A reading from the book of Genesis (1:1-2:2)
In the beginning God created heaven and earth. Now the earth was a formless void, there was darkness over the deep, with the spirit of God sweeping over the waters. God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light. God saw that light was good, and God separated light from darkness. God called light ‘day’, and darkness he called ‘night’. And there was evening and morning, the first day.
God said, ‘Let there be a dome in the midst of the waters to divide the waters in two.’ And so it was. God made the dome, and it divided the waters under the dome from the waters above the dome. God called the dome ‘sky’. And there was evening and morning, the second day.
God said, ‘Let the waters under the sky come together into a single mass, and let dry land appear.’ And so it was. God called the dry land ‘earth’ and the mass of waters ‘seas’, and God saw that it was good. God said, ‘Let the earth produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants, and fruit trees on earth, each bearing fruit of its own kind within it.’ And so it was. The earth produced vegetation: the various kinds of seed-bearing plants and the fruit trees, each bearing fruit of its own kind within it. God saw that it was good. And there was evening and morning, the third day.
God said, ‘Let there be lights in the dome of heaven to separate day from night, and let them be signs for festivals, days and years. Let them be lights in the dome of heaven to give light on the earth.’ And so it was. God made the two great lights: the greater light to rule the day, the smaller light to rule the night, and the stars. God set them in the dome of heaven to give light on the earth, to rule the day and the night and to separate light from darkness. God saw that it was good. And there was evening and morning, the fourth day.
God said, ‘Let the waters teem with living creatures, and let birds wing their way above the earth across the dome of heaven.’ And so it was. God created great sea monsters and all the creatures of every kind that glide and teem in the waters, and winged birds of every kind. God saw that it was good. God blessed them, saying, ‘Be fruitful, multiply, and fill the waters of the seas; and let the birds multiply on land.’ And there was evening and morning, the fifth day.
God said, ‘Let the earth produce living creatures of every kind: cattle, creeping things and wild animals of every kind.’ And so it was. God made wild animals in their own kind, and cattle in theirs, and all the creatures that creep along the earth in their own kind. God saw that it was good. God said, ‘Let us make man in our own image, in the likeness of ourselves, and let them be masters of the fish of the sea, the birds of heaven, the cattle, all the wild animals and all the creatures that creep along the earth.’
God created man in the image of himself,
in the image of God he created him,
male and female he created them.
God blessed them, saying to them, ‘Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and subdue it. Be masters of the fish of the sea, the birds of heaven and all the creatures that creep along the earth.’ God also said, ‘Look, to you I give all the seed-bearing plants on the surface of the earth, and all the trees with seed-bearing fruit; this will be your food. And to all the wild animals, all the birds of heaven and all the living creatures that creep along the ground, I give all the foliage of the plants as their food.’ And so it was. God saw all he had made, and indeed it was very good. And there was evening and morning, the sixth day.
Thus heaven and earth were completed and all their array. On the seventh day God had completed the work he had done. He rested on the seventh day after all the work he had been doing.
This first reading takes us back to the ‘beginning’ (re’shith), and focusses on God and on creation. The first verse solemnly opens the Scriptures with the reference to God, who ‘created heaven and earth’. The text proceeds to describe what existed before God intervened. So, in this text, there is no sense of creation ‘out of nothing’. The earth was a ‘formless void’ (in Hebrew tohu wabohu). There was a threatening darkness over the deep, for light had not yet been created. The third element, in Hebrew ruah ’elohim, is a ‘wind from God’ (NRSV), nicely translated in NAB as ‘a mighty wind’. This is similar to the ‘wind’ God sends after the flood in Gen 8:1. There is no reference to the Spirit here. The first intervention of God is to ‘speak’, when God says ‘Let there be light’. Light conquers darkness. God’s speaking punctuates the whole passage. This is creation by the word of the living God.
Other actions of God are woven in to the passage: ‘separating’, ‘making’, ‘creating’, ‘setting’, ‘naming’ and ‘blessing’. This anthropological richness honours the multiform wisdom and power of God. The reading covers the six days of creation, with the sixth day reporting both the creation of the animals, and that of human beings. The human being (’adam) is differentiated as man and woman. This climax of creation is celebrated in three lines of poetry, with the word ‘create’ (bara’) in each.
The whole narrative is punctuated by the statement that ‘God saw that it was good (tob)’, and, in the case of human beings, ‘that it was very good (tob me‘od)’. On the seventh day, the sabbath (shabbat), God ‘rested’. It will be this verse of Genesis which gives the motivation for the observance of the Sabbath in the Exodus 20 version of the Ten Commandments.
The transition from darkness to light, from chaos to order, the transition into the fulness of God’s world, sets the template for the readings to come, and for the whole of the Easter celebration. This is the first ‘night of salvation’ in the Targum of Jonathan on Exodus (see Introduction).
Psalm 104 (103) is a parallel text to Genesis 1. Both are hymnic celebrations of the immense scope of God’s creative work. There are repeated echoes of Genesis 1: light (’or), the deep (tehom), the waters, the birds of heaven, plants, animals and human beings.
Psalm 33 (32) This alternative psalm puts the emphasis on God’s ‘word’ (dabar), which is ‘faithful’ (yashar), and by which God made the heavens. Echoes of Genesis 1 include the ‘hosts’ (tseba’ot) of heaven, the seas, and the deep. God’s people are blessed, for God’s love (hesed) fills the earth.