Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Ian Hutchesson <mc2499 AT mclink.it>]

To help get at the meaning of Gen1:1-2, here is what later second temple
Jewish thinkers understood from creation as found in Wisdom of Solomon 11:17a:

            For your all-powerful hand,
              which created the world out of
                     formless matter,

This states explicitly what the KJV hides in Gen1:1-2 -- the state of things
at the beginning of creation, the waste and void.

The structure of a day goes,

  1) God said... (divine fiat)
  2) And it was so
  3) God called it... (days 1-3, the forming days)
  4) God saw that it was good  (days 3-6)
  5) Evening came and then morning closed the day.

The creation begins with God's first words on the first day (v3), as each
other day of creation begins, "Let there be..." There was already something
there to use: there was a deep and there was darkness. As Irene points out
we have a creation by separation. To separate something, you need to have
something to separate.


Ian