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  • From: Harold Holmyard <hholmyard AT ont.com>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Genesis 8:22
  • Date: Mon, 01 May 2006 04:49:44 -0500

Karl Randolph wrote:

In view of your response to me, I had decided not to respond, but now as you expanded to Yitzhak, there are a few things that I think should be emphasized.

From your latest responses, I wonder if you really
know English that well. (e.g. I have several times read the phrase "he is like a dog with a bone" which is an idiomatic phrase that has nothing about likening a person to a dog, rather it is a comment on his tenacity. That you didn't recognize it reflects on your knowledge of English.)



HH: You weren't using the phrase to compliment me but as part of your claim that I had a personal problem to make the argument I did. So you weren't using the phrase positively but negatively. As one element in a personal attack, the words become assimilated to the attack function of other words that preceded and followed.


I will come back to Genesis 8:22.

When you quoted many translations, my eyes glazed over and I skipped that section. Translations don't count. I have read Tanakh only once in translation, but several times in Hebrew. If you want to convince me, show me from Hebrew usage.



HH: Translations reflect what scholarship thinks. Most published translations are monuments to scholarship.

Similarly, your references to modern science and bird migration patterns are irrelevant.



HH: Karl, this list does not exist for your sake only. The references to bird migration patterns were relevant to the discussion I was in with someone else.


As I claim, words have a circle of meaning, for some their area is great, for others their range of meaning can be very restricted.

The word "season" even in English has a range of meaning, not just the seasons (summer, fall, etc.). Poetically it is used for much shorter periods, such as the "season to be jolly" which, according to tradition, lasted 12 days, or the "Easter season" which lasted 8 days. Thus, even if you use "season" in Jeremiah 8:7, it does not necessarily correspond to the seasons as in summer, fall, etc.



HH: This only helps my argument. It does not hurt it in any way.


But at question isn't the English word "season" but the Hebrew "MW(D", what does it mean? Does it include the four seasons as in summer, fall, etc.? I see no evidence whatsoever that it does.



HH: Here's some information from the Dictionary of Classical Hebrew, which says that the word can mean "appointed time, due season, often in general, time, season." The dictionary notes use of the word in extra-biblical materials to refer to the "time of harvest," "the time of sowing," "the time of grass," "the times of grass," "the time of heat," "the times of the years." So it obviously can have a broad temporal reference and can refer to seasons of the year such as sowing, harvest, and springtime when grass grows.


Now back to Genesis 8:22: you have an idiosyncratic reading not shared by many, including myself.



HH: It is not an idiosyncratic reading but the normal, majority interpretation. Here is what Keil & Delitzsch wrote: "All the days of the earth;" i.e., so long as the earth shall continue, the regular alteration of day and night and of the seasons of the year, so indispensable to the continuance of the human race, would never be interrupted again." Do you see that word "again"? It means that the days and seasons were interrupted by the Flood and existed prior to the Flood.

The NIV Study Bible has this comment: "Times and seasons, created by God in the beginning (see 1:14), will never cease till the end of history." The NIV Study Bible rightly looks to Gen 1:14 as signaling the beginning of seasons, so the Flood only interrupted them.

The 1599 Geneva Study Bible had this remark: "(l) The order of nature destroyed by the flood, is restored by God’s promise." See that the order of nature is being restored, according to the Geneva Bible. That Bible saw the order of nature as destroyed by the Flood and the cycles of day and night, hot and cold, summer and winter, seedtime and harvest as being restored.

The Nave's Topical Bible under "seasons" lists Genesis 1:14; 8:22. So it implies that the seasons existed fbefore the Flood.

Charles Spurgeon wrote:

For a time there had been a confusion: the seasons were mixed up, the perpetual downpour of the rain had almost turned day into night, and whether it was summer or winter could scarcely be told. The frame of nature seemed to be out of joint, her order suspended. And now the Lord, in making a promise to Noah that he would never destroy the earth again with a flood, also declares that while the earth remaineth there shall be no more of the confusion of the seasons and mingling of day and night which had brought such destruction upon all living things.

HH: Note that Spurgeon says the seasons had been mixed up. He did not say that they were appearing for the first time after the Flood. He says that there would be "no more confusion of the seasons," implying that the seasons had previously existed but were then confused.

HH: One way to consider Gen 8:22 is to note elements of nature mentioned that pre-existed the Flood:

Gen. 8:22 “As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease.”

HH: We know that there was day and night before the Flood. If day and night preexisted the Flood, there is reason to think that the other pairings mentioned in Gen 8:22 also preexisted the Flood. God did not create day and night after the Flood, so why should we think he created summer and winter after the Flood?



That verse is one of the clues that those who hold to a young earth creation followed by a flood model of history claim that the antediluvian world had a completely different climate than the postdiluvian world; that the antediluvian world had no seasons as we know them today. This they derive from a linguistic analysis of the verse in the context of all of Genesis.



HH: Genesis 8:22 is a positive formulation of the negative statement made in Gen 8:21:

“Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done.

HH: Gen 8:21 states what God will not do. Because he will not do that, the days and seasons will go round and round.

Yours,
Harold Holmyard




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