Genesis: a Divine Revelation
Genesis 2:4 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,
Genesis 2:5 And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew: for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground.
Genesis 2:6 But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground.
Genesis 2:7 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.
At this point we’re flashing back to the third day before plant life came forth. It hadn’t rained but God watered the ground with a heavy fog. Rain requires sunlight to draw water into the atmosphere. Fog is caused by differences of temperature between water and atmosphere. The sun was not created until the fourth day so fog was used. The bringing forth of plant life was a watering and a growing process and not an instant thing. So it wasn’t done in a 24-hour period of time.
How could Moses have known these things about the mist and about man being formed from the dust?
Either he was telling a story passed down through the generations or it was divinely revealed to him. I choose the latter because man wasn’t made until the sixth day. How would man have had an accurate account of events prior to the sixth day to be able to pass down to generations? It would have to have been revealed to Adam by divine revelation. So either way the story would have had to be given divinely, either to Adam or to Moses. Where does the account of a third-day fog come from?
The Bible says that Moses was a man whom God spoke to as a man speaks to his friend. Moses, on two occasions, spent forty days in the presence of God, sustained by that presence. Moses is the man to whom God revealed all of the details of the priestly garments, the tabernacle, the instruments of worship, the book of the law, and what Moses called the heavenly pattern. Moses wrote the book of Genesis and four other books.
Here’s my question. Would not God have made sure that the story of creation given by Moses to all generations to come was an accurate account? God spoke very precisely to Moses about the details of the law. Would not God have given Moses a very precise and accurate account of creation? Of course He would have.
The book of Genesis is not a story put together by men and passed down to the generations. It is a precise and accurate account given to Moses by the Lord on Mt. Sinai. Moses did not make up the story of Genesis any more than he made up the law. The story of Genesis is as trustworthy as anything else Moses wrote, because it all came by direct revelation from the Lord. Any details that were left out or left unexplained were done so intentionally by the Lord Himself.
Moses told the story with the same accuracy it was given to him on Sinai. God gave us all we need to know about creation or He would have told us more. Who did Cain marry? If we needed to know God would have told us. And I don’t believe He left it for the scientists to explain it to us. Would God have given Moses the intricate and specific details of the law and the tabernacle and then let Moses give a half-baked account of creation to pass down to the generations? I think the obvious answer is no.