The Dependent Clause of Genesis 1:1-3

Introduction

Introduction

The place we need to start to think correctly, to think grammatically, about is to talk about clauses—and no, I hope you’re not having flashbacks already about going back to English class. This is not going to be complicated; it’s something very comprehensible. As we are going to find, it’s something very crucial to being able to read the way a Hebrew writer wrote it and the way his readers would have read it and understood it.

What Is a Clause?

What is a clause? A clause is a group of related words containing a subject and a verb. A clause may or may not express a complete thought; we’re going to see the difference in a moment. The verb may be expressed or just sort of understood. This is, again, something very common with English. You can hear English statements and sort of insert a verb if you know it belongs there, because you are a native speaker. So a clause, again, is where we start.

Independent Clause

There are two types of clauses. There are independent clauses, and that is a group of words that contains a subject and a verb and in this case expresses a complete thought. For example, if I say,

“Jim studied in his room for his chemistry exam,”

that statement has a subject and a verb—“Jim studied”—and the rest of it sort of closes the thought. We don’t need any other information to understand that statement. “Jim studied in his room for his chemistry exam.” There’s nothing that is essential to comprehending “What do we mean?”

Dependent Clause

The second kind of clause is a dependent clause. A dependent clause is a group of words that contains a subject and a verb but does not express a complete thought. Let’s take our independent clause and add something to it. If I add the word

“when”—”When Jim studied in his room for his chemistry exam”

—we sort of sense that it’s leading to something. It’s not something that stands alone; it’s something that contributes to another thought. That is an example of a dependent clause.

Summary

We have two clauses that we have talked about: independent (“Jim studied in his room for his chemistry exam”)—the thought is complete; and we have “When Jim studied in his room for his chemistry exam,” and that feels like it’s leading to something else. That is incomplete, and that’s a dependent clause.[1]

Combining Clause Types

Introduction

We’ve talked about independent clauses and dependent clauses. Again, independent clauses express a complete idea; dependent clauses do not. These sorts of clauses get combined in whole sentences or groups of sentences, and the grammar helps us understand how to read something, or, when we hear it, how to process it. This is what’s going to happen in Genesis.

The Dependent Clause

But I want to show you the example, how it works in English. Let’s go back to our dependent clause, “When Jim studied in his room for his chemistry exam.” Again, that’s waiting for something, or it needs something to make the thought complete.

Adding an Independent Clause to the End

If we add an independent clause to that, here’s what we would get:

“When Jim studied in his room for his chemistry exam, he was able to concentrate.”

Now the thought is complete. What we’ve done is, we’ve taken a dependent clause and we’ve added another clause to it, an independent one, to make a whole, complete idea out of the two.

“When Jim studied in his room for his chemistry exam, he was able to concentrate.” Now the thought is complete. What we’ve done is, we’ve taken a dependent clause and we’ve added another clause to it, an independent one, to make a whole, complete idea out of the two.

Adding an Independent Clause to the Beginning

We could also add something to the front:

“His brothers stayed away when Jim studied in his room for his chemistry exam.”

Again, it gives us an added circumstance that completes the idea. You can either add something to the back or you can add something to the front, but the issue is, a dependent clause is often combined with an independent clause to make a full, complete idea.

Discerning the Clauses in Genesis

This is what’s going to happen in Genesis. We need to be able to discern what are the independent clauses and what are the dependent clauses, because the independent clauses are the ones that are going to drive the main idea. If we can isolate the dependent clauses, then we’ll sort of know what modifies an independent clause, or what is sort of secondary. What sort of needs supplementation, as we read through Genesis?

What this is going to do when we look at Genesis is, it’s going to dictate to us whether we can read as a linear sequence of events or not.[2]

Clause Function

Introduction

Let’s begin with the very first verse of the Bible (and of course our sequence that we’re talking about), . I have removed some of the punctuation in my translation here, so let’s read:

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth

Now the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep

And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters

And God said, “Let there be light”

And there was light

Independent or Dependent?

has both independent and dependent clauses. I took out the periods in the way I translated the sentence, because I don’t want to sort of telegraph anything and I don’t want to bias any particular reading, even though these verses are very, very, very familiar. We need to recognize, in terms of our analysis of these verses, that there are both independent and dependent clauses, and the Hebrew—not the English, not the way it’s sort of scripted out—will dictate that to us. I’ll point those things out as we proceed.

The Interpretive Key

Knowing how Hebrew identifies each kind of clause is going to be our interpretive key to understanding how to read these verses properly, and also how they open the door to different possibilities in terms of, What is really communicating, and what isn’t it communicating? What does the text allow in terms of the way we think about what’s going in these first three verses?[3]

The Traditional View

Introduction

We’ve talked about the two kinds of clauses—independent and dependent clauses—and now we are in am going to describe first the traditional view. This is the way most Christians would read the first three verses of Genesis. Just so that we’re clear, this is not the reading, and it’s not the interpretive slant that the Hebrew grammar gives us. This is just the way that most people would approach the three verses.

The First Creative Act and the Result

If we begin,

In the beginning, God created the heavens and earth

Now the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep

And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters

And God said, “Let there be light”

And there was light

The way I read that suggests that the first creative act of God is in the first verse—“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth”—and it makes verse 2 a resulting circumstance of what happens in verse 1. So when God created the heavens and the earth, this is how it looked: “The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.” God creates, this is the result, and then God goes back to work, so to speak, in verse 3, and we have God saying, “Let there be light,” and there was light.

This is a traditional way to approach this. We have an initial creation—God’s first creative act, verse 1; and then verse 2 is the result; and then verse 3 is another main or independent thought.

An Alternative View: A Dependent Clause

There are some hidden things going on in here. Again, that was an English translation of mine just to show the point. There are some things going on in relation to the clauses, and also one other thing I am going to add here as we proceed, that [may] make the picture appear a little bit different.

What if I change the first verse to say,

“When God began to create the heavens and the earth”?

By inserting the word “when,” I create a time circumstance where the first verse now sounds like it’s leading to something else, and it needs that something else, that supplemental thought, to be a complete idea.

You’ll say, “That’s cheating. You can’t just change the way the Bible is translated.” Actually, you can, because when we look at the way the Hebrew grammar dictates our understanding, there are going to be some things that pop out at you as being different.

If I take that alternative, “When God began to create the heavens and the earth,” we come out with a different picture. See if you can sort of detect it. “When God began to create the heavens and the earth, the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. And God said”—or we could say, “Then God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.” Now, that reading implies that verses 1 and 2 are leading up to verse 3, and verse 3 is the first creative act.

Again, you’ll say, “That’s cheating. Why would you do that?”

The First Word of

I want you to consider something that isn’t obvious from English translations. The traditional translation—“In the beginning”—that we all know, we’ve all grown up with, is really based upon some assumptions. The very first word of the Hebrew text in is bereshith. We look at the consonants here.

Hebrew Vowels

If I wanted to be sure that the writer meant me to think, and to read, and to translate

“In the beginning”

to get an absolute first creative act in verse 1, I would put this little sign that looks like a capital T underneath the first letter—again, Hebrew reads from right to left—and we would pronounce it

ba-re-shith.

But what we actually have in the Hebrew Bible, in all the manuscripts that have vowels, is not that. We have

be-re-shith

—we have two little dots underneath.

The Definite Article

You’ll say, “Who cares? What’s the difference, Mike?” Well, ba-re-shith … the little T under the first letter is something in Hebrew grammar called the “definite article”—it’s the word “the”—but we don’t have that in the actual Hebrew text. In other words, what it comes down to is, to really properly translate , we need to try to do without using the word “the,” and that’s why some translations actually have “When God began to create” instead of “In the beginning,” because there is no definite article in the Hebrew text.

The Hebrew Grammar View

If you take that to , and we refer back to that alternative translation, we have this idea—the “Hebrew grammar view” is what I’ll call it. We would read the text, “When God began to create the heavens and the earth.” Again, we’re setting the stage. “The earth was without form and void,” meaning, it just happened to be this way already. “The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. And God said”—again, looking at all this circumstance, these two verses leading up to God coming on the scene—“And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.”

Conclusion

The impact of this is that verse 3 is actually the first act of creation, and not verse 1. Verses 1 and 2 create dependent ideas that need verse 3 to complete their thought. Verses 1 and 2 are just introductory, leading up to verse 3. It’s a very subtle difference, but it’s a very important one.[4]

Considering the Ramifications

Introduction

You might ask, “Why is this important? What are the ramifications?” These sorts of questions are, of course, important and kind of obvious in view of what we’ve already talked about.

Locating the First Creative Act

The traditional view views as a linear, chronological sequence. There’s one act, there’s another act, and then there’s another act—verses 1, 2, and 3. “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth”—end of story, close of . The first verse is the first creative act. The second verse describes the result of the first verse, and then the third verse has God getting back to work. The traditional view, again, is a linear sequence, where verse 1 is the first creative act.

The view that Hebrew grammar argues for, though, has verse 3 as the first creative act. We have in verse 1 not an absolute beginning, but we have a circumstance leading to the first thing that God will do. Circumstantially, when God began to create the heavens and the earth, the earth was in this or that condition. Then in verse 3 we have God acting. “God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.”

The Ramifications

The ramifications of this are pretty important, even though this is sort of a little high-browed Hebrew grammar here—but this is why commentaries and even English translations disagree on the very first verse of the Bible.

Not the Absolute First Beginning of Matter

The ramifications are that , if you are just going with Hebrew grammar, is not the absolute beginning of the creation of matter. would describe actually a reordering, a refashioning, a reconstituting of matter that is already there in verse 1. We know theologically that God is the creator of all things visible and invisible. The Bible teaches us that idea elsewhere. My point here is that , if you just go with Hebrew grammar, is not the absolute first beginning of matter. Genesis is about describing what God did with that stuff that He had created sometime prior, that we aren’t told about in Genesis but we are told about in other verses. God is taking that material and refashioning it. Why? He wants to take that material and make a habitable earth and then fill it with human life and animal life.

Accommodating Modern Cosmological Views

You say, “Why should I care?” Here’s why you should care. If you’re concerned about the notion that modern science contradicts—the notion of a very, very, very ancient universe and even a very, very ancient earth—if you take the Hebrew grammar view, you have an indefinite amount of time between whenever it was that God created that material that we are first introduced to in , and then went back and reordered it for human habitation. We’re not given any sort of time sequence at all in the first three verses. You could have in theory millions or billions of years before .

Again, that doesn’t solve all of the issues related to the creation and evolution debate, but you should know that the Hebrew text itself can accommodate a very modern cosmological idea like that.[6]

[1] Heiser, M. S. (2016). BI161 Problems in Bible Interpretation: Difficult Passages I. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.

[2] Heiser, M. S. (2016). BI161 Problems in Bible Interpretation: Difficult Passages I. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.

[3] Heiser, M. S. (2016). BI161 Problems in Bible Interpretation: Difficult Passages I. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.

[4] Heiser, M. S. (2016). BI161 Problems in Bible Interpretation: Difficult Passages I. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.

[5] Heiser, M. S. (2016). BI161 Problems in Bible Interpretation: Difficult Passages I. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.

[6] Heiser, M. S. (2016). BI161 Problems in Bible Interpretation: Difficult Passages I. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.