middlemonk

…but for Cain and his offering he had no regard.

— Genesis 4:5.

The first act of violence in the Bible — or perhaps the second, if we’re counting God’s vengeance against Eve — and I’m conflicted. Again the Old Testament God rears His head and teaches an admittedly valuable lesson through punishment and permanent suffering. I think this is going to be something of a theme for me as we read the Pentateuch: watching helplessly as our Old God punishes his flock and waiting desperately for the New one to arrive.

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“Because you have done this, cursed are you among all animals and among all wild creatures.”

— Genesis 3:14.

This isn’t the first time I’ve read these passages. I started my Bible reading in earnest about a month ago and so far I’ve made it through the first five books (or the Pentateuch, as it’s called). In all those pages, the thing that shocked me the most was God’s ever-present anger.

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A river flows out of Eden to water the garden, and from there it divides and becomes four branches.

— Genesis 2:10.

It’s telling that I’m far more interested in what’s outside of Eden than what’s inside. Is the garden walled? Where do the rivers flow? If I were to follow the branches, where exactly would I end up? We’re two chapters in and it’s the negative space that’s captivated me the most.

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And God said, “Let there be a dome in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.”

— Genesis 1:6.

In the very first chapter of our Bible, I’m fascinated by two things. The first is the “clay” God was working with; what our world was before it was anything at all. I wouldn’t have imagined it started as a dark, chaotic ocean (I suppose a modern reader would just imagine a black void), but the ocean is its own kind of “nothingness”.

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