Fear No Fear

(All scripture from the World English Bible, ebible.org, all rights reserved)

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.“

Genesis 1:1

The Old Covenant starts with the Law of Moses, the first five books of the Word. And as books of law, you would expect them to start with a command. Exodus 12:2 is in fact the first command God gave to the Israelites as a whole people: “This month shall be to you the beginning of months. It shall be the first month of the year to you.” Instead of command, the Word begins with Creation because God declares the strength of His works (Psalm 111:6; 103:7) to give framework to the foundation of His authority and evidence of His objective reality (Romans 1:18-20).

Genesis is the beginning of His Word (John 1:1-4), which is the beginning of His Way (Proverbs 8:22; John 14:6), which is the beginning of His increase (Jeremiah 2:3).

The Word begins with this verse because this is THE foundational belief. It is the root of trusting in God. “Without faith (trust) it is impossible to be well pleasing to him, for he who comes to God must believe that he exists, and that he is a rewarder of those who seek him” (Hebrews 11:6, brackets mine). If you don’t believe this verse, the rest is dim at best (1 Corinthians 2:14). We aren’t called to understand it or even to agree with it (which is hard to do without understanding). Our task is to TRUST. Believe God and trust.

In Hebrew the verse begins with ‘beginning’ as in, ‘beginning to create God then created’. At the beginning of the word is a superfluous letter. It is a ‘bet’, which is the second letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Some say that it begins that way because bet has a connotation of blessing. Some say it is because bet has a numerical value of two (2), and two worlds were created. But it is also an enlarged letter with tags on it the letter itself doesn’t have. Whenever a letter is written differently, there is a reason for it. To call attention to something. The word ‘beginning’ is ‘bereshit’. When you look at ‘bet’ and ‘bereshit’ in the Hebrew, there are several letter groups within them that form other words. ‘bar’, ‘aleph’, ‘sayit’, ‘resh’, ‘etz’, ‘nisseth’, and ‘berith’. Translated, they mean ‘Son’, ‘God’, ‘Thorns’, ‘Head’, ‘Tree’, ‘Gift’, and ‘Covenant’. Taken in component pieces, the bet and bereshit read: ‘The Son of God with thorns on His head hangs on a tree as a gift to give covenant’. The Word starts with God’s intent. From the beginning, Jesus volunteered to be our sacrifice (Revelation 13:8). From the beginning, God wanted to save humanity (2 Peter 3:9). Inside the first word of the Word is the plan of salvation (Ephesians 1:4-6).

So who is this God we find in verse number one? He is Elo-kim (el-o-heem’): Master of all forces (Revelation 1:8). The absolute existence from which everything begins (John 1:3; Colossians 1:16-17). This word is a plural word, and can be taken in the sense of the ‘royal we’. But there is more to it than that. In Adam Clarke’s commentary of the bible, he quotes Rabbi Simeon ben Joachi (from his book the Zohar) as saying: ‘Come and see the mystery of the word Elohim; there are three degrees, and each degree by itself alone, and yet notwithstanding they are all one, and joined together in one, and are not divided from each other.’ Elsewhere in the Zohar (Zohar 2:43b) when teaching about the Shema (Deuteronomy 6:4), Simeon ben Joachi writes: ‘On this He is called One. These are three names. How can they be called one? Even though we call them one, how can they be one? Rather, in the vision of the holy spirit it is known, and these in the vision of the closed eye, to know that these three are one. And this is the mystery of the voice as it sounds. A voice is one, and it is three aspects – fire, spirit, and water, and all of them are one in the mystery of the voice. So too, ‘YHWH, our Lord, YHWH,’ these are one.’ We can see that Jewish writings, even their mystery writings (like the Zohar), show the plurality of God while maintaining His Oneness (Trinity doctrine) – and ALL three being the absolute existence from which all is derived. He is the single thing that exists outside all other things. No beginning. No end. God Almighty.

What was it that He does, here in the beginning? He brings forth the Heavens from nothing (spiritual matter – incorporeal). He brings forth the Earth from nothing (physical matter – corporeal). He creates the framework from which all of creation hangs. “By faith we understand that the universe has been framed by the word of God, so that what is seen has not been made out of things which are visible” (Hebrews 11:3). Some sages believe that the heavens and the earth here in this verse were without substance (as we think of substance). That they were instead the material out of which God then formed individual things. Here in verse one he creates the Stuff of the heavens and the Stuff of the earth, and then proceeds throughout the next two chapters to give the Stuff FORM (ie. dust, water, suns, animals, etc). In the next two chapters we’re given details as to the Earth-stuff forms because that is where we dwell. It is the existence that we know. We’re not given details as to the Heaven-stuff forms (angels, the City, etc) because we do not dwell there. God doesn’t burden us with what has no bearing on us. Those things are revealed to us as we encounter them throughout scripture, not before. When God creates, as we will see, he begins with separations – borders. He takes things from chaos to differentiated bodies which he pronounces GOOD (with one exception on Day Two – we’ll get there later). It is a journey that starts in verse one and echoes with replication throughout the rest of the Word. God takes things from darkness and places them into light. This making of things from no starting point but His thought is impossible for anyone and anything other than God Himself. This ability, this making, is what gives Him indisputable right over everything that He made by Himself (His own strength and power). Since everything comes from Him, everything should be given to Him (all praise, all glory, and all blessing).

The sense behind this verse, then, is that when God was about to create, He began with the stuff of heavens and the stuff of earth. Which, when taken with the symbology of the ‘bet’ and ‘bereshit’, can read: The Son of God with thorns on His head hangs on a tree as a gift to give covenant, beginning by creating the stuff of the heavens and the earth.