Now the earth which the Godhead created was undefined and unrefined, and darkness was over the surface of the deep (waters covering submerged land masses). And the Spirit of God breezed/propelled/swept/shimmered over the waters.

 

Truths to Ponder:

• God created the earth in raw preliminary form, like a construction crew’s initial stage of preparing a basic utilitied lot with all equipment & materials onsite ready to build.

 

• What takes construction crews months or years to develop took the Almighty Creator Lord Godhead moments up to hours of Day One (a week prior to first-ever Sabbath). Most likely it was instantaneous at his command but some hours were allowed to cool, gel, stabilize, settle in undefined and unrefined form for subsequent definition and refinement. Imagine getting all the materials to assemble a terrarium or aquarium. The initial goal is to get the stage set for later introduction of life to inhabit the living space. First the residence, then the residents.

 

• Most translations have ‘without form/amorphous and void/empty’ or ‘invisible and vacant’ or ‘unsightly and unfurnished’. Of course, in the darkness from a mortal perspective, these have some merit. But since this portion of Genesis refers to time pre-Adam, no mortal observer could eyewitness these events from any point of view – bottom-up or top-down. The likely intended meaning is not so much invisible in the dark or somehow immaterial/pre-physical or other speculations nor even unsightly as if ugly or eyesore or a mess to behold from our standpoint.

 

• Rather, it’s more from God’s own heavenly perspective as Creator (not creature-eye viewpoint): Things at this early stage looked nothing like they would later on Day 6 when God pronounced his masterpiece ‘Very Good!’ Even metaphorically for Moses the human author of Genesis, if he were in a literary way to insert his perspective into the narrative, it would be along the lines of ‘unrecognizable’, ‘unidentifiable’, ‘indiscernible’ ‘indistinct’, ‘can’t quite be made out’, ‘unable to tell what this is/will turn out to be’ compared to what I Moses know of the earth I live in. Or what Noah lived in (post-fall post-sin) before the Global Flood and certainly night & day different from Garden of Eden turnkey Paradise (unfallen sinfree) as God’s completed perfectly defined and refined ultimate Tour de Force.

 

• Thus, the Hebrew rhythmic/rhyming wordplay of ‘tohu wa bohu’ should be rendered ‘undefined and unrefined’ to capture both the poetic wordplay as well as the idea of ‘vague and vacant’ conveying incompleteness, in-process. Can’t prejudge the finished product (Michelangelo’s David) by the raw material (block of raw marble) or a Masterchef’s recipe and ingredients strewn about the kitchen with the final cooked/presented menu dish served up ready to eat. You cannot extrapolate from the rough uncut just-mined raw chunk of opaque compressed carbon into the finished Crown Jewels. Quite a mental visual leap from a palette of paint blobs and a blank canvass to a Rembrandt! Or random disjointed tunes and melodies in the composer’s head reduced to scrawlings and sketches on sheafs of paper scattered over the studio until collected and sent to the music publisher. Then it issues forth into a Symphony readable and playable by conductor and orchestra. It cannot possibly be envisioned except by the creator himself!

 

• Although darkness was the initial state of creation itself, the Godhead being Light still shined his own Glory during Creation. Uncreated Light dominated over created darkness. Light Himself created the unlit universe just before added lighting. Like engineers boring a deep tunnel, they themselves have their own light to operate but install interior lighting to complete the tunnel for traffic.

 

• The Spirit of God is the preferred translation of the Hebrew word for wind, breath. The personality of God is involved, not just impersonal creative forces or energies from God. This in contrast to pagan religions of past and present with either polytheistic personification of natural forces (the sun is a god, the wind is another god, water, sky, etc.) or atheistic depersonalization into pure naturalism of auto-genesis self-originating (absolutely everyone and everything from absolutely no one and nothing).

 

• Most popular translations of God’s Spirit bringing or carrying or positioning himself render the Spirit’s movement as hovering or brooding or fluttering or even vibrating. Hovering or fluttering pretty much portray the Spirit as floating in place over one position like a bird of prey or hummingbird. Brooding shows the idea of a hen protecting its nest or a vulture in a tree waiting its turn to feed. Vibrating indicates rapid repeated pulsing micro-convulsions or spasms, again more mechanistic than personal.

 

• Breezed or propelled or swept or shimmered captures not just stationary movement over one place but unrestricted infinite mobility over the entire global surface as well as God’s uncreated light shimmering constantly over the dark watery depths like aurora borealis. Effects of wind/breath vs. avian activity better fits God’s Spirit.

 

The Spirit of the Lord breezed over the turbulent waters.
He propelled and glided over the vast, vague and vacant oceanic depths.
God’s Spirit swept upon the churning seas.
He shimmered in uncreated heavenly light over the dense darkness…
…and the Word of the Lord said, “Let created light and heat energy now exist 
in the cold dark space-time physical universe and instantly light up and warm up the earth!”