God’s Word for You

Genesis 1:1b The Big Emulsion

by Pastor Timothy Smith on Wednesday, July 22, 2026

God created the heavens and the earth.

This word “created” is bara’ (בָּרָא), which, unlike “made” (‘asa, עָשָׂה) is only used when God is the subject. It takes no effort from God, since it is done using the word of God alone to make, while ‘asa “make” can also be used of fashioning an idol (Isaiah 44:15), the breastplate of the high priest (Exodus 39:8) or a clay pot (Job 10:8). This word, bara’, does not necessarily mean to make something out of nothing. However, since this creating was done at the beginning of all things before anything existed from which to fashion, shape, or form anything else, then this creating had to have been out of nothing.

God is the subject, and the word “God” here is Elohim (אֱלֹהִים). We learn in the Large Catechism that a god is that to which we look for all good and in which we find refuge in every time of need. “To have a god is nothing else than to trust and to believe him with our whole heart. If your trust and faith are right, then your God is the true God. On the other hand, if your trust is false and wrong, then you do not have the true God. For these two belong together: faith and God. What your heart clings to and trusts is really your God.” (Large Catechism, I:2-3).

Moses concludes the verse by telling us that God created “the heavens and the earth.” Heavens here is plural, but earth is singular. For while there are other worlds in the heavens, such as the moon on which men have walked and explored, and the nearby planets to which men have sent probes, and the distant planets and stars which we observe with telescopes, yet this one, the one we live on, is the one that God gave to us, and at this point in the creation, it was the only thing in the heavens that God had made. This world of ours is the one that God set in its perfectly balanced position around just the right sort of sun, which is a small star. Our world orbits and tilts, and these things keep us in just the right position to sustain life here. And even here there are dramatic extremes: the bitter frozen desert of Antarctica, and the equally cruel deserts of north Africa, central Asia, and the American west. So much for “earth” in the singular. It was, in this verse, not yet the completed ideal that we know. In fact, there wasn’t even a sun around which we would orbit yet. Our world in the beginning was a watery, unfinished thing, a muddy, oozy, foggy thing, and how it was shaped into what it now is will be explained in verses 3-12.

“The heavens,” then, are also an unfinished, incomplete thing in this verse. This is made more clear in verses 14-15, when the heavens are filled with the sun, moon and stars. Naturally, the other planets, comets, and all of the other things that are scattered here and there in the sky are included there. So what were “the heavens” here in verse 1? This is everything that surrounded the earth in the very beginning. It was, in a sense, space, but also whatever watery matter God used in his shaping and making later on. It was, as yet, undefined. If we needed to describe it, we might recall the phenomenon of fog, which is a cloud touching the earth. How would one differentiate one place in a fog from another? It cannot be grasped, or moved, or burned away. It simply is; it simply surrounds. Moses might describe it as “the storehouse of God’s bounty” (Deuteronomy 28:12), the place where God keeps and produces future rain, snow, and dew. “The storehouses of the snow and of the hail” (Job 38:22). And for that matter, the Psalm writers also describe “the storehouses of the wind” (Psalm 135:7) and “the storehouses of the deep; jars for the waters of the sea” (Psalm 33:7).

This unformed, unfinished, but well-begun thing was made from nothing. God did not use an explosion, nor an implosion. “He spoke, and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood firm.” In truth, the creation was not a “big bang” at all. If one had to describe this in terms of a thermal or chemical act, it would be closer to the text to describe it as an emulsion, not so far from the idea of pouring ingredients into a mixing bowl. It was not yet the cake, but the ingredients were there. We see the same sort of thing explained about the earth in verse 2, where “earth” is not the finished form, but “an initial rude state in which it existed upon God’s first creative act.”

We know that the world as yet did not even have a uniform shape, it was, as Luther says, “a crude mass of water, not yet arranged in an orderly manner and not yet graced with its specific shape… this crude mass or mire of earth, and the mists or waters.” We know from later verses that it was, for moments, minutes, or hours on that first day, dark. We will return to this darkness in verse 2. But here in this emulsion of watery stuff, God had made a beginning. God was on his way to making the world as we know it, with us in mind. This is grace, and this is God’s love. For he did not make it in order to see how it would turn out. He made it knowing exactly how it would turn out.

As to its substance, our world was then partly watery and partly earthy. As to its quantity, it was vast and huge. As to its consistency, it was not yet solid and not entirely liquid, but a muddy, buttery or batter-like blob. As to its quality, it was crude, unadorned, dark, and a treeless, rockless, grassless heath with no foothold. But this would soon change. Even this first day, Sunday, would begin to see changes. Within minutes or hours, at least one of the constants that we still take for granted would be brought into being. But for the moment we marvel at God’s great and all-powerful art and craft. For as the carpenter forms the wood and gives it the form that will also be a part of its function, so also did God bring this earth into being. For us. To him be glory forever.

In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith

 

Browse Devotion Archive