The Torah - Complete Text

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light.

God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness.

God called the light "day," and the darkness he called "night." And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.

Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array.

By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work.

Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.

This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created, when the Lord God made the earth and the heavens.

Now no shrub had yet appeared on the earth and no plant had yet sprung up, for the Lord God had not sent rain on the earth and there was no one to work the ground.

These are the names of the sons of Israel who went to Egypt with Jacob, each with his family.

Reuben, Simeon, Levi and Judah.

Issachar, Zebulun and Benjamin.

Dan and Naphtali, Gad and Asher.

The descendants of Jacob numbered seventy in all; Joseph was already in Egypt.

Now a man of the tribe of Levi married a Levite woman.

and she became pregnant and gave birth to a son. When she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him for three months.

But when she could hide him no longer, she got a papyrus basket for him and coated it with tar and pitch. Then she placed the child in it and put it among the reeds along the bank of the Nile.

His sister stood at a distance to see what would happen to him.

The daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe at the Nile, and her attendants were walking along the riverbank. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her female slave to get it.