Genesis 1:1 In the beginning God created the heaven (literally, the heavens, ha shamaim) and the earth.
2 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 (plural, ha maim).
Genesis is not just the book of beginnings. It describes God’s process of Creation – and the beginnings of what would be the nation of Israel. This document may be the most hotly contested book on earth. Did God create the worlds? Yes! Did Noah build the Ark? Yes! Did God favor Israel over Ishmael? Yes! Were Jews in bondage in Egypt? A question of greatest relevance today when Egypt has declared Israel to be its Enemy No.1. The answer to each of these questions is an unhesitating “Yes!” Genesis tells it like it was. Nobody can prove otherwise. Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the Word of God.
Hebrews 11:3 Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.
The first verse of Genesis tells us that in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.’ God (Elohim – plural noun, the Three in One) created a three-in-one universe of Space, Time and Matter.
This is followed by the mysterious verse 2:
And the earth was without form (tohu = disordered), and void (bohu = empty), and darkness was upon the face of the deep.
So, the earth was initially
- an unstructured, disordered chaos,
- empty of life, and
- unenergised (no light).
Why? Scripture doesn’t tell us. But since the Torah is a book of instruction, we could surmise that it may have been to teach a spiritual lesson about how God works generally. This describes the parts of our life without God: disordered, empty and without light.
The same concepts (‘tohu va bohu’) are found in Isaiah 45:18:
For thus saith the LORD that created the heavens; God himself that formed the earth and made it; he hath established it, he created it not in vain (not tohu), he formed it to be inhabited (not bohu): I am the LORD; and there is none else.
The final state was not disorder and emptiness but it started that way, then God formed and filled it.
Then God worked a miracle: ‘And the Spirit of God moved (hovered ) upon the face of the waters (a picture of energy waiting to be released). The word translated “moved” also means “brooded” (like a hen brooding over her eggs). The Spirit of God brooded over the egg of the empty chaotic world, to form it as a habitation for mankind.
So the first key to the miracle of creation is the presence and hovering, brooding, of the Holy Spirit. But there’s another key and we shall see it in the next verse.
Bibloscope 