Know Your Bible Devotions for MenExemplo

What Is Genesis All About?

The Bible’s first book never explains God; it simply assumes His existence: “In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth” (1:1). Chapters 1 and 2 describe how God created the universe and everything in it just by speaking: “God said. . .and it was so” (1:6–7, 9, 11, 14–15). Humans, however, received special handling, as “God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life” (2:7), and woman was crafted from a rib of man. Those first two people, Adam and Eve, lived in perfection until they ruined paradise by disobeying God at the urging of a “subtil” (crafty, 3:1) serpent. Sin threw humans into a moral freefall as the world’s first child — Cain — murdered his brother Abel. People became so bad that God decided to flood the entire planet, saving only the righteous Noah, his family, and an ark (a large boat) full of animals. After the earth repopulated, God chose a man named Abram as the patriarch of a specially blessed people, later called “Israel” after an alternative name of Abram’s grandson Jacob. Genesis ends with Jacob’s son Joseph, by a miraculous chain of events, ruling in Egypt, thereby setting up the events of the following book of Exodus. Genesis answers the greatest question we all have: “Where did I come from?” Knowing the answer — God — can give us meaning in a world that’s otherwise hard to figure out.