Parashat Bereishit

By Nancy Reuben Greenfield

The following article is reprinted with permission from Jewish Family & Life!

 

From the beginning did God create the heaven and the earth. And this earth was once confused and tangled and dark. A breath of God hovered over the waters.

 

And God said, "Let there be light of day and dark of night. Let the sky separate the waters. Let the dry land also be separate from the water. Let the earth sprout plants and trees. Let there be light-bearers of the sky to shine upon the earth and separate days and nights and seasons. Let the waters swarm with living things and birds fly in the sky. Let the earth bring forth living creatures, animals and creeping things."

 

Then God made an Adam, a human in an image worthy of God: male and female did God create. And God blessed them, saying, "Be fruitful and multiply and rule over all living things."

 

Thus, the heaven and the earth and all their array were brought to the intended completion. And with the seventh day God ceased from creating work. God blessed the seventh day and made it holy.

 

From dust was man also formed by God. An Adam and an Eve, helpmates on earth. They were told by God not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil for it would cause death.

Now the man and the women were naked without shame. But, after the serpent tempted them to open their eyes like God by eating from The Tree of Good and Evil, they become ashamed of being naked. They sewed together fig leaves for clothes.

When God found out that the first man and woman disobeyed his teachings, God cursed them. The man is cursed to hard labor, the women to difficult childbirth, and the serpent to slither on the ground. So that the man and woman wouldn't eat from the Tree of Life and then live forever, God sent them out of the Garden of Eden.

Adam knew his wife Eve. She conceived and bore Cain, and said, "I have born a man with the help of God."

Eve then bore Cain's brother Abel. Abel became a shepherd and Cain a farmer. Cain made an offering of his fruit to God and Abel gave his choicest of flock. God smiled upon Abel but not upon Cain. Cain's face fell. God said to Cain, "Why are you sad? You can either make choices for good or not good. For this purpose, sin lies at the door, urging you to master it."

In time, Cain killed Abel. Then God said, "What have you done? Do you hear the voices? These are the drops of your brother's blood! They cry out to Me from the ground. And you have already received your curse. When you till the ground, it will no longer yield its strength to you. You shall become restless and friendless upon the earth."

Cain said to God, "My sin is greater than I can bear! Will anyone who finds me kill me?"

And God responded, "Anyone who will kill Cain, revenge will be taken on him sevenfold."

So God put a mark upon Cain so that no one who found him should kill him. And Cain went and settled in the land of Nod. He became a city-builder and got a wife who conceived and bore a son, Enoch, who begot more sons, who begot more sons.

Adam knew his wife again, and she bore a son and named him Seth, meaning, "God has given me another seed in the place of Abel," for Cain killed him. And to Seth, in turn, a son was born, called Enosh. It was then that man first began to proclaim in the name of God.

A record of Adam's descendants lists how men began to increase on earth, and daughters were born to them. The giants were on the earth in those days. When the sons of the godly line came to the daughter of men, the latter bore them children. These are the heroes of old, the men of renown.

God then saw that the evil of man was great on the earth, that the thoughts in the heart and imagination of man were nothing but evil. This caused God to regret having made man on earth. And God grieved.

God said, "I will blot out man from the face of the ground, from man to beast; to the creeping things, to the birds of the sky, for I have cause to alter My decision to have made them."

But Noah found favor in the eyes of God.

 

Nancy Reuben Greenfield is a free-lance writer who lives in Carrollton, Texas with her husband and two young children.  She writes frequently on Jewish themes and is finishing a book, co-authored with her father, called The Golden Medina.