diff --git a/internal/command/init.go b/internal/command/init.go
index 96a383159f04..02f555ee0a8e 100644
--- a/internal/command/init.go
+++ b/internal/command/init.go
@@ -150,19 +150,7 @@ func (c *InitCommand) Run(args []string) int {
 	// initialization functionality remains built around "earlyconfig" and
 	// so we need to still load the module via that mechanism anyway until we
 	// can do some more invasive refactoring here.
-	rootMod, confDiags := c.loadSingleModule(path)
 	rootModEarly, earlyConfDiags := c.loadSingleModuleEarly(path)
-	if confDiags.HasErrors() {
-		c.Ui.Error(c.Colorize().Color(strings.TrimSpace(errInitConfigError)))
-		// TODO: It would be nice to check the version constraints in
-		// rootModEarly.RequiredCore and print out a hint if the module is
-		// declaring that it's not compatible with this version of Terraform,
-		// though we're deferring that for now because we're intending to
-		// refactor our use of "earlyconfig" here anyway and so whatever we
-		// might do here right now would likely be invalidated by that.
-		c.showDiagnostics(confDiags)
-		return 1
-	}
 	// If _only_ the early loader encountered errors then that's unusual
 	// (it should generally be a superset of the normal loader) but we'll
 	// return those errors anyway since otherwise we'll probably get
@@ -172,7 +160,12 @@ func (c *InitCommand) Run(args []string) int {
 		c.Ui.Error(c.Colorize().Color(strings.TrimSpace(errInitConfigError)))
 		// Errors from the early loader are generally not as high-quality since
 		// it has less context to work with.
-		diags = diags.Append(confDiags)
+
+		// TODO: It would be nice to check the version constraints in
+		// rootModEarly.RequiredCore and print out a hint if the module is
+		// declaring that it's not compatible with this version of Terraform,
+		// and that may be what caused earlyconfig to fail.
+		diags = diags.Append(earlyConfDiags)
 		c.showDiagnostics(diags)
 		return 1
 	}
@@ -189,23 +182,44 @@ func (c *InitCommand) Run(args []string) int {
 		}
 	}
 
+	// Using loadSingleModule will allow us to get the sniffed required_version
+	// before trying to build the complete config.
+	rootMod, _ := c.loadSingleModule(path)
+	// We can ignore the error, since we are going to reload the full config
+	// again below once we know the root module constraints are valid.
+	if rootMod != nil {
+		rootCfg := &configs.Config{
+			Module: rootMod,
+		}
+		// If our module version constraints are not valid, then there is no
+		// need to continue processing.
+		versionDiags := terraform.CheckCoreVersionRequirements(rootCfg)
+		if versionDiags.HasErrors() {
+			c.showDiagnostics(versionDiags)
+			return 1
+		}
+	}
+
 	// With all of the modules (hopefully) installed, we can now try to load the
 	// whole configuration tree.
 	config, confDiags := c.loadConfig(path)
-	diags = diags.Append(confDiags)
-	if confDiags.HasErrors() {
-		c.Ui.Error(strings.TrimSpace(errInitConfigError))
-		c.showDiagnostics(diags)
-		return 1
-	}
+	// configDiags will be handled after the version constraint check, since an
+	// incorrect version of terraform may be producing errors for configuration
+	// constructs added in later versions.
 
-	// Before we go further, we'll check to make sure none of the modules in the
-	// configuration declare that they don't support this Terraform version, so
-	// we can produce a version-related error message rather than
+	// Check again to make sure none of the modules in the configuration
+	// declare that they don't support this Terraform version, so we can
+	// produce a version-related error message rather than
 	// potentially-confusing downstream errors.
 	versionDiags := terraform.CheckCoreVersionRequirements(config)
-	diags = diags.Append(versionDiags)
 	if versionDiags.HasErrors() {
+		c.showDiagnostics(versionDiags)
+		return 1
+	}
+
+	diags = diags.Append(confDiags)
+	if confDiags.HasErrors() {
+		c.Ui.Error(strings.TrimSpace(errInitConfigError))
 		c.showDiagnostics(diags)
 		return 1
 	}
@@ -213,7 +227,7 @@ func (c *InitCommand) Run(args []string) int {
 	var back backend.Backend
 	if flagBackend {
 
-		be, backendOutput, backendDiags := c.initBackend(rootMod, flagConfigExtra)
+		be, backendOutput, backendDiags := c.initBackend(config.Root.Module, flagConfigExtra)
 		diags = diags.Append(backendDiags)
 		if backendDiags.HasErrors() {
 			c.showDiagnostics(diags)
diff --git a/internal/command/init_test.go b/internal/command/init_test.go
index b75da1f4f899..2bf1e0e26481 100644
--- a/internal/command/init_test.go
+++ b/internal/command/init_test.go
@@ -1608,6 +1608,33 @@ func TestInit_checkRequiredVersion(t *testing.T) {
 	}
 }
 
+// Verify that init will error out with an invalid version constraint, even if
+// there are other invalid configuration constructs.
+func TestInit_checkRequiredVersionFirst(t *testing.T) {
+	td := t.TempDir()
+	testCopyDir(t, testFixturePath("init-check-required-version-first"), td)
+	defer testChdir(t, td)()
+
+	ui := cli.NewMockUi()
+	view, _ := testView(t)
+	c := &InitCommand{
+		Meta: Meta{
+			testingOverrides: metaOverridesForProvider(testProvider()),
+			Ui:               ui,
+			View:             view,
+		},
+	}
+
+	args := []string{}
+	if code := c.Run(args); code != 1 {
+		t.Fatalf("got exit status %d; want 1\nstderr:\n%s\n\nstdout:\n%s", code, ui.ErrorWriter.String(), ui.OutputWriter.String())
+	}
+	errStr := ui.ErrorWriter.String()
+	if !strings.Contains(errStr, `Unsupported Terraform Core version`) {
+		t.Fatalf("output should point to unmet version constraint, but is:\n\n%s", errStr)
+	}
+}
+
 func TestInit_providerLockFile(t *testing.T) {
 	// Create a temporary working directory that is empty
 	td := tempDir(t)
diff --git a/internal/command/testdata/init-check-required-version-first/main.tf b/internal/command/testdata/init-check-required-version-first/main.tf
new file mode 100644
index 000000000000..ab311d066953
--- /dev/null
+++ b/internal/command/testdata/init-check-required-version-first/main.tf
@@ -0,0 +1,17 @@
+terraform {
+  required_version = ">200.0.0"
+
+  bad {
+    block = "false"
+  }
+
+  required_providers {
+    bang = {
+      oops = "boom"
+    }
+  }
+}
+
+nope {
+  boom {}
+}