The Creation

The Creation was the act of God by which the Earth, the surrounding universe, the spiritual realms and everything inhabiting them came into being over the course of six days. The creation was initiated by God's spoken words, through the Son, Jesus Christ.

After creating the physical realms of sea, sky and earth, God populated these realms with living things. God spoke commands for the earth and sea to be filled by plants and then animals. The animals were specifically given life, enabling them to move, eat, and reproduce themselves. Last of all God made mankind to be in His image. To mankind he gave dominion over the Earth. The purpose of the creation was bring glory to God.

For the Hebrew people (with continuity to the Jews), God's model of creating for six days and resting on the seventh day modeled a six-day work week from sunset to sundown (corresponding to God's division of days and night by sunlight).

Given the major importance of the creation, the creation week is described in many other places outside of the Genesis account, particularly in the Psalms through very poetic praise of God and often re-arranging the retelling of the events. <!-- See talk page for section

The Process
The Creator used two methods to bring the universe into existence. The primary method was to bring the building blocks into existence by use of His Word. This is also known as "fiat"--by decree. As the creator, God set things up to be the way they are. This is generally seen as the "creating" of verse one, and on the fifth and sixth days (great sea creatures and mankind, respectively). Without the word "create", though, the decrees for life out of the sea and from the land meet this first method by definition.

The second method is the "making" and "forming" of creatures and heavenly bodies. Much of the work on days one through three had been by decree, but when it came to putting things in place (sun, moon and stars) and populating the world (animals and man), The raw materials of the first three days seems to have been formed into everything else.

The Raw Materials
The first verse simply declares that the universe was created as "the heavens and the earth". The terms used--heaven and earth--are further defined on days two and three. On day two, the waters mentioned before light are divided into two places. In dividing the waters in this way, some remained on the separate, and the other ended up in the "heavens". Thus, the "stretched out space" was called "heaven".

On day three, two things happened: land was first seen, and life was introduced in the form of plants. The first thing, the dry land, was called earth. It is important to realize that as with the "heavens", so with the earth, there is an ambiguity in the terms. However, the basic nature of all uses of "earth" is the basic dryness of the substance. In other words, the dry stuff is what we call the solid stuff. The wet stuff is called "seas" and the gaseous stuff is one of the usages of "heaven" (air).

Based on these definitions, drawn from the immediate context, a correlation to observable space, time and matter are clearly seen. With the introduction of light, the two continua of space-time and matter-energy are begun.

Creation
The first word used for method is the verb בָּרָא, usually translated "create". The root meaning of this is "to shape by cutting". That is to say, to sculpt. This is an act of taking raw materials such as stone or wood and making something useful out of it. In context, it is bringing an idea to fruition. As the materials were gathered together in one place, that which was formless began to take shape.

Motion
The Spirit of God, like a mighty wind, set the atoms at rest into motion. The moving (Heb: רָחַף) of the Spirit of God energized the cold dark earth into a very deep ocean of water. The verb used here is sometimes used of the "brooding" or "hovering" of a mother bird over her young. The root carries the idea of fluttering or even shaking to make something soft. With the primal earth, it seems that this motion caused that which was "dry" to become "wet".

Speech
The voice of God is first mentioned with the use of "Let there be" (Heb: יְהִ֣י ), a decree by God that light should come into existence. This would happen several more times in the account. With the first decree, it seems that sound waves coming from the Spirit may have created the light quite literally. In the fiat creation of life (plants, sea creatures and land animals), those same vibrations assembled an uncountable number of atoms into living things, drawing from the ground and the waters.

Formation
The method most commonly used is "formation", that is, to make or do (Heb: עָשָׂה ). Whereas בָּרָא is basically carving, עָשָׂה is molding. In this first mention, the thing made is the vastness of "outer" space itself (as opposed to the "inner space" between the rudimentary particles). Then, on the fourth day, this space was filled by countless luminaries (Heb: מָאוֹר), primary among them the sun and the moon.

Separation
From the beginning, God had necessarily differentiated between opposite extremes. Since by definition darkness cannot exist in the presence of light, the nature of the universe required a separation, a time and space between light and darkness. On a planet like the earth, this is accomplished by shape and by motion, creating "day" and "night". In moving luminaries apart from each other in space, darkness is also maintained.

On the planet earth, there was a separation needed to allow for mankind to thrive. The original global ocean had to be reapportioned so as to allow dry land (Heb: יַבָּשָׁה ). Again God exercised his authority by naming the differentiated places "earth" and "sea". -->

The First Day
During the first day of creation, God declared that there was to be light and it was so. Seeing that the light was good, God separated the light and darkness calling the light "day" and the darkness "night". Due to this, morning and evening became transitional periods between day and night, and thus resulted in the first day.

The Second Day
During the second day, God created what He would call "the heavens". What had been only deep water everywhere was divided by an expanding space. Near the earth, this space consisted of breathable air. Within and beyond this was placed much of the water.

The Third Day
The next day, the water below the atmosphere was commanded to gather into one place, allowing dry ground to appear. The dry ground was called "land" and the waters "sea". . God commanded that there were to be plants sprouting from the ground. There being no rainwater or anyone to work the ground, heavy fog rose from the rivers to water the ground across the land.

The Fourth Day
For day four of the creation, lights were created in order to give light on the Earth as well as to be used for timekeeping The greatest of these lights for the earth were the sun and the moon to provide light during the daytime and at night, respectively. Out beyond these two were the stars.

The Fifth Day
God now created the fish and all of the other living creatures in the water, as well as the creatures of the air. Then they were blessed and commanded to multiply and spread all over the Earth.

The Sixth Day
On the sixth day land animals were created first. After this God created man in His own image in order to glorify Himself and to give them dominion over the Earth through a creation mandate. After creating the first man, Adam, he placed him in the Garden of Eden. The man was given permission to eat fruit off any tree in the garden, excluding the tree of knowledge of good and evil or he would die.

God, being aware that it would not be good for Adam to be alone, brought the animals he had formed to him to be named. After naming the animals in his language, Adam discovered there was no suitable companion for him. Therefore, God put Adam to rest and took a rib and then sealed the hole with skin. He took this rib and formed a woman out of it and presented her to Adam whom he called Eve.

The Seventh Day
After six days, the creation was completed and so God rested, in order to reflect on the work. He was simply done and admiring His work rather than actually being fatigued. God sanctified the seventh day as a day of rest from hard labor which would later become known as the Sabbath.