There’s a lot of confusion about the first chapter of the Bible. The first chapter, which explains how God created the world, is poetic in genre. And it’s not written like English poetry—it’s Hebrew poetry, which has a different style.

     If you read Genesis chapter one in the Bible, you can see a poetic Hebrew style in the repetitive pattern of the chapter. Each day, as God speaks an element of creation into existence, he calls it 'good,' and the day ends. There’s also another pattern, where each day parallels another day in the second half of the chapter. Day one about lights parallels day four about more lights. Day two about water parallels day five about fish. Day three about land and vegetation parallels day six about animals and humans. You’ll have to read Genesis chapter one to spot these patterns. And there are more poetic techniques in Genesis that we won’t have time to cover here.

     One main reason for highlighting the poetic nature of Genesis chapter one is to reveal the intentions of the author. If the author has arranged the chapter this way, it’s clear it’s not meant to be a scientifically factual account. But this doesn’t mean it’s not true. Poetry can express truth even if it does so in a different way. It’s meant to be a theologically factual account written for an ancient audience (“theology” means “thinking about God”). So, chapter one is focused on saying true things about God in a poetic way, not scientifically factual things.

     This also seems obvious when you compare it to Genesis chapter two. Chapter two recaps the order of creation in a different way to chapter one (see Genesis 2). These observations mean that explaining scientific facts doesn’t seem to be the author’s goal in writing the text.

     Many people also debate whether God created the world in six literal days or if those “days” represent longer time periods. For instance, the word “day” used in a poetic context could just refer to a very long period of time. God could have created everything within six days, but those “days” could also represent periods of thousands of years—since a “day” as we know it didn’t exist till after the process of creation was finished at the end of the chapter. And we mustn’t forget that it’s only one page of poetry—it doesn’t seem reasonable to expect it to explain much scientifically. For Christians, God was needed to create the world out of nothing, whether that creation was in six literal days or thousands of years.

     So, what’s the author saying? The author seems to be trying to explain who God is and why he created the world to an ancient audience. The author isn’t trying to scientifically explain how God made the world. If Genesis was trying to answer the question of how God made the world to a modern audience, the author might have included an explanation that God created the complex process of evolution out of nothing as he was creating the physical capabilities of the world. Instead, the author only answers questions about who and why God created everything in Genesis to highlight the following points to ancient readers:

• God is the sole creator of the universe. There are no other “gods” or “creators”.

• God originally created everything to be good—for enjoyment and harmony.

• God created everything with wisdom and order; the world was not accidentally formed from cosmic chaos.

• God cares about humanity in an intentional and personal way. This means that humans were created in love and with dignity, purpose and intrinsic value.

     In Genesis chapter two, we continue to see the wonder of God’s original creation. He created all of creation to be in a healthy relationship with himself. This chapter also emphasises that God considers humans to be the pinnacle, or best thing, about his creation. And humans don’t seem to be the best thing about creation because of their physical attributes alone, but because of the beautiful relationship they’re able to have with God himself. We see this in chapter two as we view God speaking to the first humans he created, Adam and Eve, personally.

     The creation account in Genesis chapter two seems to emphasize that God originally created humans to live in healthy and loving personal relationship with himself. God created humanity to bless and love them in this way. But we see that this healthy and personal relationship with God, which humans had in the beginning, is ruined in Genesis chapter 3. 

Chapter Summary:

• The Bible’s creation account in Genesis chapters 1-2 isn’t scientific but poetic. These chapters have a theological purpose.

• In Genesis 1 it says that God is the sole creator who intentionally designed creation with love and care. 

• Genesis 1-2 emphasizes that humans are the best thing God made. Humans were originally created to have a beautiful relationship with God.