It’s a remarkable thing, that the very first description of anything in the bible, in Genesis Chapter 1, verse 2, is of a condition of darkness, formlessness and desolation. Why?
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep (Genesis 1,1 & 2, New American Standard Bible)
Or, in Young’s Literal Translation:
In the beginning of God’s preparing the heavens and the earth the earth hath existed waste and void, and darkness [is] on the face of the deep.
And from the Orthodox Jewish Bible:
In the beginning Elohim created hashomayim (the heavens, Himel) and haaretz (the earth). And the earth was tohu vavohu (without form, and void); and darkness was upon the face of the deep.
Why the darkness and chaos?
That’s thought provoking, isn’t it? The opening words of the bible paint a picture, not just of an empty but tidy creation, waiting to be filled with light and life, not an orderly but blank canvas, but darkness, desolation and chaos. The two Hebrew words, used together, to describe this condition are Tohu Va’vohu. It turns out that this expression Tohu Va’vohu occurs only three times in the bible, one in the passage in Genesis that we’re considering now, and two other times, in Jeremiah 4, 23 and Isaiah 34, 11. In both of these passages, the phrase comes amid very dark descriptions of chaos and desolation, coming specifically as a result of unfaithfulness to God.
Tohu Va’vohu and rebellion against God:
Jeremiah, chapter 4, verses 22 – 26, contains the expression Tohu Va’vohu, as part of a very dark and melancholy rebuke by God, against Israel and Judah, for unfaithfulness to him and idolatry:
“My people are fools; they do not know me. They are senseless children; they have no understanding. They are skilled in doing evil; they know not how to do good.” I looked at the earth, and it was formless and empty; (Tohu Va’vohu) and at the heavens, and their light was gone. I looked at the mountains, and they were quaking; all the hills were swaying. I looked, and there were no people; every bird in the sky had flown away. I looked, and the fruitful land was a desert; all its towns lay in ruins before the Lord, before his fierce anger.
A similarly dark passage of rebuke and warning from God to “the nations” but also specifically Edom, is found in Isaiah 34, verse 11:
God will stretch out over Edom the measuring line of chaos and the plumb line of desolation. (Tohu Va’vohu)
Tohu Va’vohu not the final reality
Back to Genesis 1. It’s a mysterious thing, but before God declares, or proclaims Let there be light! the initial condition of things is not anything you could look at and say Behold, it was good…. However, very soon we can see that perhaps this darkness, chaos and desolation is not going to be the final reality. In verse 2 we also read:
…and the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters… (NIV)
Or: … the Spirit of God fluttering on the face of the waters (Young’s Literal Translation)
Or: …and the Ruach Elohim was hovering upon the face of the waters. (Orthodox Jewish Text)
What kind of image does this concept of the Spirit, or “breath” of God, hovering, or fluttering over the surface of this darkness and chaos conjure up in your mind? One image of the Holy Spirit that we are perhaps used to as Christians, is that of the dove. A few chapters on, in Genesis 8, Noah wants to find out if the flood waters are beginning to recede from the earth. Again, the earth has become a desolation, because of God blotting out all life, through the flood, except for Noah and his family, safe in the ark: Genesis Chapter 8, verses 8 – 9:
Then (Noah) sent out a dove from him, to see if the water was abated from the face of the land; but the dove found no resting place for the sole of her foot, so she returned to him into the ark, for the water was on the surface of all the earth. (NASB)
We can imagine the dove, flying here and there, but then returning to Noah in the ark, as there is nothing to alight upon, other, perhaps, than the corruption of bloated and floating corpses of animals and humans alike.
Jesus as the perfect resting place for the Spirit of God
In a huge leap forward to the New Testament, the image of the dove for the Holy Spirit comes up again in the story of the baptism of Jesus, in Matthew 3, verses 16 & 17:
After being baptised, Jesus came up immediately from the water; and behold, the heavens were opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending as a dove and lighting on Him, and behold, a voice out of the heavens said, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased.”
The Spirit of God is not “hovering” or “fluttering” here, but alighting because – in the person of Jesus – he finds the perfect and clean resting, dwelling and abiding place, as Jesus is the spotless and sinless Lamb of God.
Let there be light!
Back again to Genesis 1 – God interrupts this condition of darkness and chaos with what some consider to be a command, some not so much a command but simply a statement of what will be: Let there be light!
Then begins what we perhaps consider to be the actual beginning of the account of creation, Light and dark, day and night (the first day) the separation of the heavenly waters from the earthly (second day), the earthly waters separated into sea and dry land, vegetation, plants yielding seed, fruit trees bearing fruit (the third day) lights in the heavens for signs and seasons, the sun and moon to govern the day and the night and also the stars (the fourth day) the waters teeming with living creatures, birds flying in the heavens, every living creature that moves. On the sixth day, God makes man in his image, male and female, and they – together – are given the task of benign rule over the earth and everything in it.
So… Initial conditions, right at the start of everything, describes desolation, darkness, chaos, but this is interrupted with the command Let there be light…
The Good Way – away from Tohu Va’vohu towards “Let there be light!”
The good and right way, the way of light, clarity, order, beauty and life, is always away from Tohu Va’vohu and towards Let there be light. We don’t ever want to be slipping, in a degenerate process, from Let there be light, backwards towards Tohu Va’vohu. In many ways, though, it’s possible, from this point on in the bible to its conclusion in the book of Revelation, to see things moving either one way or the other, at all times, whether in individuals or groups of people. There are indications of the Tohu Va’vohu making a comeback, in God’s pronouncement over the natural world, after Adam and Eve’s sin and the resulting fall, not only of Adam and Eve, but the created world too:
…cursed is the ground because of you, through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you and you will eat the plants of the field.
As mentioned earlier, the darkness and desolation, once again covering the surface of the earth, as a result of the flood, is another dramatic episode in which things were slipping backwards, away from Let there be light back to Tohu Va’vohu.
What about our Tohu Va’vohu?
Well, what about us, today? How is this relevant? It’s my firm belief that an individual, an institution, a church or a nation will always and at all times, being moving in either direction, away from God’s light, beauty and order, towards Tohu Va’vohu – desolation, formlessness and darkness – or (hopefully) from Tohu Va’vohu, towards God’s light, beauty and order.
Jewish Commentator, Helena Hawkins, has written a pretty hard-hitting article for Jewish Press.com with the title Why are we embracing Tohu Va’vohu? In it, she says:
The first act of creation involved making boundaries. What does that mean? That without boundaries – without distinctions between light and dark, heavens and earth, man and woman – we live in chaos. In Tohu Va’vohu. We, as a society, have thrown away the very first lines of Bereshit. And it will come back to bite us – hard. Fleeing from reality only works for so long… We have flaunted our new immorality with all the fervour of a child who has finally gotten his way. But that child inevitably later learns his lesson – and so will we.
Only when we have finally learned to redraw G-d’s boundaries will we prosper. At that point we will become partners again in creation, and G-d will create a new heaven and a new earth – on a higher dimension. As the navi says “For behold, I create a new heavens and a new earth, and the first ones shall not be remembered, neither shall they come to mind” (Isaiah 65,17) – May that day come soon.
(Read the whole article here: https://www.jewishpress.com/indepth/opinions/why-are-we-embracing-tohu-vavohu/2019/11/08/ )
The topic of gender, male and female, has been a hot topic for a long time, but intensifying in various ways over the last 10 years or so, here in Europe, and many other countries worldwide. This is a very difficult topic to comment on, as all kinds of political and ideological movements are involved, but often – at the heart of the shouting and accusations – are hurt and confused individuals. However, as a broad and general observation, the more obsessed a society gets with blurring and eradicating the differences between – for example – male and female (one of a number of binary categories or characteristics laid down in Genesis Chapter 1), the more that society is slipping backwards towards Tohu Va’vohu.
So, how can a society, a church or an individual, move from Tohu Va’vohu, towards God’s light, truth, beauty and order? In the description of the Tohu va’ vohu, in the passage from Jeremiah chapter 4, there are descriptions of conditions that remind us of things that are reported as having happened during the hours of Jesus’ crucifixion:
I looked on the earth and behold it was formless and void and to the heavens, and they had no light. I looked on the mountains and behold, they were quaking, and all the hills moved to and fro. I looked and behold there was no man and all the birds of the heaven had fled.
The passage describes darkness and something like seismic activity, with the hills and mountains quaking. In the account of Jesus’ crucifixion, in the gospels, it is also described how darkness covered the land from the 6th until the 9th hour, and also that an earthquake happened. Hints of the Tohu Va’ vohu there too, but mixed with victory over it, as – during that earthquake – the veil in the temple was split in two, tombs burst open and many people were resurrected and appeared in the city.
And so, back to that simple question at the start of this piece. Why? Why is the very first description of anything in the bible a picture of darkness and desolation? Maybe it’s because the bible is – although some will vehemently deny it – at least partly about us, about me, about the Tohu Va’vohu of who we are, the darkness and desolation in our innermost being, the forces and urges that are there, that will always be tending to pull us away from the centre, from the light, the True Light. Maybe the account of the creation is saying something about how God wants to proceed in our hearts, bringing his light, his truth, order, beauty and fruitfulness.
Jesus came to this earth to talk about God’s Kingdom, and to testify to it with signs and miracles, and through his death on the cross, he opened up the way to be able to leave our own darkness and desolation of heart, our own Tohu Va’vohu, and into his light.
And so, as an antidote to the opening scene in the bible being that scene of desolation, here’s the final scene that’s painted in the final chapter of the bible, Revelation 22, and where we hopefully all want to get to, through many a trial and tribulation no doubt:
Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. There will be no more night. They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light. And they will reign for ever and ever.
If you sense the Spirit of God hovering over your own chaos and desolation, may you be able to open your heart to him, and may God be able to say, triumphantly, “Let there be light” and begin that process of New Creation in your own life.
God Bible Life 