As we left off, you had just finished the elaborate parallels describing the creation of the world in seven days (as recorded in the first chapter of Genesis) through the eyes of an ancient Israelite.
But just when you thought you had finished you came upon the next line in your scroll, and realized that the creation story wasn't over.
Instead, the author—or the editor, you don't know which—has picked up the theme with a line which echoes, but is not quite identical to, the creation story you learned at your mother's knee.
As you contemplate this line, you notice that the words:
In the day that Yahweh gods made the earth and the sky,
parallel the first line of the version you have just worked your way through, which describes creation as happening during a week, rather than a day:
| Time | verb phrase | space and physical environment | |
| Version One | In the beginning | gods created | the sky and the earth |
| Version Two | In the day | Yahweh gods made | the earth and the sky |
The folk version—version two—has been altered by the insertion of "gods", as a clear signal, on top of the parallelism, that the two versions are to be read as a unit.
You are immediately drawn in, and read the next line, expecting a parallel to the earth, formless and empty, and the darkness on the face of the deep.
There was neither domesticated plant, nor plant growing wild upon the earth,
For Yahweh gods had sent no rain on the earth,
Nor was their any man to till the ground.
You almost laugh out loud at the cleverness.
This is a classic description of chaos as wilderness, with the same two parts as version one: the emptiness symbolized by dryness—a lack of water—and the formlessness symbolized by the absence of a farmer—someone to cultivate and bring order to the land. The chaos is relative here: not the abstract nothing of the first version, but the relative chaos of a dry and desolate wilderness.
Not only do these lines parallel version one, they do it by turning a symbol from version one on its head.
The description of chaos in the first version was a description of an abstract nothingness: a void. The two symbols which analyzed that void—that broke it down into parts—were darkness, the absence of content and energy, and the waters of the deep, the absence of order.
The line before you pictures another traditional image of chaos—one much closer to the the heart of Israel—the wilderness. Just as Israel was said, in the old stories, to first pass through the waters of the deep in the form of the Red Sea and then wander forty years in the wilderness, these two versions of creation first represent chaos in terms of the deep, and now in terms of the wilderness.
And what is the first characteristic attributed to the wilderness? A complete lack of water! Where the first version used an abstraction of water to represent formlessness, this version uses concrete lack of water as a symbol of emptiness.
The artistry of this move thrills you, and you read on, expecting that the next lines will address the lack of water and the lack of a gardener, just as the lines from the first version addressed the absence of light and structure:
A spring rose out of the earth, and watered the surface of the ground,
And Yahweh gods formed human from the dust of the ground,
and he breathed into its nostrils the breath of life,
and human became a living being.
You notice, not only that the lack of water and of a tiller for the soil has been addressed, but also, the themes of word (forming) and spirit (the breath of life) have been echoed from the first version. The first act of creation in version two parallels the first act of creation in version one while remaining, at the same time, quite distinct.
You read on, wondering how the author will parallel the creation of the sky.
