1 Then the Sky and the Earth were finished וַיְכֻלּ֛וּ הַשָּׁמַ֥יִם וְהָאָ֖רֶץ
We have started Genesis 2, and we have heard for the last time that “there was an evening and there was a morning, a [numbered] day.” But weeks have seven days, not the six of Genesis 1, and this will be — it is — the seventh day. So I’m keeping the tagline “reading through the story of creation” for another three verses. I’ll change it for v. 4 and then again as we move forward from v. 5.
Genesis 1 began with an announcement about the creation of the Sky and the Earth, and Genesis 2 begins with the announcement that creation is finished. Biblical Hebrew is a VSO (verb-subject-object) language, so that verb is the first word of the Hebrew chapter, va-y’khullu, a verb in the Pual binyan, a passive form. The active, Piel form will begin v. 2, telling us who finished creation.
The root of this verb is כלה k-l-h, and it is related to the word כל kol ‘all’ that you see toward the end of the verse. I would have loved to translate this verb as “they were totaled” if that English word didn’t resonate so loudly with automobiles that are ready for the scrap heap. You can say in Hebrew that something is “completed,” but that’s not the verb being used here.
Despite its relationship to “all,” this is a verb you use when something is over. As Ethel Barrymore is reputed to have said, “That’s all there is, there isn’t any more.” When God gives the young Samuel a message for his boss Eli, the High Priest at Shiloh, God explains that he is going to do everything he had threatened to do to Eli, “from beginning to end [הָחֵ֖ל וְכַלֵּֽה haḥel v’khalleh].” Here too kalleh means “it’s over.”
Now for a responsible opposing viewpoint.
I translated this verb to say “then the Sky and the Earth were finished” because it is in the form we’ve talked about before — technically the converted imperfect or imperfect consecutive — that’s used in biblical narrative to keep the action moving. It implies that its verb is the next thing that happened: God said, “Let there be light,” and then there was light, and then God separated light from darkness, and then God (simultaneously) named the light and the darkness.
Genesis 1 ended by stating that there was an evening, then a morning, and that these comprised the sixth day of Creation Week. If we take our verb form seriously, the next thing that happened, on Day Seven, is that the world was finished. We will definitely talk more about this when we get to v. 2; for now, let’s remember that even though everything pertaining to Sky and Earth has been made, it is only now, on the seventh day, that they are “finished.”
and all their auxiliaries וְכָל־צְבָאָֽם׃
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