BibleProject Guide
Guide to the Book of Genesis
About
The book of Genesis is the first book of the Bible. It is divided into two main parts, with chapters 1-11 telling the story of God and the whole world, and chapters 12-50 focusing in on the story of God, a man, and his family. These two parts are connected by a sort of "hinge" story in the beginning of chapter 12. This literary design gives us a clue as to how to understand the message of the book as a whole, as well as how the entire story of the Bible comes together.
Genesis 1-3: Creation, the Garden of Eden, and Humanity’s Rebellion
The book of Genesis begins with God taking disorder and darkness and creating out of it order, beauty, and goodness. He creates a world where life can flourish, as well as creatures to inhabit that world.
God makes humans, or adam in Hebrew, in "his image," a concept that has to do with their role in God’s world. They are made to be reflections of God’s character out in the world, and they are appointed representatives to rule God’s good world on his behalf. They are to harness this world’s potential, to care for it, and to make it a place where they can multiply and flourish. God blesses the humans—a key theme in this book—and gives them a garden from which they can begin their task of building the world.
It is important to note that these humans have a choice as to how they are going to build this world, represented neatly in the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Up until now, God has provided and defined for them what is good and what is not good, but at this point, God gives them the freedom and dignity to choose. Will they trust his definition of good and evil, or will they seize autonomy and define good and evil for themselves? The stakes are high here. To rebel against God is to embrace death by turning away from the tree of life, which represents the gift of life itself.
All of a sudden a mysterious figure, a snake, enters the story. It is given no introduction other than it is a creature that God made. It becomes clear, however, that the snake is in rebellion against God and wants to lead the humans into rebellion also, so that they’ll die. The snake tells them a different story about this tree of knowledge and the choice it represents. Seizing the knowledge of good and evil won’t bring death. On the contrary, it’s actually the way to life and to becoming like God himself.
The tragic irony, of course, is that the humans are already like God, as they are a reflection of his image. But instead of trusting God, they seize autonomy and take the knowledge of good and evil for themselves. In an instant, the whole story spirals downward.
The first casualty is in human relationships. The man and woman suddenly realize how vulnerable they are now; can they even trust each other? They make clothes to hide their bodies from each other. The second casualty is that the original intimacy between God and the humans is lost. The humans run and hide from God and start a game of blame-shifting about who rebelled against him first. At this point, the storytelling shifts into a series of short poems in which God declares to the snake and the humans the tragic consequences of their actions.
God first announces that, despite the snake’s apparent victory, it is destined for defeat and is cursed to eat dust. God promises that one day a "seed" or descendant will come from the woman and will deliver a lethal strike to the snake’s head. While this sounds like good news, the victory will come with a cost. While its head is crushed, the snake will deliver its own lethal strike to the descendant’s heel.
This mysterious promise of a wounded victor is an act of God’s grace. Although the humans have rebelled, God promises to rescue them, but it doesn’t erase the consequences of their choice. God informs them that every aspect of their life together, in the home and in the field, will be fraught with grief and pain as a result of their rebellion, ultimately leading to death.
- God's good character and provision of life and safety amidst chaos
- Humanity's choice to partner with God or reject his instruction
- The complex and fractured relationship between humans, creation, and God
- The consistency of God’s promise to rescue and restore
Genesis 3-11: Humanity’s Downward Spiral and the Flood
Again, the story spirals downward. Chapters 3-11 trace the widening ripple effect of the rebellion and the fracturing of human relationships at every level.
The next story, about two brothers, Cain and Abel, shows this fracturing as well. Cain is so jealous of his brother that he wants to murder him. Despite God’s warning not to, Cain kills Abel. After the murder, Cain goes on to build a city where violence and oppression reign. This is epitomized in the story of Lamech, who is the first man in the Bible to have more than one wife, accumulating them like property. Lamech also sings a song about how he is more violent and vengeful than Cain ever was.
Then comes an odd story about the "sons of God." There are different views about who they are. The story could be referring to evil angelic beings, or it could be about ancient kings who claimed to descend from the gods. Like Lamech, they acquired as many wives as they wanted and produced the nephilim, great warriors of old. Whichever view is right, these people built more kingdoms that filled God’s world with more and more violence and corruption.
In response, we are told that God is broken with grief—humanity is ruining his good world as well as each other. Out of a passion to protect the goodness of his creation, he washes the world of humanity’s evil with a great flood. But he protects the one blameless human, Noah, and his family. God commissions Noah as a new Adam, repeating the divine blessing and commission. Our hopes are high, but soon Noah fails too, and in a garden no less! He plants a vineyard, gets drunk out of his mind, and then one of his sons, Ham, does something shameful to him. Our new Adam also ends up naked and ashamed. The downward spiral continues.
This all leads to the foundation of Babylon. Here, the people of ancient Mesopotamia come together around their new technology, the brick. They can make cities and towers bigger and faster than ever before, but they want to take things further and build a new type of tower that will reach up to the heavens. They will be the ones to reunite Heaven and Earth and make a name for themselves. This tower is the epitome of human rebellion and arrogance, the garden tragedy writ large. So God humbles their pride and scatters them around the world.
Now, Genesis 3-11 is a diverse group of stories, but they’re all exploring the same basic point—God keeps giving humans the chance to do the right thing with his world, and they keep ruining it instead. These stories are claiming that we live in a good world gone bad. We’ve all chosen to define good and evil for ourselves and have contributed to a world of broken relationships, conflict, violence, and ultimately death.
But there is still hope. God promised that one day a descendant would come, the wounded victor who will defeat evil at its source. Despite humanity’s evil, God is determined to bless and rescue his world. The big question is: What is God going to do?
Genesis 12:1-3: God Blesses Abraham
After the debacle at Babylon, the author has placed a hinge story that links the two parts of the book of Genesis together. The author traces the genealogy of one family after the scattering of people from Babylon, and it leads to a man named Abram, later known as Abraham. God’s promise to Abraham at the beginning of chapter 12 opens up a whole new movement in the story—one of promise and blessing.
God calls on Abraham to leave his home to go to the land of Canaan, which God says will become his one day. In that land, God promises to make Abraham into a great nation, to make his name great, and to bless him. These promises reflect back on earlier parts of the book. Babylon arrogantly tried to make a "great name" for itself but was instead scattered across the earth. God in his generosity, however, will bestow a "great name" on this man Abraham. God’s blessing of Abraham also echoes back to the original blessing God gave all creation and humanity. Now the question is, Why is God going to bless this man and his family? The last line of God’s promise makes it clear: "So that all the families of the Earth will find blessing in you" (Gen. 12:3).
This is a key moment for understanding the rest of the biblical story. God’s plan is to rescue and bless his rebellious world through Abraham’s family, who will eventually be called Israel. Later, Israel will be called a "kingdom of priests" at Mount Sinai (Exod. 19:4-6) to show all the nations what God is like. Ultimately, this promise is picked up by the biblical prophets and poets who say its fulfillment will come through Israel’s messianic king, whose reign will bring justice and blessing to all the nations (Isa. 11; Ps. 72).
However, at this point in the story, none of that is clear. You just have to keep reading and watching as the promise develops. The rest of the book focuses on Abraham and his family—first Abraham himself, his son Isaac, Isaac’s son Jacob, and then Jacob’s 12 sons. The stories about Abraham’s family are united by two main themes. Each generation is marked by repeated moral failure. They make bad decisions that mess up their lives and put God’s promise into jeopardy. However, God remains faithful to them. Despite their failures, he rescues them from themselves and keeps reaffirming his commitment to bless them and bless the nations through them.
We begin with focusing on Abraham. God had promised him a huge family, but on two different occasions, he is afraid for his life because other men are attracted to his wife. His solution is to deny that he’s even married to her, which of course only causes more problems. Additionally, Abraham and his wife Sarah are unable to have children together, so Sarah arranges for Abraham to sleep with one of their servant girls, again creating even more problems.
Genesis 13-50: Covenant With Abraham, Jacob’s Family, and Joseph in Egypt
Each time, however, God bails Abraham out, and in chapters 15 and 17 God even formalizes his promise to Abraham with an official commitment called a covenant. In a classic scene, he invites Abraham to look up at the night stars and count them, saying that’s how numerous his family will become. Now remember, he has no children, and he and Sarah have no way to produce children. Despite these very bad odds, Abraham looks up and simply trusts God’s promise. God graciously responds by entering into a covenant with him, promising that Abraham will become a father of many nations, that God’s blessing may come to the whole world. He asks Abraham to mark his family with the "sign of the covenant," or the circumcision of all males, as a symbol to remind them that their fruitfulness comes from God. Abraham did indeed go on to have many children and lived to the ripe old age of 175 (Gen. 25:7).
The Jacob stories play out even more dramatically. From birth, Jacob lives up to the meaning of his name, "deceiver." He cheats his brother Esau out of his inheritance and blessing by deceiving his old, blind father and then simply takes off. Jacob goes on to take four wives, even though he really only loves Rachel, creating all these rivalries within the family. The only thing that humbles him is being deceived by his uncle Laban, who cheats him out of years of his life. After all this humbling, Jacob returns to his homeland. And in a strange story, Jacob ends up wrestling with God. He demands that God’s blessing come to him—some things never change. Surprisingly, God honors Jacob’s determination by passing Abraham’s blessing on to him and renames him as Israel, which means "wrestles with God."
It is the last part, the story of Jacob’s sons, in which the key themes of the entire book of Genesis come to a head. Jacob loves his second youngest son, Joseph, more than the others and gives him special treatment as well as a colorful coat. The 10 older sons come to hate their brother Joseph, so they kidnap him and plan to kill him. However, at the last minute, they decide to sell him into slavery in Egypt, which they do. Talk about a dysfunctional family!
But God is with Joseph, and he orchestrates not only his release from prison, but also his rise to power. Pharaoh discovers Joseph and elevates him to second-in-command over all of Egypt. Then, during a famine, Joseph saves all of Egypt and also his brothers who had betrayed him. Once again, the folly and sin of Abraham’s family is met with the faithfulness of God, who can subvert even the evil of the brothers into an occasion to save life. In fact, this is what Joseph says near the end of the book: "You planned all this for evil, but God planned it for good, to save many lives" (Gen. 50:20).
Now, these words are very strategically placed here at the end because they summarize not only the story of Joseph and his brothers but also the entire book. From Genesis 3 onward, humans keep acting selfishly and doing evil, but God is not going to leave the world to its own devices. He remains faithful and determined to bless people despite their failure.
You can especially see this in the way the mysterious promise of the snake-crushing descendant gets developed throughout the book. God promised that this wounded victor would destroy the snake and defeat evil at its source (remember Genesis 3:15). Through the genealogies that run through the book, the author connects this promise to the line of Abraham. This defeat of evil is part of how God will bring his blessing to the nations. From Abraham, this promise is connected to Judah, Jacob’s fourth son. In an extremely important poem in chapter 49, an aging Jacob on his deathbed is blessing his 12 sons. When he comes to Judah, he predicts that Judah will become a tribe of Israel’s royal leaders and that one day a king will come who will command the obedience of the nations and fulfill God’s promise to restore the garden blessing to all the world.
After this, Jacob dies, and then Joseph does as well. The family down in Egypt continues to grow, and the book of Genesis closes with all these future promises left hanging. You’re forced to turn the page and read more to see how it will all turn out.
Frequently Asked Questions
Here are some of the most common questions people ask online about this book.
The 7 days of creation are significant because the Hebrew word for “seven” (sheba/שבע) communicates a sense of “fullness,” “completeness,” or “wholeness” throughout the biblical narrative. By using seven days in Genesis 1, the biblical authors present an ideal or “complete” time sequence of creation that ends with rest. On the seventh day, God completes his work of creation, and God rests. He then rules with humans in a world filled with his presence, abundance, and life.
Discover more about the significance of the 7 days of creation by watching the following videos on Genesis 1 and the themes of Sabbath and Temple. Dive deeper in the BibleProject Classroom course “Heaven and Earth.”
The biblical authors locate the garden of Eden “in the east” (Gen. 2:8), and we are told that a river flows down from it and branches off into four rivers, two of these being the Tigris and the Euphrates. This has led people to locate the land of Eden somewhere in the Fertile Crescent or modern-day Turkey. We aren’t given much information about Eden’s location because the authors use narrative setting as a literary tool to evoke memories and emotions, and to generate expectations about what could happen in the story, not necessarily to identify an exact geographic location. As the biblical story develops, places and directions begin to take on symbolic or meaningful significance based on what has happened there.
Authors consistently use the land of Eden to refer to the place where Heaven and Earth are united together. Rather than a specific geographic location, the garden of Eden is a place where God and humans live together and partner together to build a flourishing, beautiful world.
Discover more about the garden of Eden in the BibleProject Classroom course “Adam to Noah.” And learn more about setting and the use of geography in the Bible in our video Setting in Biblical Narrative and the article Why Does the Ascension of Jesus Matter?
God’s name in Genesis is Yahweh. “Yahweh” is the ancient Hebrew form of the verb “he will be.” And this name appears over 6,500 times in the Old Testament. When you read through Genesis in many English translations of the Bible, such as the NASB, ESV, NET, or the NIV, take note of any time “LORD” is written in all capital letters. This is one way that translators show that the word behind "LORD" in all-caps English is the personal name of the God of Israel, or "Yahweh" in Hebrew.
Discover more about the name of Israel’s God in the video YHWH/LORD, and dive into the world of God and spiritual beings in the video Elohim and the podcast God or gods?
The Greek word genesis means “birth” or “generation.” The Hebrew title of the book is Bere’shit (בראשית), which is the first word in the Hebrew text of Genesis, meaning, “in the beginning.”
As the Bible was translated and transmitted, the English tradition has followed the Septuagint (the early Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible) in calling the book “Genesis.” This title stems from the Greek noun γενεσις/genesis, which appears throughout the book (for example, 2:4; 5:1; 6:9). Since the Bible’s first book is about the birth of the world and is the beginning of the entire biblical story, and because its opening line starts with “in the beginning” (בראשית/bereshit), Genesis became a good title for a wider audience.
Interested in discovering more about the “beginning”? Check out the BibleProject Classroom class Heaven and Earth.
Genesis 1 tells us that the God of the Bible is a powerful and wise creator of the world who brings order and goodness into existence. Genesis 1 depicts God with the creative authority to speak things into existence and describes him as doing so with love and good will.
We learn that God’s essential nature is relationship. God refers to himself as "us" and "our," which shows us that he exists in both a diversity of persons and one relational essence at the same time (Gen. 1:26).
In Genesis 1, God creates beauty out of disorder, chaos, and darkness. He establishes time, the sky, the sea, and the land, also filling these realms with living creatures. God creates humans to be his co-rulers, his “images,” created to bring life and flourishing to all creation (Gen. 1:26-28).
Discover more about what Genesis 1 tells us about God by watching BibleProject’s visual commentary on
Genesis is an important book because it establishes God as the creator of all things and sets up the story of God, his people, and his ultimate purpose for all humanity. With repeating ideas and themes, along with recurring images and symbols, Genesis says that God creates a good world where life can flourish. It also describes spirit beings and human beings who contribute to broken relationships, violent conflict, and death by choosing to define good and bad for themselves apart from God the creator. These themes of light and darkness, life and death, violence or goodness, etc., will be repeated throughout the Bible, making Genesis foundational to the whole biblical story. In Genesis 3, readers get a subtle foreshadowing about God’s renewal of everything through a powerful human being he sends to set the world right.
Interested in discovering more about the book of Genesis? Check out our Genesis book podcast series, the article How Do We Make Sense of Genesis?, the BibleProject Classroom Genesis classes, and the Genesis movements in the Torah Journey on the BibleProject app!
There is not one most significant story in the book of Genesis, as the book contains many important stories that contribute to the overall narrative. But here's a quick recap of the big ones: the creation of the world and humanity’s failure in the garden (Gen. 1-3), Cain and Abel (Gen. 4), Noah and the flood (Gen. 6-9), the building of Babylon (Gen. 11), and the stories of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph (Gen. 12-50). Each of these stories play a crucial role in the development of the biblical narrative and the understanding of God's relationship with humanity.
The name "Jesus" is not mentioned in Genesis (or in the entire Hebrew Bible/Old Testament). However, in Genesis 3:15, God promises that one day a human will come who will defeat evil and restore humanity and the world to true life and goodness. Throughout the Bible, the authors refer to this promised human as the Messiah or the “anointed one.”
Later, the New Testament authors present Jesus of Nazareth as that human, the Messiah, the anointed one first mentioned in Genesis 3:15—the deliverer who would defeat evil and rescue humanity.
For more information on the theme of Messiah and anointing, watch the videos The Messiah and Anointing. Learn more about what it means for the Bible to be about Jesus in the podcast Who is the Bible About? and the article How Does the Bible’s Story Lead to Jesus?
The book of Genesis concludes with Joseph speaking to his brothers before he dies, telling them that he has forgiven them for their previous harm toward him and assuring them that what they meant for evil, God has turned to good. Joseph is a descendent of the family of Abraham, God’s chosen family to bless all the ethnic groups, or “families,” or “nations,” of the world. As Genesis concludes, this family is living in Egypt, but before he dies Joseph tells his brothers that God will one day take them out of Egypt to the land he promised their ancestors.
Discover more about the conclusion of Genesis in the final movement of Genesis, “Jacob’s Sons,” in the Torah Journey on the BibleProject app!
You are more than welcome to start reading the Bible in any book! You can read about Jesus in the Gospels, read poetry in the Psalms, and read epic narratives like God rescuing the Israelites from slavery in the book of Exodus.
The book of Genesis could also be a great place to start as it begins the story of the Bible and sets a foundation for the whole biblical narrative. Genesis introduces key characters like Adam and Eve, Noah, Abraham and Sarah, Joseph, and more, as well as introducing key themes like the tree of life, Sabbath, and the Messiah. All of the main themes in the Bible that begin in the book of Genesis come to their fulfillment in the story of Jesus of Nazareth. So reading Genesis is a helpful way to better understand the story of the Bible and how the entire story ultimately leads to Jesus.
And at BibleProject, we want to help. Check out our Genesis book podcast series, the article How Do We Make Sense of Genesis?, the BibleProject Classroom Genesis classes, and the Torah Journey on the BibleProject app!
