Genesis 1:1-3

Genesis 1:1–3 (World English Bible): In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and empty. Darkness was on the surface of the deep, and God’s Spirit was hovering over the surface of the waters. God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. ¹

A translator's note attached to Calvin's commentary explains that the Hebrew word bara, "created," carries two possible senses: to make something out of nothing, or to bring something excellent out of matter that already existed, and it points to the later uses of the verb for the creation of the great sea creatures and of man as proof of the second sense ².

Haydock's notes, compiled in 1859, read "In the beginning" as the same phrase St. John later borrows to open his Gospel ³. Haydock says John pushes it further, back to the eternal pre-existence of the Son rather than simply the start of time ³. Haydock also takes up bara, saying it is "determined by tradition and by reason to mean a production out of nothing," distinguishing this use from places where the same word describes forming something out of matter that already existed ³. Beyond the wording, Haydock reads the plural form Elohim alongside the singular verb "he created" as something many writers, following Peter Lombard, have taken as a hint of the Trinity, while adding that this was not something the Jews were required to grasp explicitly before Christ came ³.

The Targum of Jonathan, in Etheridge's 1862 translation, renders the opening not simply as narrative but with interpretive additions ⁴. The earth is "vacancy and desolation, solitary of the sons of men, and void of every animal," and the Spirit that moves over the waters is called "the Spirit of mercies from before the Lord" ⁴. It also expands the third verse, where light is made "to enlighten above," and explains the naming of day and night by their purpose — day so that "the inhabiters of the world might labour by it," night so that "the creatures might have rest" ⁴.

Ryle, writing in 1914, takes "In the beginning" — B'réshith in Hebrew — as expressing simply "the earliest time imaginable," with no allusion to a philosophical idea of eternity ⁵. He stresses that the language of the whole account is "neither that of abstract speculation nor of exact science, but of simple, concrete, and unscientific narrative" ⁵. Ryle notes that the opening of John's Gospel, "in the beginning was the Word," is built on this same Hebrew clause, but argues that John refers to the Word's eternal pre-existence before time, whereas the Hebrew writer means only the historic origin of time and space ⁵.