The Flow of Gen 1.1-2.3

Let's review the flow of the argument in Genesis 1.1-2.3...

GEN 1.1: God creates all things

GEN 1.2-2.3: God prepares a land where humans can live in his blessing.

• 1.2. Prelude—The Uninhabitable Land: The condition of the land before God prepares it for human habitation.

• 1.3-5. Day One: God separates light from darkness and establishes day and night

• 1.6-8. A Second Day: God separates the sky from the waters.

• 1.9-13. A Third Day: God separates the land from the waters and calls the earth to bring forth plants.

• 1.14-19. A Fourth Day: God sets lights in the sky and assigns their purposes.

• 1.20-23. A Fifth Day: God makes creatures to fill the waters and skies.

• 1.24-31. A Sixth Day: God makes creatures to fill the land, and creates humans in his image, blessing and providing for them.

• 2.1-3. Postlude—The Seventh Day: God had completed his work, so he rested and sanctified the seventh day.

THE Most Basic Truth: Genesis 1.1

"In the beginning, God created the skies and the land."

Contrary to translations like the NRSV and JPS, I believe this important text is best understood as an independent sentence. These versions see it as a dependent clause introducing a longer sentence with a different main clause. For example: "In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth..." (NRSV)

In his fine book on Genesis 1-4, John Collins points out that the grammar of this verse does not support such a translation. The verb "created" is in the perfect tense, and the normal use of an opening sentence like this in Hebrew is to make a statement about events that took place before the narrative storyline that follows.

Also, verse 2 begins with the disjunctive phrase, "Now the land was...," which is a common way for the author of Genesis to begin a new subject. (See Cassuto's commentary for this argument.) Genesis 1.1 is about God creating the universe. Genesis 1.2-2.3 is about God's subsequent work of preparing the land for life.

What did God create in the beginning? A translation like "the skies and the land" accurately represents what the author would have been saying as a pre-scientific observer of the world around him. Don't picture a globe in outer space amidst all the other heavenly spheres. That is not the perspective of the observer. Rather, our author is standing with the reader and looking out on a landscape, motioning with his hands across the whole sweep of the view and saying, "God created all of this."

The phrase is a merism, a figure of speech that uses two contrasting concepts to present a single idea. For example, in Psalm 139, David says, "You know when I sit down and when I rise up." In other words, God knows every movement of his day. "The skies and the land" is likewise a way of saying, "Everything that is." Genesis 1.1 thus affirms that there is one true and living God who created the universe, all that exists.

When did God do this? "In the beginning." Beyond these words, the author does not specify when this occurred. He simply thinks back as far as possibly can be imagined, to a time when there was no sky, no land, no world as we know it. At that time God created the world and the heavens that surround it.

Please note that Genesis 1.1 stands outside the seven days described in 1.3-2.3. That leaves us with two basic options with regard to its meaning.

First, many see Genesis 1.1 as a "title" for the chapter, and then say that the rest of the verses describe how God created the universe in seven days.

If this is true, one must recognize that the seven days that follow start with the earth already in existence (1.2). That would mean that Genesis 1 nowhere gives information about the creation of the universe. Bruce Waltke takes this position in his commentary, saying that the seven days of "creation" describe a relative creation, not the absolute origins of the cosmos. Likewise John Walton, who sees Genesis 1 not in terms of God bringing matter into existence, but of God organizing and assigning function to elements already in existence.

Second, we can take Genesis 1.1 as the initial creative act of God.

By this interpretation, Gen 1.1 says that out of nothing, God brought the universe into existence. It presents God as the Creator of everything. And the entire cosmos was in place before the seven days described in the rest of the chapter. That means that 1.2 describes the condition of the land, already created in 1.1, before God made it ready for his creatures, and 1.3-2.3 describe his subsequent acts of preparation within a six-day framework.

I believe the second option should be preferred. Genesis 1.1 tells how this earth, surrounded by the skies, came to be. With the universe thus in place, the rest of Genesis 1 describes God's subsequent preparation of the land for life, climaxing with the creation of human beings on day six and God's Sabbath rest on day seven.

So then, Genesis 1.1 looks back to the absolute beginning and asserts that the Source of the entire material universe is the one true and living God, who existed before all things and made all things.

This would have served several purposes as an introduction to Israel's Torah:

1. It would have affirmed to them that God and God alone is the true and living Creator, in contrast with the lifeless and impotent idols of the nations.
2. It would have reminded them that God is Lord of all the earth and nations. Though Israel was chosen as God's unique people, the whole world belongs to him. This is therefore the foundation of their calling to be the priestly nation through whom God's blessing would be restored to all the peoples of the earth.
3. 3. The phrase "in the beginning" would have affirmed to them that God is the Author of history. These words reflect a teleological understanding of history—that which has a beginning is moving toward an ending, and the events that make up the course of history have purpose and meaning. God initiated a plan for his creation to be consummated in the end of days.

Following this fundamental declaration, the rest of the chapter describes God preparing a place within his creation where humankind might live, blessed by his good favor. The God of the universe (Gen 1.1) becomes the God of covenant and blessing (Gen 1.2-2.3).

How Gen 1.1-2.3 fits together...

As we will see, understanding how the author organized this text is a key to grasping its meaning. As we did with our previous study, let's start with the end of the passage and work our way back to the beginning. There is a basic style that the author follows with regard to each day, except for the seventh day. Though each day has its own variations, the overall pattern is the same:

1. Initiation: "And God said..."
2. Confirmation: "And it was so."
3. Evaluation: "And God saw that it was good."
4. Summation: "And there was evening and there was morning, the _______ day."

Here are the seven days...

• Gen 2.1-3—The seventh day, on which God rests. God blesses this day and calls it holy.
  

• Gen 1.24-31—The sixth day, on which God commands the land to bring forth living creatures, and on which he makes human beings in his image and blesses them.

• Gen 1.20-23—The fifth day, on which God created the water creatures and creatures of the sky and blessed them.

• Gen 1.14-19—The fourth day, on which he appointed the lights in the sky to be for signs and seasons and to rule day and night.

• Gen 1.9-13—The third day, on which God separated the land from the waters and called the land to bring forth vegetation.

• Gen 1.6-8—The second day, on which God separated the waters above from the waters below and called the expanse "sky." Note: this is the only day about which the text does not say, "And God saw that it was good."
  

• Gen 1.3-5—Day one, on which God called called light out of darkness and named them "day" and "night." Note: in the Hebrew text, this is not called the "first" day, but "one day." This may indicate that it was not the absolute first day of creation but day one of the seven described in this passage.
  

The first two verses of the text stand outside the pattern of the seven days. Verse 3 marks the beginning of day one, as seen in its first words, "And God said," which is the way every other day commences (except day seven). That means that Genesis 1.1-2 are not part of the "seven days of creation."

• Gen 1.2—This verse describes the condition of the land before the seven days. As we will see, it says the land was an uninhabitable wasteland because it was covered by darkness and deep water. However, it also says that God's Spirit was present, a hint that God is about to do something to change the condition of the land.

• Gen 1.1—This verse describes what God did "in the beginning," before the seven days. He "created the skies and the land," which should be understood as a merism, a figure of speech that describes a single thing by referring to its most contrasting parts. "The skies and the land" means "everything you see," or "all the world before you." It is written from the perspective of the human eye, of one scanning the landscape and pointing out the whole wide world to the reader.

The fact that these two verses stand outside the seven-day scheme is significant for our understanding of Genesis 1. It means that God created what we call "the universe" before the seven days recorded in this passage. Verse 1 is about the original CREATION. Verses 2 and following are about the PREPARATION of a land where people might dwell and the creation of human beings to live there.

Here is how it all fits together...

• God created all that is in the beginning. (Gen 1.1)
• Before God prepared it, the land was not yet ready for human habitation. (Gen 1.2)
• God prepared the land for humans, then created them and blessed them in the good land—in a period of six days. (Gen 1.3-31)
• God rested from his works on the seventh day and blessed the seventh day (Gen 2.1-3)

Where does Genesis 1 end?...

Our first task in studying Genesis 1 is to observe and mark the extent of the text that the author has given us. On the front end there is no problem, since GENESIS 1.1 begins the Bible.

However, where the text ends is not so clear. In our Bibles with chapter and verse divisions, the true flow of an author's argument is not always evident, and Genesis 1 provides a good example of this. Most of us are aware that the story of beginnings is organized by a seven-day scheme. However, those who gave us chapters and verses separated the seventh day from the story and put it in chapter 2! Right away, we can see and agree that GENESIS 2.1-3 belongs with the material in chapter one.

What about GENESIS 2.4? Some have understood at least the first part of this verse as a summary of chapter 1, and have translated it something like this: "And so, this is the story of the heavens and the earth..." I am persuaded, however, that Genesis 2.4 begins a new section.

This conclusion grows out of observing the way the entire book of Genesis has been put together. In the book there are twelve statements that begin with words like this, "Now these are the generations of..." (2.4, 5:1, 6:9, 10:1, 32, 11:10, 11:27, 25:12, 19, 36:1, 9 and 37:2). Each of these statements then refers to a main character who has already been introduced. What follows each statement is either a listing of family names that trace his descendants, or a series of stories that tell us what became of this character and his family.

If you step back and look at the structure of the book in a bird's eye view, you see how these statements organize the material and move its stories along.

The heavens and the earth are introduced (1.1-2.3)
These are the generations of the heavens and the earth (2.4-ch. 4)
...in which Adam and his family are introduced
These are the generations of Adam (5.1-6.8)
...in which Noah is introduced by a genealogy from Adam to Noah
These are the generations of Noah (6.9-ch. 9)

And so on. We might translate this phrase (Hebrew: toledot) as: "This is what became of ____________." The material before this heading introduces the main character and the material after it describes what happened in subsequent history to that character and his family.

Therefore, Genesis 2.4 belongs to the next section, and the text we will be examining in this study goes from GENESIS 1.1-2.3.

How to read Genesis 1...

Here begins a series of brief studies on the first chapters of Genesis.

These texts have held a continual fascination for me since the days of seminary, when I studied Hebrew and OT under John Sailhamer at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (Deerfield, IL). Much of what you will read here will reflect the approach (though not necessarily the details) he takes in his stimulating commentary on Genesis (Expositor's Bible Commentary), his work on the Torah called The Pentateuch as Narrative, and in his specific study of Genesis 1-2, Genesis Unbound.

A word about the nature of this study...I am interested in the meaning of the text, not in its application to apologetics. Many modern studies of Genesis are undertaken in order to help Bible-believing people understand the relationship between Scripture and science. That is the realm of apologetics and it is not unimportant. However, it is secondary. My goal is different, and more foundational. I want to know what the text says and means in the context of the Bible, and what the author wanted his audience to gain from reading this text.

With this in mind, here are three essential positions I believe one must take to approach this part of the Bible correctly:

• We must try to read this text through pre-scientific eyes. The author and original readers of this passage knew nothing of Ptolemy, Copernicus and Galileo, Newton or Einstein. They knew only the world they could observe. If you had spoken to one of them about something as basic to us as "planet Earth," he would have had no concept of what you were saying. When we as moderns read "heavens and earth" in our English-language Bibles, we have a much more sophisticated picture in mind than someone in Moses's day (c. 1200BC), who saw "the skies and the land."

• We must try to read this text through an earthly observer's eyes. The perspective I think many of us have in our minds when we read Genesis 1 is that of the Apollo 8 astronauts, who gazed at the magnificent blue ball of planet Earth while orbiting the moon. In other words, we imagine that the author is taking us to some divine balcony seat where we can view the action from a cosmic point of view. However, the chapter is actually written from the vantage point of an ordinary human being on the ground, hearing and observing the words and works of God.

• We must try to read this text as through the eyes of its first audience and as part of the entire book that was given to them. I take the traditional view of authorship and composition of Genesis and the Pentateuch. Genesis is part one of a five-part book, the Torah, put together by Moses and given to the generation of Israelites that was preparing to enter the Promised Land. If the early part of Genesis introduces this work that was written for them, how does it do that? What message, pertinent to those people, begins with Genesis 1?