three tasks for sun & moon (Gen 1:17-18)
Reading through the story of creation
17 And God put them in the Sky cupola וַיִּתֵּ֥ן אֹתָ֛ם אֱלֹהִ֖ים בִּרְקִ֣יעַ הַשָּׁמָ֑יִם
[Here and below, go to the Day Four introductory post for the recording of the Hebrew text if you like.]
A quick note on “God put them.” The Hebrew is va-yitten otam, using a verb from the root נתן n-t-n. Look that verb up in your Biblical Hebrew dictionary and you will find it defined as “give,” which is the meaning it has in Hebrew nowadays. But the Bible uses it in a much broader range of meanings, some of which would sound awkward if we used English “give.” Not even the Hebrew-loyal, make-the-English-strange Everett Fox translation uses “give” to translate it here — yet another aspect of the Bible in which what it “literally” says cannot be taken straightforwardly. When we get to v. 19 (next time), we’ll have to talk about a much more obvious such case. Meanwhile, vv. 17-18 present us with something I had never thought about until sitting down to write this post — and I think I have been missing something important.
17 … to shine on the earth, 18 to rule over the day and the night, and to distinguish light and darkness.
לְהָאִ֖יר עַל־הָאָֽרֶץ׃ 18 וְלִמְשֹׁל֙ בַּיּ֣וֹם וּבַלַּ֔יְלָה וּֽלֲהַבְדִּ֔יל בֵּ֥ין הָא֖וֹר וּבֵ֣ין הַחֹ֑שֶׁךְ
When God thought up the idea of having lights in the Sky, we saw (in vv. 14-15) that they were intended to perform three tasks:
to distinguish Day and Night
to be used for calendar dates
to shine on the earth
In v. 16, God made those lights, and now, in vv. 17-18, he puts them in the Sky to serve these purposes:
to shine on the earth
to rule over Day and Night
to distinguish light and darkness
There are three differences between God’s idea (in vv. 14-15) and what God does (in vv. 17-18):
the original order of the three tasks is now presented in reverse
distinguishing Day and Night has been replaced by the original phrase from v. 4, distinguishing light and darkness
the use of the lights for calendar dates is now replaced by their being given rulership / dominion over Day and Night
Can that possibly be what ruling Day and Night means — determining the calendar? As we saw earlier on Day Four, memshalah, in the Bible and now, is quite a political word. When a human moshel employs his powers of rule in the Bible, as Joseph’s brothers imagined him doing to them, he does far more than determine the dates on which things are supposed to happen.
On the actual planet where we live, and where the Bible was written, the sun and moon do of course determine our calendar dates, just as God thought in v. 14. They have more subtle effects too, from causing the tides to changing the weather, not to mention what happens (according to a friend of mine who discovered this working in an emergency room) when the moon is full. But there may be something else here as well. These days you might look for it in the comic pages, but earlier in history, it was taken quite seriously. I’m talking about astrology.
As I mentioned briefly when I started our discussion of v. 14, the medieval philosophers took the distant off-earth locations of sun, moon, and stars to imply that they existed in a realm beyond the changeable nature of earth. But the philosophers also understood the “spheres” where these heavenly bodies rotated to be self-aware intellectual beings. And many of the medievals thought quite seriously that these “intelligences” had a role to play in determining what happens down on the ground.
All of which is to say that astrology and astronomy were often hard to distinguish in earlier centuries. Another 2,000 years farther back in time, it may well be that Genesis 1 is also acknowledging the power of these heavenly bodies to shape events on earth. (Remember that “the stars in their courses fought against Sisera” in Jud 5:20.) The medievals understood that their powers were subordinate to God’s, and they certainly are here; God made them for precisely that purpose — among others. Nonetheless, Day Four tells us quite explicitly that the sun, moon, and stars are being given some kind of governing power over Earth. I think it is not impossible to understand Day Four as saying that this dominion is linked with the use of sun and moon to establish the calendar, and that the combination implies something close to what astrology once meant to serious thinkers.
In the Tuesday and Thursday posts this week, we’ll conclude our discussion of Day Four with a summary of what we’ve learned so far and a visit from (of all people) Rembrandt! But since this post discussing the calendar is dropping on January 1st, let me wish all my readers a Happy New Year! Looking forward to great learning together in 2023. Please share our learning with a friend!