The Holy Bible – Knox Translation
The Book of Genesis
|
Chapter 1
|
1
God, at the beginning of time, created heaven and earth.
2
Earth was still an empty waste, and darkness hung over the deep; but already, over its waters, stirred the breath of God.
3
Then God said, Let there be light; and the light began.
4
God saw the light, and found it good, and he divided the spheres of light and darkness;
5
the light he called Day, and the darkness Night. So evening came, and morning, and one day passed.
6
God said, too, Let a solid vault arise amid the waters, to keep these waters apart from those;
7
a vault by which God would separate the waters which were beneath it from the waters above it; and so it was done.
8
This vault God called the Sky. So evening came, and morning, and a second day passed.

9
And now God said, Let the waters below the vault collect in one place to make dry land appear. And so it was done;
10
the dry land God called Earth, and the water, where it had collected, he called the Sea. All this God saw, and found it good.
11
Let the earth, he said, yield grasses that grow and seed; fruit-trees too, each giving fruit of its own kind, and so propagating itself on earth. And so it was done;
12
the earth yielded grasses that grew and seeded, each according to its kind, and trees that bore fruit, each with the power to propagate its own kind. And God saw it, and found it good.
13
So evening came, and morning, and a third day passed.

14
Next, God said, Let there be luminaries in the vault of the sky, to divide the spheres of day and night; let them give portents, and be the measures of time, to mark out the day and the year;
15
let them shine in the sky’s vault, and shed light on the earth. And so it was done.

16
God made the two great luminaries, the greater of them to command the day, and the lesser to command the night; then he made the stars.
17
All these he put in the vault of the sky, to shed their light on the earth,
18
to control day and night, and divide the spheres of light and darkness. And God saw it, and found it good.
19
So evening came, and morning, and a fourth day passed.

20
After this, God said, Let the waters produce moving things that have life in them, and winged things that fly above the earth under the sky’s vault.
21
Thus God created the huge sea-beasts, and all the different kinds of life and movement that spring from the waters, and all the different kinds of flying things; and God saw it, and found it good.
22
He pronounced his blessing on them, Increase and multiply, and fill the waters of the sea; and let there be abundance of flying things on earth.
23
So evening came, and morning, and a fifth day passed.
24
God said, too, Let the land yield all different kinds of living things, cattle and creeping things and wild beasts of every sort; and so it was done.
25
God made every sort of wild beast, and all the different kinds of cattle and of creeping things; and God saw it, and found it good.

26
And God said, Let us make man, wearing our own image and likeness; let us put him in command of the fishes in the sea, and all that flies through the air, and the cattle, and the whole earth, and all the creeping things that move on earth.
27
So God made man in his own image, made him in the image of God. Man and woman both, he created them.
28
And God pronounced his blessing on them, Increase and multiply and fill the earth, and make it yours; take command of the fishes in the sea, and all that flies through the air, and all the living things that move on the earth.
29
Here are all the herbs, God told them, that seed on earth, and all the trees, that carry in them the seeds of their own life, to be your food;
30
food for all the beasts on the earth, all that flies in the air, all that creeps along the ground; here all that lives shall find its nourishment. And so it was done.
31
And God saw all that he had made, and found it very good. So evening came, and morning, and a sixth day passed.