GENESIS 1:1. Understanding the First Verse

IN THE BEGINNING, GOD CREATED

HEAVENS AND EARTH

One of the least observed details of the creation account is that the First Day of creation, chronologically speaking, does not begin in the first verse of the Tora. Although from the point of view of the biblical text the first day of creation includes verses 1 and 2, DAY ONE begins with the appearance of the light, in verse 3. Why? Because DAY ONE is determined by the day / night transition.Therefore, the first two verses of the Tora correspond to “DAY ZERO”. This first observation can help us, among other things, to better understand the complexity of the question of time since Creation. The time that has elapsed since DAY ONE excludes the undetermined time since the first Act of Creation (verse 1) to the appearance of light (verse 3).

Now let’s look at the first verse, word by word.

“Bereshit” does not mean “In the beginning”, it literally means: “In the beginning of ….” But instead of being followed by a noun (In the beginning of time, etc.) it is followed by a verb, “created”, the perfect past tense of the verb create. What makes this word more complex is that the Hebrew word BERESHIT is also marked by a sign that represents a comma (tarha). The combination of the genitive (nismakh) and a comma, something not only unusual but contradictory, led me to suggest that the word BERESHIT should be understood in a reflexive sense. Something like “In the beginning of the … beginning.” That is, when nothing but God existed, not even atoms or some prime matter in a chaotic state, as suggested by the Greek philosopher Plato.

The second word, BARA, confirms the explanation of the first. BARA is used to indicate an exclusively Divine creation; a creation from nothing (ex-nihilo). It should be noted that while we understand in general the two ideas expressed in these two words– “In the beginning …”, before there was matter or time; and “created” bringing into existence something from nothing — are absolutely incomprehensible to our limited understanding. This is the esoteric or mystical aspect of the creation account, it is no possible to visualize it, its nature is unattainable for the human mind.

This is the most relevant word of this entire verse and the story of Creation. The main message of the Tora is that God is the Creator of the Universe, and the world was not created spontaneously, as an accidental quantum act. This is fundamental because if the world has a Creator, creation has a purpose, and vice versa.

Maimonides explains that the words of the Tora uses are not complicated regarding their literal meaning. The difficulty is that the semantic sense of the word changes, sometimes significantly, according to the context in which it appears. In the creation account, the word shamayim, literally “heavens”, appears in different contexts. Shamayim generally refers to the visible, bright or dark sky. It can also refer to the solar system: the sun, the moon and the planets that keep earth in its privileged location that allows the existence of liquid water. In our case, the first verse of the Tora, the meaning of this word covers the universe exhaustively. With one exception: our planet.

This word obviously refers to our planet. And it helps us better understand the extraordinary magnitude of the first act of creation. At the moment it is estimated that the universe includes more than 100 billion galaxies. Each galaxy contains 100 billion stars and each star, an indeterminate number of planets (our star, the sun, has 8 or 9) and each planet, taking into account our own solar system can have between 1 and 50 satellites (moons).

All this unimaginable number of celestial bodies is described with a single word “hashamayim”: the universe.

But the most interesting thing, I think, is that the Tora highlights with a separate word a quantitatively insignificant planet that will have the privilege of being conditioned by the Creator to host life and humanity.

From the second verse on, “heavens” will no longer be modified, and the Tora will concentrate exclusively on our planet, as we will explain BH later.

To summarize: the first verse of the Tora describes the creation of the entire universe, all existing matter, including our planet.

So, what does the first act of creation exclude? Planet earth will be modified in the next four days to generate by Divine command the two elements not included in the first act of creation: life, FIFTH DAY, and human intelligence(nefesh, neshama), SIXTH DAY.