The Subversion of creation in the figurative language of poets

Abstract

It has been intended in this article to gather and to comment some prophetic passages where reference is made to creation’s alteration or subversion, as a figurative image of hyperbolic style through which to forecast or reflect upon a dramatic event which befalls upon the Hebrew people. This literary means evokes the first chapters of Genesis, both in what refers to the origins of creation, and as to what deals with its devastation through the universal flood due to the malice of the human being. The vocabulary, the expressions and the iconography which are employed in these texts sketch a divine intervention of judicial and punitive character, which we may  name as “anti-Genesis” or “anti-creation”, because through them is depicted  a total perturbation or destruction of the elements of the cosmos and of nature, the realm in which human life develops and, therefore,  a prelude of its own destruction, These oracles, in which a kind of regression to the primordial chaos, a conflagration of  cosmic proportions, or the collapse of the natural sphere is formulated, must not be interpreted, then, in a literal way, given that its  true meaning is of a symbolic intention; it is an imaginary with which the prophets relate happenings of great proportions which threaten the very existence of their people, in concrete circumstances of their history, as for example the Exile or Banishment