Transcription
From the first breath of scripture, the text hints that God is both one and he is a collective. Even the rabbis acknowledge that there was some sort of discussion, and the Hebrew actually makes it sound like God was a plurality. So where does this leave us as we try to understand him? And another thing that I think is fascinating in Exodus 20 is that it says the people saw God's voice. How do you see a voice? Right.
Hey everyone, I'm Jeff Morgan, and I'm here with Ariel Randall. We want to invite you to study the scriptures with us today from our So Be It studio, right here in the land of Israel. We're in the blue room, and uh, we're going to be studying from our new series called Messiah in Genesis.
Now, let's be honest. In today's world, a lot of people treat the Bible like a fortune cookie. You know, you crack it open and you grab a quick inspirational quote, slap it onto your mirror with a sticky note, and call it a day. But in Jewish tradition, especially when it comes to the Torah, it was never meant to be like that. It's always been about dialogue, about wrestling with the text, asking the hard questions, and digging deep into the layers of meaning God packed into his word. And sure, you'll hear different interpretations, but it's not about who can come up with the most clever opinion. It's about knowing God. Because if God spoke, then what he meant actually matters. The name Israel literally means one who wrestles with God. And that's our heritage. But the goal isn't to win an argument or impress people with the latest hot take, or to continue to wrestle with God. It's to get closer to him, to discover the truth he's revealed, and let it change you from the inside out.
In Western thought today, a lot of times people's goal in studying is just to arrive at a conclusion as quick as possible. But in Jewish culture, the conversation itself deeply matters. And it's not an end to itself. It's a path to uncover what God is saying. In Jewish thought, the Bible also isn't just a straight line. It's a living, interconnected pattern where small details reflect the grand story again and again. It's filled with fractals. A concept that means that everything small carries the shape of something bigger. So, think about cauliflower. Yeah. Right. I like cauliflower. A little floret, a little piece of cauliflower looks just like the whole, right? And you see this same thing in lightning, snowflakes, river systems, even human DNA. The way that DNA folds inside a cell, a single cell carries the entire blueprint of the body. Every tiny part knows the story of the whole. And this is exactly how the Hebrew scriptures are written. They aren't just random ancient stories that are strung together. Every part contains the pattern of the bigger story, God's plan to redeem the world. And not only that, Jewish study has always been deeply communal. And that's exactly what we're inviting you into. We're going to take a walk through the book of Genesis, Jewish style, exploring different texts and tracing how these ancient words connect to the hope we have in Jesus. And you, you're a part of the study group, too. So jump into the comments, share your questions, your insights, but let's make it our aim to move closer to his truth, not just to our own ideas.
This is exciting. Yeah, let's dive in. Let's do it. So, let's start from the first chapter of the Bible. Genesis 1. If you want to get your Bibles out, go for it. If you want to digitally find it, that's cool. So, from the very beginning, the scriptures show us something incredible. God isn't distant, right? God is relational. You know, in the very first sentence, the Bible introduces us to God not as a lonely creator, but as a community of love. Okay. So, let's look at the text. I'm going to read from Genesis 1:1-3. All right. Yep.
"In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. And God said, 'Let there be light.' And there was light."
So the Hebrew word here for God is Elohim, a plural noun, right? Paired with singular verbs, right? Plural noun with singular verbs. From the first breath of scripture, the text hints that God is both one and he is a collective. His unity includes relationship. So when God speaks of himself, he uses that plural pronoun. And when we jump to Genesis 1:26, that famous Bible line that says, "God said, 'Let us make man in our image after our likeness,'" right? And he surely wasn't talking about angels because we weren't made in the image of angels. We were made in the image of God. And so in Jewish literature, in Midrash Rabbah, um, in the commentary on Genesis, a rabbi recognizes the weight of this passage. And here it says that at this time when Moses wrote the Torah, writing a portion of it daily, when he came to this verse which says, "And Elohim said, 'Let us make man in our image after our likeness,'" Moses said, "Well, Master of the Universe, why do you give herewith an excuse to the heretics?" God answered Moses, "You write, and whoever wants to err, let him err." So this quote is a defense against the plurality of God. And what that really tells us is that even the rabbis acknowledge that there was some sort of discussion, and the Hebrew actually makes it sound like God was a plurality. So God seems to refer to himself in the plural. So where does this leave us as we try to understand him?
It's a really good question, and I really don't think that this is a linguistic coincidence. Everything in the Bible is deeply intentional. Clearly, God wants us to have a foundational understanding of who he is in this story that's about to unfold. And it's revealing that God's identity is communal. It includes relationship, even love. This is the very first fractal in the Bible. And everything that's created is going to carry this pattern. Everything in nature is meant to be interconnected, to exist in harmony, in wholeness, in healed community and relationship. And we intuitively know this, right? We know that a good life is one that's filled with relationships and with love. Yeah. Yeah. And I think, I think in the way that we enjoy relationships as people, I think it's, um, clear to see that when someone pulls out of relationships, isolates themselves, you know, spends time a lot of their time alone thinking about only about themselves, that they have a difficult time communicating, a difficult time interrelating with people. Um, they have a difficult time within complex relationships. And so it shows us how important not only relationships are, but how they help us actually become more like God in his relationship, um, with himself and his and humanity.
Well, and I think that the Hebrew scriptures are implying here that love is a small fractal of the divine, right? So when we experience that in our lives, we know there's something so powerful about that. And it's because that is the essence of God. And we can further understand this concept, I believe, when we continue through the passage, right? Because in the next verse, it talks about the spirit of God hovering over the face of the waters. The, the word in Hebrew there for hover, it comes from the root rafa, which means to flutter or hover, right? To gently move back and forth, um, like beating wings. And it's actually a word that's used, uh, in another passage in Deuteronomy referring to an eagle, uh, flying over and protecting her young. The word can also be used to refer to a bird, um, sitting on their nest on their eggs, right? Waiting for them to hatch. And so here's a quote from a rabbinic commentary on the Bible from the Midrash. Um, this is from Genesis Rabbah, which is compiled between the third and fifth centuries AD. Right? So this is preserving older Jewish traditions about creation. And it says, "And the spirit of God hovered over the face of the waters. This refers to the spirit of King Messiah, as it is written, 'And the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him.' And what is meant by hovered? It is like a dove that hovers over her young but does not touch them. In the same way, the spirit of God hovered over the waters, gently moving over them, bringing warmth and life without fully descending."
It's so interesting to me that the rabbis would connect the spirit of God present at creation to the same spirit that would rest on the Messiah. Mhm. And what's fascinating is that in the New Testament, when the spirit of God comes upon Jesus at his baptism, it says the spirit descended like a dove, yeah, physically, and remained on him. And that detail really matters because the spirit didn't just visit Jesus. It stayed with him. And later, Jesus told his disciples that it was actually better for him if he'd left because if he didn't, the spirit wouldn't be sent to them. He says, "Unless I go away, the advocate will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you." So Jesus carried the spirit, but after his resurrection and ascension, that same spirit would be poured out on all who believe. So we wouldn't just walk beside him, but have his presence within us, continuing the work of new creation in our hearts. I love the feminine imagery that's used here for God's spirit, this picture of a mother bird. And this is consistent with the Hebrew, the word ruach, spirit. It's grammatically feminine. And again, this is an idea we're going to see woven again and again through the Hebrew scriptures. One beautiful example is in the book of Proverbs where wisdom is personified as a woman. And listen to what it says in Proverbs 8. Wisdom says about herself, "I was there when he set the heavens in place. When he marked out the horizon on the face of the deep. When he established the clouds above and fixed securely the fountains of the deep. When he gave the sea its boundary so the waters would not overstep his command, and when he marked out the foundations of the earth, I was constantly at his side."
It's very clear in Genesis 1:2 that there's a spirit of God that's present at creation and that God is interacting with his creation in a deeply intimate way and also through diverse forms. Right? God is still God in heaven who's orchestrating creation at the same time while the spirit of God is on the surface of the water. So this is setting a precedent for part of God to be interacting with his creation while he still maintains his divine presence in heaven. Yes. And as he's interacting with creation, he's also interacting with the spirit of God. Right. They're in relationship. That's right. That's right.
And so we're going to now look at how creation happens. You know, it doesn't happen with God's hands. It actually happens with his word. And over and over, we hear, "And God said, and God said." In ancient Jewish thought, God's speech isn't just a sound. During the Second Temple period, Jewish translators created something called the Targums, which are Aramaic paraphrases and translations of the Hebrew Bible used in synagogue. And in these Targums, when the Hebrew texts would attribute very personal, human-like actions to God, like God speaking, God walking, God coming down, the Targum translators often replace those direct actions with what's called the Memra, which is the word of God acting instead. And they did this to preserve God's transcendence, to maintain the idea that God is so holy and beyond physical form that his interactions with the world must be mediated through his word. Yeah, it's really, really interesting. So when we actually read these Targums, like if you read in those translations, Genesis 1:3, it literally says, "And the Memra of the Lord said, 'Let there be light.'" And there's so many more examples of this as you continue through the Hebrew scriptures, right? Another, um, well-known one is in Exodus 19 when Moses brings the people to meet God at Sinai. The Targums say he brought them to meet the Memra of the Lord.
And another thing that I think is fascinating in that passage in Exodus 20 is that it says that the people saw God's voice. How do you see a voice? And the rabbis teach on this, right? There's this concept in Judaism that God's word and God's voice is a unique manifestation of who he is. And this has been widely recognized by Jewish scholars, even modern Jewish scholars. I want to read, um, a few quotes from Allan Segal. He's a respected Jewish, uh, scholar. He, uh, of ancient Judaism teaches at Columbia, and he wrote a book, Two Powers in Heaven, which is, it's a really serious, um, well-known work of Jewish studies in our time. And, and this is what he says, okay? "The Memra is obviously a manifestation of God which was distinguishable, yet the same, a means of talking about the action of God in the world without compromising his deity. The Memra was a common substitute for the divine name in the Targums, and its use shows us that the concept of the divine word acting as an intermediary was quite familiar in Judaism." So the idea of the Memra, the divine intermediary, was already there. It was already in place before Jesus lived. Right. So, and this developed organically in the Second Temple period. Yeah. As you know, in the Jewish worldview, and it was used in synagogue worship to explain how God acts in the world without compromising his transcendence.
And there's another contemporary Jewish scholar. He's actually a Talmudic scholar, Daniel Boyarin. He points out that early Jewish writings like those in the Hebrew Bible and Second Temple literature actually reflect a divine plurality with figures like the Son of Man given everlasting dominion in Daniel 7, and the visible Word of the Lord appearing alongside God himself. And why is this so important to understand? Because when John opens his account of who Jesus is by writing, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. And through him all things were made." So John isn't inventing a new idea here. He's speaking straight out of Jewish understanding of creation.
Well, and I mean, how many people think that the New Testament isn't Jewish? Right? But if you look at the opening words of the Hebrew scriptures, the opening words of the New Testament, they both start with "In the beginning." Then they both go on to explain how God's word was the agent of creation. And in the New Testament, it's, it's actually building on Jewish thought, Jewish interpretation of creation and explaining how God has always had the intent to interact with us in an intimate way. Yeah. So when the New Testament talks about Father, Son, Holy Spirit, it's not inventing a new idea, you know, it's building on the patterns and mysteries already revealed in the very opening words of the Hebrew scriptures, right? In the beginning of Genesis, the God who existed before the universe, the Word who spoke the creation into being, and the Spirit who nurtured this new world. They're all present there from the beginning. The first verses of the Torah show us a threefold revelation of God, written thousands of years before the word Trinity was even used to describe this idea. So, the Trinity is not a Christian invention, but it's something that's deeply rooted and consistent with everything that God has revealed to us about himself from the very beginning of the Hebrew scriptures.
Well, and from the first pages of Genesis, God is showing us he is one, but his nature includes interaction, love, relationship, family. When I think of these different aspects of God working together, it's almost like a beautiful dance. We've seen this. We've experienced this in the most sacred moments of our lives where the love between people, the relationships between people are so powerful that they almost have a life force unto themselves. And that's why God created the world. In his nature, there was so much love that the only natural thing to do was to create, to expand the circle. It's a creative force. Yeah. Right. Exactly. Right.
So, what have we learned today? That nothing in the scriptures is random, right? Every detail is reflecting the grand story of God's love for the world. The creation account itself is preparing God's people to understand that God is a unity, but a complex unity, and that includes relationships, and that he wants us to relate to him in a personal way, and he will stop at nothing to demonstrate his love towards us. Stay tuned because in the next episode, we're going to go into Genesis 2, the creation of humankind. And I think that we're going to discover some really interesting things in the Hebrew that most people do not understand. Yep. About that account. And so we look forward to you joining us. Please like, subscribe, share this content so we can continue to study the Bible together.