Genesis 1 Commentaries

Genesis, Commentary to Chapter 1:1-2:3
Robert Alter
2. welter and waste. The Hebrew tohu wabohu occurs only here and in two later biblical texts
that are clearly alluding to this one. The second word of the pair looks like a nonce term coined
to rhyme with the first and to reinforce it, an effect I have tried to approximate in English by
alliteration. Tohu by itself means "emptiness" or "futility," and in some contexts is associated
with the trackless vacancy of the desert.
hovering. The verb attached to God's breath-wind-spirit (ruach) elsewhere describes an
eagle fluttering over its young and so might have a connotation of parturition or nurture as well
as rapid back-and-forth movement.
5. first day. Unusually, the Hebrew uses a cardinal, not ordinal, number. As with all the six
days except the sixth, the expected definite article is omitted.
6. vault. The Hebrew raki’a suggests a hammered-out slab, not necessarily arched, but the
English architectural term with its celestial associations created by poetic tradition is otherwise
appropriate.
24. wild beasts. Literally, the phrase would mean "beast of the earth," but the archaic
construct form for "beasts of," chayto, elsewhere regularly occurs in collocations [word
arrangements] that denote wild beasts. In verse 25, the archaic form is not used, but given the
close proximity of chayat ha'arets there to chayto 'erets here, it seems likely that the meaning is
the same.
26. a human. The term 'adam, afterward consistently with a definite article, which is used
both here and in the second account of the origins of humankind, is a generic term for human
beings, not a proper noun. It also does not automatically suggest maleness, especially not
without the prefix ben, "son of," and so the traditional rendering "man" is misleading, and an
exclusively male 'adam would make nonsense of the last clause of verse 27.
hold sway. The verb radah is not the normal Hebrew verb for "rule" (the latter is reflected in
"dominion" of verse 16), and in most of the contexts in which it occurs it seems to suggest an
absolute or even fierce exercise of mastery
the wild beasts. The Masoretic Text reads "all the earth," bekhol ha'arets, but since the term
occurs in the middle of a catalogue of living creatures over which humanity will hold sway the
reading of the Syriac Version, chayat ha'arets, "wild beasts," seems preferable.
27. In the middle clause of this verse, "him," as in the Hebrew, is grammatically but not
anatomically masculine. Feminist critics have raised the question as to whether here and in the
second account of human origins, in chapter 2, adam is to be imagined as sexually
undifferentiated until the fashioning of woman, though that proposal leads to certain dizzying
paradoxes in following the story.
Genesis 1, Commentaries, Page 1

Genesis, Chapter 1:1-2:3, Commentary
Richard Elliott Friedman
Introduction
The first portion of the Torah has a double role: it conveys its own story, and it sets the
context of the entire Torah. The Torah's stories have been observed to be rich in background,
as opposed to, for example, the epic poems of Homer. In Homer, each episode is self-
contained: all the information that a reader needs is provided then and there, and all action is in
the foreground.
That is fine, but it is not the way of the Torah. To read the Torah at any level beyond "Sunday
school," one must have a sense of the whole when one reads the parts. To comprehend what
happens in the exodus and in the revelation at Sinai, you have to know what has happened in
Genesis 1. Like some films that begin with a sweeping shot that then narrows, so the first
chapter of Genesis moves gradually from a picture of the skies and the earth down to the first
man and woman. The story's focus will continue to narrow: from the universe to the earth to
humankind to specific lands and peoples to a single family. (It will expand back out to nations in
Exodus.) But the wider concern with skies and the entire earth that is established here in the
first portion will remain.
When the story narrows to a singular divine relationship with Abraham, it will still be with the
ultimate aim that this will be "a blessing to all the families of the earth." Every biblical scene will
be laden—artistically, theologically, psychologically, spiritually—with all that has come before.
So when we read later of a man and his son going up a mountain to perform a fearful sacrifice,
that moment in the history of a family is set in a cosmic context of the creation of the universe
and the nature of the relationship between the creator and humankind. You can read the
account of the binding of Isaac without being aware of the account of the creation or the account
of the covenant between God and Abraham, but you lose something. The something that you
lose—depth—is one of the essential qualities of the Torah.
The first portion initiates the historical flow of the Torah (and of the entire Tanakh). It
establishes that this is to be a related, linear sequence of events through generations. That may
seem so natural to us now that we find this point obvious and banal. But the texts of the Torah
are the first texts on earth known to do this. The ancient world did not write history prior to these
accounts. The Torah's accounts are the first human attempts to recount history. Whether one
believes all or part or none of its history to be true is a separate matter. The literary point is that
this had the effect of producing a text that was rich in background: every event carries the
weight of everything that comes before it. And the historical point is that this was a new way to
conceive of time and human destiny.
There is also a theological point: this was a new way to conceive of a God. The difference
between the Torah's conception of God and the pagan world's conception not merely arithmetic:
one versus many. The pagan deities were known through their functions in nature: The sun god,
Shamash, was the sun. If one wanted to know essence of Shamash, the thing to do was to
contemplate the sun. If you wanted know the essence of the grain deity Dagon, you
contemplated wheat. To know Yamm, contemplate the sea.
But the God of the Torah was different, creating all of nature and therefore not knowable or
identifiable through any one element of nature. One could learn no more about this God by
contemplating the sea than by contemplating grain, sky, or anything else. The essence of this
God remains hidden. One does not know God through nature, but by the divine acts in history.

One never finds out what God is, but rather what God does—and what God says. This
conception, which informs all of biblical narrative, did not necessarily have to be developed at
the very beginning of the story, but it was. Parashat Bereshit establishes this by beginning with
accounts of creation and by then flowing through the first ten generations of humankind. (Those
"begat" lists are thus more important than people generally think.)
The Torah's theology is thus inseparable from its history and from its literary qualities.
Ultimately, there is no such thing as "The Bible as Literature" or "The Bible as History" or "The
Bible as . . . anything." There is: the Bible.
Commentary to Chapter 1
1:1. In the beginning of God's creating the skies and the earth. Rashi began his
commentary with the remark that the Torah could have begun with the first commandment to
Israel—the commandment to observe Passover—which does not come until Exodus 12, rather
than with creation. He answered that it begins with creation in order to establish God's
ownership of all the world—and therefore God's right to give the promised land to Israel. I
suggest that the lesson that we learn from the fact that the Torah does not begin with the first
commandment is precisely that the commandments are not the sole purpose of the Torah. The
Torah's story is no less important than the commandments that it contains. Law in the Bible is
never given separately from history. The Ten Commandments do not begin with the first "Thou
shalt," but with the historical fact that "I brought you out of the land of Egypt...."
Another lesson is that, in the Torah, the divine bond with Israel is ultimately tied to the divine
relationship with all of humankind. (Rashi did not refer to the first commandment, which is "Be
fruitful and multiply" and is given to all humankind, but rather to the first commandment to Israel,
which is Passover.) The first eleven chapters establish a connection between God and the
entire universe. They depict the formation of a relationship between the creator and all the
families of the earth. This relationship will remain as the crucial background to the story of Israel
that will take up the rest of the Torah.
1:1. In the beginning of God's creating the skies and the earth. The Torah begins with
two pictures of the creation. The first (Gen 1:1-2:3) is a universal conception. The second (2:4-
25) is more down-to-earth. The first has a cosmic feeling about it. Few other passages in the
Hebrew Bible generate this feeling. The concern of the Hebrew Bible generally is history, not the
cosmos, but Genesis 1 is an exception. There is a power about this portrait of a transcendent
God constructing the skies and earth in an ordered seven-day series. In it, the stages of the
fashioning of the heavenly bodies above are mixed with the fashioning of the land and seas
below.
The translation of the Torah's first phrase is a classic problem. Even at the risk of a slightly
awkward English, I have translated this line literally, not only to make it reflect the Hebrew, but
to show the significant parallel between this opening and the opening of the second picture of
creation in Gen 2:4, thus:
In the beginning of God's creating the skies and the earth
In the day of YHWH God's making earth and skies
(The second line is translated slightly differently above because it is not possible to reproduce
the doubled divine identification, YHWH God, with a possessive in English.)
Note that this first, universal conception puts the skies first, while the second, more earthly
account starts with earth.
1:2. the earth had been. Here is a case in which a tiny point of grammar makes a difference
for theology. In the Hebrew of this verse, the noun comes before the verb (in the perfect form).
This is now known to be the way of conveying the past perfect in Biblical Hebrew. This point of
grammar means that this verse does not mean "the earth was shapeless and formless"—
referring to the condition of the earth starting the instant after it was created. This verse rather
means that "the earth had been shapeless and formless"—that is, it had already existed in this
shapeless condition prior to the creation. Creation of matter in the Torah is not out of nothing
(creatio ex nihilo), as many have claimed. And the Torah is not claiming to be telling events from
the beginning of time.
1:2. shapeless and formless. The two words in the Hebrew, tohu and bohu, are understood
to mean virtually the same thing. This is the first appearance in the Torah of a phenomenon in
biblical language known as hendiadys, in which two connected words are used to signify one
thing. ("Wine and beer" [Lev 10:9] may be a hendiadys, as well, or it may be a merism, a similar
construction in which two words are used to signify a totality; so that "wine and beer" means all
alcoholic beverages.) The hendiadys of "tohu and bohu," plus the references to the deep and
the water, yields a picture of an undifferentiated, shapeless fluid that had existed prior to
creation.
1:2. God's spirit. Or "wind of God." Words for "soul" or "spirit" in Hebrew frequently denote
wind or breath (likewise in Greek: pneuma means both wind and spirit). This suggests that, in
the ancient world, life was associated, in the first place, with respiration, as opposed to later
determinations of life in terms of blood circulation or brain activity. Thus the animation of the first
human will be described this way: "And He blew into his nostrils the breath of life, and the
human became a living being."
1:2. God's spirit/wind hovering on the face of the water. The parallel with the ancient
pagan creation myth of the wind god (Enlil, or Marduk) defeating the goddess of the waters
(Tiamat; compare Hebrew tehom, translated "the deep," in this verse) is striking. The difference
between the two is striking, too: in the Torah the water and all other components of the universe
are no longer regarded as gods. Nature is de-mythologized. [See Page 58 of the Essays section for
Hertz’s refutation. Or is it a refutation at all? — Shammai]
1:3. Let there be light. God creates light simply by saying the words: "Let there be" (the
Hebrew jussive [a word, form, case, or mood expressing command]). Only light is expressly
created from nothing (creatio ex nihilo). All other elements of creation may possibly be formed
out of pre-existing matter, that is, from the initially undifferentiated chaos. Thus God later says,
"Let there be a space," but the text then adds, "And God made the space." And God says, "Let
there be sources of light," but the text adds, "And God made the sources of light." So we cannot
understand these things to be formed simply by the words "Let there be." Now we can
appreciate the importance of understanding the Torah's first words correctly: The Torah does
not claim to report everything that has occurred since the beginning of space and time. It does
not say, "In the beginning, God created the skies and the earth." It rather says, "In the beginning
of God's creating the skies and the earth, when the earth had been shapeless and formless...."
That is, there is pre-existing matter, which is in a state of watery chaos. Subsequent matter—dry
land, heavenly bodies, plants, animals—may be formed out of this undifferentiated fluid. In
Greece, the first philosopher, Thales, later proposed such a concept, that all things derive from
water. Examples from other cultures could be cited as well. There appears to be an essential
human feeling that everything derives originally from water, which is hardly surprising given that
we—and all life on this planet—did in fact proceed from water.
1:4. God separated. Initially there is only the watery chaos: shapeless and formless. Then
creation is the making of distinctions: "And God separated between the light and the darkness,"
"And separated between the water that was under the space and the water that was above the
space." Then more distinctions: between dry land and seas, among plants and animals "each
according to its kind," between day and night, and so on. In each case, creation is the act of
separating a thing from the rest of matter and then giving it a name.
1:5. God called the light "day" and called the darkness "night." The first day also
includes the creation of the ordering of time. Before the invention of day and night, time no less
than space would be undifferentiated: "formless." Light, the one thing that is totally ex nihilo, is
thus essential to all that follows: the separating between light and dark in an ordered
arrangement initiates a sequence of distinctions of time and space, and these distinctions
embody creation.
1:5. And there was evening, and there was morning. It is sometimes claimed mistakenly
that Genesis 1 is poetry. True, the wording is powerful and beautiful, and the recurring words
"And there was evening, and there was morning" and the chronology that they reflect lend a
formulaic order to the chapter. But that does not make the text poetry. It is prose.
1:6. space. The distinction between "the water that was under the space and the water that
was above the space" is particularly important and was frequently confusing to readers who
were not certain of the meaning of the old term for this space: "firmament." As Rashi perceived,
the text pictures a territory formed in the middle of the watery chaos, a giant bubble of air
surrounded on all sides by water. Once the land is created, the universe as pictured in Genesis
is a habitable bubble, with land and seas at its base, surrounded by a mass of water. Like this:
God calls the space "skies." "The skies" (or "heavens") here refer simply to space, to the sky
that we see, and not to some other, unseen place where God dwells or where people dwell after
their death.
The reference to "water that was above the space" presumably reflects the fact that when the
ancients looked at the sky they understood from its blue color that there was water up there
above the air. As when we look out at the horizon on a clear day and can barely distinguish
where the blue sea ends and the blue sky begins, so they pictured the earth as surrounded by
water above and below. The space was the invisible substance that holds the upper waters
back. It is important to appreciate this picture of the cosmos with which the Torah begins or one
cannot understand other matters that come later, especially the story of the flood. See the
comment on Gen 7:11.
1:6. Let there be a space. The "firmament" is either the entire air space or, more probably,
just the transparent edge of the space, like a glass dome (Ramban says "like a tent"), which is
actually up against the water. It is difficult to say which. The Hebrew root of the word, raki'a,
refers to the way in which a goldsmith hammers gold leaf very thin. This may suggest that the
firmament is best understood to be the thin outermost layer of the air space. Still, we must be
cautious not to commit the etymological fallacy. That means: we should not automatically derive
the meaning of a word from its root. People commonly make this mistake because the Hebrew
of the Tanakh is so beautifully constructed around three-letter roots. Looking for root meanings
is usually very helpful. But sometimes it can lead to misunderstandings. Words can evolve away
from their root meanings over centuries.
1:8. God called the space "skies." The space (or "firmament") and the sky are the same
thing. This appears to be an explanation of what the sky is. It is a transparent shell or space that
holds back the upper waters.
1:8. a second day. The first day's account concludes with the cardinal number: "one day." All
of the following accounts conclude with ordinal numbers: "a second day," "a third day," and so
on. This sets off the first day more blatantly as something special in itself rather than merely the
first step in an order. It may be because the first day's creation—light—is qualitatively different
from all other things. Or it may be because the opening day involves the birth of creation itself.
Or it may be that the first unit involves the creation of a day as an entity. A more mundane
explanation—which is presumably the peshat —would be that this simply is a known biblical
form, which has no special meaning for the matter of creation, because it occurs elsewhere as
well. See the numbering of the four rivers of Eden, which likewise uses the cardinal "one" and
then the ordinals "second, third, fourth" (Gen 2:11–14; see also 2 Sam 4:2).
1:10,12. God saw that it was good. God observes the day's product to be good on every
day except the second day. Instead, the text says "it was good" twice on the third day. Rashi
suggested that this is because the task of the division of the waters was begun on the second
day but not finished until the third. But, in that case, one might still ask why the task had to be
thus split between two days. The reason why the second day's work—the formation of the
space, with water above and below—is not pronounced "good" may rather be that God will later
choose to break this structure (in the flood story, Gen 7:11). The double notice that "it was
good" on the third day may be because (1) the formation of land and (2) the land's generation of
plants are each regarded as creations worthy of notice.
This explanation is based on the Masoretic Text (MT). The Greek text (Septuagint), on the
other hand, includes the words "And God saw that it was good" on the second day as well. It
may be that these words were simply omitted from the MT by a scribe whose eye jumped from
the first two letters of this line (Hebrew vav and yod) to the beginning of the next line ("And there
was evening ... "), which begins with the same two first letters (vav and yod). This is called
haplography.
1:12. vegetation that produces seeds of its own kind. The fact that plants (and later,
animals) not only reproduce but also propagate offspring like themselves, rather than random
production of new lifeforms, is not taken for granted. It is treated a both fundamental and a
wonder of life, which needed an explicit creative utterance by the deity.
1:13. third day. On the third day the divine attention turns from the cosmos to the world: first
land, then the vegetation that the land yields. On the fourth day the attention turns back to the
skies: the creation of lights in the sky. The alternation between skies and earth continues as the
deity turns back to the earth on the fifth day. This conveys that the earth and the skies are not
conceptually separate. Understanding the nature of the universe is essential to understanding
our place as humans on earth. We have especially come to realize this through the discoveries
in astronomy and physics of the last century.
1:15. they will be for lights in the space. Note that daylight is not understood here to derive
from the sun. The text understands the light that surrounds us in the daytime to be an
independent creation of God, which has already taken place on the first day. The sun, moon
and stars are understood here to be light sources—like a lamp or torch, only stronger. Their
purpose is also to be markers of time: days, years, appointed occasions.

This also implies an answer to an old question: People have questioned whether the first
three days are twenty-four-hour days since the sun is not created until the fourth day. But light,
day, and night are not understood here to depend on the existence of the sun, so there is no
reason to think that the word "day" means anything different on the first two days than what it
means everywhere else in the Torah. People's reason for raising this is often to reconcile the
biblical creation story with current evidence on the earth's age. But it is better to recognize that
the biblical story does not match the evidence than to stretch the story's plain meaning in order
to make it fit better with our current state of knowledge.
1:16. the bigger light. The sun. 1:16. the smaller light. The moon.
1:21. sea serpents. Hebrew tannin. This is generally understood to refer to some giant
serpentlike creatures that were formed at creation but later destroyed, associated with the
monsters Rahab (Isa. 51:9) or Leviathan (Isa. 27:1). Later, Aaron's staff (and the Egyptian
magicians' staffs) turns into such a creature (not merely a snake!) at the Egyptian court.
1:26. Let us make. Why does God speak in the plural here? Some take the plural to be "the
royal we" as used by royalty and the papacy among humans, but this alone does not account
for the fact that it occurs only in the opening chapters of the Torah and nowhere else. Others
take the plural to mean that God is addressing a heavenly court of angels, seraphim, or other
heavenly creatures, although this, too, does not explain the limitation of the phenomenon to the
opening chapters. More plausible, though by no means certain, is the suggestion that it is an
Israelite, monotheistic reflection of the pagan language of the divine council. In pagan myth, the
chief god, when formally speaking for the council of the gods, speaks in the plural. Such
language might be appropriate for the opening chapters of the Torah, thus asserting that the
God of Israel has taken over this role.
1:27. He. In the present age many people choose not to conceive of the deity as male or
female. In the Torah, however, there are passages in which one cannot help but understand
and translate a divine reference as masculine. The Torah depicts God as male. Rather than
impose a present view on an ancient text, I feel bound to leave the masculine references to the
deity as they are, although I urge those who study the Torah to contemplate what this has
meant through the ages from the time of the writing of the Torah to their own respective times.
1:27. in the image of God. We argue but truly do not know what is meant: whether a
physical, spiritual, or intellectual image of God. (Some light may be shed on this by Gen 5:3.
See the comment there.) Whatever it means, though, it implies that humans are understood
here to share in the divine in a way that a lion or cow does not. That is crucial to all that will
follow. The paradox, inherent in the divine-human relationship, is that only humans have some
element of the divine, and only humans would, by their very nature, aspire to the divine, yet God
regularly communicates with them by means of commands. Although made in the image of
God, they remain subordinates. In biblical terms, that would not bother a camel or a dove. It will
bother humans a great deal.
1:27. in the image of God; He created them male and female. Both men and women are
created in the divine image. If the physical image of God is meant, it is difficult to say what is
implied about the divine appearance.
1:28. Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. This commandment has now been fulfilled.
1:28. subdue it and dominate. Incredibly, some have interpreted this command to mean that
humans have permission to abuse the earth and animal and plant life—as if a command from
God to rule did not imply to be a good ruler!
1:31. everything that He had made, and, here, it was very good. The initial state of
creation is regarded as satisfactory. Things will soon go wrong, but it is unclear if that means

that the "good" initial state becomes flawed, or if there is hope that the course of events will fit
into an ultimately good structure in "the length of days." One of the most remarkable results of
having a sense of the Tanakh as a whole when one reads the parts is that one can experience
the overwhelming irony of God's judging everything to be good in Genesis 1 when so much will
go wrong later. The deity notes on every working day that what was created in that day is good
(except on Monday, but it compensates, saying "God saw that it was good" twice on Tuesday;
see the comment on 1:10,12). And at the end of the six days God observes that everything is
very good. But before we are even out of Parashat Bereshit, we read that God begins to see
"that human bad was multiplied in the earth" (6:5). Above all, the struggle between God and
humans will recur and unfold powerfully and painfully. The day in which the humans are created
is declared to be good, but this condition ends very soon. No biblical hero or heroine will be
unequivocally perfect. Individuals and nations, Israel and all of humankind, will be pictured in
conflict with the creator for the great majority of the text that will follow. Parashat Bereshit is a
portent of this coming story; which is arguably the central story of the Tanakh, because its first
chapter contains the creation of humans that is divinely dubbed good, and its last verses contain
the sad report that God regrets making the humans in the earth (6:6ff.). Importantly, Parashat
Bereshit ends not with the deity's mournful statement that "I regret that I made them,” (6:7) but
rather with a point of hope: that Noah found favor in the divine sight (6:8) And this note, that
there can be hope for humankind based on the acts of righteous individuals, is also a portent of
the end of the story. In the last installment in the narrative, the book of Nehemiah, God does not
speak, there are no extraordinary reports of miracles, no angels, dreams, talking animals, or
Urim and Tummim (see comment on Exodus 28:301); but humans, now having to live without
these things, behave better and appear to be more committed to the Torah than perhaps any
other generation in the Bible. (Nehemiah comes last in the Leningrad Codex, the oldest
complete manuscript of the entire Tanakh. Printed editions of the Hebrew Bible generally have
the books of Chronicles last, but the story ends with Nehemiah.) Nehemiah ends by asking his
God to "Remember me for good" (13:31). The fact that the Hebrew Bible's' story concludes with
the word "good" is an exquisite, hopeful bookend to the opening chapter of Genesis, in which
everything starts out being good.
2:1. the skies and the earth and all their array were finished. Attempts to reconcile this
seven-day creation story with evolution and geological and cosmological evidence of the age of
the universe are absurd, requiring a twisting of the words of the text in ways they never remotely
meant. Arguments over whether the biblical or the scientific picture is correct are pointless. Of
course the biblical picture is not a factual, literal account of the universe's origin. The evidence
to this effect is overwhelming. It is, however, a meaningful, valuable, instructive account: It
conveys a particular conception of the relationship between humans and the cosmos, of the
1
Urim and Tummim. We have pondered for centuries what these are. They have something to do with
inquiring of God for an answer to a question. They may contain letters that can spell out long answers, or
they may provide only a "yes" or no," or they may also provide a third option of "no response." They are
mentioned four times in the Torah, twice in 1 Samuel (14:41, where the Greek text differs from the
Masoretic Text by a full line; and 25:6), and then never again in Israel's history until the narrative of Ezra
and Nehemiah, where it is noted that answers through the Urim and Tummim are not available (Ezra
2:63; Neh 7:65). We must admit it: we just do not know what they are. What is important is that several
different biblical sources indicate that there was a belief that it was possible to ask questions of God and
get an answer, and that this was done through a priest, not a prophet. It was a mechanism other than
prophecy to learn the will of God. And it is known as a practice only in Israel's earliest era.

relations between the sexes, of the linear flow of time, of the Sabbath. It sets the Bible's story in
a context of a universe that starts out as good, with God being initially very close to humans….
2:2. the seventh day. The seven-day week is found in cultures around the world, presumably
because of the association with the sun, moon, and five planets that are visible to the naked
eye. Hence, the English Sunday (Sun-day), Monday (Moon-day; cf. French lundi), and Saturday
(Saturn-day), and French mardi (Mars-day) and mercredi (Mercury-day). It is fundamental to
creation in the Torah, again relating the ordering of time to the very essence of creation. The
reckoning of days and years is established by the creation of the sun and moon on the fourth
day. The reckoning of weeks is established by the very order of divine activity in the creation
itself. This may suggest that the week is given a special status among units of time, and this
appears to be confirmed by the singular status given to the Sabbath. It is blessed by the creator,
sanctified, and later will be recognized among the Ten Commandments.
2:2. ceased. The word (Hebrew shavat) means to "stop," not to "rest" as it is often taken. The
explicit association of the Sabbath with rest will come later, in the Ten Commandments.
2:3. made it holy. (Hebrew kadesh) This word is commonly understood to mean "separated,"
in the sense of being set off from the usual, rather than denoting a special spiritual or even
mysterious quality, but there really is little linguistic justification for that understanding. Holiness
in the Torah seems indeed to be a singular, powerful quality that certain objects, places, and
persons acquire.…It means much more than just "separate."
2:3. made it holy. What does it mean to make a day holy? The creation of humans toward
the end of the account is both a climax and, at the same time, a small component of the
universe. Their creation is not the culmination of the story. The culmination, as the story is
arranged, is the Sabbath, a cosmic event: the deity at a halt and consummation. A. J. Heschel
wrote that the special significance of the concept of the Sabbath is that it means the
sanctification of time. Most other religious symbols are spatial: sacred objects, sacred places,
sacred music, prayers, art, symbolic foods, gestures, and practices. But the first thing in the
Torah to be rendered holy is a unit in the passage of time. This powerfully underscores the
Torah's character as containing the first known works of history. In consecrating the passage of
time in weekly cycles, the institution of the Sabbath at the end of the creation account in
Genesis 1 is itself a notable union of the cosmic/cyclical and the historical/linear flow of time. It
sets all of the Bible's coming accounts of history in a cosmic structure of time, just as the story
of the creation of the universe in that chapter sets the rest of the Bible's stories in a cosmic
structure of space. Thus Genesis 1 is a story of the fashioning of a great orderly universe out of
chaos in which everything fits into an organized temporal and spatial structure.

The JPS Torah Commentary: Genesis
Nahum Sarna
Creation (1:1–2:3)
The story of Creation, or cosmology, that opens the Book of Genesis differs from all other
such accounts that were current among the peoples of the ancient world. Its lack of interest in
the realm of heaven and its economy of words in depicting primeval chaos are highly
uncharacteristic of this genre of literature. The descriptions in Genesis deal solely with what lies
beneath the celestial realm, and still the narration is marked by compactness, solemnity, and
dignity.
There is abundant evidence that other cosmologies once existed in Israel. Scattered allusions
to be found in the prophetic, poetic, and wisdom literature of the Bible testify to a popular belief
that prior to the onset of the creative process the powers of watery chaos had to be subdued by
God. These mythical beings are variously designated Yam (Sea), Nahar (River), Leviathan
(Coiled One), Rahab (Arrogant One), and Tannin (Dragon). There is no consensus in these
fragments regarding the ultimate fate of these creatures. One version has them utterly
destroyed by God; in another, the chaotic forces, personalized as monsters, are put under
restraint by His power.
These myths about a cosmic battle at the beginning of time appear in the Bible in fragmentary
form, and the several allusions have to be pieced together to produce some kind of coherent
unity. Still, the fact that these myths appear in literary compositions in ancient Israel indicates
clearly that they had achieved wide currency over a long period of time. They have survived in
the Bible solely as obscure, picturesque metaphors and exclusively in the language of poetry.
Never are these creatures accorded divine attributes, nor is there anywhere a suggestion that
their struggle against God could in any way have posed a challenge to His sovereign rule.
This is of particular significance in light of the fact that one of the inherent characteristics of all
other ancient Near Eastern cosmologies is the internecine strife of the gods. Polytheistic
accounts of creation always begin with the predominance of the divinized powers of nature and
then describe in detail a titanic struggle between the opposing forces. They inevitably regard the
achievement of world order as the outgrowth of an overwhelming exhibition of power on the part
of one god who then manages to impose his will upon all other gods.
The early Israelite creation myths, with all their color and drama, must have been particularly
attractive to the masses. But none became the regnant version. It was the austere account set
forth in the first chapter of Genesis that won unrivaled authority. At first it could only have been
the intellectual elite in ancient Israel, most likely the priestly and scholarly circles, who could
have been capable of realizing and appreciating the compact forms of symbolization found in
Genesis. It is they who would have cherished and nurtured this version until its symbols finally
exerted a decisive impact upon the religious consciousness of the entire people of Israel.
The mystery of divine creativity is, of course, ultimately unknowable. The Genesis narrative
does not seek to make intelligible what is beyond human ken. To draw upon human language to
explain that which is outside any model of human experience is inevitably to confront the
inescapable limitations of any attempt to give verbal expression to this subject. For this reason
alone, the narrative in its external form must reflect the time and place of its composition. Thus it
directs us to take account of the characteristic modes of literary expression current in ancient
Israel. It forces us to realize that a literalistic approach to the text must inevitably confuse idiom
with idea, symbol with reality. The result would be to obscure the enduring meaning of that text.

The biblical Creation narrative is a document of faith. It is a quest for meaning and a
statement of a religious position. It enunciates the fundamental postulates of the religion of
Israel, the central ideas and concepts that animate the whole of biblical literature. Its
quintessential teaching is that the universe is wholly the purposeful product of divine
intelligence, that is, of the one self-sufficient, self-existing God, who is a transcendent Being
outside of nature and who is sovereign over space and time.
This credo finds reiterated expression in the narrative in a number of ways, the first of which
is the literary framework. The opening and closing lines epitomize the central idea: “God
created.” Then there is the literary structure, which presents the creative process with bilateral
symmetry. The systematic progression from chaos to cosmos unfolds in an orderly and
harmonious manner through a series of six successive and equal units of time. The series is
divided into two parallel groups, each of which comprises four creative acts performed in three
days. The third day in each group is distinguished by two productions. In each group the
movement is from heaven to terrestrial water to dry land. Moreover, the arrangement is such
that each creation in the first group furnishes the resource that is to be utilized by the
corresponding creature in the second group. The chart below illustrates the schematization.
THE SIX DAYS OF CREATION

Group I , The Resource Group II, The Utilizer
Day Creative Act Day Creative Act
1 Light 4 The luminaries
2 Sky, leaving terrestrial waters 5 Fish and fowl
3 Dry land 6 Land creatures
Vegetation Humankind
(Lowest form of organic life) (Highest form of organic life)
The principle of order, deliberation, and direction is further inculcated by means of the
progression from inorganic matter to the lowest forms of organic life to four categories of living
creatures: fish and fowl, reptiles, the higher animals, and finally humankind. In addition, the
entire narrative adheres to a uniform literary pattern. Each of the literary units begins with a
declaration formula, “God said,” followed by a command, a statement recording its fulfillment, a
notice of divine approbation, and a closing formula, “There was evening and there was
morning,” with the accompanying numbered day.
Finally, the Narrator employs the device of number symbolism, the heptad, to emphasize the
basic idea of design, completion, and perfection. The opening proclamation contains seven
words; the description of primal chaos is set forth in twice seven words; the narrative’s seven
literary units feature seven times the formula for the effectuation of the divine will and the
statement of divine approval; and the six days of creation culminate in the climactic seventh.
This seven-day typology is widely attested in the ancient world. As early as the twenty-second
century B.C.E., King Gudea of Lagash, in southern Mesopotamia, dedicated a temple with a
seven-day feast. The literatures of Mesopotamia and Ugarit are replete with examples of seven-
day units of time. Most common is a state of affairs that lasts for six days with a climactic
change taking place on the seventh. While the Creation narrative conforms to this literary
convention, it is unique in that a different action occurs each day, with no activity at all on the
seventh.
1. When God began to create This rendering of the Hebrew looks to verse 3 for the
completion of the sentence. It takes “verse 2 to be parenthetical, describing the state of things at

the time when God first spoke. Support for understanding the text in this way comes from 2:4
and 5:1, both of which refer to Creation and begin with “When.” The Mesopotamian creation
epic known as Enuma Elish also commences the same way. In fact, enuma means “when.”
Apparently, this was a conventional opening style for cosmological narratives. As to the peculiar
syntax of the Hebrew sentence—a noun in the construct state (be-re’shit) with a finite verb
(bara’)— analogies may be found in Leviticus 14:46, Isaiah 29:1, and Hosea 1:2. This seems to
be the way Rashi understood the text.
The traditional English translation reads: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the
earth.” This rendering construes the verse as an independent sentence complete in itself, a
solemn declaration that serves as an epitomizing caption to the entire narrative. It takes the
initial word be-re’shit to mean “at the beginning of time” and thus makes a momentous assertion
about the nature of God: that He is wholly outside of time, just as He is outside of space, both of
which He proceeds to create. In other words, for the first time in the religious history of the Near
East, God is conceived as being entirely free of temporal and spatial dimensions.
In favor of the traditional English translation are the arguments that be-re’shit does not have
to be in the construct state and that the analogies of 2:4 and 5:1, as well as of Enuma Elish, are
inexact. In each instance, the word translated “when” is literally “in the day,” which is not the
case in this verse.
God Unlike the pagan cosmologies, Genesis exhibits no interest in the question of God’s
origins. His existence prior to the world is taken as axiomatic and does not even require
assertion, let alone proof. There is no definition of God or any mystical speculation about His
nature. God’s nature finds expression not in philosophical abstractions but through His acts and
through the demands He makes on human beings.
The term for God used here and throughout the present account of Creation is ’elohim. This is
not a personal name but the general Hebrew word for deity. It can even refer to pagan gods.
Although plural in form, only rarely is it not constructed with a singular verb or adjective. The
plural form may signify majesty or serve to intensify the basic idea. The preference for the use
of ’elohim in this chapter, rather than the sacred divine name YHVH, may well be conditioned by
theological considerations; the term ’elohim, connoting universalism and abstraction, is most
appropriate for the transcendent God of Creation.
create The Hebrew stem b-r-’ is used in the Bible exclusively of divine creativity. It signifies
that the product is absolutely novel and unexampled, depends solely on God for its coming into
existence, and is beyond the human capacity to reproduce. The verb always refers to the
completed product, never to the material of which it is made. As Ibn Ezra observed, bara’ does
not of itself denote the creation of something out of nothing (creatio ex nihilo). This doctrine
seems to have been first articulated in the late Second Temple work, 2 Maccabees: “Look up to
heaven and earth and see all that is therein, and know that God made them out of things that
did not exist” (7:28). However, the Genesis narrative does contain intimations of such a concept.
Precisely because of the indispensable importance of pre-existing matter in the pagan
cosmologies, the very absence of such mention here is highly significant. This conclusion is
reinforced by the idea of creation by divine fiat without reference to any inert matter being
present. Also, the repeated biblical emphasis upon God as the exclusive Creator would seem to
rule out the possibility of pre-existent matter. Finally, if bara’ is used only of God’s creation, it
must be essentially distinct from human creation. The ultimate distinction would be creatio ex
nihilo, which has no human parallel and is thus utterly beyond all human comprehension.
heaven and earth The definite article in the Hebrew specifies the observable universe. The
use here of a merism, the combination of opposites, expresses the totality of cosmic

phenomena, for which there is no single word in biblical Hebrew. The subsequent usage of each
term separately refers to the sky and the dry land in the more restricted and concrete sense. We
are not told how the cosmos came into being, but other texts point to a tradition of its creation by
means of divine fiat. Thus, Psalm 33:6 and 9 declare: “By the word of the LORD the heavens
were made, / by the breath of His mouth, all their host. . . / For He spoke, and it was; / He
commanded, and it endured.” The postbiblical 2 Esdras 6:38 has the same notion: “I said, O
Lord, You have indeed spoken from the beginning of creation; on the first day You said: ‘Let
heaven and earth be made,’ and Your word accomplished the work.”
2. Following the general comprehensive statement comes a detailed description of the
primordial state of the world.
unformed and void Hebrew tohu va-vohu. This compound phrase appears again in the
Bible in Jeremiah’s prophetic vision of the return of the primal chaos (Jer. 4:23–27), thus leaving
no doubt that the phrase designates the initial chaotic state of the earth. That God should create
disorganized matter, only to reduce it to order, presents no more of a problem than does His
taking six days to complete creation instead of instantaneously producing a perfected universe.
The quintessential point of the narrative is the idea of ordering that is the result of divine intent.
It is a fundamental biblical teaching that the original, divinely ordained order in the physical
world has its counterpart in the divinely ordained universal moral order to which the human race
is subject.
darkness Throughout the Bible darkness is often a symbol of evil, misfortune, death, and
oblivion. Here it seems to be not just the absence of light but a distinct entity, the origin of which
is left unclear. Isaiah 45:7, however, explicitly ascribes its existence to divine creation.
the deep Hebrew tehom, the cosmic abyssal water that enveloped the earth. The text says
nothing about how or when this watery mass came into existence. Proverbs 8:22–24 makes it
one of God’s creations. In many unrelated mythologies water is the primal element, a notion that
most likely arose from its amorphous nature. To the ancients, this characteristic seemed to
represent appropriately the state of affairs before chaos was reduced to order and things
achieved stable form. It is instructive that tehom is treated as a Hebrew proper name; like all
such names, it never appears with the definite article. Although not feminine in grammatical
form, it is frequently employed with a feminine verb or adjective. At times it is personified. In
Genesis 49:25 and Deuteronomy 33:13 it “couches below,” and in Habakkuk 3:10, “Loud roars
the deep” in panic at the wrathful approach of God. Lastly, tehom appears in Isaiah 51:10 in a
mythic context. All these facts suggest that tehom may once have been the name of a mythical
being much like the Mesopotamian Tiamat, the female dragonesque personification of the
primordial salt-water ocean, representing the aggressive forces of primitive chaos that
contended against the god of creativity. Here in Genesis, tehom is thoroughly demythologized.
a wind from God Hebrew ruach means “wind, breath, spirit.” “Wind” is the most popular
rendering of the word in ancient and medieval Jewish sources. As a physical phenomenon, wind
conforms to the general picture of primal chaos evoked by this verse, except that, unlike
darkness and water, it is not mentioned again in the Creation story. One possible explanation
may be that wind reappears as the agent by means of which the water is separated—that is,
blown back—as in Genesis 8:1 at the conclusion of the Flood and in Exodus 14:21 at the
crossing of the Sea of Reeds. Wind often functions as a divine agent in the Bible. Another
interpretation takes ruach in the sense of God’s creative, life-giving, sustaining energy. Still a
third possibility lies in its use as a term heralding the arrival of God, expressing His immanence,
or symbolizing His presence. The last two explanations connect the phrase with the following
verse, thus alerting us to an imminent, dramatic development: God is about to transform the
inert, disorganized matter, to affect it by His presence, to animate it with His spirit.
sweeping The Hebrew stem r-kh-f appears otherwise in Deuteronomy 32:11, where it
describes an eagle hovering over its young, a meaning it also possesses in Ugaritic; but in
Jeremiah 23:9 it refers to bones trembling or shaking. The basic idea of the stem is vibration,
movement. Hitherto all is static, lifeless, immobile. Motion, which is the essential element in
change, originates with God’s dynamic presence.
water This is either the cosmic ocean believed by the ancients to surround the earth or the
same water referred to in verses 6, 7, 9, and 10, namely, the water covering the solid mass of
earth. It is doubtful that the two were really differentiated in the Hebrew mind.
THE FIRST GROUP (vv. 3–13)
DAY ONE
3. God said The divine word shatters the primal cosmic silence and signals the birth of a new
cosmic order. Divine fiat is the first of the several modalities of creativity employed in this
account. “God said” means “God thought” or “God willed.” It signifies that the Creator is wholly
independent of His creation. It implies effortlessness and absolute sovereignty over nature.
Let there be The directive yehi, found again in verses 6 and 14, is reserved for the creation of
celestial phenomena. Its usage here may be an allusion to the divine personal name YHVH.
light The first creation by God’s utterance is fittingly that which serves in the Bible as a
symbol of life, joy, justice, and deliverance. The notion of light independent of the sun appears
again in Isaiah 30:26 and Job 38:19-20. Most likely it derives from the simple observations that
the sky is illuminated even on cloudy days when the sun is obscured and that brightness
precedes the rising of the sun. The source of this supernal, nonsolar light of creation became a
subject of rabbinic and mystical speculation. Genesis Rabba 3:4 expresses the view that this
light is the effulgent splendor of the Divine Presence. Psalms 104:2, with its theme of creation,
describes God as “wrapped in a robe of light.”
and there was light God’s commanding utterance possesses the inherent power of self-
realization and is unchallengeable. The sevenfold repetition of the execution formula, “and there
was,” emphasizes the distinction between the tension, resistance, and strife that are
characteristic of ancient Near Eastern cosmologies and the fullness of divine power that we find
here.
4. God saw Not visual examination but perception. The formula of divine approbation, “God
saw that [it] was good,” affirms the consummate perfection of God’s creation, an idea that has
important consequences for the religion of Israel. Reality is imbued with God’s goodness. The
pagan notion of inherent, primordial evil is banished. Henceforth, evil is to be apprehended on
the moral and not the mythological plane.
God separated Separation, or rather differentiation, is the second modality of creation. Light,
like darkness, is viewed as a discrete entity, a notion made explicit in Isaiah 45:7 and Job 38:19.
5. God called According to the conceptions of the ancient Near East, possessing no name
was equivalent to nonexistence. An Egyptian text describes pre-creation as the time “when no
name of anything had yet been named,” and Enuma Elish similarly designates primeval chaos
as the period “when on high the heaven had not [yet] been named, and below the firm ground
had not [yet] been given a name.” Name-giving was thus associated with creation and, by
extension, with domination, for the one who gives a name has power over the object. In the
present narrative, day and night, the sky, and the earth and sea are all named by God. This is
another way of expressing His absolute sovereignty over time and space, the latter in both its

celestial and terrestrial dimensions. It should be noted that in Genesis name-giving finalizes the
creative act but does not initiate it or cause it to come about.
evening. . . morning Hebrew ‘erev and boker mean, strictly speaking, the “sunset” and the
“break of dawn,” terms inappropriate before the creation of the sun on the fourth day. Here the
two words, respectively, signify the end of the period of light, when divine creativity was
suspended, and the renewal of light, when the creative process was resumed. As Rashbam
noted, the day is here seen to begin with the dawn. The same idea dictates the order of words
in the oft used phrase “day and night,” and it underlies the regulations of Leviticus 7:15 and
22:30, which mark off the morning following the bringing of certain sacrifices as the time limit by
which they may be eaten. This accords with the Egyptian practice of reckoning the day from one
morning to the next. On the other hand, the Mesopotamian concept of the day as beginning at
eventide also has its counterpart in the Bible in the phrase “night and day” and in the
observance of the Day of Atonement “from evening to evening,” as laid down in Leviticus 23:32.
This is the system that governs the Jewish religious calendar, by which the Sabbath and
festivals commence at sunset and terminate at the start of the following night.
a first day Hebrew ’echad functions both as a cardinal number (“one”) and an ordinal number
(“first”) in many texts.
DAY TWO
6. an expanse The Hebrew noun rakia‘ is unparalleled in cognate languages. The verbal form
is often used for hammering out metal or flattening out earth, which suggests a basic meaning
of “extending.” It is unclear whether the vault of heaven was here viewed as a gigantic sheet of
metal or as a solid layer of congealed ice. The latter interpretation might be inferred from
Ezekiel 1:22, which is how Josephus understood it as well.
water from water The purpose of the expanse is to create a void that separates what was
taken to be the source of rain above from the water on earth.
7. God made This verb ‘-s-h, used again in verses 16 and 25, simply means that the divine
intention became a reality. It does not represent a tradition of creation by deed as opposed to
word. This is clear from a passage like Psalms 33:6, which features God’s creative word and
deed with no perceptible difference between them: “By the word of the Lord the heavens were
made (Heb. na‘asu) / by the breath of His mouth, all their host.” In the same way, several texts
indiscriminately interchange “create” (b-r-’) and “make” (‘-s-h), with God as the actor.
and it was so Henceforth this is the standard formula for expressing the execution of the
divine command. It was only the brevity of God’s initial utterance in verse 3 that permitted
repetition of its content without stylistic clumsiness. Ibn Janah observed that the formula should
follow verse 6 by analogy with verses 24-25. In fact, each occurrence immediately follows the
divine speech, which is how it appears in the Septuagint version of the text. The formula ki tov,
“that it was good,” is omitted because rain has no value unless there is dry land to be fructified;
the creative acts relating to water are not completed until the third day, the account of which
appropriately records the formula twice.
DAY THREE
9. The two acts of this day are interconnected, the first being the prerequisite of the second.
below the sky That is, the terrestrial waters.
the dry land The terrain now visible to man.
11. Let the earth sprout This creative act constitutes an exception to the norm that God’s
word directly effectuates the desired product. Here the earth is depicted as the mediating
element, implying that God endows it with generative powers that He now activates by His
utterance. The significance of this singularity is that the sources of power in what we call nature,
which were personified and deified in the ancient world, are now emptied of sanctity. The
productive forces of nature exist only by the will of one sovereign Creator and are not
independent spiritual entities. There is no room in such a concept for the fertility cults that were
features of ancient Near Eastern religions.
vegetation Hebrew deshe’ is the generic term, which is subdivided into plants and fruit trees.
A similar botanical classification is found in Leviticus 27:30. The function of these productions is
revealed in verses 29–30.
seed-bearing That is, endowed with the capacity for self-replication.
of every kind That is, the various species that collectively make up the genus called deshe’.
That this is the meaning of Hebrew le-mino is clear from several texts. 17
THE SECOND GROUP (vv. 14–31)
DAY FOUR
14. Let there be lights This pronouncement corresponds to verse 3, “Let there be light.” The
emergence of vegetation prior to the existence of the sun, the studied anonymity of these
luminaries, and the unusually detailed description have the common purpose of emphasizing
that sun, moon, and stars are not divinities, as they were universally thought to be; rather, they
are simply the creations of God, who assigned them the function of regulating the life rhythms of
the universe. With regard to the particulars, apart from the alternating cycle of day and night,
there is some uncertainty as to interpretation.
signs for the set times Hebrew ’otot and mo‘adim are here treated as hendiadys, a single
thought expressed by two words. The “set times” are then specified as “the days and the years.”
It is also possible to take ’otot as the general term meaning “time determinant,” a gauge by
which “fixed times” (mo‘adim) such as new moons, festivals, and the like are determined, as
well as the days and the years.
15. to shine upon earth To focus their light downward, not upward upon heaven.
16. Here the general term “luminaries” is more precisely defined. Significantly, no particular
role is assigned to the stars, which are not further discussed. This silence constitutes a tacit
repudiation of astrology. Jeremiah 10:2 reads: “Thus said the LORD: / Do not learn to go the
way of the nations, / And do not be dismayed by portents in the sky; / Let the nations be
dismayed by them!”
DAY FIVE
The process of Creation is now sufficiently advanced to sustain life, which is classified
according to its habitat: creatures that colonize the waters and creatures that populate the sky.
20. Let the waters bring forth swarms Water does not here possess inherent, independent
generative powers as it does in the pagan mythologies. It produces marine life only in response
to the divine command.
living creatures Hebrew nefesh chayyah means literally “animate life,” that which embodies
the breath of life. It is distinct from plant life, which was not considered to be “living.” It is unclear
why the formula “and it was so” is omitted here. It appears in the Septuagint version.
across the expanse of the sky Literally, “over the face of,” that is, from the viewpoint of an
earth observer looking upward.

21. God created This is the first use of bara’ after verse 1. Here it signifies that a new stage
has been reached with the emergence of animate beings.
the great sea monsters This specification expresses an unspoken antipagan polemic.
Hebrew tannin appears in Canaanite myths from Ugarit, together with Leviathan, as the name of
a primeval dragon-god who assisted Yam (Sea) in an elemental battle against Baal, the god of
fertility. Fragments of this myth, in a transformed Israelite version, surface in several biblical
poetic texts in which the forces of evil in this world are figuratively identified with Tannin
(Dragon), the embodiment of the chaos that the Lord vanquished in primeval time. By
emphasizing that “God created the great sea monsters” late in the cosmogonie process, the
narrative at once strips them of divinity.
22. God blessed them Animate creation receives the gift of fertility. Plant life was not so
blessed, both because it was thought to have been initially equipped with the capacity for self-
reproduction by nonsexual means and because it is later to be cursed. The procreation of
animate creatures, however, requires individual sexual activity, mating. This capacity for sexual
reproduction is regarded as a divine blessing.
DAY SIX
The drama of Creation is moving toward its final act, the production of animate beings whose
natural habitat is dry land. The unusual expansiveness of this section, the enhanced formula of
approbation, and the exceptional use of the definite article with the day number indicate that the
narrative is reaching its climax. The section is divided into two parts. Verses 24-25 describe the
emergence of the animal kingdom, which is classified according to three categories: cattle,
creeping things, and wild beasts. The drama then culminates in verses 26-30 with the creation
of the human being.
24. Let the earth bring forth It is uncertain whether the production of animals from earth is a
reflex of the concept of “mother earth” or is simply a figurative way of expressing the natural
environment of these creatures.
25. The execution of the divine utterance reverses the order of verse 24 so as to juxtapose
’adamah, “earth,” to ’adam, “human being,” in the next verse.
creeping things A general term for creatures whose bodies appear to move close to the
ground. Here it seems to encompass reptiles, creeping insects, and very small animals.
The absence of a blessing upon these categories of animals is striking. It may be that,
whereas the natural habitat of fish and fowl allows for their proliferation without encroaching
adversely upon man’s environment, the proliferation of animals, especially the wild variety,
constitutes a menace. This idea is actually expressed in Exodus 23:29 and Leviticus 26:22.
26. The second section of the sixth day culminates the creative process. A human being is
the pinnacle of Creation. This unique status is communicated in a variety of ways, not least by
the simple fact that humankind is last in a manifestly ascending, gradational order. The creation
of human life is an exception to the rule of creation by divine fiat, as signaled by the
replacement of the simple impersonal Hebrew command (the jussive) with a personal, strongly
expressed resolve (the cohortative). The divine intent and purpose are solemnly declared in
advance, and the stereotyped formula “and it was so” gives way to a thrice-repeated avowal that
God created the man, using the significant verb b-r-’. Human beings are to enjoy a unique
relationship to God, who communicates with them alone and who shares with them the custody
and administration of the world.

At the same time, the pairing of the creation of man in this verse with that of land animals, and
their sharing in common a vegetarian diet, focuses attention on the dual nature of humankind,
the creatureliness and earthiness as well as the Godlike qualities.
The mysterious duality of man—the awesome power at his command and the starkness of his
utter insignificance as compared with God—is the subject of the psalmist who, basing himself
on the present narrative, exclaims: “When I behold Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, / the
moon and stars that You set in place, / what is man that You have been mindful of him, / mortal
man that You have taken note of him, / that You have made him little less than divine, / and
adorned him with glory and majesty; / You have made him master over Your handiwork, / laying
the world at his feet” (Pss. 8:4–7).
Let us make The extraordinary use of the first person plural evokes the image of a heavenly
court in which God is surrounded by His angelic host. Such a celestial scene is depicted in
several biblical passages. This is the Israelite version of the polytheistic assemblies of the
pantheon—monotheized and depaganized. It is noteworthy that this plural form of divine
address is employed in Genesis on two other occasions, both involving the fate of humanity: in
3:22, in connection with the expulsion from Eden; and in 11:7, in reference to the dispersal of
the human race after the building of the Tower of Babel.
man Hebrew ’adam is a generic term for humankind; it never appears in Hebrew in the
feminine or plural. In the first five chapters of Genesis it is only rarely a proper name, Adam. The
term encompasses both man and woman, as shown in verses 27–28 and 5:1–2, where it is
construed with plural verbs and terminations.
in our image, after our likeness This unique combination of expressions, virtually identical
in meaning, emphasizes the incomparable nature of human beings and their special relationship
to God. The full import of these terms can be grasped only within the broader context of biblical
literature and against the background of ancient Near Eastern analogues.
The continuation of verse 26 establishes an evident connection between resemblance to God
and sovereignty over the earth’s resources, though it is not made clear whether man has power
over nature as a result of his being like God or whether that power constitutes the very essence
of the similarity. A parallel passage in 9:6-7 tells of God’s renewed blessing on the human race
after the Flood and declares murder to be the consummate crime precisely because “in His
image did God make man.” In other words, the resemblance of man to God bespeaks the
infinite worth of a human being and affirms the inviolability of the human person. The killing of
any other creature, even wantonly, is not murder. Only a human being may be murdered. It
would seem, then, that the phrase “in the image of God” conveys something about the nature of
the human being as opposed to the animal kingdom; it also asserts human dominance over
nature. But it is even more than this.
The words used here to convey these ideas can be better understood in the light of a
phenomenon registered in both Mesopotamia and Egypt, whereby the ruling monarch is
described as “the image” or “the likeness” of a god. In Mesopotamia we find the following
salutations: “The father of my lord the king is the very image of Bel (salam bel) and the king, my
lord, is the very image of Bel”; “The king, lord of the lands, is the image of Shamash”; “O king of
the inhabited world, you are the image of Marduk.” In Egypt the same concept is expressed
through the name Tutankhamen (Tutankh-amun), which means “the living image of (the god)
Amun,” and in the designation of Thutmose IV as “the likeness of Re.”
Without doubt, the terminology employed in Genesis 1:26 is derived from regal vocabulary,
which serves to elevate the king above the ordinary run of men. In the Bible this idea has
become democratized. All human beings are created “in the image of God”; each person bears

the stamp of royalty. This was patently understood by the author of Psalm 8, cited above. His
description of man in royal terms is his interpretation of the concept of the “image of God”
introduced in verse 26. It should be further pointed out that in Assyrian royal steles, the gods are
generally depicted by their symbols: Ashshur by the winged disk, Shamash by the sun disk, and
so forth. These depictions are called: “the image (salam) of the great gods.” In light of this, the
characterization of man as “in the image of God” furnishes the added dimension of his being the
symbol of God’s presence on earth. While he is not divine, his very existence bears witness to
the activity of God in the life of the world. This awareness inevitably entails an awesome
responsibility and imposes a code of living that conforms with the consciousness of that fact.
It should be added that the pairing of the terms tselem and demut, “image” and “likeness,” is
paralleled in a ninth-century B.C.E. Assyrian-Aramaic bilingual inscription on a statue at Tell
Fekheriyeh in Syria. The two terms are used interchangeably and indiscriminately and obviously
cannot be used as criteria for source differentiation.
They shall rule The verbs used here and in verse 28 express the coercive power of the
monarch, consonant with the explanation just given for “the image of God.” This power,
however, cannot include the license to exploit nature banefully, for the following reasons: the
human race is not inherently sovereign, but enjoys its dominion solely by the grace of God.
Furthermore, the model of kingship here presupposed is Israelite, according to which, the
monarch does not possess unrestrained power and authority; the limits of his rule are carefully
defined and circumscribed by divine law, so that kingship is to be exercised with responsibility
and is subject to accountability. Moreover, man, the sovereign of nature, is conceived at this
stage to be functioning within the context of a “very good” world in which the interrelationships of
organisms with their environment and with each other are entirely harmonious and mutually
beneficial, an idyllic situation that is clearly illustrated in Isaiah’s vision of the ideal future king
(Isa. 11:1–9). Thus, despite the power given him, man still requires special divine sanction to
partake of the earth’s vegetation, and although he “rules” the animal world, he is not here
permitted to eat flesh (vv. 29-30; cf. 9:3-4).
There is one other aspect to the divine charge to man. Contrary to the common beliefs of the
ancient world that the forces of nature are divinities that may hold the human race in thralldom,
our text declares man to be a free agent who has the God-given power to control nature.
27. male and female He created them No such sexual differentiation is noted in regard to
animals. Human sexuality is of a wholly different order from that of the beast. The next verse
shows it to be a blessed gift of God woven into the fabric of life. As such, it cannot of itself be
other than wholesome. By the same token, its abuse is treated in the Bible with particular
severity. Its proper regulation is subsumed under the category of the holy, whereas sexual
perversion is viewed with abhorrence as an affront to human dignity and as a desecration of the
divine image in man.
The definition of the human community contained in this verse is solemnly repeated in 5:1-2,
an indication of its seminal importance. Both sexes are created on the sixth day by the hand of
the one God; both are made “in His image” on a level of absolute equality before Him. Thus the
concept of humanity needs both male and female for its proper articulation.
It is noteworthy that the recurrent formula “of every kind,” hitherto encountered with the
emergence of every living thing, is here omitted. There is only one human species. The notion
of all humankind deriving from one common ancestry directly leads to the recognition of the
unity of the human race, notwithstanding the infinite diversity of human culture. The sages of the
Mishnah, in Sanhedrin 4:5, observed that mankind was created as a single unit in order to
inculcate the idea that the destruction of a single life is tantamount to the destruction of the

entire world and, conversely, the preservation of a single life is the preservation of the entire
world. The sages further understood that God, in order to promote social harmony, intended that
no person have claim to unique ancestry as a pretext for asserting superiority over others.
28. God blessed them and God said to them The difference between the formulation here
and God’s blessing to the fish and fowl in verse 22 is subtle and meaningful. Here God directly
addresses man and woman. The transcendent God of Creation transforms Himself into the
immanent God, the personal God, who enters into unmediated communion with human beings.
Be fertile and increase Some commentators have understood this blessing of fertility to
encompass a religious duty of procreation as well. However, only in its repetition in 9:7,
following the depopulation of the earth by the Flood, is it clearly prescriptive. 24
30. God makes provision for the sustenance of man and beast—a reminder that man is still a
creature totally dependent on the benevolence of God. The narrative presupposes a pristine
state of vegetarianism. Isaiah’s vision of the ideal future in 11:7 and 65:25 sees the carnivorous
animals becoming herbivorous.
very good A verdict on the totality of Creation, now completed.
the sixth day The exceptional definite article here and with the seventh day points to the
special character of these days within the scheme of Creation.
Chapter 2: THE SEVENTH DAY (vv. 1–3)

The ascending order of Creation, and the “six-plus-one” literary pattern that determines the
presentation of the narrative, dictates that the seventh day be the momentous climax. Man is
indeed the pinnacle of Creation, but central to the cosmogonic drama is the work of God, the
solo performer. The account of Creation opened with a statement about God; it will now close
with a statement about God. The seventh day is the Lord’s Day, through which all the creativity
of the preceding days achieves fulfillment. The threefold repetition of the day number indicates
its paramount importance within the cosmic whole. The seventh day is in polar contrast to the
other six days, which are filled with creative activity. Its distinctive character is the desistance
from labor and its infusion with blessing and sanctity. This renders unnecessary the routine
approbation formula. An integral part of the divinely ordained cosmic order, it cannot be
abrogated by man. Its blessed and sacred character is a cosmic reality entirely independent of
human effort.
The human institution of the Sabbath does not appear in the narrative. Indeed, the Hebrew
noun shabbat is absent, and we have only the verbal forms of the root. There are several
possible reasons for the omission. First, the expression “the seventh day” is required by the
conventional, sequential style of the creation narrative in which numbered day follows numbered
day in an ascending series. Further, the term shabbat connotes a fixed institution recurring with
cyclic regularity. This would be inappropriate to the present context and, in general, inapplicable
to God. Finally, as we read in Exodus 31:13, 16, and 17, the Sabbath is a distinctively Israelite
ordinance, a token of the eternal covenant between God and Israel. Its enactment would be out
of place before the arrival of Israel on the scene of history.
Nevertheless, there cannot be any doubt that the text provides the unspoken foundation for
the future institution of the Sabbath. Not only is the vocabulary of the present passage
interwoven with other Pentateuchal references to the Sabbath, but the connection with Creation
is made explicit in the first version of the Ten Commandments, given in Exodus 20:8–11.
“Remember the sabbath day and keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but
the seventh day is a sabbath of the LORD your God....For in six days the LORD made heaven
and earth and sea, and all that is in them, and He rested on the seventh day...and hallowed it.”

The biblical institution of the weekly Sabbath is unparalleled in the ancient world. In fact, the
concept of a seven-day week is unique to Israel, as is also, so far, the seven-day cosmogonic
tradition. Both these phenomena are extraordinary in light of the widespread use of a seven-day
unit of time, both as a literary convention and as an aspect of cultic observance in the ancient
Near East. The wonderment is compounded by additional data. The other major units of time—
day, month, and year—are uniformly based on the phases of the moon and the movement of
the sun, and the calendars of the ancient world are rooted in the seasonal manifestations of
nature. Remarkably, the Israelite week has no such linkage and is entirely independent of the
movement of celestial bodies. The Sabbath thus underlines the fundamental idea of Israelite
monotheism: that God is wholly outside of nature. [Emphases here are mine: Shammai]
It is still a moot point whether the noun shabbat is derived from the verb sh-b-t, “to cease,” or
vice versa. Attempts have been made to connect it with the Babylonian-Assyrian calendrical
term shapattu, which is described as ūm nūkh libbi, “the day of the quieting of the heart (of the
god),” that is, the day when he is appeased. This day, however, is defined as the fifteenth of the
month, the day of the full moon. It is not certain that every full moon was called shapattu, nor is
it clear how the term would have been transferred to the Israelite cyclical seventh day freed of
any lunar association. The etymology and exact meaning of that term still remain problematical.
In fact, the likelihood exists that shapattu is itself a loan word in Akkadian. In addition, there is
no evidence that the day entailed a cessation from labor. Whatever its etymology, the biblical
Sabbath as an institution is unparalleled in the ancient world.
1. all their array Hebrew tsava’, in the sense used here, is strictly speaking applicable only to
“heaven”; but, by the figure of speech known as zeugma, it is extended to apply to the “earth” as
well.
2. On the seventh day This phrase caused embarrassment to ancient translators and
commentators, for it seems to be out of harmony with the context, implying some divine activity
also on this day. However, the preposition can easily mean “by,” and the verb can be taken as a
pluperfect, “had finished,” or as a declarative, “pronounced finished,” just as “he declared it holy”
in verse 3.
He ceased This is the primary meaning of sh-b-t; the idea of resting is secondary.
3. God blessed...declared it holy Unlike the blessings of verses 22 and 28, which are
verbal, specific, material, and relate to living creatures, this blessing is undefined and pertains to
time itself. The day becomes imbued with an extraordinary vital power that communicates itself
in a beneficial way. That is why the routine day-formula is here omitted. God, through His
creativity, has already established His sovereignty over space; the idea here is that He is
sovereign over time as well. Through his weekly suspension of normal human activity, man
imitates the divine pattern and reactualizes the original sacred time of God, thereby recovering
the sacred dimension of existence. Paradoxically, he also thereby rediscovers his own very
human dimension, his earthliness, for the Sabbath delimits man’s autonomy, suspends for a
while his creative freedom, and declares that on that one day each week nature is inviolable.
holy This first use of the key biblical concept of holiness relates to time. This is in striking
contrast to the Babylonian cosmology, which culminates in the erection of a temple to Marduk
by the gods, thereby asserting the sanctification of space.
all the work of creation that He had done This smooth English conceals a difficulty in the
Hebrew, which literally translates “all His work that God created to do.” Ibn Ezra and Radak
understood the final verb as connoting “[for man] to [continue to] do [thenceforth].” Ibn Janah.
and Ramban connected the final verb with the preceding “ceased,” thereby taking it to mean:
“He ceased to perform all His creative work.”

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Genesis, Commentary to Chapter 1:1-2:3

Genesis 1, Commentaries, Page 1

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THE SIX DAYS OF CREATION

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THE FIRST GROUP (vv. 3–13)

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THE SECOND GROUP (vv. 14–31)

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Genesis 1, Commentaries, Page 19

Chapter 2: THE SEVENTH DAY (vv. 1–3)

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