Metaphors: Light of the World

June 16, 2024

Geof Morin presented today's message, "Metaphors: Light of the World." Here's a video of the message.

It's interesting to note that the words for light in Genesis 1:14-15 (4th day) and Genesis 1:3-5 (1st day) are not the same. (The words are similarly different in the Greek Septuagint also.) The former is "mi-ohrot," better translated as orb or luminary (a celestial object that emits light), and the latter is "ohr," what we think of today as light. Some suggest that these "illuminators" of Day 4 were not so much created on Day 4 but rather were revealed on Day 4. It's much like having plenty of light on a cloudy day, but when the clouds part, the sun is revealed as the source of that light. Likewise, the stars and moon were there all along, too, but revealed on Day 4. By the way, this is in keeping with the scientific understanding that the primordial stages of the Earth had an opaque atmosphere.

Light was important for the Israelites in the wilderness. God led them by day by sun-lit cloud and by the light of a pillar of fire at night. Exodus 13:21.

Check out Daniel 12:3, "And those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky above; and those who turn many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever."

Isaiah 42:6 alludes to our instruction to be a light to the nations as Geof mentioned: "I am the Lord; I have called you in righteousness; I will take you by the hand and keep you; I will give you as a covenant for the people, a light for the nations."

Psalms is replete with references to light (about 25). Two examples: Psalm 36:9, "For with you is the fountain of life; in your light do we see light; and Psalm 18:28, "For it is you who light my lamp; the Lord my God lightens my darkness."

Be careful... Light in English has several meanings and is used to translate various Biblical Hebrew words, including: traveling photons, not heavy, cheap, short of or less than correct (light load), softly (lightly), loose (e.g. light soil), unsubstantial, a fire or flame or to light a fire or flame, slim, carrying or requiring little (light industry), even herbs are referenced using "light" (2 Kings 4:39).

"Let there be light" is such a powerful statement in Creation. It's like boom, wonder, pure, glorious, beneficent, and the like all tied up in one expression. It might be the most well-known Biblical sentence among even non-believers. It supports even greater understandings for phrases in the New Testament like "God is light," "Father of lights," "Sun of righteousness," and "light of the world."

For more on the Creation story, see immediately below.

Bonus

Notes from "Creation Part 2" (PILLAR)

For more on the classes I'm teaching at PILLAR Institute, see the PILLAR page.

Here are Notes from Creation Part 1.

Part 2 covered the "second" Creation story starting in Genesis 2:4. This includes a brief review of items from the first story, then the Creation of Man and Woman in much greater detail. In this class, we continued with the Garden of Eden, the Serpent, Cain and Abel, and a very brief look at Methuselah as one of their descendants and regarding Biblical lifetime length.

This material comes mainly from Dennis Prager's book, "Rational Bible: Genesis" and Leon Kass' book, "The Beginning of Wisdom: Genesis."

Notes and Tidbits

• The first Creation story focuses on the Creation of the universe and everything in it. The second story focuses on the creation of mankind.
• The actor in the first story is Elohim, God of everyone, the universal God.
• This second story is Yahweh/Elohim/Adonai, the more personal God, used 20x here.
• This story is about relationship, God-Man, Man-Woman, Society, etc.
• This story points to key truths about human beings:
  • Man should work
  • Man must guard (care for) his environment
  • Need for Obedience
  • Not good for humans to be alone
  • Men should grow up (leave their parents)
  • And marry (and have a family)
  • Lies are the root of all evil (a "Pragerism")
  • Humans should wear clothes (differentiates from animals)
  • It's natural for humans to blame others. This has continued in spades
  • God will no longer protect humans from pain (adversity generally)
  • Humans are rarely satisfied with what they have Man is macro-oriented. Woman is micro-oriented.
  • The perpetuation of life from birth to raising good kids and building good societies is hard, and not natural. "The Way" has to be taught. Another reason Men and Women need each other.
  • Pride
  • Anger
  • Jealousy
  • Fear/Dread
  • Violence/Punishment
  • Intention is irrelevant; it's what you do
  • Humans are natural born liars
  • We all come from the same mother/father. We are literally all related. "In God's image" suggests tremendous value of each human being.
  • There is only one way to subdivide humans: male and female.
• The need for Man is announced before Man is created (Genesis 2:5).
• Breath of life (Gen 2:7) could also be "soul of life". Only Man gets this "soul," not the animals.
• Adama = earth. Adam = Earthling".
• Genesis 2:8-9 is about the creation of the Garden, not of trees.
• The "bad" in "tree of good and bad" is more than just evil. Evil implies generated by people. Bad also includes natural unfortunate things from rotten luck to lightning strikes.
• The location described by the four rivers likely has no reality on earth (despite two of the four rivers named existing today (Tigris and Euphrates). It's meant to be a universal place.
• The Garden setup may suggest a desire for Man to be vegetarian, but meat-eating clearly becomes allowed later in the Bible. The Bible's interest in animals is about preventing cruelty (no muzzling, no yoking different species, no blood consumption, etc.).
• Prager suggests this should be called "The Choice of Man" as opposed to "The Fall of Man."
• "Knowledge" is obviously a metaphor (knowledge does not grow on trees). So, what knowledge? How to live. Awareness of mortality. Freedom with restraints.
• Clearly they did not die when they ate the fruit. Again, suggests gaining an awareness of mortality.
• Genesis 2:18 is the first "not good" in Creation, "It is not good for man to be alone." Points to need for community in the future, too, not just family.
• Literally, "a helper who is his equal." Includes the notion of "opposed to him" and "completes the whole."
• God describes himself as a helper (ezer).
• Genesis 2:19-20: Man did not find a suitable companion in the animals.
• Naming is the beginning of reason, language.
• The Hebrew is not a "rib" but rather "something from his side."
• Given the overall process of Creation proceeding to higher orders, it should be clear that Woman is the pinnacle. It took one verse to make Man, six verses for Woman.
• The words Man and Woman literally show both a sameness and a difference. So do the Biblical Hebrew words, ish and ishah.
• "This one" (Gen 2:23) suggests Adam was looking through the animals for something.
• There are male humans and female humans, period. That's the only human distinction made.
• One man should marry one woman as is suggested by the population being about 50:50 male:female.
• Initially innocent, like the animals, nakedness was no issue.
• God made the serpent (was not some other deity or supernatural).
• There's no mention of "apple."
• Two other animals speak in the Bible (Balaam's donkey and the eagle in Revelation.
• The conversation between the serpent and Eve was fraught with half-truths and outright lies.
• There was a play on words with shrewd and naked. Both words have "smooth" as a meaning (hairless and/or cunning/clever).
• The same snake-y tactics are used today: overstate the prohibition, attack the motives, you won't suffer you'll benefit, partial to full lies.
• When you decide what is right and wrong, you become your own god.
• Eve had to be convinced by the serpent. Adam just ate it. She mixes what she heard and what her mind told her. This is how we are misled into accepting as whole truth things that are only partial to hasty truths.
• In Genesis 3:7, the word for naked is a totally different word than used earlier. They are now differently aware.
• "Shame" may be the first clue that self-awareness has arrived.
• God does not interrogate the serpent. The only thing you can do with evil is overcome it.
• Note that the pain of childbirth was multiplied. This suggests there was some amount of pain at first (or planned).
• Genesis 3:16 at the end is about differentiation of roles, not dominance. It's important from the family on up through civilization.
• God made humans' first clothing. The earlier fig leaves were apparently insufficient as are all human-only "arts."
• Adams punishment is macro (earth, work) while Eve's is micro (feelings, pain, desires).
• A key to understanding humans is to understand their sexuality.
• "Knew" as in sexual intercourse is the same word as "knowledge" regarding the tree.
• Pain in childbirth portends how tough life is.
• "Eve" (Chavah) means "mother of all living things."
• Cain's sacrifice wasn't rejected; it just wasn't as good as Abel's. There's no mention of how Cain knew his offering was lesser.
• Interesting to note that the birth of Eve's children includes no mention of pain.
• Bringing a sacrifice was apparently natural to Cain and Abel. There is no mention of God requesting such. Sacrifice was ubiquitous in the Ancient Near East (ANE). No known society at that time was atheistic.
• Cain was the first farmer, initiator of sacrifice, founder of the first city, and progenitor of arts including music and metallurgy.
• "Sin couches at the door": the less good we do, the more that sin is tempting. Build habits of doing good.
• God only speaks to Cain. Maybe He's recognizing that humans are most promising AND most problematic.
• God questioned Cain just as he questioned his parents.
• Without having any reason to believe he did wrong (there were no laws yet), Cain lied. Clearly conscience is not enough to prevent doing bad.
• Genesis 4:10, "brother's blood cries out." The word blood is actually "bloods", plural, referring to all the potential descendants of Abel's that died with him. Sent a chill up my spine.
• God curses Cain but does not kill him. God is generally hard on murder. But only pre-meditated.
• The "ceaseless wandering" part of Cain's punishment was clearly not fully executed as Cain became the founder of the first city. "Punishment" could also mean "my sin/guilt"; when the Torah is ambiguous, it often means both.
• Genesis 4:21: music is introduced in the Torah; something primeval and foundational.
• The ages of people in the Bible gradually descends from Methusaleh at 969 years to Joseph (last story of Genesis) living to 110 and stabilizing there. This aligns interestingly with the current maximum lifetime (apparently) at about 120 years.
  
  

  Bonus2

  
  Best Advertisement for Atheism
  
  The above title comes from this Dennis Prager Fireside Chat. It could also have been called "Why are there Bad Religious People?" I commend this video to you. The first 16 minutes is on this topic. The rest is worth watching, too, should you wish.
  
  Here are what I saw as the main points in the video:
  
  Data tends to show that generally religious people do more good (give more to charity, donate time more, etc.). But still, there are bad religious people.
  
  Bad religious people turn people off to religion (see the title of this article).
  
  The best advertisement for religion is good religious people.
  
  Religious leaders don't stress what God most wants from us... Be good!
  
  The Flood destroyed mankind (except for Noah's family) because everyone was violent (Genesis 6:11, chamas, חָמָס). Not because they didn't worship God enough. But Noah was "a righteous man."
  
  There are many flood stories, but only the Biblical story says the survivor was saved because he was good and the rest of mankind was destroyed because it was evil. The most famous "other" flood story in Gilgamesh had mankind destroyed because humans made too much noise and kept the gods up at night. Another saved one guy because he was handsome.
  
  God is constantly described as moral. God is just, good, and holy.
  
  God wants us to act good. "Faith without works is dead." Faith must be matched with what you do.
  
  Matthew 7:12, "So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets."
  
  "Let those who love the Lord hate evil, for he guards the lives of his faithful ones and delivers them from the hand of the wicked," Psalm 97:10.
  
  Micah 6:8, "He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God."
  
  My favorite title for this discussion is "What Does God Want Most from Us?" It's not for humans to worship Him more. It's not for sacrifices to Him. It's nothing "for Him." Those things are good, and good for our own benefit, too, but that's not it. It's to be good to one another!