Transliterated: Bereshit bara Elohim et hashamayim ve'et ha'aretz.
Bereshit (בְּרֵאשִׁית): "In [the] beginning [of something]". Be is a prepositional prefix, resh is a noun, "head". The definite article ha (i.e., the Hebrew equivalent of "the") before reshit is missing, but implied.[1]
bara (בָּרָא): "[he] created/creating". The word is in the masculinesingular form, so that "he" is implied; this verb is used only for the God of Israel.[2]
Elohim (אֱלֹהִים): the generic word for God, whether the God of Israel or the gods of other nations; it is used throughout Genesis 1, and contrasts with the phrase YHWH Elohim, "God YHWH", introduced in Genesis 2.
et (אֵת): a particle used in front of the direct object of a verb, in this case "the heavens" and "the earth", indicating that these are what is being "created".
Hashamayim ve'et ha'aretz (הַשָּׁמַיִם וְאֵת הָאָרֶץ): "the heavens and the earth"; this is a merism, a figure of speech indicating the two stand not for "heaven" and "earth" individually but "everything"; the entire cosmos.[3]
It can be translated into English in at least three ways:
As a statement that the cosmos had an absolute beginning ("In the beginning, God created the heavens and earth").
As a statement describing the world's condition when God began creating ("When in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was untamed and shapeless").
Taking all of Genesis 1:2 as background information ("When in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, the earth being untamed and shapeless, God said, Let there be light!").[4]
Analysis
Genesis 1:1 forms the basis for the Judeo-Christian doctrine of creation out of nothing (creatio ex nihilo). Some scholars still support this reading,[5] but most agree that on strictly linguistic and exegetical grounds this is not the preferred option,[6][7][8] and that the authors of Genesis 1 were concerned not with the origins of matter (the material which God formed into the habitable cosmos), but with the fixing of destinies.[2]
