Picture the world before there was a world.

Black water. All the way down. Nothing on it. Nothing in it. No light, no time, no shape.

Then — a voice.

"Let there be light."

And there is.

The voice speaks again. The waters split — sky above, sea below. Land rises out of the water. Trees, grass, fruit. Sun, moon, stars. Fish in the seas. Birds in the sky. Animals on the earth.

Six times the voice speaks. Six times the world becomes more.

After each one, the voice looks at it and says the same thing.

"It is good."

Then on the sixth day, the voice says something new.

"Let us make humans. In our image."

Whose image? The text never says. But where these humans go is unmistakable. Not at the bottom of the cosmic order. At the top. Not as servants. As representatives.

The voice looks at all of it — light, seas, animals, humans — and says:

"It is very good."

On the seventh day, the voice rests.

That is the entire chapter.

Two claims, hidden inside what looks like a poem about six days.

The world is deliberate.

The human is not a slave.

Three thousand years later, both still hold up.