Genesis 1:29-2:1-3

Man's meals, Heavens and Earth and whole cosmos finished, the Sabbath, Ramban and St. Ephrem and Fr. Schmemann, Heraclitus...

And so we reach the end of the first chapter of Genesis and enter the second. Before I go further into the second chapter I will return to the days of creation and revise my initial translation. In addition to revisions and ongoing translation, I have interviews scheduled with Everett Fox and Michael Carasik. We’ll talk about translation in general and translating Hebrew in particular. Both men know far more about both (and about Bible) than I do. If you have a question for either that you’d like me to ask, a suggestion for another translator (from any language!) to interview, or a question for me about anything I’ve posted, please email: bibletranslation@substack.com.

Also forthcoming: Leo Strauss on Genesis 1. And perhaps posts on Ibn Ezra, Maimonides, and Robert Alter’s The Art of Bible Translation.

The translation:

He said, “Look,
  I gave you
    every seeding crop
      on all Earth
    every fruit bearing tree
        to eat
  also for earth beasts
  sky birds
  wigglers on earth
    with life
      every green crop
        to eat”
 
It was so
He saw
  that all was very fine
 
An evening and a morning
  sixth day
 
Heavens and Earth and their whole order finished
He finished
    that seventh day
  the work
    He’d done
He rested 
    that seventh day
  from work
    He’d done
He blessed
  the seventh day 
    from all work
He consecrated it
  for ceasing
    from work
      God had made
        for doing.

---

The first verse of the second chapter introduces a new concept: צָבָא. Heavens and Earth are finished (the verb for finished (כלה) has the same double meaning as the English: completion and annihilation). But Heavens and Earth are joined with this new thing, צָבָא, which has an interesting range of meaning itself.¹ The LXX translates צָבָא as κόσμος, and the classical and koine κόσμος² is not exactly (or not only) the Cosmos of Carl Sagan. Its meaning is closer to order than “universe”, and it can also mean ornament or decoration. Indeed, St. Jerome translates צָבָא as ornatus. Almost all English Bibles give צָבָא as hosts. The latest revision of the NASB offers heavenly lights.

Ramban comments thus:

AND ALL THE HOST OF THEM. “The host of the earth” are those which have been mentioned: beasts, creeping things, fish, and all growing things, and also man. “The host of the heavens” are the two luminaries and the stars, mentioned above, just as it is written: And lest thou lift up thine eyes unto heaven, and when thou seest the sun and the moon and the stars, even all the host of heaven (Deuteronomy 4:19). It also includes the Separate Intelligences, just as it is written: I saw the Eternal sitting on His throne, and all the host of heaven standing by Him; also, The Eternal will punish the host of the high heaven on high (Isaiah 24:21). It is here [in the expression, all the host of them], that He has hinted at the formation of the angels in the work of creation. Similarly, the souls of men are included in the host of heaven.

Rashi is curiously quiet about this verse.

I’ll leave you with two short readings on the Sabbath: first, St. Ephrem of Syria on the meaning of God’s rest; second, Fr. Alexander Schmemann on Saturday as the Christian Sabbath.

St. Ephrem of Syria:

From what toil did God rest? For the creatures that came to be on the first day came to be by implication, except for the light, which came through his word. And the rest of the works that came to be afterward came to be through his word. What toil is there for us when we speak one word? So what toil could there have been for God to speak one word a day? Moses, who divided the sea by his word and his rod, did not tire. Joshua, son of Nun, who restrained the luminaries by his word, did not tire. So what toil could there have been for God when he created the sea and the luminaries by his word? It was not because he rested on that day that God, who does not weary, blessed and sanctified the seventh day. Nor was it because he was to give it to that people, who did not understand that since they were freed from their servitude, they were to give rest to their servants and maidservants. He gave it to them so that, even if they had to be put under requirement, they would rest. It was given to them in order to depict by a temporal rest, which he gave to a temporal people, the mystery of the true rest, which will be given to the eternal people in the eternal world.

Louth, Andrew – Conti, M. (ed.), Genesis 1–11 (Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture; Downers Grove, IL 2001) 45-46.

Fr. Alexander Schmemann:

No one can undo or abolish that which God has ordered. It is true that many Christians think that the divine institution of sabbath has simply been transferred to Sunday which thus became the Christian day of rest or sabbath. Nothing in the Scriptures or Tradition can substantiate this belief. On the contrary, the “numbering” of Sunday for the Fathers and the entire early Tradition as the first or the eighth day stresses its difference from and a certain opposition to Saturday which forever remains the seventh day, the day blessed and sanctified by God. It is the day on which Creation is acknowledged as “very good,” and such is its meaning in the Old Testament, a meaning retained by Christ Himself and the Church. This means that in spite of sin and the fall, the world remains God’s good creation; it keeps that essential goodness in which the Creator rejoiced: “and God saw everything that He had made and, behold, it was very good” (Gen. 1:31). To keep the sabbath as was meant from the very beginning means therefore that life can be meaningful, happy, creative; it can be that which God made it to be. And the sabbath, the day of rest on which we enjoy the fruits of our work and activities, remains forever the blessing which God bestowed on the world and on its life. This continuity of the Christian understanding of sabbath with that of the Old Testament not only does not exclude, but indeed implies also a discontinuity. For in Christ nothing remains the same because everything is fulfilled, transcended, and given a new meaning. If the sabbath in its ultimate spiritual reality is the presence of the divine “very good” in the very texture of this world, it is “this world” that in Christ is revealed in a new light and is also made something new by Him. Christ bestows upon man the Kingdom of God which is “not of this world.” And here is the supreme “break” which for a Christian makes “all things new.” The goodness of the world and of all things in it are now referred to their final consummation in God, to the Kingdom which is to come and which will be manifested in all its glory only after “this world” comes to its end. This world, moreover, by rejecting Christ has revealed itself to be in the power of the “Prince of this world” and to “lie in wickedness” (1 John 5:19); and the way of salvation for it is not through evolution, improvement, or “progress,” but through the Cross, Death and Resurrection. “It does not come to life unless it dies” (1 Cor. 15:36). A Christian thus lives a “double life”—not in the sense of juxtaposing his “worldly” and his “religious” activities, but in the sense of making this life in its totality the “foretaste” of and preparation for the Kingdom, of making his every action a sign, an affirmation and expectation of that which is “to come.” Such is the meaning of the Gospel’s apparent contradiction: the Kingdom of God is “in the midst” of us and the Kingdom of God is “to come.” Unless one discovers it “in the midst” of life, one cannot see in it the object of that love, expectation, and longing to which the Gospel calls us. One can still believe in punishment or reward after death, but one can never understand the joy and the intensity of the Christian prayer: “Thy Kingdom come!”—“Come, Lord Jesus!” Christ has come that we may wait for Him. He entered life in time so that life and time may become the passage, the passover into God’s Kingdom.

Schmemann, Alexander, Great Lent (New York 1969) 67-69.

If you haven’t yet,

1. Here’s the spread of definitions in the Dictionary of Classical Hebrew:

1a. army/armies, host(s), military troop(s), military division(s)

1b. host of Y.

2. war, warfare, battle, military campaign, military service

3. host, assembly, group, division

4a. heavenly host, heavenly entourage of Y., heavenly beings, angels

4b. sing., host of Y.’s spirits, plur. hosts of spirit

4c. plur., hosts of gods, i.e. angelic assemblies

4d. plur., hosts of Melchizedek, angels

5. celestial bodies, luminaries, stars

6. host of clouds

7. multitude of created things

8. plur. hosts of the nations

9. cultic service, cultic duty of Levites

10. (term of) hard service

2. Cf. Heraclitus: κόσμον τόνδε οὔτε τις θεῶν οὔτε ἀνθρώπων ἐποίησεν, ἀλλʼ ἦν ἀεὶ καὶ ἔστιν καὶ ἔσται πῦρ.