Genesis 1:2

And the earth, &c. Notice, in the present verse, (1) that "darkness" exists which God is not said to have made: (2) that "waters" exist before the formation of the seas: (3) that "the spirit of God" is mentioned, without explanation of its nature or origin, as "brooding upon the face of the waters." The whole picture is vague and obscure, because the touches, by which it is conveyed, are left unexplained. The old monstrous and grotesque figures with which primitive Semitic, and possibly primitive Hebrew, imagination sought to fill up the void of the unimaginable past, have been left out. The gap which they filled is not wholly supplied. The description is brief and condensed. But, even making allowance for the brevity of the narrative, we are conscious of the presence of features in it, which represent the dim and cancelled outlines of an earlier mythological story. The thought of the Israelite reader is elevated to a higher religious plane in this simple and stately account.

the earth i.e. the materials out of which the universe is formed. We are not told what the origin of these materials was, or whether God had created them. God is not here spoken of as creating the universe out of nothing, but rather as creating it out of a watery chaos: cf. Wis 11:18. That which is affirmed in Hebrews 11:3, i.e. that God did not make "that which is seen out of things which do appear," is not asserted in this verse, though it is implied in the general representation of God's omnipotence and His solitary personal action.

was The simplest description of what "existed" before the first day of Creation. To translate "became," or "came into being," in order to import into the verse an allusion to the nebular hypothesis for the origin of the solar system, is an expedient not to be entertained by any scholarly interpreter. It has, however, found favour in some quarters. Apologists have been known to appeal to this verse as demonstrating that the Bible contains anticipations of the latest discoveries in Natural Science, as if the Hebrew auxiliary denoted the process of gradual evolution out of nebulous gas.

The theory, however, would never have been thought of except for the well-meaning, but mistaken, purpose of defending the honour of Holy Scripture on the supposition that it must contain perfection of instruction upon all matters of scientific knowledge.

It is sufficient to remind the reader that the ancients were entirely ignorant of the Copernican theory of the solar system; and, ex hypothesi, could not have comprehended Laplace's nebular theory.

It violates every canon of interpretation to assume that simple words, like "earth," "darkness," "water," &c., were intended to convey to the Israelite reader not the meanings which the Hebrew equivalents everywhere else conveyed, but those which could only be understood after the scientific discoveries of the nineteenth century had transformed men's conception of the universe.

Equally arbitrary is the explanation of this verse, that it is intended to summarize the period, or periods, of catastrophe which, according to some writers, preceded the present geological condition of our planet. Geology is a modern science. The view which regarded the geological history of the globe as a succession of gigantic catastrophes is now very generally abandoned. The theory, that the earth has reached its present condition through gradual changes which have taken place during an enormous span of time (the uniformitarian theory), has now received the general adherence of geologists. (Cf. Sir Arch. Geikie, Art. "Geology," Encyc. Brit.)

On the other hand, the Hebrew conception of the Creation in this chapter is in agreement with a fundamental principle of scientific thought. It recognizes in Nature an orderly progress from the simple into the complex, from the lower into the higher. Evolution, in the modern acceptance of the word, would have been unintelligible. But the ideas of order and progress, which it endorses and illustrates, are dominant in the present description. See Special Note, pp. 45 f.

waste and void A.V. "without form and void." The Heb. tôhû va-bhôhûis untranslateable. The LXX, ἀόρατος καὶ ἀκατασκεύαστος, "invisible and unformed," fails to give the meaning. The Latin, inanis et vacua, is closer to the original. The alliteration of the Heb. words cannot be reproduced in English: "void and vacancy" would partially represent the sense and the sound.

tôhûin Isaiah 45:18, where there is a reference to the Creation Narrative, seems to denote "waste" or "vacancy"; while bôhû= "emptiness," "void," occurs elsewhere only in Isaiah 34:11; Jeremiah 4:23, with a reference to the present passage. Conceivably, the words may contain some similarity to primitive names, which had become obsolete, but which had been used to personify the conditions of chaos out of which the universe was formed. We may, at least, in connexion with this suggestion, compare the Phoenician Βαύυ = Night, the Mother of Chaos, and the Gnostic technical terms Βύθος and Χαός, designating primaeval matter.

darkness The existence of "darkness" is here assumed. It is not said to have been created. "Light," not "darkness," has its origin in the creative act of God.

For another conception, cf. Isaiah 45:7, "I form the light, and create darkness."

the deep Heb. t'hôm, LXX ἀβύσσου, Lat. abyssi. This word is generally used in the O.T. for the "Ocean," which, according to Hebrew ideas, both encircled the world, and occupied the vast hollows beneath the earth: cf. Genesis 49:25. It is used like a proper name, without the article; and is very probably Babylonian in origin. In the present verse it denotes the chaotic watery waste destined on the Second Day to be confined within certain definite limits. It is conceivable that in primitive Hebrew mythology this t'hôm, or "abyss," fulfilled the same part as the somewhat similar Babylonian Tiamtu, or Tiamath, "the Goddess of the Great Deep," with a dragon's body, whose destruction preceded the creative deeds of the Babylonian Supreme God, Marduk, or Merodach. Marduk slew the dragon, clave its body in two parts, and made the heaven of one portion, and the earth of the other. See Appendix A.

The Hebrew notion that, before the Creation, the universe was enveloped in the waters of the great deep is possibly referred to in Psalms 104:6, "Thou coveredst it [the earth] with the deep as with a vesture," cf. Psalms 33:7.

the spirit of God Nothing could more effectually distinguish the Hebrew Narrative of the Creation from the representations of primitive mythology than the use of this simple and lofty expression for the mysterious, unseen, and irresistible presence and operation of the Divine Being. It is the "breath" of God which alone imparts light to darkness and the principle of life to inert matter.

The student should be warned against identifying this expression with the Holy Spirit in the Christian doctrine of the Blessed Trinity. We must not look for the distinctive teaching of the Christian Revelation in the pages of the O.T.

The word for "wind," Heb. ruaḥ, Gr. πνεῦμα, Lat. spiritus, was accepted as the most suitable term to express the invisible agency of God. In consequence, it is sometimes difficult to decide whether the word is used literally in its meaning of "wind" or "breath," or metaphorically in its meaning of "spirit" as the symbol of the invisible operation and influence of the Almighty. An instance of this ambiguity occurs in our Lord's words in John 3:8, "The wind (πνεῦμα) bloweth (marg. -The Spirit breatheth") where it listeth, &c.… so is every one that is born of the Spirit (πνεῦμα)." Similarly, whereas the Targum of Onkelos probably rendered our clause by "wind from the Lord blew upon the face of the waters," the Targum of Palestine renders "the Spirit of mercies from the Lord breathed upon the face of the waters."

moved upon the face of the waters The rendering of the margin, was brooding upon, furnishes the picture of a bird spreading its wings over its nest; it also reproduces the meaning of the participle of the Hebrew verb, which implies continuousness in the action. For the use of the same unusual Hebrew word, cf. Deuteronomy 32:11. "As an eagle that stirreth up her nest, That flutterethover her young, He spread abroad his wings, He took them, He bare them on his pinions."

By the selection of this word the writer conveys the thought that the continuous, fostering care of the Almighty was given to the welter of primaeval chaos no less than to the orderly successive phenomena of the universe.

Milton employs this metaphor in two well-known passages.

Thou from the first

Wast present, and, with mighty wings outspread,

Dove-like sat'st brooding on the vast Abyss,

And mad'st it pregnant …

Par. Lost, i. 19.

… Matter unformed and void. Darkness profound

Covered the Abyss; but on the watery calm

His brooding wings the Spirit of God outspread,

And vital virtue infused, and vital warmth,

Throughout the fluid mass.…

vii. 234.

It may, indeed, be questioned whether, if the word is intended to denote the action of a bird, it should not be rendered "was fluttering," or "was hovering," rather than "was brooding." Motion seems to be implied: and the simile is not so much that of a bird sitting upon its nest as that of a bird hovering with outstretched wings over the young ones in the nest. The choice of the word, with its allusion to bird life, has been thought to contain an intentional reference to primitive mythologies, e.g. Phoenician, Egyptian, according to which the universe was hatched by a female deity out of the primaeval egg of Chaos.