‘And the earth was without form and empty. And darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved on the face of the waters.'
“And the earth” - the connecting ‘' (‘ waw ') really excludes the suggestion of a gap between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2. The writer could not have made the connection any closer (there are no verse divisions in the original) - ‘ ha aretz we ha aretz ' - ‘---the heavens and the earth, and the earth was ---'. Having spoken of the creation of heavens and earth he is now turning his attention directly to the earth's condition as created. It should be noted that what is now immediately described is therefore limited to ‘the earth'. The remainder of the universe is not in mind.
It was ‘ tohu wa bohu ' - ‘without form and devoid of anything positive'. Try pronouncing the Hebrew quickly and deeply (pronouncing toe - hoo wah boe -hoo). Like many Hebrew words it conveys its meaning by its sound as well as by its interpretation. This is the condition in which God created the earth. He had made it formless that He may give it form, He had made it empty that He might fill it. He had made it covered with water that from that He might produce what is, as altered by His hand. There is no thought that it had ‘become' this way, or was naturally so. Nor that forces of chaos were at work against which God had to fight. It was as He had determined it to be. God had created the earth covered in water and now He began His work upon it. No conflict is involved.
“ Tohu ” is used in both Hebrew and Arabic to indicate a waste place. The meaning of ‘ bohu ' is uncertain, but in Arabic it means ‘to be empty'. In the Old Testament it is only used in connection with ‘tohu' (three times). Thus the idea here is of an uninhabitable, lifeless and empty, water-covered earth.
“And darkness was on the face of the deep.” The point is that without God's word there is no light. Darkness is seen as negative. It is God's positive action that brings light. Unless God acts the universe such as it is will remain forever dark. So the primeval world is seen as formless, empty and dark, as without shape or evident light. It is covered with water. Note that all that was outside of God and was visible was described as ‘the deep', and that everything that happens is seen from the point of view of earth. But the fact that he speaks of ‘the face of the deep' demonstrates that it is apart from God. This dark, unshaped, mass is not God, it is not everything that is. It has a surface, and over that surface God waits and is about to act.
But why ‘the deep'. ‘The deep' - ‘ tehom ' (in Ugaritic ‘ thm ') means ‘the deeps', thus usually referring to the oceans and seas. To the Israelite the deep itself was a mystery. It was dark, impenetrable, shapeless and for ever fluid. It formed nothing solid or specific. Thus it indicated that which was impenetrable, and beyond man's sphere, that which was shapeless, dark and fluid. It had no form or shape, was ever changing and temporary, and was suitable as a description of ultimate formlessness and barrenness. Here in the beginning it was dark and unformed because light and shape and form and all significance had yet to come from God, and He had not yet acted. There is no suggestion of a struggle. It is impersonal. We may speak of ‘chaos' as long as we do not read in ideas that are not there. It is chaos in the sense of being unshaped and unformed and not controlled, utterly waste and shapeless and void. As being ‘empty'.
“And the Spirit of God hovered over the face of the waters.” This could also be translated ‘wind of God'. Either way the idea is of God hovering over earth ready for action. In view of this, ‘Spirit' is the most likely meaning. It is the creative energy of God waiting to act. He Who is light is ready to act on darkness. He Who is all that is significant would bring significance to this shapeless mass. (The translation ‘mighty wind' is extremely doubtful. The word ‘God' appears too many times in this narrative for its appearance here to be just adjectival, and there is no suggestion in the later narrative of the activity of a mighty wind. Creation takes place through His word, not through a wind).
In the Old Testament when God's direct action is seen in the world it is often described in terms of the ‘Spirit of God'. To the Old Testament the Spirit of God is God extending Himself to act positively, locally and visibly in the world. Basically the writer is saying here that God is now hovering over His world about to reveal Himself in action. It should be noted that this description already assumes a kind of ‘heaven' where the Spirit is hovering, but not our heaven. Our earth and heaven is seen as not all that there is. It is probable therefore that he intends us to see the Spirit in action in the following verses, acting through God's word.
“Hovered”. Compare its use in Deuteronomy 32:11 of a bird hovering over its young. The same root in Ugaritic means ‘hover, soar'. The word as used here suggests intimate concern.
“The face of the waters.” As light was positive and darkness was absence of light, so ‘land' was positive and ‘waters' or ‘deeps' represented absence of land, in other words here there was the absence of the means of creaturely existence and absence of shape and form. The deeps were fluid, unshaped, dark and mysterious. They had no form. There was no atmosphere. They were therefore to the writer a perfect symbol of unformed existence.
But while ‘the deep' was formless and shapeless and fluid, the sphere of hovering was outside of this emptiness, outside the beginnings of creation as we know it. God was not a part of the stuff of creation. He was there ready to act upon it. This deep was the incomprehensibly mysterious described in terms of what was indescribable, that which was formless and shapeless and waiting for God to give it shape, and form, and significance. And God is pictured as by His Spirit waiting apart from it to act on it from the outside.