Howdy Chad!
I read your post with great interest because I have taught on the creation account. I am just curious what your explanation or interpretation would be on the following points...
1) Jeremiah 4:23-27--What is the Old Testament Prophet Jeremiah describing? Isn't He describing
Genesis 1:2? And, Who gave him this vision?
There are many views on that. Below is one of them from Albert Barnes Notes on the Bible:Jer 4:23-26
In four verses each beginning with “I beheld,” the prophet sees in vision the desolate condition of Judaea during the Babylonian captivity.
Jer_4:23
Without form, and void - Desolate and void (see Gen_1:2 note). The land has returned to a state of chaos (marginal reference note).
And the heavens - And upward to the heavens. The imagery is that of the last day of judgment. To Jeremiah’s vision all was as though the day of the Lord had come, and earth returned to the state in which it was before the first creative word (see 2Pe_3:10).
Jer_4:24
Moved lightly - “Reeled to and fro,” from the violence of the earthquake.
Jer_4:26
The fruitful place - The Carmel Jer_2:7, where the population had been most dense, and the labors of the farmer most richly rewarded, has become the wilderness.
At the presence - i. e., because of, at the command of Yahweh, and because of His anger.
2) 2 Peter 3:3-6--The Apostle Peter says...and the earth standing out of the water and in the water in verse 5. Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water,
perished:
2a. Question #1: When the earth is standing out of the water, The earth is dry. Agreed?
2b. Question #2: When the earth is standing in the water, The earth is wet. Agreed?
2c. Question #3: If Questions 1 and 2 are true, Then, Does Water have four states? Or 3 States?
My Answer: I say Water has only 3 states. Liquid, Solid, and Gas (or vapor, Steam)
Sometimes a good concordance can help shed lots of light on a subject. Again From Albert Barnes Notes on the Bible:
T
he heavens were of old - The heavens were formerly made, Gen_1:1. The word “heaven” in the Scriptures sometimes refers to the atmosphere, sometimes to the starry worlds as they appear above us, and sometimes to the exalted place where God dwells. Here it is used, doubtless, in the popular signification, as denoting the heavens as they “appear,” embracing the sun, moon, and stars.
And the earth standing out of the water and in the water - Margin, “consisting.” Greek, συνεστῶσα sunestōsa. The Greek word, when used in an intransitive sense, means “to stand with,” or “together;” then tropically, “to place together,” to constitute, place, bring into existence - Robinson. The idea which our translators seem to have had is, that, in the formation of the earth, a part was out of the water, and a part under the water; and that the former, or the inhabited portion, became entirely submerged, and that thus the inhabitants perished. This was not, however, probably the idea of Peter. He doubtless has reference to the account given in Gen. 1: of the creation of the earth, in which water performed so important a part. The thought in his mind seems to have been, that “water” entered materially into the formation of the earth, and that in its very origin there existed the means by which it was destroyed afterward.
The word which is rendered “standing” should rather be rendered “consisting of,” or “constituted of;” and the meaning is, that the creation of the earth was the result of the divine agency acting on the mass of elements which in Genesis is called “waters,” Gen_1:2, Gen_1:6-7, Gen_1:9. There was at first a vast fluid, an immense unformed collection of materials, called “waters,” and from that the earth arose. The point of time, therefore, in which Peter looks at the earth here, is not when the mountains, and continents, and islands, seem to be standing partly out of the water and partly in the water, but when there was a vast mass of materials called “waters” from which the earth was formed. The phrase “out of the water” (ἐξ ὕδατος ex hudatos) refers to the origin of the earth. It was formed “from,” or out of, that mass. The phrase “in the water” (δἰ ὕδατος di' hudatos) more properly means “through” or “by.” It does not mean that the earth stood in the water in the sense that it was partly submerged; but it means not only that the earth arose “from” that mass that is called “water” in Gen. 1, but that that mass called “water” was in fact the grand material out of which the earth was formed. It was “through” or “by means of” that vast mass of mingled elements that the earth was made as it was. Everything arose out of that chaotic mass; through that, or by means of that, all things were formed, and from the fact that the earth was thus formed out of the water, or that water entered so essentially into its formation, there existed causes which ultimately resulted in the deluge.
3) Noah was given the instruction to
replenish the earth in
Genesis 9:1. I have read your explanation on this word.
3a. Does Noah replenish the earth for the first time?
3b. Or, Does Noah replenish the earth for a 3rd time? Please think twice before you answer.
This can be a matter of symantics and cultural understanding. What meant one thing when the King Jimmy was translated can oft have a different connotation now. There are multiple translations that no longer use the word replenish in Genesis 9:1. Examples would be:
(CEV) God said to Noah and his sons: I am giving you my blessing. Have a lot of children and grandchildren, so people will live everywhere on this earth.
(Darby) And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said to them, Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth.
(DRB) And God blessed Noe and his sons. And he said to them: Increase, and multiply, and fill the earth.
(ESV) And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.
(LITV) And God blessed Noah and his sons. And He said to them, Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth.
(MKJV) And God blessed Noah and his sons. And He said to them, Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth.
(YLT) And God blesseth Noah, and his sons, and saith to them, `Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the earth;
From the Answers in Genesis website a study on replenish:
The word ‘replenish’ occurs seven times in the KJV: here in Genesis 1:28, again in Genesis 9:1 (both times in the imperative), and five times in three major prophets in the passive and causative forms. So does the Hebrew original in these cases really mean ‘re-fill’? But before getting into the Hebrew, we must ask why the KJV translators used the verb ‘replenish’. 1. An examination of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) shows that the word was used to mean ‘fill’ from the thirteenth to the seventeenth centuries. In no case quoted in these five centuries does it unambiguously mean ‘re-fill’. The OED defines ‘replenish’ as having 10 meanings throughout its history:
- Replenished (adjective):
- fully stocked; provided, supplied;
- filled, pervaded;
- physically or materially filled;
- full, made full.
- To replenish:
- make full, fill, stock with, as in: ‘This man made the Newe Forest, and replenyshed it with wylde bestes’ (AD1494);
- inhabit, settle, occupy the whole of;
- fill with food, satiate;
- fill (space) with; fill (heart) with (a feeling);
- fill up again; fill up (a vacant office) (AD1632);
- become full, attain to fullness.
Note that only ‘9’ includes the idea ‘again’. This use first appears in a poem in 1612. It appears again in Pepys’ Diary, where he says: ‘buy ... to replenish the stores’. Only the year 1612 is anywhere near the date of the KJV (1611), and it’s a poetic use. The Hebrew original of Genesis 1:28 is not poetic. All other uses range from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century, when it tends to die out in normal writing.
2. The English word comes through a lot of changes from Latin pleo or repleo. There’s also the adjective plenus, ‘filled’. So we must now trace the prefix re- and see what it means.
In very old Latin it did mean ‘again’, but by the time the Bible went into Latin it had lost some of this meaning. We see this in the later French word remplir, which doesn’t mean ‘refill’, but ‘fill’. In late Latin it was re-in-plere, and re- had already lost its basic idea of ‘again’. In many other words it now meant ‘completely’ or ‘altogether’. Compare ‘research’, meaning to ‘search completely’.
We notice also that two of the meanings in history include ‘making full’. In similar English words we have this meaning: ‘refresh’ means to make fresh; ‘relax’ to make lax; ‘release’ to make loose or free. But when the KJV was translated, ‘replenish’ was just a scholarly word for ‘fill’. They almost certainly came to use it because an old word ‘plenish’ was dying out.
Now, In
Genesis 1:9, The Waters suddenly abated. In Noah's flood, The waters took nearly 1 year to abate.
Question: Is the Flood in
Genesis 1:2, the very same flood of Noah's Day?
Yes,
there is no scriptural evidence of another worldwide flood and God gave His Word there would be no more judgment of flood water:
Gen 9:8 And God spake unto Noah, and to his sons with him, saying,
Gen 9:9 And I, behold, I establish my covenant with you, and with your seed after you;
Gen 9:10 And with every living creature that is with you, of the fowl, of the cattle, and of every beast of the earth with you; from all that go out of the ark, to every beast of the earth.
Gen 9:11 And I will establish my covenant with you; neither shall all flesh be cut off any more by the waters of a flood; neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy the earth.
Gen 9:12 And God said, This is the token of the covenant which I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for perpetual generations:
Gen 9:13 I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth.
Finally, The Apostle Peter says the following in
2 Peter 2:4-5...
4. For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment;
5. And spared not the old world, but saved Noah the eighth person, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood upon the world of the ungodly;
Question: Peter says, The Old World
was not spared. Which World is the old world here?
Genesis 1:1? Or, The World after the Garden of Eden to Noah's Flood? Please remember...
That is an unsupported leap.
1) In the Old World,
No one was spared.
2) In Noah's World,
8 people were spared.
You are misconstruing the scripture here.
First the word world here was referring to the society and population: from the Strong's Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible:
G2889
κόσμος
kosmos
kos'-mos
Probably from the base of G2865; orderly arrangement, that is, decoration; by implication the world (in a wide or narrow sense, including its inhabitants, literally or figuratively [morally]): - adorning, world.
No one from the society of Noah's day was spared but only those whom God chose to deliver.
Many people can look at the word
replenish and give their reason to what this word means. But, When you look at the evidence God gives us in His Holy Word, There is a reason Why Moses wrote
ma'le' which literally means
replenish when God instructed Adam to be fruitful and multiply.
I look forward to your response.
