THE DIVINE PURPOSE IN GENESIS
Genesis is concerned with
this fact of God’s self-revelation. He is not only the Creator of all things
but their Sustainer as well. His purpose required both the good earth as the
home of man and a good human lineage through which he could fully manifest himself.
It is the beginning of this divine revelation through the descendants of
Abraham with which Genesis mostly deals. It is concerned to show not
only that God had revealed himself in a general way through his created works
but that he had made a special revelation through the Hebrew people, a people
chosen for this very purpose.
For this reason the
account of the ‘chosen nation’ takes up most of this great book. The
introduction to it, Genesis 1-11, is the Hebrew story of how all things
began, including the human race and civilization. In these supreme events no mere
chance operated; God himself was the Initiator. Genesis 12-50 is the
story of Israel, beginning with its great ancestor, Abram (Abraham). It is in
the main a vivid account of what happened to him, to his son Isaac, to Jacob
his grandson, and to their families as they worked out under the divine
oversight their destiny in the ancient world. It is a narrative of God’s
leading and direction of a people increasing slowly in numbers and in faith as
they approached their large mission in the time of Moses.
Genesis is a book to be read
and enjoyed—later, if one has the time, to be studied critically. The reader must
not make the mistake of supposing that it is a scientific account of the
beginnings of things; rather it is an ancient attempt, before science began, to
explain the nature of these beginnings and the divine methods employed. To put
its theme in a sentence, one would say that Genesis recounts the beginnings
of the world and human culture under the divine initiative, and more
particularly what God was trying to do in history though his covenant people,
the Hebrews. (Heber Cyrus Snell, Ancient Israel: Its Story and Meaning:
A Brief History for Seminaries, Colleges, and for the General Reader [Salt
Lake City: Stevens & Wallis, Incorporated, 1963], 3, italics in original)
