In the beginning...

What can be said that is new on the subject? The immutable glory of God pours through the text into our eyes and mind. May the Holy Spirit open our ears, our eyes and our mind to a meeting with the infinite. "God created the heavens and the earth..." Our minds can hardly grasp the immensity of such a task and the proper response is fear and awe. The word Elohim is one of the many names for God in Hebrew and it allows for a plural interpretation. This makes sense with respect to our orthodox understanding of God, that He is the Trinity. As further light is given about His nature in the New Testament, we find that He is three persons: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. This "plurality" is not about multiple gods, but three persons that make up the Godhead. All three persons of the Trinity are God. This helps us to understand the later passage, "Let us make man in our image."

The author of this "book" is Moses. We can imagine him smelling the scents of sacrifices and the seriousness of such facts filling his mind. It is no small thing to be in a relationship with this Elohim. God had revealed Himself in a burning bush to Moses at a younger age, when things were simpler. He provided Moses with a more personal name: Yahweh.

The purpose of jumping forward to Exodus is to remind us that Genesis is one of five parts in something that is currently called the Pentateuch. Like the "penta" in pentagon, it is a single book of five books, like a pentagon is one geometric object with five sides.