GENESIS ONE

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 earth was formless and void.

There was no earth. Instead, there was only formlessness and nothingness—tohu and bohu.

Both of these Hebrew words can be translated as “empty” or “void.” Poetically they are words that differ only in their first consonant and thus rhyme.

But there is a slight difference between them. Bohu signifies emptiness, nothingness. Tohu carries the same meaning as bohu, but with the additional negative sense of confusion, futility, waste, and chaos.

It is hard for us to imagine emptiness that is disorganized. How can something be nothing, and yet still be chaotic and futile?

Perhaps because there is a sense of something unfinished, something yet to come.

Perhaps because the sheer glory and creative authority of the Most High God stood in stark contrast to the nothingness that surrounded His dwelling place.

Something was lacking in the nothingness.

And God saw that it was not good.

Darkness was over the surface of the deep.

Darkness is the absence of light.

Heaven was filled with light because of the presence of the One Who Is Light. But outside of His presence, beyond the boundaries of His dwelling place, was absolute darkness.

And something else was present—the deep.

The deep is referred to several times in the Old Testament. In many ways, it is beyond our understanding. Yet the deep exists, and what is more, it existed before the beginning of time.

It is mentioned 35 times in the Old Testament, often in mysterious ways. Sometimes it is singular, but sometimes the word is plural, indicating the possibility of more than one deep.

The deep is separate from God’s dwelling place. In Genesis 49:25, Jacob blesses his son Joseph with the “blessings of heaven above, [and] blessings of the deep that lies beneath.”

Often the deep appears to be connected to water. In the flood, we read that “all the fountains of the great deep burst open” (Genesis 7:11). In Moses’ song to the LORD following the death of all the Egyptian warriors in the Red Sea, He says, “The deeps cover them; they went down into the depths like a stone” (Exodus 15:5).

Yet even though the deep appears to be connected to water in some way, it also stands as its own entity: “The deep says, ‘It is not in me’; and the sea says, ‘It is not with me” (Job 28:14).

And the deep existed before the beginning of time.

Darkness was over the face of the deep.

The deep was not part of the darkness. There was some kind of surface or boundary that separated the deep from the darkness.

The Hebrew word translated “over” can also mean “against” or “opposite to.” So not only were the darkness and the deep not the same, but they were opposing or opposite entities.

Since the darkness was separate from the deep and in some way the opposite of the deep, and since darkness is the antithesis of God’s light, it is possible that the pre-Creation deep was free from the sense of chaotic futility that the darkness carried.

The Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters.

What were those waters?

In the creation story, there is no mention of God creating water. On the second day, God separates the waters above from the waters below, and on the third day God gathers the waters below into one place, but there is never any indication as to where or when these waters came into existence.

And God’s Spirit was not present in the waters. His Spirit was hovering over the waters.

God is the Creator of All Things. The waters must have been created by Him in the timeless eons prior to the beginning. And when He determined that the time of the beginning had arrived, God came to the waters, and His Spirit moved over those waters.

His Spirit was not present in the waters. His Spirit, filled with the immensity of His plans and purposes, came to the waters and hovered over them.

The stage was set for a new beginning.

A New Beginning

Thus, we see that before the beginning, there was absolute emptiness and nothingness.

Before the beginning, there was a darkness that was filled with chaos and futility, a darkness that was already present in the midst of the emptiness of nothingness.

Before the beginning, there were waters and the mysterious deep.

And before the beginning, there was God.

A God who desired more. A God who had deep relational bonds within the Trinity of Himself, but whose heart felt the need for a class of sentient beings who would be created in His image, who would be closely aligned to Himself, who would wrestle with truth, who would choose Him over all else, and who would explore the immensity of His heart at a level never experienced by the angelic host.

And so God began His new work. It was a new beginning. The beginning of time. The beginning of the heavens and the earth. The beginning of humanity—human beings created in God’s image, created for His glory, created to live and move and have their being in Him.

In the beginning, Elohim created.

And it was very good.

© Christine Fisher
March 2026