The beginning is not a part of time, and 'made' shows God as craftsman

Or perhaps the words “In the beginning God made” were chosen because the act of creation was instantaneous and outside time, since a beginning is something without parts and without extension. Just as the beginning of a road is not yet a road, and the beginning of a house is not a house, so the beginning of time is not yet time—not even the smallest part of it. And if someone argues contentiously that the beginning is time, let him understand that he will be dividing it into the parts of time: beginning, middle, and end. But to imagine a beginning of a beginning is utterly laughable. The person who cuts the beginning in two will make two beginnings instead of one—or rather many, even infinite, since whatever is divided is always cut into further pieces. So to teach us that the world came into existence together with the will of God, outside time, Scripture says, “In the beginning God made.” Other translators, expressing the meaning more clearly, have said, “In summary God made”—that is, all at once and concisely. Let this much suffice, then, as a brief account drawn from many possible remarks about the beginning.

Now among the arts, some are called productive, others practical, and others theoretical. The end of the theoretical arts is the activity of the mind. The end of the practical arts is the movement of the body itself, and when that movement stops, nothing remains or persists for those who see it; for dancing and flute-playing have no end product, but the activity itself terminates in itself. In the productive arts, however, even when the activity has ceased, the work remains before us—as with house-building, carpentry, metalworking, weaving, and all such crafts. Even if the craftsman is not present, these works sufficiently display the skill of their makers in themselves, and you can admire the builder from his building, the metalworker and the weaver from their work. So to show that the world is a technical construction, set before all for contemplation, so that through it the wisdom of its Maker might be known, the wise Moses used no other word about it. He said, “In the beginning God made”—not “he worked,” nor “he brought into existence,” but “He made.” And since many people have imagined that the world coexisted with God from eternity and was not made by him, but rather came into existence automatically as a kind of shadow of his power—they acknowledge God as its cause, but as a cause without deliberate choice, like a body causing its shadow or a light causing its radiance—the prophet corrects this error by using the precise wording, “In the beginning God made.” God did not merely supply the cause of its being; as good, he made what is useful; as wise, what is most beautiful; as powerful, what is greatest. He has all but shown you a craftsman entering into the substance of all things, fitting each individual part to the others, and producing a whole that is consistent with itself, harmonious, and perfectly ordered. “In the beginning God made the heaven and the earth.” By the two extremes of the universe he indicated its existence obliquely, giving the heaven the first place in origin and saying that the earth holds second place in existence.