Genesis 1:1 (ESV)
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
Genesis 1:1 Interlinear Study:
If I had never heard Genesis 1:1 before, and all I knew was what these Hebrew words are telling me, how would I say this?
In the beginning, here is what is the most important thing to know. God, the Creator does what only He can do; He produces something new. Before anything else, He creates both the created realm above ground and it’s counterpart, the created world below.
Background & Breakdown:
Genesis 1:1 begins with reshith, “beginning,” but also the idea of what is first, foundational, or of first importance. Then comes Elohim, the Hebrew word that can have a plural form and can refer to gods or divine beings in other contexts. But here, Elohim is paired with a singular verb, bara’ (“created”), making the grammatical subject singular: God created. The verse isn’t presenting multiple gods creating together; it identifies Elohim as the one Creator.
And then there is bara’. The word means to create, but what really stands out to me is that Scripture reserves this creative verb for God’s creative activity. Humans can make, build, form, craft, and change things, but Scripture does not describe us as the ones who bara’. God alone is the Creator in this sense.
Then shamayim and erets show me the scope of what He created… the heavens and the earth, everything above and everything below. Even the little eth, which doesn’t appear in English, helps clarify the relationship: God is the one acting, and the heavens and earth are receiving His creative action.
And this makes Psalm 51:10 especially beautiful to me: “Create in me a clean heart, O God.” David uses the same word, bara’, asking God to create something new within him. I can’t know whether David was consciously thinking about the specific grammatical significance of bara’, but the prayer itself recognizes something profound: David is asking God to do what he cannot do for himself. He doesn’t ask God merely to help him repair or improve his heart… he asks the Creator to create something new in him.
The God who bara’ the heavens and the earth is the same God David trusts to bara’ a clean heart.
And maybe that’s what this verse is making me think about personally. If God is the beginning of everything, He should also be the beginning of my understanding. Before I try to figure everything out, fix everything, or make sense of what I’m experiencing, I can begin with Him. I can work on things, but there are things only God can create. What I put first shapes everything that comes after it.
So maybe the question isn’t always, “Can I figure this out?” or “Can I fix this?”
Maybe it’s simply: “Did I begin with God?”
— Katie
Word & Weekdays
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