At the outset of the Torah (as Christians understand it), a triune God creates the heavens and earth over the course of a seven-day week. Why? What’s the connection between the three and the seven? Could a triune God have created the world over any period of time he chose? No doubt he could. But a sevenfold week seems particularly apt. Here’s why.1
Three entities can combine/interact with one another in seven ways. Put differently, granted three conceptual entities, seven sets emerge—or eight if we include the empty set. In what follows, we’ll refer to these sets as ‘base sets’.
The above base sets are underlain by an elegant symmetry and simplicity. Ordered by size, they form of a trio of one-element sets ({A}, {B}, {C}) followed by a trio of two-element sets ({A, B}, {A, C}, {B, C}), grouped together by the empty set at one end and the complete set at the other. Moreover, they can be formed simply by looping the sequence ABC and bracketing its elements together in the required way; that is to say, given the sequence ABCABCABCABC, our eight base sets can be formed as shown below (which gives them an inherent order).
In a fairly rudimentary way, then, our base sets echo the pattern of creation. Creation Week begins with a kind of ‘Day Zero’,2 when the earth is formless and empty, and comes to its climax on Day Seven, when God’s work is complete. Similarly, our base sets begin with the empty set and culminate in a seventh non-empty set, viz. the complete set.
More striking is the particular structure they form, shown below.
Consider the chronology of God’s work in creation. Creation starts out as a blank canvas, formless and empty (Genesis 1:1). Then, over the course of six days, God carries out two different types of activities: for three days he adds form to the earth (e.g., by forming night and day),3 and for three days he fills and/or appoints rulers over what he’s formed (e.g., the sea with fish and the sky with birds).4 Afterwards, God rests, his work complete, as shown below.
The number of the triune God thus seems apt to generate a distinctly Genesis-1-shaped structure. And a lot can be said about that structure.
Suppose we think of the elements A, B, and C in terms of the Father, Son, and Spirit, as shown below.
We now have a mapping that connects the days of Creation to the person(s) of God. And it does so in meaningful ways. For a start, the main element(s) of what God declares he will make each day (Gen. 1.3, 6, 9, 11, etc.) correspond to the grammatical gender of the associated person(s):
- on the day of the Father (masculine singular) we have ‘light’ (אוֹר) (likewise masculine singular);
- on the day of the Son (masc. sing.) we have a ‘firmament’ (רָקִיעַ) (masc. sing.);
- on the day of the Spirit (fem. sing.) we have ‘dry land’ (יַבָּשָׁה) (fem. sing.);
- on the day of the Father and Son (masc. plural) we have ‘lights’ (מְאֹרֹת) (masc. plural);
- on the day of the Spirit and Father (fem. & masc. sing.) we have ‘sea-life’ (נֶפֶשׁ חָיָּה) (fem. sing.) and ‘birds’ (עוֹף) (masc. sing.);
- and at the climax of the day of the Son and Spirit we have mankind, who is made ‘male’ (זָכָר) and ‘female’ (נְקֵבָה).
In addition, what happens each day corresponds to the person(s) of God associated with it.
- Day One is the day of light, from which (by definition) the rest of the week flows forth. As such, it is the day of the Father, the One who is light, from whom every good and perfect gift proceeds (James 1:17, I John 1:5).
- Days Two, Four, and Six are days of the Son and depict the establishment of heaven’s reign on earth: on Day Two the heavens above are separated off from the earth below; on Day Four heavenly bodies are installed as rulers over the earth’s times; and on Day Six man is installed as earth’s vice-regent—an office ultimately to be held by the Son of Man, God’s mediator between heaven and earth (Hebrews 1:13, 2:5ff.).
- On Days Three, Five, and Six, life emerges on the earth. Appropriately, therefore, all three days are days of the Spirit, the breath of life; meanwhile, Days Five and Six are days of the Spirit (fem.) together with either the Son or the Father (masc.) since the life created on those days consists of both male and female and hence is commanded to be fruitful (Genesis 1:22, 28).
- Day Four is the day when the (Fatherly) light of Day One (אוֹר) is manifested in the form of lights (מְאֹרֹת) in the sky. As such, it is the day of the revelation of the Father in the Sun/Son, the radiance of his glory (Hebrews 1, Revelation 1:16).
- Day Six is the day of the Son and Spirit. It is the day when the marriage of man and woman foreshadows the union of Christ and his Spirit-filled Church (Ephesians 5:31–32 , Revelation 22:16–17).
- And Day Seven is the day when God’s work is complete—the day of the Father, Son, and Spirit, in perfect harmony. Day Seven is thus unbroken by the division of day and night, and is sanctified by God as holy (Gen. 2.1–3, Rev. 22.5): ‘Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!’.
These resonances strike me as unlikely to be a coincidence. Whereas the notion of a month is grounded in the lunar cycle and the notion of a year is grounded in the solar cycle, the notion of a week does not have a natural counterpart in God’s created order; it instead finds its counterpart in the nature of God himself (Exodus 20:11).
They also shed light on an unusual detail of the text of Genesis 1:1–2:3. On five of the first six days of Creation Week, God is said to ‘look’ at what he has done. The exception is Day Two, when God is not said to look at his creation in the usual way. That Day is also notable for other reasons. First, it is a day associated with separation. The heavens above are separated off from the earth below, which reflects an unusual state of affairs since they will only be separated from earth temporarily; ultimately, the two will be reunited under the reign of the Son (1 Corinthians 15:30, Revelation 21). Second, it is a day of the Son, and not just any old day of the Son, but a day of the Son alone. And, third, it is a day when–although everything God does is good–God does not look at the earth and declare it to be good. It thus brings to mind the text of Genesis 2:19 when God says it is ‘not good’ for Adam to be alone.
Why does Day Two have these unusual undertones? My suggestion is as follows. It is intended to direct our attention towards a day of separation to come–a day when the Son will call out to the Father and receive no answer (Psalm 22:1–2), a day when deep will call unto deep as the Father’s waves and billows pass over the Messiah (Psalm 42:7–11, Jonah 2:3), a day when the skies will turn black because the Father of lights does not look down upon the earth in the usual way.
The Torah’s very first page is thus underlain by a distinctly Trinity-shaped structure, and even hints at a triune God’s act of redemption, which is why it needs to be read as Christian Scripture.
James Bejon attends a church in Romford, London, where he fellowships, is taught, and teaches. He presently works at Tyndale House in Cambridge (https://academic.tyndalehouse.com), whose aim is to make high-quality biblical scholarship available as widely as possible.
NOTES
- The inspiration behind the present note came from Beren Gunsolus, who identified a connection between the Trinity and the seven sets {A}, {B}, {C}, {A, B}, {A, C}, {B, C}, {A, B, C} in a Theopolis course on Numerology (led by Alastair Roberts and myself). I’m also thankful to Tony Watkins, who reminded me about the seven-day week’s lack of a counterpart in the natural world. ↩︎
- Each of Days Two to Six begin with the words “And God said” (1:6, 9, 14, 20, 24). It therefore makes sense to take 1:3’s “And God said” to signal the start of Day One, which would make 1:1–2 a kind of ‘Day Zero’, at least in literary terms.
↩︎ - Consequently, the first three days of Creation Week (and only those first three days) involve the verb “call/name” (qara), which describes the way God assigns names to what he separated out. ↩︎
- In a sense, the population of the land with plants on Day Three is an exception to the rule, but it still fits the basic pattern of three-days-forming-and-three-days-filling since the plants are an essential part of the environment that’s formed on Day Three (hence they’re assigned to God’s creatures as food in Gen. 1.29–30). ↩︎