Introduction

Genesis 1-11 has served as a battleground between conservative Biblical scholars and skeptics for many decades. There are secular evolutionists who mock what is written here. And then there are theistic evolutionists who do not take these chapters at face value (though some claim they do). They evidently prefer to call themselves evolutionary creationists (an oxymoron, in my judgment). They try to marry the theory of evolution with the record of God’s creation as recorded in Genesis 1:1-2:3. But that is impossible, for, according to Genesis 1, God created light before the sun, and He created the earth before the sun, moon, and stars. God created plant life before the sun could enable photosynthesis. All of these statements fly directly in the face of evolutionary theory. Furthermore, according to the Biblical record, God created everything in the universe in six days, each of which is designated with a sequential number, and each tagged with an evening and a morning, which explains why Jewish people still begin their day at sundown (Gen. 1:1-2:3). To further dispel any notion that the creation account was to be taken only as a non-literal metaphor, Moses implanted the seventh day of rest in the Creation record into the foundation of the Jewish Sabbath day (Ex. 20:8-12), certainly not to be taken as a span of eons of time. There Moses reaffirmed that everything in the cosmos was created in six days as understood from the vantage point of his writing in ca. 1400 B.C. Again, this flies in the face of evolutionary dogma, which must assume billions of years, an assumption which lacks coherent proof. Some evolutionary creationists label these early chapters as non historical. Others say that Genesis 1-11 is historical, but then they reinterpret the Bible in such a way as to allow for evolution. Sadly, many Biblical scholars have allowed an unproven and discredited secular theory of origins to influence their interpretation of God’s sacred Word. WordExplain takes the position that Genesis 1-11 is sober history (that is the way Moses presented it). WordExplain also takes the position that Genesis 1:1-2:3, combined with the genealogies of Genesis 5 and 11 accurately record a young earth created by God in six literal days (that is the way Moses presented it). WordExplain also takes the position that authentic science supports a recently created earth that was marred by a universal flood, just as the Bible portrays it. Let us now examine Genesis 1:1-2:3.

Some initial comments on Genesis 1:1-2:3

In the book, Coming to Grips with Genesis: Biblical Authority and the Age of the Earth, Steven W. Boyd wrote chapter six, “The Genre of Genesis 1:1-2:3: What Means This Text?” In concluding remarks at the end of the chapter (p. 191), He stated the following:

Three major implications arise from this study. First, it is not statistically defensible to read Genesis 1:1-2:3 as poetry. Second, since Genesis 1:1-2:3 is narrative, it should be read as other Hebrew narratives are intended to be read – as a concise report of actual events in time-space history, which also conveys an unmistakable theological message. Third, when this text is read as narrative, there is only one tenable view of its plain sense: these were six literal days of creation.

(For a brief online summary of Boyd’s thesis, see The Biblical Hebrew Creation Account: New Numbers Tell the Story.)

Day One of Creation

Genesis 1:1. The Beginning of God’s Creation. “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” In this simple (ten words in English, seven in Hebrew), yet incredibly profound opening statement of the Bible, several foundational truths appear. “In the beginning” refers to the origin of time in regard to the cosmos; “God” refers to the Powerful One, whose existence is assumed and needs no proof, and who is the sole agent; “created” means, in this context, that He made out of nothing (ex nihilo); “the heavens” refers to the fact that God created space; and “the earth” denotes that God created the matter comprising planet Earth.

There are some evangelical scholars who believe that “Verse 1 describes what God did on all six days of creation (1:2-31). It is a topic sentence that introduces the whole creation account that follows.” (Thomas Constable, Dr. Constable’s Notes on Genesis, 2010 Edition, p. 9, viewed on July 16, 2010. Constable prefers this view. He also cites, in footnote 22, other scholars who hold this view, namely George Bush, Edward J. Young, Bruce K. Waltke, Allen P. Ross, and Victor P. Hamilton). Another way of stating this view is to assert that Genesis 1:1 is a merism, a figure of speech for totality (Constable, p. 9). This view is not preferable for the following reasons:

First, if Genesis 1:1 is merely a topic sentence, or an introductory merism, then we are left with no specific statement as to how or when the earth came into existence, and this, in the beginning portion of the beginning book of the Bible which purports to do that very thing! That would be a bizarre and unfortunate omission by the author of Genesis, in my view.

Second, there are eleven unambiguous topical statements in the Book of Genesis, and none of them is worded this way. (These are the toledot passages, found in Genesis 2:4; 5:1; 6:9; 10:1; 11:10, 27; 25:12,19; 36:1, 9; 37:2. These toledot passages are typically translated, “these are the records of the generations of _______________.”)

Third, if Genesis 1:1 does not refer to God’s specific creation of the earth, then we are left with a most peculiar literary device. Suddenly in Genesis 1:2, the author begins to discuss the condition of the earth that has no specific record of having been created. That, in my view, is unthinkable.

Fourth, God, in His commandment concerning the Sabbath Day, clearly stated that He had made both the heavens and the earth and everything in them in six days (Ex. 20:8-11). It seems evident from this Divine commentary that Genesis 1:1 records God’s actual creation of two entities, the heavens, and then the earth. So Genesis 1:1 is the opening statement of what occurred on Day One, not merely a topical statement, or merism, the details of which would appear subsequently.

“In the beginning” refers to the beginning of the created cosmos. God, of course, is eternal, and had no beginning. Some evangelicals label the beginning of which John spoke (John 1:1-2) as the “absolute beginning,” placing it before the beginning of which Moses wrote. But I see no valid exegetical reason why Moses and John cannot be referring to the same beginning. After all, both Genesis 1 and John 1 discuss the creation of the world and the entire universe. So the initial beginning the Bible discusses in those terms is here in Genesis 1:1. John’s beginning refers backwards to this event. In any case, it is difficult to use the term absolute beginning for either passage, since God and the Word were already there before the beginning (Gen. 1:1; John 1:1-3). It is best to understand that the third heaven (2 Cor. 12:2-4), the abode of God, existed before the creation of the cosmos, as did angels, who apparently witnessed God’s creation of the earth with great joy (Job 38:4-7). That would imply, of course, that entities, both created and uncreated, existed and continue to exist outside the cosmos. That means that the cosmos is not infinite in regard to time, space, or matter. It also affirms the existence of a spiritual universe existing outside of our present material universe, albeit interacting with it.

“God” – Elohim is the generic word for God. “Its basic meaning is ‘strong one, mighty leader, supreme Deity.’ The form of the word is plural, indicating plentitude (sic) of power and majesty and allowing for the NT revelation of the triunity of the Godhead” (Ryrie Study Bible note). In Genesis 1:1-2:3, Elohim, God, appears a startling 35 times in 34 verses! Clearly, God is the featured subject of this overwhelmingly theological historical narrative!

“God created” – The Hebrew word bara here means that God created, out of nothing (Latin ex nihilo), both the earth and the framework in which he situated it. Moses used the word bara eight times in Genesis, and each time it refers to the creative act of God (Gen. 1:1, 21, 27; 2:3, 4; 5:1, 2; 6:7). We can also observe in these passages that Moses used bara, to create, and asah, to make, as synonyms (Gen. 2:3, 4; 5:1; 6:7). “In biblical Hebrew, the verb bara (create) always has God for its subject and never mentions the material from which He created” (Boyd, p. 189).

“the heavens and the earth” – Some take this phrase as a merism, a figure of speech for totality (Thomas Constable, Notes on Genesis, p. 11). In this view, Genesis 1:1 is merely an introductory or summary statement of what God did in Genesis 1:3-31, which, it is assumed, are the actual days of creation. But if that were the case, there is no specific statement in this chapter of the actual creation of the earth. That would be bizarre, considering that this chapter purports to be an explanation of how the world and the entire universe originated. To illustrate how counterintuitive this view is, let me quote Constable’s opening statement regarding Genesis 1:2 (p. 10, viewed on July 26, 2010): “Verse 2 probably describes what we now call the earth before God created it.” What does that even mean? Scripture is its own best commentary, and Moses clearly stated that “in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them” (Exod. 20:11). So it makes more sense to understand both Genesis 1:1 and 1:2 as the initial part of day one of creation, the foundational state of that which God would momentarily upgrade. So Genesis 1:1 is a statement of part of what God created on the first day.

God created “the heavens” (hashamayim). The word heavens (shamayim) always appears in the plural in the Hebrew Bible. That is appropriate, not only because of the vastness of the heavens, but because of their plurality. There are three distinct heavens in the Bible, the third being the abode of God (2 Cor. 12:2). The other two heavens are the heavens in which God placed the sun, moon, and stars (Gen. 1:14-19), and the heavens in which birds fly (Gen. 1:6-8, 20) (more about this heaven later.) “The heavens” (hashamayim) of which Moses wrote in Genesis 1:1 are what we today would call “outer space”, for God had as yet apparently created no atmosphere around earth to support life and in which birds could fly. What was the composition of the heavens at the end of Genesis 1:1? Based on what is stated in the rest of Genesis 1, the initial condition of the heavens is that they were the time-space framework in which God placed an aqueous matrix of matter, the earth, and in which He would later (on the fourth day) place the sun, moon and stars (Gen. 1:14-19). By the end of Genesis 1:1, the only matter that existed in the heavens was the earth, as yet in its incomplete state (as Genesis 1:2 further details). Most of what we call “outer space” today has nothing in it, at least nothing visible to the eye. There are enormous voids between stars, galaxies, and galaxy groups. Today, outer space is cold because there is relatively little light (energy) out there. So the fact that one can measure temperature in deep space when little that is tangible exists out there indicates that something is there – a framework of darkness and coldness. That would be the condition of the heavens at the end of Genesis 1:1 – dark and cold – and empty – with the lone exception of the earth, which God had just placed there. Since there were no stars or planets or light (energy) whatever – the initial condition of the heavens was totally empty compared to outer space today, which is actually teeming with light waves both visible and invisible (including cosmic microwave background) from distant stars and galaxies. The only exception to this emptiness would have been the earth, the second item that God created on day one.

God created “the earth” (haarets). The Hebrew word erets refers either to the whole planet or to a portion thereof. Consequently it is sometimes translated earth, sometimes land. The context controls the particular meaning. For example, the term erets in Gen. 1:1 refers to the whole planet and is translated earth. In Gen. 1:2 we are given additional details about the earth just after God created it – it was formless, void, dark, and aqueous. Here again, erets refers to the whole planet, and it is translated earth. On the third day, God commanded the dry land (yabbashah) to appear (Gen. 1:9). God named the dry land (yabbashah) earth (erets) (Gen. 1:10). So here only a portion of the planet is designated as earth – the dry land. That narrower terminology is used elsewhere. Reference is made in Gen. 2:11 to the land (erets) of Havilah. The gold of that land (erets) is good (Gen. 2:12). Further reference is made to the land (erets) of Cush (Gen. 2:13). Surprisingly enough to the English reader, Yahweh commanded Abram to depart from his country (lit. “your earth” – erets) “to the land (lit. “earth” – erets) which I will show you” (Gen. 12:1). There are Jewish people today who speak of Eretz Israel – the land or “earth” which belongs to Israel. (See, for example, the reference to the “Eretz Israel lobby” in the summary immediately below the title of the linked article on ynetnews.) It is appropriate to note here that while the creation account (Gen. 1:1-2:3) is very much Theo-centric (God-centered) in relation to the Cause of creation, it is very much Geo-centric (earth-centered) in relation to the products of creation. This can be deduced from the following frequencies of occurrence in Genesis 1:1-2:3: The noun light (‘owr) appears six times (Gen. 1:3, 4, 5, 18). The verb to give light (‘owr) occurs twice (Gen. 1:15, 17). The word light(s) (better, light-bearer(s) (ma’owr) (lit., “from light”) appears five times (Gen. 1:14, 15, 16). The word expanse (raqiya’) (KJV firmament) appears nine times (Gen. 1:6, 7, 8, 14, 15, 17, 20). The word shamayim (usually translated heavens, but three times as sky) appears eleven times (Gen. 1:1, 8, 9, 14, 15, 17, 20, 26, 28, 30; 2:1). But the word earth (erets) is the runaway winner, appearing 21 times (Gen. 1:1, 2, 10, 11, 12, 15, 17, 20, 22, 24, 25, 26, 28, 29, 30; 2:1). As far as God is concerned, Earth is very much the center of the universe!

Genesis 1:2. The Preliminary Condition of the Earth When First God Created It.

On Day One of creation just after God had created the framework of the cosmos and had created the earth in that framework, what was the condition of the earth? Moses described it this way: “The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters.”

The initial clause of verse 2 begins in Hebrew with a waw disjunctive, not a waw consecutive (Constable, p. 12). It should be translated, “Now the earth was…” In other words Gen. 1:2 describes in a more detailed way the initial condition of the earth when God created it in Gen. 1:1. Unfortunately, a number of commentators have suggested that an indefinite time gap exists between Gen. 1:1 and 1:2. This is called the Gap Theory (see Constable, pp. 11-13). This theory was held by some early church fathers and some early Jewish writers. Thomas Chalmers promoted the gap theory in 1814 before Darwin wrote his Origin of Species in 1859 (Constable, p. 12). The first edition of the Scofield Reference Bible espoused this theory. Many who support evolution have welcomed the gap theory, but Hebrew grammar does not permit it.

“the earth was formless and void” – tohu wa bohu is the Hebrew phrase translated “formless and void” used to describe the earth God had just created. (See Representative Translations of Tohu and Bohu; see the author’s Word Study of Tohu wa Bohu in .html format; see the author’s Word Study of Tohu wa Bohu in .pdf format.) Unfortunately, some conservative commentators have characterized the condition of the earth as described in Gen. 1:2 as if it were chaotic and even evil. I call this the Chaos Theory of Origins. For example, Allen P. Ross (Genesis, The Bible Knowledge Commentary, Vol. 1, p. 28) stated the following concerning the entire creation account:

Third, the account reveals that God is a redeeming God. It records how He brought the cosmos out of chaos, turned darkness into light, made divisions between them, transformed cursing into blessing, and moved from what was evil and darkness to what was holy. This parallels the work of God in Exodus, which records His redeeming Israel by destroying the Egyptian forces of chaos. The prophets and the apostles saw here a paradigm of God’s redemptive activities. Ultimately He who caused light to shine out of darkness made His light shine in the hearts of believers (2 Cor. 4:6) so that they become new creations (2 Cor. 5:17) (emphases mine).

Two paragraphs later, Ross states his interpretation of Genesis 1:2:

The clauses in verse 2 are apparently circumstantial to verse 3, telling the world’s condition when God began to renovate it. It was a chaos of wasteness, emptiness, and darkness. Such conditions would not result from God’s creative work (bara); rather, in the Bible they are symptomatic of sin and are coordinate with judgment. Moreover, God’s Creation by decree begins in verse 3, and the elements found in verse 2 are corrected in Creation, beginning with light to dispel the darkness (emphasis mine).

Moreover, Thomas Constable, in his discussion of the “No-Gap Theory” (Notes on Genesis, pp. 13-15), offers three versions of this theory. But in every one of them he uses the term “chaos,” which implies something defective. To his credit, however, Constable specifically and correctly rejects the notion that  "chaos" (tohu wa bohu) describes an evil condition in Gen. 1:2 (Notes on Genesis, "Arguments and Responses," #3 on p. 12, viewed June 11, 2011).

It appears to me that Ross, and to a lesser extent Constable, who relies on Ross, have imported ideas from elsewhere in Scripture into a context in which they do not exist, namely, this Creation account. There is no need to use the words “redeeming,” “chaos,” “cursing,” “sin,” “evil,” or “judgment” with reference to Genesis 1:1-2:3. They are simply out of context here. Why does Allen employ these terms? The answer can be found several paragraphs later:

It is more likely that verse 1 refers to a relative beginning rather than the absolute beginning (Merrill F. Unger, Unger’s Commentary on the Old Testament. 2 vols. Chicago: Moody Press, 1981, 1:5). The chapter would then be accounting for the Creation of the universe as man knows it, not the beginning of everything, and verses 1-2 would provide the introduction to it. The fall of Satan and entrance of sin into God’s original Creation would precede this (emphasis mine).

So Ross apparently believes that God created planet earth at some undated, unspecified, and unrevealed time in eternity past. Satan then fell and brought sin into God’s original universe. Genesis 1:2 describes the chaotic, ruined state of the world as it existed because of Satan’s sin. Genesis 1:3-31 describes God’s reclamation of a world ruined by Satan. What this amounts to is a variation on the Gap Theory theme (which see for a brief description and refutation). (At least Ross holds to the days of creation as being literal 24-hour days of Divine activity [p. 28]. But sadly, I suspect his whole exegetical approach is driven by his assumption that Hebrew scholars must bow before the uniformitarian geological bias of an ancient earth, not a recent earth.)

Ross’s theory appears to be driving his exegesis rather than his exegesis driving his theory. There is no need to describe the earth in Genesis 1:2 as being in any way defective. Words like “chaos” and “evil” and “symptomatic of sin” and “coordinate with judgment” are foreign concepts he has imported into Genesis 1:2 from elsewhere in Scripture. The Earth of Genesis 1:1 was not flawed; rather it was merely preliminary and incomplete, and it was the way God intended to create it at that stage during Day One. The Chaos Theory of Origins simply does not fit the evidence of the Hebrew text.

So what is the best translation of tohu wa bohu? Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon lists the following meanings of the noun, tohu: “formlessness, confusion, unreality, emptiness”. Then it adds, (“primary meaning difficult to seize” …). This is certainly true, as is evidenced by the chart, Representative Translations of the Hebrew Word Tohu. Most Bible versions employ a variation of the word “form,” translating tohu either “formless” or “without form.” The translations “formless” and “without form” tend to leave the impression that the earth in Genesis 1:2 was shapeless. I do not believe that is what Moses meant. Instead, I have chosen the word “unformed” and I have added four qualifying statements as to what “unformed” does not mean and what it does mean.

1.      Unformed does not mean that the earth on Day One had no shape (contra NIRV, “The earth didn’t have any shape”). Think it through. Why are the vast majority of entities in our universe, whether they are stars or planets or moons, spherical? It is because they all have gravity. If something were both aqueous (Gen. 1:2, 9) and shapeless, it must also mean that it was not spherical. If it were not spherical, it must mean that it had insufficient gravity to keep it together. So to say that the earth was shapeless is also to say that it had no gravity or insufficient gravity. What then would have prevented the earth from beginning to disperse throughout the universe? Proverbs 8, which personifies wisdom (see author’s Analysis of Proverbs, p. 1), provides additional Biblical evidence that the earth on Day One had shape, even spherical shape. Proverbs 8:22-31 describes the antiquity of wisdom, for it pre-dated even God’s creation of the world! In fact, we learn that wisdom was there “when there were no depths (tehom) (Prov. 8:24), that is, before Creation! Wisdom was already there when God “inscribed a circle on the face of the deep (tehom)” (Prov. 8:27), and “when the springs of the deep (tehom) became fixed” (Prov. 8:28b).(See the author’s Uses of the Hebrew word Tehom, “The Deep”.) In the context of Proverbs 8:22-31, this happened at creation. Day One is the most likely candidate for the day in which God formed the earth into a sphere (“…and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters” [Gen. 1:2]). The Third Day is the most likely candidate for the day in which “the springs of the deep became fixed,” (Prov. 8:28b) for it was on the Third Day that God “gathered into one place” “the waters below the heavens” (Gen. 1:9-10). Proverbs 8:28a, “When He made firm the skies above,” evidently describes God’s activity on the Second Day of creation. It was on the Second Day that God “made the expanse, and separated the waters which were below the expanse from the waters which were above the expanse,” calling it “heaven.” (Gen. 1:6-8). The point of this digression into Proverbs 8 is that the word tohu (unformed) does not mean that the earth on Day One had no shape. To the contrary, it was spherical.

2.      Unformed does not mean that the earth on Day One was chaotic (contra Allen P. Ross, Genesis, The Bible Knowledge Commentary, OT Vol., p. 28; contra Thomas Constable, Notes on Genesis, 2010 Edition, pp. 13-14; contra Bruce K. Waltke, Creation and Chaos; contra Waltke, An Old Testament Theology, p. 181, quoted by Constable, p. 10, text denoted by footnote 28; contra Warren Wiersbe, The Bible Exposition Commentary, Vol. 1, p. 15). God does not create chaos because He is not chaotic. The world God created on Day One was preliminary, not chaotic. It was “a waste” (see the NASB marginal reading for formless in Genesis 1:2) in the sense that it was not yet a suitable environment for man or animals to live in, but it was not a chaos.

3.      Unformed does not mean that the earth as God originally created it had been disrupted by some sin, whether by man or by fallen angel (Satan) (contra Allen P. Ross, The Bible Knowledge Commentary, p. 28. Ross apparently believes that the fall of Satan ruined the earth, causing sin to enter the earth, making it a chaos which had to be transformed and redeemed by God in the six days of creation). The Scriptures are clear that sin entered the earth after the creation week, not before it (Gen. 3); and that it was by one man that sin entered the earth, not by one fallen angel (Rom. 5:12).

4.      Unformed does mean that the earth was not yet in its final form. The best Biblical commentary on tohu in Genesis 1:2 is to be found in Isaiah 45:18, which tells us that God did not create the earth to be tohu, but rather He created it to be inhabited. So when Moses wrote in Genesis 1:2 that the earth was tohu, he merely meant that it was not yet a suitable environment in which humans and animals might live. It was unsuitable because it was dark and aqueous (Gen. 1:2, 3-4), because there was no atmosphere (Gen. 1:6-7), because there was no dry land (Gen. 1:9-10), because there was no vegetation (Gen. 1:11-12), and because there were no celestial bodies up in the heavens (Gen. 1:14-18). In fact, there is a sense in which it can be said that the words “unsuitable” or “pre-functional” are appropriate translations of tohu in Genesis 1:2. By way of illustration, it could be said that today’s moon is tohu, although not nearly to the degree that the earth was in Genesis 1:2. Today’s moon is tohu in the sense that it is not formed to be suitable for human or animal habitation or for the growth of vegetation. This is true because it has no atmosphere and no water, and because of the extreme variations in temperature.

What about the word bohu? The term bohu occurs only three times in Scripture, Gen. 1:2; Isa. 34:11; Jer. 4:23. Each time it does so, it is in tandem with tohu. The Jeremiah passage harkens back to the language of creation in Genesis 1:2. Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon lists a one-word definition for bohu – “emptiness,” and gives no etymology. C. F. Keil (Keil and Delitzsch), in his commentary on Genesis 1:2, states that the etymology for both tohu and bohu has been lost. Four representative translations (http://wordexplain.com/Translations_of_tohu_and_bohu.html) translate bohu as “void” six times, and as some variation of “empty” or “emptiness” five times.

In the English language today, “empty” is a synonym for “void.” Since “void” with the meaning of “emptiness” is not a commonly used word, I will use the noun “emptiness” to translate the noun bohu.

Conclusion in regard to the dual use of tohu and bohu

We have already noted that tohu and bohu always appear in the same connection. In two of those instances, Genesis 1:2 and Jeremiah 4:23, are to be paired off. In Genesis 1:2 Moses declared that the earth was “formless and void” (tohu and bohu); Jeremiah stated that, as he looked at the earth, it had primeval conditions – the earth was “formless and void,” and the heavens “had no light” (Jer. 4:23).

Some have viewed tohu and bohu, connected by “and,” as a hendiadys, “the expression of an idea by the use of usually two independent words connected by and (as nice and warm) instead of the usual combination of independent word and its modifier (as nicely warm).” Constable, in his discussion of Genesis 1:2 (Notes on Genesis, 2010 edition, p. 11) states, “Here we learn that the earth was ‘formless and empty’ (a hendiadys meaning unorganized, unproductive, and uninhabited) before God graciously prepared it for human habitation (cf. Jer. 4:23-27).”

Whether or not tohu and bohu form a hendiadys, Constable has accurately captured their combined meaning as it relates especially to Genesis 1:2. The earth at this stage of Day One of the Creation week was unorganized and unproductive (tohu) and it was uninhabited (bohu).

So together, tohu and bohu are saying that the earth, at the time God first placed it in the heavens He had just made consisted, literally, of “unformedness and emptiness.” Or we could say it was “unformed and unfilled.” Or we could say it was “unorganized and empty.”

An artist paints a landscape on a canvas. First he paints a swirly background on the upper half of the canvas using blues and grays. Then he takes his brush and spreads splotchy greens and browns on the lower half of the canvas. To the untrained eye it may appear to be nonsensical, even chaotic. But the artist knows exactly what he is doing. There is nothing chaotic whatever in his actions. He is merely painting the sky background and the land foreground on the canvas. At a later time appropriate to his choice, he will begin to fashion trees and grass, animals, and perhaps birds and humans in his landscape. It would be completely erroneous to describe the early stage of his painting as being chaotic, evil, or symptomatic of sin. Rather his blue-gray upper canvas and his green-brown lower canvas provide the perfect foundation for the details to be added later. But at this stage, it would be appropriate to describe his picture as being “unformed and unfilled.”

So it was with the earth God had created and placed in the heavens on the first part of Day One. The earth was unformed and unfilled. There was nothing chaotic, nothing evil, nothing connected with sin, and nothing connected with judgment. God’s just-created Earth was merely unformed and unfilled at this stage. He would soon begin His artful task of forming the earth, and then of filling it!

“and darkness was over the surface of the deep”

Darkness (choshek) is the absence of light. Those who espouse the Gap Theory or some variation thereof seize upon darkness as proof of something evil and sinful that must have happened after Genesis 1:1 to corrupt the earth (see, for example, Ross, p. 28). 1 John 1:5 states that “God is Light, and in Him there is no darkness at all.” But to import a later concept of darkness into the second verse in the Bible constitutes a deficient hermeneutic. An appropriate response to the notion that darkness symbolizes evil is, as Constable (2010 edition, p. 12, Item 5, viewed July 22, 2010) has stated, “This is true in some cases in Scripture, but not always (Psa. 104:19-24). Furthermore, evening was part of the days God declared good.” The truth of the matter is that the word darkness (choshek) is used only four times in Genesis, and only in chapter 1 (Gen. 1:2, 4, 5, 18). There is no trace of moral evil in any one of these uses. The light that God created (in Gen. 1:3-4) and separated from the darkness was good (tob). But the darkness was never called evil. Rather, God named it. He called the light Day and the darkness Night. Together, the evening and the morning comprised “Day One” (Gen. 1:5). Later, God would create two great lights, one to govern the day, and the second to govern the night. These along with the stars, would “give light on the earth,” govern the day and the night,” and “separate the light from the darkness” (Gen. 1:16-18). Far from being evil, this darkness, balanced by light, became part of that which God saw was good (Gen. 1:18)! So much for darkness being evil in Genesis 1! So the earth that God created on Day One existed in a state of darkness. That darkness was not evil. Nor yet could it be labeled good. Rather it was a characteristic that, on Day One, contributed toward the earth’s being tohu, unsuitable for human, animal, or even plant habitation. Darkness would be the first unsuitable characteristic that God would rectify. He would do so, not by eliminating it, but by adding light. Ultimately light-bearers (sun, moon and stars) would balance off that characteristic of darkness which makes it unsuitable for viewing anything, but which makes it a wonderful condition in which animals and man could refresh themselves in rest. The data in the text, not some imported theory, must drive exegesis.

“and darkness was over the surface of the deep” – On Day One of creation, it was said that “darkness was over the surface of the deep” (Gen. 1:2). The word surface translates the Hebrew word for faces (panim, plural of paneh). “Surface” is an excellent translation, even though panim occurs in the plural. Nothing in particular should be made of that fact, for paneh always appears in the plural (panim) in the OT, even when one person’s face is in view (Gen. 4:5, 6; here panim is translated as a reference to Cain’s countenance).The word deep (tehom) refers to the waters which evidently covered the entire surface of the earth when first God created it. Unfortunately, some conservative commentators give the word deep (tehom) a sinister connotation in this passage. For example, Constable (2010 Notes, p. 10) states, “In the Old Testament tahom refers to the ocean, which the ancient world regarded as symbolic of chaos and evil that needed overcoming and which Yahweh overcame.” Generally speaking, that is an inaccurate characterization of tehom in the Old Testament, and it is driven, I believe, by the misguided Chaos Theory of Interpretation of Genesis 1:2. There are, for example, four uses of tehom in the book of Genesis: 1:2; 7:11; 8:2; and 49:25. In Genesis 1:2 there is no inherent evil whatever associated with “the deep.” Quite to the contrary, in fact, “the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters.” In Genesis 7:11, “the fountains of the great deep burst open,” not because tehom was evil, but because the people of the world were evil, and God was compelled to destroy all but eight of them. Here tehom is an instrument of God for judgment. The same can be said for Genesis 8:2, where “the fountains of the deep and the floodgates of the sky were closed…” The fact that God had used tehom to judge evil people does not make tehom, in and of itself, evil. In Genesis 49:25, the last occurrence in Genesis, “the deep” is part of a blessing from God bestowed by Jacob upon his son Joseph: “…blessings of heaven above, blessings of the deep that lies beneath.” We conclude that tehom is morally neutral, and God uses tehom for judgment and for blessing. What was the makeup of tehom, the deep? The text does not tell us. We know that tehom consists of water. We are told that in Genesis 1:2. On the third day, God commanded the waters to be gathered together into one place, and for the dry land to appear (Gen. 1:9). Was that which became “dry land” a solid land mass underneath the surface of the water prior to that? Or were water and soil all mixed together? We cannot know for certain, for this text does not say. All we can know from this text is that prior to Genesis 1:9, there was soil underneath that was not dry, and there was water on the surface. I believe it is safe to say that tehom, the deep, as it existed by the end of the third day of creation (Gen. 1:9-13), was significantly different from what it is today. Prior to the Flood of Noah’s day, an enormous portion of tehom existed beneath the surface of the earth, and possibly under great pressure. In Genesis 7:11 “the fountains of the great deep (tehom) burst open”; simultaneously, “the floodgates of the sky were opened.” The greatest contributors to the Flood that engulfed the entire globe were “the fountains of the great deep.” Once the “fountains of the deep and the floodgates of the sky were closed” (Gen. 8:2) after a period of 150 days (Gen. 7:24; 8:3), the water began to recede from the earth (Gen. 8:3). Over the next 221 days God apparently used the same process for uplifting the land masses from the ocean that He had done in one day at Creation (Ps. 104:6-9 cf. Gen. 1:9-10). Though Psalm 104:5-9 speaks of Creation, there is no reason to suppose that God did not use the same process to uplift the land masses to end Noah’s Flood that He had used to form dry land at Creation, only at a much slower rate in order to protect the inhabitants of the ark. God raised the land masses and mountains upward, and He sank the ocean floors and valleys downward. After Noah’s Flood, “the fountains of the deep” no longer held the enormous volume of water that they once had. That volume had been largely emptied into the global sea of today’s Earth. Today we have aquifers underneath the surface of the earth, but they evidently contain only a fraction of the volume of water that they once did prior to Noah’s Flood. Massive caves such as the Carlsbad Caverns and Mammoth Cave give fragmentary, but powerful testimony to possible former reservoirs of tehom. Today, of course, the great bulk of tehom resides in the ocean depths. Today, water covers seventy per cent of the earth’s surface. Tehom continues to provide a massive influence upon life and climate upon earth.

“and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters” We are told that the Spirit of God was moving or hovering over the surface of the waters (Gen. 1:2). The word Spirit translates ruach, which can be translated either spirit or wind or breath, depending on the context. In Genesis 1:2, the ruach of God is said to have been active in creating the earth on Day One of creation. In Psalm 33:6 it is “By the word of the LORD” that “the heavens were made, and by the breath (ruach) of His mouth” that “all their host” (were created). In Psalm 104:30, it is said of Yahweh regarding births of animal life, “You send forth Your Spirit (ruach), they are created; and You renew the face of the ground.” In Isaiah 34:16 the Spirit (ruach) of Yahweh will call specific animals to haunt the ruins of Bozrah and Edom. So we can definitely observe the ruach of God active in nature. What role did God’s ruach exercise in creation on Day One? It is lexically possible that Moses here (Gen. 1:2) meant that a wind from God was blowing, but then he would have used a word for blowing, such as nashaph or nashab. Instead, he used the word rachaph, to move (Gen. 1:2), hover (Deut. 32:11), or tremble (Jer. 23:9). Perhaps Moses meant that a wind from God was moving or hovering or trembling; but in any case the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity, cannot be excluded from this passage. So what was He doing? “We could never believe that this hovering of the Spirit over the face of the waters was idle and purposeless. From all other activities that are elsewhere ascribed to the Holy Spirit we conclude that His work in this case must have been anticipatory of the creative work that followed, a kind of impregnation with divine potentialities.” (H. C. Leupold, Exposition of Genesis, Vol. I, p. 50). Leupold goes on to say that Eduard Koenig, in his Kommentar on Genesis, “feels impelled to interpret this ‘hovering’ as ‘an intensified and vitalized type of vibration.’ We should not be averse to holding that the foundation for all physical laws operative in the world now was laid by the preparatory activity” (Ibid.). .

Henry M. Morris, in his commentary, The Genesis Record, p. 52, agrees. He believes that the Hebrew word rachaph carries the idea “of a rapid back and forth motion.” He goes on to state the following:

In modern scientific terminology, the best translation would probably be “vibrated.” If the universe is to be energized, there must be an Energizer. If it is to be set in motion, there must be a Prime Mover.

It is significant that the transmission of energy in the operations of the cosmos is in the form of waves – light waves, heat waves, sound waves, and so forth. In fact (except for the nuclear forces which are involved in the structure of matter itself), there are only two fundamental types of forces that operate on matter – the gravitational forces and the forces of the electromagnetic spectrum.  All are associated with “fields of activity and with transmission by wave motion.

Waves are typically rapid back and forth movements and they are normally produced by the vibratory motion of a wave generator of some kind. Energy cannot create itself. It is most appropriate that the first impartation of energy to the universe is described as the “vibrating” movement of the Spirit of God Himself.

We cannot know for certain what God’s Spirit was doing when He was moving over the surface of the waters (Gen. 1:2). But perhaps we are given a clue in Psalm 104:5-9. Perhaps it was then that “He established the earth upon its foundations, so that it will not totter forever and ever” (Ps. 104:5). Perhaps it was then that He was forming mountain peaks, broad plains, and canyons beneath the surface of the waters (Ps. 104:6), so that on the Third Day, God could lift up the land masses and peaks, and sink down the ocean canyons (Gen. 1:9-10). This would have formed the pre-Deluge continent(s) and global sea. Peter accurately recorded “that by the word of God the heavens existed long ago and the earth was formed out of water and by water” (2 Pet. 3:5, emphasis mine).

“Then God said,” Gen. 1:3.

With the exception of Day One (in my view), these words mark the beginning of each of the six days of creation (Gen. 1:3, 6, 9, 14, 20, 24). For this reason, many evangelical writers have insisted that Genesis 1:3 rather than Genesis 1:1 marks the beginning of Day One of creation (e.g. Allen P. Ross, Genesis, (see his comments on 1:3-5), Vol. I, The Bible Knowledge Commentary (viewed Aug. 31, 2010); Thomas Constable, Dr. Constable’s Notes on Genesis, p. 15 (viewed Aug. 22, 2010). (Constable has labeled Gen. 1:3-31 as “The six days of creation,” and he has labeled Gen. 1:3-5 as “The first day.” In fairness, he does state that “Verse 1 may be part of the first day of creation,” but he has not labeled it that way.)