Genesis 1

The Creation

In six days God speaks an unformed, empty earth into order and fills it with life, and last of all makes man and woman in His own image.

Genesis chaptersChapter 1 of 50

The beginning of this earth. The scriptures “do not provide details about how or when the earth was created,” so no date is given. Read with footnotes in Gospel Library

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Background

Genesis itself names no author: “the Bible itself does not identify who wrote the Pentateuch,” and “many scholars believe that there were multiple writers, editors, and others…

Genesis itself names no author: “the Bible itself does not identify who wrote the Pentateuch,” and “many scholars believe that there were multiple writers, editors, and others involved in producing the text we have today.” Whatever that history, “Restoration scripture confirms Moses’s central involvement in these works.” He “used several documentary sources from which he compiled the book of Genesis, besides a divine revelation to him,” and “scribes and copyists have left their traces” on the text. Latter-day revelation records the revelation itself: “Moses, my son, I will speak unto thee concerning this earth upon which thou standest; and thou shalt write the things which I shall speak” (Moses 1:40). That chapter, Moses' vision before he wrote, is “an introduction to Genesis.” Lehi's brass plates held “the five books of Moses, which gave an account of the creation of the world” (1 Ne. 5:11).

Genesis is built on family records, each beginning “These are the generations,” and the first of them opens at Gen. 2:4. Chapter 1, with the first three verses of chapter 2, stands in front of them all: the account of the whole earth, when “all mankind” was “as yet one family.”

Restoration scripture tells the same Creation twice more: as the Lord's own words to Moses in Moses 2, part of the Joseph Smith Translation, which “offers the best available account of the early chapters,” and as the plan of the Gods in Abr. 4. The notes below bring them in where they answer a question about a verse in Genesis.

The thread through the chapter

The chapter is the story of an earth that is unformed and empty being made into a home.

The chapter is the story of an earth that is unformed and empty being made into a home. Verse 2 states the problem in two Hebrew words, tohu wabohu, “without form, and void.” Isaiah gives the reason God would not leave it that way: He “created it not in vain, he formed it to be inhabited” (Isa. 45:18), and the word for “in vain” is tohu.

God answers the formlessness by dividing and naming. The verb divide comes five times (verses 4, 6, 7, 14, 18): light from darkness, the waters above from the waters below, day from night, and the sea is gathered from the dry land. Then He answers the emptiness by filling what He has divided: lights in the firmament, fish told to “fill the waters,” birds in the sky, beasts on the land, and at last man and woman, told to “replenish” (that is, fill) the earth. Again and again the same order recurs: God speaks, it is done, and He sees that it is good. “Good” comes seven times, and the seventh, after man and woman, is “very good.”

The pattern breaks at verse 26. Instead of “Let there be,” God says “Let us make,” and what He makes is in His own image and is given dominion over the rest. The ordered earth was made for them.

Tap any highlighted phrase to open a note beneath its versein the margin.

Verses 1–5

Light out of darkness

In plain words

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was unformed and empty; darkness lay over the deep waters, and the Spirit of God hovered over the waters. God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and He separated the light from the darkness. He called the light Day and the darkness Night. There was evening and there was morning: the first day.

1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

Language #

The beginning of this earth

“In the beginning” is the beginning of this earth, not of everything that exists.

“In the beginning” is the beginning of this earth, not of everything that exists. Before revealing the Creation the Lord told Moses that “worlds without number have I created,” but “only an account of this earth, and the inhabitants thereof, give I unto you” (Moses 1:33, 35).

The Hebrew points the same way. Bereshit has no definite article (“in a beginning”), and the verse can be read as a time clause that runs into verse 2: “in the beginning when God created.” One Jewish translation renders it, “When God began to create heaven and earth—the earth being unformed and void.” The King James wording can suggest that “this was where everything started, and there was nothing before,” which “is not the Latter-day Saint position, and it is not really the position of the book of Genesis.” The verse sets the scene in which God begins to shape an earth that is already there (see the next note on verse 2).

Sources: The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Westminster Leningrad Codex (the Masoretic Hebrew text), Read in the Hebrew–English interlinear on Bible Hub. Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906. Avram R. Shannon, “The Genesis Creation Account in Its Ancient Context”, BYU Studies 64, no. 3, 173.

Language #

Elohim, and who created

The word for God here is Elohim, plural in form but used with a singular verb, bara, “he created,” a use classed as a “plural intensive.”

The word for God here is Elohim, plural in form but used with a singular verb, bara, “he created,” a use classed as a “plural intensive.” Latter-day Saints use Elohim as a name-title of the Father, “God the Eternal Father, whom we designate by the exalted name-title ‘Elohim,’” and “when one speaks of God, it is generally the Father who is referred to.”

Restoration scripture says who did the work. The Lord's words to Moses begin, “by mine Only Begotten I created these things” (Moses 2:1). So the verse says “God created the heaven and the earth,” “but we know that it was actually the Lord (Jesus) who was the creator.” He worked “under the direction of His Father,” as “the executive of the Father, Elohim, in the work of creation.” From Gen. 2:4 on, Genesis also uses the divine name that the King James Bible prints as “the LORD” in small capitals: Jehovah, “the premortal Jesus Christ.”

Sources: Westminster Leningrad Codex (the Masoretic Hebrew text), Read in the Hebrew–English interlinear on Bible Hub. Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906. The First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, “The Father and the Son: A Doctrinal Exposition”, 30 June 1916; reprinted in Ensign, April 2002. “God”, Bible Dictionary. The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, “The Living Christ: The Testimony of the Apostles”, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. “Jehovah”, Bible Dictionary.

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.

Language #

Organized, not made from nothing

The earth in verse 2 is not nothing; it is unshaped and empty. The Hebrew pair tohu wabohu means “formlessness” and “emptiness,” and Abraham's account reads “empty and desolate” (Abr. 4:2).

The earth in verse 2 is not nothing; it is unshaped and empty. The Hebrew pair tohu wabohu means “formlessness” and “emptiness,” and Abraham's account reads “empty and desolate” (Abr. 4:2). The phrase “does not mean ‘nothing’ or indicate an absence, but instead refers to a state in which material was present, but in an unorganized, unformed, state.” “The deep” (tehom) is the “primaeval ocean” of the Hebrew picture of the world, reflecting “the common ancient Near Eastern association of the sea or ocean with the unorganized material” before creation.

The verb of verse 1, bara, is used only of God (“shape, fashion, create, always of divine activity”), but it does not say “out of nothing”; it “means something like ‘organize’ rather than active creation out of nothing.” This is the Restoration's reading. Joseph Smith taught in 1844, “The word create came from the word baurau; it does not mean so; it means to organize; the same as a man would organize a ship. Hence we infer that God had materials to organize the world out of chaos.” In a doctrinal exposition of 1916 the First Presidency and the Twelve said that “the Creator is an Organizer,” who “certainly did not create, in the sense of bringing into primal existence, the ultimate elements” of the earth.

Jeremiah reuses the phrase for the land after judgment: “I beheld the earth, and, lo, it was without form, and void” (Jer. 4:23), a land “reduced to primaeval chaos.”

Sources: Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906. The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Daniel L. Belnap, “In the Beginning: Genesis 1–3 and Its Significance to the Latter-day Saints”, in From Creation to Sinai: The Old Testament through the Lens of the Restoration, ed. Daniel L. Belnap and Aaron P. Schade (Religious Studies Center, BYU; Deseret Book, 2021), 1–42. Avram R. Shannon, “The Genesis Creation Account in Its Ancient Context”, BYU Studies 64, no. 3, 173. Joseph Smith, “Discourse, 7 April 1844, as Published in Times and Seasons”, Times and Seasons 5, no. 15 (15 Aug. 1844): 612–617; read in The Joseph Smith Papers. The First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, “The Father and the Son: A Doctrinal Exposition”, 30 June 1916; reprinted in Ensign, April 2002.

Language #

The Spirit brooding over the waters

The Hebrew ruach means “breath, wind, spirit,” and in Hebrew the senses are “very difficult (if not impossible)” to separate, so one Jewish translation reads “a wind from God…

The Hebrew ruach means “breath, wind, spirit,” and in Hebrew the senses are “very difficult (if not impossible)” to separate, so one Jewish translation reads “a wind from God sweeping over the water.” The Lord's words in the Book of Moses settle it for Latter-day Saints: “my Spirit moved upon the face of the water” (Moses 2:2).

“Moved” is too weak. The verb means to hover, “or perhaps… brooding,” and elsewhere it describes an eagle that “fluttereth over her young” (Deut. 32:11). Abraham's account uses the brooding image: “the Spirit of the Gods was brooding upon the face of the waters” (Abr. 4:2). The waters are dark and unformed, but the scene opens “with a sense of potential or expectation,” as a bird hovers over its nest before anything has hatched.

Sources: Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906. Avram R. Shannon, “The Genesis Creation Account in Its Ancient Context”, BYU Studies 64, no. 3, 173. The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Daniel L. Belnap, “In the Beginning: Genesis 1–3 and Its Significance to the Latter-day Saints”, in From Creation to Sinai: The Old Testament through the Lens of the Restoration, ed. Daniel L. Belnap and Aaron P. Schade (Religious Studies Center, BYU; Deseret Book, 2021), 1–42.

3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

Witness of Christ #

Creation by the word

Every act of creation in the chapter begins with God speaking, and the thing follows the word: “Let there be light: and there was light.”

Every act of creation in the chapter begins with God speaking, and the thing follows the word: “Let there be light: and there was light.” The Psalm says it in a line: “By the word of the Lord were the heavens made” (Ps. 33:6); “he spake, and it was done” (Ps. 33:9).

Restoration scripture gives the word a name. When Moses asked how the worlds were made, the Lord answered, “by the word of my power, have I created them, which is mine Only Begotten Son” (Moses 1:32), and Moses' account of the first day adds that it was done “by the word of my power, and it was done as I spake” (Moses 2:5).

Sources: The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Imagery #

Light before the sun

Light comes on the first day; the sun, moon, and stars on the fourth (verses 14–19).

Light comes on the first day; the sun, moon, and stars on the fourth (verses 14–19). So the first light is not sunlight, and Genesis does not say what it is. One Latter-day Saint answer points to God Himself. President John Taylor taught that God “caused light to shine upon [the earth] before the sun appeared in the firmament… for God is light, and in him there is no darkness. He is the light of the sun and the power thereof by which it was made.” His words echo the revelation on the light of Christ, who “is in the sun, and the light of the sun, and the power thereof by which it was made” (D&C 88:7), a light that “proceedeth forth from the presence of God to fill the immensity of space” (D&C 88:12).

That reading fits the ancient setting. “Throughout the ancient Near East and the Bible, the presence of light indicates the presence of Deity,” so the first act of creation may make “an environment in which the divine may be directly and always present.” God names the light “Day” before there is a sun; on the fourth day the sun and moon are given to “rule” what He has already divided.

Sources: Moses 2:1–31, Pearl of Great Price Student Manual (Church Educational System, 2017). The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Daniel L. Belnap, “In the Beginning: Genesis 1–3 and Its Significance to the Latter-day Saints”, in From Creation to Sinai: The Old Testament through the Lens of the Restoration, ed. Daniel L. Belnap and Aaron P. Schade (Religious Studies Center, BYU; Deseret Book, 2021), 1–42.

4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.

Language #

Creation by dividing

“Creation in Genesis 1 is fundamentally a process of dividing in order to put things into their proper places.”

“Creation in Genesis 1 is fundamentally a process of dividing in order to put things into their proper places.” The Hebrew verb hibdil, “divide, separate,” comes five times: God divides light from darkness (verse 4), the firmament divides the waters (verses 6–7), and the lights divide day from night (verses 14, 18). Where the verb is absent the idea goes on, as plants and animals are each made “after his kind.”

It is a priest's word. Aaron's sons are to “put difference between holy and unholy, and between unclean and clean” (Lev. 10:10), with the same verb, and in the law “when priests are making these kinds of distinctions, they are engaged in divine behavior.” The Lord uses it of Israel too: “I am the Lord your God, which have separated you from other people” (Lev. 20:24). The distinctions God makes in creating the world are the kind His priests and His people are asked to keep.

Sources: Avram R. Shannon, “The Genesis Creation Account in Its Ancient Context”, BYU Studies 64, no. 3, 173. Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906. The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

Language #

How long is a day?

The Hebrew yom is the ordinary word for “day,” and in this chapter it is a “day as defined by evening and morning.”

The Hebrew yom is the ordinary word for “day,” and in this chapter it is a “day as defined by evening and morning.” But the same word stretches. When the Creation is summed up, all of it happened “in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens” (Gen. 2:4), where yom means “the time of,” “representing the act vividly as that of a single day.” Abraham's account calls each period a “time” (“the second time,” “the fifth time,” Abr. 4:8, 23). Elder Russell M. Nelson taught in 2000: “Whether termed a day, a time, or an age, each phase was a period between two identifiable events—a division of eternity.”

How long those periods were has not been revealed. “Using our measurement of time, we do not know how long it took God to create the earth.” The same is true of how life on the earth developed: “The Church has no official position on the theory of evolution.” Organic evolution “is a matter for scientific study. Nothing has been revealed concerning evolution.” What is taught concerns our first parents: “We are all descendants of Adam and Eve, our first parents, who were created in God's image. There were no spirit children of Heavenly Father on the earth before Adam and Eve were created.” The rest is promised: when the Lord comes He will reveal “things of the earth, by which it was made” (D&C 101:32–33).

Verses 6–8

The firmament

In plain words

God said, “Let there be an expanse in the middle of the waters, to separate water from water.” God made the expanse and separated the waters under it from the waters above it, and it was so. God called the expanse Heaven. There was evening and there was morning: the second 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.

Language #

The firmament

The firmament is the sky, set between the waters. The Hebrew raqia is an “extended surface, (solid) expanse (as if beaten out)”; its root means “to beat out,” as in beating out a…

The firmament is the sky, set between the waters. The Hebrew raqia is an “extended surface, (solid) expanse (as if beaten out)”; its root means “to beat out,” as in beating out a metal plate. The Greek translators rendered it stereōma and the Latin firmamentum (from firmus), and the King James “firmament” comes from the Latin. The Church edition's footnote and Abraham's account both give “expanse” (Abr. 4:6–8).

The word reflects how the first hearers pictured the sky: probably as a solid vault “supporting ‘waters’ above it,” and they had a reason, “the clear example of falling rain.” When the Flood came, “the windows of heaven were opened” (Gen. 7:11). Latter-day Saint teaching describes what the division accomplished in terms of the air and the clouds: “the waters were divided between the surface of the earth and its atmospheric heavens. Provision was made for clouds and rain to give life to all that would later dwell upon the earth.” The second day makes “a space in which the rest of the earth could be established.”

Sources: Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906. Avram R. Shannon, “The Genesis Creation Account in Its Ancient Context”, BYU Studies 64, no. 3, 173. Noah Webster, An American Dictionary of the English Language, 1828. The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Russell M. Nelson, “The Creation”, general conference, Apr. 2000. Daniel L. Belnap, “In the Beginning: Genesis 1–3 and Its Significance to the Latter-day Saints”, in From Creation to Sinai: The Old Testament through the Lens of the Restoration, ed. Daniel L. Belnap and Aaron P. Schade (Religious Studies Center, BYU; Deseret Book, 2021), 1–42.

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.

Verses 9–13

Land, sea, and plants

In plain words

God said, “Let the waters under the sky be gathered into one place, and let dry land appear,” and it was so. He called the dry land Earth and the gathered waters Seas, and God saw that it was good. Then God said, “Let the earth bring forth grass, plants that bear seed, and fruit trees whose fruit holds their seed, each after its kind,” and it was so. The earth brought them forth, each after its kind, and God saw that it was good. There was evening and there was morning: the third 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.

Verses 14–19

The lights in the sky

In plain words

God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate the day from the night. Let them mark signs and appointed times, days and years, and let them give light on the earth,” and it was so. God made the two great lights, the greater to rule the day and the lesser to rule the night, and the stars as well. He set them in the sky to light the earth, to rule the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness, and God saw that it was good. There was evening and there was morning: the fourth 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:

Language #

Signs and seasons

The lights are given work to do. Besides dividing day from night, they are to be “for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years.”

The lights are given work to do. Besides dividing day from night, they are to be “for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years.” “Seasons” (mo'adim) are “appointed times,” and in particular a “sacred season,” the set feasts of Israel's calendar. Here the word most probably means “the sacred seasons as fixed by moon's appearance,” though many read it as “the seasons of the year.” The Psalm says, “He appointed the moon for seasons” (Ps. 104:19).

What “signs” means is less clear, but it “hints of a function useful primarily to humankind.” Even the sky is ordered toward the people who will live under it.

Sources: Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906. Westminster Leningrad Codex (the Masoretic Hebrew text), Read in the Hebrew–English interlinear on Bible Hub. The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Daniel L. Belnap, “In the Beginning: Genesis 1–3 and Its Significance to the Latter-day Saints”, in From Creation to Sinai: The Old Testament through the Lens of the Restoration, ed. Daniel L. Belnap and Aaron P. Schade (Religious Studies Center, BYU; Deseret Book, 2021), 1–42.

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.

Context #

Why not the sun and moon?

Genesis calls them only “the greater light” and “the lesser light.” The Lord's words to Moses name them: “the greater light was the sun, and the lesser light was the moon” (Moses 2:16).

Genesis calls them only “the greater light” and “the lesser light.” The Lord's words to Moses name them: “the greater light was the sun, and the lesser light was the moon” (Moses 2:16). Why Genesis holds back the names is not stated. One reading suggests it was “possibly in order to avoid reference by name to heavenly bodies whose worship was a source of idolatrous superstition, from the peril of which Israel was not free.” The law warns against exactly that: “lest thou lift up thine eyes unto heaven, and when thou seest the sun, and the moon, and the stars… shouldest be driven to worship them” (Deut. 4:19). In Genesis the lights are made, set in place, and given a task. The stars get five words: “he made the stars also.”

Sources: The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Herbert E. Ryle, The Book of Genesis in the Revised Version, Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (Cambridge: University Press, 1921); read on Bible Hub.

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.

Verses 20–23

Creatures of the sea and the air

In plain words

God said, “Let the waters swarm with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the sky.” So God created the great sea creatures and every living thing that moves, with which the waters swarm, each after its kind, and every winged bird after its kind, and God saw that it was good. God blessed them: “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the waters of the seas, and let the birds multiply on the earth.” There was evening and there was morning: the fifth 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.

Imagery #

The great sea creatures

The “great whales” are the tanninim, “sea-monsters”; the Church edition's footnote gives “great sea monsters,” and the King James wording followed the Greek and Latin translations.

The “great whales” are the tanninim, “sea-monsters”; the Church edition's footnote gives “great sea monsters,” and the King James wording followed the Greek and Latin translations. Elsewhere tannin is the dragon of Hebrew poetry. The psalmist says to God, “thou brakest the heads of the dragons in the waters” (Ps. 74:13); the Lord “shall slay the dragon that is in the sea” (Isa. 27:1); His arm “wounded the dragon” (Isa. 51:9), where the dragon stands beside Rahab, a “mythological personification of chaos.” “Throughout the ancient Near East, the Creation was described in terms of a battle between the warrior god and the chaos monster, which was often equated with the ocean.”

Genesis 1 tells no battle; here “God caused everything to come into existence simply by speaking.” The great sea creatures are made on the fifth day like the fish, “after their kind,” and God sees that they are good. They are also the first things since verse 1 of which the chapter uses the verb bara, “created,” marking “a new departure” as animal life appears; its other use is for man (verse 27).

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.

Verses 24–31

Animals, and man and woman in God's image

In plain words

God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures after their kind: cattle, creeping things, and wild animals,” and it was so. God made them all after their kind, and God saw that it was good. Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and let them rule over the fish, the birds, the cattle, all the earth, and every creeping thing.” So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; rule over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and every living thing that moves on the earth.” God said, “I have given you every seed-bearing plant and every fruit tree for food, and to every animal and bird and creeping thing I have given every green plant for food,” and it was so. God saw everything He had made, and it was very good. There was evening and there was morning: the sixth 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.

Related Scriptures #

God in council

“Let us make” is plural in Hebrew, and so are “our image” and “our likeness”; verse 27 returns to the singular, “in his own image… created he him.”

“Let us make” is plural in Hebrew, and so are “our image” and “our likeness”; verse 27 returns to the singular, “in his own image… created he him.” The Book of Moses says who is spoken to: “I, God, said unto mine Only Begotten, which was with me from the beginning: Let us make man” (Moses 2:26). Abraham widens the circle: “the Gods took counsel among themselves” (Abr. 4:26), after a scene among “the noble and great ones” in which one “like unto God” said, “We will go down… and we will make an earth” (Abr. 3:22–24).

The Old Testament knows such a council. The prophet Micaiah “saw the Lord sitting on his throne, and all the host of heaven standing by him” (1 Kgs. 22:19), and Jeremiah asks of the false prophets, “who hath stood in the counsel of the Lord?” (Jer. 23:18). Against that background “let us” appears to reflect “the divine assembly that was led by God,” not a sign “that Israel worshipped more than one deity.” Joseph Smith taught the council in his sermon of April 1844: “The head God called together the Gods, and set in grand council. The grand counsellors sat in yonder heavens, and contemplated the creation of the worlds.” Latter-day revelation names one of those at work: “Michael (known also as Adam…) participated in the process of creation as well.”

Sources: Westminster Leningrad Codex (the Masoretic Hebrew text), Read in the Hebrew–English interlinear on Bible Hub. The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Scripture Central, “Why are Other People with God When He is Planning the Creation?”, KnoWhy #832, Jan. 1, 2026. Daniel L. Belnap, “In the Beginning: Genesis 1–3 and Its Significance to the Latter-day Saints”, in From Creation to Sinai: The Old Testament through the Lens of the Restoration, ed. Daniel L. Belnap and Aaron P. Schade (Religious Studies Center, BYU; Deseret Book, 2021), 1–42. Joseph Smith, “Discourse, 7 April 1844, as Published in Times and Seasons”, Times and Seasons 5, no. 15 (15 Aug. 1844): 612–617; read in The Joseph Smith Papers. Russell M. Nelson, “The Creation”, general conference, Apr. 2000.

Language #

In the image of God

“Image” and “likeness” are words for a visible resemblance. Tselem, “image,” is literally “something cut out,” and is used of images and idols; demut, “likeness,” is used of…

“Image” and “likeness” are words for a visible resemblance. Tselem, “image,” is literally “something cut out,” and is used of images and idols; demut, “likeness,” is used of “external appearance.” Genesis shows how far the words go: Adam “begat a son in his own likeness, after his image; and called his name Seth” (Gen. 5:3). The words for a son's likeness to his father are the words for man's likeness to God. Restoration scripture says it outright: “In the image of his own body, male and female, created he them” (Moses 6:9); “The Father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man's” (D&C 130:22).

Jews and Christians have long debated these verses, but the Latter-day Saint reading is not a modern novelty. Image “denotes an actual, physical representation,” and “ancient Israel understood God to have at least looked like man”; the Latter-day Saint reading reflects “something very similar to the likely ancient conception of these verses.”

The image belongs to both. “Male and female created he them” (verse 27): “Females are not a derivative form of males but are an independent part of Creation, and both are created in the image of God.” When Genesis 5 repeats the verse, God “called their name Adam” (Gen. 5:2).

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.

Language #

Replenish

“Replenish” does not mean “fill again.” The Hebrew is the ordinary verb “fill,” in the same form God used to the fish in verse 22, “fill the waters in the seas.”

“Replenish” does not mean “fill again.” The Hebrew is the ordinary verb “fill,” in the same form God used to the fish in verse 22, “fill the waters in the seas.” In older English replenish meant simply “To fill; to stock with numbers or abundance,” and an 1828 dictionary gives this verse as its example: “Multiply and replenish the earth. Genesis 1:28.” The verse says nothing of an earlier population to be restored; on what the Church teaches about that, see the note on verse 5.

Sources: Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906. Westminster Leningrad Codex, with morphology, Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible (OSHB), openscriptures/morphhb. The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Noah Webster, An American Dictionary of the English Language, 1828.

Language #

Subdue and have dominion

The two verbs are strong. Kabash, “subdue,” elsewhere means to “bring into bondage” or to conquer; radah, “have dominion,” means to “rule, dominate.”

The two verbs are strong. Kabash, “subdue,” elsewhere means to “bring into bondage” or to conquer; radah, “have dominion,” means to “rule, dominate.” But the Old Testament also shows how such rule is to be used. Radah is the word for Solomon's foremen, “which ruled over the people that wrought in the work” (1 Kgs. 5:16). The law uses it to forbid harsh mastery: “Thou shalt not rule over him with rigour; but shalt fear thy God” (Lev. 25:43). Ezekiel uses it to condemn the shepherds of Israel: “with force and with cruelty have ye ruled them” (Ezek. 34:4).

Because the word can describe an overseer, “the terms did not necessarily mean tyrannical domination,” and they can be read as “compassionate authority.” Man and woman rule as God's image, with “authority akin to that of the Creator himself.” “The dominion described in Genesis is not an absolute or unrighteous dominion.… The earth is not here for humans to despoil.”

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.

Language #

Meat

“Meat” in the King James Bible means “Food in general; any thing eaten for nourishment, either by man or beast,” and the Church edition's footnote gives “food.”

“Meat” in the King James Bible means “Food in general; any thing eaten for nourishment, either by man or beast,” and the Church edition's footnote gives “food.” What God gives here is plants: seed-bearing herbs and fruit for people, and “every green herb” for the animals (verse 30). Animals are first given as food after the Flood: “Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things” (Gen. 9:3).

Sources: Noah Webster, An American Dictionary of the English Language, 1828. The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

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.

Language #

Very good

“Good” in this chapter means fit for its purpose. Seven times God sees that what He has made is good (verses 4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25, 31), and the declaration is “a fundamental and…

“Good” in this chapter means fit for its purpose. Seven times God sees that what He has made is good (verses 4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25, 31), and the declaration is “a fundamental and crucial observation that the objects noted are fulfilling their divine purpose and function.” At the same points Abraham's account speaks of obedience. Where Genesis has “it was good,” Abraham has the Gods seeing “that they were obeyed” (Abr. 4:10) and watching what they had ordered “until they obeyed” (Abr. 4:18), and the sixth time ends, “they shall be very obedient” (Abr. 4:31).

Only once the man and woman are made is the whole called “very good.”

Sources: Westminster Leningrad Codex, with morphology, Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible (OSHB), openscriptures/morphhb. Daniel L. Belnap, “In the Beginning: Genesis 1–3 and Its Significance to the Latter-day Saints”, in From Creation to Sinai: The Old Testament through the Lens of the Restoration, ed. Daniel L. Belnap and Aaron P. Schade (Religious Studies Center, BYU; Deseret Book, 2021), 1–42. The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Seeing Christ in Genesis 1

Genesis says God created by speaking, and John opens his Gospel with the same first words and names the Speaker: “In the beginning was the Word…. All things were made by him” (John 1:1–3). An angel told King Benjamin that the coming Messiah would be “the Creator of all things from the beginning” (Mosiah 3:8), and the apostles testify, “Under the direction of His Father, He was the creator of the earth.”

The first words God speaks are “Let there be light,” and Paul speaks of the light of the gospel in the language of the first day: “God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Cor. 4:6). Jesus said, “I am the light of the world” (John 8:12).

The image in which man and woman were made is, in Moses' account, “the image of mine Only Begotten” (Moses 2:27). To the brother of Jared the premortal Christ said, “all men were created in the beginning after mine own image” (Ether 3:15).

Worth exploring next

Read Moses 1, the vision that prepared Moses to write, and then Moses 2 and Abr. 4 beside this chapter; Abr. 3:22–28 tells of the council before the Creation. The account ends with the seventh day in Gen. 2:1–3. Other scripture sings the same Creation: Job 38:4–7, Ps. 104, Isa. 45:18, and John 1:1–5.

For the Creation in its ancient setting, read by a Latter-day Saint scholar, the Religious Studies Center chapter “In the Beginning: Genesis 1–3 and Its Significance to the Latter-day Saints” (in From Creation to Sinai) is the best single place to go next.

This chapter elsewhere in scripture

Moses 2:1–31 — The same account, verse for verse, as the Lord's words to Moses; part of the Joseph Smith Translation.
Abr. 4:1–31 — The Creation as the plan of the Gods, with each day called a “time.”

Sources & further reading

The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
“Pentateuch”, Bible Dictionary.
“Genesis”, Bible Dictionary.
“God”, Bible Dictionary.
“Jehovah”, Bible Dictionary.
The First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, “The Father and the Son: A Doctrinal Exposition”, 30 June 1916; reprinted in Ensign, April 2002.
The First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, “The Living Christ: The Testimony of the Apostles”, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Genesis 1–2; Moses 2–3; Abraham 4–5, Scripture Helps: Old Testament (2025).
“What does the Church believe about evolution?”, New Era, Oct. 2016, 41.
Russell M. Nelson, “The Creation”, general conference, Apr. 2000.
Joseph Smith, “Discourse, 7 April 1844, as Published in Times and Seasons”, Times and Seasons 5, no. 15 (15 Aug. 1844): 612–617; read in The Joseph Smith Papers.
Moses 2:1–31, Pearl of Great Price Student Manual (Church Educational System, 2017).
Daniel L. Belnap, “In the Beginning: Genesis 1–3 and Its Significance to the Latter-day Saints”, in From Creation to Sinai: The Old Testament through the Lens of the Restoration, ed. Daniel L. Belnap and Aaron P. Schade (Religious Studies Center, BYU; Deseret Book, 2021), 1–42.
Avram R. Shannon, “The Genesis Creation Account in Its Ancient Context”, BYU Studies 64, no. 3, 173.
Scripture Central, “Why Do We Have Three Different Accounts of the Creation?”, KnoWhy #400, Aug. 21, 2019.
Scripture Central, “Why are Other People with God When He is Planning the Creation?”, KnoWhy #832, Jan. 1, 2026.
Westminster Leningrad Codex, with morphology, Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible (OSHB), openscriptures/morphhb.
Westminster Leningrad Codex (the Masoretic Hebrew text), Read in the Hebrew–English interlinear on Bible Hub.
Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906.
Noah Webster, An American Dictionary of the English Language, 1828.
Herbert E. Ryle, The Book of Genesis in the Revised Version, Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (Cambridge: University Press, 1921); read on Bible Hub.
Genesis 1–2: The Creation, Old Testament Student Manual: Genesis–2 Samuel (Church Educational System, 2003).

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