“I thought about light pollution as well here. What must the sky have looked like back then? It surely would have been impossible to count all the stars. There would be so many, and a whole lot of them would have blended together and been essentially indistinguishable from one another. Counting them would be impossible. I tend to think the point here is that the stars are uncountable, even more so than something like the grains of sand on a beach, which conceivably could be counted with tremendous difficulty.

“Within that context, I wonder if time of day actually matters. Surely Abram would have had sufficient recollection to know that’s a whole lot of stars—more than all the people who had ever lived at that point. If inability to count them is a feature whether day or night (though I suppose it would be even harder during the day), so much the better for making the point.

“I do think it’s a particular challenge to our faith to contemplate promises from God that surpass our ability to understand or to comprehend. It’s one thing to look toward something that’s like my current life only more or better. It’s another thing to look forward to something I have no basis for understanding. Even cooler, I think, is that this is the case for God’s promise to each of us as Christians. As the prophet mentions in the Book of Isaiah 64:4 and Paul reiterates in his First Letter to the Corinthians 2:9, “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him.”

Learn more about the prophet Trito- (Third) Isaiah in Lesson 14 Trito-Isaiah & the Return in the Turning to God’s Word Catholic Bible study Thus Says the LORD: God Speaks Through His Servants the Prophets—Volume II: Restoration & Redemption.

Q&A—the connection between God’s Word & God’s Spirit 
A participant in this Bible study comments: “The word in Scripture implies to me a living spirit that moves forward with us.” Here’s her question: 

Q: Can you please address whether the Greeks believed that words had spirits?

A—what Matthew says: Making a connection between the word of God and God’s Holy Spirit is entirely in keeping with basic Christian teaching found in paragraphs 689 and 690 in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Paragraph 690 in the Catechism of the Catholic Church goes on to explain the joint mission of the Son and the Spirit, which seems to be at the heart of this participant’s comment about God’s Spirit moving forward with us:

689     The One whom the Father has sent into our hearts, the Spirit of his Son, is truly God. Consubstantial with the Father and the Son, the Spirit is inseparable from them, in both the inner life of the Trinity and his gift of life for the world. In adoring the Holy Trinity, life-giving, consubstantial, and indivisible, the Church’s faith also professes the distinction of persons. When the Father sends his Word, he always sends his Breath. In their joint mission, the Son and the Holy Spirit are distinct but inseparable. To be sure, it is Christ who is seen, the visible image of the invisible God, but it is the Spirit who reveals him.

690     Jesus is Christ, “anointed,” because the Spirit is his anointing, and everything that occurs from the Incarnation on derives from this fullness. When Christ is finally glorified, he can in turn send the Spirit from his place with the Father to those who believe in him: he communicates to them his glory, that is, the Holy Spirit who glorifies him. From that time on, this joint mission will be manifested in the children adopted by the Father in the Body of his Son: the mission of the Spirit of adoption is to unite them to Christ and make them live in him.

So yes, this statement is right on the money: “The word in Scripture implies a living spirit that moves forward with us.” The word of God, of course, can be used to refer to Jesus Christ or to Scripture. We come to know God through relationship with his word, and it’s the Holy Spirit that reveals God to us. Those of us involved in regular Bible study have no difficulty in understanding how God’s Spirit is present in Scripture.

What’s problematic, however, is attempting to say that our relationship with God, his word, and his Spirit is based in any way on a Greek understanding of spirits connected to words. That’s making a theological leap that’s difficult to defend. It appears to be trying to connect the uniquely Christian concept of the Trinity—one God in three persons—with pagan Greek ideas about a myriad of gods. It should be obvious why comparing the Christian Godhead to multiple gods in any way is a bad idea.

a more in-depth look at the Greek part of this question
For those of you who don’t know, Turning to God’s Word author Matthew Phelps’ degree is from Grinnell College where he majored in classical languages with an emphasis on Greek. He’s done a great deal of study of Greek philosophy and culture. Here’s more of his response to whether Greeks believed that words had spirits:

“Greek thought deals with a few related issues, but to my understanding never actually views words as spirits. As far as spirits go, the Greek worldview saw various daimones or gods who inhabited many different things, mostly in nature. These were related to corporeal things and to the best of my knowledge had nothing to do with anything else.

“As far as words go, the Greeks had a unique philosophy. Their language had the ability to create abstract nouns from concrete ones with a simple change of ending (e.g. table becomes table-ness). At that time, there was no idea that language could easily and consistently describe a thing that wasn’t real, so some philosophers—including Plato—ascribed reality to these things and called them “forms.” In this sense, words had greater meaning. Concepts such as truth, love, and justice referred to real and extant things in a way that modern philosophy doesn’t recognize. Our theology stumbles upon a similar conclusion in some cases but arrives there entirely independently from Greek philosophy.

“More literally, basically, and universally, all words are connected with spirit insofar as the word spirit means “breath.” Spirit is required to produce or to sound a word. Literally, all words require spirit, but this isn’t at its heart a Greek concept.”

another connection to the book of Genesis
The very first verses in the book of Genesis describe God’s breath or Spirit involved in Creation, along with God’s spoken word. The introduction in the first lesson in the Turning to God’s Word Catholic Bible study In the Beginning: The Book of Genesis acknowledges that the accounts of Creation found in this first book of the Bible share similarities with other ancient explanations of how the world came to be. What distinguishes the accounts in Sacred Scripture, however, is that the they present a God who’s quite different from any other ancient gods. The Old Testament reveals a distinctly Hebrew picture of the one living God, a perspective that allows for our expanded New Testament Christian understanding of the Trinity. To try to impose Greek pagan religious ideas on advanced Christian understanding of who God is takes a dangerous step away from the Trinity—one of the two most basic and mysterious concepts of our faith. (The other is that Jesus Christ has a dual nature that’s both human and divine.)

our Christian faith is based on Hebrew thinking
It’s good to remember that while we have a Greek translation of the book of Genesis in the Septuagint, the five books of the Torah almost certainly originally were passed down orally in the Hebrew language and reflect Hebrew and not Greek ideas. The connection between God’s Word and God’s Spirit is easily made in Hebrew, and much safer theologically than trying to get there from ancient Greek thinking. The ancient Greeks led the way to civilization in many areas. When it comes to religion, however, the ancient Hebrews get the nod. The Greeks believed in an entire pantheon of gods, all modeled on humans and our most unflattering traits. The Hebrews believed instead that humanity is created in the image and likeness of the one God, and as Christians we believe that it’s our goal to discard sinful behavior and become more and more like the living God in whose image we’re created.

righteousness—you could look it up in our archives
Abram’s faith in God’s word is reckoned to him as righteousness, a word that means observing the rules. To learn about the meaning of righteousness in the New Testament, read Lost in Translation, an online column in which Turning to God’s Word author Matthew Phelps helps readers connect with ideas expressed in the original languages of the Scriptures. New Lost in Translation entries are posted on Mondays, and past entries are archived on our website. Contact us if you’d like to receive Lost in Translation by email every week.

be on the lookout
The sixteenth chapter in the book of Genesis contains the first account of Sarai’s Egyptian maid Hagar being sent away. A second account, with some significantly different details, is coming up. We’ll examine the discrepancies between those two accounts in Lesson 12.

the best Catholic commentary about Scripture
To find out more about how Church teaching is supported by Scripture passages in In the Beginning: The Book of Genesis, check out the Index of Citations in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Links to the primary Scripture passages in the lesson (Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition [RSVCE*]) and relevant paragraphs in the Catechism are provided here. Not every passage in the biblical text for this Catholic study is referenced in a Catechism paragraph, however.

the book of Genesis 15:2—paragraph 2374
the book of Genesis 15:2–3—paragraph 2570
the book of Genesis 15:5—paragraphs 146, 288
the book of Genesis 15:5–6—paragraph 762
the book of Genesis 15:6—paragraphs 146, 2571

ways our glossary might prove helpful
In addition to providing extra information about geographical locations, our glossary also points out persons or places mentioned in the biblical text under more than one name or more than one spelling. If you can remember a name but aren’t sure in which lesson it shows up, you can find it in the glossary, which lists every proper noun that appears in the biblical text for every lesson in In the Beginning: The Book of Genesis.

to learn more, read more Scripture
If you’re having difficulty with a particular passage of Scripture, it can be helpful to read the relevant cross references—but looking these up can take time. To make that easier, we’ve compiled the cross references from the Revised Standard Version Second Catholic Edition (RSV2CE)—the translation that we reprint in our study books. A link to that list can be found at the top of every online study page; the list features links to cross references in the primary biblical text in the study book In the Beginning: The Book of Genesis.

don’t forget about our indexes & extra online material
If you’re trying to locate information about a specific Scripture passage, you can look it up in the index at the back of the study book or sample lesson. If you want to find a particular commentary, you can look up its title in the topics index. To learn more about another book of the Bible for which there’s a Turning to God’s Word study, visit the online study directories to read the commentaries and watch any accompanying videos. Finally, if you have a question or would like to make a comment about any of our studies, you can use one of the “ask us your question” or “what do you think” buttons to email our authors.

ex libris—Church documents & books about religious topics
Link to magisterial documents referred to in our Bible studies at ex libris—magisterial documents. This listing includes significant recent encyclicals as well as a number of historical Church documents. Recommended books related to Scripture study can be found at ex libris—main bookshelf.

wondering how to pronounce some of these words?
The following link is to a reading from the New International Version (NIV) Bible. To listen, open the link and click on the audio icon above the printed text. Although not taken from the translations used in our study materials, the NIV reading provides an audio guide to pronunciation of words in this lesson’s primary biblical text. A close online version of the translation of the Bible used in Catholic liturgy in the United States as well as an audio guide for daily Mass readings for the current month can be found on the website of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB).

the book of Genesis 15:1—16:16 (NIV)

close with Bible-based prayer related to this lesson
Many of our Catholic study groups like to conclude their discussions with a prayer based on the scriptural focus of their lesson, and some participants include Scripture-specific prayer in their individual study. If you’re uncomfortable composing your own Bible-based prayers, you can follow our four easy steps. If you prefer, you can use the following prayer based on this lesson’s text from the book of Genesis.

O God, you created the stars in the heavens
and the sands on the seashore.
Grant us the grace to believe in your promise of salvation
in order that our faith may be reckoned as righteousness.
We ask this in the name of your Son, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Lesson 10 God’s Covenant with Abraham—the book of Genesis 17:1—18:33
Lesson 8 The Call of Abram—the book of Genesis 12:1—14:24

you also may like our two-part study of the prophets
Thus Says the LORD: God Speaks Through His Servants the Prophets—Volume I: A Kingdom Divided examines the prophets in their historical context using the First and Second Books of the Kings and other Old Testament passages written before the Babylonian Exile in 586 B.C. Volume II: Restoration & Redemption looks at the post-exilic prophets. This 51-lesson Catholic Bible study builds on The United Kingdom of Israel: Saul, David & Solomon Foreshadow Christ the King. Click on the books’ covers to view a sample lesson from each volume.

start a Turning to God’s Word Bible study
Thank you for your interest in our study In the Beginning: The Book of Genesis. Information about beginning a Turning to God’s Word Catholic Bible study can be found at start a Bible study. Tami, Matthew, and I are available to answer questions and offer support. Contact us if you’d like to start a Turning to God’s Word study or have your schedule listed with other TtGW study groups on our website. —Jennifer

*There are seven deuterocanonical books in the Old Testament—the Books of Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch, and First and Second Maccabees, as well as some passages in the Books of Esther and Daniel. Protestants usually refer to these works as “apocryphal,” a word that means “outside the (Protestant) canon” because they’re excluded from most Protestant Bibles. The word “deuterocanonical” means “second canon”; Catholics use that word to refer to any section of the Catholic Old Testament for which there are no extant, or existing, Hebrew manuscripts. All of the deuterocanonical books appear in the Septuagint, the earliest remaining versions of which date to the 1st century B.C. This Greek translation of the Old Testament was in common use by Jews at the time of Jesus. Learn more by reading How Do Catholic & Protestant Bibles Differ?

Turning to God’s Word printed Bible studies use the 2006 Revised Standard Version Second Catholic Edition (RSV2CE) translation for all Scripture references except those to the Psalms, which are taken from The Abbey Psalms and Canticles, prepared by the Benedictine monks of Conception Abbey and published in 2020 by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). All Scripture links for the online study pages for In the Beginning: The Book of Genesis are to the 1966 Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition (RSVCE) translation. The New International Version (NIV) audio recordings follow the same chapter and verse numbering as the RSV Catholic translations, but the NIV translation doesn’t include the deuterocanonical books and passages.

The 1966 RSVCE uses archaic pronouns and verb forms such as “thee,” “thou,” “didst” in the Psalms and in direct quotations attributed to God. The 2006 RSV2CE replaces these with more accessible English. The few significant translation changes in the RSV2CE include rendering almah as “virgin” in the Book of Isaiah 7:14 and restoring the term “begotten” in the Gospel According to John 3:16.

Numbering varies for some passages in this Bible study. Turning to God’s Word studies (print and digital) follow the numbering in the Revised Standard Version Catholic translations (RSV2CE and RSVCE). Discrepancies in the New American Bible Revised Edition (NABRE) are noted in the Index of Scripture Citations in the study book and the online sample.

You can learn more about the Psalms by viewing a sample lesson from the Turning to God’s Word Catholic Bible study Sing a New Psalm: Communicating with God Through the Prayers of the Church—Volume I: Lauds & Vespers. The second part of that study, Sing a New Psalm: Communicating with God Through the Prayers of the Church—Volume II: Vigils, Day Prayer & Compline, is scheduled for publication in 2025. Some verse numbers may vary in different translations of the Psalms.