Page 18 - Genesis: Book of Beginnings and Science Behind it

Chapter 3: In the beginning, God

Connect…

To build a house, you must gather building materials at a location. You need cement, sand, blocks,
metal sheets for the roof, doors made from wood or metal, plastic pipes for drainage, and so on. You
can only create something out of materials already existing. You cannot simply go to the job site and
create a house out of NOTHING. That is what God did. How is that possible? Today, we will see what a
powerful Creator God is.

Objectives…

1. The student should be able to describe the first verse in Genesis and understand what every word
means.

2. The student should be able to list many of the Hebrew words in this verse and explain their
implications for understanding the verse.

3. The student should be able to write a paraphrase or an accurate sentence that would help him best
understand the full meaning of this text.

The Lesson ...

In the beginning, God created….

Genesis 1:1
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. (ESV)

To fully appreciate the verse, let's take each word and consider its addition to this all-important
declaration.

1. God – Let us start with the main focus of all of eternity. This is the first occurrence of the divine
name of God in Hebrew, Elohim, the name of God that stresses His majesty and omnipotence. This is
the name that is used throughout the first chapter of Genesis. The "im" ending is the Hebrew plural
ending, so that Elohim can mean "gods" and is so translated in various passages referring to the gods of
the heathens (Psalm 96:5).

However, it is clearly used here in the singular as the mighty name of God the Creator, the first of over
2,000 times that it has been used that way. Thus, Elohim is a plural name with a singular meaning, a
"uni-plural" noun, thereby suggesting the uniplurality of the Godhead. God is one, yet more than one.

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