Genesis Chapter 1

By His word God forms and fills the earth in six evening-and-morning days, crowning His work with humanity made in His image.

Genesis 1:1-2

The Creator and the Unformed Earth

Genesis 1:3-13

Days One to Three: Realms Formed

Genesis 1:14-23

Days Four and Five: Lights, Seas, and Skies Filled

Genesis 1:24-28

Day Six: Land Creatures and Humanity

Genesis 1:29-31

Provision and the Verdict of “Very Good”

Genesis 1:1

The Bible opens with God. “In the beginning God” sets the Creator before every created thing and beyond the reach of time, space, and matter. All that follows in Scripture rests on this sentence. If God made all things, then all things belong to Him, depend on Him, and must finally answer to Him (Psalm 24:1; Revelation 4:11). The verse stands as a complete statement, the heading and summary of the chapter, and the verses after it unfold how the Creator brought this earth into order and life.

The Hebrew sentence is spare—seven words, with the name of God at its center. Some modern translations render the opening “When God began to create,” as though material already lay waiting. The traditional rendering remains the stronger reading. The ancient versions, the separating accent the Hebrew text places on the first word, and the short independent sentences that run through the chapter all point to an absolute beginning. Isaiah speaks of God “declaring the end from the beginning” (Isaiah 46:10), and Hebrews concludes that “the things which are seen were not made of things which do appear” (Hebrews 11:3). God alone is self-existent; everything else, in heaven or on earth, owes its being to Him.

The verb “created” is reserved in the Old Testament for divine activity. People make, shape, and build from what is at hand; only God creates in this sense. The verb never names a material, only a result, and it returns at decisive points of the account: the great sea creatures (v. 21), humanity (v. 27), and the summary of the whole work (2:3–4). “The heaven and the earth” pairs opposites to express everything that exists. Israel’s neighbors pictured the world emerging from conflict among gods or from the body of a defeated deity. Genesis allows no rival, no material independent of God, and no battle. God acts alone, freely, and without opposition.

The New Testament reads this verse in the light of Christ. John opens his Gospel with the same words, “In the beginning,” and identifies the Word who was with God and was God as the One through whom “all things were made” (John 1:1–3). Paul writes that by the Son “were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth” (Colossians 1:16). The Creator of Genesis 1 is the Redeemer of the Gospels. The God who brought a universe into being can also make a person new, and Scripture uses creation language for that work (Psalm 51:10; 2 Corinthians 5:17). To confess “In the beginning God” is to place every other beginning, including one’s own, in His hands.

Study Links

Cross References

Word / Phrase Notes

בְּרֵאשִׁית (bereshit) — in the beginning

The noun re’shit denotes the first point or opening part of something. Here, standing without a following noun and marked off by a separating accent, the phrase introduces the absolute start of the created order, not merely the first stage of an existing process. The Greek Old Testament renders it en archē, the very words with which John begins his Gospel to present the Word as already existing when that beginning came.

בָּרָא (bara’) — created

In this stem the verb always has God as its subject and never mentions the material out of which something comes. It stresses divine initiative and the bringing about of something new. The verb by itself does not prove creation from nothing; the context of an absolute beginning does. Elsewhere it describes God creating a clean heart and new heavens and a new earth, works only He can do.