Genesis/Bere’shith 1: "At the beginning of God’s creating the heavens and the earth"

[A new year, a time when mindful individuals make resolutions, one of which might just include reading the Bible from the beginning.  And so we will feature the Torah, chapter by chapter every Sabbath, the perfect day to rest from everything so one could focus on the Instructions and Guidelines for Living, issued by the Revelator on Sinai Himself, YHWH.

 

Sinaites have greatly benefitted from the best minds — Jewish and non-Jewish — who have shared their perspectives in commentaries which have become valuable resource books in our library.

 

We are featuring the same commentaries here, namely:

• Pentateuch and Haftorahs, ed. Dr. J.H. Hertz (unbracketed commentary) 
• We have updated our translation of choice by using Everett Fox, The Five Books of Moses; “EF” indicates additional commentary is from him;
• Additional  commentary is from Robert Alter, The Five Books of Moses, indicated as “RA”. AND, at the end of this post is the STRAIGHT TEXT, of Alter’s translation in prose, no commentary.

The more we learn from diffferent commentators, the better, sometimes they supplement one another, other times they contradict.  The final verdict is up to you, reader; we are merely sharing what might appear as a ‘Sinaite’s Notes on Torah Study’.   Posted the first time in 2013. —Admin1.]

 

I.  BERESHITH

 

ORIGIN OF THE UNIVERSE AND THE BEGINNINGS OF THE HUMAN RACE

CREATION OF THE WORLD

 

1   At the beginning of God’s creating the heavens and the earth.

 

In the beginning.  Verse 1 is a majestic summary of the story of Creation:  God is the beginning, nay, the Cause of all things.  The remainder of the chapter gives details of the successive acts of creation.  Ages untold may have elapsed between the calling of matter into being and the reduction of chaos to ordered arrangement.

God. Heb. Elohim.  The existence of the Deity is throughout Scripture assumed: it is not a matter for argument or doubt.  Elohim is the general designation of the Divine Being in the Bible, as the fountain and source of all things.  Elohim is a plural form, which is often used in Hebrew to denoted plenitude or might.  Here it indicates that God comprehends and unifies all the forces of eternity and infinity.

created.  The Heb. word is in the singular, thus precluding any idea that its subject, Elophim, is to be understood in a plural sense.  The term ‘create’ is used exclusively for Divine activity.  Man is spoken of as ‘making’ or ‘forming’, but never as ‘creating’, i.e. producing something out of nothing.

the heaven and the earth.  The visible world; that which is above (heaven), and that which is below (earth).

 

[EF] At the beginning . . .:  This phrase, which has long been the focus of debate among grammarians, is traditionally read:  “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” . . . I have followed several medieval commentators, and most moderns, in my rendition.  creating: Indicative of God’s power and not used in reference to humans, although later in the chapter such words as “make” and “form” do appear.  the heavens and the earth: Probably a merism—an inclusive idiom meaning “everything” or “everywhere”—such as Hamlet’s “There are more things in heaven and earth . . . “

 

2. when the earth was wild and waste,

darkness over the face of the Ocean,

rushing-spirit of God hovering over the face of the waters—

 

the earth.  The material out of which the universe is formed.

the deep.  Heb. tehom, the abyss.

spirit of God. The mysterious, unseen, and irresistible presence of the Divine Being.

hovered. The Heb. word occurs again only in Deut. II,11, where it is descriptive of the eagle hovering over the young to care for them and protect them.  Matter in itself is lifeless.  The Spirit of God quickens it and transforms it into material for a living world.  The Jerusalem Targum translates this verse: ‘And the earth was vacancy and desolation, solitary of the sons of men and void of every animal, and darkness was upon the face of the abyss; and the Spirit of Mercies from before the LORD breathed upon the face of the waters.’

 

[EF] when the earth . . .: Gen. I describes God’s bringing order out of chaos, not creation from nothingness.  wild and waste: Heb. tohu va-vohu, indicating “emptiness.” Ocean: The primeval waters, a common (and unusually divine) image in ancient Near Eastern mythology.  rushing-spirit: Others, “wind.”  The Hebrew word ruah can mean both “spirit” and “wind.”  See Ps. 33:6. hovering: Or “flitting.” The image suggested by the word (see Deut. 32:11) is that of an eagle protecting its young.

 

[RA] welter and waste.  The Hebrew tohu wabohu occurs only here and in two alter biblical texts that are clearly alluding to this one.  The second word of the pair looks like a nonce term coined to rhyme with the first and to reinforce it, an effect I have tried to approximate in English by alliteration.  Tohu by itself means “emptiness” or “futility,” and in some contexts is associated with the trackless vacancy of the desert.

hovering. The verb attached to God’s breath-wind-spirit (rua) elsewhere describes an eagle fluttering over its young and so might have a connotation of parturition or nurture as well as rapid back-and-forth movement.

 

3-5.  FIRST DAY.  CREATION OF LIGHT

 

3. God said:  Let there be light! And there was light.

 

And God said.  ‘By the word of the LORD were the heavens made,’ Psalm XXXII,6. One of the names for God in later Jewish literature is ‘He who spake and the world came into existence’ (Authorized Prayer Book, p. 16).  ‘The phrase God said must be taken as a figurative equivalent of “God willed”‘ (Saadyah).

let there be light. A sublimely simple phrase to express a sublime fact. This light, which is distinct from that radiated later on from the sun, disperses the darkness that enshrouded the Deep, (v. 2).  The old question, Whence did the light issue before the sun was made, is answered by the nebular theory! The great astronomer Halley wrote:  ‘These nebulae reply fully to the difficulty which has been raised against the Mosaic description of creation, in asserting that light could not be generated without the sun.’

 

[EF] 3-5.  God said . . . God saw . . . God separated . . . God called:  Here, from the outset of the story, the principle of order is stressed, through the rhythmic structure of “God” plus verb, four times.

 

4. God saw the light: that it was good.  

God separated the light from the darkness.

 

that it was good. i.e. fulfills the will of the Creator.  Repeated v. 10,12,18,21,25,31.

 

[EF] God saw . . . that it was good: The syntax is emphatic; others use “God saw how good it was.”  The phrase is reminiscent of ancient Near Eastern descriptions of a craftsman being pleased with his work. separated: The verb occurs four more times early in the chapter (vv. 6,7,14,18), and further points to the motif of order.

 

5. God called the light: Day! and the darkness he called: Night!  

There was setting, there was dawning: one day.

called. In calling the light Day, God defines the significance of light in human life.  In the Bible account of Creation, everything centers around man and is viewed from his angle.

And there was evening.  The day, according to the Scriptural reckoning of time, begins with the preceding evening.  Thus, the observance of the Day of Atonement is to be ‘from even unto even’ (Lev. XXIII,32); and similarly of the Sabbath and Festivals.

one day. Not an ordinary day but a Day of God, an age.  With Him a thousand years, nay a thousand thousand ages, are but as a day that is past; Psalm XC,4. ‘Earthly and human measurement of time, by a clock of human manufacture, cannot apply to the first three days, as the sun was not then in existence.  The beginning of each period of creation is called morning; its close, evening’ (Delitzsch); in the same way, we speak of the morning and evening of life.

 

[EF] setting . . . dawning:  The Heb. terms erv and boker are rather more specific than the usual “evening” and “morning.”  Elsewhere I have used “sunset” and “daybreak”; the latter would have clashed with “day” in these lines.

 

[RA] first day.  Unusually, the Hebrew uses a cardinal, not ordinal number.  As with all the six days except the sixth, the expected definite article is omitted.

 

6-8. SECOND DAY. THE FIRMAMENT

 

6. God said:

Let there be a dome amid the waters,

and let it separate waters from waters!

 

firmament. Sky, arch of heaven.

waters from the waters. i.e. the waters above the firmament (the mists and clouds that come down to earth in the shape of rain), from the waters on earth (rivers and seas).

 

[EF] dome: Heb. raki’a, literally a beaten sheet of metal.

 

[RA] vault.  The Hebrew raki’a suggests a hammered-out slab, not necessarily arched, but the English architectural term with its celestial associations created by poetic tradition is otherwise appropriate.

 

7. God made the dome

and separated the waters that were below the dome from the waters that were above the dome.

It was so.

 

and it was so.  Fulfilment follows immediately upon the Divine fiat.  ‘For He spoke, and it was; He commanded, and it stood’ (Psalm XXXIII,9).

 

8. ‘God called the dome: Heaven!

There was setting, there was dawning: second day.

Heaven.  In the Bible (shamayim) is represented as the habitation of God, in the figurative sense in which the Temple is similarly described: ‘Behold, heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain Thee: how much less this house that I have builded!’ (I Kings VIII,27).

and there was evening. On the second day the usual formula, ‘And God saw that it was good,’ is omitted.  The work begun on that day did not terminate until the middle of the third day.  Hence, an uncompleted piece of work could not properly be proclaimed ‘good’ (Rashi).

a second day. Or, ‘the second day’; similarly, v. 13, 19, and 23.

 

[EF] Heaven!: The sky.

 

9-13.  THIRD DAY.  SEA, LAND, AND VEGETATION

 

9. God said:  

Let the waters under the heavens be gathered to one place,

 and let the dry land be seen!  

It was so.

 

be gathered together.  As long as the face of the earth was covered by the ‘deep’ (v.2), life was impossible for man or beast.  God therefore decreed boundaries for the waters;  Psalm CIV,6-8.

 

10. ‘God called the dry land: Earth! and the gathering of the waters he called: Seas!  

God saw that it was good.

 

Earth. Here it signifies that part of the terrestrial surface which was to be the abode of man and the scene of his activity.

that it was good. i.e. a fitting stage for the drama of human history.

 

11. God said:  

Let the earth sprout forth with sprouting-growth,

plants that seed forth seeds, fruit trees that yield fruit, after their kind, (and) in which is their seed, upon the earth!  

It was so.

 

put forth. In creating the earth, God implanted in it the forces that at His command produced the vegetation.

 

[EF] sprout forth with sprouting-growth . . . seed forth seeds . . . fruit trees . . . fruit:  The three sound doublets create a poetic effect in God’s pronouncement.  Note that they are not repeated by the narrator in verse 12.  See also v.20, “. . . swarm with a swarm . . .” after their kind: Here as in number of passages in the translation I have shifted some words that occur in the singular (especially collectives) for the sake of clarity. See, for example: 6:3,5.

 

12. The earth brought forth sprouting-growth, 

plants that seed forth seeds, after their kind, 

trees that yield fruit, in which is their seed, after their kind.  

God saw that it was good.

that it was good. As food for man and beast (v. 29).

 

13. There was setting, there was dawning:  third day.

 

14-19. FOURTH DAY. CREATION OF HEAVENLY BODIES

 

14. God said:  

Let there be lights in the dome of the heavens, to separate the day from the night,

that they may be for signs—for set-times, for days and years, 

 

lights.  The Heb. word signifies sources of light; hence, ‘luminaries’ would be a better translation.

Other ancient peoples ascribed to the sun, moon and stars a beneficent or malevolent potency over the lives of men and nations.  Here, however, all idolatry and superstition are swept away.  These lights are works of one Almighty God, and are created for His appointed purposes; see Jer. X,2.

for signs. To help man locate his position when moving over the surface of the earth: they were primitive man’s compass.

for seasons. To regulate the calendar.  The ‘seasons’ are spring, summer, autumn, and winter’ also seed-time and harvest.  The Heb. word for ‘seasons’ later acquired the meaning of ‘festivals’, since these were fixed by the year’s seasons.

 

[EF] lights: In the sense of “lamps.” for signs—for set-times . . .Heb. difficult.

 

15. and let them be for lights in the dome of the heavens, to provide light upon the earth!

 It was so.

 

light upon the earth. Without which life and growth are impossible.

 

16. god made the two great lights,

the greater light for ruling the day and the smaller light for ruling the night,

and the stars.

 

and the stars. They are mentioned last and without explanation, because they play a subordinate part in the life of man, as compared with the sun and moon.

 

17. ‘God placed them in the dome of the heavens

18. to provide light upon the earth, to rule the day and the night, to separate the light from the darkness.  

God saw that it was good.

19. There was setting, there was dawning: fourth day.

20-23.  FIFTH DAY.  FISHES AND BIRDS

 

20. God said:  

Let the waters swarm with a swarm of living things, and let fowl fly above the earth, across the dome of the heavens!

 

swarm.  Or, ‘teem.’  Heb. sharatz. Movement as well as fecundity is implied.  It is used in connection with fishes and aquatic animals, rodents and insects.

fowl.  Collective noun, meaning winged things.

in the open firmament.  In mid-air; in the face of, or over against, the firmament.

 

21. God created the great sea-serpents

and all living beings that crawl about, with which the waters swarmed, after their kind,

and all winged fowl after their kind.  

God saw that it was good.

 

creature.  lit. ‘soul.’  In Hebrew, soul is used more widely than in English, often denoting, as here, merely a living being.

 

[EF] great sea-serpents: The rebellious primeval monster of Ps. 74-13 (and common in ancient Near Eastern myth) is here depicted as merely another one of God’s many creations.

 

22. And God blessed them saying:  

Bear fruit and be many and fill the waters in the seas,

and let the fowl be many on earth!

 

God blessed them.  No blessing was bestowed upon the vegetation, as its growth is dependent upon sun and rain, and not upon its own volition.

 

[EF] And God blessed them: The first occurrence in Genesis of the key motif of blessing, which recurs especially throughout the Patriarchal stories.  Bear fruit and be many and fill: Heb. peru u-revu u-mil’u.

 

23. There was setting, there was dawning: fifth day.

 

24-31.  SIXTH DAY.  LAND ANIMALS AND MAN

 

24. God said:  

Let the earth bring forth living beings after their kind, herd-animals, crawling things, and the wildlife of the earth after their kind!  

It was so.

 

earth bring forth. The seeds and possibility of life implanted within her on the first day of Creation (Rashi).

cattle.  All domestic animals.

creeping thing.  Reptiles.

beast of the earth.  Wild animals.

 

[RA] wild beasts. Literally, the phrase would mean “beast of the earth,” but the archaic construct form for “beasts of,” ayto, elsewhere regularly occurs in collocations that denote wild beasts.  In verse 25, the archaic form is not used, but given the close proximity of ayat ha’arets there to ayto ‘erets here, it seems likely that the meaning is the same.

 

25. God made the wildlife of the earth after their kind, and the herd-animals after their kind, and all crawling things of the soil after their kind.  

God saw that it was good. 

 

26. God said:  

Let us make humankind, in our image, according to our likeness!  

Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, the fowl of the heaens, animals, all the earth, and all crawling things that crawl about upon the earth!

 

let us make man.  Mankind is described as in a special sense created by God Himself.  To enhance the dignity of this last work and to mark the fact that man differs in kind from the animals, Scripture represents God as deliberating over the making of the human species (Abarbanel).  It is not ‘let man be created’ or ‘let man be made’, but ‘let us make man’.  The use of the plural, ‘let us make man,’ is the Heb. idiomatic way of expressing deliberation, as in XI,7; or it is the plural of Majesty, royal commands being conveyed in the first person plural, as in Ezra IV,18.

man. Heb. ‘Adam.’ The word is used here, as frequently in the Bible, in the sense of human being’.  It is derived from adamah ‘earth’, to signify that man is earth-born; see II,7.

in our image, after our likeness.  Man is made in the ‘image’ and ‘likeness’ of God:  his character is potentially Divine.  ‘God created man to be immortal, and made him to be an image of His own eternity’ (Wisdom of Solomon, II,23).  Man alone among living creatures is gifted, like his Creator, with moral freedom and will.  He is capable of knowing and loving God, and of holding spiritual communion with Him; and man alone can guide his actions in accordance with Reason.  ‘On this account he is said to have been made in the form and likeness of the Almighty’ (Maimonides).  Because man is endowed with Reason, he can subdue his impulses in the service of moral and religious ideals, and is born to bear rule over Nature.  Psalm VIII says of man, ‘O LORD . . . Thou hast made him but little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour.  Thou hast made him to have dominion over the works of Thy hands.’

 

[EF] in our image: The “our” is an old problem. Some take it to refer to the heavenly court (although, not surprisingly, no angels are mentioned here).

 

[RA] a human. The term ‘adam, afterward consistently with a definite article, which is used both here and in the second account of the origins of humankind, is a generic term for human beings, not a proper noun.  It also does not automatically suggest maleness, especially not without the prefix ben, “son of,” and so the traditional rendering “man” is misleading, and an exclusively male ‘adam would make nonsense of the last clause of verse 27.

hold sway. The verb radah is not the normal Hebrew verb for “rule” (the latter is reflected in “dominion” of verse 16), and in most of the contexts in which it occurs it seems to suggest an absolute or even fierce exercise of mastery.

the wild beasts. The Masoretic Text reads “all the earth,” bekhol ha’arets, but since the term occurs in the middle of a catalogue of living creatures over which humanity will hold sway, the reading of the Syriac Version, ayat ha’arets, “wild beasts,” seems preferable.

 

27. So God created humankind in his image,

in the image of God did he create it,

male and female he created them.

 

male and female.  A general statement; man and woman, both alike, are in their spiritual nature akin to God.

 

[EF] God created humankind: The narrative breaks into verse, stressing the importance of human beings. “Humankind” (Heb. adam) does not specify sex, as is clear from the last line of the poem.

 

[RA]  In the middle clause of this verse, “him,” as in the Hebrew, is grammatically but not anatomically masculine.  Feminist critics have raised the question as to whether here and in the second account of human origins, in Chapter 2, ‘adam is to be imagined as sexually undifferentiated until the fashioning of woman, though that proposal leads to certain dizzying paradoxes in following the story.

 

28. God blessed them,

God said to them:  

Bear fruit and be many and fill the earth and subdue it!  

Have dominion over the fish of the sea, the fowl of the heavens, and all living things that crawl about upon the earth!

 

and God blessed them. CF. v. 22.  Here the words, ‘And God said unto them,’ are added, ‘indicating a more intimate relationship between Him and human beings.

be fruitful and multiply. This is the first precept (mitzvah) given to man.  The duty of building a home and rearing a family figures in the rabbinic Codes as the first of the 613 mitzvoth (commandments) of the Torah.

and subdue it. ‘The secret of all modern science is in the first chapter of Genesis.  Belief in the dominion of spirit over matter, of mind over nature, of man over the physical and the animal creation, was essential to the possession of that dominion’ (Lyman Abbott).  ‘What we call the will or volition of Man . . . has become a power in nature, an imperium in imperio, which has profoundly modified not only Man’s own history, but that of the whole living world, and the face of the planet on which he lives’ (Ray Lankester).

 

29. God said:  

Here, I give you 

all the plants that bear seeds that are upon the face of all the earth,

and all trees in which there is tree fruit that bears seeds,

for you shall they be, for eating;

In the primitive ideal age (as also in the Messianic future, see Isaiah XI,7), the animals were not to prey on one another.

 

[EF] I give you: “You” in the plural.

 

30. and also for all the living things of the earth, for all the fowl of the heavens, for all that crawls about upon the earth in which there is living being—

all green plants for eating.  

It was so.

 

[EF] all green plants for eating: Human beings in their original state were not meat-eaters.  For the change, see 9:3.

 

31. Now God saw all that he had made,

and here: it was exceedingly good!  

There was setting, there was dawning: the sixth day.

 

very good.  Each created thing is ‘good’ in itself; but when combined and united, the totality is proclaimed ‘very good’.  Everything in the universe was as the Creator willed it—nothing superfluous, nothing lacking—a harmony.  ‘This harmony bears witness to the unity of God who planned this unity of Nature’ (Luzzatto).

 

[EF] exceedingly good . . . the sixth day: The two qualifiers “exceedingly” and “the” are deviations from the previous expressions in the story, and underscore the sixth day (when humankind was created) as the crowning achievement of creation (or else serve as a summary to the whole).

 

 

 

[Prose Version/Straight Text/No Commentary]

ROBERT ALTER’S THE FIVE BOOKS OF MOSES: GENESIS