Creation to Completion: A Guide to Life’s Journey from The Five Books of Moses

By RABBI RUSSELL RESNIK

A commentary on each of the weekly portions read in traditional synagogues, a practice seen in the New Testament.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Messianic Jewish Communications
• Release date: Jan 1, 2006
• ISBN: 9781936716142

RABBI RUSSELL RESNIK

Former rabbi of Messianic Jewish congregation and current executive director of the Union of Messianic Jewish Congregation and author of several books.

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THE BOOK OF GENESIS

(B’resheet), meaning In the Beginning.

Genesis also looks ahead to the distant future, to the culmination of all things. God creates the first man and woman in the book’s first chapter and charges them to subdue the earth, launching a process that is still to reach completion. Just before the book’s conclusion, Jacob gathers his sons to tell them what shall befall them in the last days. Genesis reveals that from the beginning, the divine goal of Creation—its consummation or completion—is clearly in sight, and will prevail over all obstacles.

We also encounter in Genesis the profound wisdom of the ancient Jewish division of Torah into weekly reading portions, or parashiyot. The parashiyot are longer than chapters and verses, which tend to interrupt the narrative flow. Instead, the parashiyot respond to that flow, and echo the larger patterns of biblical revelation.

The weekly readings of Genesis reflect the narrative structure of the entire book, which comprises twelve portions in the traditional reading cycle. The first two portions (chapters 1–11) cover the first twenty generations of humankind—ten generations from Adam to Noah, and ten from Noah to Abraham. They constitute Part One of Genesis, recounting the origins of the cosmos and of the human race, and the early history of all humankind. The final ten parashiyot (chapters 12–50) constitute Part Two, and cover only four more generations. The story shifts from a universal focus to one specific human family, from epochal stories of Creation, innocence, sin, and judgment, to domestic stories of marriage, children, and inheritance. Still, this one specific and very real family will carry God’s initial purpose of blessing to the whole human race.

Translator and commentator Robert Alter summarizes this shift in Genesis:

The human creature is now to be represented not against the background of the heavens and the earth and civilization as such but rather within the tense and constricted theater of the paternal domain, in tent and wheatfield and sheepfold . . . working out all hopes of grand destiny in the coil of familial relationships. . . . In keeping with this major shift in focus from the Primeval History to the Patriarchal Tales, style and narrative mode shift as well. The studied formality of the first eleven chapters . . . gives way to a more flexible and varied prose.¹

From a Messianic perspective, we note two major continuities in Genesis despite this shift.

First is the theme of redemption. The human race, created in the image of God, has a destiny, which will be fulfilled despite failure and opposition. Early in the story, when the sin of Adam and Eve seems to have sidetracked God’s purpose, God promises a seed, an offspring of the woman who will defeat the opposition. The theme of the promised seed carries throughout the book.

Second is the theme of covenant. After the Flood, God makes a covenant with the whole Creation through Noah. Then, when God raises up a restored humanity through Abraham, he establishes a covenant with him as well, which God will preserve and pass on to each succeeding generation.

These themes of redemption and covenant are foundational to the whole Torah, and to all of the Scriptures built upon it, the Bible that we possess and read today. These themes will enable us to read Torah, not just as an ancient history or rulebook, but as the story of Creation to completion, a story filled with hope for our world.

CREATION AND ITS GOAL

Parashat B’resheet, Genesis 1:1–6:8

A classic Jewish story tells of two men who fell into a dispute and agreed to bring the matter to their rabbi for judgment. The first one told his story and ended with the claim that the other owed him twenty pieces of silver. The rabbi said, You know . . . you’re right! When the second told his story, he claimed that the first one owed him twenty pieces of silver. The rabbi responded, You know . . . you’re right! The rabbi’s assistant called out, Rabbi, they can’t both be right! And the rabbi replied, You know . . . you’re right too!

We begin our study of Torah with its very first word—B’resheet or In the beginning—which has been the subject of debate among Jewish interpreters for centuries. The great medieval commentator Rashi says of Genesis 1:1, This verse says nothing but ‘Expound me!’ The medieval Jewish commentators were experts in Hebrew grammar, and Rashi begins his exposition with a grammatical look at the first word, B’resheet. Other commentators over the following centuries will either agree or disagree with Rashi.

Let’s listen in on this discussion. It will be worth the effort, because it reveals a unique aspect of Jewish interpretation that will expand our understanding of Scripture. Two different viewpoints may both have something vital to teach us.

The word b’resheet is in the construct form, used when one noun combines with another. It combines b’ or in with resheet, meaning first or beginning, so that it would normally mean in the beginning of . . . . Rashi says, "You have no instance of the word resheet in Scripture that is not attached to the word that follows it." Accepting this argument, one traditionally-oriented Jewish version translates the opening lines of Genesis:

In the beginning of God’s creating the heavens and the earth—when the earth was astonishingly empty, with darkness upon the surface of the deep, and the Divine Presence hovered upon the surface of the waters—God said, Let there be light, and there was light.²

In contrast with Rashi, however, another leading medieval commentator, Ramban, points out two instances of resheet that are not in the construct form: Isaiah 46:10, "Declaring the end from resheet—the beginning, and Deuteronomy 33:21, He provided resheet—the first part—for himself. Furthermore, Ramban says that the construct form is always used to connect one noun with another, but in Genesis 1, b’resheet connects with a verb. Therefore, he translates the opening words, In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth," signifying the Creation of all things out of nothing. He explains,

The Holy One, blessed be he, created all things from absolute non-existence. Now we have no expression in the sacred language for bringing forth something from nothing other than the word Bara [translated ‘created’ here].³

This discussion of b’resheet may seem a bit technical, but it shows that two opposing views can both teach us something. We might even end up like the rabbi in the story, saying You’re right to two interpretations that seemed at first to oppose each other.

In this case, Genesis is telling us both that God created all things out of nothing, simply by his word, and that this creative process was a matter of bringing order to the original chaos. Creation is the miraculous coming-into-being of all things through the divine utterance, and also a battle with the disorder that was present almost from the first.

In this understanding, Creation is not an end in itself, but is moving toward a goal—the completion of God’s order and shalom (peace, wholeness). Indeed, the theme of Creation and its consummation underlies the entire Torah.

This theme also unlocks the meaning of our own lives. When God created humankind, he gave them a role in improving his Creation: Then God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth’ (Genesis 1:28). Humans are to fill the earth that God has created, to subdue and rule it in a divine-human partnership.

Thus, when God places Adam and Eve in the Garden, they are not to remain in innocent passivity. Rather, the Lord gives them real responsibility: Then the LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to tend and keep it (Gen. 2:15). Human tending and keeping of the Garden will increase it, until the whole earth becomes a garden, and Creation reaches the fulfillment for which it was designed.

God gives us humans a vital role in his ultimate plan for the Creation, but before our first ancestors begin to fulfill this role, disorder breaks out again. God had placed Adam and Eve in the Garden as his representatives, and had commanded them not to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in its midst. The disorder, vanquished during the week of Creation, enters the Garden in the form of a serpent that entices the humans to eat. Because of their disobedience, God expels Adam and Eve and cuts them off from the Tree of Life.

Exile from the Garden sets the stage for the human quest throughout the rest of Torah, and into our own times, the quest for the Tree of Life. Traditional Judaism sees Torah as the Tree of Life. In the synagogue service, after reading from the Torah scroll, one of the men will grasp its handles and lift it high for the whole congregation to see, calling out, This is the Torah which Moses placed before the children of Israel at the command of the Lord. A Tree of Life it is to those who take hold of it. Cleaving to Torah, then, will open the way back to the Tree of