10 Plagues, 10 Commandments, and the Design of Genesis

In this video I look at the symbolism of 10 in the literary structure of genesis, the plagues, and the ten commandments.email: [email protected]: @johnbhiggins| Transcription |Welcome back to the Bible is art where we look at the literary artistry of the Bible and in this week we are looking at the symbolism in the structure of Genesis. The biblical authors make heavy use of number symbolism but not in this sort of weird number symbolism of like the books like the Bible code where you know in 2012 Saddam Hussein blabbity blah. No, no, no. They use number symbolism in a similar way to how colour symbolism is used in literature that is it may have its own symbolic nature. So red can symbolize love or lust or passion or white could symbolize purity and sometimes it can allude back to other situations where that color is used. We're gonna look at the symbolism of the number 10 and we're gonna do this because last week we saw that the book of Genesis is organized into ten sections and there's a symbolic reason for that. But before we understand that we have to look at how the Bible uses the number ten. The first time it uses the symbolism of number ten it's actually the place where it sets up this symbolism is in Genesis chapter one. And in Genesis chapter 1 this symbolic use is subtle it's not as if the author says and God did something ten times. You have to look a little bit more carefully.In Genesis chapter 1 God creates the heavens and the earth. And it's fascinating to see whatspecifically about creation our narrator wants to point our attention. He wants to point our attention to the means, how God creates the world. And he creates it by speech, by speaking. 10 times the narrator tells us God said, so God said "let there be light" and God said "letthere be an expanse" etc. So in Genesis chapter 1 this symbolic connection is established between the number 10 and creation. Now you may be thinking that's a sort of slim connection right just counting up 10 verbs and I would agree with you if this were the only time but time and time again the biblical authors will layer on examples of the number 10 symbolismThe next time the number 10 symbolism is used is in the plagues of Egypt. There are, of course, 10 plagues, but the numerical connection is not the only connection. There's a creationalconnection. If you remember back to Genesis 1, the way that God designs the universe is that he designs it into three parts: heaven, earth/land and sea.