GEN
2:1
| JERUSALEM
BIBLE |
(ALTERNATIVE
GENESIS) |
|
Thus
Heaven and Earth were completed with all their array.
|
And
so the struggle against the Heights and against the land
below was completed.
|
The key
to this verse lies in the term 
= zabamwhich, later, came to mean 'warfare' and 'army
service'. The biblical translation ignores this reference -
and yet the construction on the Heights with the dam wall and
the resulting reservoir, and the great cedar-wood edifices of
the Great House and the Building of Knowledge, must have posed
technical problems and a tremendous physical struggle.
The development
of the low-lying land, below the dam, where the plantations
were sited would hardly have been less arduous because the great
watercourse had to be cut into rock (as mentioned earlier) to
bring the reservoir waters under control, into the irrigation
channels. We know that this was an almost unbearable toil, under
a hot sun, from the Akkadian account of the insurrection of
the Lordlings.
It had
been warfare of a kind - against Nature and the challenges of
an unfamiliar land.
