Created God the Heaven(s) and the Earth

My brother-in-law recently told me he is reading a study Bible. He said several verses have a footnote saying, “Meaning of Hebrew uncertain.”

“So does that mean that they are just guessing?” He asked.

“It’s an educated guess, but yes. Sometimes the Hebrew text will make even the best translators scratch their heads. In those cases, all they can do is say, ‘This is the best we can determine from the information we have.’”

So far, I’ve been working on translating the first verse of the Bible, because it is one of those cases where the meaning of the Hebrew appears to be different from most English translations. The Masoretic Text (Hebrew) says, “When God began to create heaven and earth,” but many English translations say, “In the beginning, God created heaven and earth.”

It all depends on how you read the first Hebrew word, bereishit. It took two posts for me to show what goes into translating that one word. After taking in information from the Masoretic Text (MT), the standard Greek text called the Septuagint (LXX), ancient Jewish commentaries like the Talmud and Genesis Rabbah, and considering the context, I favored “In the beginning.” In this post I believe I will be able to finish my translation of Genesis 1:1.

Heaven and earth are the work of Your hands.