VERSE 1

BHS (Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia): בְּרֵאשִׁ֖ית בָּרָ֣א אֱלֹהִ֑ים אֵ֥ת הַשָּׁמַ֖יִם וְאֵ֥ת הָאָֽרֶץ

ESV (English Standard Version): In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

NLT (New Living Translation): In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

LXX (Septuagint): ἘΝ ἀρχῇ ἐποίησεν ὁ Θεὸς τὸν οὐρανὸν καὶ τὴν γῆν

BETS (Brenton English translation Septuagint):IN the beginning God made the heaven and the earth.

NETS (New English Translation Septuagint): In the beginning God made the sky and the earth.

OSB (Orthodox Study Bible): In the beginning God made heaven and earth.

VUL(Latin Vulgate): in principio creavit Deus caelum et terram

DRB (Douay Rheims Bible): IN the beginning God created heaven, and earth.

NAB (New American Bible): In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth

Other English translations with variant readings:

GNB (Good News Bible): In the beginning, when God created the universe…

LB (The Living Bible): When God began creating the heavens and the earth…

TM (The Message): First this: God created the Heavens and the Earth—all you see, all you don’t see.

YLT (Young’s Literal Translation): In the beginning of God’s preparing the heavens and the earth…

Observations:

1. The Hebrew Text has the plural form for the “heavens.” The LXX uses the singular.
2. All LXX translations use “made” instead of “created.” Significance? The MT and the VUL seem to use better words than the LXX, yet the Greek word for “do or make” can also be translated “create.”
3. The Catholic New American Bible (NAB) actually inserts a temporal pronoun “When” into the verse which doesn’t seem to be there in the Greek, Latin or Hebrew. They are attempting to make a more modern connection between verse 1 and verse 2. I don’t think it’s necessary. Other translations have this idea as well and it implies that when God started his creative efforts which culminated in life on earth and man created in his own image things were a mess as we see in later verses. It’s an interesting approach because if the bible is the story of God’s redemption of the world through His Son it would make sense to start when things were at their darkest. And it appears that’s what we get in the following verses. Now according to the Translator’s Handbook on Genesis (THG) the difference is significant, “If the traditional interpretation is followed, then the beginning refers to the time when the universe came into existence, rather than the beginning or opening of the story of creation.^[1]
4. Eugene Peterson’s translation attempts to salvage the idea of the visible and invisible in his translation and we see in the original languages there is some validity to that.
5. Young’s Literal translation incorporates the idea of “preparing” instead of ex-nihilo creation to include the idea that something was there before God started His redemptive plan.
6. Many commentators and bible scholars will argue that the Hebrew phrase for “heavens and earth” is a figure of speech. The writers of THG hold this to be true. They say, “The heavens and the earth is the Hebrew way of speaking of all that existed. It is an idiom made up of two opposites, like the expression ‘good and evil,’ and in this context it means the universe, or everything in the universe, and not just the earth and the sky.^[2] If it is a figure of speech we might translate the phrase to say God created “all that is, both here and there.” The demonstratives are referring to the heavens (there) and the earth (here). Maybe “God created everything that exists” is a more appropriate rendering.

CLV (Chuck Larsen Version): In the beginning  (when) God created heaven and all it contains and earth and everything on it,

^[1] William David Reyburn and Euan McG. Fry, A Handbook on Genesis, UBS Handbook Series (New York: United Bible Societies, 1998), 28.

^[2] William David Reyburn and Euan McG. Fry, A Handbook on Genesis, UBS Handbook Series (New York: United Bible Societies, 1998), 29.

BHS (Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia): וְהָאָ֗רֶץ הָיְתָ֥ה תֹ֙הוּ֙ וָבֹ֔הוּ

ESV (English Standard Version): The earth was without form and void

NLT (New Living Translation): The earth was formless and empty

LXX (Septuagint): Ἡ δὲ γῆ ἦν ἀόρατος καὶ ἀκατασκεύαστος

BETS (Brenton English translation Septuagint): But the earth was unsightly and unfurnished

NETS (New English Translation Septuagint): Yet the earth was invisible and unformed

OSB (Orthodox Study Bible): The earth was invisible and unfinished

VUL (Latin Vulgate): terra autem erat inanis et vacua

DRB (Douay Rheims Bible): And the earth was void and empty

NAB: (New American Bible): the earth was a formless wasteland,

English Translations with variant readings:

NASB (New American Standard Bible): The Earth was formless and void

Darby: And the earth was waste and empty

CJB (Complete Jewish Bible): The earth was unformed and void

CEV (Contemporary English Version): The earth was barren with no form of life

AMP (Amplified version): Now the earth had become waste and wild

GNB: The earth was formless and desolate

ISV (International Standard Version): When the earth was as yet unformed and desolate

LB: the earth was a shapeless, chaotic mass

TM: Earth was a soup of nothingness, a bottomless emptiness

NIRV (New International Readers Version): The earth didn’t have any shape. And it was empty.

Observations & Discussions

1. The Greek word “ἀόρατος” is defined in the Greek English Lexicon of the New Testament based on semantic domains (Luow – Nida) as “…pertaining to that which cannot be seen—‘what cannot be seen, invisible.” According to the Intermediate Greek-English Lexicon (Liddell) it means, “unseen, not to be seen, invisible.”
2. The Greek word “ἀκατασκεύαστος” is defined in The Greek-English Lexicon of the Septuagint by Lust, Eynikel, and Hauspie (LEH) as “unwrought, unformed, unorganized.” The Lexham Analytical Lexicon of the Septuagint (LAL) says it means “unprepared.” According to the Greek Lexicon of the Roman and Byzantine Periods (GLRB) It means “unformed, unfinished.”
3. The Latin word “autem” means “on the other hand, but, yet, however, nevertheless” according to Lewis and Short’s Latin Dictionary (LSLD). This is interesting because the Greek δὲ can sometimes mean “but” also.
4. The Latin word “Inanis” is defined by LSLD as “empty, void.”
5. The feminine singular adjective “Vacua” means “vacuous, vacant, empty, blank.” The word does not show up in the Logos search because it’s in the Feminine Gender in the text (I’m assuming). Vacuos, the masculine form, does show up in LSLD with the same meaning. If the two latin adjectives, inanis and vacua mean the same things (close to it) you can see the DRB translation using “void and empty” in their translation. But the LXX uses two very different adjectives; one meaning “invisible” and the other meaning “incomplete” or “unfinished.”
6. I like the idea of “invisible” because the context talks about light and darkness and how God said let there be light and there was light. That made it visible? Since “darkness” was over the face of the deep that might explain the invisibility. Also the LXX word and the English translations of that word all point to the idea of invisibility.

CLV (Chuck Larsen Version): But the earth was invisible and incomplete.

CLV In the beginning God created heaven and earth but the earth was invisible and incomplete.

Or: In the beginning when God created heaven and earth the earth was invisible and incomplete.

BHS (Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia): וְר֣וּחַ אֱלֹהִ֔ים מְרַחֶ֖פֶת עַל־פְּנֵ֥י הַמָּֽיִם׃

ESV (English Standard Version): And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.

NLT (New Living Translation): And the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters.

LXX (Septuagint): καὶ πνεῦμα Θεοῦ ἐπεφέρετο ἐπάνω τοῦ ὕδατος.

BETS (Brenton English translation Septuagint): and the Spirit of God moved over the water.

NETS (New English Translation Septuagint): And a divine wind was being carried along over the water

OSB (Orthodox Study Bible): The Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the water.

VUL (Latin Vulgate): et spiritus Dei ferebatur super aquas

DRB (Douay Rheims Bible): and the spirit of God moved over the waters.

NAB: (New American Bible): while a mighty wind swept over the waters.

English Translations with variant readings:

NASB (New American Standard Bible): and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters

Darby: the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters

AMP: The Spirit of God was moving (hovering, brooding) over the face of the waters

TM: God’s Spirit brooded like a bird above the watery abyss

NJB (New Jerusalem Bible): with a divine wind sweeping over the waters..

Observations & Discussions

1. The Hebrew word מְרַחֶ֖פֶת is defined as to “tremble or hover.” The BHS is the only one of three languages that includes the idea of “the face of the waters” instead of just the waters. This leads me to believe that the OSB wasn’t totally dependent upon the Septuagint. These translators must have considered the MT. None of the Catholic versions contain “the face of” when talking about the waters probably because it’s mostly based on the VUL which has no reference to “the face.”
2. The NETS tranlastion is extremely loose and seems to render this translation more like the NLT or some other non-literal translation. A “divine wind” is incredible. I would think if you were going to use “wind” in the translation you would make it “the wind of God.” God is definitely in all the original languages as a noun and not an adjective.
3. The latin word ferebatur has no mystery according to the www resources. It simply means “moved.” I don’t know if that’s a bad translastion of the Hebrew or Greek or if the Hebrew and Greek words have been exaggerated. The NAB translation of “swept over” is graphic but not literal.
4. I like the THG comment: “the word translated was moving is sometimes rendered “brooded…”^[1] Brooded carries the idea of concern and care for. It’s used in Deuteronomy to refer to how Eagles look after their young. Moses refers to how God cares for and protects his people as an eagle “broods” over her chicks. In the ESV, Deuteronomy 32:10-11 says, “He found him in a desert land, and in the howling waste of the wilderness; he encircled him, he cared for him, he kept him as the apple of his eye. Like an eagle that stirs up its nest, that flutters over its young, spreading out its wings, catching them, bearing them on its pinions…”

CLV (Chuck Larsen Version): A wind from God brooded over the abyss’ darkness

CLV In the beginning God created heaven and earth but the earth was invisible and incomplete. And darkness covered the abyss. The spirit of God brooded over the abyss’ darkness

^[1] William David Reyburn and Euan McG. Fry, A Handbook on Genesis, UBS Handbook Series (New York: United Bible Societies, 1998), 32.