Lexicon

H7225 - reshit

Strong's: H7225 · BLB lookup Pronunciation: ray-sheeth' Part of speech: feminine noun Root: from H7218 - rosh (רֹאשׁ, "head"), the same root behind Rosh Hashanah ("head of the year")

Semantic range (Brown-Driver-Briggs)

Beginning, temporal or sequential starting-point.
First, first in time, place, order, or rank.
Chief, principal, head, most important.
Choicest, choice part, best, finest portion (e.g., of harvest).
Firstfruits, the first-yielded portion offered to YHWH.

Theological force

In Genesis 1.1 the word appears in absolute construct without article: בְּרֵאשִׁית (bereshit), "in [the] beginning." The grammatical question is whether to read this as:

Absolute, "In the beginning, God created…" (independent main clause; supports creatio ex nihilo and the temporal-origin reading; classical Christian and Jewish exegesis).
Construct, "In the beginning of [God's creating]…" (subordinate clause, with v. 1 a temporal modifier of v. 2 or v. 3; followed by some modern critical scholars and Rashi).

The Masoretic vowel pointing and the LXX (ἐν ἀρχῇ, G0746 - arche) both support the absolute reading. The Septuagint translators clearly understood it as an absolute-temporal beginning, and John 1:1, ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος, deliberately invokes this exact phrase, predicating eternal pre-existence of the Word prior to the temporal beginning bereshit names.

The other senses of reshit (firstfruits, choicest, chief) operate in cultic and wisdom literature contexts and rarely overlap with the temporal-beginning sense, but they share a common metaphorical structure: priority in time, rank, or quality.

Notable verses

Beginning (temporal / absolute)

Genesis 1.1, בְּרֵאשִׁית בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים, "In the beginning God created"
Jeremiah 26:1, "in the beginning of the reign of Jehoiakim"
Jeremiah 28:1, "in the beginning of the reign of Zedekiah"

First / chief / best

Exodus 23:19, "the first (reshit) of the firstfruits of your soil"
Deuteronomy 18:4, "the first (reshit) of your grain, your new wine, and your oil"
Numbers 18:12, "the best (reshit) of the fresh oil"
Amos 6:1, "the chief (reshit) of the nations"
Job 8:7, "though your reshit (beginning) was insignificant"
Ecclesiastes 7:8, "the end (acharit) of a matter is better than its beginning (reshit)"

Wisdom (a chief biblical theme)

Proverbs 1:7, "The fear of the LORD is the beginning (reshit) of knowledge"
Proverbs 9:10, "The fear of the LORD is the beginning (reshit) of wisdom"
Proverbs 8:22, "The LORD possessed me at the beginning (reshit) of His way" (Wisdom personified)
Psalm 111:10, same sense paired with yirath YHWH

Firstborn / firstfruits cluster

Deuteronomy 21:17, "the firstborn (reshit ono)", first issue of strength

Patristic / scholarly note

Augustine (Confessions 11.5-13; City of God 11) makes Genesis 1:1's bereshit the locus for his discussion of time as a created reality: time begins with creation, not before. There is no "before" the beginning because temporal succession itself is part of what was made. Aquinas (ST I, q.46) follows this line and argues that the temporal-beginning reading is consistent with, though not strictly demonstrable from, Genesis 1:1 alone; the doctrine of a temporal beginning is held by faith.

Proverbs 8:22's identification of personified Wisdom as YHWH's reshit fed into pre-Christian Jewish (Sirach, Wisdom of Solomon) and Christian Logos / Sophia Christology, eventually feeding the prologue of John (John 1.1) where the Word is en archē. The Arian controversy turned partly on whether Proverbs 8:22's "the LORD possessed me as the beginning of His way" implied that Christ-as-Wisdom was a created being. Athanasius (Discourses Against the Arians II.18ff) argues the verse refers to the eternal generation of the Son, not creation in time.

Verses in this codex

See Obsidian's backlinks pane for every verse page linking here.