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These are the generations of the heaven and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made earth and heaven. -- Revised Version
"These are the generations" is, unfortunately, not quite intelligible to today's readers. In Hebrew, it's "These are the toldot." Elsewhere, the term toldot generally refers to a genealogy or family history. Genesis, in particular, has a large number of toldot headings. "These are the generations of Adam" . . . "These are the generations of Noah" . . . and so on.
If we could translate something that goes just a bit beyond what normal English usage allows, we would say, This is the genealogy of the sky and the earth.
It could be tempting to translate with something like, This is the account of the sky and the earth. But we could lose something. If the word chosen to render toldot in Genesis 2:4 is different than the word chosen to render the term in the other toldot passages, then the parallel is broken. The English-speaking reader cannot see what is plain in Hebrew: that this toldot statement is to earth and sky as other toldot-s are to Adam, Noah, and so on.
Instead of "These are the toldot", the Septuagint reads (per Kittel), "This is the book of the toldot".
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