Introducing God
“In the beginning God created...” – Genesis 1:1a
Dear Friends,
It’s been weighing on my heart to do a series on the creation story and the fall of man so I am kicking it off today with the first verse of the Bible. There is so much packed into this first verse and it is so easily passed over as we continue to read into the full creation story. So I am going to stop here and unpack it a little bit.
Let’s start with breshit, the Hebrew word for “In the beginning.” What makes this distinctive is that it introduces the concept of time. In eternity, there is no beginning or end, but there is with time. So when we read “In the beginning,” I believe we should take this as the creation of time. Yet already present at the beginning of time was God. God is eternal, not temporal. He was already there when time began.
Unfortunately, the English language loses much of the meaning of the original Hebrew word used here for God, Elohim. Elohim is significant. First, it is one of the many Hebrew words for God, but this one characterizes the majesty, greatness and power of God. This is something we would expect considering we need a God of great power to fulfill the rest of the story of redemptive history.
Second, and along similar lines, it is presumptive. There’s no discussion of how God came to be or why God is there in the first place. It’s the basic presupposition of the Bible. There is a God. It requires no further explanation.
Third, the word itself is a bit of a paradox. It comes from the Hebrew word, Eloah, which is the Hebrew name of God, but it has a plural ending to make it Elohim. The writer gives us a word that is plural in form, but singular in meaning. We know that it is singular in meaning because the Hebrew word for created, bara, is singular.
Let me step out and explain this briefly. In many languages, verbs have both gender and number. In English, we say, “He ran, she ran, we ran.” The verb ran has neither gender nor number. It can be used with the masculine, he, the feminine, she, or the plural, we.
But bara is masculine singular. And the grammatical rule is that the verb must agree with the subject. It can only be used with a singular, masculine subject. Consequently, the noun, Elohim, represents one God who is masculine in nature. That’s why He is referred to as Father.
So just in these first three words breshit bara Elohim, we are introduced to an eternal, majestic, mighty, creator God who has both plurality and singularity and is masculine in nature. As the revelation of the Bible unfolds, we will learn that these first three words introduce us to a God who is three in one (plurality and singularity), Father, Son (masculine) and Holy Spirit thousands of years before anyone ever uses the term Trinity.
In Christ,
David
