9 so that the dry land can be seen וְתֵרָאֶ֖ה הַיַּבָּשָׁ֑ה
Despite the darkness and water that were all that could be seen when Genesis began, apparently there were the makings of a planet hidden under that water. The Sky (in the form of a sapphire cupola) had to be made, but the land was there all along. When the water moves away, it will be able to dry out. As we’ll see shortly, this is the “creation” of Earth.
Many translations say that God wanted the dry land to “appear.” That’s a perfectly good translation. This is the same verb that one might use in Modern Hebrew to say, “It appears to me …” It is using the same verb conjugation as to have the water “gather.” The one person who will be able to “see” what will shortly “be seen” is God, who knows already that it is there, so “appear” makes good sense. Once again, however, I have changed the more usual translation to help me notice what is really being said.
And it was so. וַֽיְהִי־כֵֽן This time, “and it was so” seems to be in its natural place, in between God’s wish that it be so and the words telling us how it became so. Remember that in v. 7 “and it was so” followed God’s making the cupola; in the Greek, they introduced that action. But we are in for another surprise.
In the traditional Hebrew (the MT or Masoretic Text), “and it was so” is all we are told. We must take for granted that the water did gather into one location as God wanted. The Greek translation does show us that this happened:
And the water that was under the sky was gathered into their gatherings, and the dry land appeared.
καὶ συνήχθη τὸ ὕδωρ τὸ ὑποκάτω τοῦ οὐρανοῦ εἰς τὰς συναγωγὰς αὐτῶν, καὶ ὤφθη ἡ ξηρά.
I include the Greek for those who can read it; when I offer an English translation, I am taking it from the NETS, not doing it myself as I do for the Hebrew. It amuses me that the “gathering” of water is a συνᾰγωγή, the Greek word that gives us our English “synagogue” for a place where Jews gather to worship. Undoubtedly there were such locations, perhaps even called by that name, when the translation was written, but I am not going to guess whether this would have been on the writer’s mind.
Again we must ask: was this line …
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