Throughout the creation days, we are repeatedly informed that God saw that which He made and pronounced it good. In preceding posts, we have talked about the deep freight these words carry and their significance to countless other biblical ideas. For example, the proclamation of that which God has made as “good” has close connections to the notion of the heavenly council. God’s heavenly or divine council is the heavenly court- it is that place in which He is enthroned and from which He judges the world. The heavenly council is also the place at which prophets are invested with God’s Spirit as emissaries of divine authority. Hence, Isaiah receives his calling in the temple- the palace of God- where he beholds the court in deliberation. In Genesis 1, the text begins with the creation of the Heavens- that place where God is enthroned with His angels. It ends with God’s creation of Man as His Image: “Let us make Man in Our Image.” Man is invested with the capacity to exercise dominion over the world, and, as with later prophetic calls, this capacity is invested by virtue of the outbreathing of God’s Spirit into Adam in Genesis 2:7. Adam, in other words, is created of earth to be drawn into heaven so that the whole earth from which he comes will be drawn into heaven with him. Today, I wish to begin discussing the notion of sight in order that we will be able to interpret the purpose of the rising of the land- that it might be seen (Genesis 1:9, the literal meaning of the phrase usually rendered “to appear”) and its role in the divine-human relationship.
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