Genesis 1:3

Summary

With this verse the chapter's narrative chain begins: "and God said". The command is cast in the jussive — "let it be" — and its fulfillment is immediately narrated with the same verb in narrative form, producing the pair "let there be light… and there was light".

Key words

• va ("and", H9001) — narrative vav: chains the story.
• i.Yo.mer ("he said", H0559) — qal verb in narrative form: "and then… he".
• ye.Hi ("let it be", H1961) — qal verb in the jussive: "let him…".
• 'or ("light", H0216) — feminine singular noun.

What the text says

The first word is the narrative vav va ("and", H9001), which the data describe as the particle that "chains the story". Joined to the verb i.Yo.mer ("he said", H0559), a qal in narrative form — "and then…" — it marks the shift from the static description of verse 2 to sequenced action. The subject is 'E.lo.Him ("God", H0430), a plural-form noun with a third person singular verb.

The content of the speech is a single clause: ye.Hi ("let it be", H1961) + 'or ("light", H0216). The verbal form is a jussive, glossed in the data as "let him…": a third-person command or wish rather than an imperative addressed to a present interlocutor. The fulfillment repeats the same verb H1961, now in narrative form: y.hi- ("there was", H1961) + 'or. Command and outcome thus use the identical verb and the identical noun; only the conjugation changes, from jussive (volition) to narrative (an accomplished fact within the story's chain).

The four supplied versions reproduce this symmetry with their own resources: the LXX with Γενηθήτω φῶς and καὶ ἐγένετο φῶς, the Vulgate with Fiat lux and facta est lux, the RV1909 with «Sea la luz: y fué la luz», and the BSB with "Let there be light" and "there was light". In this verse the supplied texts show no substantive divergence from one another.