Genesis 1:2


Genesis 1:2 is the second verse of the Genesis creation narrative. It is a part of the Torah portion Bereshit.

Hebrew

Transliteration:
  1. Wəhā’āreṣ: "and the earth"
  2. hāyəṯāh: "was"
  3. tohu wabohu: difficult to translate, but often rendered as "formless and void"
  4. wəḥōšeḵ: "and darkness
  5. ‘al-pənê: " over face"
  6. ṯəhôm: a mythological or cosmological concept often translated as "the Deep"
  7. wərûaḥ: "and ruah", a difficult term translated as "spirit" or "wind"
  8. ĕlōhîm: the generic Hebrew term for God or gods, distinct from Yahweh, the name of the god of Israel
  9. məraḥep̱eṯ: often translated as "hovered/was hovering"
  10. ‘al-pənê hammāyim: "over the face of the waters"

    Translation

"Tohu wabohu" is commonly translated as "formless and empty", and denotes the absence of some abstract quality such as purpose or worth. Tohu by itself means desert, desert-like, empty, uninhabited, so that "Tohu wabohu" signifies that the earth was empty of life, whether plant, animal, or human. "Tehôm" was the cosmic ocean both above and below the earth. Ruah means "wind"; the wind blows ‘al-pənê hammāyim, over the face of the waters of Tehom.

Analysis

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. 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 : 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. It appears again in Jeremiah 4:23, where Jeremiah warns Israel that rebellion against God will lead to the return of darkness and chaos, "as if the earth had been ‘uncreated’." Tohu wa-bohu, chaos, is the condition that bara, ordering, remedies.
Darkness and "Deep" are two of the three elements of the chaos represented in tohu wa-bohu. In the Enûma Eliš, the Deep is personified as the goddess Tiamat, the enemy of Marduk; 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. William Dumbrell notes 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".
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". Victor P. Hamilton decides, somewhat tentatively, for "spirit of God", but dismisses any suggestion that this can be identified with the Holy Spirit of Christian theology.
Rûach 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", or God's "spirit", a concept which is somewhat vague in Hebrew bible, or simply a great storm-wind.

Citations