(Absolutely) to create ; (qualified) to cut down (a wood), select , feed (as formative processes)
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בָּרָא (bārāʾ) is the Hebrew word for the divine act of creation, and its most important grammatical feature is also its most important theological fact: in the OT, bārāʾ is used in the Hebrew Bible with God as its subject. Human beings make, form, build, and fashion, but the Hebrew Bible reserves this verb for God's creative action.
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Full entry for בָּרָא (H1254) · Open the biblical lexicon
בָּרָא (bārāʾ) is the Hebrew word for the divine act of creation, and its most important grammatical feature is also its most important theological fact: in the OT, bārāʾ is used in the Hebrew Bible with God as its subject. Human beings make, form, build, and fashion, but the Hebrew Bible reserves this verb for God's creative action.
The BSB source-word alignment has 55 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include created (7), Create (3), and create (2), and created (2), have created (2).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Genesis 1:1. Its strongest book concentrations include Isaiah (21), Genesis (11), Ezekiel (6), Psalms (6).
This entry includes 4 verse guides that explain exact original-language forms in context.
בָּרָא (bārāʾ) is the Hebrew word for the divine act of creation, and its most important grammatical feature is also its most important theological fact: in the OT, bārāʾ is used in the Hebrew Bible with God as its subject. Human beings make, form, build, and fashion, but the Hebrew Bible reserves this verb for God's creative action. The distinction is not always pressed in English translations, but the Hebrew maintains it with remarkable consistency: the verb presents YHWH or Elohim as the actor.
The word does not in itself resolve whether creation was ex nihilo (from nothing), though Genesis 1:1's use of bārāʾ without any mention of pre-existing material strongly implies it, and the NT and Jewish tradition both affirm ex nihilo creation. The theological weight falls not on the mechanism but on the identity of the Creator: the one who bārāʾ is the sovereign Lord of all that exists.
Whatever he bārāʾ, he owns, rules, and is responsible for. The prophetic use of bārāʾ is concentrated in Isaiah 40-55 (Deutero-Isaiah), where the incomparability of YHWH is demonstrated precisely by his status as the Creator: 'I am the Lord who bārāʾ all things' (Isa 44:24). The challenge to the gods is the bārāʾ challenge: show me what you have created. Their silence is their condemnation.
The NT's Christological development of creation-theology (John 1:3; Col 1:16; Heb 1:2) applies the bārāʾ function to the Son — all things were made through him — without abandoning the monotheistic framework.
בָּרָא appears in the local Hebrew index about 54 times in the OT, with God as subject in the Hebrew Bible. Major concentrations include the creation narrative (Gen 1), the Psalms of creation (Ps 51; Ps 89; Ps 104), and the Isaianic creation-theology of chapters 40-55, where bārāʾ becomes one of the central terms for YHWH's incomparable sovereignty.
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
The opening bārāʾ of Scripture: bĕrēʾšît bārāʾ ʾĕlōhîm — in the beginning, God created. The subject is Elohim; the verb is bārāʾ; the object is 'the heavens and the earth' — a merism for everything that exists. The sentence establishes the absolute primacy of the divine creative act before all things. The verb's God-as-subject pattern is already established at the first occurrence: bārāʾ signals that what follows is not human construction but divine origination.
So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.
The creation of humanity is marked by three bārāʾ verbs in a single verse — the only triple use of bārāʾ in the OT. The literary emphasis signals that the creation of the human being in the divine image (ṣelem, H6754) is the climax of the bārāʾ sequence. The image-bearing status of humanity is inseparable from the act of bārāʾ: it is not something humans achieve but something they receive as the object of the divine creative act.
Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.
The penitential Psalm's appeal for inner renewal uses bārāʾ: 'create (bĕrāʾ) in me a clean heart.' This is the only OT prayer that uses bārāʾ as an imperative addressed to God — David asks for the same kind of creative act that brought the cosmos into existence to be directed at his own spiritual life. The implication is that inner transformation is not reformation of existing material but a genuinely new creation — a bārāʾ-act that God performs.
Paul's 'new creation' language (2 Cor 5:17; Gal 6:15) carries this forward.
I form the light and create the darkness; I bring prosperity and create calamity. I, the Lord, do all these things.
YHWH's radical sovereignty expressed through bārāʾ: 'I form light and create darkness, I make peace and create calamity — I, the Lord, do all these things.' The bārāʾ of darkness and calamity (raʿ) is one of the most theologically challenging bārāʾ texts: YHWH claims creative sovereignty even over the negative dimensions of reality. This is not an endorsement of evil but a monotheistic assertion that no independent power — no dualistic 'evil creator' — stands over against YHWH; all reality is under his sovereign hand.
For behold, I will create new heavens and a new earth. The former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind.
The eschatological bārāʾ: YHWH will create new heavens and a new earth. The verb is bārāʾ — a new divine creation-act that is as radical as the original Genesis bārāʾ, not a renovation of the existing order but a new origination. Revelation 21:1 quotes this text directly ('I saw a new heaven and a new earth') and frames the eschatological renewal as YHWH's final bārāʾ-act, completing the creation trajectory that began in Genesis 1:1.
For behold, He who forms the mountains, who creates the wind and reveals His thoughts to man, who turns the dawn to darkness and strides on the heights of the earth—the Lord, the God of Hosts, is His name.”
Amos's doxology applies bārāʾ to the wind (rûaḥ): 'he who forms the mountains and creates the wind... Lord, God of hosts, is his name.' The bārāʾ of wind alongside the formation of mountains establishes YHWH's creative sovereignty over both visible and invisible realities. The doxology functions as a theological anchor for Amos's prophetic judgments: the God who pronounces judgment on Israel is the same God who bārāʾ everything that exists; his judgments are not arbitrary but flow from his character as the sovereign Creator.
BSB source-word alignment connects this entry to exact verse rows, English rendering, source form, transliteration, and parsing.
How English Renders ItA compact distribution from source-word alignment before the full evidence tables.
Verse-level guides showing how this original-language form works in its specific context, including grammar, verse function, and guarded interpretation.
Hebrew word. Create by divine fiat; God's exclusive prerogative to bring into being from nothing or formlessness.
Create by divine fiat; God's exclusive prerogative to bring into being from nothing or formlessness.
(absolutely) to create; (qualified) to cut down (a wood), select, feed (as formative processes) BDB: be fat Usage: choose, create (creator), cut down, dispatch, do, make (fat).
How the stem changes the meaning of this verb across the biblical text.
This verb appears through different tense, voice, mood, or stem patterns. Those forms help readers see how the action is presented in context.
Selected passage-level study witnesses for this word. This section is not the full occurrence list.
Showing 1 selected witness from 54 lexical occurrence verses.
בָּרָא is a primitive root - no further derivation.
Affirms divine sovereignty as foundation for trust. Isaiah 40:12-31
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
The God-as-subject usage of this verb is the OT's linguistic monument to the Creator-creature distinction. When this verb appears in the Hebrew Bible, its grammar makes a theological statement: God is the subject of the creative act. Human beings make, craft, form, and build — yāṣar (to form, H3335), ʿāśāh (to make, H6213), bānāh (to build, H1129), kûn (to establish, H3559) — but they do not bārāʾ.
This grammatical constraint is not a minor lexical detail; it is the OT's way of writing the Creator-creature distinction into the language itself. The moment bārāʾ appears, the reader knows: God is acting, not humanity. The prophetic use of bārāʾ in Isaiah 40-55 is the supreme deployment of this logic: YHWH proves his incomparability over the nations' gods by citing his bārāʾ-acts.
'Show me what you have made,' is the challenge to the idols — and their silence is the answer. The pastoral weight for preaching is this: the God who bārāʾ at the beginning will bārāʾ at the end (Isa 65:17; Rev 21:1). The new creation is not a metaphor for gradual improvement; it is a divine bārāʾ-act as radical as Genesis 1. The regeneration of the believer (2 Cor 5:17: 'if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation') is the same bārāʾ-logic applied to the human soul: you cannot reform yourself into a new creation; that is finally the Creator's work.
Gen.1.1
The Qal stem of bārāʾ is used with God as subject in the Hebrew Bible. The Niphal (passive) form appears in the sense 'was created' — also referring to what God has created. The root does not appear with the preposition mēn (from) + material, which might signal ex nihilo — but the absence of any pre-existing material in Gen 1:1-2 has led the majority of interpreters to conclude ex nihilo is the implied meaning.
The cognate Aramaic bĕrāʾ and the Ugaritic br are found in creation contexts in ancient Near Eastern texts but without the same Hebrew God-as-subject pattern, making the Hebrew usage theologically distinctive. The closest synonyms in creation contexts are yāṣar (to form, H3335), ʿāśāh (to make/do, H6213), and kûn (to establish, H3559). The NT's poiein (to make), ktizein (to create), and dēmiourgein (to fashion) carry the semantic range, with ktizein (G2936) functioning most closely as the equivalent to bārāʾ.
The NT applies the bārāʾ-function Christologically without abandoning the OT monotheistic framework: John 1:3 ('all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made'), Colossians 1:16 ('in him all things were created... through him and for him'), and Hebrews 1:2 ('through whom also he created the world') apply the God-as-subject pattern to the Son.
This is among the highest Christological claims in the NT — the Son participates in the act that God performs. Paul's new creation texts (2 Cor 5:17; Gal 6:15) apply the bārāʾ logic to the believer's regeneration: the new creation is not self-improvement but a divine creative act. The eschatological bārāʾ vision (Isa 65:17) is explicitly fulfilled in Revelation 21:1,5 ('I saw a new heaven and a new earth...
Behold, I am making all things new'). The God who bārāʾ at the beginning will bārāʾ at the end — and the new creation will surpass the first, as the Lamb who is the light of the new Jerusalem (Rev 21:23) surpasses the first day's light of Gen 1:3.
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