¹ In the beginning God created heaven and earth.

² Now the earth was a formless void, there was darkness over the deep, with a divine wind sweeping over the waters.

³ God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light.

⁴ God saw that light was good, and God divided light from darkness.

⁵ God called light 'day', and darkness he called 'night'. Evening came and morning came: the first day.

⁶ God said, 'Let there be a vault through the middle of the waters to divide the waters in two.' And so it was.

⁷ God made the vault, and it divided the waters under the vault from the waters above the vault.

⁸ God called the vault 'heaven'. Evening came and morning came: the second day.

⁹ God said, 'Let the waters under heaven come together into a single mass, and let dry land appear.' And so it was.

¹⁰ God called the dry land 'earth' and the mass of waters 'seas', and God saw that it was good.

¹¹ God said, 'Let the earth produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants, and fruit trees on earth, bearing fruit with their seed inside, each corresponding to its own species.' And so it was.

¹² The earth produced vegetation: the various kinds of seed-bearing plants and the fruit trees with seed inside, each corresponding to its own species. God saw that it was good.

¹³ Evening came and morning came: the third day.

¹⁴ God said, 'Let there be lights in the vault of heaven to divide day from night, and let them indicate festivals, days and years.

¹⁵ Let them be lights in the vault of heaven to shine on the earth.' And so it was.

¹⁶ God made the two great lights: the greater light to govern the day, the smaller light to govern the night, and the stars.

¹⁷ God set them in the vault of heaven to shine on the earth,

¹⁸ to govern the day and the night and to divide light from darkness. God saw that it was good.

¹⁹ Evening came and morning came: the fourth day.

²⁰ God said, 'Let the waters be alive with a swarm of living creatures, and let birds wing their way above the earth across the vault of heaven.' And so it was.

²¹ God created great sea-monsters and all the creatures that glide and teem in the waters in their own species, and winged birds in their own species. God saw that it was good.

²² God blessed them, saying, 'Be fruitful, multiply, and fill the waters of the seas; and let the birds multiply on land.'

²³ Evening came and morning came: the fifth day.

²⁴ God said, 'Let the earth produce every kind of living creature in its own species: cattle, creeping things and wild animals of all kinds.' And so it was.

²⁵ God made wild animals in their own species, and cattle in theirs, and every creature that crawls along the earth in its own species. God saw that it was good.

²⁶ God said, 'Let us make man in our own image, in the likeness of ourselves, and let them be masters of the fish of the sea, the birds of heaven, the cattle, all the wild animals and all the creatures that creep along the ground.'

²⁷ God created man in the image of himself, in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them.

²⁸ God blessed them, saying to them, 'Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and subdue it. Be masters of the fish of the sea, the birds of heaven and all the living creatures that move on earth.'

²⁹ God also said, 'Look, to you I give all the seed-bearing plants everywhere on the surface of the earth, and all the trees with seed-bearing fruit; this will be your food.

³⁰ And to all the wild animals, all the birds of heaven and all the living creatures that creep along the ground, I give all the foliage of the plants as their food.' And so it was.

³¹ God saw all he had made, and indeed it was very good. Evening came and morning came: the sixth day.

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The New Jerusalem Bible (NJB) is a Catholic translation of the Bible published in 1985. The New Jerusalem Bible (NJB) has become the most widely used Roman Catholic Bible outside of the United States. It has the imprimatur of Cardinal George Basil Hume.

Like its predecessor, the Jerusalem Bible, the New Jerusalem Bible (NJB) version is translated "directly from the Hebrew, Greek or Aramaic." The 1973 French translation, the Bible de Jerusalem, is followed only "where the text admits to more than one interpretation." Introductions and notes, with some modifications, are taken from the Bible de Jerusalem.

Source: The Very Reverend Dom (Joseph) Henry Wansbrough, OSB, MA (Oxon), STL (Fribourg), LSS (Rome), a monk of Ampleforth Abbey and a biblical scholar. He was General Editor of the New Jerusalem Bible. "New Jerusalem Bible, Regular Edition", pg. v.

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