God Spoke Plainly

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This week we’re considering the question “what genre is Genesis chapters one to eleven?” And we’ll look at how the rest of the Bible treats these early chapters.

Now, consider this verse from the book of Numbers, “If there is a prophet among you, I, the Lord, make myself known to him in a vision . . . . Not so with my servant Moses . . . . With him I speak mouth to mouth, clearly, and not in riddles.”

So here God says that he spoke “clearly” and “not in riddles” to Moses, the author of Genesis. This strongly suggests that we shouldn’t be looking for mysterious, hard-to-understand meanings in what Moses wrote. Instead, we should read Genesis as it’s meant to be: straightforward history.

Dig Deeper

• Did Bible Authors Believe in a Literal Genesis?
• Hebrew Scholars: 24-Hour Days in Creation