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).