The First Word

When God began to create heaven and earth — the earth being unformed and void, with darkness over the surface of the deep and a wind from God sweeping over the water — God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light. Genesis 1:1-3


As English speakers, most of us know the King James version of the first word in the Bible, or really the first two words, B’reishit barah: “In the beginning, G-d created.” But there are various translations, like the one above from the Jewish Publication Society.  I’m interested in how these different translations affect the meaning, especially comparing the King James version to “When G-d was about the create heaven and earth,” as the phrase is given in The Torah, A Woman’s Commentary.

The first translation means this world contains

everything: the sun hoisted up

each morning like a koi out of a dark pool;

the palm tree holding its bolus of new fronds;

the squirrel scuttering across a branch

and the coyote skulking after him;

the pack of men, who merge into the landscape

as your plane ascends a thousand feet.

In the other, much is lost—what G-d had done

before He turned His mind to this green orb

and all the other planets rolling like the bearings

in a pinball game.  Had He been drinking tea

with angels? Coiling some other helix to form

an earlier set of disappointing creatures?

Fashioning the immovable object

with irresistible force?  We cannot say,

having just one world to plunder for words.