Genesis 1
The chapter in full, then the passages inside it that are worth stopping on — what each one claims, what the Greek or Hebrew shows, and how the reading is arrived at.
Genesis 1 WEB
- 1 In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
- 2 The earth was formless and empty. Darkness was on the surface of the deep and God's Spirit was hovering over the surface of the waters.
- 3 God said, "Let there be light," and there was light.
- 4 God saw the light, and saw that it was good. God divided the light from the darkness.
- 5 God called the light "day", and the darkness he called "night". There was evening and there was morning, the first day.
- 6 God said, "Let there be an expanse in the middle of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters."
- 7 God made the expanse, and divided the waters which were under the expanse from the waters which were above the expanse; and it was so.
- 8 God called the expanse "sky". There was evening and there was morning, a second day.
- 9 God said, "Let the waters under the sky be gathered together to one place, and let the dry land appear;" and it was so.
- 10 God called the dry land "earth", and the gathering together of the waters he called "seas". God saw that it was good.
- 11 God said, "Let the earth yield grass, herbs yielding seeds, and fruit trees bearing fruit after their kind, with their seeds in it, on the earth;" and it was so.
- 12 The earth yielded grass, herbs yielding seed after their kind, and trees bearing fruit, with their seeds in it, after their kind; and God saw that it was good.
- 13 There was evening and there was morning, a third day.
- 14 God said, "Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs to mark seasons, days, and years;
- 15 and let them be for lights in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth;" and it was so.
- 16 God made the two great lights: the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night. He also made the stars.
- 17 God set them in the expanse of the sky to give light to the earth,
- 18 and to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness. God saw that it was good.
- 19 There was evening and there was morning, a fourth day.
- 20 God said, "Let the waters abound with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth in the open expanse of the sky."
- 21 God created the large sea creatures and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarmed, after their kind, and every winged bird after its kind. God saw that it was good.
- 22 God blessed them, saying, "Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth."
- 23 There was evening and there was morning, a fifth day.
- 24 God said, "Let the earth produce living creatures after their kind, livestock, creeping things, and animals of the earth after their kind;" and it was so.
- 25 God made the animals of the earth after their kind, and the livestock after their kind, and everything that creeps on the ground after its kind. God saw that it was good.
- 26 God said, "Let's make man in our image, after our likeness. Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the sky, and over the livestock, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth."
- 27 God created man in his own image. In God's image he created him; male and female he created them.
- 28 God blessed them. God said to them, "Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it. Have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the sky, and over every living thing that moves on the earth."
- 29 God said, "Behold, I have given you every herb yielding seed, which is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree, which bears fruit yielding seed. It will be your food.
- 30 To every animal of the earth, and to every bird of the sky, and to everything that creeps on the earth, in which there is life, I have given every green herb for food;" and it was so.
- 31 God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. There was evening and there was morning, a sixth day.
Genesis 1 opens the whole of scripture and the whole of the biblical story: not an argument for God's existence but a narration of his action, structured as seven days building toward the seventh day's rest. It is written against the background of Israel's neighbors, whose creation stories involve warring deities carving order out of a slain rival's corpse; here there is one God, no combat, and a word that simply speaks and is obeyed.
1:1 In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth
The Hebrew verb is bara, used in the Old Testament almost exclusively of divine, not human, activity — it is not the ordinary word for making or fashioning something out of material at hand. Whether the verse asserts creation ex nihilo (out of nothing) has been argued: Genesis 1:2 describes an earth already there, "formless and empty," which is why some readers take verse 1 as a summary heading for the chapter rather than a first, separate act. But the trajectory of the rest of scripture reads it as absolute origin. Hebrews 11:3 states it plainly: "the universe has been framed by the word of God, so that what is seen has not been made out of things which are visible." There is no eternal matter God shapes, no rival substance he negotiates with. Everything that is not God owes its existence to him, including the raw stuff of verse 2.
The opening word also sets Genesis apart from every rival cosmology by refusing a theogony — there is no story of where God came from, because the text has no interest in explaining God, only in declaring what he did. John's Gospel picks up the same words to open its own book: "In the beginning was the Word" (John 1:1), deliberately placing Christ at the site Genesis reserves for the act of creation itself.
1:2 Formless and empty, and the Spirit hovering
"Formless and empty" (Hebrew tohu wa-bohu) describes a condition, not a catastrophe — an as-yet-unshaped, uninhabited earth, dark and covered in water. Some interpreters (the "gap theory") have read this as evidence of a prior judgment or fall between verses 1 and 2, appealing to Jeremiah 4:23, where the prophet describes coming devastation in the same terms ("waste and void... they had no light"). But Jeremiah is describing judgment using Genesis' vocabulary as a picture of undoing creation, not explaining what happened in Genesis; there is no other textual signal in Genesis 1 of a prior fall, and the days that follow read as forward motion, not repair. The straightforward sense is that God begins with unformed material and speaks form and fullness into it, day by day.
The Spirit "hovering over the surface of the waters" is the first mention of the third person later identified fully in the New Testament, and Psalm 104:30 later credits the same Spirit with the ongoing work of creation: "You send out your Spirit and they are created."
1:3 Let there be light
Light exists here three days before the sun is made (1:16), which has puzzled readers who expect the text to move in strict physical sequence. It is not a scientific oversight; ancient readers were not confused about where light comes from, and the text is not attempting a modern account of astrophysics. The sequence follows a different logic: God first establishes light and the day/night rhythm as such, then later installs the sun and moon as the "lights" that will govern that rhythm (1:14–18) — functionaries appointed to an order already established, not the source of the order itself. This also quietly de-thrones the sun and moon, which surrounding nations worshiped as gods; in Genesis they are simply lamps, hung "to rule the day" and "to rule the night," created things doing an assigned job.
The line has become paradigmatic well beyond its immediate context. Paul reaches back to it in 2 Corinthians 4:6 to describe the new creation: "God who said, 'Light will shine out of darkness,' who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." The first creation becomes the pattern for the new one.
1:26-27 Let us make man in our image
"Let's make man in our image, after our likeness" (1:26) is the chapter's hinge and its most argued line. "Image" (Hebrew tselem) and "likeness" (demuth) most naturally recall the ancient practice of kings setting up images of themselves in territories they ruled, to represent their authority there. Humanity is God's representative on earth, given "dominion" (1:26, 1:28) — a royal, stewardly office, not a license for exploitation, since the one whose image is borne is himself the God who calls his creation "good" seven times over.
The plural "us" and "our" has drawn readings ranging from a divine council of angels, to a plural of majesty, to (in Christian tradition, retrospectively) a hint of the Trinity — the text itself does not settle which; Christian readers have generally taken the fuller answer to be found only later, in the New Testament's revelation of the triune God, not extracted from this verse alone.
That both male and female together bear the image (1:27) — "male and female he created them" — is stated without qualification or hierarchy of image-bearing; whatever distinctions Genesis 2 and later texts introduce, verse 27 grounds the dignity of both sexes equally in the same act. Irenaeus, in Against Heresies, IV.20.7, drew from texts like this the axiom: "The glory of God is a living man; and the life of man consists in beholding God" — human flourishing is not opposed to God's glory but is precisely where it is displayed.
1:31 Very good
Six times the refrain "God saw that it was good" recurs; the seventh and climactic time, surveying everything together, it is "very good" (1:31). This is the chapter's verdict on the material world itself — against every philosophy, ancient or modern, that treats matter, body, and physical creation as inferior, illusory, or an embarrassment to be escaped. Whatever goes wrong afterward in Genesis 3, it does not originate in creation's own nature.
What the chapter asks
Genesis 1 asks whether the world is accident or gift, and answers with a single, unhurried word repeated: good. It claims that matter, time, and human dignity are not incidental but declared and blessed by the one who made them, and that the rhythm of work culminating in rest — not endless labor — is built into the world's own architecture, ahead of the fall, ahead of Israel, ahead of everything the rest of scripture will need to undo and restore.
The verses this turns on
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.discussed above
See also 5
- John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
- Hebrews 11:3 By faith we understand that the universe has been framed by the word of God, so that what is seen has not been made out of things which are visible.
- Isaiah 45:18 For Yahweh who created the heavens, the God who formed the earth and made it, who established it and didn't create it a waste, who formed it to be inhabited says: "I am Yahweh. There is no other.
- Revelation 4:11 "Worthy are you, our Lord and God, the Holy One, to receive the glory, the honor, and the power, for you created all things, and because of your desire they existed and were created!"
- Hebrews 1:10 And, "You, Lord, in the beginning, laid the foundation of the earth. The heavens are the works of your hands.
The earth was formless and empty. Darkness was on the surface of the deep and God's Spirit was hovering over the surface of the waters.discussed above
See also 5
- Jeremiah 4:23 I saw the earth and, behold, it was waste and void, and the heavens, and they had no light.
- Psalm 104:30 You send out your Spirit and they are created. You renew the face of the ground.
- Isaiah 45:18 For Yahweh who created the heavens, the God who formed the earth and made it, who established it and didn't create it a waste, who formed it to be inhabited says: "I am Yahweh. There is no other.
- Psalm 33:6 By Yahweh's word, the heavens were made: all their army by the breath of his mouth.
- Job 26:7 He stretches out the north over empty space, and hangs the earth on nothing.
God said, "Let there be light," and there was light.discussed above
See also 5
- 2 Corinthians 4:6 seeing it is God who said, "Light will shine out of darkness," who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
- John 1:5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness hasn't overcome it.
- Isaiah 45:7 I form the light and create darkness. I make peace and create calamity. I am Yahweh, who does all these things.
- Isaiah 60:19 The sun will be no more your light by day, nor will the brightness of the moon give light to you, but Yahweh will be your everlasting light, and your God will be your glory.
- 1 John 1:5 This is the message which we have heard from him and announce to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.
God said, "Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs to mark seasons, days, and years;discussed above
See also 5
- Psalm 104:19 He appointed the moon for seasons. The sun knows when to set.
- Deuteronomy 4:19 and lest you lift up your eyes to the sky, and when you see the sun and the moon and the stars, even all the army of the sky, you are drawn away and worship them, and serve them, which Yahweh your God has allotted to all the peoples under the whole sky.
- Psalm 74:16 The day is yours, the night is also yours. You have prepared the light and the sun.
- Jeremiah 31:35 Yahweh, who gives the sun for a light by day, and the ordinances of the moon and of the stars for a light by night, who stirs up the sea, so that its waves roar— Yahweh of Armies is his name, says:
- Psalm 136:7 to him who made the great lights, for his loving kindness endures forever;
God made the two great lights: the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night. He also made the stars.discussed above
See also 5
- Psalm 136:7 to him who made the great lights, for his loving kindness endures forever;
- Deuteronomy 4:19 and lest you lift up your eyes to the sky, and when you see the sun and the moon and the stars, even all the army of the sky, you are drawn away and worship them, and serve them, which Yahweh your God has allotted to all the peoples under the whole sky.
- Psalm 8:3 When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have ordained,
- Isaiah 40:26 Lift up your eyes on high, and see who has created these, who brings out their army by number. He calls them all by name. By the greatness of his might, and because he is strong in power, not one is lacking.
- Psalm 148:5 Let them praise Yahweh's name, for he commanded, and they were created.
God said, "Let's make man in our image, after our likeness. Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the sky, and over the livestock, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth."discussed above
See also 5
- Colossians 3:10 and have put on the new man, who is being renewed in knowledge after the image of his Creator,
- Ephesians 4:24 and put on the new man, who in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of truth.
- Psalm 8:4 what is man, that you think of him? What is the son of man, that you care for him?
- Genesis 3:22 Yahweh God said, "Behold, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand, and also take of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever—"
- Genesis 5:1 This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day that God created man, he made him in God's likeness.
God created man in his own image. In God's image he created him; male and female he created them.discussed above
See also 5
- Matthew 19:4 He answered, "Haven't you read that he who made them from the beginning made them male and female,
- Ephesians 2:10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared before that we would walk in them.
- Genesis 5:1 This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day that God created man, he made him in God's likeness.
- Genesis 2:21 Yahweh God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep. As the man slept, he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh in its place.
- Mark 10:6 But from the beginning of the creation, God made them male and female.
God blessed them. God said to them, "Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it. Have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the sky, and over every living thing that moves on the earth."discussed above
See also 5
- Genesis 9:1 God blessed Noah and his sons, and said to them, "Be fruitful, multiply, and replenish the earth.
- Genesis 9:7 Be fruitful and multiply. Increase abundantly on the earth, and multiply in it."
- Leviticus 26:9 "'I will have respect for you, make you fruitful, multiply you, and will establish my covenant with you.
- Psalm 128:3 Your wife will be as a fruitful vine in the innermost parts of your house, your children like olive shoots around your table.
- Genesis 22:17 that I will bless you greatly, and I will multiply your offspring greatly like the stars of the heavens, and like the sand which is on the seashore. Your offspring will possess the gate of his enemies.
From the interpretive tradition
I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.
The glory of God is a living man; and the life of man consists in beholding God.