*This page was migrated in July 2022 from my older website, biblicalambiguities.net.
31 July 2022
This article will deal with the first of the two creation stories, and _will thus cover not only Genesis 1, but the first three verses of Genesis 2.
Genesis 1 is the first chapter of the book of Genesis, and perhaps the most publicly contested chapter of the Bible. It comes before Genesis 2.
1 When God began to create the sky and the earth -- 2 the earth being waste and void, and darkness on the face of the deep, and a wind from God sweeping across the face of the waters -- 3 God said, Let there be light. And there was light.
4 And God saw the light, that it was good, and God divided between the light and the darkness. 5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening, and there was morning: one day.
6 And God said, Let there be a dome in the middle of the waters, and let it serve to divide waters from waters. 7 And God made the dome, and divided the waters which were below the dome from the waters which were above the dome. And it was so. 8 And God called the dome Sky. And there was evening, and there was morning: a second day.
9 And God said, Let the waters under the sky be collected to one place, and let the dry ground appear. And it was so. 10 And God called the dry ground Earth, and the collection of waters he called Seas, and God saw that it was good.
11 And God said, Let the earth grow green with greenery, plants yielding seed, and every sort of fruit tree bearing fruit whose seed is in it, upon the earth. And it was so. 12 And the earth brought forth greenery, every sort of plant yielding seed, and every sort of fruit whose seed is in it. And God saw that it was good. 13 And there was evening, and there was morning: a third day.
14 And God said, Let there be lights in the sky-dome to divide between the day and the night, and let them be for signs, and for set times, and for days and years. 15 And let them be for lights in the sky-dome to light up the earth. And it was so. 16 And God made the two great lights, the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night, and the stars. 17 And God placed them in the sky-dome to light up the earth, 18 and to rule over the day and the night, and to divide light from darkness. And God saw that it was good. 19 And there was evening, and there was morning: a fourth day.
20 And God said, Let the waters swarm with swarms of living beings, and let birds fly above the earth across the face of the sky-dome. 21 And God created the great sea-monsters, and every living being that moves, which the waters swarmed with, of every sort, and all winged birds of every sort. And God saw that it was good. 22 And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth. 23 And there was evening, and there was morning: a fifth day.
24 And God said, Let the earth bring forth every sort of living being: livestock, and crawling things, and wild animals of every sort. And it was so. 25 And God made wild animals of every sort, and livestock of every sort, and all things that crawl on the ground of every sort. And God saw that it was good.
26 And God said, Let us make humanity in our image, after our likeness, and let them subjugate the fish of the sea, and the birds of the sky, and the livestock, and all the earth, and every crawling thing that crawls on the earth. 27 And God created humanity in his image; in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. 28 And God blessed them, and God said to them, Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it, and subjugate the fish of the sea, and the birds of the sky, and every animal that crawls on the earth.
29 And God said, Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed which is on the face of all the earth, and every tree in which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed. It will serve as food for you. 30 And to every wild animal, and to every bird of the sky, and to everything that crawls on the earth, in which is the breath of life, [I have given] every green plant for food. And it was so.
31 And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning: the sixth day.
2:1 And the sky and the land were finished, and all their host. 2 And on the seventh day God finished his work which he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he done. 3 And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it, because on it he rested from all his work which God made in creation.
(1:1) When God began to create. Many traditional translations read, In the beginning, God created. For details, see here.
(1:1) God. Despite what you hear from time to time, the word is clearly singular in this verse.
(1:1) create. On the precise meaning of this word, see here.
(1:1) ʾet. For some trivia on Hebrew grammar and its popular reception, see here.
(1:1) the sky and the earth. On these two terms, see here.
(1:2) waste and void. Hebrew tohu wa-bohu.
(1:2) the deep. See here.
(1:2) a wind from God sweeping. See here. Among the various options for translating these difficult words, it did not escape my attention that the NRSV and NJPS agree substantially with the reading here.
(1:5) one day. Notice that in the Genesis 1 creation story, the cycle of day and night on earth is established before the creation of the sky (6-8) and sun (10-14). This is a problem for the odd interpretations one sees occasionally viewing the six days as merely a shortened version of the scientific order of events. For a bit more, see here.
The one day is in Hebrew ywm ʔḥd, and "one day" is a perfectly literal and serviceable translation of the term. It is found as "one day" in the ASV, which is the basis of the World English Bible. However, for some reason, the WEB translates this as "the first day". The exchange of "one" for "first" is not so bad. However, the introduction of the in the WEB seems a bit of an overstep, as now the WEB has "the first day", "a second day", "a third day" ... "a sixth day". But the Hebrew has a "the" only in front of "sixth day", with the rest simply "a second", "a third", etc. If the the in the Hebrew was intentional, to mark the sixth day out as special for the creation of humanity, then this feature has been lost in the WEB, although it is present in the ASV.
(1:6) a dome. See here.
(1:7) And it was so. Perhaps this phrase belongs not here but at the end of verse 6. See here.
(1:8) Sky. Here the World English Bible reads, reasonably enough, "sky", as it does with the Hebrew šamayim throughout Genesis 1, except in the first verse, where it translates it as "heavens", which is inconsistent, as though Genesis 1:1 meant something different from what is created in the rest of Genesis 1.
(1:9) place. Or collection. Instead of Hebrew mqwm, "place", Kittel suggests that one should probably read mqwh, "collection," and indicates that he is following the Septuagint.
(1:9) At the end of this verse, the Septuagint adds, And the waters under the sky were gathered to their gatherings, and the dry ground appeared.
(1:11) "greenery". The World English Bible, following ASV, translates as "after their kind". This is no longer readable English for most readers. So also throughout the chapter.
(1:14) "for signs, and for set times, and for days and years." This is a fairly literal translation of how the Hebrew words are structured. Here I am following the ASV, except that I have substituted "set times" for "seasons" as a better equivalent of the Hebrew moʕadim. Compare for example, in Leviticus 23, the "moʕadim of Yahweh", which are the dates of annual festivals, as calculated on the lunar calendar (i.e. the sun and moon, as this passage would suggest).
The World English Bible reads "for signs to mark seasons" instead of "for signs and for set times". The word "seasons" unfortunately could suggest to the reader that instead of things like festival dates it is summer, winter, spring, and autumn that the text has in mind. I am also concerned that removing the "and" in "for signs, and for set times" might foreclose one possible reading of the text: that by "signs" is meant "portents" of particular events, rather than that only the set times of the calendar are in view. For the translation of "signs" as "portents", one example is in John Good's (2011) Genesis 1-11: Tales of the Earliest World, pp. 8, 14.
(1:20) At the end of this verse, the Septuagint adds, And it was so. Kittel endorses the Septuagint reading.
(1:21) sea-monsters. Hebrew, tanninim. See here. Because it appears the term refers to mythical sea-beasts associated with creation-stories both, it seems unsatisfactory to read, as the World English Bible does, "the large sea creatures". Here my reading conforms to what is found in the ASV.
(1:24) On the categories of animals in Genesis 1, see here.
(1:24) crawling. The World English Bible reads "creeping", but that word, at least as used in modern English, doesn't describe what the Hebrew term is talking about.
(1:24) wild animals. A bit more literally, as the World English Bible has it, "animals of the earth". But notice that, in Genesis, these "animals of the earth" are repeatedly placed in contexts that distinguish them from domestic animals.
(1:26) us ... our. On the plural, see here.
(1:26) humanity. The Hebrew term clearly is one that includes both men and women (compare verse 27): ʾdm. When one is speaking not of humans in general, but of men specifically, the another word is used (compare 2:23). This is why I cannot follow the World English Bible in reading ʾdm as 'man' here.
(1:26) in our image, after our likeness. The Samaritan Pentateuch and Septuagint read, in our image and after our likeness (BHK).
(1:26) the earth. By the addition of one word, it would appear that the Vorlage of the Peshitta reads "the wild animals", as Kittel recommends following the Peshitta. The Peshitta reading makes more sense than the Masoretic one here.
(1:28) After sky, according to Kittel we should add, and over the livestock, following the Septuagint and Peshitta.
(1:29) "tree in which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed". This follows the Masoretic Text, which is as redundant in Hebrew as this is in English. The World English Bible removes the redundancy, and reads "tree, which bears fruit yielding seed". Note that the comma deforms the sense of the sentence there. But there may be something to the WEB's deletion of the second "tree", as Ronald Hendel's critical edition of Genesis 1-11 omits it as well, following the Septuagint.
(1:30) I have given. The verb "I have given" does not appear here in the Hebrew text, but immediately before "every green herb for food", there does appear ʾet, a little Hebrew grammatical pointer, with no equivalent in English, which indicates that the words following it are the object of some verb. But where is the verb? Kittel suggests that the word natatti, "I have given", originally appeared here (compare 9:3).
(1:31) the sixth day. On the appearance of the the here, see Genesis 1:31, the sixth day. The World English Bible, not following the ASV, reads "a sixth day".
(2:1) host. Or more literally, army. On the meaning of this word, see Genesis 2:1, army.
(2:2) on the seventh day God finished. On the variations in ancient witnesses concerning this phrase, see Genesis 2:2, finished.
(2:3) On this verse, see Genesis 2:3.
Tsumura, David Toshio (1989). The Earth and the Waters in Genesis 1 and 2: A Linguistic Investigation. Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series 83.
I've consulted the World English Bible throughout, not because it is an exceptionally good translation, but because of its culturally important position as a fore-runner of what I hope are later and more thorough efforts at public domain translation of the Bible.
As with other pages migrated from biblicalambiguities.net, this page may contain material paraphrased or even outright copied without direct attribution from the KJV, RV, ASV, JPS (1917), WEB, NHEB, Kittel's BH, the pre-1923 volumes of the ICC series, or the commentaries on Genesis of Dillmann, Skinner, and Driver. More details on this policy can be found here: biblicalambiguities-general-disclaimer and biblicalambiguities-translation-disclaimer.