GENESIS

Genesis is a book of beginnings. Throughout this book, we find ourselves reading about events that happened where they did for a reason. We read about gardens and towers, a Promised Land that has no water and unpromised lands that do, roadways and memorials, trips to Egypt, delays at Beersheba, and a longing to be buried in Hebron. Each of these events happened where it did for a reason.

In part 1 we will see that water concerns often affected the decisions people made. The Lord placed Adam and Eve in his water-rich Garden of Eden. But when the serpent tempted them to eat the forbidden fruit, he directly contradicted the Lord’s warning that this act of mutiny would bring death. The new sin-ruined world became so steeped in mutiny that it threatened the hope of any rescue. The Lord then used water to remove wickedness from the world—a judgment on evil that opened the door for a new beginning that Noah’s family could enjoy. Mutiny, however, was progressive. Noah’s descendants, through his son Ham, moved east and into deep trouble. Thus the new beginning of Noah’s descendants ended badly as they tried to set down roots in the well-watered region of Babel only to build structures that misrepresented the nature and power of the one true God and distorted the Lord’s purpose for humanity.

Thus in the Lord’s plan, Abraham was directed to the land of Canaan with its unpredictable supply of water. The Lord chose Abraham and his descendants to be messengers of the one true God whose plan to rescue all nations occurred on the podium of Canaan (the Promised Land). Throughout the life of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and other members of this family, we observe their struggles, falling, rising, and continuing their journey. Water-rich areas of the Fertile Crescent that espoused self-reliance proved alluring. So we find them weighing decisions to leave the Promised Land only to return to their divinely assigned mission, and a life marked by tombs, altars, and memorials, whose locations and messages go hand in hand. The book of Genesis ends with Abraham’s family in Egypt, but their hope for return is forged in the minds of all through the burial requests of Jacob and Joseph, who constantly turn their eyes to the Promised Land and call for their descendants to remember they are messengers of the one true God through whom all nations will be blessed.

So although Adam and Eve succumbed to the serpent’s temptation in the Garden of Eden—a temptation to mutiny against the King of the Universe—their loving Creator proclaimed a message of rescue and restoration from the consequences of that mutiny. In time, that promise would intimately involve the family of Abraham and would one day be fulfilled in the coming of the Rescuer.

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1).
© NASA. Hubble Space Telescope NGC 2207 and IC 2163.

Neo-Sumerian cylinder seal (2200–2100 BC) reveals similarities with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.
© Dr. James C. Martin. The British Museum.

Mount Ararat, eastern Turkey. Noah’s ark rested on the mountains of Ararat.