Tag archives for Genesis

Worship Has a Moral Aspect

By | Published 05/24/2010

Pope Benedict XVI, then Cardinal Ratzinger, on the connection of sabbath and worship with creation:

The Bible, to be sure, could take up the fundamental notion of the universe as existing for the sake of worship, but at the same time it had to purify it. This idea is to be found there, as has already been said, in the context of the sabbath. The Bible declares that creation has its structure in the sabbath ordinace. But the sabbath is in its turn the summing up of Torah, the law of Israel. This means that worship has a moral aspect to it. God’s whole moral order has been taken up into it; only thus is it truly worship. To this must be added the fact that Torah, the law, is an expression of Israel’s history with God. It is an expression of the covenant, and the covenant is in turn an expression of God’s love, of his “yes” to the human being that he created, so that he could both love and receive love.1

Footnotes

  1. Joseph Ratzinger, ‘In the Beginning…’: A Catholic Understanding of the Story of Creation and the Fall, Ressourcement, trans. Boniface Ramsey, O.P. (Grand Rapids: Wm B. Eerdmans, 1995), 29. ↩
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Waw Consecutive in the Theology of Rihanna

By | Published 01/07/2009

You’ve heard Rihanna’s song Live Your Life? It sounds an awful lot like she’s using wayehi, a Hebrew waw consecutive. Anyone who’s heard this song now knows how to say “(And) there was” in Hebrew. This word is all over the place in Genesis 1.

“And God called the expanse Heaven. And there was [wayehi] evening and there was [wayehi] morning, the second day” (Genesis 1:8).

Anyways…that’s what I think of when I hear this song…not that I listen to that kind of music…Who’s Rihanna?

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Genesis 48

By | Published 04/28/2007

The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness (2 Peter 3:9)

In Genesis 48, Jacob is running on the last few fumes in his gas tank. I, personally, thought that when I would read this chapter, Jacob would come across as bitter, or upset, or disappointed. Why? Because God had made promises to his grandfather (Abram), and his father (Isaac), and to him, but those promises hadn’t yet come to fruition. But, instead of passing on his dying disappointment to his son (Joseph) and grandchildren (Ephraim and Manasseh), he passes on the promise of a great nation arising from the seed of Abraham:

And now your two sons, who were born to you in the land of Egypt before I came to you in Egypt, are mine; Ephraim and Manasseh shall be mine, as Reuben and Simeon are. And the children that you fathered after them shall be yours. They shall be called by the name of their brothers in their inheritance (Genesis 48:5-6)

Thanks to Matthew’s genealogy we can trace Jesus’ lineage and find that God’s promise of a great nation (and a ruler as promised to Judah) come to fulfillment in Jesus Christ.

Know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham…And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise. (Galatians 3:7, 29)

Thinking of God’s promises and the length of time between the promise given to Abraham and it coming to fruition in Jesus and the lack of disappointment of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob that they had not yet received the promise should teach us a lesson concerning the return of Jesus: namely, wait for it. From the New Testament, it is somewhat clear that the disciples expected Jesus to return to establish his kingdom in their lifetime (cf. Acts 1:6-7, 2 Timothy 2:18). But we know that he did not and we still await the triumphant return of Christ. Can, we too, wait without wearying of the promise, but pass it on until it is fulfilled in God’s time according to his great pleasure? Pray we may.

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