The Grand Overture-Genesis 1:1-5

At the beginning of large works of music, there will often be an overture that is played in an effort to announce the major themes of a work or to highlight forthcoming movements. Different musical phrases are borrowed from the rest of the piece and fit together in a neat package that is offered to listening audiences to prepare them for what is to come. It is no different for the beginning of Genesis. In Genesis 1:1-5, four elements are used to create an overture that successfully introduces the major theological and organizational themes that will be in play throughout our study of the book. In this, the very first pericope/paragraph of the Canon, Moses, under the influence of the Holy Spirit, artfully pieces together a brilliant introduction that successfully reveals the origins of the universe and the agent responsible.

1. The Revelation-1:1

There on a mountainside in the wilderness, several million former Hebrew slaves sat patiently waiting to have their history, the world’s history, revealed to them—some for the first time. With simple profundity, Moses pens these words, “in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (1:1). Though a relatively simple declaration, these words are pregnant with implications. First, “in the beginning” not only suggests a genesis, but also a terminus. You cannot conceive of something as having a beginning unless there is also an end. In fact, “Beginning” is often paired in the Old Testament with its antonym “end” in order to indicate an inclusive period of time. From this point on, all of the prophets and apostles after them could speak of the end (eschaton) that was to come in reference to the beginning of time that started here. Time started in this moment where it once didn’t exist!

However, there is at least one entity that existed prior to time. That is the agent doing the creating—“God” (Elohim). The term used here for God –“Elohim”—celebrates His transcendence and the power of His spoken word along with His plurality—inasmuch as Elohim is a plural noun. In fact, though not explicit here, there are hints throughout this opening overture that subtly reveal the Trinity as pre-existent over the universe. In verse two, God’s “Spirit” is witnessed “floating over the waters.” In verse 3, God’s word brings forth light—perhaps hinting at the Son who is called the “Word of God” in John’s Gospel. Throughout the passage, “God” the Father is mentioned as the major character and focus. He is the center of this theocentric passage/chapter as everything revolves around and comes from Him.

This plural, transcendent, speaking God is assumed and never explained.  The omission of His origins, although cause for inquiry to some today, was actually a polemic tool used of Moses in his context. Elohim’s unexplained existence “repudiates the cosmogonies of the pagan world, where the origins and biography of their ‘gods’ are paramount” (Matthews, 128). In other words, contra the Egyptian Gods who were many and whose beginnings were explained in elaborate stories, Moses reveals that there is actually one God whose origin cannot be explained, only assumed.

The temptation for many in our skeptical world is to demand that Christians explain where God came from. Unfortunately, believing this to be too hard a question to answer, many Christians shirk away from such remarks or can even grow discouraged. However, this question is misplaced. The Christian God is not the kind of deity that can come from anything. He is, as this verse teaches, outside the created realm and therefore His existence is not contingent on anything. As He is not contingent on anything (dependent on anything to exist), He is not affected by time, space, or matter. Each of these is a continuum that depends on the other for its existence. For instance, you cannot have time without space, for, where would you put it? You cannot have matter without time, for, when would you put it? These all must exist together simultaneously. The Bible explains how this all came to be in one sentence (10 words in English and 7 in Hebrew), “In the beginning (time: past, present, future), God created the heavens (space: length, width, height) and the earth (matter: solid, liquid, gas).” These God created instantaneously! As He created these continuums, He stands outside of them and therefore, to conceive of God as having an origin is to place Him within the limits of something that He created (time), thereby limiting His divinity. He is above time, unaffected by space, and transcends matter. The God that Moses reveals here is not limited by time, space, or matter and is therefore superior to the God’s of Egypt whose origins were known. This renders Him worthy of worship and praise!  

This “God” “created the heavens and the earth.” Though “created” is used in many ways throughout the Old Testament (to “restore,” “fashion,” “make”, etc.), here there is nothing to restore, no tools available for the use of fashioning something, and no compounds/elements present to make anything. Here, God “created” everything out of nothing. In fact, every time “created” is used with “God” as its subject “special significance for God as autonomous Creator” is in view (Matthews, 129). In other words, when God creates, He does not depend on what is available, He creates out of nothing (ex nihilo).

Just what did God “create” out of nothing? EVERYTHING!—“the heavens and the earth” (1:1c). All of the space necessary to place everything and all of the matter necessary to yield everything in that space was created by a transcendent God in the beginning.

2. The Description-1:2

In its original form, Moses reveals that the earth was “formless and void” (tohu wabohu)—literally “a desert and a wasteland” (Hamilton 108). Using rhyming words here and in verse 1 (bereshit bara), Moses is depicting the history of the universe in a near-hymnic style—perhaps to aid this largely oral audience in appreciating and memorizing the content that is being espoused. Here, it is clear that Moses would like his people to know that earth began in chaos—an unproductive uninhabited place. As it existed on the beginning of that first day, the world was in no way capable of supporting life as we now know it.

Moses also reveals that “darkness was over the surface of the deep” (1:2b). Interestingly, darkness resulted when time/space/matter collided—the illumination of God’s creation would require its own specific and special creative act. However, at this point the “darkness” and the “deep” seem to suggest that the earth was an “undifferentiated mass or vacuous nonentity” (Sailhamer, 27). 

The vacuous and deserted earth was of no concern to the “Spirit of God” who is depicted as “moving over the surface of the waters” (1:2c). In the ancient near-eastern world, the “darkness,” “deep,” and “waters” were viewed as sources of chaos, danger, and mystery. In Moses’ “Spirited” retelling of the account, he artfully places the Spirit of God “over the surface” of these things, suggesting God’s dominance and authority over all—even though, at this point in the creation narrative, evil and danger do not even exist yet as categories.

3. The Creation-1:3-4

Breaking the silence of this dark and wet void is the voice of Elohim who begins creating on this vacuous canvas what humans know to be the universe today—“Let there be light” (1:3a). It is here that God begins to bring order out of the chaos, rendering the world organized, inhabitable, and even fruitful for His good pleasure.

As simply as it was spoken, it existed—“and there was light” (1:3b). Though the source of creation’s first “light” is not specified, the text insinuates that the “light” was sourced in God Himself (Matthews, 145). “This ‘light’ on the first day then is indicative of the presence of God both at creation and among His people Israel, a light that both reveals and conceals the presence of God. The Light at creation was the first word, the word that is indistinct from God’s personal presence…” (Matthews, 146). Though Moses illuminated God’s revelation for His people in his day, only Jesus would satisfy the intercessory position par excellence as God’s most complete and most illuminating revelatory presence. This theme is picked up later in the book of John when Jesus refers to Himself as the “light of the world” –God’s perfect representation on the earth (see John 1:9-18; 8:12). Ever wonder why God created light first? Perhaps because He wanted the first revelation given in the universe to be about His matchless glory—even if it was just for an audience of one.

Pleased with what He had created, God set out to distinguish the light and the darkness—“God saw that the light was good, and God separated the light from the darkness” (1:4). By calling the light “good” God provides a qualitative evaluation of what He has created. This establishes Him as the judge of His creative order. The light is deemed “good” because it serves God’s-intended purpose of bifurcating between light and darkness. The difference between the two is the first of three separations that would prepare the earth for Life’s possibilities—see sky and earth (1:6) and land and sea (1:9).

However, notice what else God introduces in here. According to Moses’ account, God with one word yields light AND Morality. By introducing the concept of “good” here, God introduces the beginnings of a moral framework that would be revealed with further nuance later. However, at least for the time being, the universe as it is exists on day one possesses light and its opposite (darkness) and moral qualities (goodness). From day one, the universe contained a moral framework that was rooted in the person of God Himself!

4. The Identification-1:5

The final element involved in the overture to Chapter 1 of Genesis is God’s identification of the different phenomena He has created—“God called the light day, and the darkness He called night” (1:5a). Though a simple recognition, this verse demonstrates God’s authority over that which is created. By naming day and night, and continuing to name things throughout this entire creative account, God demonstrates His authority over it all. He made it all happen and therefore gets the honor of naming it whatever He wills.   

The closing notes of the overture provide readers with a helpful and nearly emphatic way of interpreting the time schedule in which all of this took place, --“and there was evening and there was morning one day” (1:5b). Via the creation of light and the presence of darkness (and their separation), God begins a program of 24 hour periods that Moses calls day (yom). Though this word is taken figuratively elsewhere in reference to other things, whenever it is attached to a cardinal number, it describes a 24hour period. Not only that, but when the qualification “and there was evening and there was morning” is added, it becomes even clearer that a literal 24 hour period is an appropriate interpretation. If not, one would have to ask, “why did the Spirit move in Moses’ life to lead him to write “and there was evening and there was morning, one day” if it was not explicitly intended to refer to what men and women would have understood as a typical day. Though this passage is hymnic and near poetic at times, it is not pure allegory, especially when one considers that this construction of “day,” cardinal number, and “evening and morning,” is repeated on each of the remaining days of creation (Answers in Genesis).

Interestingly enough, early Jewish and Christian interpreters had a hard time believing that it would take God this long (6 days) to create the entire universe. Surely He would have been powerful enough to create it all at once! Still more interesting is that more recent modern scholarship wonders how God could have possibly created it all in so short a time. Ever since Darwin’s Origins of the Species and enlightenment’s claim of a billion-year-old universe and more recent fantasies of a big bang, many, even those within the church, have a hard time interpreting Moses’ account in this more grammatically conservative and straight-forward way—believing that the earth must must must be millions of years old and that God had to of used a process like macro-evolution to accomplish this mammoth feat. However, this foists a severely allegorical interpretation on what Moses seems to take pains to make clear. One must turn “day” into something that does not mean “day,” “morning” into something that does not mean “morning,” “evening” into something that does not mean “evening” and “one,” “two,” “three,” etc. into something these numbers do not represent. This seems to be quite a stretch, especially when the repetition Moses employs and the organization of the text assumes organization and straightforwardness. The best interpretation in my mind is that each day was a 24 hour period, complete with evening and morning.

Some respond to this with, “well, how could there be an evening or morning without a sun” (the Sun does not exist until day 4—see vv.14ff)? Respectfully, I would respond “I’m sure that a God who conceived of time and created matter out of nothing can manage morning and evening without a sun for the first three days, especially if He is the source of light in the first place!

The creative act described in this overture also sets in motion a pattern that will be followed without fail throughout the rest of chapter one. First, “God said” is mentioned as He alone instigates every creative work. Second, the command is given—“let there be light.” Then that which is commanded is created—“and there was light.” Fourth, God evaluates His creation—“God saw that the light was good.” Fifth, the boundaries of the creation are acknowledged—“and God separated the light from the darkness.” Finally, He names that which is created—“God called the light day, and the darkness He called night.” Moses adopts this pattern on each of the following days almost to a tee and, like an overture intends to do in a brilliant piece of music, this opening passage introduces the thematic phrases that can be anticipated throughout the account.

So What?

So what does this overture foreshadow about the God of creation and His unfolding work? So far, God is shown to be in many ways outside of the created realm—independent of time, space, and matter. He is therefore not contingent on anything else for His existence. Because of this, we have learned along with the Israelites in the wilderness that unlike other deities in Egypt or any other worldview, God’s existence must be assumed as it cannot be explained or exhaustively delineated. We have also learned that God is a Creator. He is the one who conceived of time, made space, and filled it with matter. Not only that, but, morality itself emanates from His character as the impassable standard by which everything else is judged and compared. We have also been shown a preview of how God can turn chaos into order. In fact, this passage depicts God as a God of order who is able to speak clarity over a vacuous deep and illuminate the darkness. This, He does in His own time-table as is suitable for Him (and independent of scientific THEORY or popular opinion). What a mighty God!

If this overture is any indication of what we are in for throughout the rest of this chapter and study of Genesis 1:1-11, we are in for a real treat! The Israelites in the wilderness and the church today ought to respond to such revelation with praise, adoration, and submission to the Creator God. Additionally, we must also take comfort in the fact that God is a God who is not bothered by the depths of obscurity or in any way intimidated by the darkness—as His Spirit was shone to do in this passage, God floats above the mysteries of our lives and is capable of speaking order into our chaotic situations. What a brilliant reminder and aesthetically pleasing piece of music that foreshadows what He has accomplished for us and just what He can do in our lives today!