4.3 The Interpretation of Genesis 1:1-2

This continues an exploration of Genesis 1. Previous posts:

4.1 Differing Views of Genesis 1
4.2 The Genre of Genesis 1 

Now 4.3 The Interpretation of Genesis 1:1-2
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4.3.1 Taking Off Our Glasses
Now we get to the verses themselves. At first glance, they may seem simple enough:

In the beginning, God created the skies and the land. But the land was formless and useless, and darkness was on the face of the deep. And a wind from God was blowing over the face of the waters.

There are several opportunities in these verses for us to read modern assumptions into them, including modern Christian assumptions. But if we want to hear them as their first audiences did, we will have to take off our modern glasses and try to get into the ancient Israelite view of the world.

For example, most Bibles read, “God created the heavens and the earth.” It is natural that most readers probably picture a sphere like our contemporary view of the earth. When we hear the word heavens, we may not think of the skies but of the universe or even of the place where God and the angels are located.

We thus have to adjust our thinking to realize that Hebrew did not have a separate word for “sky” and “heaven” as a place where God is. I have translated with the word sky to remind us that the ancient Israelites had a far, far smaller sense of the world than we do today. The word shamayim for “skies” was simply that which is above us.

The word for “sky” in Hebrew is “dual,” which means that it refers to two things. In English, we have singular for one thing (e.g., a book) and plural for multiple things (e.g., books – we often add an s to the end to do this). Hebrew had another number it could use for its nouns, although rarely used. The “dual” in Hebrew referred to two things. For example, because Egypt was divided into Upper and Lower Egypt, the word for Egypt in Hebrew is always dual (mitzrayim).

The fact that Hebrew thinks of the sky as dual probably reflects the view of the sky we hear about later in Genesis 1. God divides the waters from the waters and puts a space, a dome, a “firmament” in between them (Gen. 1:6-8). There are thus two parts to the sky – the upper part and the lower part. Perhaps for the same reason, the word for “water” in Hebrew is also typically dual (mayim – notice how similarly the word for sky and water are in Hebrew).

Similarly, they did not yet think of the earth as a sphere in the times of ancient Israel. “Land” is a better translation if we want to picture what they would have pictured when they heard the Hebrew word ‘arets. We will see dry land appear in Genesis 1:9. This is not a globe but the relatively flat earth that emerges as you come ashore from an ocean or a lake.

A “wind from God” is another phrase where we as Christians might immediately think of the Holy Spirit if we read a translation that has “the spirit of God” here. It is probably not wrong theologically to hear overtones of the Holy Spirit. That is to say, we can apply the verse that way as Christians. But in terms of the original meaning of the verse, it is anachronistic. Ancient Jews did not yet have as developed a sense of God’s Spirit as the New Testament has – or frankly later Christian theology. The Old Testament does have a sense of God’s spirit (e.g., Psalm 139:7), but it is not yet used in a personal way.

The New Revised Standard Version is an example of a version that translates this part of 1:2 with “a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.” [27] They translate it this way because other Ancient Near Eastern (ANE) creation stories talk about a violent wind from one god blowing against a water goddess (e.g., the Enuma Elish). [28] It is a reminder that the word ru’ah in Hebrew could mean things like breath and wind. In other words, using the word spirit easily can lead us to read many concepts into the verse that were not there originally.

These are just some of the ways that our assumptions can easily lead us to see Genesis 1:1-2 as a mirror of what we already believe. To hear what these verses actually meant, we have to take off our cultural glasses and put on Ancient Near Eastern Israelite/Jewish glasses. [29] Only then will we begin to hear the words in terms of how their first audiences heard them.

4.3.2 The Function of Genesis 1:1
Should we see Genesis 1:1 as an overview of the whole chapter? Or is it the first moment in the sequence of creation – Day 0, if you would?

On the one hand, some see Genesis 1:1 as God getting his raw materials ready. He creates the materials he is going to use in creation in 1:1 -- the skies and the earth. Then in 1:3 he begins to cook with the ingredients and organize them. 

You might remember the gap theory. God creates an orderly universe in verse 1. But then Satan fell and everything became chaos in verse 2. In the gap theory, God then begins to re-create the world in verse 3. This would be one version of an interpretation that sees Genesis 1:1 as the creation before the creation, if you would. A whole sequence of creation and recreation has taken place before verse 3.

There is little contextual evidence for this gap theory. That is to say, if this is what Genesis 1:1-2 was saying, the verses do not leave us many clues. Isaiah 45:18 may very well allude to Genesis 1:2 when it says that God did not create (bara') the earth to be chaos (tohu). [30] However, the verse most likely refers to the direction and end result of creation rather than its initial state. It is saying that God never intended for the cosmos to end up as chaos. Rather, God created order out of chaos.

John Walton sees Genesis 1:1 as the heading of 1:1-2:3, an introduction to the rest of the chapter. In this way, it functions much like the statements "These are the generations of..." that start eleven later sections of Genesis (e.g., 2:4). [31] He proposes that it is far more likely that the author of Genesis had twelve of these sections -- with Genesis 1:1 starting the series off -- than that there were only eleven of them. Twelve is a special number in Genesis, the number of the sons of Jacob and thus the tribes of Israel.

Another argument for Genesis 1:1 as an overview of the whole chapter comes from the way 2:1 seems to close this introduction. Genesis 1:1 says, "In the beginning, God created" at the beginning of the chapter. Then 2:1 says, "The skies and the land were finished" at the end. This kind of literary structure is called an "inclusio," where a block of text is put in a kind of parenthesis by similar words at its beginning and end. Here are the similar words: "At the beginning, God created the skies and the land... [read on and I'll tell you how]." Then we have "And the skies and the land were finished" at the end when the creating is done. 

On the whole, then, Genesis 1:1 does not seem to be the creation before the creation. It does not seem to be Day 0 or the creation of the matter that God will then mould in the rest of the chapter. Rather, it seems to be a general statement of the whole chapter. What is Genesis 1 about? Genesis 1 is about God creating the skies and the land. Keep reading and you will find out how he did it.

4.3.3 Creation Out of Nothing?
If Genesis 1:1 is an overview, then we face another question. Where did the waters of Genesis 1:2 come from? Genesis 1:1 already does not mention the waters. If it were the creation of material before the creation, one might suppose that the creation of the waters was implied in it. But if Genesis 1:1 is an overview of the chapter, then the chaotic waters of 1:2 are never created.

Given all the other ancient creation stories, it would not be surprising. All the creation stories of the Ancient Near East begin with water. In the Enuma Elish, the goddess that Marduk fights is Tiamat, a sea water goddess. The Egyptians had Nun, god of the primeval waters. In the Greek Theogony by Hesiod (500s BCE), the creation begins with -- you guessed it -- water. Aristotle distinguished the first Greek philosopher Thales (also 500s BCE) as different because he looked for a natural substance as the basis for the world rather than gods. But guess what substance he proposed as the most basic element of the world? You guessed it. Water.

So the cultural surroundings of Genesis would make it easy for us to think that it too saw water as an eternal given. God would have been meeting the Israelites where they were in their categories and speaking to them from there. [32] 

There are some grammatical features to Genesis 1:1 that are relevant to discuss. The very first word, bereshith, is curious in that it often has a sense of "first of" (e.g., Exod. 23:19). Building on this dynamic, the 1985 translation of the Jewish Publication Society rendered Genesis 1:1 to say, "When God began to create the heaven and earth... God said 'Let there be light.'" The sense it gave was that 1:1 was not a sentence but the setting for what follows. When God began (in the beginning of God creating) -- and the waters were unformed -- he started by saying "Let there be light."

This move seems a little strained (and unnecessary). The word can just mean "first." And the waters of 1:2 seem to be there waiting to be ordered one way or another. Further, as we have argued, 1:1 makes more sense as an overview of the whole chapter.

Another question is the meaning of bara', which means to create. It is not a frequently used word in the Old Testament, and it is always used with God as the subject -- "God created." Some have wanted to read a special meaning in here as in creation out of nothing. However, this meaning is not clear. It simply seems to be a word for making but that specifically refers to God making something.

What then is the meaning of 1:2. At the beginning of creation, there are two entities: God and the useless, non-functioning, chaotic, primordial waters. There is nothing but darkness. But a wind from God blew over the waters. This is the way things are when God decides to start to order the cosmos.

We have already discussed the origins of the doctrine of creation out of nothing in the previous chapter. We have framed it as a consensus of Christian (and Jewish) faith, and implied it is correct as a theological belief. However, we also made it clear that it likely reflects a "development of doctrine." That is to say, it is a belief that probably was not articulated in biblical times. It is not that the Bible opposes the belief -- not at all. It is simply not a thought that anyone had yet had.

Our exegesis of Genesis 1:1-2 supports this sense of development. At the time of the Old Testament, it was more or less assumed that everything had emerged from chaotic, primeval waters. That was not the point of revelation about creation. The point was that the God of Israel -- and he alone, almighty -- was the one who brought order to the cosmos.

[27] So also the Jewish Publication Society’s Tanakh translation.

[28] E.g., Claus Westermann translates it as “wind” in Genesis 1–11 (Fortress, 1990).

[29] The distinction between Israelite and Jewish largely has to do with the Babylonian captivity of 586-538BCE. Since the northern kingdom of Israel was destroyed in 722BCE, only the southern kingdom of Judah was left to go into captivity in 586BCE when Jerusalem was destroyed. Although “Israel” can still be used after this point, it is common to increasingly refer to those who returned as Judahites or Jews after the exile. Accordingly, if Genesis 1 was written after the exile, we might refer to its first audience as Judahites or Jews.

[30] Or it could be the other way around, Isaiah 45 may have helped inspire Genesis 1:2.

[31] Walton, Lost World, 43-45.

[32] It seems like any in depth understanding of Scripture will need to see somewhat of a "flow" of revelation as the understanding gets more precise the further we go in the river.