1:4 - God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness.
[T]
Here, the author reports God's evaluation of what He has just done. Now, only those who are secure in themselves are unafraid of assessing what they have done. The insecure would leave their work untested lest their shoddy workmanship show them for what they are. God evaluated the light He had commanded into existence and found it good. He would continue to do so with all his work until it culminates in the expression of full satisfaction in v31, "And God saw all that He had made and, behold, it was very good!" Most English translations miss the force expressed by the Hebrew particle ki in the expression "ki tob." Ki is often used as a conjunction. Here, rather, it should be understood as emphasizing the adjective. It is as if God was excitedly delighted in what He has made. We are given a first peek here at God, and what a wonderful delight it is to find a God who does all things well and who delights in what He has done!
Nature, as God had created it, is good and we never need fear it. It was the rediscovery of this biblical truth in the West in the 16th Cent that laid the foundation for modern science. Harvey Cox observes, "However highly developed a culture's power of observation, however refined its equipment for measuring, no real scientific breakthrough is possible until man can face the natural world unafraid."1
But what exactly does the adjective 'good' imply? How does one define 'good'? In human terms all goodness is relative. Is being physically handicapped good? No, most would say. But if there is a war on and the government is conscripting men for the army, the mother of a paraplegic son might think it is good that her son is crippled; she gets to keep her son from the battlefield.
Ultimately the only meaning 'good' can have is in relation to what God has in mind for a thing. Here in Genesis, the created things are good because they are what God wanted them that way. Creation was what God wanted them to be. Today, of course, we have many things we might complain about creation. Why did God, e.g., have to make the mosquito? We cannot, of course, compare what we find in the world as it is with how God created them in the beginning. In thinking about creation and nature today we have to remember Paul's caveat that "the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time" and that "creation itself will [have to] be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God" (Rom 8:21-22). We no longer have nature as it was, though nature may not also have been, in its original state, what we often imagine or assume it to be.2
Separation, indicated by the verb (badal) used here and in vv6, 7, 14 & 18, is a central idea in this account. The basic notion is to discern and to distinguish between things and to appoint them to their proper place and purpose. Here the light is separated from the darkness, each having its proper place in God's scheme of things. Notice that, though there is no suggestion that the darkness was evil, it is the light that God calls good. Clearly, God has preferences. And, of course, it is only God who can have preferences without being guilty of unfairness or prejudice.
Elsewhere in the Old Testament the verb badal is applied to Israel. It is, e.g., what she must do in drawing the boundaries between the holy place and the holy of holies and not trespass them (Exo 26:33) and to distinguish between "the holy and the common" and the "unclean and the clean" (Lev 10:10). The term becomes synonymous with divine election when, e.g., Israel was set apart from other nations (Lev 20:24, 26) or the Levites set apart from the other tribes for service before the Lord (Num 8:14; Deut 10:8). God is the author and model of purposeful living, of sorting out where each thing goes according to its purpose. Only we are happy enough to live muddled and muddling lives. Ah, to live in discerning deliberation and purposeful liberty!
You may wish to read the following commentaries-expositions:
Low Chai Hok
©Alberith, 2022