In the beginning, vers 1

reshith

"the beginning (reshith)" is also used in the book of Job:

42.12 And the LORD blessed the latter days of Job more than his beginning (reshith). He had 14,000 sheep and 1,000 she-asses.

When translating/interpreting a text, one must always look at the possibilities of the word, the whole of the verse, the words that are otherwise in the verse, the whole of the chapter, and what the rest of the Bible says about the chapter that can give more light, so that one can give an interpretation that does not contradict the whole of the first chapter.

The word reshith actually contains quite a lot (KJV: first (or best) part of a thing, first stage of a process or series of events, starting point of a series, beginning, best, chief, choice part), so part of a study must be based on having examined how the word is used elsewhere in order to gain more light on the usage.

My starting point is: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth", not only because of reshith, but also because of the whole in which it is written. When we look at verse 2, it is clear that the earth is destroyed (the earth and the heavens had been struck by God's judgment), everything is enveloped in water (the atmosphere), and on day 1, that God only pleased the light and not the darkness (because of the darkness (the powers of chaos)), the words, the whole of the verse, the chapter, the Bible, all indicate that we must go another way than saying that the heavens and the earth were "formless and empty" when God created them. All of this indicates that verse 1 has nothing to do with the rest of the chapter, and it is therefore necessary to point out that the six days have nothing to do with God creating the heavens and the earth as it says in verse 1.

A scripture that suggests my translation of the word beginning (in the beginning) is Job 42.12 where it says that "the LORD blessed the latter days of Job more than his beginning (reshith)".

This does not mean that God blessed Job's death more than his birth (ACC), it is clear that this is not a real beginning, but more of a real pointing back to the time that lay before Job's trials, as ISBE also says (about Genesis 1.1), a time that has long been or as a reference back in time. It is clear that reshith is used in more than one sense, but it is not the purpose of the article to find out.

bara

1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

5 times bara is used in the first chapter, and 3 of them are used when God created man, and the second about the sea creatures.

The word bara in 1.1, which is here in the perfect tense, simply means that the action is finished, that it is completed and is considered a completed whole (as opposed to process), in order as coming from the fingers of God (Psalm 8.3). The word, which is not the same as in the rest of the chapter, as this has a 'et, which is used to emphasize the word to which it is attached.

Everything God does is perfect, and without chaos or disorder.

Deuteronomy 32:4 He is the Rock, his work is perfect: for all his ways are judgment: a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he.

The word translated "perfect" is the same word used about the sacrificial lambs, without sound, without flaw. But if we look at verse 2, which we will come to in a moment, it is not what the new translations express, it does not give the impression that God created the heavens and the earth perfectly by just a general reading of the text.

A created chaos is a contradiction and is therefore also excluded by "heaven and earth" since these are always about the whole (see opposite bara), functioning and not as the common understanding that the cosmos came out of chaos (Greek), and it is therefore only that which is whole that can be called "heaven and earth" and not that which is "desolate and empty", verse 2 describes in this way how it looked when God began to shape, form and create in the 6 days.

The word also has in it the meaning to (KJV: to shape, fashion) to form, to shape, but as I have indicated above, it is the word that suggests a completed work, or formed, formed into a completed work.

Stop for a moment

For me there can only be a pause after verse 1. What has taken place there can be all the ages that science speaks of, and if you look at the creation account, I thought there was a big difference between day 1 and the beginning. The Bible does not say much about what happened before day 1, but it does say some.

Luther says that there is a pause after verse 1, a "REBHIA", which is a disjunctive accent that alerts the reader to pause before continuing to the next verse. It thus indicates a "stop" in the text. The rabbis inserted indicators into the text to help the reader along the path they thought the text actually took. A good example, which is probably original and not inserted by the rabbis, is the word selah in the Psalms, which could perhaps be translated "think about". Jameison (Commentary: Critical and Expository: Genesis) also says that in many manuscripts there is a sign indicating a pause after verse 1, and that it is very clear even though the verse separation does not occur in the original language.

Final Words

The Bible says that God created the heavens and the earth, but not when, not that they were created at the same time. The words "heaven AND earth" only mean that God created them both. When you look at science, they say that the universe is between 13 and 14 billion years old (see notes) and the earth 4.55 billion years old. Therefore, it is not a misreading of verse 1 if you do not read it as a whole sentence, that is, God created the heavens 13-14 billion years ago, and the earth 4.55 billion years ago. Maybe????

So what we have is that the word reshith should be translated as pointing and that the heavens and the earth were not created at the same time.