The Beginnings
- When
- Creation to c. 1800 BC
- Written by
- Moses, by tradition
- Chapters
- 50
The big idea
God creates a good world, humanity breaks it by sin, and God begins to set it right through a promise to Abraham and his family.
Themes
- Creation and the image of God
- Covenant and promise
- The fall and the spread of sin
- God’s providence through Joseph
Memory verse
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
Key passages
- 1:1–2:3Creation
- 3The fall
- 12:1–3The call of Abraham
- 22The binding of Isaac
- 50:20You meant evil, God meant it for good
Links to other Scripture
- John 1:1–3The Word in the beginning
- Romans 5:12–19Adam and Christ
- Galatians 3:8The gospel preached to Abraham
- Hebrews 11:8–19The faith of Abraham
Read the text
Choose a chapter to read it here in the King James Version. Verses with a dotted underline have notes from Bible scholars. Tap one to open them.
Notes from
Chapters
King James text and the commentaries of Henry, Jamieson, Fausset and Brown, Gill, Clarke, Calvin, and Keil and Delitzsch are in the public domain. Tyndale Open Study Notes are used under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license, from tyndaleopenresources.com. Texts were reformatted for this site.
Journal prompts
Keep a journal or notebook for your study. Write your answers there, in your own words.
- Where do you see Christ in this book?
- God called creation good before anything went wrong. Where do you see that goodness around you today?
- Adam and Eve hid from God. What do you tend to hide from him, and what would it look like to come out?
- Joseph said, “You meant evil, God meant it for good.” Write about something in your life that you are still waiting to see that way.
- In one sentence, this book is about…