The Bible opens with seven Hebrew words:
בְּרֵאשִׁ֖ית בָּרָ֣א אֱלֹהִ֑ים אֵ֥ת הַשָּׁמַ֖יִם וְאֵ֥ת הָאָֽרֶץ
Open Word Bible’s Balanced level gives them in the familiar way:
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
That familiarity hides more decisions than you might expect. Two of them are close calls, and the record for each verse marks them uncertain.
“In the beginning” or “When God began”?
The first word, בְּרֵאשִׁ֖ית, is two parts written as one: a small prefix meaning “in” and the noun רֵאשִׁית, “beginning”. The noun has no article. Strictly it says “in beginning”, and that has led some translators to read the verse as a time clause that leads into what follows: “When God began to create the heavens and the earth, the earth was formless and empty...” Genesis 2:4 opens the second account in a similar way, with “in the day that the LORD God made”.
Open Word Bible reads verse 1 as a sentence that stands on its own. The record gives two reasons. The Masoretic accents, the ancient marks that guide how the text is read aloud, put a pause after the first word, so that it reads as complete in itself. And the Septuagint, the oldest translation, reads it as a main clause, as John 1:1 does when it echoes it: “In the beginning was the Word”. See “The Word was God”.
The other reading is defensible, so the decision is marked uncertain and a footnote gives it. The record adds that read either way, God is there and acting before anything else is described.
The Literal level shows the missing article by putting it in brackets:
In [the] beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
Created, God, the heavens and the earth
The rest of the verse carries three quieter decisions:
- Created. The verb בָּרָא is used in the Old Testament only of what God does, and never with a material that something is made from. Genesis 1 uses it at three points: the heavens and the earth, the first living creatures (verse 21) and human beings (verse 27).
- God. אֱלֹהִ֑ים is plural in form, and elsewhere it can mean “gods”. Here its verb is singular, “he created”, as it is through the whole chapter, so it names the one God. Hebrew often uses a plural to express greatness.
- The heavens and the earth. Naming two opposite ends to mean everything between them is a common Hebrew way of speaking, and Hebrew has no single word for the universe. So Readable says what the pair means and keeps the words: “God created everything: the heavens and the earth”.
Spirit, or wind?
Verse 2 describes how things stood before God first spoke:
The earth was without form and empty. Darkness lay over the surface of the deep, while the Spirit of God hovered above the waters.
“Without form and empty” translates two rhyming words, תֹ֨הוּ֙ וָבֹ֔הוּ. The record notes that the rest of the chapter answers both: on days one to three God gives the world its form, and on days four to six he fills it.
The close call is וְר֣וּחַ אֱלֹהִ֔ים. The noun רוּחַ means breath, wind or spirit. With “God” it could mean “a mighty wind”, since Hebrew sometimes uses “of God” to mean “very great”, and after the flood God sends a wind over the waters (8:1).
Open Word Bible says “the Spirit of God”. Elsewhere the phrase is God’s own Spirit at work (Exodus 31:3; 1 Samuel 10:10). And the verb that follows, “hovering”, is the one used of an eagle over its young in Deuteronomy 32:11. It suits a living presence better than a wind. The decision is marked uncertain, and a footnote gives “a wind from God”.
One more decision in verse 2 is worth knowing. The verse puts “the earth” before its verb, a Hebrew way of pausing the story to describe a scene. So the record reads it as “the earth was formless”, how things stood when God spoke, and not “the earth became formless”, as if an earlier creation had been ruined.
Open Genesis 1 and tap verse 1 to see the whole record.