Jon: Each day begins with the phrase, “and God said,” and then ends with the phrase, “and there was evening and morning.” And this ordering happens in a series of six days. Jon: So you can’t see it, but God is present in the darkness, ready to bring order, so that life can flourish. Tim: The Hebrew word for God’s Spirit is ruakh, which can refer to wind, or breath, or God’s invisible presence. Jon: “And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.” 4 Because in the midst of those dark waters, God is present. ![]() ![]() Now, here’s where things start to get interesting. It’s another common way the ancients described the non-reality that preceded creation. Jon: “And darkness was on the face of the deep abyss.” 3 The Chaotic Waters And the next line uses another image to say the same thing. “The land was tohu vavohu,” which means, “unordered and uninhabited.” This is the ancient way of talking about the pre-creation state, what we might call “nothingness.” For the biblical authors, non-existence means having no purpose and no order. Jon: And it reads: “Now the land was wild and waste…” 2 This line is summarizing what’s going to happen in the following narrative, which starts in the next line. And the word for “earth” does not mean “globe” but rather, “the land.” Tim: Now, your Bible translation might say, “the heavens and the earth.” In biblical Hebrew, the word for “heaven” refers simply to the sky above. Now, the opening line of the whole Bible is: “In the beginning God created the skies and the land.” 1 Heaven and Earth It’s a carefully crafted narrative about God creating and ordering the whole cosmos. ![]() Tim: And we’re going to look closely at the first page of the book of Genesis. Jon: The first book in the Bible is called Genesis.
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