A Glance at Genesis

Over the next four weeks I plan to take A Glance at Genesis. I would love to go through the entire book, but it is 50 chapters long! Therefore I will settle for a glance. My prayer is that this will be a help to anyone who wants to read it. I plan to post once a week for the next 4 weeks, on Tuesdays. Beginning today!

Book of Beginnings
The original Hebrew title of Genesis is bereshit, the first word of chapter 1, which means in the beginning. But our English Bibles don’t follow the Hebrew title. About 250 years before Christ, the Hebrew Old Testament was translated into Greek. This is known as the Septuagint or LXX. The Greek translators gave their own title, Genesis, to the first book of the Old Testament. Genesis means “origin, source, generation, or beginning.” Genesis is indeed a book of beginnings. In fact, the whole rest of the Bible begins in this book!

Here are some of the beginnings we find in Genesis

heaven and earth
1:1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth

time
1:5 And the evening and the morning were the first day

mankind
1:27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them

marriage, home, family
2:24 Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh

Adam and Eve were the first people, the first husband and wife, the first parents, the first grandparents.

sin 
2:17 And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it…

3:6 And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.

death
3:6 …for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

5:5 And all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years: and he died.

This is now the testimony of every one, every single person after Adam.

the nations
10:1 Now these are the generations of the sons of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth…

10:32 These are the families of the sons of Noah, after their generations, in their nations: and by these were the nations divided in the earth after the flood.

languages
11:6-9 And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech. So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city. Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the LORD did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the LORD scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.

Israel
12:2 And I will make of thee a great nation

the gospel of salvation
3:15 And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.

49:18 I have waited for thy salvation, O LORD.


There are many other things we could mention, but one we have not is God. Does Genesis tell us of the beginning of God? No, for God is. He has no beginning. The book opens, “In the beginning God.” God was at the beginning. God was before the beginning. God is the Cause of the beginning. “From everlasting to everlasting thou art God.” He is “the eternal God”; “the everlasting God”. “Art thou not from everlasting, O LORD?” “For thou art great, and doest wondrous things: thou art God alone.”

Genesis was not just given to keep us busy reading its 50 chapters. It is the book of beginnings, the seed bed of everything else in the Bible. The truth is, we would not be able to understand the rest of the Bible without it.


Next Tuesday: The Outline of Genesis