An Exposition of Genesis 1:1-3, Part 2: Setting the Stage

In “An Exposition of Genesis 1:1–3, Part 1: Replacing the Cultural Myth,” I explained that Genesis 1 replaces the cultural myth on how the human story began. Now, we’ll turn to the question: Does Genesis 1 teach young-earth creationism (YEC)? The key issue is not, as many assume, the meaning of the word “day” (yom in Hebrew) but whether the initial creation in Genesis 1:1 happens on or immediately before day 1. When was day 1?

First Statement of Stage Setting
We know that Genesis 1:1–2 is stage setting—like arranging a stage before a play begins—for four reasons. First, the word “beginning” is not a title for the following account but God’s original creating act. Old Testament professor John Sailhamer noted it does not refer “to a point in time but to a period or duration of time which falls before a series of events.”¹ Second, the verbs in 1:1–2 are for stage-setting. Another Old Testament professor, John Collins notes that in typical Old Testament “discourse grammar,” the perfect tense (i.e., qatal verbs), such as bā·rā’ (בָּרָא) in 1:1, in the opening of a narrative describes an event that occurred prior to it.² Third, the refrain that begins each day—“and God said”—is in 1:3. Fourth, the waw consecutive that begins 1:3 moves the narrative forward.

There are four statements of stage setting. First, “In the beginning God created the heavens” (meaning the universe) “and the earth” (this planet). So, the first statement is that God created all things, all matter, all stars, galaxies, the solar system, everything.

By beginning with God we see God was already there in the beginning. The “beginning” in Genesis 1:1 is not the beginning of God but the beginning of creation, of us. God is the only One without a beginning. God, by definition, is the beginner. He is uncreated. Everything else is created. That makes God infinitely higher—transcendent—over everything else, including ourselves. This division between God and us can’t be erased. We will always be created beings and God will always be our uncreated Creator.

First Statement Refutes Myth, Materialism
When God first inspired Genesis 1, it was a bold statement that all things—the sky, seas, Sun, Moon, stars, etc.—were mere created things and not gods themselves. The pagans believed in a god-filled universe. The Egyptians, for example, sometimes worshipped the Sun. So here in Genesis we are told that the Sun is created; it isn’t a god. The Sun isn’t Apollo making his daily rounds in his chariot across the sky. The stars aren’t gods. Mercury isn’t the messenger of the gods. Venus isn’t the goddess of love and Mars isn’t the god of war. They’re all creations, like us. Except they’re just objects. We, however, have been created in the image of God. As theologian R. C. Sproul said, “Genesis is already demythologized.”

That God created the universe means that he created matter. There are two extreme errors people can fall into with regard to creation. First is materialism, the belief that matter is all there is. Popular science communicator Carl Sagan began his 1980 Cosmos: A Personal Voyage program by declaring that the cosmos—the material universe—“is all that is or was or ever will be.” That wasn’t a scientific statement because it’s not a claim he could prove. It was a statement of faith. It’s materialism and it tells us to live for money, for the stuff you can buy, for your body, what it can feel.

The second error is the pseudo-spirituality that matter doesn’t matter. Some people think that nothing “natural” is spiritual. The church has struggled with, and sometimes surrendered to, this problem since it was introduced into Greek culture in the ancient world. For nearly a millennium, the highest form of spirituality was seen in the monk or nun who fled from this world and sought God in secluded monasteries or convents. The idea was that truly spiritual people should escape from as many natural concerns as possible. Pseudo-spirituality holds that the spiritual and natural realms have no connection to each other, no Creator who made them both.

The Puritans didn’t believe that because they didn’t find such a separation in the Bible. Puritan pastor Increase Mather taught “the Works of God [i.e. nature] have a voice in them, as well as his Word.”³ Mather was president of Harvard and was the first person to write a book on comets. His son, Cotton Mather, also a Puritan pastor, was a pioneer in developing inoculations—he’s one of the fathers of vaccines.⁴ Biblical Christians are proscience because we believe God made nature and invites us to study and master it.

Three More Stage-Setting Statements
The second, third, and fourth scene-setting statements are contained, meaningfully, in fourteen Hebrew words in Genesis 1:2, after the seven in 1:1. That is, the purposeful numbers of words in the verses before “And God said” set them apart from the days that follow.

The second scene-setting statement (1:2) is “The earth was without form and void,” or “void and desolate.” It was disordered and uninhabited. Earth was not fit for living immediately after creation. To make it so, God worked on it. He made it.

There’s a distinction between two words we often confuse: creating and making. In verse 1, God created—out of nothing—everything. There’s a special word there in Hebrew for create: bā·rā’ (ברא). The Hebrew and English lexicon Brown-Driver-Briggs notes that bā·rā’ (ברא) is “always of divine activity.” In the Old Testament (OT), “create” (bā·rā’) is used exclusively with God as its subject. By contrast, “make” (‘ā·śāh, עָשָׂה) is not so specific.⁵ God is the only One who creates but humans can make. To “make” is to manufacture something out of preexisting material. Construction workers make a building out of wood, brick, glass, and other materials. A cook makes a meal out of rice, grain, meat, vegetables, water, etc. But only God can create out of nothing. In the beginning God created everything out of nothing and then started to make it fit for us. Exodus 20:11 describes God “making” the previously created world (“For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth. . .”), but not the initial creation of Genesis 1:1.

The third scene-setting statement (1:2), “And darkness was over the face of the deep,” implies that the earth was covered with water and, probably, had such thick clouds that light couldn’t penetrate. It was dark and watery.

The fourth scene-setting statement, concluding verse 2, “And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.” The verb here—hovering—is used in Deuteronomy 32:11, “Like an eagle that stirs up its nest, that flutters—or hovers—over its young . . .” It evokes the image of a hen brooding over her chicks. It suggests nurturing, care, attention. Nurturing, by definition, requires time. It is an activity transpiring over an unspecified length of time. In Genesis 1:2, the Spirit of God is nurturing the earth. Now, the stage is set for the scene to begin. Earth is the stage for this divine drama.

Then day 1 starts in Genesis 1:3 with “and God said.” First, the phrase starts with a waw consecutive (which I discuss here, on pages 156–159). Weston Fields, in his seminal young-earth creationist book Unformed and Unfilled, labored to show that the waw disjunctive which begins 1:2 cannot allow for a gap.⁶ But, in so doing, he showed that the waw consecutive that begins 1:3 does allow that gap. Second, every day starts with this refrain. Consistency demands that day 1 starts in 1:3, not 1:1. So, the initial creation and the nurturing of the earth to prepare it for the six days happens before the first day.⁷ How long before? The text doesn’t say. Nevertheless, sound exegesis of Genesis 1—the biblical text alone—shows that it teaches that the earth was created and nurtured for an undisclosed time before day 1.

Endnotes

1. John Sailhamer, Genesis Unbound: A Provocative New Look at the Creation Account (Sisters, OR: Multnomah Books, 1996), 44.
2. C. John Collins, Genesis 1-4, A Linguistic, Literary and Theological Commentary (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2006), 51.
3. Increase Mather, “The Latter Sign Discoursed of, in a Sermon Preached at the Lecture of Boston in New-England,” August 31, 1682, 22.
4. John B. Carpenter, “When Puritan Theology Helped Develop Immunology,” The Gospel Coalition, April 30, 2020.
5. Weston Fields, Unformed and Unfilled: A Critique of the Gap Theory (Green Forest, AR: Master Books, 1976), 81–83.
6. The New Brown-Driver-Briggs-Gesenius Hebrew and English Lexicon, (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishing, 1979), 135, 793b.
7. For further exegesis establishing that Genesis 1:1–2 is the “scene setting” before the days start with “and God said,” see my essay “When Was Day One? An Exegetical Answer to the Key Issue with Young Earth Creationism,” in Sy Garte and Anikó Albert’s God and Nature online magazine (Fall 2023).