The major obstacle in this text is getting past the first verse.

Whether we read "In the beginning. . ." (e.g. Revised Standard Version) or "When God began to create . . ." (e.g. New Revised Standard Version alternate reading) this verse often prompts heated discussions of evolution, intelligent design, creationism, and big bangs. But suppose we looked at the text as a literary whole; what might it say to us?

We might begin by noting that the repeated vocabulary ("God," "created," "heaven," and "earth") in 1:1-2 and 2:1-3 (not 2:4a as often claimed) forms an inclusion that brackets 1:3-31, the six days of creation. Within that inclusion, the alternate New Revised Standard Version reading precludes "creation out of nothing" in favor of seeing verse 2 as a description of the already existing "earth" as "formless and void," that is, as a watery chaos.

If correct, this means we should look for an ordering of a primeval chaos in God's creative activity in 1:3-31; and that's what we find: a divine divide and conquer operation against chaos.

In verses 3-13, ...