Genesis 1:1 is the “opening statement of the world’s most often printed book” (Henry Morris, The Genesis Record, 37). It may be the most read and well-known verse in the the Bible, and certainly in the Old Testament. It is also probably the most important verse in history; without it there is no such thing as history. It may contain the most discussed and debated ideas ever. Henry Morris wrote:

It has often been pointed out that if a person really believes Genesis 1:1, he will not find it difficult to believe anything else recorded in the Bible. That is, if God really created all things, then He controls all things and can do all things. (37)

Thus begins general revelation and special revelation.

I am newly sensitive to each song we sing about God as Lord of heaven and earth. As much as ever I’ve been bowed and lifted by considering how indescribable and uncontainable God—our God—is. How do you create space in no place? My mind can’t comprehend the idea of God existing without being in a particular location. And how do you create time? If there was a day one, yet God existed before day one, then why don’t we start counting backwards? God does not fit in our finite minds. The best we can say is that God existed before time and before space, somehow apart from sometime and somewhere.

As we open to the first page of the Genesis story we reach Act 1 Scene 1 when God creates His stage. This is an amazing chapter, presenting the process of creation with structure and style, but every part of it is fact. We can’t skip this or write it off as fiction without serious consequences. This is the beginning.

The Creation of the Entire Universe (verse 1)

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

God’s book opens with a sweeping declaration of God’s creating of everything, and our modern English copies owe much to William Tyndale: “In the begynnynge God created…”

The Time of Creation

The first phrase in the Bible, In the beginning, refers to the absolute beginning of time itself, to the start of the history of the world. The only thing or person in existence prior to the beginning was God. In 1:1 we’re standing at farthest left point on the timeline; this is the dawn of days, the grand opening. This is the defining moment of moments.

When exactly did creation take place, or, when was the beginning? There are a number of things that make determining the precise date of creation difficult. For example, various cultures, the Hebrews among them, have defined the length of a year differently. It is also possible that entire generations are missing in the genealogies in the Old Testament, especially in Genesis 5 and 11. Additionally, scientific methods, such as carbon dating, have proven that their proofs are unreliable.

The best efforts to estimate the age of the earth use the Bible and take the chronological details we do have from the beginning of creation to man (Genesis 1), from man to the flood (Genesis 1-6), from the flood to Abraham (Genesis 7-11), from Abraham to the captivity (Genesis 12-2 Chronicles), and from the captivity to restoration (books like Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Daniel). Using the biblical figures, conservative chronologies range from men like Luther (3961 BC) to famous scholar James Usher (4004 BC) to those who assume some gaps in Genesis 11 and guesstimate creation around 10,000 BC. But there is no evidence to hurl us back to 3,000,000 BC.

We don’t know the precise date. Nor do we need to. The time of creation is most important in so far as we recognize it had a beginning and that God determined it.

The Act of Creation

In the beginning God created. God is the first subject of the first sentence in Scripture. Of course, He had to be, since there was no one else to do anything. But He is clearly the emphasis in all of chapter one, the subject of almost every verb. He speaks. He commands. He names. He pronounces good. God is named at least 32 times in the first 31 verses of the story, and if we include the pronouns, He’s mentioned even more.

The Hebrew word for God is Elohim (‏אֱלֹהִ֑ים). It is not a personal name or proper noun. Like our English word “God,” it is the title given to a deity that emphasizes supremacy and sovereignty and bigness and majesty and distinctness from whatever is not God. Yahweh is the primary personal name that God reveals for Himself, and we’ll see Yahweh as “LORD” as early as chapter two. But Elohim and Yahweh are one and the same in Genesis. There is no confusion about who or which Elohim is doing the creating. Israel’s national LORD is the (one and only) universal God.

Also significant is that Elohim is plural in form but singular in meaning (used with singular endings on all the Hebrew verbs in Genesis one). We shouldn’t read a full treatment of the Trinity into Elohim simply because it is plural, but it certainly allows for more than one persons in the Godhead. That truth is also hinted at in verse 2 (with the Spirit of God hovering over the face of the waters) and verse 26 (where God refers to conversation among Himself, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness”).

God brought things into reality that previously had no existence. The Hebrew word translated created is bara (so 1:1 begins bereshit bara). It stresses freedom and power on the part of the one creating. God is the only subject of this verb in the Old Testament. Sometimes the word refers to God’s work of making or forming things out of pre-existing materials, a remodeling or renovation. But when that happens, the materials are always mentioned. Here in verse 1, however, no pre-existent materials are mentioned (or again in verses 21 and 27). In this case bara means He created something entirely new, not just improved.

No man has ever made something from nothing. Man can create in the sense of forming one thing into something different or making it more complex, but no person can make something out of nothing. Perhaps you’ve heard the Latin phrase ex nihilo which means “out of nothing.” Even though verse 1 doesn’t explicitly say creation was out of nothing, the context definitely teaches that truth.

That means God alone is eternal. He alone is self-existent. He alone has the sovereign creativity and capability to make everything from nothing. And that He created teaches us that the universe had a beginning and a Creator; it did not exist eternally nor did it come into being by random cause.

That also means our world is not a result of chance, random variation, stray molecules, or willy-nilly gods. Genesis 1:1 shows God’s initiative (He moved first), independence (God moved apart from external influence) intention (God created with purpose), and intelligence (God created with creativity and order).

The Objects of Creation

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. “It is characteristic of many languages to describe the totality of something in terms of its extremes” (Wenham, 15). So, in other words, by saying He created the heavens and the earth, Moses means God created everything, the entire universe. Heavens refers to what we think of as the atmosphere or the sky, those things that are above. Earth refers to the planet, a place, what is below. In creating the universe, God created space and then focuses on a particular (and relatively small) place within that space.

It is particularly interesting to consider how in Genesis 1:1 we see SPACE, TIME, MATTER, ENERGY/FORCE, and ACTION, the things that define our existence. Herbert Spencer, an evolutionary philosopher and early advocate for Darwin, “outlined five “ultimate scientific ideas”: time, force, action, space, and matter. These are categories that (according to Spencer) comprise everything that is susceptible to scientific examination. …Genesis 1:1 accounts for all of Spencer’s categories. “In the beginning”—that’s time. “God”—that’s force. “Created”—that’s action. “The heavens”—that’s space. “And the earth”—that’s matter.” (referenced by Thomas, Genesis: A Devotional Commenatry, 31, and referenced by MacArthur, The Battle for the Beginning, 40-41)

Genesis 1:1 also frames our beliefs about God in such a way that certain other -isms are ruled out. For example, Henry Morris shows that this verse refutes (38):

• Atheism, the belief that there is no god. Verse 1 assumes God’s existence. There is no proof provided, or apparently necessary. It is taken for granted. I guess the point is, only a fool would say there is no God (cf. Psalm 14:1). God exists.
• Polytheism, the belief that there are many gods. Verse 1 makes plain that there are not multiple gods responsible for the universe as the result of of their petty fights. “The LORD our God, the LORD is one.”
• Pantheism, the belief that god is part of creation. Verse 1 reveals that God is distinct from His creation.
• Dualism, the belief that both good and evil are eternal and have been battling forever. Verse 1 reveals that only God was around. It also means that stuff was His idea, and He calls it “good.”
• And while we’re at it, verse 2 rules out Deism, the belief that God created and then doesn’t intervene after.

In just (seven Hebrew words) ten English words, Genesis 1:1 reveals that God exists, that God is one God, that God is separate from creation, and that He made things out of nothing. The origin of the universe is attributed to the only ever-existent, omnipotent, initiating Elohim.

The Condition of the Early Earth (verse 2)

After verse 1 every verse in Genesis chapter one begins with the conjunction “and.” This is one time where the ESV doesn’t help itself by trying to make a smoother read. The NASB sometimes uses the word “then,” which is fine, though it doesn’t include a connecting conjunction at the start of verse 2 either. The KJV does it right. The point is, Moses is moving us step by small, sequential step. Each new thing follows closely on the heels of the previous verse.

Moses moves from the creation of the universe (verse 1) to the earliest condition of the earth (verse 2). He focuses on one little part in the universe. In fact, it is interesting how earth-centric Genesis one is. I don’t think the reason is that the earth or what ends up being on it is so special, but instead because the earth is where God chose to tell His story and make His name known.

Though the ESV doesn’t include the conjunction, verse 2 steps immediately after verse 1.

[And] the earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.

Three successive and coordinate phrases focus on the early condition of the earth.

Unformed and Unfilled

First, And the earth was without form and void. Some of you know that the phrase tohu va bohu is the title of my blog. The Hebrew phrase means “without form and void” (or “formless and empty” -NIV, “inanis et vacua” -Vulgate). The word tohu means formless and describes something in disorder like the wilderness or desert. The word bohu means empty like a wasteland. The words in Hebrew are actually nouns, not adjectives, so a translation such as “the earth was a (watery) wilderness and wasteland” would work. The earth was uninhabitable and inhospitable to life at this point.

This first phrase in verse 2 sets the stage for the following six days. Days one (light), two (sky, seas), and three (dry land, vegetation) are God forming to the unformed world. Days four (lights), five (birds, fish), and six (animals, humans) are God filling the void.

A number of “Christian” scientists have taken tohu va bohu to say that the earth deteriorated between verse 1 and 2. They say creation was complete and pristine in verse 1 and that the earth then became without form and void. The biblical reason they give is that Isaiah 45:18 claims the LORD “did not create it formless (tohu)“.

But Isaiah appears to be talking about God’s goal in creation, Moses is writing about the process.

Besides, the scientists who make this argument come at it with the presupposition that the theories of science must be made to fit with Scripture. One of their key scientific “evidences” is that of geological strata which suggest corresponding geological ages. They claim it took thousands of years for each strata to form. Scientists believe that between verse 1 and 2 there was a huge gap in time to make room for those thousands of years, so called the Gap Theory.

One of the key elements of the Gap Theory, however, is that the strata are identified by different fossil records. But what does it take to make fossils? Fossils require living things. However we don’t learn anything about created life, like plants or animals, in verse 1. And equally important, it takes dead things. Death doesn’t come into the story until chapter three after Adam sinned.

For that matter, the strata overlap. There isn’t even solid scientific evidence for clear divisions. The Gap Theory is a guess, a supposition, and it is a guess based on a faulty premiss that reads into creation in verse 1 things that clearly don’t take place until later in chapter one or even chapter three.

Instead of all that, Moses moves simply from the general statement in verse 1 to the specified beginning and a focus on the earth. In its very beginning condition, God made it unformed and unfilled before He spoke specifically starting in verse 3.

Darkness and Deepness

The second description in verse 2, and darkness was over the face of the deep. Deep is a reference to “deep water,” but this is not a kind of primordial ooze with energy of its own. The formless condition was primarily water; it wasn’t until day three that dry land was separated. It was also dark. Light doesn’t appear until verse 3.

Present and Poised

The third description of the early earth is And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. There is some possibility that Spirit could be “wind” but the idea seems to be that God is present and poised for His next creative action. Besides, ruah is modified by Elohim, and every other time Elohim is used in Genesis chapter one it refers to God. We are about to see the increasing beauty and grandeur that God will create over the next six days.

Everything in chapter one is successive, close in sequence. Creation in the beginning (verse 1), the early condition of the earth (verse 2). Then with the creation of light (verses 3-5) all on day one, through the rest of week and the chapter into 2:3, the unformed is formed and the unfilled is filled.

Conclusion

If we get verse 1 right, we’re on the right road to get right the rest of the Bible. If we understand that one, sovereign, initiating God created everything and controls it all, then we understand that we owe our life to Him. We are part of His story.

In the bigger story, Genesis 1:1-2:3

declares that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is no mere localized or tribal deity, but the sovereign LORD of the whole earth. The apparently petty and insignificant family stories that occupy the bulk of the book are in fact of cosmic consequence, for God has chosen these men so that through them all the nations of the earth should be blessed. (Wenham, 15)

However, as is obvious in the world we live in, not everyone takes Genesis 1:1 and the rest of chapter one as truth. Is it because there isn’t enough evidence? Is it because the information is unclear? Is it because Moses seems like he’s speculating or making up a fairy tale? No. Moses treats this as pure history (as does the rest of the Bible, see Exodus 20:11; 31:17; Psa 8; 104; Matt 19:4-6; 2 Pet 3:5; Heb 11:3-4). God’s creation of the heavens and earth is not something to be proven, it is something to be believed. That is exactly the point in Hebrews 11:3.

By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible.

Creation is an issue of faith. The revelation of intelligent design from an initiating, powerful God as the first cause is there to be believed. You will never argue someone into creationism. They have all the information and evidence they need (says Paul in Romans 1:18-23). What they don’t have is faith.

So for our collective joy, remember that our world is not a result of chance, random variation, stray molecules, or willy-nilly gods. Genesis one shows God’s creating initiative, independence, intention, and intelligence. It frames our beliefs and inflames our worship. This isn’t an academic exercise, it is an adoration exercise. “Our help is in the name of the LORD who made heaven and earth” (Psalm 124:8).