God created the Land
May 6, 2022
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the EARTH.”
בְּרֵאשִׁ֖ית בָּרָ֣א אֱלֹהִ֑ים אֵ֥ת הַשָּׁמַ֖יִם וְאֵ֥ת הָאָֽרֶץ׃
Genesis 1:1
As
modern Western readers, we involuntarily bring modern Western
presuppositions and biases to our understanding of the Text. This is
unavoidable at first. We cannot help but be what we are. Moreover, our
English translations do not help us stand apart from these biases. The
problems arise when these biases shape (or misshape?) our understanding
of the words, which might lead to errors in interpretation and
application. For some readers, this will lead them to straining at
making the Text mean what the Text was never intended to mean.
Today’s
word from Genesis 1:1 is an almost perfect example of reading into the
Text what was not meant to be there. The word is the Hebrew ERETS
(אֶרֶץ), which almost every English translation renders as “earth”.
ERETS occurs more than 2500 times in the Hebrew Bible, making it one of
the most frequently used terms in the Text.
From the perspective
of an Ancient Near Eastern audience, what would G-d have created in the
beginning? We moderns see “earth” as a round globe, floating in the
expanse of space (unless you are Kyrie Irving, of course); this picture
represents the earth as we have known it for several centuries. But the
original audience for the Text would not have seen it this way, in any
shape or form. The term ERETS represented the solid ground – the land –
on which they were standing. In more three-fifths of its 2500
occurrences, the English translators render it as “land”. In modern
Hebrew usage the country of Israel is “ERETS YISRAEL” (which makes
“earth” almost a comical rendering of ERETS).
Cosmologically
speaking, the Text has G-d making the sky above and the land beneath
that sky, not to mention (as the Text moves on) everything that exists
in both of them.
