Reading Practice — Genesis 1:1–5בְּרֵאשִׁית בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים — read the opening of the Bible in the original

The opening verses of Genesis are the foundational text of all Scripture. Every later book — Exodus, the Psalms, Isaiah, Matthew, Romans, Revelation — assumes Genesis 1. The doctrine of creation, the nature of God as Creator, the goodness of the material world, the meaning of light and darkness, the structure of time itself — all begin here. To read Genesis 1 in the original is to read the headwaters of the Christian Bible.

There is also a practical reason. Genesis 1:1–5 is written in remarkably clean, regular Hebrew. The vocabulary is small and concrete: God, heavens, earth, light, darkness, day, night. The grammar is straightforward narrative prose. There are no rare poetic forms, no obscure roots, no textual problems. It is the friendliest possible first passage for a beginner.

And there is a third reason, which matters most. Hebrew is the only language in which Genesis 1 was originally given. Every translation — Greek, Latin, German, English — is a faithful echo of an earlier sound. When you sound out בְּרֵאשִׁית בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים, you are speaking the syllables that Moses, the prophets, the Lord Jesus, and the apostles all heard read aloud. The text you are about to read is the text the church has lived from since before there was a church.

The small mark at the end (׃) is the sof pasuq — "end of verse." It is the Hebrew period. Every verse in the Hebrew Bible ends with it.

Now we walk through this verse one word at a time. For each word: name each consonant, name each vowel, build the syllables, give the transliteration, give the meaning.

Transliteration: bereshit bara elohim et hashshamayim veʼet haʼarets.

Literal English: "In-beginning created God [obj] the-heavens and-[obj] the-earth."

Familiar English: "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth."

You have now read Genesis 1:1 in Hebrew. Stop and notice what just happened. You used the consonants of Lesson 1, the vowels of Lesson 2, the syllable rules of Lesson 3 — and you produced the sound that has carried this verse down through history.

Whole verse, transliteration: ve-haʼarets hayetah tohu va-vohu ve-choshech al-peney tehom ve-ruach elohim merachefet al-peney ha-mayim.

Literal English: "And the earth was formless-and-empty, and darkness on the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God hovering on the face of the waters."

Whole verse: vayyomer elohim yehi or vayhi-or.

Literal: "And-said God 'let-be light,' and-was-light."

Familiar: "And God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light."

The Hebrew is even tighter than the English: yehi or — vayhi or. "Let-be-light — and-was-light." The very words of the command are echoed by the words of its fulfillment, separated only by the narrative vav. The text enacts what it describes.

Whole verse: vayyar elohim et-haʼor ki-tov vayyavdel elohim ben haʼor u-ven ha-choshech.

Familiar: "And God saw the light, that it was good. And God separated between the light and the darkness."

Whole verse: vayyiqra elohim laʼor yom ve-la-choshech qara laylah vayhi-erev vayhi-voqer yom echad.

Familiar: "And God called the light 'day,' and the darkness he called 'night.' And there was evening, and there was morning — day one."

You have just read the first five verses of the Hebrew Bible.

Stop and take that in. Six weeks ago, perhaps, you could not have told the difference between a bet and a kaf. You could not have said what a qamatz was. You could not have sounded out a single Hebrew word. And now you have read — read, not glanced at — Genesis 1:1–5. The text that opens the canon of Scripture. The text that Moses wrote down, that the temple scribes copied, that the synagogue chanted, that Jesus knew from boyhood, that the apostles quoted, that the Reformers translated, that has shaped every Christian century since.