bārāʾ

Semantic range

1. 1to create — always with God as the subject in the qal stem
2. 2to shape or cut out (the root may relate to cutting or separating)
3. 3to bring into an ordered state

In the Hebrew Bible bārāʾ never takes a human subject in the simple stem. It is God's verb. What it does not do — and this matters — is specify creation out of nothing. The Hebrew simply does not carry that freight; creatio ex nihilo is a later philosophical doctrine imported from Greek thought and formalised in the second and third centuries after Christ.

Genesis 1:1–2 shows the verb at work on material already described: the earth is tōhû wābōhû, unformed and empty, with darkness over the face of the tehôm, the deep. The chapter proceeds by separating, gathering, and filling. Creation in Genesis is organisation.

Joseph Smith made exactly this argument from the Hebrew in the King Follett discourse, observing that the word he read as create carried the sense of organising existing materials, and connecting it to the revealed doctrine that "the elements are eternal" (D&C 93:33) and that intelligence "was not created or made, neither indeed can be" (D&C 93:29). Abraham 3–4 renders the creative acts as the Gods organising and forming.

Where it appears

• Genesis 1:1"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth."
• Genesis 1:27Three times in one verse, for the creation of humankind.
• Isaiah 45:18He created it "not in vain" — literally, not as tōhû.

See also

• עָשָׂהʿāśāh
• יָצַרyāṣar
• תֹהוּ וָבֹהוּtōhû wābōhû
• אֱלֹהִיםʾĕlōhîm