to create, to bring something into being; in the Bible, always an act of God.
Two things set this word apart, and neither is the act of producing something.
- First, only God is ever the one who does it: no person, craftsman, or nation ever creates in this sense.
- Second, it never mentions the stuff God works with, the way ordinary words for making or shaping do.
So it points to God bringing something about, not to God assembling it from materials already on hand.
Those two features are why it became Israel's special word for God's creating, and why debates about creation out of nothing gather around it. But the word on its own only insists that the work is uniquely God's. It does not by itself say whether God worked from nothing, gave the world its order and roles, or shaped what was already there; those are questions the rest of the Bible and later teaching take up.
The same word stretches from the making of the world to the brand new things God does later in history: a people, a rescue, even a judgment he sends. The prophets of the exile, especially in the second half of Isaiah, lean on it on purpose. Against the gods of Babylon they insist that the God who made the heavens and the earth is the same God who is about to make Israel new.
Nuances
Whether Genesis 1:1 is an independent sentence or a dependent clause leading into verse 2.
- contestedAn independent sentence: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."; Umberto Cassuto, A Commentary on the Book of Genesis, Part I (1961); Gerhard F. Hasel, "Recent Translations of Gen 1:1: A Critical Look," The Bible Translator 22 (1971)
- contestedA dependent clause: "When God began to create the heavens and the earth..."; E. A. Speiser, Genesis, Anchor Bible (1964); Nahum M. Sarna, Genesis, JPS Torah Commentary (1989); Robert D. Holmstedt, "The Restrictive Syntax of Genesis i 1," Vetus Testamentum 58 (2008)
Disputed
Whether this word by itself teaches that God created out of nothing.
- majorityNo. The word marks creating as God's unique act and never names any material, but it does not by itself assert creation from nothing; that idea is drawn from the wider Bible and later theology.; Alexander Heidel, The Babylonian Genesis, 2nd ed. (1951); Claus Westermann, Genesis 1-11: A Continental Commentary (1984); Nahum M. Sarna, Genesis, JPS Torah Commentary (1989); Werner H. Schmidt, "ברא," in Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament (TDOT) 2:242-249; Gerhard May, Creatio Ex Nihilo (1994)
- minorityYes. Because only God is ever its subject and no raw material is ever mentioned, the word itself implies creation out of nothing.; Paul Copan and William Lane Craig, Creation Out of Nothing (2004)
What the word's core action is: bringing something into being, giving it a role in an ordered world, or setting things apart.
- majorityBringing something into being, that is, to create. This is the established reading of the standard lexicons and of every major translation.; HALOT (Koehler-Baumgartner), s.v. ברא; BDB (Brown-Driver-Briggs), s.v. ברא; DCH (Clines, ed.), s.v. ברא
- minorityGiving something a function or role within an ordered world, rather than producing its matter.; John H. Walton, Genesis 1 as Ancient Cosmology (2011)
- minoritySpatially separating or setting things apart, proposed for the Genesis account and criticized in the peer-reviewed literature.; Ellen van Wolde, "Why the Verb ברא Does Not Mean to Create in Genesis 1.1-2.4a," JSOT 34 (2009)