Yahweh, the God of Genesis 1

As you might know, Genesis 1 is the beginning of Scripture. It opens with the words ‘in the beginning’, and describes the beginning of God’s workmanship.

Yet the name Yahweh doesn’t occur until we get to Genesis 2 (it’s all Elohim until then), which many commentaries claim, with a breathtaking lack of imagination, must be because Genesis 1 and 2 have different authors.

But, as Peter Leithart has pointed out in his book Creator, while the name Yahweh doesn’t occur in Genesis 1, the signature of Yahweh is present everywhere.

To see this, consider the Pentateuch’s portrayal of Yahweh. When Yahweh reveals himself to Moses in the burning bush, he doesn’t describe himself via a series of adjectives, but by reference to his being. ‘I am who I am’, Yahweh says—a phrase constructed from the verbal root of his name (Hebrew H-Y-H). Yahweh is the God who is, and who will be what he will be (Exod. 3.14). His name also marks him out as a God who causes other things to be (given a slightly different interpretation of ‘Yahweh’), which is precisely what Yahweh does. He is the God who calls Abraham forth from the backdrop of Babel, who promises to bless and multiply his seed (Gen. 12.1–3, 7, 13.14–16), and who hovers above Abraham’s descendants as he leads them out of a formless wilderness and brings them into their land (Deut. 32.10–12).

Suffice it to say, this notion of God is clearly prefigured in Genesis 1. In the very first verse of Scripture, at the beginning of all things, we find Elohim already present. (‘In the beginning, God…’: Gen. 1.1, Psa. 90.2.) He too is the God who is. And, like Yahweh, he is a God who causes other things to be. He hovers above his creation, calls life to emerge from a lifeless world via the word of command yehi (‘Let there be…!’), and blesses creation’s seed.

That Genesis 1’s use of the verb H-Y-H is significant can be shown statistically. Genesis 1 has 27 occurrences of H-Y-H, which is more than any other chapter of Genesis. (H-Y-H also occurs most frequently in Genesis 1.) By contrast, Genesis’s last chapter has only one occurrence of the verb H-Y-H, which puts it in (joint) last place. And this too is significant.

While the book of Genesis begins with seven days of creation (Gen. 2.1), it ends with seven days of mourning (after the death of Jacob), and with Israel still small in number (Gen. 2.2, 50.10). It thus raises the question of whether Israel will survive in a foreign and unruly land—which is answered decisively in the opening chapter of Exodus. The God of Genesis 1 (Elohim) makes Israel fruitful. The Hebrews ‘multiply’, ‘swarm’ (Gen. 1.20), and ‘fill the land’ (of Egypt!), (Exod. 1.7). Despite Pharaoh’s best efforts, Exodus 1 literally teems with ‘life’ (KH-Y-H)—a word that sounds almost identical to H-Y-H and underlies the name ‘Eve’. As the Hebrews multiply (Exod. 1.15ff.), KH-Y-H occurs five times (as it does in Genesis 1), one of which is an unusual description of the Hebrew women as ‘lively’ (‘Eve-like’) as they give birth (Exod. 1.19).

In sum, then, Genesis 1 and 2 are cut from the same theological cloth. The name of Yahweh may, technically, be absent from Genesis 1, but its root and semantics are everywhere, as is Yahweh’s nature.