--- title: "Genesis 1 - Study King James Bible with ellicotts commentary for english readers" description: "Read Genesis 1 with ellicotts commentary for english readers commentary. 1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. 2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the S" image: "/_app/immutable/assets/missing.C7wGMEZ6.jpg" url: "https://realbiblebelievers.com/study/ellicotts-commentary-for-english-readers/genesis/1" --- [ Read](/kjv/genesis/1)[ Commentary](/study/genesis/1)[ Interlinear](/interlinear/genesis/1) Audio 1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. 2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness *was* upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. 3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. 4 And God saw the light, that *it was* good: and God divided the light from the darkness.* 5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.* 6 ¶ And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.* 7 And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which *were* under the firmament from the waters which *were* above the firmament: and it was so. 8 And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.* 9 ¶ And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry *land* appear: and it was so. 10 And God called the dry *land* Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that *it was* good. 11 And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, *and* the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed *is* in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.* 12 And the earth brought forth grass, *and* herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed *was* in itself, after his kind: and God saw that *it was* good. 13 And the evening and the morning were the third day.* 14 ¶ And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:* 15 And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so. 16 And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: *he made* the stars also.* 17 And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth, 18 And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that *it was* good. 19 And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.* 20 And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl *that* may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.**** 21 And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that *it was* good. 22 And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth. 23 And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.* 24 ¶ And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so. 25 And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that *it was* good. 26 ¶ And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. 27 So God created man in his *own* image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. 28 And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.* 29 ¶ And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which *is* upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which *is* the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.** 30 And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein *there is* life, *I have given* every green herb for meat: and it was so.* 31 And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, *it was* very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.* [Genesis 2](/study/genesis/2) ## Commentary To verse 1 **THE CREATIVE WEEK**([Genesis 1:1](/kjv/genesis/1/1) to [Genesis 2:3](/kjv/genesis/2/3)). (1) **In the beginning.**—Not, as in [John 1:1](/kjv/john/1/1), “from eternity,” but in the beginning of this sidereal system, of which our sun, with its attendant planets, forms a part. As there never was a time when God did not exist, and as activity is an essential part of His being ([John 5:17](/kjv/john/5/17)), so, probably, there was never a time when worlds did not exist; and in the process of calling them into existence when and how He willed, we may well believe that God acted in accordance with the working of some universal law, of which He is Himself the author. It was natural with St. John, when placing the same words at the commencement of his Gospel, to carry back our minds to a more absolute conceivable “beginning,” when the work of creation had not commenced, and when in the whole universe there was only God. **God.**—Heb., *Elohim.* A word plural in form, but joined with a verb singular, except when it refers to the false gods of the heathen, in which case it takes a verb plural. Its root-meaning is *strength, power;* and the form *Elohim* is not to be regarded as a *pluralis majestatis, but* as embodying the effort of early human thought in feeling after the Deity, and in arriving at the conclusion that the Deity was One. Thus, in the name *Elohim* it included in one Person all the powers, mights, and influences by which the world was first created and is now governed and maintained. In the Vedas, in the hymns recovered for us by the decipherment of the cuneiform inscriptions, whether Accadian or Semitic, and in all other ancient religious poetry, we find these powers ascribed to different beings; in the Bible alone Elohim is one. Christians may also well see in this a foreshadowing of the plurality of persons in the Divine Trinity; but its primary lesson is that, however diverse may seem the working of the powers of nature, the Worker is one and His work one. **Created.**—Creation, in its strict sense of producing something out of nothing, contains an idea so noble and elevated that naturally human language could only gradually rise up to it. It is quite possible, therefore, that the word *bârâ*, “he created,” may originally have signified to *hew* stone *or fell* timber; but as a matter of fact it is a rare word, and employed chiefly or entirely in connection with the activity of God. As, moreover, “the heaven and the earth” can only mean the totality of all existent things, the idea of creating them out of nothing is contained in the very form of the sentence. Even in [Genesis 1:21](/kjv/genesis/1/21); [Genesis 1:27](/kjv/genesis/1/27), where the word may signify something less than creation *ex nihilo,* there is nevertheless a passage from inert matter to animate life, for which science knows no force, or process, or energy capable of its accomplishment. **The heaven and the earth**.—The normal phrase in the Bible for the universe ([Deuteronomy 32:1](/kjv/deuteronomy/32/1); [Psalms 148:13](/kjv/psalms/148/13); [Isaiah 2:0](/kjv/isaiah/2/0)). To the Hebrew this consisted of our one planet and the atmosphere surrounding it, in which he beheld the sun, moon, and stars. But it is one of the more than human qualities of the language of the Holy Scriptures that, while written by men whose knowledge was in accordance with their times, it does not contradict the increased knowledge of later times. Contemporaneous with the creation of the earth was the calling into existence, not merely perhaps of our solar system, but of that sidereal universe of which we form so small a part; but naturally in the Bible our attention is confined to that which chiefly concerns ourselves. ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/#website","url":"https://realbiblebelievers.com","name":"Real Bible Believers","description":"RBB","publisher":{"@id":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/#/schema/person/e966585dde703268e7f6ae890ea98509"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/search?q={search_term_string}","query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"ImageObject","@id":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/study/ellicotts-commentary-for-english-readers/genesis/1#primaryimage","inLanguage":"en-US","url":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/_app/immutable/assets/missing.C7wGMEZ6.jpg","contentUrl":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/_app/immutable/assets/missing.C7wGMEZ6.jpg","width":672,"height":448,"caption":"Real Bible Believers"},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/study/ellicotts-commentary-for-english-readers/genesis/1#webpage","url":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/study/ellicotts-commentary-for-english-readers/genesis/1","name":"Genesis 1 - Study King James Bible with ellicotts commentary for english readers","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/study/ellicotts-commentary-for-english-readers/genesis/1#primaryimage"},"author":{"@id":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/#/schema/person/e966585dde703268e7f6ae890ea98509"},"description":"Read Genesis 1 with ellicotts commentary for english readers commentary. 1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. 2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. 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