Note that this is still a work in progress.

Creation Verbs in Genesis

Five different Hebrew verbs are used to describe the processes involved during the seven days of creation. While they are translated into separate English verbs (to create, to be, to form, to make, and to bless), the deeper distinctions between the meanings of the original words is largely lost.

Aside:

The word nephesh is also included, but for the opposite reason. It is an important Hebrew word that is translated into many different English words, including "soul", "life", "person", "mind", "heart", "creature", "body", "dead", "will", "desire", and "man". While it's important to understand that the Genesis verbs lose some meaning in translation, it's also important to understand that this word often unnecessarily gains meaning in translation.

Conventions:

• The NKJV translators used italics to indicate words that were supplied by the translators as they do not appear in the Hebrew text.
• I have underlined to be words that are simply English auxiliary verbs that do not have corresponding Hebrew words indicating existence; they are not the same as most of the other words that are translated as was or were, and simply convey verbal tense.

Words:

In Hebrew, there are three words which have similar meaning. They are Bara, meaning to create, Yatzar, meaning to form, and Asah, meaning to make. According to the Kabbalists, Bara indicates creation ex nihilo, something from nothing. Yatzar denotes formation of something from a substance that already exists, something from something. Asah has the connotation of the completion of an action. — Sefer Yetzirah: The Book of Creation in Theory and Practice

Genesis (NKJV):

• 1. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
• 2. The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.
• 3. Then God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
• 4. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.
• 5. And God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. So the evening and the morning were the first day.
• 6. Then God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.
• 7. Thus God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.
• 8. And God called the firmament Heaven. So the evening and the morning were the second day.
• 9. Then God said, Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.
• 10. And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters He called Seas: and God saw that it was good.
• 11. Then God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb that yields seed, and the fruit tree that yields fruit according to its kind, whose seed is in itself, on the earth: and it was so.
• 12. And the earth brought forth grass, the herb that yields seed according to its kind, and the tree that yields fruit, whose seed is in itself, according to its kind: and God saw that it was good.
• 13. So the evening and the morning were the third day.
• 14. Then God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs and seasons, and for days and years;
• 15. And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heavens to give light on the earth: and it was so.
• 16. Then God made two great lights: the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night. He made the stars also.
• 17. God set them in the firmament of the heavens to give light on the earth,
• 18. and to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good.
• 19. And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.
• 20. Then God said, Let the waters abound with an abundance of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the face of the firmament of heavens.
• 21. So God created great sea creatures and every living thing that moves, with which the waters abounded, according to their kind, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.
• 22. And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.
• 23. So the evening and the morning were the fifth day.
• 24. Then God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature according to its kind: cattle and creeping things and beast of the earth, each according to its kind; and it was so.
• 25. And God made the beast of the earth according to its kind, cattle according to its kind, and every thing that creeps on the earth according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.
• 26. Then God said, Let us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.
• 27. So God created man in his own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.
• 28. Then God blessed them, and God said to them, Be fruitful, and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.
• 29. And God said, See, I have given you every herb that yields seed which is on the face of all the earth, and every tree whose fruit yields seed; to you it shall be for food.
• 30. Also, to every beast of the earth, to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, in which there is life, I have given every green herb for food; and it was so.
• 31. Then God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good. So the evening and the morning were the sixth day.
• 1. Thus the heavens and the earth, and all the host of them, were finished.
• 2. And on the seventh day God ended his work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done.
• 3. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because that in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made.
• 4. This is the history of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens,
• 5. before any plant of the field was in the earth and before any herb of the field had grown. For the LORD God had not caused it to rain on the earth, and there was no man to till the ground;
• 6. but a mist went up from the earth and watered the whole face of the ground.
• 7. And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.

Use of verbs:

Creating the essence from nothing (bara'):

• 1:1 — The universe is created from nothing.
• 1:21 — Life is created in the seas and air.
• 1:27 — The spiritual image of God is created in humans.

Transforming things (hayah):

• 1:3 — Darkness becomes light.
• 1:6 — Air and water become separated.
• 1:14 — Sun, moon, and stars become lights.
• 1:29 — Seeds and fruit become food.
• 2:5 — Vegetation becomes planted in the earth.
• several — evening and morning become a day.
• several — what God proposed becomes so.

Forming or shaping things (yatsar):

• 2:7 — Humans are formed and given life.

Completing things (`asah):

• 1:7 — The air and water are made separate.
• 1:16 — The sun, moon, and stars are made to shine.
• 1:25 — The land creatures are made.
• 1:26 — Humans are made.

Blessing things (barak):

• 1:22 — Life in the sea and air are blessed and told to reproduce.
• 1:28 — Humans are blessed and told to reproduce.
• 2:3 — The seventh day is blessed and sanctified as the Sabbath.

Observations:

Animals:

On the fith day, swimming and flying creatures were created from nothing and then blessed.

But on the sixth day, land animals were made complete, without creation.

Mankind:

In Isaiah 43:7, we can see the three words involved with human creation (blessing is omitted; at this point God is not pleased with his people):

Everyone who is called by My name, Whom I have created for My glory; I have formed him, yes, I have made him.

Notice that humans were created from nothing, formed into shape, completed in the image of God, and blessed by God, but they were never transformed from something else.

The Earth:

Isaiah 45:18 says:

… God himself that formed the earth and made it; he hath established it, he created it not in vain, he formed it to be inhabited ….

• As in Genesis, the word created is the Hebrew word bara' for creation from nothing.
• The expression in vain is the same Hebrew word tohuw as in Genesis 1:2.

Isaiah says that God did not create the Earth as tohuw.

In 1:2, The earth was without form, and void;

• without form (tohuw (תֹּהוּ) = confusion, wasteland, wilderness).
• and void (bohuw *(בֹּהוּ) = emptiness, waste).

One can can conclude that, since Earth's creation from nothing was not in vain (tohuw), Genesis 1:2 must mean that the Earth became a wasteland (tohuw), implying that a long period of time could have elapsed between the first two verses. Genesis 1:2 would be better translated as the Earth became (hayah). In fact, the NMV version does use this translation.

The idea of a potentially long time gap between the first two verses is not new:

Long before the modern study of geology, early church writers have examined the biblical text and considered the idea that between Gen. 1:1 and 1:2 was an indeterminate period when the created world fell into chaos. — Gap creationism — Wikipedia

The Targum of Onkelos is an early second century Aramaic translation of the Hebrew scriptures, whose English translation is: and the earth was devastated and empty (Wikipedia) or and the earth was laid waste (Arthur Custance).

Third century theologian Origen, in De Principiis, Book III, Chapter 5.3 recognized that there was an age before Adam:

By these testimonies it is established both that there were ages before our own, and that there will be others after it.

In De Sacramentis Christianae Fidei, Book 1, part 1, chapter 6, twelfth century scholar Hugo St. Victor wrote:

Perhaps enough has already been debated about these matters thus far, if we add only this, how long did the world remain in this disorder before the regular re-ordering?

Hayah, in general

Much of the Bible reads better if hayah is translated as a form of to become rather than to be:

• 2. The earth became an empty wasteland ….
• 3. Then God said, Become light: and it became light.
• 5. … So the evening and the morning became the first day.
• 15. And become lights in the firmament of the heavens to give light on the earth: and it became so.
• 29. … every tree whose fruit yields seed; to you it shall become food.

The idea of something being changed, rather than created from nothing, is conveyed much more clearly.

Copyright: