The Order of Heaven and Earth

Creation and Recreation in Genesis 1-9 (1 of 2)

The ontology of creation is rooted in the dyad of heaven and earth. In Genesis 1:1, God creates the heavens and the earth, but the earth alone is “without form and void” with darkness “over the face of the deep.” The descent of the Spirit on the first creation day illumines the world and sets the stage for the progressive shaping and filling of the world over the course of the six days. In Genesis 2, Adam is called the “generations of the heavens and the earth” and is constituted out of the union of the divine “Breath of Life” from heaven with the “dust of the ground” from Earth. Adam is created to unify heaven and earth in himself as the one who is animated by the Breath of Heaven and speaks by that Breath to name those creatures from earth (Genesis 2:19-20.) We see throughout the early chapters of Genesis that the relation between heaven and earth is the fulcrum around which its narrative swings.