Sir William Ramsay said of Luke: Luke is an historian of the first rank; not merely are his statements of fact trustworthy; he is possessed of the true historic sense; he fixes his mind on the idea and plan that rules in the evolution of history, and proportions the scale of his treatment to the importance of each incident. He seizes the important and critical events and shows their true nature at greater length, while he touches lightly or omits entirely much that was valueless for his purpose. In short, this author should be placed along with the very greatest historians. High praise indeed from a man who initially set out to prove that Acts was a late second century production, not written by Luke.
I would suggest that if this could be said of Luke, it should also be said of Moses. He wrote two thousand years of history in fifty chapters! How is that possible? Bear in mind that he spent from chapters 12-50 dealing with four generations of one family – that of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph. This means that eleven chapters cover some two thousand years of history. Also bear this in mind: he spends two chapters on the first week, and then a chapter on one incident – the fall of man. So by the time he starts chapter four he realizes that he’s got to get a wiggle on if he’s going to get to Noah by chapter six! So some sixteen hundred years are covered in two chapters! (I don’t speak this way to disparage inspiration) So I say, Moses was not a padder! (he doesn’t waste words to fill up space) This means we must pay close attention to anything he writes, because what he includes must be important and written for our learning.
Since he spends two chapters on the creation week it must be important for us to understand. These chapters are not a hymn but sober detailed history of the beginning of man and his universe. The one chapter on the fall of man is essential to our understanding of how a perfect creation gave rise to the world as we know it today, and man’s need for a Saviour.
But then in Chapters four and five he has to really “cut corners” to cover sixteen hundred years. He achieves this by highlighting crucial events that illustrate and put in train trends and consequences. For example, he highlights conflict between the righteous and the unrighteous, the protection of murderers, the glorification of force, family trends and bad marriage choices.
This style of writing gets Moses into trouble quite often. For instance, we don’t know how long Adam and Eve spent in the garden, nor do we know whether Cain and Abel were the first children they had. Questions about where Cain got his wife arise because of his punctuated style, but all these and other such questions are not important to his task.
Rationalists and theological liberals do not see anything prophetic (in the Messianic sense) about Genesis 3:15. They suggest that in the animosity and distrust between men and snakes the former will crush the head of the foes while the latter can only wound the heel. As Leupold wryly observes, such a trite platitude would not have been worthy of recording. It stands about on the level of the astute observation that a man will slap the mosquito that bites him! Moses was not a padder and Genesis 3:15 stands as the first prophecy of the Deliverer of man from the assaults of the Devil.
When Jesus was questioned about marriage and divorce (eg. Matt.19) He went straight to Moses in Genesis 2, implying that the foundation laid by God at the beginning was the model God wanted for the world for all time: that marriage was monogamous, heterosexual, a binding commitment, and the foundation of family.
Moses spends some time in talking about the repercussions from the eating of the forbidden fruit. Included in this is reference to Adam’s and Eve’s inadequate attempt to alleviate their sense of the shame of nakedness and God’s response to that. Rather than being conformed to the standards of the world, we would do better to consider what Moses wrote on this subject. This is not an appeal to the old covenant, but rather to a pattern laid down for the world long before Moses’ covenant was enacted . God looked down from heaven and there was Adam resplendent in his “budgie smugglers” and Eve in her carefully designed topless swimsuit to give her an even suntan (with apologies to whoever wrote that song). He might have said “What have you done? You look like a pair of Australians!” He obviously did not consider their attempts at modesty to be adequate (and neither did they) and so he clothed them with “coats of skin” as the old versions put it. This was the word for the basic garment of the Jew and was essentially a “neck to knee” garment. Can we not learn something from what Moses regarded as worthy of inclusion?