Genesis 1:1-5

Since the formula These are the generations of is usually placed by P at the beginning of a section, whereas here it occurs at the end (Genesis 2:4a), it is thought by many that its present position is due to its removal from the beginning of this chapter, and that the story opened with the words These are the generations of the heaven and of the earth. But this implies a different use of generations from what we find elsewhere in P, who employs it to express what is produced by the person mentioned. The clause may be an addition. Several scholars connect Genesis 1:1 with Genesis 1:3, rendering In the beginning when God created the heaven and the earth (now the earth. the waters), then God said, Let there be light: and there was light. This makes the creation of light the main point, the creation of heaven and earth serving simply to date God'S command Let there be light. But surely the creation of light thus receives an excessive emphasis, while the placing of Genesis 1:2 in a parenthesis makes the sentence very awkward and involved. It is better to retain the RV rendering, according to which Genesis 1:1 is an independent sentence. It is possible that this verse narrates the creation of the primæval chaos, described in Genesis 1:2; but, since heaven and earth are cosmos rather than chaos, it is far more likely that it gives in a summary form what is to be told in detail in the rest of the chapter. To us the word created most naturally suggests to create out of nothing. But whether this was the writer'S view or not, the term probably does not express it. Its meaning is uncertain; most usually it is given as to cut or to carve. It is characteristic of, and is generally, though not invariably, found in late writings, but it does not follow that it must be a comparatively late word. Neither here nor elsewhere is Scripture committed to the doctrine of absolute creation. Hebrews 11:3* does not assert creation out of nothing; it denies creation from things which do appear, i.e. out of the phenomenal. Basilides the Gnostic, who taught in the former part of the second century A.D., was perhaps the first to teach it (see Hatch, Hibbert Lectures, pp. 195f.); earlier statements often quoted may be otherwise explained. Genesis 1:2 describes the condition of things before this Divine action began. The earth, as we know it, had not come into being, but the writer uses the word to describe the formless mass, in which were confused together the elements God would disentangle to make the ordered universe. This chaos was illumined by no ray of light, the deep lay under a thick pall of darkness, and over its surface the spirit of God was already brooding (mg.), as a bird on the eggs in its nest. Are we to suppose that the brooding has a similar result? Milton'S invocation to the Spirit :

Thou from the first

Wast present, and with mighty wings outspread,
Dove-like satst brooding on the vast abyss,
And mad'St it pregnant:

corresponds to the impression made on the modern reader; but it is questionable whether it is that intended by the writer, who regards creation as achieved simply by God'S word. The term spirit of God is not to be interpreted through later theological usage and identified with the Holy Spirit; more probably it is an expression for the life-giving energy of God. Perhaps we have here a relic of a mythological feature in the original story, which may have told how the gods came into existence through this brooding over the world-egg, a thought which the severe monotheism of Israel could not tolerate.

Such, then, was this dark chaotic confusion before God Himself began to act upon it. There are eight creative acts, each introduced with the formula And God said. There is no manipulation of matter by God'S fingers, but all is achieved by God'S word, which is living and active, and instinct with Divine power. By this effortless word God called the various orders of creation into existence and carried to completion His stupendous task. Here there is no conflict with the hostile demon of darkness and chaos as in the Babylonian myth, no struggle to bend the reluctant matter to His will, no laborious shaping and moulding of raw stuff into the finished product, but the mere utterance of the word achieves at once and perfectly the Divine intention (Peake, Heroes and Martyrs of Faith, pp. 27f.). And just as, after darkness and sleep, the light comes that man may go forth to his work till the night closes in when no man can work, so after the eternal night which has rested on the abyss, light comes, to be followed by God'S creative work. For the Hebrews light and darkness were physical essences (Cheyne), each having its own abode (Job 38:19 f.), from which each in turn issued to illumine or darken the world. When light was first created, it streamed out into the darkness, and mingled with it as one fluid with another. But such a confusion it is the purpose of creation to overcome, so God separates the light from the darkness. This separation is partly temporal, as Genesis 1:5 indicates; each has a period in the twenty-four hours in which to function, yielding then the field to the other. But the temporal rests on a local separation. The two are disentangled, and then each is assigned first its local habitation (Job 38:19 f.), then its period of operation. Light is thus not due to the heavenly bodies, which come into being only on the fourth day; it has an independent existence. And it is entirely adequate to its purpose, for God pronounces it good, by which He means that it corresponded to His design, the result was precisely what He had intended. To the light He gives the name of Day, to the darkness the name Night. The temporal mingling of light and darkness, which we call twilight, is much briefer in Palestine or Babylonia than in our northern climes. Thus the work of the first day, reckoned probably from morning to morning, is accomplished. The period of light is followed by evening and darkness, which comes to an end with the next morning, when the second day begins. Render, And evening came, and morning came, one day (Driver), and similarly throughout the chapter.