Genesis 1: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

In six days God makes the heavens and the earth: light, the expanse he names Sky, dry land and seas, plants and fruit trees, two great lights and the stars, sea creatures and birds, and land animals, each kind after its kind. On the sixth day God says, "Let us make man in our image," and creates man in his own image, male and female, blesses them, and tells them to fill the earth, bring it under their control, and rule over the fish, the birds, and every living thing that moves on the earth. God gives seed-bearing plants and fruit to people for food, and green plants to the animals and birds. Again and again God sees that what he has made is good, and at the end that it is very good.

Claim by Claim

1. 1:1
   • In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
2. 1:2
   • The earth was formless and empty.
   • Darkness was over the face of the deep.
   • The Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.
3. 1:3
   • God said, Let there be light.
   • There was light.
4. 1:4
   • God saw that the light was good.
   • God separated the light from the darkness.
5. 1:5
   • God called the light Day.
   • God called the darkness Night.
   • There was evening and there was morning, one day.
6. 1:6
   • God said, Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters.
   • God said, Let the expanse separate the waters from the waters.
7. 1:7
   • God made the expanse.
   • God separated the waters under the expanse from the waters above the expanse.
   • It was so.
8. 1:8
   • God called the expanse Heaven.
   • There was evening and there was morning, a second day.
9. 1:9
   • God said, Let the waters under the heavens be gathered to one place.
   • God said, Let the dry land appear.
   • It was so.
10. 1:10
    • God called the dry land Earth.
    • God called the gathering of the waters Seas.
    • God saw that it was good.
11. 1:11
    • God said, Let the earth sprout vegetation.
    • God said, Let the earth bring forth plants yielding seed.
    • God said, Let the earth bring forth fruit trees bearing fruit according to their kind, with their seed in them, upon the earth.
    • It was so.
12. 1:12
    • The earth brought forth vegetation.
    • The earth brought forth plants yielding seed according to their kind.
    • The earth brought forth trees bearing fruit with their seed in them, according to their kind.
    • God saw that it was good.
13. 1:13
    • There was evening and there was morning, a third day.
14. 1:14
    • God said, Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens.
    • God said, Let the lights separate the day from the night.
    • God said, Let the lights be for signs.
    • God said, Let the lights be for appointed times.
    • God said, Let the lights be for days and years.
15. 1:15
    • God said, Let the lights be in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth.
    • It was so.
16. 1:16
    • God made the two great lights.
    • God made the greater light to rule the day.
    • God made the lesser light to rule the night.
    • God made the stars.
17. 1:17
    • God set the lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth.
18. 1:18
    • God set the lights to rule over the day and over the night.
    • God set the lights to separate the light from the darkness.
    • God saw that it was good.
19. 1:19
    • There was evening and there was morning, a fourth day.
20. 1:20
    • God said, Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures.
    • God said, Let birds fly above the earth across the face of the expanse of the heavens.
21. 1:21
    • God created the great sea creatures.
    • God created every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarmed, according to their kinds.
    • God created every winged bird according to its kind.
    • God saw that it was good.
22. 1:22
    • God blessed them.
    • God said to them, Be fruitful.
    • God said to them, Multiply.
    • God said to them, Fill the waters in the seas.
    • God said, Let the birds multiply on the earth.
23. 1:23
    • There was evening and there was morning, a fifth day.
24. 1:24
    • God said, Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kind: livestock, creeping things, and beasts of the earth according to their kind.
    • It was so.
25. 1:25
    • God made the beasts of the earth according to their kind.
    • God made the livestock according to their kind.
    • God made every creeping thing of the ground according to its kind.
    • God saw that it was good.
26. 1:26
    • God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.
    • God said, Let them rule over the fish of the sea.
    • God said, Let them rule over the birds of the heavens.
    • God said, Let them rule over the livestock.
    • God said, Let them rule over all the earth.
    • God said, Let them rule over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.
27. 1:27
    • God created man in his own image.
    • God created him in the image of God.
    • God created them male and female.
28. 1:28
    • God blessed them.
    • God said to them, Be fruitful.
    • God said to them, Multiply.
    • God said to them, Fill the earth.
    • God said to them, Subdue the earth.
    • God said to them, Rule over the fish of the sea, the birds of the heavens, and every living thing that moves upon the earth.
29. 1:29
    • God said, I have given you every seed-bearing plant on the face of all the earth.
    • God said, I have given you every tree that has seed-bearing fruit.
    • God said, These shall be food for you.
30. 1:30
    • God said, To every beast of the earth, every bird of the heavens, and everything that creeps upon the earth, in which there is the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.
    • It was so.
31. 1:31
    • God saw everything that he had made.
    • It was very good.
    • There was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

1:1

"The heavens and the earth" is a Hebrew way of saying "everything" by naming the two extremes, the sky above and the ground below. The word for heavens is plural in Hebrew and means the visible sky, not a place of afterlife. The verb translated "created" (bara) is used in the Hebrew Bible only with God as its subject.

1:2

"Without form, and void" translates the Hebrew pair tohu wabohu, a rhyming phrase meaning something like "trackless and empty", a waste with nothing in it and no shape to it. "The deep" (tehom) is the primeval mass of water, the same word used elsewhere for the ocean depths. The word rendered "Spirit" (ruach) equally means "wind" or "breath," and translators have long divided over which sense is meant here; "moved" is a verb used of a bird hovering or fluttering over its nest.

1:4

The Hebrew word behind "good" is tov, which is wider than our moral sense of the word. It means right, fitting, working as it was meant to work. The line is closer to a craftsman looking at finished work and seeing that it is sound.

1:5

In Hebrew reckoning a day runs from sunset to sunset, so "the evening and the morning" is the full cycle, not an odd order. The Hebrew of the last phrase is literally "day one", a count rather than an ordinal, though the following days are numbered second, third, and so on.

1:6

"Firmament" comes from a Latin word meaning something made firm or solid; the Hebrew raqia refers to something beaten or hammered out thin, like sheet metal. Ancient readers pictured the sky as a vast dome stretched over the earth, holding back an ocean above it, which is why the next verse speaks of waters above and waters below.

1:7

"The waters which were above the firmament" reflects how the sky looks and behaves from the ground: rain falls from up there, so there must be water up there. The verse describes the world the way an observer standing in it would describe it.

1:8

The word translated "Heaven" here is the same one used in verse 1. It means the sky, the open space overhead where birds fly and the sun and stars appear.

1:11

"After his kind" uses "his" in its older English sense of "its"; English had no word "its" in 1611. The Hebrew phrase means each sort of plant produces seed that yields more of the same sort.

1:14

The word for "seasons" (mo'adim) means appointed or fixed times, the points on the calendar marked by the sun and moon, including festivals and set occasions, rather than spring, summer, autumn and winter. "Signs" here means markers by which such times are recognized.

1:16

The Hebrew avoids the ordinary words for sun and moon, calling them simply the greater and lesser lights. In the surrounding cultures those words doubled as the names of gods. "Rule" is a term used of a governor or official presiding over a domain.

1:20

"Fowl" in 1611 English meant birds of any kind, not just poultry. The Hebrew verb behind "bring forth abundantly" means to swarm or teem.

1:21

"Great whales" translates tanninim, a word for large sea creatures generally, used elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible for serpents, crocodiles and the monstrous creatures of the sea. Modern translations usually render it "great sea creatures."

1:22

"Be fruitful, and multiply" is a blessing of fertility: have young, and have many of them. In a world where survival depended on numbers, a large population of animals or people was itself understood as a gift.

1:24

"Cattle" in 1611 English meant domesticated animals of all kinds, the Hebrew behemah covers herds and flocks, not cows specifically. "Creeping thing" (remes) covers small animals that move low along the ground: reptiles, insects, rodents and the like.

1:26

"Let us make" is plural, and the Hebrew gives no explanation for it. It has been read as a royal or self-deliberative plural, as God addressing a heavenly court of attendants, and in other ways; the text itself leaves it unresolved. "Man" translates adam, a collective word for humankind rather than a male individual, hence "let them have dominion" in the same sentence. "Image" (tselem) is the ordinary word for a statue or carved representation, and in the ancient Near East a king would set up such images to represent his rule where he was not present.

1:27

The sentence switches from "him" to "them" without warning because adam is a collective word, like "humanity." The word for "image" is tselem, which usually means a statue or a physical likeness. Kings in the ancient Near East set up images of themselves in territories they ruled to stand in for their presence there, and that background is what the word would have called to mind.

1:28

"Replenish" in 1611 English meant simply to fill, not to fill again. "Subdue" (kabash) is a forceful word, used elsewhere of bringing land or people under control, and "have dominion" is the language of a ruler over subjects.

1:29

"Meat" in 1611 English meant food of any kind, not flesh specifically. The distinction the verse draws is between seed-bearing plants and fruit, not between plant and animal food.

1:30

"Meat" here again means food of any kind. Green plants were the food for the animals.

1:31

The Hebrew word translated "good" (tov) covers what is fitting, sound, and working as intended, as well as what is morally good; here it is the assessment a craftsman makes of finished work. "Behold" is 1611 English for "look" or "see".