The Creation of the World

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When Yahweh set out to create the world, the land was covered with water and with swirling clouds of darkness. In this primordial sea dwelt monsters, but no other things lived or could live in the chaos of the wind-swept water and darkness. The world was empty of life and order.

Then the great Yahweh approached. He ordered light to appear, and it obeyed. Yahweh was pleased with the light as it was useful, so he spread it throughout everything. Where light was placed Yahweh called it “Day” and where there was no light he called it “Night”. The light pushed against the clouds of darkness, and the monsters of the deep were angry.

Yahweh descended to the violent seas and fought the monsters of the seas and the darkness. He fought against the giant monster Behemoth who was the source of the darkness and chaos that had covered all and he destroyed it. He fought against great serpents like the vicious Rahab and he fought against the oceans themselves. With his great sword he killed and destroyed them all, and brought the oceans to rest.

The mightiest of all of the monsters was Leviathan and their battle was fierce. The great dragon had seven terrible heads full of snatching and tearing teeth, but Yahweh was able to defeat each one, and finally he stabbed his sword through the great serpent's thick skin. Yahweh cut the monster to pieces to become food for the fish and animals that would eventually appear in Yahweh's domain.

Having gained the victory over the great monsters of the deep and the ancient seas, Yahweh was now king of all. The other gods of his court honored his might and power.

With the violence of the oceans destroyed and the clouds of darkness dispersed, Yahweh set the light that he had created to soar through the heavens in a grand repeating cycle. In this way the first day occurred.

Now that the world was quiet Yahweh gathered up some of the deep waters of the oceans and placed them into the dome of heaven, coloring the sky a brilliant blue. Yahweh placed windows in the great dome so that the waters of heaven would always have places to emerge as clouds that would provide heavenly rains to water the world. The cycle of light moving through the skies continued during his work and Yahweh finished by the end of the second day.

As the light of the third day shone through the now-blue skies, Yahweh dealt with the rest of the now-still seas. He dammed up the rivers and stopped the springs that had fed the ancient waters that had covered everything. Now instead of allowing them to continually flood the world, he would keep the ancient seas that existed before creation underneath everything. Yahweh created a great boundary around his world that kept these oceans outside of his realm. He then moved the remaining seas to gather into different places and caused dry land to appear where the seas had previously covered all.

Yahweh was pleased with his progress, so he ordered the now dry ground to produce plants of every kind and it did. Many kinds of plants grew out of the ground: grasses, trees, vines, and flowers. All of the plants, following the orders of Yahweh, produced powerful seeds that could be placed into dirt that would grow more of the type of plant they had come from.

The cycle of the lights of the dome of heaven continued and the blue color of day faded to darkness as the light moved on. The third day had ended.

Having spend the previously day attending to the land, now Yahweh turned his attention back to the skies. He created a great light that lived within the moving light of day that provided heat and brightness called the sun, and in the darkness of evening he created a lesser light called the moon. Finally, he created swaths of small lights within the expanse of evening's darkness called the stars. Finally, he added more order and change to the moving skies, introducing the seasons of winter and summer, ordering some stars to attend to one and some to attend to the other.

The great court of gods was amazed at the progress of Yahweh. His sons shouted with joy at Yahweh's power and majesty. The very stars Yahweh had assigned sang songs throughout the heavens as they spun over the land.

As the sun now rose again with the blue skies of the fourth day, Yahweh decided to spread life through the remaining waters as he had with the plants of the land. He commanded the waters to produce fish and they did. The fish fed upon the remnants of the great monsters from Yahweh's mighty battles and multiplied. He ordered birds to appear, and they did so and fed on the fish and the fruits of the seas and the land.

The land was now full of plants, the seas were now full of fish, and the skies were now filled with birds. The slow turning of the heavens continued, pulling the sun below the rim of the earth and bringing another evening.

Dawn broke over the world on the sixth day, and Yahweh descended to the dry land and ordered it to be filled with animals, wild and tame, large and small. The land obeyed and was filled with animals. Yahweh was pleased.

Finally, Yahweh ordered all of his court, “We will make humans, male and female, like us, so that the humans can enjoy what we have created.”

And so Yahweh created humans, both male and female, and they looked like him. And Yahweh ordered the humans to have families and grow to fill the world. He ordered them to feed themselves with the fish of the water, the birds of the air, and the animals of the earth. He ordered them to farm the land and to take control of everything he had made. And the humans did as Yahweh ordered them.

And the sun went down over the world ending the sixth day. Yahweh was pleased. It had been a tiring six days, so for the entirety of the seventh day Yahweh rested while his full, living world continued on its now endless cycles.

For a full explanation of this post, see the previous one explaining the full project. In summary, this is my own version of the Hebrew creation myth as it might be presented in some future collection of Hebrew myths presented in the same fashion as we now have collections of myths by the ancient Sumerians, Greeks, Romans, Celts, and Norse.