"God thought" (Gen 1:3)

Reading through the story of creation

We’re making progress! So far, in our careful reading of the verses that tell about the first day of creation, we’ve worked through vv. 1 and 2:

1 When God began to create the sky and the earth —

בְּרֵאשִׁ֖ית בָּרָ֣א אֱלֹהִ֑ים אֵ֥ת הַשָּׁמַ֖יִם וְאֵ֥ת הָאָֽרֶץ׃

2 at the time the world was a tohu-bohu, with darkness over Deep and a God-wind hovering over the water — 

וְהָאָ֗רֶץ הָיְתָ֥ה תֹ֨הוּ֙ וָבֹ֔הוּ וְחֹ֖שֶׁךְ עַל־פְּנֵ֣י תְה֑וֹם וְר֣וּחַ אֱלֹהִ֔ים מְרַחֶ֖פֶת עַל־פְּנֵ֥י הַמָּֽיִם׃

Now let’s move ahead to the moment when creation actually begins:

3 God thought, Let there be light, and there was light. 

וַיֹּ֥אמֶר אֱלֹהִ֖ים יְהִ֣י א֑וֹר וַֽיְהִי־אֽוֹר׃

God thought וַיֹּ֥אמֶר אֱלֹהִ֖ים  First a quick reminder of what we said at the end of our discussion of v. 2: nothing has happened yet in this story.  But the grammatical form used with this verb – technically called the converted imperfect or the imperfect consecutive – is not just a past tense verb. It also identifies its action as the next consecutive event to occur.  Now that we understand what the world is like at this point, It is used here for the first time in the Bible, because this is the first action that the Bible wants to tell us about: “God thought.”

The Hebrew for this uses the verb amar, regularly defined as “to say,” and the form is va-yomer, which more than 2,000 times in the Bible is translated as “he said.”  But this is also the main verb Biblical Hebrew uses for “think.”  (The verb ḥashav, which is “think” in Modern Hebrew, means something more like “scheme” or “reckon” in Biblical Hebrew, depending on its form.). Of more than 5,000 occurrences of amar in the Bible, about 350 seem to – and sometimes must – refer to thought processes rather than pointing to words spoken aloud.

Thoughts can be formulated as words (though not all thoughts are), so it is quite natural for thoughts to be described as words that one “says” to oneself.  An example from the story of Saul and David will show you what I mean, and how words that are really “thought” rather than “spoken” might be identified:

1 Sam 18:17 Saul said [va-yomer sha’ul] to David, “Here is my oldest daughter, Merav – I will give her to you as a wife, as long as you become a soldier for me and fight the wars of YHWH.”  For Saul thought [ve-shaul amar], Let my hand not be against him; let the Philistines’ hand be against him.

In v. 18 David replies to Saul, modestly wondering how he could possibly become “the king’s son-in-law.”  He is responding, of course, to what Saul said out loud (va-yomer) and not to what Saul had previously said to himself (amar).  Saul had not “said” his plan to escape responsibility for David’s death by having the Philistines kill him out loud; it was a decision that he had taken.  The difference tense of the verb forms and the obvious need for Saul not to state his plan out loud make it clear that the second occurrence of amar refers to thought, not speech.

There is no reason for God in Gen 1:3 to conceal the statement he is about to make, but on the other hand there is no one around for God to say it to.  The medieval philosophers had tremendous questions about what it might mean for God to “say” anything: Does God have vocal cords?  Did a “sound” come from God’s “mouth,” or did God simply make the air vibrate in a way that would have conveyed those sounds to a human ear, had humans been in existence? Did God speak Hebrew before the world came into being?

The Bible, though, is not interested in explaining such matters, or (an even greater concern for the philosophers) how a perfect God could want anything to happen at a particular moment in time, implying that God was less than perfect before that moment.  The Bible wants to tell us not that words (in some language) were spoken out loud, but that creation began with a decision taken by God.  The verb it uses to express the taking of that decision is va-yomer, so I have translated this phrase as “God thought.”

As seems obvious to us now after thinking so carefully about vv. 1-2, the Bible is also not interested in telling us why God decided to create the world. But it will tell us, at long last, what the first step in creating the world was. We’ll turn to that next time.