THE BOOKS OF MOSES
The first five books of the Bible - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy - are sometimes called The Books of Moses because Moses is the one God chose to use to record the events in all of these books. They are also sometimes called The Books of the Law because in them is where God told the people of Israel how He wanted them to live. They are also called the Pentateuch, meaning “five books” or the Torah which is what Jews call this group of books to this day. These five books set the stage for all the rest of the Bible, so read them carefully to see how it all began …
GENESIS (BEGINNING)
Genesis is the first book of the Bible. It tells us about several “beginnings.” God chose Moses to write down the things that happened at the very beginning of the world. Moses had been told these stories from the time he was very little. When God chose him to be the leader of His special people, Israel, He also had him write down all of these wonderful and important stories so that so many generations later, we could still know the truth about the way the world began and about the important firsts in His world.
Genesis
Creation
Gen 1: 1-2 This is the story of the very beginning of everything. In the beginning, God made, out of absolutely nothing, the heavens and the earth - everything in our world and in the universe around us. When the world first came into being, it was empty and shapeless and dark. Only the Spirit of God moved around as He hovered over the waters.
Gen 1:3-5 We take light for granted. Every day the sun comes up and every night when it goes down, we trust that it will come up again. But in the beginning, there was no light. Everything was in darkness. But then God spoke. He said, “Let there be light!” and because God is in charge of everything that exists and can do whatever He pleases, light was born. And God saw what He made, and saw that it was good. But light isn’t as awe-inspiring if it is not shown side by side with darkness, so God separated the darkness and the light. He called the light Day, and He called the darkness Night. The first evening and the first morning were the First Day.
Gen 1:6-8 Then God decided to separate the water on the earth into two parts: the water on the bottom - the oceans - from the water on the top - the sky with its clouds full of water. So God told an expanse of dry air to form between the two waters, and so it did. God called the space separating the sky and the seas The Heavens. And that was the Second Day.
Gen 1:9-10 After that, God decided to separate the water on the earth from the land below it. He told the waters on the earth come together in one place and the ground below them to appear and become dry ground, and so they did. God called the dry land The Earth and the water The Ocean. And God saw what He made, and saw that it was good. But He wasn’t done. He told The Earth to produce plants with seeds and fruit trees with seeds in the fruit, and so it did. Plants and trees grew that had seeds in them so that more just like them could grow later. And God saw what He made, and saw that it was good. And that was the Third Day.
Gen 1:11-19 Now that God had made preparations across the whole earth, He created things to live there. First He said there should be lights in the The Heavens He created so that there would be day and night. He said these lights would determine when the seasons changed and when each day would begin and end and when the days would come together to make full years. He said they would provide light for all the things on earth. And so the sun, moon and stars were born. God made two great lights: the sun to shine in the day and the moon to shine in the night. He also made the spectacular stars we see in the night sky. And God saw what He made, and saw that it was good. And that was the Fourth Day.
Gen 1:20-23 Then God told The Ocean to fill up with all kinds of water creatures, and He told The Heavens to fill up with all kinds of birds. God created all of the amazing creatures that live in The Ocean and in The Heavens and gave them the ability to make more amazing creatures just like them so that the waters and the sky would always be full of His wonderful creatures. He blessed them and told them to fill up the whole Ocean and the Heavens. And that was the Fifth Day.
Gen 1:24-25 Then God told The Earth to make all kids of creatures: big animals like cows and horses, slithery animals like snakes, crawling animals like turtles, and medium-sized animals like rabbits and cats and everything in between. And so it did. God created all of the animals that live on land, from the huge elephants to the tiny beetles, and He gave them the ability to make more amazing creatures just like them so that the land would always be full of His wonderful creatures. And God saw what He made, and saw that it was good.
Gen 1:26-31 Then the Holy Trinity: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit decided together to make the most magnificent part of their creation. God would make humans that would be like Him! And so He did. He made a man and he made a woman and these humans - just like all of us that have come after them - were like a mirror, reflecting to the world what God is like. He didn’t make them little gods, but did He make them - make us - like Him. Just like children aren’t their parents, but might look and talk and act like them, God made us to be like Him. He wanted us to be able to have a relationship with Him, to talk to Him, to love Him. And to do that, we had to be made in His image, in His likeness. God blessed these people that He made. He gave them a job. He gave them the ability to make more people just like them to fill the whole earth with people for Him to love and who would love Him. God told this man and woman that they should have babies and take care of the wonderful creation He had made. He told them to take care of the fish and the birds and the land animals. God also told them that He had prepared the world for them. He said that all of the plants and trees that He had made would be their food as well as food for all the animals. And so they used the things that God gave them. And God saw what He made, and saw that it very was good. And that was the Sixth Day.
Gen 2:1-4 And that’s how God made the heavens and the earth and all the wonderful things in them. When the Seventh Day came, God had finished everything He was going to make. And so He stopped. God decided to set the Seventh Day apart from all the other days as a special day because on the Seventh Day He rested after completing His magnificent creation. So that’s the story of how the world came in to being goes. That is the truth about how everything was made.
Adam & Eve
Gen 2:5-6 At the beginning there were not farm lands, no planted fields. God hadn’t sent rain yet and no one was there to take care of a farm. Instead, God sent a mist of water right out of the ground to water the plants.
Gen 2:7 God made man by gathering up dirt from the ground and forming it carefully into a human body. Then God Himself breathed from the man’s nose right into his lungs the breath that would bring him to life. And that’s how the man became a living, breathing human man.
Gen 2:8-9 God planted a special garden in the east, in a place called Eden. He put the man He had made in this lush garden. God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground in the Garden of Eden. The trees were beautiful and made delicious fruit. In this garden there were two special trees. One was the Tree of Life and the other was the Tree of Knowing Good and Evil.
Gen 2:10-14 There was a river in the Garden of Eden that watered the garden and then split up to become four different rivers. The first one was the river Pishon. This river surrounds Havilah, a place where there was very good gold as well as bdellium and onyx stone. The second river that came from the river the Garden of Eden was the river Gihon which flowed through the land of Cush. The third river is the Tigris, and it flows east of Assyria. And the fourth river is the Euphrates.
Gen 2:15-17 God took the man He had made and put him in the Garden of Eden for him to take care of it. God told the man, “You can eat fruit from any of the trees in the garden except for the Tree of Knowing Good and Evil. When eat fruit from it, you will die.”
Gen 2:18-22 God said, “It’s not good for the man to be by himself, alone. I will make a helper for him who is like him.” God made all the animals of the field and all the birds out of dirt from the ground. He brought each animal to the man and let the man name them. Whatever name he chose, that would be what the animal would be called. Adam gave names to all of the big animals like cows and horses, and to the birds that fly in the sky, and to all the wild animals like the lions and the monkeys, but as he went through all of the animals, looking at each one, they didn’t find a single one that could be the helper Adam needed. So God made the man fall into a deep, deep sleep. While he was asleep, God took out one of his ribs and closed up the place in his chest He had gotten it from. Then God took Adam’s rib and made it into a woman and then took the woman to Adam.
Gen 2:23-25 Adam said, “She is made out of me - out of my bones and flesh. I’ll call her woman because she was taken out of a man.” Since God made man and woman in this way, as part of one another, a man will leave his parents’ house, their immediately family, and will come together with his wife to make a new family; they are one flesh together, one unit. The man and woman were both naked, and they weren’t embarrassed.
