Concluding Thoughts On Genesis

Genesis is completed! It took a while, but I'm glad I spent so much time with it, for even though it is my third or fourth reading of Genesis, it's been by far the most illuminating. I discovered so much more in this Book than I ever knew was there. I dwelt much more on the later chapters, whereas before I tended to focus on the early chapters and skim through everything else. Adam and Eve still captured my attention, but Jacob and Joseph enthralled me like never before.

I came to understand something more about Genesis -- its place amongst the other Books of the Bible. Obviously it is most famous for its Creation account, but it goes so far beyond that. It lays the foundation. It is where the "desire of the everlasting hills" is first revealed to us! "Genesis, from the end of the third chapter to its close, is but the history of [the] immortal Hope, and the other books of the Pentateuch do but describe the national institutions, political and religious, by and through which this Hope was to be preserved undimmed among the universal darkness of Heathendom, till the Star of Bethlehem warned Israel that the Light of the World was come."*

The people we meet in Genesis, with all their failings and worries, their weaknesses and mutinies, might otherwise give in to despair had they not been given a Hope. For imagine a world in which Adam falls and no Hope is given afterwards! Such a world would be one of constant gloom and unhappiness. But God in His Eternal Mercy gives the world a glorious Hope in the figure of His Son. And this Hope guides the chapters of Genesis. All eyes point toward the Promised Light. Many men lose sight of this ultimate Hope (as today they still do), but we have holy men to thank (Abraham, Isaac, Jacob) for keeping that Hope alive.

And now I embark on the rest of the Pentateuch, which sometimes reads like a rulebook. Though I now understand better why so many rules needed to be established. For, doubtless, men feared that future generations may lose sight of the Hope Who was revealed to the people written of in the Book of Genesis. Men, most notably Moses, realized that our fallen nature makes it too easy to drift away from the Truth, and therefore we need guidance and direction in the form of Rules to ensure we stay the course. But first, there are the extraordinary events captured in the Book of Exodus, which I turn to next.


*Bernard O'Reilly