Genesis ch. 1:1-2

Genesis

The Creation

Day One

1:1 This sublime statement is not trivialized in the least by the fact that it may actually have been a subordinate clause: “When God began to create the heavens and the earth”. “God” (Elohim) is introduced here for the first time; yet the word needs no preceding referent. The readers know who Elohim is, even if he also is called Yahweh, El Shadday, Adonay (“my Lord”), and several other less common names. Since the verb “created” is singular, readers are not misled into thinking the formal plural alludes to multiple creators. The question of why he creates is not addressed. This is not a philosophical treatise, but a historical one. Not, of course, that we are to think of “Primeval History” (Creation to the Flood) as so simply and completely equivalent to writing a history of the reign of Hezekiah! The author here has no contemporary historical sources to draw on! He writes from divine revelation, some of which may have already circulated in the oral tradition of his time.

1:2 The two adjectives “formless and empty” (NIV; Hebrew tohu va-vohu) are structurally significant, in that the six “days” of Creation are arranged symmetrically, so that days 1-3 form one sequence, and days 4-6 another, with day 1 corresponding to day 4, 2 to 5 and 3 to 6. And it has been suggested that in days 1-3 God sets the framework of creation, while in days 4-6 he furnishes the framework with inhabitants. If this is so, then “formless” refers to the creation without a structure (“form”), and “empty” to its need for the structure to be filled or populated. The NRSV has obscured this important clue by merging the two Hebrew adjectives into a noun-phrase “formless void”.

Two other statements describe the unstructured and unpopulated world prior to the creative act of the first “day”: (1) darkness and (2) a hovering Spirit of God. The former is not so much a positive as a negative condition: darkness is the absence of light, and light will come from God. The latter indicates perhaps the readiness ("hovering") of God’s Spirit, seen as the executor of his willed command, to generate light and life at His command.

These sparse statements at the outset of the great account of Creation serve as a kind of analogy to the creation of new life in a believer. Without Christ he or she is in darkness, the darkness not being an independent condition, but one due to the absence of the light of Christ. We thought in the darkness of ignorance of God. We walked in the darkness of an unguided life. Before the infusion of Christ’s new creation our lives were totally unstructured and chaotic, characterized by the frantic pursuit of whatever we thought might bring us pleasure or at least distraction from our problems. We were “formless” (tohu). Before the gift of the Holy Spirit who populates our lives with the fruits of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control (Gal 5:22), our lives were empty (vohu)—cheerless desolate “rooms” needing filling with the warmth, love and comfort provided us by our Savior.
In the next few days, as we progress through the Creation Account, let us look for other analogies that God may have had in mind, to teach us through His creation of the plants and animals of our world how he also structures and fills our lives as His new creation. Amen.