And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness [was] upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
Ver. 2. And the earth was without form and void,] that is, as yet it had neither essential nor accidental perfection. The Lord afterward did form it into light, the firmament, the water, and the earth; so beginning above, and building downwards (in the new creature he doth otherwise); and in three days laying the parts of the world, and in other three days adorning them. The Rabbins tell us that Tohu and Bohu do properly import Materia prima and privatio; a and others of Tohu, derive Chaos, whence the ancient Latins called the world Chobus, and borrowed their word Inchoo (εγχυω), &c.
And darkness was upon the face of the deep,] that is, not of hell, as Origen expounds it, but of the deep waters (αβυσσος, see the like, Luk 8:31), which "as a garment covered the earth, and stood above the mountains." Psa 104:6 This darkness God created not, for it was but the want of light. And to say that God dwelt in darkness till he had created light, was a devilish sarcasm of the Manichees, as if God were not light itself, 1Jn 1:5 and "the Father of lights"; Jam 1:17 or, as if God had not ever been a heaven to Himself, "Ere ever he had formed the earth and the heavens." Psa 90:2 What he did, or how he employed himself before the creation, is a sea over which no ship hath sailed, a mine into which no spade hath delved, an abyss into which no bucket hath dived. Our sight is too tender to behold this sun. A thousand years, saith a great divine, b are to God but as one day, &c. And who knoweth what the Lord hath done? Indeed, he made but one world to our knowledge; but who knoweth what he did before, and what he will do after? Thus he. As for St Augustine:
“The bishop Lybicus was shaping the underworld according to these verses, he said these ideas which he helps to be examined by means of such a mind.” c
Excellently another, d who wanted not wit: As in the element of fire, saith he, there is a faculty of heating and enlightening; whence proceedeth heat and light unto the external near bodies; and besides this faculty, there is also in it a natural power to go upward; which, when it cometh into act, is received into no other subject, but the fire itself: so that if fire could, by abstractive imagination, be conceived of as wanting those two transient operations, yet could we not justly say it had no action, forasmuch as it might move upward, which is an immanent and inward action. So, and much more so, though we grant that there was no external work of the Godhead, until the making of the world, yet can there be no necessary illation [inference] of idleness, seeing it might have (as indeed it had) actions immanent, included in the circle of the Trinity. This is an answer to such as ask, What God did before he made the world? God, saith Plotinus the Platonist, e not working at all, but resting in himself, doeth and performeth very great things.
And the Spirit of God moved, &c.] Or hovered over, f and hatched out the creature, as the hen doth her chickens; or as the eagle fluttereth over her young, to provoke them to flight. Deu 32:11 Or as by a like operation, this same Holy Spirit formed the child Jesus in the Virgin's womb, in that wonderful "overshadowing" Luk 1:35. The Chaldee here hath it, "The Spirit breathed"; and David saith the same. Psa 33:6 He became, to that rude dead mass, a quickening, comforting Spirit. He kept it together, which else would have shattered. And so he doth still, or else all would soon fall asunder, Heb 1:3 Psa 104:29 were not his conserving mercy still over, or upon, all his works. Psa 145:9
a Ahlsted., Lexic. Theol ., p. 111.
b Dr. Preston, Of God's Attributes, p. 34. [Rather, 2 Peter 3:8 - ED.]
c Praesul ad haec Lybicus, fabricabat Tartara, dixit, His, quos scrutari talia mente iuvat.
Sabin, Poet.
d Cuff's Differ. of Ages, p. 22.
e Ferebatur super aquas non pervagatione, sed potestate, non per spatium locorum, ut sol super terram, sed pepotentiam sublimitatis suae. - Eucherius
f Dei Dicere est Efficere, "of God, to say is to accomplish"