Genesis begins with this seminal, authoritative statement: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” It is arguably the most famous, all-encompassing opening sentence in all of literature. It establishes God as the Creator, eternal and almighty, yet caring. He established the earth first, before the vast universe, which came later in the six days of creation. God built the universe around the earth, which is the focus of His creative power, the place where His ultimate creation, man, would reside. Much later, King David of Israel asked, “What is man that You [God] are mindful of Him?” (Psalm 8:4) The answer rests on God’s loving care for that part of His living creation that He deliberately made in His image, after His likeness: human beings.

The history presented in Genesis accounts for Adam, the first man, all the way to Jacob’s sons settling in Egypt, around 1,866 B.C., a span of about 2,100 years. Some of this history, including customs such as contracts, the Great Flood, and the names of the patriarchs, are corroborated by ancient clay tablets of Mesopotamia and Syria. The Great Flood in particular is the theme of the legend of Gilgamesh, a Mesopotamian account as told in a pantheistic culture. But Genesis is more than a dry history. It is divided into ten memorable accounts, each beginning with the word “account.” The accounts tell of people and events that are best described as fascinating stories of human nature as people struggle with obstacles and opposition, even as God plays a sovereign role of guiding them, answering prayers, giving visions, and making promises to a the patriarchs. Ultimately God makes covenant promises to Noah, then Abraham, and then reaffirms the covenant to Abraham’s son, grandson, and great grandson.

Genesis runs a long narrative of God’s creation of the world and all life, assesses the nature of mankind, and relates the history of a family which God calls into a special relationship for the purpose of founding a holy nation. His plan alludes to the possibility of a Messiah, a specially anointed One to bring us back from the abyss of sin and conflict against God. The subtle assumptions within single words of Genesis point to the promise of the concept of the Trinity, God as One, yet comprised of three perfectly united persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This is suggested by Elohim, plural yet meaning God. God created, ba-ra Elohim, uses the plural noun with ba-ra, a singular verb. Furthermore, God’s Spirit hovered over the waters of earth, in Genesis 1:2. In Genesis 1:26, God said, “Let us make man….” By “us” God did not mean God and angels, but God Himself with Himself.

This statement, “Let us make man in our image,” establishes mankind as the image bearers of God on God’s nascent earth. The full meaning of image bearers becomes inextricably intertwined in the Genesis narrative history as characters attempt to honor God, while others do not. The imperfections of human beings – their sins – call into question good versus evil, why God allows evil, and whether this state of affairs is a permanent problem. Is the world to be forever tainted? Genesis raises such questions and more, and has therefore been labeled a narrative text on philosophy.

Humans are unique in creation, possessing superior intelligence, a sense of what eternity means, self awareness, and the capacity to reason, create tools and subdue the earth to their purposes. Even further, humans have a moral conscience, a will to choose either good or evil, and the capacity to worship God and choose the attributes of their holy God. Such attributes include the fruit of God’s Spirit listed in Galatians 5:22-23, which include love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. In Genesis we read of such marvelous attributes and their opposite, the capacity for evil, and we discover God’s dealings with both good and evil. We learn that there exists a representive of evil, Satan, who tempted the first man and woman to sin and fall.

As mentioned, Genesis has been called a book of philosophy in literary form as the book weaves stories of families and generations. The reader asks, will Noah and family survive the Great Flood? Will Lot, Abraham’s nephew, survive the wickedness of Sodom and the judgment that would rain down on that city with fire and sulphur? How can Abraham save his precious son, Isaac, the child of God’s promise, and still obey God’s demand to sacrifice the boy? Will Jacob overcome his brother Esau’s determination to kill him for tricking him out of his birthright and stealing his blessing, and how can Jacob ever repay Esau his debt to his brother? In the next generation, how may Joseph survive slavery and prison, and ultimately, how will he find a way to forgive his brothers, especially his worst betrayer, Judah? From the answers to these questions we find dysfunctional families whom God blesses and teaches and accompanies (e.g., God was “with” Joseph and blessed everything he did). The philosophical questions are answered by the presence of God and the faith of the people whom He blesses. The people of truth and faithfulness receive honor, at times in spite of their imperfect demonstration of honor: e.g., righteous Noah got drunk and naked; faithful Abraham lied about his wife, Sarah; and persevering Jacob began as a deceiver who learned the better way, even wrestling with an angel to receive a blessing.

The longest account in Genesis (Gen. 37:2-50:26) focuses on Joseph, the eleventh son of Jacob and favored above the others by his father. Joseph the Dreamer had God-inspired visions of grandeur about himself, which he naively shared with his jealous brothers, resulting in Judah and the others selling him into slavery in Egypt. God was with Joseph as he rose from slave and prisoner to ruler of all Egypt, second only to the Pharaoh. Now Joseph had a chance to seek vengeance on his brothers, but he chose to forgive them! The word forgive is not even found in Genesis and seems to be a new principle. However, in order to forgive, Joseph felt compelled to exact a price: Judah’s offer to sacrifice himself – to voluntarily become a slave at Joseph’s mercy (Genesis 44:33). This is the turning point of the saga of Joseph and his brothers, the exact moment when Joseph revealed his identity and offered forgiveness.

Today we have two opposing perspectives of culture: the culture of shame and the culture of guilt. With shame there is no remedy, no remediation, no atonement; it perpetuates a permanent fallen condition that cannot be resolved. Hence a violator against correctness is “canceled” – relegated to the fixed status of outcast for his sin. The other cultural perspective is guilt for which a remedy may be obtained by repentance and the forgiving act of the offended party. Joseph, having God with him, chose this second alternative, the better way. For this reason, as well as the compelling story in itself, Joseph’s forgiving act makes his life the most prominent of the Genesis accounts. Therefore, Genesis establishes the precedent for grace: the unmerited restoration of the offender by reason of his repentance and faith. The climax of Joseph’s story provides a kind of reverse type for our restoration under the grace of Jesus. Joseph’s brother, Judah, guilty of selling Joseph into slavery, offered himself as a slave to save his innocent brother, Benjamin. In contrast, Jesus, innocent of all charges, Judah’s descendant, gave His life as a ransom for guilty souls.

Almost unwritten in the Genesis history, a moral code seems woven into the fabric of the riveting narrative long before the code is written in the Ten Commandments and the religious and ethical mandates of Exodus and Leviticus. Before Moses and the priests and the written law, Abraham tithed his booty from a righteous battle, giving it to the kingly priest, Melchizedek. Joseph answered the sexual temptress, Potiphar’s wife, “How then could I do such a wicked thing and sin against God?” Human beings even then had what the forbidden tree foreshadowed before the fall of Adam and Eve – the knowledge of good and evil. Yet characters in Genesis did not have a written Law from God. The Mosaic Law would eventually come, when sin and righteousness would be spelled out vividly to Jacob’s untrained and pagan-influenced descendants: righteousness including “Love the Lord your God” and “Love your neighbor,” and sanctions against wickedness in X-rated explicitness.

More than philosophy, and more than a moral code, Genesis is the forerunner of the Messiah as Savior of mankind. Early in the Genesis narrative, after the fall of Adam and Eve, God predicted that Eve’s descendant would crush Satan’s head, and the devil would bruise his heel. The outcome alluded to in Genesis 3:15 gives the answer to the age-old problem of humanity’s finding redemption and restoration. The works of the devil, the heel bruising, put Jesus on the cross; the work of Jesus, the bruising of Satan’s head, was finished on the cross and by His resurrection! Redemption, the answer, came by God’s grace announced at the outbreak of the First Sin, in Genesis 3:15. Genesis became, therefore, the beginning history of God’s redemption of mankind. First, God’s plan provided for a people from Abraham, then a culture by Abraham’s descendants, then the God-ordained moral code, then a land for the people (the Promised Land), and then a kingly lineage leading to the Messiah as predicted in the prophets. Genesis laid the groundwork. The reshith, the beginning, already prepared the way for the King of Kings. Malachi, the last book of the Tanakh, the Jewish Bible and our Old Testament, concludes with a prediction of what Genesis began. Malachi ends the Old Testament saying Elijah would come before the “great and dreadful day of the Lord.” Jesus interpreted Malachi’s closing sentences, saying that the Elijah who was to come was John the Baptizer, who came to prepare the way for Jesus. As John said, this One (Jesus) would baptize the people “with the Holy Spirit and with fire.” As early as Genesis, God’s Spirit and fire, representing grace and judgment, counterbalance each other as God showed two sides of humanity’s ultimate fate: grace for the faithful, and judgment for the unfaithful.