Seed and Speech

Theological Reflections on the Third Day of Creation

Christian interpreters have classically taken the reference to God’s speaking the world into being within Genesis 1 as an allusion to the preeminent role of Jesus Christ, the Hypostatic Word of God, in the creation of the world. The Gospel of John, therefore, recalls the language of Genesis: “in the beginning was the Word” (John 1:1). Modernist interpretation has increased skepticism as to the viability of this exegesis. However, as I have sought to demonstrate, in detail, in my discussion of Genesis 1, the foundation for the Christian interpretation of Genesis 1 is woven far more deeply into the text than most readers recognize. The idea of divine speech or language as ontologically central to the existence of the created order is structurally significant for the text. Thus, it is not merely that God calls light into the world on the first creation day by speaking “let there be light” (Genesis 1:3). It is that the role of God’s speech is developed throughout the text in a way that is exegetically taken up later in Genesis and in the rest of the Bible.

Thus, on the third creation day, God elevates the world to a greater degree of intimacy with His Word. Rather than simply speaking His intention and enacting it directly, God speaks concerning the land (Genesis 1:11). As God exists as a perfect communion of three divine persons in relation, so the world fashioned according to the intention of the triune God is shot through with relations of distinction intended for communion. Heaven and earth exist in relation to each other and are ordered towards their unification. We see developing throughout Genesis the pattern in which things which have been separated out are causally oriented in relation to each other. Thus, on the third day, when God wishes to call land into being, He does so not by directly lifting land out of the sea, but rather by gathering the waters into unity. It is by virtue of God’s action in the water that the land is brought into being.

Subsequently, the land which has arisen from the gathered sea becomes a partner in God’s creative work. God speaks concerning the land: “let the earth bring forth…” and the earth acts accordingly. As God formed the land by acting in relation to the sea, God forms the trees and grains by speaking in relation to the land. We therefore find the connection, later in Scripture, between the productivity of the ground and the indwelling of the divine Word. God thus speaks in Isaiah: “As the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout…so shall my Word be that which goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty” (Isaiah 55:10-11). We likewise find that the sacrificial system is tied irrevocably to the reality of the productivity of the ground. God calls the earth to bring forth fruits and grains, which are constitutive of the animal bodies created on the fifth and sixth creation days, so that God delegates the green plants to them for food (Genesis 1:29). Upon the altar of sacrifice, we find offerings of beasts and tribute of grain (Leviticus 1-3). Crucially, the sacrificial system is tied intensely to speech. Leviticus begins with God’s speaking to Moses from the tent of meeting (Leviticus 1:1). God’s word proceeds outwards through the place of God’s dwelling: but the sacrificial system is the reciprocal return inwards of God’s word. One cannot have a relationship with a person about whom one knows absolutely nothing. Israel has been taken into God’s family in the event of the exodus, which gives birth to the nation as the son of God (Exodus 4:22). It is for this reason that God arranges for the construction of His home after the exodus: if Israel is to live as the children of God, they must dwell with Him in His house. And if they are to enjoy a relationship with God, they must not only dine in His presence but engage Him in speech.