Reading For The Hatan Bereshit

and trees bearing fruit, each with its own seeds in it. And God saw that it was good. > There was evening; then there was morning: a third day. < God said, “Let there be lights in the dome of the sky, to divide day from night; let them mark out signs and seasons, days and years; and let them be lights in the dome of the sky to light up the land.” Thus it came to be. God made the two great lights — the greater light to rule over the day, and the smaller light to rule over the night, and the stars. And He hung them in the dome of the sky, to light up the earth; to rule by day and by night, and to divide light from darkness; and God saw that it was good. » There was evening; then there was morning: a fourth day. < God said, “Let the water swarm with schools of living things; and let flying creatures fly across the land, against the dome of the sky. And God created the great sea beasts, and living things of all kinds that crawl and that swarm within the waters, and winged, flying crea tures of all kinds; and He saw that it was good. God blessed them: “Be fruitful, grow numerous, fill the waters of the seas; and let the creatures that fly grow many on the land.” » There was evening; then there was morning: a fifth day. « here that the universe has a precisely calibrated mathematical structure at every level, from the microscopic to the cosmological. The text is also designed to show that creation has an underlying order. For the first three days, God establishes a series of distinct domains from the undifferentiated void: On the first day, He separates light from darkness and day from night, on the second, the upper and lower waters, on the third, sea from dry land. For the next three days God furnishes each of the domains with the appropriate objects and life-forms: On the fourth day, the sun, moon and stars, on the fifth, birds and fish, on the sixth, animals and humankind. The key verb, appearing five times, is vege meaning “to distinguish, de marcate, separate.’ This will eventually become a key word relating to the priests: they will be charged with distinguishing between pure and impure, holy and mundane. There is a sacred ontology, a God-given structure to the universe whose integrity we are commanded to respect and preserve.