Gen 10: The Blessing of Man
Book of Genesis #10
Photo by Davide Cantelli on Unsplash
Verse 28 of the first chapter of Genesis begins with these words: "And God blessed them..."
What does it mean for God to bless? Especially when God's creation was certified by him as good and the creation of man as very good. If this is so, what does a blessing confer beyond this initial goodness?
To fully understand the purpose of a blessing, we need to consider curses for that is what God does later on when Adam and Eve disobeys. Blessings and curses are fundamental to the covenant that God establishes with them and this lecture then focuses on the establishment of this covenant and its ramification.
Closely associated with the notion of a blessing is that of dominion over the rest of the created world. Man (as the generic expression for man and woman) is seen as the summit of creation in the spiritual order and to them is given dominion over the world. But why does God do that? What is the purpose of it all if He already knows what they are about to do shortly? How could He say that creation is very good if it seems to be fundamentally flawed since Adam and Eve will disobey?
