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The book at a glance
Genesis tells of beginnings: creation and fall (chapters 1–11), then the call of Abraham and the stories of Isaac, Jacob and Joseph (chapters 12–50). Jewish and Christian tradition associate it with Moses; the Church reads it as inspired Scripture that teaches the truth about God, creation and sin through the literary forms of its time (CCC 337, 390).
Genesis is not a book of prophets, and few of its passages are prophecy in the strict sense. It looks forward in three ways: through promises God makes (to Eve, to Abraham, to Judah), through types, people and events that foreshadow Christ (Melchizedek, Isaac, Jacob's ladder), and through images that Revelation takes up again at the end. Each card below names which.
Key to the labels
How a passage stands
Fulfilled Accomplished in history, above all in Christ.
Unfolding Being worked out now in the life of the Church.
Future Clearly still to come at Christ's return.
Mystery Its meaning or moment is not yet settled.
What kind of passage it is
Prophecy God's word through a prophet, or Christ, about what will come.
Promise A pledge God makes, kept over generations.
Type A person or event that foreshadows Christ or the Church.
Image A picture Scripture returns to and completes at the end.
Apocalypse A vision unveiling history from heaven's side, in symbols.
More on the labels
| Passage | Subject | Standing |
|---|
| 2:9; 3:22–24 | The tree of life | Future |
| 3:15 | The first Gospel | Fulfilled Unfolding Future |
| 6–9 | The flood and Noah | Fulfilled Future |
| 12:1–3 | The blessing to all nations | Fulfilled Unfolding |
| 14:18–20 | Melchizedek | Fulfilled |
| 15:13–14 | Slavery and exodus foretold | Fulfilled |
| 22:1–18 | The binding of Isaac | Fulfilled |
| 28:10–17 | Jacob's ladder | Fulfilled |
| 49:8–12 | The scepter of Judah | Fulfilled Mystery |
The passages
In the middle of the garden stands “the tree of life.” After the fall, cherubim guard “the way to the tree of life.”
- Reading
- Sin closes the way to the tree of life. Revelation opens it again: “To the victor I will give the right to eat from the tree of life that is in the garden of God” (Revelation 2:7), and in the new Jerusalem the tree of life stands beside the river, its leaves “for the healing of the nations” (22:2).
- Why future
- Christ has opened the way by his Cross, which the Fathers called the true tree of life, but the garden-city itself is still to come.
“I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; they will strike at your head, while you strike at their heel.”
- Reading
- The Church calls this the Protoevangelium, the first announcement of the Messiah and Redeemer, of a battle between the serpent and the woman and of the final victory of her descendant (CCC 410–411). The Fathers saw in the woman Mary, the New Eve.
- Fulfilled
- On the Cross Christ crushed the serpent's head, while the serpent struck his heel.
- Unfolding
- The enmity continues: the dragon, “the ancient serpent,” makes war on “the rest of her offspring” (Revelation 12:9, 17).
- Future
- “The God of peace will quickly crush Satan under your feet” (Romans 16:20); the devil is thrown into the lake of fire (Revelation 20:10).
- See also
- The Temple of His Body; John 2:4; 19:26.
Noah and his household are saved through the waters in the ark; God sets his bow in the clouds as the sign of his covenant.
- Fulfilled
- St. Peter reads the flood as a figure of Baptism, which “saves you now” (1 Peter 3:20–21; CCC 1219). The ark has long been read as a figure of the Church.
- Future
- Jesus says his coming will be “as it was in the days of Noah”: people eating, drinking and marrying, unaware until the flood came (Matthew 24:37–39). The rainbow reappears around God's throne (Revelation 4:3).
“All the families of the earth will find blessing in you.”
- Reading
- God calls Abram from Ur and promises land, descendants and a blessing for every nation. The promise is repeated to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (22:18; 26:4; 28:14).
- Fulfilled
- St. Paul says Scripture “foretold the good news to Abraham” and that the promised descendant is Christ (Galatians 3:8, 16).
- Unfolding
- The blessing reaches the nations as the Gospel is preached to the ends of the earth (Matthew 28:19). Revelation sees its completion: a multitude “from every nation, race, people, and tongue” (Revelation 7:9).
Melchizedek, king of Salem and “a priest of God Most High,” brings out bread and wine and blesses Abram.
- Reading
- Psalm 110:4 promises a king who is “a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.” The Letter to the Hebrews applies this to Christ (Hebrews 5–7). The Church sees in Melchizedek's offering of bread and wine a prefiguring of the Eucharist (CCC 1333, 1544), and names him in the Roman Canon.
Abram's descendants will be aliens “in a land not their own,” enslaved and oppressed for four hundred years, and will come out with great wealth.
- Reading
- One of the few predictions in the strict sense in Genesis. It is fulfilled in Israel's slavery in Egypt and the Exodus (Exodus 12:40–41), the great act of deliverance that Revelation echoes in its plagues and in “the song of Moses” (Revelation 15:3).
“God will provide the sheep for the burnt offering, my son.” (22:8)
- Reading
- Abraham's beloved son carries the wood up the mountain. Isaac is spared and a ram is offered in his place. The Fathers saw in Isaac a figure of Christ carrying his Cross, and the Church sees the Father who “did not spare his own Son” (Romans 8:32; CCC 2572). Revelation's central image, the Lamb that was slain (Revelation 5:6), is the sheep God himself provided.
Jacob dreams of a stairway reaching to the heavens, with God's angels going up and down on it. He calls the place “the house of God” and “the gateway to heaven.”
- Reading
- Jesus applies the dream to himself: “you will see the sky opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man” (John 1:51). Christ is the meeting place of heaven and earth, the true house of God, and the open door John sees in heaven (Revelation 4:1).
Jacob blesses Judah as a lion's cub: “The scepter shall never depart from Judah.”
- Reading
- The kingship of Israel came through Judah in David's line, and the Church has always read the blessing as messianic. In Revelation, Christ is “the lion of the tribe of Judah, the root of David,” who has triumphed and can open the scroll (Revelation 5:5).
- Why mystery
- The Hebrew of verse 10 is notoriously difficult. Older translations read “until Shiloh comes”; the NABRE reads “until tribute comes to him.” The messianic sense is clear; the exact wording is still debated.
Genesis and Revelation: the Bible's bookends
The last book answers the first. What was lost in the garden is restored, and more, in the city.
| Genesis | Revelation |
|---|
| “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (1:1) | “I saw a new heaven and a new earth” (21:1) |
| The tree of life, its way barred (2:9; 3:24) | The tree of life, open to the victors (2:7; 22:2) |
| A river flows out of Eden (2:10) | The river of life-giving water flows from the throne (22:1) |
| The serpent deceives (3:1–5) | The ancient serpent is thrown down and bound (12:9; 20:2) |
| The ground is cursed (3:17) | “Nothing accursed will be found there anymore” (22:3) |
| Man and woman driven from God's presence (3:23–24) | “They will look upon his face” (22:4) |
| The first marriage (2:22–24) | The wedding of the Lamb and his Bride (19:7; 21:2) |
Still to come on this pageFurther passages to add: creation and the Sabbath rest (1–2:3), Cain and Abel (4; compare
Hebrews 12:24), Enoch taken up (5:24), the Tower of Babel and its reversal at Pentecost (11;
Acts 2), the covenant of circumcision (17), Sodom (18–19; compare
Revelation 11:8), and Joseph, the rejected brother who saves his people (37–50).
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