1 In the beginning God created heaven and earth. 2 Moreover the earth as empty and vacant, and darkness was over the shape of the abyss; and the Spirit of God carried over the waters. 3 And God said: Let there be light. And there was light. 4 And God saw the light which was good. And he divided the light from the darkness. 5 And he called the light Day and the darkness Night. And it was done evening and morning, the first day.
6 And God said, Let there be a firmament in the middle of the waters and let it divide waters from waters. 7 And God made the firmament and divided the waters that were below the firmament, from those which were above the firmament. And thus it was done. 8 And God called the firmament Heaven. And it was done evening and morning, the second day.
9 Truly, God said: Let the waters be gathered, which are under heaven, in one place, and dry land appeared. And so it was done. 10 And God called the dry areas Earth, and the gathered waters he called Sea. And God saw that it was good. 11 And h said, Let the earth sprout herbage flourishing and making seed, and fruit-bearing trees making fruit according to its kind, whose seed in itself may be over the earth. And so it was done. 12 And the earth brought forth herbage flourishing, and making seed according to its own kind, and trees bearing fruit, and each one having seed following its type. 13 And God saw that it as good. And it as done evening and morning, the third day.
14 Moreover God said: Let there be lights in the firmament of heaven, and let them divide day and night, and let them be in the signs and the times, both days and years. 15 So that they might shine in the firmament of heaven, and they might illuminate the earth and so it was done. 16 And God made the great lights: the larger to shine so that it might preside over the day, and the lesser to shine, so that it might rule over night, and stars. 17 And he put them in the firmament of heaven so that they would shine over the earth 18 and preside over day and night, and divide light and darkness. And God saw that it was good. 19 And it was done evening and morning, the fourth day.
20 Again God said: Let there be made living life of water creeping, and birds over the earth under the firmament of heaven. 21 And God created the great sea monsters, and all creatures living and moving, which produced in water in its own kind and every bird following its own kind. And God saw that it was good. 22 And he blessed them saying: Increase and multiply, and fill the waters of the sea; and birds multiplied over the earth. 23 And it was done, evening and morning, the fifth day.
24 Also God said: Let the earth produce living life in its own kind, beasts of burden and crawling things, and beasts of the land according to their own kind. And so it was done. 25 And God made beasts of the land on a par with their types, and beasts of burden and every crawling thing of the land in its land. And God saw that it was good. 26 And he said: Let us make man in our image and likeness, and the control of the fish of the sea, and flying things of the sky, and beasts, and all the lands, and all creeping things that move on the land. 27 And God created man in his image, in his image God created him, male and female he created them. 28 And God blessed them, and said: Increase, and multiply, and fill the earth, and make it subject, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and the flying things of the sky, and every living thing which moves on the earth. 29 And God said: Behold, I have given you every plant producing seed over earth, and every tree which has in itself its kind of seed, so that they might be food to you, 30 and with all animals of the earth, and all flying things of heaven, and in all things which move on earth, and in which is a living spirit, so that they might be for you to eat. And so it was done. 31 God saw all which he had made; and they were powerfully good. And it was done evening and morning, the sixth day.
Linguistic Notes
Et creavit Deus hominem ad imaginem suam. The student of Latin might find that ad a bit odd there. “And God created man to his image”? At least one on-line translation of the vulgate that I found makes that choice. Ad, however, has a broader range of meanings than simply “to.” It actually can mean anything in the range of “to”-ness from “towards” to “at” with an implicit sense of coming in from the outside. (Ex carries a similar range of meanings coming from the inside). This directionality of prepositions is something characteristic of Latin, it seems and I’m reminded of the opening of the Credo, “Credo in unum deum,” which would translate literally as “I believe into one God…”
Theological Notes
I’ve often heard it claimed that one of the theological meanings of Genesis 1 is that God only “saw that it was good” when he created things, not when he divided them. Getting close and dirty with the text like you do when doing a translation (not to mention my process of writing out by hand the whole Latin text and then interlinearly the English before typing a final version here), it’s hard to elide over the fact that this isn’t actually true. In verse 10, after separating the waters and the dry land, “God saw that it was good.” Some logical gymnastics might save the point, but whether it’s worth saving is left as an exercise to the reader.