Thursday, June 8, 2023

John Day on the Construct Reading of Genesis 1:1 and a construct before a perfect

  

If it is in the construct state, we might more naturally have expected the text to read berē’šît berō, with the infinitive construct, rather than berē’šît bārā. However, there are occasional instances of a construct before a perfect, for example, Hos. 1.2; Exod. 6.20. This interpretation therefore is not impossible. It has also been argued in support that the word rē’šît is elsewhere in the construct, though there is an exception in Isa. 40.10, which speaks of God ‘declaring the end from the beginning (mērē’šît)’. (John Day, “Genesis 1.1-5: The First Day of Creation,” in From Creation to Abraham: Further Studies in Genesis 1-11 [Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies 726; London: T&T Clark, 2022], 2; note that Day is a critic of the construct reading of Gen 1:1)

 

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