Beginnings · Not dated
Chapter 1
In the Beginning
God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. There was evening and there was morning, a sixth day.
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
Darkness lay over the deep, a sea that had no shore. The earth was , and God’s hovered above the water.
“Let there be light,” God said, and there was light. For the first time, the water shone. God was pleased with the light, and he separated it from the darkness and gave them names, “day” for the light and “night” for the dark. Evening came, and then morning, and that was the first day.
On the second day God said, “Let an appear in the middle of the water and split it in two.” God made the expanse, with water under it and water over it, and he called it “sky.”
The sea still covered everything on the third day, when God said, “Let the water beneath the sky gather in one place, so the dry ground shows.” The water drew together, and land stood clear of it, wet and bare, with waves lapping at its new edges. God called the dry ground “earth” and the gathered water “seas,” and he liked what he saw.
“Let the land grow green,” he said, “with grass, plants that go to seed, and every kind of fruit tree, each carrying its own seed.” The earth brought them out. Where there had been bare ground there was green, and the air smelled of leaves. In God’s eyes this was good too, and that was the third day.
“Let there be lights up in the sky,” God said on the fourth day, “to keep day and night apart. They’ll be signs, marking out the seasons, the days and the years, and they’ll shine on the earth.”
God made , a larger one to rule the day and a smaller one to rule the night. He made the stars too, and set them all in the sky. God saw them shining, and they were good. The day blazed now, and at night the stars came out thick across the dark.
“Let the waters swarm with living things,” God said on the fifth day, “and let birds wing their way above the earth, across the open sky.” So God created the sea’s , every living thing that swarms through the water, and every kind of bird. Fish flashed silver under the waves, and the air was full of wings. God saw that they were good, and he blessed them. “Have young and grow in number,” he said. “Fill the seas, and let there be more and more birds all over the earth.”
On the sixth day God said, “Let the land bring out every kind of living creature: livestock, creeping things and wild animals.” So God made them all, each of its kind. Something rustled in the grass, and out on the hillsides the first herds were grazing. To God, these were good as well.
That same day God said, “Let’s make people in , to resemble us. Let them over every fish and bird, over the livestock and the whole earth, and over every creature that creeps along the ground.”
God created people in his own image, male and female. A man and a woman stood in the long grass, and the animals lifted their heads to look at them. Then God blessed them. “Have children and grow in number,” he told them, “and fill the earth and master it. Rule over every creature of the sea, the sky and the land.”
“Look,” God said, “I’m giving you food: every plant on earth that goes to seed, and every fruit tree with its seed. And I’m giving all the green plants as food to every animal and bird and everything that creeps along the ground, everything that breathes.”
God looked at all of it, everything he had made, and found it very good. Then evening came, and morning, and that was the sixth day.
With that, the heavens and earth were complete, and so was everything that fills them. On the seventh day God stopped working and rested. He blessed that day and made it , since that was when all his making came to an end.
of the heavens and earth from the time they were made. When made earth and sky, no shrub had come up in the fields yet and no plant had sprouted, because he had sent no rain and nobody was there to farm the land. But a rose from the earth and watered all of it.
God took from and shaped a man from it. Then he breathed life into him through the nostrils, and the man was alive. The first thing he ever knew was breath, coming into him. His chest rose, and fell, and rose again.
God planted a garden toward the east, in . Out of the ground he made every kind of tree grow, trees lovely to look at and good to eat from. At the garden’s heart stood the tree of life, and with it one more tree, the only one in the garden the man would be told to leave alone.
Out of Eden ran a river that watered the garden, and once it left the garden it split into four. The wound through all of , a land of good gold, where and onyx were found. The ran through all of , and the flowed east of . The fourth was the .
God set the man he had shaped in that garden, to work it and look after it. The man walked under the trees, through their deep shade, with the river running near, and the fruit hung low enough to pick.
God gave the man a command. “Eat from any tree you like,” he said, “but not the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The day you eat from that one, you’re sure to die.”
“It is not good for the man to be alone,” the Lord God said. “So I’ll make a for him, someone who matches him.”
He every kind of wild animal and bird out of the ground, and brought each one to the man to find out what he would call it. They came to him in pairs, , the cattle plodding up through the grass and the sparrows fluttering down into the branches. Each one kept the name the man gave it, livestock, birds and wild animals alike. Every creature had its mate, and he had none. For the man there was no helper who matched him.
So God sent a deep sleep over the man, and while the man slept, God took a from his side and closed up the flesh where it had been. Out of the rib he built a woman, and he led her to the man.
When the man opened his eyes, she was there, close enough to touch. “At last!” he said, sitting up, one hand going to his side. “Bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh! She is to be called ‘,’ because it was from man that she was taken.”
That is the reason a man leaves his parents and binds himself to his wife. The two of them become .
They were naked, the man and his wife both, and so far neither of them was ashamed.