Very- מְאֹ֑ד

I was looking once more at Genesis 1 and decided to examine the word "very" used in Genesis 1:31 "God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day."  

God sees creation as "very good", after putting man into it, but calls man neither good nor very good directly. For a long time this did not stand out to me much, but after considering the words of Jesus in Matthew 10:18 I took more notice "'Why do you call me good?' Jesus answered. 'No one is good--except God alone.'" 

In relation to Genesis 1, where many things are described as good, I was led to consider that this might be meant as a direct correlation, and that these things described (which is basically everything except man, darkness, and the sky (the vault between seas)) are God/pieces of God alone. Recently I have considered, viewing good as a value in an equation, if God is "good", then what is "very good?"

It is commonly believed by Christians that God is the epitome of what can be, the ultimate in good and power. It is interesting the to consider the following: can God crate something that is a degree better than God's self? It is one of those things that feels paradoxical, but this also feels like a meaningful goal if one were singular in one's creation, and it's something I have touched on in "The Two Rollers"/paradise series. In God's shoes, I could imagine setting up an entire structure (creation) simply to arrive at this goal of having something with more meaning than one has before doing it, along the lines that one had said meaning, which is the difference in value between good and very good.

So from the beginning God stated the intention: for there to be more. The word "very" here felt right away like an exponent to me, like it was adding a whole new layer to reality and the idea of good. So I started looking into the concordance of that word "very" in hebrew מְאֹ֑ד and found that it was used to describe things that had a significant degree: Cain's anger, Sarai's beauty, Abram's resulting wealth, Sodom's sin, God's blessing as a shield and reward, etc. Here it struck me as interesting that while the word "very" is still meant to describe a more significant degree of something today, it is not used as precisely as it once was. It is used to describe even slight degree changes and can mean broadly varying shifts in degree depending on context now. In reading how it was used in Genesis, it seems to represent a more stable multiplier in Hebrew, it had meaning in its specific contribution of degree. 

As I examined מְאֹ֑ד as a term of degree, I noticed something interesting that feels like it has been lost in translation. The term is used twice in a row in these cases, sometimes with slight variation, to indicate a significant shift in degree. I interpreted this as an additional layer being added to the function, an additional exponent on top of the single usage, but the way in which it is translated feels like this extra added degree is much more easily disregarded, as if it were additive rather than multiplicative. For example, during the flood, in Genesis 7:19 the word is repeated to describe when the entire planet was covered in water, whereas to describe the sin of Sodom it was only used once. This seems to demonstrate the degree of the second shift, as one use resulted in the destruction of a single city (in fact the same sin a second time resulted in the destruction of a second city, Gomorrah), where as using the word twice back to back was sufficient to describe the destruction of all those living on the earth in creation, save those saved. 

In this same way when God blessed Abraham in Genesis 17:6, he used the word twice to describe the number of his descendants. He did the same with Ishmael in 17:20. So if we are looking at the word "very" as a sign of degree, then God established creation to be very good, a degree beyond the good that existed beyond what existed before creation. But God intentionally multiplied man to the degree of "very very." God never described man as good or very good, and this seems intentional. It was as if God separated us out to be ourselves in creation, and to act as a kind of wild card in its midst. So while creation itself would be a degree beyond existence without it, man would spread two degrees out (multiplied very very) without necessarily being good. In this way the same relationship in degree between God and creation established at the beginning would be in place between creation and man at the end, a single degree of increase between each. 

Now this is not to say God would not still possess a singular power in the realm. I believe that the concentration of power would persist in God's goodness, despite the larger size of creation (very) and the vastness of man's multiplication (very very). It seems like all this was intentional to keep the balance of this equation that is not yet understood by man, and that the balance would persist and perhaps bloom from there after this timeline was over, when we finally came to understand it.