The action take returns a list on n elements where n is the argument to be passed to the method take():

//take()
JavaRDD<Integer> intRDD = sparkContext.parallelize(Arrays.asList(1,2,3));
List<Integer> takeTwo=intRDD.take(2);
for(Integer intVal:takeTwo){
  System.out.println("The take elements are :: "+intVal);
}

As it can be observed now that the method take() with an argument as 1 will return the same value as the method first(). In other words, output of take(1) is same as running first action.