Understanding the Hebrew of Genesis One:
Star Formation and Genesis 1

by James Stambaugh*

(A Guest Article)

The Use of waw in Hebrew

The Institute for Creation Research: Impact Article #251, May 1994.

Most astronomers accept the idea that stars form by gravitational collapse of a cloud of gas and dust, and that this process takes a minimum of 210,000 years. (Ref. 1) The consensus is that it was the Big Bang that made all this possible. There are Christians who assert that the Bible can be harmonized with the Big Bang and this process of star formation. (Ref. 2) Dr. Hugh Ross, astronomer and minister, is the most prominent spokesman for this position. He postulates that the sun was formed before the earth and that it is wrong to view Genesis 1:14-19 as an account of the creation of the sun, moon, and stars. All God needed to do was to clear the cloudy atmosphere so that these celestial objects simply "appeared" or became visible. E.J. Young a Hebrew scholar, takes the opposite view: "That the heavenly bodies are made on the fourth day and that the earth had received light from a source other than the sun is not a naive conception, but is a plain and sober statement of the truth" (Ref. 4) These interpretations are at odds with each other, so both cannot be true. At least one of them contradicts what God said in Genesis 1:14-19 concerning Day 4.

God's Command

Throughout the Genesis narrative God speaks and something happens as a result. These commands are characterized by the wording: "Let there be." One such command appears in verse 3 (light); two in verse 6 (expanse and divided waters); two in verse 9 (waters gathered and appearance of dry ground); one in verse 11 (sprouting plants); one in verse 14 (luminaries); two in verse 20 ( sea creatures and flying animals); one in verse 24 (land animals); and one in verse 26 (man). All, with the exception of one, are used in the sense of God speaking to His creation. In the exception, one gets the sense of one member of the Godhead speaking to the others: "Let us make man " This command (i.e., "Let there be____") is known as a Jussive. (Ref. 5) God used this command consistently in the first six instances to refer to something brought into existence that did not previously exist. Regardless of whatever these commands, signify, ex nihilo, (out of nothing) or de novo something new), they represent a fundamental change in the object that is "created." One may wonder, since no clues in the text suggest another view, why in the command concerning the luminaries. Dr. Ross proposes something radically different: The sun, moon, and stars are mentioned on the fourth day, and the opening sentence for the fourth day uses the Hebrew word "hayah"--"let there appear the sun, moon, and stars." So what the text is telling us is on the first day, the cloud layer was transformed from opaque to translucent so light could come through; on the fourth day, the clouds broke so that the observer on the surface of the ocean for the first time, could see the sun, moon, and stars. (Ref. 6)

If this is truly the correct interpretation, then this exceptional command on Day 4 would represent the only non-creative command God issued in Genesis 1. All the other commands, as even Dr. Ross notes, are a creation of something that was not in existence before the command. We should ask: What is so exceptional about this command that requires such a radically different interpretation? It would appear, from reading Genesis 1, that each of God's commands brought something into existence that did not previously exist!

Hebrew Verb Construction

While the Hebrew language may seem frightening to some, it really is not. The style of writing of Genesis I is historical, using the waw-consecutive to express consecutive action (waw = and). Biblical historians use this style to: "express actions, events, or states, which are to be regarded as the temporal or logical sequence of actions, events, or states mentioned immediately before." (Ref. 7) What this means for Genesis 1 is that God describes a sequence of events that occur one after the other throughout the creation week. We see this sequence reflected in the English as "And God said," "And there was," or "And it was," with which each verse in Genesis I begins. Each occurrence signifies that some action followed another in a real time sequence.

This is very important as it relates to the events of Genesis 1. Francis Andersen observes: "A string of WP (waw-consecutive) clauses in narrative prose (historical) stages events as occurring in a time sequence one after another. It is implied that one is finished before the next begins, so it is possible to speak of the verbs as 'perfective' in aspect." (Ref. 8) So the events of Genesis 1:14-19 have an opening waw-consecutive "And God said," and a closing pattern of waw-consecutives "and it was evening, and it was morning" separating the 4th day from the previous and subsequent commands God issued. The point for the interpreter is that each day in Genesis 1 must be a completed event! So God began His creation of the sun, moon, and stars on Day 4 and finished them on that same day. This also rules out the concept that the days may overlap in some manner.

Appeared or Established

If the syntax and context suggest that God created the sun, moon, and stars in Genesis 1:14-19, how do those who maintain that they were created earlier argue their case? Dr. Ross would suggest that a key word in this passage is nathan, which appears in Genesis 1:17 translated "set." Here is how he defines this word: "set; put; place; appoint; bring forth; apply; ascribe; cause to appear; show." (Ref. 9) The word, nathan, does have a broad semantic range, as Dr. Ross observes. However, its usage falls under three basic categories: "give, put or set, make or constitute." (Ref. 10) In Genesis 1, God is establishing or setting the functions of these celestial bodies. However one may view the definition of nathan, it is not used with the significance "cause to appear."

The second word of importance is hayah. Dr. Ross defines this as "become; cause to appear or arise; cause to be made or done; come into existence; come to pass; make into something." (Ref. 11) This word also has a wide semantic range, of which "to appear" is part. Yet, its basic meaning is one of existence: "It seems, however, that from the very outset, hayah was used to refer to 'being' in the sense of 'exist, be present' and of 'come into being, happen.'" (Ref. l2) If "to appear," as the sense that Dr. Ross suggests, is the interpretation of hayah in 1:14, then one must consistently apply this meaning in 1:3 (let light appear), and twice in 1:5 (let an expanse appear and let a dividing appear). These four occurrences must be interpreted in a consistent manner. But Dr. Ross does not do this. He interprets the word to mean "appearance" on Day 4, but interprets it to mean "come into existence" on all the other days." (Ref. 13)

The Stars "Made" Earlier?

Those who believe that the stars were formed before Day 4 make a point from Hebrew syntax. Hebrew does not have a specific way of communicating a pluperfect tense. A pluperfect is: that which denotes that an action or event was completed before a given time. So, in Genesis 1:16, some would translate the first portion of the verse "now God had made the two great luminaries." The argument is that God made the stars before He created the earth, and now simply describes their function for the earth. Note Dr. Ross's explanation:

Now you'd also see in the fourth day it uses the word asah for the Sun, Moon, and stars, but it's in the past tense. God made past tense and it's in a parenthetical context after the nathan usage. Which means that it could have been made any time before.... There is only one past tense in the Hebrew, you can't tell if its pluperfect or whatever. (Ref. 14)

The point is that if made is pluperfect (i.e., "had made") in verse 16, then it must be referring back to an earlier "making," but how much earlier? Some have proposed the events of verse I or verse 3, but it could just as well be simply referring back to verse 14.

The word made occurs two other times in Genesis 1. Each one could possibly be translated as a pluperfect, so if verse 16 is pluperfect, we would expect the others to be pluperfect also. But how does this effect our understanding of Genesis 1?

The first occurrence is on the second day (verse 1:6), when God said "let there be an expanse." Then we see in verse 7, "and God made the expanse." This should then be translated "and God had made the expanse." But this seems unnatural and contradictory. The other occurrence is on Day 6 (verse 1:24), when God said, "Let the earth bring forth living creatures." Then we see in verse 25 "and God made (or had made) the beasts of the earth." Yet even if we accept the pluperfect tense in these instances, they are simply pluperfect to the previous command. The uses of made function as a description of what was accomplished as a result of His command. We can see this kind of function with other verbs in Genesis 1 that could be translated as pluperfects (verses 12, 21, and 27 are results of verses 11, 20, and 26). So what God made in verse 16 is clearly intended to be the same as that which God spoke into existence in verse 14. To conclude that the pluperfect refers to a long-ago, unrelated event, introduces meaninglessness to Scripture, and introduces a concept totally foreign to what God is telling us!

An Historical Interpretation

It would be useful to gain some insight from an early church father, Theophilus. He differs greatly from the views of Dr. Ross and the modern cosmologists as he says:

On the fourth day the luminaries came into existence. Since God has foreknowledge, he understood the nonsense of the foolish philosophers who were going to say that the things produced on earth come from the stars, so that they might set God aside. In order therefore that the truth might be demonstrated, plants and seeds came into existence before stars. For what comes into existence later cannot cause what is prior to it. (Ref. 15).

It appears that Theophilus clearly understood the significance of this passage and would dispute current theories. We realize that when all the facts are discovered and rightly interpreted, science and Scripture will be in full agreement. Until that time, we must "take every thought captive" (2 Corinthians 10:5) and make it obedient to Christ. The Bible is to be the standard for all thought! This means that we must not seek to insert foreign ideas into the Biblical text.


In the beginning of this article, we drew attention to two vastly different interpretations of Genesis 1:1-19. If current theories of the origin of the universe and star formation are correct, then the Bible is wrong. God did not say exactly how He created the stars, so we should attempt to build scientific models describing His actions, which utilize the best scientific data and that are consistent with Biblical revelation. The purpose of this article was to examine the Biblical data and determine what the Bible says about the creation of the stars. This article should be thought of as establishing a Biblical foundation upon which a scientific model can be built.


1. R. Kippenhahn, Stellar Structure and Evolution (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1990), p. 260.

2. One can examine any of Hugh Ross's books to substantiate this point: Genesis One: A Scientific Perspective, revised edition (Sierra Madre, CA: Wiseman Productions, 1983); The Fingerprint of God, 2nd edition (Orange, CA: Promise Publishing Co., 1991), The Creator and the Cosmos (Colorado Springs: NavPress, 1993); Creation in Time (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 1994).

3. Hugh Ross, Genesis One, p 10.

4. E.I. Young, Studies in Genesis One (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1964), p. 95.

5 Bruce Waltke and M.O'Connor, An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1990), p. 568. See E. Kautzsch, Gencsius' Hebrew Crammar, 2nd edition revised by A.E. Cowley (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1910), p. 320.

6. Hugh Ross, Resolving The Timescale Issues, Creation/Evolution audio tape (Pasadena, CA: Reasons to Believe, 1990.

7. Kautzsch, Genesius' Hebrew Grammar, p 326.

8. Francis Andersen, The Sentence in Biblical Hebrew (The Hague: Mouton Publishers, 1980), p. 87. See also Thomas J. Finley, "The WAW-Consecutive with 'Imperfect' in Biblical Hebrew," in Tradition and Testament, ed. by J. Feinberg (Chicago: Moody Press, 1981), pp. 241-262.

9. Hugh Ross, Word Studies in Genesis One (Pasadena, CA: Reasons to Believe, 1983), p. [3]. This is the same response he gave at a lecture: Genesis One: An Ancient Earth-Recent Man Interpretation (audio tape), 1989. He says that: "according to the lexicons nathan has 36 definitions so it's not that well-defined a word. But you will see 'to set, to allow to appear' at the top of the list."

10. Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament, S.V. "Natan" by Milton C. Fisher, 2:608.

11. Ross, Word Studies, p [2].

12 Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, S.V. "Hayah" by K. H. Bernhardt, 3:372.

13. Ross, Genesis One, p 7. Ross, Genesis One: An Ancient Earth-Recent Man Interpretation, 1989 (tape 2). Theophilus, To Autolycus 2.4, Oxford Early Christian Texts, as cited in Louis Lavallee, "The Early Church Defended Creation Science" Impact 160 ICR Acts & Facts (October 1986): ii.

*James Stambaugh, M.L.S., M.Div., is librarian for the Institute for Creation Research.

SINGLE COPIES 10 cents. ORDER FROM: INSTITUTE for CREATION RESEARCH (1994 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED PO. BOX 2667, EL CAJON, CA 92021. Reproduced by Permission. October 26, 1995.

The Hebrew Letter



519 (we) 1 (we), 1 (d) and, so, then, when, now, or, but, that, and many others. (ASV and RSV similar.) The vocalization varies.

This is an inseparable prefix which is used as a conjunction or introductory particle which can usually be translated "and."

The fundamental use of the prefix is that of a simple conjunction "and," connecting words ("days and years," Gen. 1:14), phrases ("and to divide" Gen. 1:18), and complete sentences (connecting Gen. 2:11 with verse 12). However it is used more often and for a greater variety of constructions than is the English connector "and."

It is often used at the beginning of sentences, for which reason the K]V begins many sentences with an unexplained "and." This use may be explained as a mild introductory particle and is often translated "now" as in Ex 1:1 where it begins the book (KJV, ASV; the RSV ignores it completely; cf. Gen. 3:1, 4:1).

The item following the prefix is not always an additional item, different from that which preceded: "Judah and Jerusalem" (Isa. 1:1), pointing out Jerusalem especially as an important and representative part of Judah; "in Ramah, and in his own city" (I Sam 28:3), the two being the same place, hence the translation "even" as explanatory. When the second word specifies the first the construction is called a "hendiadys," i.e., two words with one meaning. For example, "a tent and a dwelling" in II Sam 7:6 means "a dwelling tent."

The prefix may mean "or" or the negative "nor" (Ex 20:10), or, if it connects opposing ideas, it may mean "but" (Gen. 3:3; 4:2). It may add an additional subject in a way not acceptable in English, "I will fast, and my maidens" (Est. 4:16). The noun can also denote purpose as in English, e.g. "Divide and conquer." Used twice, the meaning may be "both. .. and" (Num. 9:14). For "a weight and a weight" (Deut 25:13) is meant "different weights." It is used to connect two ideas in a proverb, "Cold waters to a thirsty soul, and good news from a far country" (Prov. 25:25), that is, they are alike. These usages are not really different meanings of the conjunction. They derive from the fact that Hebrew is more paratactic than English. We subordinate some clauses and specify relationships. Hebrew often puts clauses and phrases side by side leaving the sense and juxtaposition to specify the precise relationship.

The prefix is often used to introduce a circumstantial clause and is better translated ' when," "since," "with," etc., "Why is thy countenance sad, and (i. e. "seeing," "since") thou art not sick?" (Neh. 2:2). The prefix is often to be translated "then" as a consequent introducing the second part of a conditional sentence, "But if he wash not..., then he shall bear his iniquity" (Lev 17:16)--the so-called waw of the apodosis.

A common use of this prefix is with a short form of the prefixed conjugation of the verb in a special construction with the letter following the prefix (usually) doubled. This form, generally called the "waw consecutive," usually denotes sequence in past narrative. But sometimes the action is not successive in a strict sense. It may denote logical sequence (cf. Gen. 2: 1; 23 :20; Deut 3 :8) or action that is actually prior to the preceding verb, i.e. it functions as a pluperfect (cf. Gen. 19:27; Num. 1:48; II Sam 12:27; I Kgs 12:13; passim). W. Martin refers to this last usage as dischronologized narrative ("Dischronologized Narrative in the Old Testament," Vetus Testamentum, Congress Volume, Rome, 1968: 17986). This use explains the apparent contradiction between Gen. 1:24-26 and Gen. 2:19. The latter passage means "and the Lord had formed."

[The origin and even meaning of this waw consecutive has been much discussed. The treatment in GKC is in accord with that in S. R. Driver, Use of the Tenses in Hebrew. In brief, it says that this form is found only in sequences and it takes its meaning from the lead verb. A lead verb in the perfect will be followed by this form which represents a continuation of that past action viewed as incomplete from the standpoint of the past horizon. Similarly for the sequence of an imperfect verb continued by a waw consecutive with a perfect.

An alternative view was presented by Zellig S. Harris, The Development of the Canaanite Dialects (New Haven: American Oriental Society, 1939), pp. 47-49. He argued that this waw preserved an old Ugaritic past tense which by accident is similar to the newly-developed imperfect.

G. H. Gordon shows rather convincingly that the alleged old past tense in Ugaritic was identical with a form like the Hebrew imperfect. But it is admitted by all, that this preformative tense in Ugaritic had both a narrative past and an imperfect usage. R. Laird Harris (Introductory Hebrew Grammar, Eerdmans, 1950, pp. 33-34) would modify Zellig S. Harris's view to hold that the waw consecutive is a preservation of the old Ugaritic narrative meaning of the imperfect tense which was used in a past sense with or without the waw. In poetic Hebrew also the imperfect shows this narrative past sense with or without the waw. Cf. the sequence of tenses in Ps 18:412.

G. Douglas Young has argued that this waw is a reflection of Egyptian usage ("The Origin of the Waw Consecutive," JNES 12: 248-52).

A waw with the usual pointing (simple shewa) is used with the imperfect and called the waw conjunctive. The meaning of this form also is debatable. It does not seem usually to refer simply to the future--that would call for a waw consecutive with the perfect. Rather it normally throws the verb into the subjunctive and expresses result, purpose, volition, etc. It often has a cohortative "a" attached.

The same conjunction is used commonly in Ugaritic but apparently as a separate word, as it is often separated from the following word by a word divider. M. Dahood alleges also an emphatic, an explicative and a vocative waw (Psalms III, in AB, pp. 400-402). R.L.H.]

Bibliography: Blake, Frank R., "The Hebrew Waw Conversive," JBL 63: 271-95. Meek, Theophile J., "Translating the Hebrew Bible," JBL 79: 328-35. Pope, Marvin, "'Pleonastic' Waw before Nouns in Ugaritic and Hebrew," JAOS 73: 95-98. Young, G. D., "The Origin of the waw Conversive," JNES 12: 248-52. Wernberg Moller P., " 'Pleonastic' Waw in Classical Hebrew," JSS 3: 321-26.


Harris, R. Laird, Archer, Gleason, L. Jr., and Waltke, Bruce K., "Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament, Moody Press, Chicago, 1980, Vol. 1, p. 229.

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