Genesis 1:2 presents an initial condition of creation - namely, that it is tohu wa-bohu, formless and void. This serves to introduce the rest of the chapter, which describes a process of forming and filling.[2] That is, on the first three days the heavens, the sky and the land is formed, and they are filled on days four to six by luminaries, birds and fish, and animals and man respectively.
Before God begins to create, the world is tohu wa-bohu (Hebrew: תֹהוּ וָבֹהוּ): the word tohu by itself means "emptiness, futility"; it is used to describe the desert wilderness. Bohu has no known meaning and was apparently coined to rhyme with and reinforce tohu.[3] It appears again in Jeremiah 4:23,[4] where Jeremiah warns Israel that rebellion against God will lead to the return of darkness and chaos, "as if the earth had been ‘uncreated’."[5]Tohu wa-bohu, chaos, is the condition that bara, ordering, remedies.[6]
Darkness and "Deep" (Hebrew: תְהוֹםtehôm) are two of the three elements of the chaos represented in tohu wa-bohu (the third is the formless earth). In the Enûma Eliš, the Deep is personified as the goddess Tiamat, the enemy of Marduk;[6] here it is the formless body of primeval water surrounding the habitable world, later to be released during the Deluge, when "all the fountains of the great deep burst forth" from the waters beneath the earth and from the "windows" of the sky.[7]William Dumbrell argues that the reference to the "deep" in this verse "alludes to the detail of the ancient Near Eastern cosmologies" in which "a general threat to order comes from the unruly and chaotic sea, which is finally tamed by a warrior god." Dumbrell goes on to suggest that Genesis 1:2 "reflects something of the chaos/order struggle characteristic of ancient cosmologies".[8] However, David Toshio Tsumura argues that the term tehôm is simply a common noun referring to underground water, and disputes any connection between the term and chaos.[9]
The "Spirit of God" hovering over the waters in some translations of Genesis 1:2 comes from the Hebrew phrase ruach elohim, which has alternately been interpreted as a "great wind".[10][11]Victor P. Hamilton decides, somewhat tentatively, for "spirit of God" but notes that this does not necessarily refer to the "Holy Spirit" of Christian theology.[12]Rûach (רוּחַ) has the meanings "wind, spirit, breath," and elohim can mean "great" as well as "god". The ruach elohim which moves over the Deep may therefore mean the "wind/breath of God" (the storm-wind is God's breath in Psalms 18:15 and elsewhere, and the wind of God returns in the Flood story as the means by which God restores the earth), or God's "spirit", a concept which is somewhat vague in the Hebrew bible, or simply a great storm-wind.[11]
