Episode Transcript
Carey Griffel: Welcome to Genesis Marks the Spot where we raid the ivory tower of biblical theology without ransacking our faith. My name is Carey Griffel, and this week I was hoping to just edit a conversation that I had in my biblical theology community. Actually, it was a live stream. I was hoping to edit that and then release it as a podcast episode.
[00:00:31] But it turns out because of the way that the community platform records things, which is not to a higher standard like Zoom is, or Riverside or you know, other kinds of platforms that people use to record online, it just didn't work well because the sound was terrible.
[00:00:50] So basically I was asking where and how do we see atonement in Genesis, which chronologically is before the Levitical system exists. So I'm gonna talk about frame semantics. No real surprise there. Instead of assuming that atonement means what we think of now, particularly penal forgiveness.
[00:01:18] So I'm going to map out a conceptual frame of the Hebrew terminology in the Torah. Then I'm going to look for both the actual word as well as strong conceptual rhymes of it in Genesis. Because once you have crafted out a conceptual frame for an idea using frame semantics, then you can go throughout other things and say, what else has this same frame?
[00:01:48] Now a lot of this is gonna have to do with what I've been talking about in holiness and purity. Holiness does not map directly onto sinless moral purity. Although, as you know, those do have crossover. Holiness is about God's otherness and his dangerous, yet life-giving presence among the people.
[00:02:11] So purity and atonement language isn't reducible to courtroom categories.
[00:02:18] What I'm going to be talking about today is atonement, primarily as functional repair, keeping God's dwelling space fit for his presence. And it's not really about legal pardon. We'll be talking about blood and sacrifice, and we'll be talking about washing, reparations, and relational repair as part of the wider matrix of atonement.
[00:02:44] So in this episode, I'm not going to lay out all of the reasoning and all of the Scriptures and everything else that I used in order to come up with my frame for atonement, but it comes from all of the study that I've been doing about purification, holiness, and those kinds of things in the ancient Near East.
[00:03:05] And going into Scripture and looking at particular passages to find those conceptual frames, and then comparing those distinct conceptual frames within particular authors and passages and looking at those throughout the canon, particularly I'm looking at it through Torah.
[00:03:23] So that's where I'm getting a lot of the context, and that's where I'm getting the framing for the stuff I'm gonna be bringing out today. And I think that if you've listened to my previous episodes of late, then you'll kind of see where I'm coming from in all of that.
[00:03:38] Again, I want to stress that the core meaning of holiness is not sinlessness, nor is it righteousness in the sense of moral purity as a whole concept. There is more to it. Obviously those things are connected, but again, they shouldn't just be mapped onto the same thing. Holiness is, I don't even wanna say it's an attribute of God, but it kind of has that feeling to it, because some of it can be passed on to people or things.
[00:04:11] Because as we worship, we become more like God. As we're filled with the Holy Spirit, we are sanctified. And all of those things. So there are ontological things about it, but a lot of it is kind of similar to how we can see the image of God, as well. The image of God is a status that God bestows upon us. So holiness can be a little bit like that. Holiness is who God is, and if we're being conformed to the image of God and if that's a real thing that's happening, then yes, we are becoming more like God and that absolutely has to do with our moral behavior. But it is a wider picture than that.
[00:04:55] At any rate, I hope that's helpful to set all of this conversation in motion. So the first thing I'm gonna do is frame out atonement. And what I did was I went to various passages where we have this word that we now translate as atonement in English, this word kipper, or various forms of it.
[00:05:16] I looked at all of these ideas and all of these places where it was in Scripture, because ideally when you're doing frame semantics, you're looking at it in an actual particular context. You don't take the word out of context. You have to understand it within that conceptual world of the author and the actual use of it.
[00:05:37] The difficulty with that is, the uses you'll find will have different contextual frames of meaning. So it can be rather dismaying if you just want one dictionary answer, but it doesn't have to be one dictionary answer. It is okay that it's like this because language and ideas really do work this way.
[00:05:57] But after you have framed out particular contexts, then you can take those frames that you've done and you can set them alongside each other to see where the similarities and crossovers are. The crossover is because I really think that our idea of atonement is complicated, and I don't think there is one single English word that really encompasses it. So I kind of think that's why we have, and still use, the word atonement because there is not just a single English gloss that really gets the message across.
[00:06:32] Now, does atonement mean things like to purge or to purify or to cleanse or things like that? Yes, it does, but it doesn't just mean that. There are wider ideas that are not encompassed by our ideas of purging or cleansing. So the problem with those words is that there are other Hebrew words that also mean those things explicitly. So there's crossover and you can't just boil down the word atonement to the word purge or purify because it doesn't quite capture the meaning of all the instances and the theological concept that people would have in their mind.
[00:07:15] So that's kind of my point here. When I talk about purity and things like that, we really have to import some new ideas with those words.
[00:07:25] The conceptual frame of atonement has several different elements that we're gonna look at. There's the participants in what's going on. There's an agent who is performing the act of atonement. It's usually the priest, especially the high priest, but we also see it with Moses offering to make atonement in Exodus 32.
[00:07:47] Now let me go ahead and read those verses. I'm going to be reading from the Lexham English Bible today. Exodus 32 verses 30 through 35. This is after the incident with the golden calf. Quote, "And the next day, Moses said to his people, you have sinned a great sin. And now I will go up to Yahweh. Perhaps I can make atonement for your sin. And Moses returned to Yahweh and he said, alas, this people has sinned a great sin and made for themselves gods of gold. And now if you'll forget their sin, and if not, please blot me from your scroll that you have written. And Yahweh said to Moses, whoever has sinned against me, I will blot him from my scroll. And now go lead the people to where I spoke to you. Look, my Angel will go before you. And on that day when I punish, I will punish them for their sin. And Yahweh afflicted the people because they had made the bull calf that Aaron had made." End quote.
[00:08:52] So again, this is after the golden calf, Moses says, let me go see if I can make atonement for you. And then Moses goes to Yahweh and asks for forgiveness. It is then that he's offering his own life for their sin. And Yahweh says, no, whoever did this, I will blot them out. And so the people who were at fault were the ones who were punished. There's no substitution. There's an offering of Moses to do this. But God rejects that offering and he says that whoever is sinned is going to get the consequence.
[00:09:27] So anyway, we've got agents who do atonement, usually the priest, sometimes Moses. We also have God who does or makes atonement. Deuteronomy 32, verse 43 says, quote, "Call for songs of joy, oh nations concerning his people. For the blood of his servants he will avenge and he will take reprisals against his foes and he will make atonement for his land, his people." End quote.
[00:09:57] That probably parallels the situation where we have, I think it's in numbers 35, where we have the murderer and nothing can make atonement for the blood that is shed by the murderer in the land. So when God's people are killed, he will avenge their death by making atonement. It doesn't explain how God is going to do that. It just says that God is going to be the one to do it.
[00:10:21] Okay, so that's the agent who is making atonement and notice it is a purposeful act. It's intentional. It's something that the agent who is making the atonement is doing. So it's a mediating action of some sort.
[00:10:37] All right, so then within the conceptual frame, there's the patient or the beneficiary of the action of the atonement. We see that as individuals. We see the whole congregation as being the beneficiary of the atonement. We see the priest themselves as the beneficiaries.
[00:10:56] Then we have the object or the space that is involved in what's going on here. Usually, almost always, it is sacred objects, at least technically speaking. We have the altar, the sanctuary, the tent, the land as we see in numbers 35, and Deuteronomy 32 43.
[00:11:18] Numbers 35, 33 to 34 says, quote, " So you will not pollute the land in which you are because blood pollutes the land. No atonement can be made for the land, for the blood that is poured out on it, except with the blood of the one who poured it out. You'll not defile the land on which you are living because I am living in the midst of it. I am Yahweh. I am living in the midst of the Israelites." End quote.
[00:11:49] So again, this is about murderers who pollute the land by committing murder. Their own blood must be spilled in order to make the atonement.
[00:11:59] So in the frame of atonement, of course, we also have God. He is what we might call the offended party or the one that we're really concerned about in this situation here. God is the source of forgiveness. He is the recipient of offerings, and he is the ultimate one who will either accept or reject the atonement.
[00:12:22] Now, what we also have is a problem or something that needs fixing or addressing in some way. This is either impurity or defilement, which are things like ritual uncleanliness, contact with the dead, skin disease, things like that. And we also have sin or transgression or iniquity. These are moral or relational breaches that need to be addressed. We also have blood guilt, as we've mentioned. This is the homicide that pollutes the land. We also have just general alienation, broken relationships between people, and alienation between people and God as well.
[00:13:07] So within the frame of atonement, we also have the means or the instrument of atonement. And this actually varies sometimes. Often we do associate it with blood, which is probably the most frequent material with atonement.
[00:13:23] Leviticus 1711 tells us that blood is given for atonement on the altar. That obviously involves sacrificial animals, sin and guilt offerings, purification offerings, whole burnt offerings and all of that. But it can also be with grain offerings. So it is not only about, or with sacrificial animals that atonement is made. We also have incense as a means of atonement, like in numbers 16, I think it is. Aaron stops a plague by going out from the presence of Yahweh after the plague has begun. So there we have incense as a mechanism or a material or an instrument. But probably the main thing is that Aaron, the high priest, is the one going out standing there as the mediator.
[00:14:16] We have other associated things, other objects like hyssop, cedar, sometimes scarlet thread. We see the red heifer ashes. We see it in washing with water. Sometimes we'll see things that are probably to be seen as non sacrificial. We have Phineas in numbers 25 and we have ransom money in Exodus 30. That one's kind of a strange one. And then of course we have legal execution of murderers, so lots of things going on here. There's a really wide range of different material that can actually make atonement.
[00:14:56] So then what we might call the process of how it works is there's this ritual action, an agent with the means of atonement, which is blood, incense, money, whatever, and then there's a directionality to it.
[00:15:13] When you're talking about frame semantics, you have the different frame elements within the concept, and then often there's a direction between those frame elements. So the priest is making atonement for some beneficiary, either a person or a house or a land or whatever else. And they do this with or by means of some sort of instrument, the blood or the incense, et cetera.
[00:15:42] So verbs that come in association with atonement are things like to be clean, which is spatial or personal purification. We have to purify. We have forgiveness, which is a divine relational verdict. We have the word sanctify, which we could call that kind of a renewed status for space and people.
[00:16:08] We also have the word accept. God accepts the offering. The word purge can either be for ritual contamination of sin or other impurities, but it can also sometimes actually have this idea of removing evil or guilt. We also have the word blot out. And this is an erasure of record or memory of an event, and that is also very connected to what we have going on with things like the flood and et cetera.
[00:16:44] Okay, so now going back to this wider frame of atonement, we also have the result or the goal of what atonement is doing. Why do we make atonement? And here's a list of things that happen when atonement is made. There's a restoration of relationship between God and people or between two people. There's purification of space so that God can dwell amongst his people.
[00:17:12] There's possibly judicial clearance. This would be especially in relation to like murder. Then there is no longer any more guilt upon the community or the land. So is that always judicial? I mean, no, I don't think so. Can it include things that are judicial? Well, I think so. And so there's a renewed acceptance of worshipers, of offerings, and of the sanctuary as being pleasing to God, and there can be a connection to forgiveness there.
[00:17:47] Does not mean that every time atonement is used, that it is pulling up all of these results because it's not. Nor does it mean that you have to have atonement in order to get these results. That's just not good thinking, to think that just because something results from atonement means you have to have atonement for that result. Because guess what? Those results can also come from other means. It just so happens to be that atonement has these results, sometimes, always, or usually depending upon what we have going on.
[00:18:25] Okay, so let's zoom out a little bit more. We have the agent, which is the priest, the mediator, sometimes God. We have the target or the beneficiary, the people, the sins, the sacred space, the land. We have the means of atonement. This is the blood, the sacrifice, the incense, the water, the money, sometimes the judicial act of execution of the murderer. We have the problem that is being addressed, which is impurity, sin, blood, guilt, alienation. And we have the process that's going on. It's the ritual expiation act. Usually it occurs with other words like cleanse, purify, forgive, and some of those other things I mentioned.
[00:19:19] So when you're doing frame semantics, you have this particular word you're looking at, and you also need to see what other associated verbs and nouns are along with it in the passage, even if those aren't necessarily directly related entirely to the concept of atonement. So atonement can be associated with forgiveness. It can be associated with judicial processes, but is not always associated with the act of forgiveness, right?
[00:19:51] And we have the result. The result is cleansing, forgiveness, sanctification, acceptance, and much more than that.
[00:19:59] So what is the broadest idea above this? I would say that it is a restored relationship. So a restored relationship is kind of in the form of atonement itself. And thus we do get some crossover into the English word atonement, as in at onement. That isn't necessarily directly related always to the word kipper, right? The actual formal ritual act. But there's a reason we see these crossovers because they're there.
[00:20:35] So that basically frames out atonement. We're gonna take what we framed out with atonement throughout the Torah and slightly beyond the Torah, and we're gonna take that into Genesis because this is the way they're thinking of the term and these concepts. We're gonna see where we can find it here.
[00:20:55] But first, some notes on our methodology here. How do we do this? How do we take the frame of atonement, take it into the text back in Genesis, and find this frame as useful there? I'm going to give you a set of questions you can ask when you're doing something like this.
[00:21:16] First of all, what is the problem or what is an issue that needs to be resolved or addressed in some way? Is it sin? Is it impurity? Is it something about sacred space? Is it blood guilt? Those are things we could ask because those things do involve atonement.
[00:21:37] Then we're gonna ask, who is the one acting? Is it a priest, a mediary figure? Is it God? Or just common people? Who is doing the action?
[00:21:50] What means are being used in the situation? Is there blood? Do we have sacrifice, incense, water, money, execution? All of those things are involved with the idea of atonement in the Torah.
[00:22:04] How is the whole thing phrased? Do we actually even use the word atonement or an associated word? Do we have the word kipper anywhere? What verbs are riding alongside all of it? Do we have cleansing, purification, forgiveness? Anything explicit like that?
[00:22:24] Also, what is the declared result? Do we have forgiveness, cleansing, acceptance, removal, restored relationship, any of that?
[00:22:35] Okay. So when we take all of those questions with our frame into the passage, then we can see how those things map together. Is there any correlation? Is there any crossover?
[00:22:47] Again, Genesis does not have the Levitical system, but the person who is reading or hearing about Leviticus does have that in mind. It is very core to their thinking. So the idea that we can't import that back into Genesis is pretty foolish because we know that the recipients would have that in mind. They have these concepts in their head that make this legitimate.
[00:23:14] Now, if we're thinking of a book that had nothing to do with that context and the people who were writing and reading it, then it would not be acceptable or appropriate to import this idea back into Genesis. But that's just not what we have going on.
[00:23:29] Now for a second, let's back up a little bit again and look at this ancient Israelite conceptual frame of atonement and ask some really crucial questions like how are they actually picturing it? I mean, I framed it out, but that's a bit of an analytical picture. So how are they thinking about it? What are associated metaphors and pictures that we have?
[00:23:54] One of the things we could say is that the problem we have that someone is making atonement for, it is a heavy or a sticky problem. Hebrew uses a lot of metaphors. So impurity is not just dirt, but it's like a sticky dirt. It clings to things that you might not expect it to, like the holy place. So the people's contact with death, with childbirth, with skin disease, normal bodily fluids, normal life seems to have left a residue that threatens God's presence in the camp itself, which is very strange to us, but kind of a normal idea for the ancient Near East. These ideas are not unique to the Bible.
[00:24:42] We have them in the broader context. They all know about purification. They all have ideas of holiness, even with the other deities. As I've pointed out many times, yes, there are differences, but there's a lot of similarity. So we need to take the whole concept as something that is perfectly normal to them, but it's not normal to us.
[00:25:05] Sin also does the same thing, and it's seen very highlighted in the idea of blood guilt. Blood seeps into the land itself and cries out until something is done. Does that remind us of something in Genesis?
[00:25:21] So in their mind, guilt and impurity are not just invisible abstract things. They're not contained to the individual. They contaminate the space and the community itself, and those things need to be removed or neutralized because they're dangerous.
[00:25:40] So then you also have the idea of the sanctuary in the midst of the camp. It's kind of a fragile thing that God could abandon because of what the people are doing. It's very central to what's going on. But there's a concern here. God has chosen to dwell in their midst, but also his presence with them is dangerous as well. Again, these are just the broad ideas at the time.
[00:26:04] So we have the concentric rings of the camp, right? We have the tabernacle. Kind of the beating heart of the camp. It can get clogged and it can get dirty and God could leave it. And when God leaves it, the life in the camp is going to stop. So atonement primarily is about keeping God's house clean enough for him to be able to stay there.
[00:26:27] In addition, ritual acts are not empty. They're not merely symbolic. People don't just go through the rituals. When the priest is sprinkling the blood, it is seen as actively doing something. It's purging, it's neutralizing, it's restoring relationships, restoring things the way they should be to their previous level of cleanliness.
[00:26:49] So even your ordinary Israelite back here at the time would know that their sin and their ritual impurity is going to be a threatening aspect to the community. And these things threaten God's presence, and so the ritual rites are going to remove the problem.
[00:27:06] So atonement is functional repair. If we're thinking of atonement as legal pardon, we're missing a big part of the picture. So he might say that what's going on in the Levitical system, to some degree, it's a vertical and a horizontal thing.
[00:27:23] We have the relationship of the people with God so that God can remain with the people. But if you're reading through the book of Leviticus, you see how relational it is. Like if people have something going on that is disruptive to the community, they don't know about it and they find out about it, then there's something that they have to do in order to repair that situation.
[00:27:45] It is not just about the offerings. Sometimes it's about paying back something that they did that they could pay back. This is the picture of repentance between people as well.
[00:27:57] And then water and washing is such an absolutely core part of what's going on in the whole thing as well. We tend to kind of focus on the death, sacrifice, blood aspects, but we need to understand purification and washing and all of those things as well.
[00:28:15] None of that means that judicial actions can't be involved, and people have said that there is no sacrifice for intentional sin in Leviticus. Well, there are a few places where you could point to and say, well, look, this is an intentional act.
[00:28:29] Those intentional acts that are brought up in Leviticus have intentional things you're supposed to do in order to repent from them. So it's not like you do something wrong, like you defraud somebody out of money by accident. And then you don't have to do anything about it. All you have to do is sacrifice the animal. No, no, no. You have to pay that back. You have to repair that. Then you offer the offering and make the atonement.
[00:28:57] So it's not like the offering was a replacement for the reparations you were supposed to do between each other. If you did something wrong, you were supposed to go and fix it. Then you come back to the altar and do your thing. You repent, you restore, you do the things that are mandated in the Levitical system because those are things that are going to keep you in alignment with God and the community, both things.
[00:29:25] So the ancient Israelite is also going to be thinking about the outcome and purpose of atonement. It's very much about identity, belonging, community, making sure that everything is working correctly, and we have the ideas of righteousness and justice so that God can dwell amongst his people.
[00:29:45] So when atonement is made, you hear this all the time, it shall be forgiven. He shall be clean, right? There is a result that happens. So you're connecting atonement with forgiveness. You're connecting atonement with purification. But why are there two different things here?
[00:30:02] These are results that happen and are connected to atonement, but there's a broader picture still. Again, if you're sinning, if you're defrauding someone, you have to pay that back. You have to do what's right to make it right. It's part of your action. Then the priest will mediate the situation so that God can stay in relationship to the people.
[00:30:24] So it's not like this really simple atonement is just purification. Atonement is forgiveness. It's part of the whole matrix of ideas. It's connected to those things. But it still does not mean that God cannot forgive without atonement, especially because as we're seeing here, atonement is so centered on the Levitical system, generally speaking.
[00:30:49] Another way of saying it might be that atonement restores shalom or peace or relationship and right order. I mean, there's a reason why righteousness and sacrifice are often connected, so you're acting in a righteous way in the Old Testament, you're acting in a way that is maintaining, securing, or restoring order.
[00:31:11] It doesn't mean you didn't do something to get out of alignment with order. But when you're out of alignment, you do something to right the ship and then you're now righteous. Righteousness is not about, not sinning, it's about making things right. Now, if you didn't sin, maybe there's nothing you have to make right. But that's not in reality, right? That's not what people do.
[00:31:35] Okay, so now that we've really kind of laid out all of this whole idea here, let's look at Genesis. Now, the fun thing about my conversation in my community was that I had asked everybody where Atonement first shows up. So I got a lot of really good ideas. Some of them I hadn't even thought about.
[00:31:54] The first one going chronologically in Genesis was from Joe. He suggested that cosmic coverings, like in Genesis one, might be the first place that we see atonement. By cosmic coverings, he's talking about light, dark, day, night, land and sea, all of the animals and creatures that inhabit those places. All of that is kind of wrapped up in the idea of being covered by the cosmos.
[00:32:23] The idea of separating and covering, well, can you use the word covering or filling the spaces? That is something I'd never heard, and it's a really interesting idea. Of course, it's very speculative and pretty high level analytical. Maybe a little bit too abstract for what we're talking about and might not really fit into our atonement frame.
[00:32:44] We don't have atonement words, we don't have the other things we've talked about, but if we think of atonement as being something that restores and puts in order, what we have in Genesis one is a way that we have the framing out of those things. We have order and structure. Then, you know, there is some sort of crossover there.
[00:33:04] There's a functional right place for things. So this is kind of an out there idea. How much the ancient Israelites would be thinking that I don't know. But you do have holiness and common, and those are separated. And if you don't have something that can be set apart, then you don't have anything that can really be described as holy either.
[00:33:28] So common isn't bad, it's not evil, it's not morally wrong, it's just not that separated out holiness. So at minimum, you can see some sort of idea here where the separation is part of the idea of creating the distinction first, because you have God who is holy. He is creating. The creation is not God. Creation is not holy. But at the same time, God is setting up his cosmic temple in Genesis one. So in some sense, everything is holy, as in It is connected to God, belongs to God. The cosmos is his place. He's dwelling in it on day seven.
[00:34:08] So the conceptual realities are there, but I would say Genesis one is exceptionally proto to the idea of atonement. Once things are separated, there needs to be a way to keep them in relationship to each other.
[00:34:24] There seems to be an implication there. I mean, we have the creation of man and woman in Genesis one. Then we have Adam, who is separated out into Adam and Eve, and then they're brought back together in marriage.
[00:34:40] Speaking of which, let's get to Genesis two. We have the garden. It's a more specific place. So here we have the ideas of concentrated holiness and concentric rings of holiness. So even though this isn't really where we should see atonement as a concept in general, again, we see the ordering of things so that we can get to the idea at minimum.
[00:35:05] But ritual thrives in the realm of narrative and story and narrative and story have beginnings. So I would say if we're not seeing any relationship of atonement here in Genesis one and two, we're not reading it very well.
[00:35:24] Now let's get to the first place that many people will see atonement, which is in Genesis three. This is where God makes the garments of skin for Adam and Eve. The idea is that, well, they're called garments of skin. Therefore God had to slaughter an animal in order to make those garments for Adam and Eve.
[00:35:47] So there's our parallel with the sacrificial system. Now, on the surface level, we can see there's something going on there. We don't have any words that are associated with atonement. We don't even have words like purify, forgive, blot out. None of the other words we usually associate with atonement or kipper.
[00:36:08] We do, however, have some alienation from God, right? They're kicked out with sacred space. They're removed from the ability to take the Tree of Life. There's the nakedness and shame aspect as well. And so that is a kind of alienation. The people try to create their own clothes, the fig leaves. God's like, well, that's really not gonna cut it. Let me give you these skins.
[00:36:34] And now, historically in Christianity, there's ideas here about losing priestly status, losing access to the divine, losing some gradient of glory. But overall, the problem is the nakedness and the shame. So the skins are covering their nakedness and their shame. God is the one said to be doing that. There's no priestly mediator, there's no explicit animal death.
[00:37:00] And the result is a covering, right? We're going through our frame semantics and trying to match this up with atonement in any way. And of course, with the word covering, people love to use that word covering for atonement. It's not always a bad word to use, especially when we get into some of the other contexts. But the word covering usually pulls up this idea of God can no longer see what's covered. It's like it's hiding things. And so it's not really in the realm of purifying or purging because the idea of covering, at least in English, means that it's not gone, nothing goes away. It's just hidden. It's out of sight.
[00:37:40] Is that really what we should be seeing going on? Like God couldn't stand to see their nakedness? Or is it a restorative dignity and a greater ability to live outside of sacred space? In other words, is this a kind of restoration, actually? Like if people are losing their glory that they had within the garden, they are now being given a covering to restore some of it.
[00:38:09] We don't have sacrifice, we don't have blood, we don't have forgiveness or anything like that. But I think we could see this as an act of mercy rather than an act of penal judgment. Although obviously there is judgment, right? They're kicked out of the garden. The covering of skin is not part of the judgment. It gives them a benefit. I think, however you look at it, it's something that's good.
[00:38:32] Now, there is a reason that they're kicked outta the garden explicitly. It says that they shouldn't have access to the tree of life.
[00:38:39] Again, I think if we have the idea of relational fidelity in our minds when we're thinking about it, we do see that context here. It's just not the atonement in the realm of penal judgment. I just think that's interesting where people can see the idea of atonement here, but they're focusing on the wrong elements.
[00:39:03] ' Cause those elements really don't show up. But there are elements of atonement that do show up. God could have just let them go with their fig leaves and just left it at that, but he didn't. He kicked them out of the garden, but he kicked them out of the garden with protection.
[00:39:21] So the next idea we're gonna get into for atonement in Genesis is the word play between the word Adam and the word blood. There's a kind of a Hebrew word play going on here. So does this connect to the idea of atonement, even though we don't have the word blood in Genesis three, is it still calling that idea up?
[00:39:44] I think that, again, when we're talking about ritual, we're entering the realm of narrative story space. So as long as we're not getting all dogmatic and systematic about it, then I think we can see the connection here. But what does it mean for atonement and things moving out from here? It's hard to say because again, atonement does not always have something to do with blood.
[00:40:08] What if the connection with the word Adam and the word blood is simply an idea of life? It doesn't have to explicitly connect to atonement and certainly not to blood guilt. It might be some sort of play on how things are rectified and put into restored relationship, which is not really how people in Christianity like to see the story of Adam. Right. He tends to be the bad guy. He's the one who put us into sin. He's not restoring anything
[00:40:38] Well, but, again, what are the frames of reference that you're bringing in here? Because I think this shows very clearly that we already have axiomatic ideas that we're bringing into the text and saying, this has to be the way it is. If we brought a set of new axiomatic ideas, new ideas of relationship and life instead of atonement, punishment, and death, then we're really gonna get something different out of the story, aren't we?
[00:41:10] All right, so the next place we're gonna go is Genesis four. This wasn't actually mentioned by anybody in the group, which kind of surprised me. We have offering. We have the blood crying out from the ground. I'm not gonna read the whole section, but again, we have sacrifice and we're wondering what kind of sacrifice is this?
[00:41:29] Is it purifying, sacred space, and so on and so forth. Now, it is quite possible that they were understood to be doing this at the doorway of sacred space. The threshold is where somebody might be actually doing some of the actions like that actually happens in Leviticus. Things are happening at the threshold of sacred space.
[00:41:50] But Cain kills Abel. Abel's blood is crying from the ground, and I think this is gonna be echoed many times in Scripture, but Cain isn't killed. He's protected again. So does that have anything to do with the concept of atonement?
[00:42:06] Hmm. Interesting. We have offerings, blood, acceptance, rejection, and those are pretty clear precursors to the Levitical system in the categories there. We have worship. But Cain isn't punished. He hasn't like negatively judged in the way that we would expect him to be. He doesn't get a death sentence.
[00:42:27] So why, why is that? I'll just leave that for you to think about. But again, is it about substitution? Punishment? Cain is judged. He's exiled further from the garden, so there is a lot of connection here. Again, is the connection meaning something that we already suppose that we know what it means or do we need to reexamine the actual underpinnings of everything?
[00:42:53] Again, if atonement is about penal judgment, then the story of Cain kinda doesn't make a whole lot of sense. If atonement is about restored relationship, then it actually does make a lot more sense.
[00:43:09] In the places where we think that atonement shows up, or at least many people do, and they already are thinking of atonement in a penal type way, in a judicial legal system, then I would say that we're kind of barking up the wrong tree.
[00:43:25] It's not really showing up in these places in the way that people think that it does. On the other hand, if we're thinking of atonement being something more about relational repair, then I think we do have the context here.
[00:43:41] Let's move on to Genesis six. Genesis six 14 is where we have an actual word. Finally, the first time we have any word that is connected to atonement. But in Genesis six 14, we have it in its kind of plain form. So in Leviticus you'll say that the priest makes atonement, but for Noah, he's not making atonement for anything. He's just using the word in a straightforward way.
[00:44:10] Let's go ahead and read it in the Lexham English Bible. It says, quote, "Make for yourself an Ark of Cyprus wood. You must make the Ark with rooms. Then you must cover it with pitch inside and outside." End quote.
[00:44:27] Noah is making the Ark. He's covering it with pitch to make it watertight so that the Ark can move through the water. This word is covering. This is one reason why people love the word cover for atonement, because here we have Noah using it in this plain form. He's not making atonement. He's covering the Ark. And this is a salvific action. In that sense, it's preparing sacred space, a sacred space that is inside the Ark.
[00:44:58] So I would say it's in alignment with the idea of purification in the Levitical system. But again, Noah isn't making atonement. He's just doing the action of covering it, like swiping it on or wiping it on something along those lines. And this is where we also get the idea of wiping, purging, purifying. It's like smearing or covering it, right?
[00:45:23] The problem that we have in Genesis six is the destruction of water by the flood. So the verb is more about waterproofing, but it's necessary in order to be saved by the boat. The result is physical survival, like real physical survival through the flood.
[00:45:41] And some scholars will say that this word is not actually related to atonement, but it's a homonym. It has the same root, but a different field of knowledge entirely. I don't know about that. At minimum, it probably does have the word play at least, and it probably is associated in this way with provision to have salvation through the sacred space. That's what I would say about that.
[00:46:06] So is it connected to atonement? Yes. Does it help us to provide an idea of covering, like hiding? No, because Noah isn't covering the Ark to hide the wood away from anything. It's protection.
[00:46:23] Okay. Another place that I don't think anybody mentioned this is in Genesis eight, after the flood. A lot of people will see atonement in the offering that Noah gives post flood. Noah builds the altar, he takes the clean animals, he burns them on the altar. Yahweh smells the soothing fragrance, and Yahweh says that he will never curse the ground again.
[00:46:47] Okay, so this is the post flood world. The world was under divine judgment, but God remembered Noah. First of all, he placed him on the Ark. Second of all, it says right in the middle of the flood story that God remembered Noah. So what's going on after the flood cannot be appeasing God, but it's Noah giving an offering to God.
[00:47:10] So not all offerings are really about atonement in a technical sense. The reason people will see atonement here is because of the phrase that God smells the pleasing aroma and promises not to curse the ground again. So there's an idea of acceptance of the offering because we have an offering. But again, what Noah is doing is not averting any judgment and he's not even purifying any space. It's probably more in alignment with something like a peace offering, having a good relationship with God.
[00:47:45] Again, when we're looking at all these ideas, we just need to be really careful to not just be like, well, look, there's atonement because it's got an animal and it's being burnt up on the altar. There's no penal judicial situation here. That's not what's going on here.
[00:48:03] Okay, so now let's move on to Genesis 15, the covenant situation with Abraham. It is not purification. We've talked before about the difference between purification and covenant. Abraham here has a problem. He wants confirmation of God's promise. Abraham straight up, asked God, how will I know? And so this is God's response, the divided animal pieces of the divine presence that passes between them and the result is covenant ratification.
[00:48:35] Interestingly enough, Abraham's faith is also said to be credited as righteousness in this chapter. So the sacrificial act here is not purification, but ratification and evidence of God's faithfulness. It's not really atonement, but covenant blood logic does play into what we have going on in Leviticus.
[00:48:55] So again, just listen to all of the things I've talked about lately in the podcast. Now we're gonna talk about Genesis 18, Abraham Interceding with Sodom. Okay, so why am I bringing up atonement here?
[00:49:10] Well, it's a moment of intercession, and when we have intercession, we might wonder if there's atonement that's also going on. Of course, we have the judgment of sin on the people of Sodom. Abraham is acting as a mediator towards God for the people he's bargaining that a few righteous people could possibly save the many, not by dying themselves, but simply by their own presence.
[00:49:35] So that's interesting. Substitution of the righteous for the guilty, but not in a way where anybody's dying. It's actually the opposite of that. So there's conceptual overlap here with atonements and relational situations and recovery.
[00:49:51] Now let's talk about Genesis 22, the binding of Isaac. It's one of those really obvious places that people go, 'cause we have sacrifice, substitution of some sort. Isaac was gonna get killed and the ram gets killed instead.
[00:50:08] The situation is God's test of loyalty. That's the problem that we have. God wants to know if Abraham fears him or not, and this might be more for Abraham's sake than it is for God. It might be God teaching Abraham who he is in relation to the way that other gods would relate to their people.
[00:50:28] This is one thing many scholars have brought out because Abraham, coming from a pagan people, would presume that Yahweh would act like the other gods of the nations. So when Yahweh stops Abraham from killing his son, Abraham then sees, ah, I see God is a different God than that.
[00:50:47] And so here again, the result is that life is preserved, covenant is reaffirmed, and it's important because covenant promise is going to come through Abraham's offering.
[00:50:58] And since covenant and purification are two separate things that are related, but they're different tracks, and that's why it can be really hard for us to understand Genesis 22, because I think we do need to put it in the covenant box rather than the purification box.
[00:51:17] And you know, honestly, I think a lot of times we gloss over the ideas of the offspring, either here or even in the Exodus. We don't know really what to do with that. Like the Passover is strange. Why is God killing people? Right? Why is it the firstborn who are being killed? The idea of promise and all of those things are wrapped up into that. It's about covenant and it's about God perpetuating the covenant and God being the one to fulfill those covenants.
[00:51:48] So while there's strong resonance with the atonement frames here, with possibly substitution, sacrifice in some form, we can talk about that later. But in all of these things, it's relational, it's covenantal, it's a relational reparation or proof, like a relational test.
[00:52:09] Again, these are really hard concepts because we have to get into the mind of the ancient person as best we can, which is, I mean, it's also really kind of an impossible task. But we have to try. And when we understand that there's distinctive differences here, overlap does not mean intentional full crossover.
[00:52:32] So once we see that there are distinctive things, then we cannot import too much into it because the frame doesn't allow for it, the frame within the particular context that is right in front of us. Right? So we have the Levitical system and we have things like Genesis 22. Obviously there's interrelated ideas here, but they're also very different.
[00:52:57] I've got a couple of other things before I wrap up. Another place we might find that is a little bit surprising in the context of atonement in Genesis is Genesis 27. This is where Jacob is blessed instead of Esau.
[00:53:13] What we have is kind of a substitution, again, the wrong son is receiving the blessing or what we would call the wrong son, right? There's deception, it's mediated through animal skins and a food offering. There's a blessing that's transferred, but interestingly enough, instead of relational reparation, we get relational rupture.
[00:53:36] So we have what we might call substitutionary dynamics here. I mean, really I would prefer to distinguish different types of what we would call substitution, but we can just simplify it here for now.
[00:53:51] Like we have Jacob who is covered in the skins. Again, not atonement proper, but it has echoing of skins and atonement, we might say, covering, right? In addition, we have identity markers and covenant, and again, promise and offspring. All of those ideas really are being brought to mind here. But if we're looking at the broad conceptual frame, then this does echo in a narrative fashion, some of these ideas.
[00:54:23] All right, now let's move into the passage where we get actual legitimate atonement in Genesis. This is the place where we see atonement. Genesis 32, verse 20. Now, interestingly, I just talked about Jacob and Esau and relational rupture. Well, here we have Jacob appeasing Esau with an offering. So we have Jacob coming back to the land. He knows Esau is really mad at him. He's really worried about what Esau's gonna do. So he's like, well, okay, I'm going to give him a bunch of presents. Maybe he'll be happy with me.
[00:55:05] Verse 20 in Genesis 32 says, quote, "And moreover, you shall say, look, your servant Jacob is behind us for he thought, let me appease him with the gift going before me. And afterward I will see his face. Perhaps he will show me favor." End quote.
[00:55:24] All right, so we have appeasement, which is atonement with the gift going before me. That's the atonement word. So there is a broken relationship, and he's trying to repair it through the gift. It's not blood. It's not water, it's not incense. It's a gift or an offering. It's not even a gift or an offering to God, but there is a reconciliation here on a very relational human level.
[00:55:51] It's really fascinating to me that the first time we see atonement being used is between two people. Again, not blood, not judicial. It's a relational appeasement. So there's the idea of, let me make you happy with this gift. Kind of a bribe. Right? So is that what we're supposed to see in the Levitical system is that it's a bribe to God?
[00:56:15] Yeah. I think that would be putting our judgment, our modern judgment back into the text. Jacob is intentionally working to restore the right relationship. If we see it in the form of appeasement, then what does that say about how we're thinking about the nature of God? This is crucial. So if you are thinking that God needs to be appeased in the form of a bribe, what is that saying about your view of God?
[00:56:45] The last place we can see the concept of atonement, at least where I could find it, is in the story of Joseph and his brothers. The problem is there's guilt over and they even use blood and kind of a coat, like an animal skin, right?
[00:57:04] There is ransom language. We have bringing gifts when Joseph is in charge of Egypt, the brothers are coming back. They give him gifts, they give him silver. And also life is offered in exchange. So lots of ideas here. I don't have a lot of time to go through them, but it'll be pretty easy for you guys to go into the story yourself and kind of look at it now that you have the frame of reference.
[00:57:30] The result is forgiveness and reconciliation, rescue through the danger with the famine and lots of creation ideas as well. Echoes of the flood, things like that. Offerings. Substitution in a very broad kind of a way.
[00:57:49] And look, it's not like there's no idea of substitution and things like that. But we really have to be careful in what we mean by those things and how we're looking at them. And I think we ought to be specific. Like I'm being very broad in this episode for that, but because normally when we're talking about substitution and atonement in relationship, usually people are talking about judicial situations and penal situations.
[00:58:17] But what we're actually seeing in these stories is relational repair and reciprocity. We see repentance, we see people offering things to other people to pave the way for restoration of relationship.
[00:58:31] Let me go ahead and summarize it. As far as the first direct words we have, that's in Genesis six 14, and it's not really making atonement, it's just the general word for slapping the pitch onto the boat, but it does relate to being saved through the water.
[00:58:50] We have Genesis 32 20 with the appeasement reconciliation. I think this is the strongest place that we see it.
[00:58:58] And then of course we have the conceptual frames that don't use the words at all, but we see the patterns there. Genesis one, Genesis two, Genesis three, Genesis four. Wow. That's a lot here in the early chapters. And again, they're gonna be hard to see if you haven't looked at it long enough to develop the concept through the Torah.
[00:59:20] Again, I'm gonna say we need to be very careful not to presume that we've got penal elements here. I mean we have Genesis four with the offering and the blood guilt. Those are clear thematic precursors, but it doesn't map exactly on. And so when something doesn't map exactly on, even if it's close, we should take some careful note of that.
[00:59:46] And with Genesis 22, with the substitutionary ram, we've got atonement logic there and some form of substitution logic. But it's pretty backwards if we're presuming that it's teaching something like penal substitutionary atonement. ' cause it's totally backwards. It doesn't really make a lot of sense.
[01:00:07] Okay, so let's just end on talking about how we need some guardrails when we're looking at atonement and Genesis, we're looking at Atonement anywhere really, we have to anchor the ideas in the texts' own words and its own concepts.
[01:00:23] If it's using the words, it's a little bit stronger, obviously. If it's just resonating with the concept, then we need to ask how, and is there a better way to describe it than some other way, right?
[01:00:36] Always, always, always check the immediate context, check the purpose, and you can see if there's an upside down idea right there, because a lot of times there are.
[01:00:47] We also have to distinguish between what's going on in the earlier text and later theological horizons. Don't impose later ideas onto earlier ones without really good reasoning. And the earlier parts are not gonna be fully conceptually developed. That's just normal.
[01:01:06] So anyway, I would say that if we're thinking of atonement in the framework of penal substitutionary atonement, then no, we almost don't see it at all in Genesis. Like you can force it there if you want. And with Jacob and Esau, you could fit it there, sort of.
[01:01:28] But if you're seeing atonement in the form of relational repair. Well, we see that narratively all over the place, don't we? We see many precursors and many things that are going to lead up to Leviticus as well.
[01:01:43] All of these stories set things up so that when you move into Exodus, Leviticus, Deuteronomy, well, what is Genesis setting that up for? If we're presuming that it's setting it up for something that is primarily judicial, I think we're gonna be disappointed because that's not what we see.
[01:02:03] There's enough information out there for the ancient context, for the way that the ancient world thought and acted that I think all of this is becoming easier. I think it's becoming more accessible to people and that it shouldn't be too hard to get our minds wrapped around at least some of these ideas.
[01:02:22] But it does take work. And again, I would just stress that we really should be very careful. We do check for overlaps, but don't assume that those things mean something that you think that they mean. That is why understanding the whole concept of sacred space, holiness, ritual purity, all of these things are so crucial.
[01:02:46] All right, so I'm gonna go ahead and wrap up here for the episode today. I hope this was pretty interesting. I know I had a really good time in framing out atonement and then trying to go back into Genesis and finding places that I found it, and I'm sure that I have missed places. If you guys find anything else, I would love to hear it.
[01:03:10] You can find me in my biblical theology community where I initially did this topic as a live stream, and I will leave a link to that community in the show notes. It's called On This Rock, and we're going to be starting a new study on the book, Lamb of the Free, which is going to deep dive into the concept of atonement in the Old Testament in particular.
[01:03:34] So if you wanna come join me there, I would love to have you. You can also contact me in Facebook or through my website at genesis marks the spot.com. Thank you guys for listening. Thank you guys for sharing the episodes. Those things are really, really helpful to me. And a really big thank you to all of my supporters. Whether you support me on the community or through Patreon or PayPal, I am very grateful to you guys. If you're listening to this in 2026, I pray for a really great year for everybody and that God's glory will shine in our lives. I wish you all a blessed week and we will see you later.
