Creation and Fall/Blessing and Completion

From YoKim

VV. 28-31 AND CHAP. 2, VV. 1-4A Gen. 1:28-31; 2: 1-4a. Blessing and Completion BLESSING AND COMPLETION

64 Vv. 28-31.

And God blessed them and said to them: Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish in the sea and over the birds under heaven and over every animal that creeps upon the earth. And God said: Behold, I give to you^[1] for your food every kind of plant on all the earth that bears its own seed and every kind of fruit-bearing tree that bears its own seed; and to all animals on earth and all birds under heaven and all reptiles that live upon the earth I give every kind of green plant to eat. And so it came to be. And God looked upon everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And with evening and morning the sixth day came to be.

THE BLESSING OF GOD upon humankind is God's promise, God's sure pledge. Blessing involves the choosing of those who are blessed. The blessing is laid upon humankind and remains on it, until it is changed to a curse. Blessing and curse are burdens that God lays upon humankind. They are inherited from one generation to another, often not understood, often uncomprehended. They are altogether real - not magical, to the extent that this implies casting a spell, but real. This blessing - be fruitful, multiply, have dominion, subdue the earth - affirms humankind wholly within the world of the living in which it is placed. It is humankind's whole empirical existence that is blessed here, its creatureliness, its worldliness, its earthliness. What, however, if this very blessing one day changes into a curse?^[2] But for the time being this blessing means nothing else than that God saw that God's work was very good.^[3] And with morning and evening, there came to be the sixth, the last, day.

Chap. 2, vv. 1-3. And on the seventh day Godfinished the work that God had done and rested on the seventh day from all the work that God had done. And God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from the "-works that God had created and made. ^[4]

Rest in the Bible really means more than having a rest;^[5] it means rest after completing one's work; it means completion. It means the peace of God in which the world lies [liegt];^[6] it means transfiguration. It means turning our eyes wholly toward God's being, toward worshiping God. It is after all never the rest of a lethargic god but the rest of the Creator; it is no letting go of the world but the final glorification of the world that gazes at the Creator. Even in God's rest, God of necessity remains the Creator. "My Father is still working, and I also am working."^[7] God remains the Creator, but now as the one who has finished the work of creation. We understand God's rest only^[8] in the sense that it is at the same time rest for God's creation. God's rest is our rest (as God's freedom is our freedom, God's goodness our goodness). Therefore God hallows the day of God's rest also for Adam and for us, whose heart is restless until it finds rest in God's rest."^[9] To us this rest is wholly a promise, one given to the people of God.^[10] To seek too hastily to grasp hold of God's rest for oneself in pious quietism is as much unbelieving presumption as to grumble impudently about the boredom of rest in paradise and thereby defend^[11] and glorify unrest and struggle. Such noisy pleasure in one's own vitality may very quickly have to fall silent in the presence of the 'living' God.

It is the same day as the day of the Lord's resurrection in the New Testament. It is the day of rest, the day of victory, of dominion, of completion, of transfiguration, the day of worship for us, the day of hope, of looking forward to the day of final rest with God, to the 'rest that belongs to the people [of God]'.^[12] All the days of the week have really been created just for the sake of this day. You shall keep the holiday holy^[13] and not sleep it away. God's work has been created, we have been created, for the final peace, for the day of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, for the day of the final resurrection and the rest of the Creator with the creatures the Creator has made, "that they may rest from their labor, and their works follow them! "^[14]

v. 4a. This is the history of the genesis of heaven and earth, when they were created. ^[15]

[edit] Notes

1. ↑ LB says "I have given you"; cf. Kautzsch, "Along with this I allocate all plants to you" (11). Otherwise the text largely follows Luther's translation.
2. ↑ HP reads, "The curse of God can take away what God's blessing had given" (26).
3. ↑ EK reads, "The blessing of God lies only upon the dominion that this human being exercises" (8).
4. ↑ Verse 1 (in LB, "Thus heaven and earth with their whole host were finished") is lacking. Verse 2 is taken from Kautzsch word for word; LB in this verse has the plural "works." Verse 3 corresponds to Luther's translation except for the word "all," which is lacking (LB: "from all his works").
5. ↑ FL comments on "God's rest," saying "Our thinking grasps [what is meant is: understands 'rest' as] something for which God needs to apologize" (31).
6. ↑ Possibly a misreading for ruht, "rests."
7. ↑ John 5:17b.
8. ↑ The 1933 edition reads nun, "now," instead of nUT, "only." EK reads, "only in the sense that it is at the same time the creature's rest. What happens in God's aseity beforehand remains hidden from us. But God's righteousness is our righteousness, and therefore God's rest is our rest" (8). The statements about "aseity" and "righteousness" are also in FL (32). HP adds "God's holiness is our holiness" (27).
9. ↑ See Augustine, Confessions (1,1:31): " ... inquietum est cor nostrum, donee requiescat in te" ("restless is our heart, until it comes to rest in you").
10. ↑ Hebrews 4:9: "So then, a sabbath rest still remains for the people of God .... " Luther in the Stiasny ed.: "as the Epistle to the Hebrews in an acute and masterly way argues from the 95th Psalm (v. 11) about God's rest" (27-28).
11. ↑ The 1933 edition, clearly by mistake, reads vereinigen, "unite."
12. ↑ The last two words, "of God," are added in the translation. Cf. Heb. 4:9 and-editorial note 10 above. [DSB]
13. ↑ Exodus 20:8.
14. ↑ Revelation 14:13b, following Bonhoeffer's translation; LB reads, "for their works [NRSV: deeds] follow them."
15. ↑ Following Kautzsch, 11. Cf. LB, "Thus heaven and earth came to be, for they were created.