Day One of Creation

Bonus Post

Friends, a long time ago I promised I would try to figure out a way to provide premium subscribers with a little something extra. This post — which is free for everyone — is a first attempt to fulfill that promise.

What I’ve done is to put the entire translation of Day One of Creation (Gen 1:1–5) here in one place, with links to all the relevant posts for each phrase in the translation. Because this was the beginning of the column, I’m also providing links to the introductory posts. The first three are here, here and here.

In this (fourth) post, I lay out the following points:

• The story of creation is told in two different ways.

• Version 1 overlaps two biblical chapters.

• Our method: commentary.

• The “actual words” of the Bible means the Hebrew words.

Here (in the fifth post) is the English translation of Day One with a recording of each verse in Hebrew.

And here it is again below, with links to each of the relevant posts. All these posts have been unlocked so they’re free for everyone to read. Comments (on this post) are also open to everyone, so you can recommend improvements to this format or offer other helpful suggestions. My intention is to do this for everyone (if you find it useful) for all of the seven days of creation, and then, for premium subscribers, every chapter or so.

^{Gen 1:1} When God¹ began to create the sky and the earth — ² at the time the world was a tohu-bohu, with darkness over Deep and a God-wind hovering over the water — ³ God thought, Let there be light, and there was light. ⁴ God saw that the light was good, and God distinguished light from darkness. ⁵ God named the light Day and the darkness Night. There was an evening and there was a morning: Day One.

Before Day Two began, I posted …

• a refresher on the purpose of this Substack;

• a more detailed look at what Gen 1:5 means;

• a careful look at all of Day One; and

• a discussion of the verb ברא and the concept of creation, to prepare us to read Day Two.

Again, all these posts should be free for everyone to read. Please let me know if you run into a problem. And … thanks for reading The Bible Guy!

1. Hebrew and English use different word orders. So the first clickable link in v. 1 is on “God,” but that post actually was published after the next link, which comes first in the Hebrew. I won’t point this out each time it happens in the series.