1In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up; and his train filled the temple. 2Above him stood the seraphim. Each one had six wings. With two he covered his face. With two he covered his feet. With two he flew. 3One called to another, and said,
“Holy, holy, holy, is Yahweh of Armies!
The whole earth is full of his glory!”
4The foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke. 5Then I said, “Woe is me! For I am undone, because I am a man of unclean lips and I live among a people of unclean lips, for my eyes have seen the King, Yahweh of Armies!”
6Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar. 7He touched my mouth with it, and said, “Behold, this has touched your lips; and your iniquity is taken away, and your sin forgiven.”
8I heard the Lord’s voice, saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?”
Then I said, “Here I am. Send me!”
9He said, “Go, and tell this people,
‘You hear indeed,
but don’t understand.
You see indeed,
but don’t perceive.’
10Make the heart of this people fat.
Make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes;
lest they see with their eyes,
hear with their ears,
understand with their heart,
and turn again, and be healed.”
11Then I said, “Lord, how long?”
He answered,
“Until cities are waste without inhabitant,
houses without man,
the land becomes utterly waste,
12and Yahweh has removed men far away,
and the forsaken places are many within the land.
13If there is a tenth left in it,
that also will in turn be consumed,
as a terebinth, and as an oak whose stump remains when they are cut down,
so the holy seed is its stump.”
Ancient cultures held much in common in regard to cosmology (the study of the beginning of the universe). Consequently, the considerable originality of Israelite ideas and their independence from other ancient Near Eastern cultures in regard to the beginning of the world becomes particularly significant. This uniqueness is found in at least three different areas, discussed in the following paragraphs.
First, creation has been explained in two ways regarding the nature of the creation being "good." Some would view this in a moral sense, and certainly, God is a morally good being. The moral nature of the God of Israel stands in striking contrast with the nations around Israel. Yahweh can bind His creation to high standards of morality because He is perfectly holy (Lev 11:44; Isa 6:3). The gods of the nations shared in heightened proportions the sins of peoples around the Israelites. The term "good," then, may be found at times in the Bible, such as there is none that is good, mentioned by Jesus in Mark 10:18. Yet, the word good found in Genesis 1 and 2 likely speaks of good in a different way. The text probably is speaking of "good" teleologically, that is, it satisfies his purpose in creation. This sense of "good" is like when a person is asked if they need some more help, or something else to eat at a restaurant. The response might be, "No thanks, I am good." The sense of this use is that I have everything I want, and that I have achieved what I was seeking to accomplish, though this may include the moral sense. Each of the days of creation, and finally all six days, ended with "it was good." His crowning work of creation was to create humans in His image (Gen 1:26-28) and created a male and female to tend the earth. In Genesis 1:31, Yahweh says that it is "very good" and so ended His creative acts.
Second, Israel's story of creation excludes a theogony (birth of the gods). In contrast to the ancient Near Eastern explanation of the origin of the gods, Israel had nothing to say about how God came into being. He never had a beginning but is the beginning of all things. This avoids dualism, a second principle in addition to God, as well as pantheism, which identifies God and the world.
Third, creation is ex nihilo (out of nothing). This is supported in four ways. First, heaven and earth in 1:1 refers to the entire cosmos, an example of merismus (two opposites encompassing totality). Second, one also observes the use of the Hebrew term bara (ברא), which always is used with God as its subject. Third, the use of bere'sit (בראשת) fixes an absolute beginning for creation, in contrast to the pagan mythology that considered the cosmos as having no beginning. Last of all, the emphasis in the biblical text is on the absolute freedom by which God acts.
Last of all, Genesis 1:1 excludes dualism, evolutionism, atheism, pantheism, and materialism. See The Initial Verse of the Bible Denies
See Gerhard Hasel, "Polemical Nature of the Genesis Account"; Umberto Cassuto, Commentary on Genesis, for further discussion of the creation account.