What did God do in the third creation story?

Answer 1

The Torah states that it was written in its entirety by one author, Moses (Deuteronomy 31:24), to whom it was dictated by God (Exodus 24:12), including earlier events.
The Torah has one creation-narrative, which takes the form of a summary (Genesis ch.1) followed by an in-depth recap (Rashi commentary, Genesis 2:8).

Other mentions of Creation (Psalms, Isaiah, Job) are poetic, not meant to supplant or alter the details in Genesis.

When we see a newspaper whose opening headline is paraphrased in the detailed story, we don't ascribe the repetition to different writers.

But this kind of literary device, which the Torah employs to enrich its text, has been used by Bible-critics in an attempt to reassign and divide up its authorship.

The Jewish sages, based on ancient tradition, identified many of the literary devices used by the Torah, which include:

- recapping earlier brief passages to elucidate,

- employing different names of God to signify His various attributes,

- using apparent changes or redundancies to allude to additional unstated details,

- speaking in the vernacular that was current during each era,

and many more. While Judaism has always seen the Torah as an intricate tapestry that nonetheless had one Divine source, some modern authors such as Wellhausen (the father of modern Biblical-criticism, 1844-1918) have suggested artificially attributing the narrative to several unknown authors, despite the Torah's explicit statement as to its provenance (Exodus 24:12, Deuteronomy 31:24). This need not concern believers, since his claims have been debunked one by one, as archaeology and other disciplines have demonstrated the integrity of the Torah. No fragments have ever been found that would support his Documentary Hypothesis, which remains nothing more than an arbitrary claim:

Refuting the JEPD Documentary Hypothesis

The creation-narrative in Genesis (a Christian author)

The authorship of the Hebrew Bible

A summary of the Creation-narrative is that, day by day, God created the universe and everything in it (Genesis ch.1).God created the universe out of nothing (Exodus 20:11, Isaiah 40:28; Rashi commentary to Genesis 1:14; Maimonides' "Guide," 2:30). Note that the Torah, in describing the Creation, deliberately employs brevity and ellipsis, just as it does in many other topics. See the Talmud, Hagigah 11b.

• On day 1: God created the universe in general, light, and this Earth. The light was not the same as that of the sun. Rather, it was light that God created before the sun, and which emanated from a point in space without any physical source; like what we might term a "white hole."
  
• On day 2: God created the separation between the Earth and the upper atmosphere.
  
• On day 3: God separated the continents from the oceans, and created plants.
  
• On day 4: God created the sun, moon, and stars.
  
• On day 5: God created birds and fish.
  
• On day 6: God created animals and people.
  
• On day 7: God ceased creating, thereby creating the concept of rest.
  

See also:

Is there evidence against Evolution?

Can you show that God exists?

Seeing God's wisdom

Answer 2

The first biblical creation story is in Genesis 1:1-2:4a; the second biblical creation story is in Genesis 2:4b-20. The third biblical creation story consists of fragments of a more primitive creation story, found in the Book of Psalms and the Book of Job. Some scholars see a further creation story in Genesis chapter 5, which appears to be a summary of the second story, but differs from it in key aspects.

Although the third creation story is fragmented, there is enough detail remaining, to see that it is very similar to some early Mesopotamian creation stories, and scholars can thus recognise what the story would once have dealt with.

The best detail of the third creation story is preserved in the Book of Job. By chapter 38, God and Satan have failed in their attempts to defeat Job, and God angrily tells job what he had accomplished and asks Job where he was when God did all this. In other words, by what right does Job place himself equal to God. In the beginning, God:
laid the foundations of the earth;
shut up the seas and said come no farther;
commanded the morning and caused the dawn to know its place;
caused it to rain;
created the rivers, thunder and lightning;
provided the raven his food;
created all the beasts and given the horse its strength;
taught the hawk to fly;
made both man and behemoth;
defeated the leviathan, one of the chaos monsters of creation.