Genesis 1:1. Textual Creativity with Creation Text

The first verse of Genesis, opening the Bible's first Creation Story, invites wonder and contemplation. It has also elicited much interpretation. Here are ideas for some adventurous, playful renderings of the verse, which arise from changing the 'whitespace' of the first three words.

Instead of the traditional placement of the letters as

בראשית     ברא      אלהים

which usually gets translated along the lines of, 'In the beginning G!d created', or 'Towards the beginning when G!d created', we simply shift the letters side to side, moving and altering the spaces between them, so that they spell


ברא    שיתברא      אל      הים

The whole verse then becomes


ברא    שיתברא     אל      הים    את      השמים      ואת      הארץ

The first word now, ברא, could be read literally either as past-tense, 'he/He/it/It created', or as imperative, '[you] create!'. I like the imperative.


שיתברא translates as '[so] that: it/It/he/He would be created'.

I read  אל as 'toward', and thus together with the next word, we get 'towards the Sea'. (One might also try  אל as god/G!d, to get 'god/G!d of the Sea', although that choice seems to me perhaps a bit too monolatrous or idolatrous.)

Finally, note that the object-marker, את, sometimes means 'with'. Let's take it that way in this version of the text.

Putting these words together, the verse might be saying


Create! so that It (the world, the manifestation of holiness, the presence of G!d) is created, towards the Sea, along with the Heavens and the Earth

In the above translation, I imagine a primordial view of Land, Ocean and Sky. Presumably, this triad could also be taken symbolically.

If we restore the word אלהים, dropping the motif of 'towards the sea', and read ברא as past-tense, then the verse might say


[G!d] created, and thus [G!d]-self got created, along with Heaven and Earth

The above version, along with the next one, feels more-emphatically mystical.

If we now read את as 'you [grammatically feminine, balancing the grammatical masculine of the first part of the verse]', then we could get


[G!d] created, and thus The Universe got created -- [and by the way,] you are Heaven and you are Earth

Or, if 'you' need to be masculine, we could move the ה's from the following words over to make אתה, to get an essentially equivalent result.

I invite further exploration in the Comments to this Post. To use some of the vocabulary of this verse: Be creative!

11-v-Zot-ha-Brakhah -- Shifting Roles

See the corresponding song-sheet (if your browser can view PDFs)

Chapter 33

א וְזֹאת הַבְּרָכָה, אֲשֶׁר בֵּרַךְ מֹשֶׁה אִישׁ הָאֱלֹהִים--אֶת-בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל: לִפְנֵי, מוֹתוֹ

1 And this is the blessing wherewith Moses the man of God blessed the children of Israel before his death

Chapter 34

ה וַיָּמָת שָׁם מֹשֶׁה עֶבֶד-יְהוָה, בְּאֶרֶץ מוֹאָב--עַל-פִּי יְהוָה

5 So Moses the servant of the LORD died there in the land of Moab, according to the word of the LORD

Moshe gets described first, in Chapter 33, just before his death, as Man of Elohim. Then, in Chapter 34, at the time of his death, he is called Servant of YHVH. The first G!d-name carries the nuance of Din, judgement, firmness, boundaries. The second name is more associated with compassion, and also with the notion of Pure Being.

To me the contrast between these designations of Moshe suggests a dance of shifting roles.

In his long-time role, Moshe remains 'on-duty' as the religious leader of the Israelites, until just before his death. In Chapter 33 he keeps fulfilling this role as The Man, the voice of Authority. In this chapter his leadership manifests in the form of conveying valedictory blessings to the twelve tribes of Israel.

Then, in Chapter 34 Moshe finally goes 'off-duty'. In this brief respite before he dies, he can breathe (perhaps only a couple of) sighs of relief, and can experience himself unladen of the huge communal responsibilities that he had carried. Now he can be 'simply' a servant or devotee of Pure Being, in G!d's compassion.

A well-known comment that appears in Rashi interprets the phrase 'on the mouth of YHVH'. This phrase, in a literalistic translation, corresponds to the above, more contextual / idiomatic translation, 'according to the word of...'. Rashi says that 'on the mouth of...' means that G!d kissed Moshe. Thus Moshe's death was a merging into a loving embrace with Compassionate, Pure Being.

For us, this shift of roles might suggest that, even in the midst of our lives, we should strive to take breaks from our usual ways of engaging with others, including G!d. If we tend toward 'should's, i.e., rules and regulations, then we 'should' occasionally let that go, and simply breathe in Compassion and Being. Conversely, let us sometimes 'do the right thing', which may require more discipline or structure than simply surrendering to Being.