Genesis

The first promise is a promise of seed. God tells the serpent that the woman’s seed “shall bruise thy head” (3:15), and from then on the book follows a line. Eve names Seth, for God “hath appointed me another seed instead of Abel” (4:25). To Abram the LORD says, “Unto thy seed will I give this land” (12:7), and under the stars, “So shall thy seed be” (15:5). God’s word, not birth order, chooses the line: “in Isaac shall thy seed be called” (21:12). After Moriah the oath reaches the nations: “in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed” (22:18). The same promise is spoken to Isaac (26:4) and to Jacob (28:14).

God binds himself by covenant. After the flood he says, “I will establish my covenant with you” (9:11), and sets his bow in the cloud as its token. With Abram the covenant is made over divided animals while a deep sleep is on him (15:12), and only “a smoking furnace, and a burning lamp” pass “between those pieces” (15:17). The promise rests on the LORD alone. Before that covenant, and years before circumcision, Abram “believed in the LORD; and he counted it to him for righteousness” (15:6). Circumcision comes later, as the sign of “an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee, and to thy seed after thee” (17:7). Paul builds on that order: Abraham received “the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had yet being uncircumcised” (Romans 4:11).

Cain answers the LORD with a question: “Am I my brother’s keeper?” (4:9). Brothers in this book seldom keep each other. Esau resolves, “then will I slay my brother Jacob” (27:41). Joseph’s brothers “hated him, and could not speak peaceably unto him” (37:4), and it was Judah who said, “Come, and let us sell him” (37:27). Years later Judah stands surety for Benjamin, and when the cup is found he asks to take the lad’s place: “let thy servant abide instead of the lad a bondman to my lord” (44:33). Then Joseph makes himself known, and “kissed all his brethren, and wept upon them” (45:15). Cain’s question is answered by a brother who offers himself for another.

Each day of the making closes the same way: “And the evening and the morning were the first day” (1:5), and over the works God saw “that it was good” (1:10), until “behold, it was very good” (1:31). Faithful readers have counted those days differently. Basil read them as days as we count them: Scripture sets a day and a night together, for twenty-four hours fill up the space of one day, and the law rests the sabbath on them, “in six days the LORD made heaven and earth” (Exodus 20:11). Augustine noted that the first three days passed before the sun was made (1:14–19), and read evening as the completion of the work that was done and morning as the beginning of the work to come. Both read the days as the order of God’s own making, by his word.