Just like other synagogues around the world right after the Biblical Feast of Sukkot or Tabernacles our synagogues read the last verses Deuteronomy and immediately rolled our Torah scroll back to Genesis to continue the reading cycle by reading the first verses of Genesis. In this way, we never complete our reading of the Torah we just continue in a never-ending loop.
As we read the first few verses of Genesis again a word jumped out at me and something I had never seen before was revealed about G-D, His nature, and His sovereignty.
Let's look at Genesis 1:1-2:
1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 Now the earth was chaos and waste, darkness was on the surface of the deep, and the Ruach Elohim was hovering upon the surface of the water.
These verses begin the Bible by introducing us to G-D and His creative power. From nothing, He created everything in the Heavens and Earth. The eternal he created the temporal, out of the intangible he created the tangible. The first two verses provide enough of a foundation for us to spend the rest of our lives researching, and at the end, we would still not achieve the full understanding of what happened in creation, how it happened and why it happened.
While the first few verses provide both a great deal of information and an even greater number of questions. Hidden in plain view at the end of verse two we are provided an insight into G-D and His intent that up until this year's reading I had totally missed.
Let me try to explain. The first thing G-D did after creating the heavens and the earth was to enter into His creation. Not only did he create the tangible from the intangible but also the temporal from the eternal. He then entered into His creation as an active part of what He had created. The verse reads in English, and the Ruach Elohim
(Spirit of G-D) was hovering upon the surface of the water. The Hebrew word translated hovering is merachephet which does mean to hover, but it is in the sense of a hummingbird hovering or a bumblebee hovering. When we think of these flying creatures we note that by design their flight is contrary to nature. Their bodies are too large for their wings to carry them, yet they still fly. When I was in the navy, we spoke about helicopters not really flying but rather beating the air into submission. This is nature or connotation of the word, which is translated hovering.
What this means is that the first thing that G-D did after creating the heavens and the earth was to enter into His creation and do something that contrary to the natural. What we would term supernatural. He created the world and then entered it and caused His created world to submit to His will. This teaches us an extremely valuable lesson from what is right there in the second verse of the Bible. G-D created the all that we see in the natural and then He entered the world and did the supernatural so that we would always know that there is nothing in the natural that is not in submission to His authority and will. No disease, no illness, no crisis, no storm, no financial hardship, no broken relationship, nothing in the heavens or on earth is beyond His ability to enter into and acted supernaturally to cause His creation to submit to His authority.
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