Sky & Earth are finished (Gen 2:1)
Reading through the story of creation
1 Then the Sky and the Earth were finished וַיְכֻלּ֛וּ הַשָּׁמַ֥יִם וְהָאָ֖רֶץ
We have started Genesis 2, and we have heard for the last time that “there was an evening and there was a morning, a [numbered] day.” But weeks have seven days, not the six of Genesis 1, and this will be — it is — the seventh day. So I’m keeping the tagline “reading through the story of creation” for another three verses. I’ll change it for v. 4 and then again as we move forward from v. 5.
Genesis 1 began with an announcement about the creation of the Sky and the Earth, and Genesis 2 begins with the announcement that creation is finished. Biblical Hebrew is a VSO (verb-subject-object) language, so that verb is the first word of the Hebrew chapter, va-y’khullu, a verb in the Pual binyan, a passive form. The active, Piel form will begin v. 2, telling us who finished creation.
The root of this verb is כלה k-l-h, and it is related to the word כל kol ‘all’ that you see toward the end of the verse. I would have loved to translate this verb as “they were totaled” if that English word didn’t resonate so loudly with automobiles that are ready for the scrap heap. You can say in Hebrew that something is “completed,” but that’s not the verb being used here.
Despite its relationship to “all,” this is a verb you use when something is over. As Ethel Barrymore is reputed to have said, “That’s all there is, there isn’t any more.” When God gives the young Samuel a message for his boss Eli, the High Priest at Shiloh, God explains that he is going to do everything he had threatened to do to Eli, “from beginning to end [הָחֵ֖ל וְכַלֵּֽה haḥel v’khalleh].” Here too kalleh means “it’s over.”
Now for a responsible opposing viewpoint.
I translated this verb to say “then the Sky and the Earth were finished” because it is in the form we’ve talked about before — technically the converted imperfect or imperfect consecutive — that’s used in biblical narrative to keep the action moving. It implies that its verb is the next thing that happened: God said, “Let there be light,” and then there was light, and then God separated light from darkness, and then God (simultaneously) named the light and the darkness.
Genesis 1 ended by stating that there was an evening, then a morning, and that these comprised the sixth day of Creation Week. If we take our verb form seriously, the next thing that happened, on Day Seven, is that the world was finished. We will definitely talk more about this when we get to v. 2; for now, let’s remember that even though everything pertaining to Sky and Earth has been made, it is only now, on the seventh day, that they are “finished.”
and all their auxiliaries וְכָל־צְבָאָֽם׃
Here’s another case where I’ve decided to use a somewhat unexpected English word in my translation in order to de-familiarize things. Had I taken the easier route and said “all their host,” following King James, the 1917 JPS version, and others, no one would have blinked an eye. Understanding the meaning of that somewhat archaic English word, however, would have been somewhat difficult.
So let’s look into the Hebrew word that’s being used here, צְבָאָֽם. The -am suffix at the end of this word is what means “their,” so this host belongs to Sky and Earth, not directly to God, as we might have thought. But what is a “host”?
Here’s what the Oxford English Dictionary has to say:
1. a. An armed company or multitude of men; an army. Now archaic and poetic.
2. a. transferred. A great company; a multitude; a large number.
3. In Biblical and derived uses:
a. host or hosts of heaven (Hebrew ts'bā hashshāmayim) is applied to (a) the multitude of angels that attend upon God, and (b) the sun, moon, and stars.
Our tzava does not belong only to ha-shamayim, the Sky, but to Earth as well. We have not yet heard of any angels, and the sun, moon, and stars certainly do not belong to earth. Yet this is just one tzava, not one each for Sky and for Earth. So let’s look at what the Hebrew & Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament has to say about צבא, with their explanation of our occurrence given a separate entry of its own:
A. 1. military service
—2. military men, troops
—3. those setting out from Egypt
—4. צְבָא הַשָּׁמַיִם the host of heaven
—5. וְכָל־צְבָאָם Gen 21 either the beings surrounding God, or alternatively the stars, or the totality of what is denoted in the individual works; NRSV: the heavens and the earth and all their multitude; REB: and everything in them (cf. NEB: with all their mighty throng).
—6. military service > service in the cult1
—7. military service > compulsory labour
—8. misc.
—B. צְבָאוֹת as an epithet of God
And here is a little more on that last, “B” entry, but from the OED:
b. Lord (God) of Hosts (Jehovah Ts'bāōth): a frequent title of Jehovah in certain books of the Old Testament; apparently referring sometimes to the heavenly hosts (see a), sometimes to the armies of Israel, and hence in modern use with the sense ‘God of armies’ or ‘of battles’.
“Certain books” means that this name does not appear at all until we reach the book of Samuel, giving me a lot of time to think about it before I have to write about it for you. Meanwhile, here are some of the words other Bible versions use to translate צבא in Gen 2:1:
NJPS: array
KJV & OJPS & ESV: host
NRSV: multitude
NETS: arrangement = LXX: κόσμος
[It’s interesting that Gr. kosmos means “an arrangement” or even “an ornament.” The same word gives us both “cosmos” and “cosmetics.”]
Douay-Rheims: furniture
CPDV2: adornment
And here are some of the different words NJPS uses to translate צבא elsewhere:
Gen 21:22 – troops
Exod 7:4 – ranks
Num 1:3 – groups [+ yotzé tzava = “able to bear arms”]
Num 4:3 – service
There is a verb צבא too. Two forms of that verb occur in Exod 38:8, in the phrase הַצֹּ֣בְאֹ֔ת אֲשֶׁ֣ר צָֽבְא֔וּ, translated by NJPS as “the women who performed tasks,” with the following legendary NJPS footnote: “Meaning of Heb. uncertain.”
All of this brings me at last to my own translation, “auxiliaries.” This has a vaguely military sound and does also include the notion that these auxiliaries are somehow in the service of Sky and Earth doing “compulsory labor.”
What can they be? The auxiliaries of Sky must indeed be the sun, moon, and stars. The auxiliaries of Earth must be all the creations of Days Three, Five, and Six, including us. Combined with the sun, moon, and stars, all these things make up one single צבא, in the service of the two-fold world of Sky and Earth — a merism (see my discussion of that in The Bible’s Many Voices here) referring to what we would call the universe.
The implications of that word צבא tzava, which I’ve tried to mimic with “auxiliaries,” suggest that God’s creation of the world was purposeful, not just something that seemed like it might be fun to do. We’ll learn more about the nature of our world from what we’re told about it in the next two verses.
“Cult” here is a technical term for temple ritual, not a judgmental term.
This is the Catholic Public Domain Version. I’ve gotten some of these translations from a resource called Scripture Tools for Every Person that you’ll find at stepbible.org.