Genesis 1:2(a)

Genesis 1:2- 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.

I am going to jump straight into this since it does come first in the passage. The first section here can be literally translated the way it is or more commonly, “And the earth became without form, and void;” which is possible since the word “hayah” in the Hebrew is defined to mean:

1) to be, become, come to pass, exist, happen, fall out

a) (Qal)

1) -----

a) to happen, fall out, occur, take place, come about, come to pass

b) to come about, come to pass

2) to come into being, become

a) to arise, appear, come

b) to become

1) to become

2) to become like

3) to be instituted, be established

3) to be

a) to exist, be in existence

b) to abide, remain, continue (with word of place or time)

c) to stand, lie, be in, be at, be situated (with word of locality)

d) to accompany, be with

While it can be translated the way it is currently (the earth was without), there is a passage in Isaiah that may lend weight to the other translation. Isaiah 45:18 says, 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, he formed it to be inhabited: I [am] the LORD; and [there is] none else. The word that is used in this translation for “not in vain” is the same phrase that is used in the Genesis 1:2 to say formless and void. So why does Genesis say that God created the world without form and void and Isaiah says the complete opposite? There is a way to reconcile these passages that allow other events and Bible difficulties to fall in place.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth… complete… not void. But something happened to the earth… something made it without form and void. What could that have been. Well scripture in Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28 talks about the time when an angel named Lucifer led a rebellion against God and was kicked out of heaven, him and a third of the angels in heaven were cast down to the earth and Lucifer became the god of this world[1]. The earth was created most likely beautiful… we know our God and I can guarantee that it was beautiful. Lucifer was kicked out and we see his M.O. in action, to destroy God’s work and bring darkness and void to our world. He still is like that in our world. The bible declares that Lucifer is a thief (John 10:10), “The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy:” He is still trying to bring destruction and voidness to our world and our lives.

Since we do not know how long this period was, we can only guess. We do have some extra biblical evidence that suggests that this period of time was a long time. If we hold the Genesis account to a literal translation then we are only about year 6,000 away from creation. There is evidence though (some of the radiometric dating methods) that indicate the stuff of the earth is much older. While there are issues with that evidence, if that evidence is accurate, this age between verse 1 and 2 can potentially account for that.

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[1] 2 Corinthians 4:4