A Prophecy of Esau and Jacob

Remember the former things of old; for I am God, and there is none other; I am God, and there is none like Me,

declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, ‘My counsel shall stand, and I will do all My pleasure,’ Isaiah 46:9-10

Genesis 1

¹ In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. — created; not formed or made from any pre-existing materials, but created out of nothing; in the beginning of this sidereal system, of which our sun, with its planets; of this material, visible, and temporal world; not the the spiritual, invisible and eternal world;

— God; Heb. Elohim; a word plural in form (Father and Son), but joined with a verb singular; created; the idea of creating them out of nothing;

² And the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. — and the earth; the conjunction “and” (וְ) negatives the well-meant attempt to harmonise geology and Scripture while studying Genesis 1:1

— and the earth became (hā·yə could be translated as “become” in some versions as in Genesis 3:20 and elsewhere) without form and void; it just doesn’t make sense that God created something that is already in a state of decay (bohû and tohû);

— this process of hā·yə could have taken many years, perhaps thousands, or even million, the details we’re not given; we’re only given the gist of it only; hence today, many trace marks could be gathered to prove that the earth is very old;

— one example is the Tibetan Plateau, sometimes called the “roof of the world,” and according to Bradley Hacker, a professor of geological sciences at the University of California, “the plateau dates back 13.5 million years and has reached a maximum average height of five kilometers.”

— a second example is the Hawaiian chain of islands; more from Britannica; “The origin of Hawaii’s islands, islets, and seamounts can be traced to at least 70 million years ago, near the end of the Cretaceous Period (145 million to 66 million years ago);”

— a third evidence is the absence of the creation of the dinosaurs in Genesis chapter two, indicating they were created and destroyed millions of years before another creation in Genesis 1:1

— both the Targums of Jonathan and Jerusalem paraphrase it, a waste and desert, empty and destitute of both men and beasts;

³ And God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. — God said, Let there be light; he willed it, and at once there was light. Oh, the power of the Word of God!

⁴ And God saw the light, that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness. — divided between the light and between the darkness; God then separates light and darkness, by assigning to each its relative position in time and space; which refers to the division of day and night;

⁵ And God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day. — and the Evening and the Morning were the first day: the evening, the first and second part of the evening; about the space of twelve hours;

— and the morning, which is also the second part of the night, and the second morning, in the light, in all together they make the opposite space from Evening; and both form one natural day, consisting of twenty four hours; 

⁶ And God said, “Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.” — a firmament; an extension, or a space; or place extended or stretched out, and spread abroad like a tent or curtain, it indicates something solid;

— and let it be dividing between water and water; it appears that the water in the atmosphereic sphere was in contact with another mass of water ion the earth; hence the Targum of Jonathan says “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate between the waters above and the waters beneath.”

⁷ And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament; and it was so. — the waters under the firmament are seas, rivers, lakes, fountains, and other waters in the bowels of the earth;

⁸ And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day. — God called the firmament (the expanse) heaven; and means something heaved up; including the starry and airy heavens; being above the earth, and reaching to the third heaven;

— and the evening; and the morning were the second day; these together made up the space of twenty four hours, which was another natural day; 

⁹ And God said, “Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear”; and it was so. — unto one place; the ocean bed. We must add the vast depth of the ocean to the height of the mountains before we can rightly estimate the intensity of the forces at work on the third day;

— and let the dry land appear: clear of the waters, dried by the expanded air, hardened by the fiery light, and as yet without any herb or tree upon it: and it was so; immediately done;

¹⁰ And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called He Seas; and God saw that it was good. — he called them not sea, but seas; because of the differing quantity and nature both of several seas, and of the rivers, and other lesser collections of waters, all which the Hebrews call seas;

¹¹ And God said, “Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth”; and it was so. — and God said, Let the earth bring forth grass; which had been impregnated by the spirit of God that moved upon it when a fluid; and though now become dry land;

¹² And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind; and God saw that it was good. — and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind; as apples, pears, plums, apricots, nectars, peaches, oranges, lemons, and more;

¹³ And the evening and the morning were the third day. — the space of twenty four hours ran out, and were measured, either by the rotation of the body of light and heat around the earth, or of the earth upon its axis;

¹⁴ And God said, “Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years; — and God said, let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven; in the upper part of it, commonly called the starry heaven;

— and let them be for signs and the times of the feasts, and to reckon with them the number of days, and, sanctify the beginnings of the months, and the beginnings of the years;

¹⁵ and let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth”; and it was so. — to give light upon the earth; and the inhabitants of it, when formed: and it was so:

— the Targum of Jonathan adds “and let them be for signs and for festival times,”

¹⁶ And God made two great lights: the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night. He made the stars also. — the great light, the sun, which is really and considerably greater than the moon and with the little light, the stars, from man’s point of view, are insignificant;

¹⁷ And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth, — and God set them in the firmament of the heaven; he not only ordered that there they should be, and made them that there they might be,

— but he placed them there with his own hands; and they are placed, particularly the sun, at such a particular distance as to be beneficial and not hurtful: had it been set nearer to the earth, its heat would have been intolerable; in the one case we should have been scorched with its heat, and in the other been frozen up for the lack of it;

¹⁸ and to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. — in the fourth day’s work, the creation of the sun, moon, and stars is accounted for; all by the works of God;

¹⁹ And the evening and the morning were the fourth day. — the fourth day, made by the rotation of the earth on its own axis, in the space of twenty four hours;

²⁰ And God said, “Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.” — moving creature; all oviparous animals, both among the finny and the feathery tribes, remarkable for their rapid and prodigious increase: fowl, which means every flying thing;

²¹ And God created great whales and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind; and God saw that it was good. — great whales; those vast sea monsters known by that name, though elsewhere this word be applied to great creatures of the earth, or under the seas;

²² And God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply on the earth.” — be fruitful, and multiply; this blessing shows that the earth was replenished with animal life from a limited number of progenitors, and probably from a small number of centres, both for the flora and for the fauna;

²³ And the evening and the morning were the fifth day. — the evening and the morning were the fifth day; the sun now in the firmament, where it was fixed the day before, having gone round the earth, or the earth about that, in the space of twenty four hours; 

²⁴ And God said, “Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind: cattle and creeping thing and beast of the earth after his kind”; and it was so. — “cattle” which seem to design domestic cattle, and such as are for the use of man, either for carriage, food,

— or clothing, as horses, asses, camels, oxen, sheep and “creeping” things, which are different from the creeping things in the sea before mentioned, are such as either have no feet, and go upon their bellies, or are very short, and seem to do so, whether greater or lesser, as serpents, worms, ants and more;

²⁵ And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind; and God saw that it was good. — and God saw that it was good; that every creature he had made would some way or other be for his glory, and for the benefit of man;

— the Behemoth (H930 ḇə·hê·mō·wṯ), or known as as dinosaur in Job 40:15, is a different word from Cattle (H929 bə·hê·māh) used in this verse and elsewhere; the word “dinosaur” was coined only in 1841 by an Englishman named Sir Richard Owen, hence most translations today continue to use the antiquated word Behemoth;

²⁶ And God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.”

— in our image, in our form; after our likeness; with the ability to understand and to discern; these Words “let us” indicates the plurality of God (Elohim); are spoken by God the Father to the Son; hence the “US” and “OUR” plural form of a singuar God;

²⁷ So God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them. — in our image, that is, in our form; after our likeness; with the ability to understand and to discern, showing man’s superior glory and dignity to the rest of the creations;

— the Jerusalem Targum says,

the Word of the Lord created man in his likeness; even that Word that was in the beginning with God, and in God’s presence, the Word created all things; which is closely linked to John 1:1;

— and the parallel revealing of the Word in John 1:1-3

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

The same was in the beginning with God.

All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made. John 1:1-3

²⁸ And God blessed them, and God said unto them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.” — so God created man in his own image; and with man’s superior intelligence, to subdue and have dominion over them;

²⁹ And God said, “Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree in which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. — to you it shall be for meat: which is generally thought to be the food; as the Hebrew word “meat” is an old English term for “food;” compares this Luke 24:41 And while they yet believed not for joy, and wondered, He said unto them, “Have ye here any meat?”

³⁰ And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat”; and it was so. — and to every beast, and to every fowl and every thing that creepeth, are likewise for food;

³¹ And God saw every thing that He had made, and behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day. — it is affirmed here everything is good that flesh and meat as well as herbs and fruits, are granted to the first men for food;

— and therefore we are safe to ignore any false shepherds who came along later and preached derogatively the eating of meat as if eating corpses; it is sufficient for us that it was expressly allowed here; as was instructed to righteous Noah in Genesis 9:3 (except the blood);

— and Ellen G White is thus a false prophetess; for she wrote derogatively of eating meat as if eating corpses:

From the light God has given me, the prevalence of cancer and tumors is largely due to gross living on dead flesh.

I sincerely and prayerfully hope that, as a physician, you will not forever be blind on this subject, for blindness is mingled with a want of moral courage to deny our appetite, to lift the cross, which means, to take up the very duties which cut across the natural passions.

Feeding on flesh, the juices and fluids of what you eat pass into the circulation of your blood, and, as we are composed of what we eat, we become animalized; thus a feverish condition is created, because the animals are diseased, and by partaking of their flesh, we plant the seeds of disease in our own tissue and blood.

Then when exposed to the changes in a malarious atmosphere, these are more sensibly felt; also when we are exposed to prevailing epidemics and contagious diseases the system is not in condition to resist the disease. TSDF 68.11

I have the subject presented to me in different aspects. The mortality caused by meat-eating is not discerned; if it were, we would hear no more arguments and excuses in favor of the indulgence of the appetite for dead flesh. We have plenty of good things to satisfy hunger without bringing CORPSES upon our table to compose our bill of fare. TSDF 68.12

The prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests bear rule by their means; and My people love to have it so. And what will ye do in the end thereof? Jeremiah 5:31

 For they prophesy falsely unto you in My name: I have not sent them, saith the Lord. Jeremiah 29:9

Genesis 2

¹ Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. — the host of them; that is, the creatures contained therein; the host of heaven, in Scripture language, sometimes signifies the stars and sometimes the angels;

² And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had made; and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had made. — God ended his work; not all work (John 5:17), but the work of this specific creation;

³ And God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He had rested from all His work which God created and made. — God blessed the seventh day, by conferring special honours and privileges upon it above all other days, that it should be a day of solemn rest and rejoicing and celebration of God and his works.

⁴ These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, —t hese are the generations of the heavens and the earth, when they were created; that is, the above account is a history of the creation of the heavens and earth, and of all things in them; the creation of them being a kind of generation, and the day of their creation a sort of birthday;

⁵ and before every plant of the field was in the earth, and before every herb of the field grew; for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground.

— for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth: so the plants and herbs could not grow owing to that; since on the third day, when they were made, there was no sun to exhale and draw up the waters into the clouds, in order to be let down again in showers of rain;

— and there was not a man to till the ground; who was not created till the sixth day, and therefore could have no concern in the cultivation of the earth, and of the plants and herbs in it; but these were the produce of almighty power;

⁶ But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground. — a mist; this mist, as we learn from Job 36:27, where the same word is translated vapour, is the measure and material of the rain;

⁷ And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. — and the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground; literally, formed the man (adam) dust from the ground;

— became a living soul, that is, a living man: not only capable of performing the functions of the animal life, of eating, drinking, walking and more; and of thinking, reasoning, and discoursing as a rational creature;

⁸ And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there He put the man whom He had formed. — and the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; or “had planted” for this wasn’t done after the formation of man;

⁹ And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. — the tree of life also; so called, because of assuring him of the continuance of life and happiness, on condition of his persevering in obedience;

— but also because God had given to the fruit of it a singular virtue for the support of nature, the prolongation of life, and the prevention of all diseases, infirmities, and decays through age;

— the tree of knowledge of good and evil; to man, who by the use of it would know, to his cost, how great and good things he did enjoy, and might have kept by his obedience, and how evil and bitter the fruits of his disobedience were to himself and all his posterity; thus knowing both the good and evil;

¹⁰ And a river went out of Eden to water the garden, and from thence it was parted and became four heads. — the Targum of Jonathan says And a river went forth from Eden, to water the garden, and from thence was separated, and became four heads of rivers (or four chief rivers).

¹¹ The name of the first is Pishon; that is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold. — the first is Pishon; or Pison, perhaps an eminent branch of the river Tigris, probably that called by others Pasi-tigris, or Piso-tigris;

¹² And the gold of that land is good, and there is bdellium and the onyx stone. — there is the bdellium, and the onyx stone; the first of these is either an aromatic gum; the tree is black, and is of the size of an olive tree, has the leaf of an oak;

¹³ And the name of the second river is Gihon; the same is it that compasseth the whole land of Cush. — Gihon, the second river, flows by the land of Kush; there is one other Gihon mentioned in 1 Kings 1:33, and in II Chronicles 32:30;

— the rivers Pishon and Gihon may have been greatly altered or even effaced by the deluge and other causes over time;

¹⁴ And the name of the third river is Hiddekel; that is it which goeth toward the east of Assyria. And the fourth river is Euphrates. — of the “Hiddekel” and “Euphrates” there high probability the former is the Tigris, or Tigres;

— and the fourth river is Euphrates; which retains its name till modern time as we know it today;

¹⁵ And the Lord God took the man and put him into the Garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. — to dress it and to keep it; the first word literally means to work it; for though a paradise, yet the garden had to be tilled and planted; seeds must be sown and the cultivated plots kept in order;

— the other word, “to keep it,” implies, however, some difficulty and danger, though no unpropitious weather, nor blight nor mildew, spoiled the crop, yet apparently it had to be guarded against the incursion of wild animals and birds, and protected even against the violence of winds and the burning heat of the sun;

¹⁶ And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat; — saying, of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: a very generous, large, and liberal allowance this: or “in eating thou mayest eat”

¹⁷ but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it. For in the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die.” — the tree of knowledge of good and evil; a consequence to humanity of how evil and bitter the fruits of his disobedience were to himself and all his posterity; thus knowing both the good and evil;

— for in the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die; man became at once a mortal creature; but had he obeyed by eating of the tree of life, he would have lived an immortal life;

¹⁸ And the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper meet for him.” — a new and final need of man is stated, a helper;  she is formed to be social, to hold converse, not only with her superior, but also with him, a co-worker;

¹⁹ And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air, and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them; and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.

— whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof; his powers of perception and intelligence were supernaturally enlarged to know the characters, habits, and uses of each species that was brought to him.

²⁰ And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found a helper meet for him. — power and dominian over the creatures were also given to man, and as a proof of this he named them all.

²¹ And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept; and He took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof. — the Targum of Jonathan says, “and he took one of his ribs; it was the thirteenth rib of his right side:”

— that opening of his side and the taking away of his rib might be no grievance to him; while he knows no sin, God will take care that he shall feel no pain;

²² And the rib which the Lord God had taken from man, made He a woman and brought her unto the man. — the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he woman; was not made from the superior part of man, that she might not be thought to be above him, and have power over him; nor from any inferior part, as being below him, and to be trampled on by him; but out of his side;

²³ And Adam said, “This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.” — she shall be called Woman (Ishah), because she was taken out of Man (Ish); from hence the suffix ish is derived from: British (English, Scottish), Irish, Danish, Swedish, Finnish; indicating they are of Hebraic origin;

²⁴ Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife; and they shall be one flesh. — one flesh; the human pair differed from all other pairs, that by peculiar formation of Eve, they were one; the man and his wife;

²⁵ And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed. — and they were both naked, the man and his wife, but were not ashamed.

~ by Joel on June 29, 2024.

Posted in Books of Moses