World English Bible · Before the nations
Genesis 1
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, created and the earth. The earth was formless and empty. was on the surface of the deep and was hovering over the surface of the waters. said, "Let there be ," and there was . saw , and saw that it was good. divided from . called "day", and he called "night". There was evening and there was morning, the first day. said, "Let there be an expanse in the middle of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters." made the expanse, and divided the waters which were under the expanse from the waters which were above the expanse; and it was so. 8 called the expanse "sky". There was evening and there was morning, a second day. said, "Let the waters under be gathered together to one place, and let the dry land appear;" and it was so. called the dry land "earth", and the gathering together of the waters he called "seas". saw that it was good. said, "Let the earth yield grass, herbs yielding seeds, and fruit trees bearing fruit after their kind, with their seeds in it, on the earth;" and it was so. The earth yielded grass, herbs yielding after their kind, and trees bearing fruit, with their seeds in it, after their kind; and saw that it was good. 13There was evening and there was morning, a third day. said, "Let there be lights in the expanse of to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs to mark seasons, days, and years; 15and let them be for lights in the expanse of to give on the earth;" and it was so. made the two great lights: the greater to rule the day, and the lesser to rule the night. He also made the stars. set them in the expanse of to give to the earth, and to the day and over the night, and to divide from . saw that it was good. 19There was evening and there was morning, a fourth day. said, "Let the waters abound with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth in the open expanse of ." created the large sea creatures and every that moves, with which the waters swarmed, after their kind, and every winged bird after its kind. saw that it was good. them, saying, "Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth." 23There was evening and there was morning, a fifth day. said, "Let the earth produce living creatures after their kind, livestock, creeping things, and animals of the earth after their kind;" and it was so. made the animals of the earth after their kind, and the livestock after their kind, and everything that creeps on the ground after its kind. saw that it was good. said, "Let's make man in our , after our . Let them over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of , and over the livestock, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." created man . In he created him; male and female he created them. them. said to them, "Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and it. over the fish of the sea, over the birds of , and over every living thing that moves on the earth." said, "Behold, I have given you every herb yielding , which is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree, which bears fruit yielding . It will be your food. To every animal of the earth, and to every bird of , 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. saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. There was evening and there was morning, a sixth day.
A public domain modern English translation, free to read and share. Notes and cards are EKLI’s own.
Christians read this chapter differently
- How should Christians read Genesis 1? · Genesis 1:1-2:3
Every view at its strongest, with who holds it and what it has to answer for.
The world at this moment · Before the nations, 2600 BC to 2100 BC ›
The opening chapters, from creation to Babel, told on a scale that covers the whole earth before the story narrows to one family.
- The neighbours' own stories
- Mesopotamia told its own versions of these events. Atrahasis and the eleventh tablet of Gilgamesh tell of a flood, a survivor, an ark, and birds sent out to find land. Enuma Elish tells of a world made from a defeated sea. The resemblances are close enough that scholars have argued about them for a century and a half, and the differences are where the argument gets interesting: Genesis has no quarrel among gods, no accidental humanity, and a flood sent for moral reasons rather than because people were noisy.
- Babel and the ziggurat
- A tower with its top in the heavens, built of brick and bitumen on a plain in Shinar, describes a Mesopotamian ziggurat exactly. Dozens were built, the best known at Ur and Babylon, of mud brick because southern Mesopotamia has no stone. The detail about brick instead of stone is the kind of thing someone writes who has actually seen one.
- The wider world
- If these chapters are placed anywhere in ordinary chronology, the surrounding centuries are the age of the Egyptian pyramids, the Sumerian city-states, the Indus Valley cities, and the first phase of Stonehenge. Writing was a few centuries old and existed in two places on earth.
All of Genesis