the remainder of the Pentateuch. In the movement from sin to exile to restoration, these blessings are challenged, thus threatening the creative design of God. The first blessing relates to the orderliness of creation. The highly poetic design of Genesis 1, with the repetition of numerous words and phrases, suggests that the author intended to present creation as an act of ultimate order.1 The repetition of the phase “and God saw that it was good” suggests that from the beginning creation fulfilled
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