Bible Geek Word Nerd - Formless

 In the Beginning: formless

May 11, 2022 

“Now the earth was FORMLESS and EMPTY, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.”

וְהָאָ֗רֶץ הָיְתָ֥ה תֹ֙הוּ֙ וָבֹ֔הוּ וְחֹ֖שֶׁךְ עַל־ פְּנֵ֣י תְה֑וֹם וְר֣וּחַ אֱלֹהִ֔ים מְרַחֶ֖פֶת עַל־ פְּנֵ֥י הַמָּֽיִם׃

Genesis 1:2

Sticking with the theme of beginnings, let’s move onto the second verse in the Sacred Text, which gives us two of our favorite Hebrew words (favorite because they rhyme so pleasantly).

The earth was FORMLESS and EMPTY, say the NIV translators. The RSV has it “ without form and void”, which is close to the NLT’s “formless and empty”. The NASB renders those two as “a formless and desolate emptiness”. My favorite version of this verse, though, comes from the 19th century Emphasized Bible of JB Rotherham: “the earth had become waste and wild”.

Formless and empty. Waste and wild. What Hebrew words are behind these terms? They are two of my favorite because of their pleasing rhyme: TOHU (תֹּהוּ) and BOHU (בֹּהוּ). In this post, we will explore the first of these.

TOHU is a noun that occurs 20 times in the Hebrew Bible. It can mean formlessness, confusion, emptiness, and unreality.

In Deuteronomy 32, in the Song of Moses, TOHU describes the desert wilderness where G-d finds Israel and shielded him: “He found them in a desert land, in an EMPTY, HOWLING WASTELAND. (NLT)”

 

 

In 1 Samuel 12, Samuel is speaking to the people after they have asked for for King Saul. He says in verse 21: “Do not turn away after USELESS IDOLS. They can do you no good, nor can they rescue you, because they are USELESS.”

Isaiah used the word ten times, which the English translators of the NAS (to select one) render variously as “chaos” (24:10), “meaningless arguments” (29:21), “desolation” (34:11), “meaningless” (40:17), “emptiness” (41:29), and “confusion” (59:4).

So, clearly a word that does not easily carry over into English. The salient take-away is that TOHU seems to convey the absence of order, a place completely inhospitable to life. In the ancient near eastern theistic view of creation, the gods came to bring ORDER out of the primeval chaos in which the world began. Order allows life – and mankind – to exist and continue, to be “fruitful and multiply”.

But so many questions are left by the Text. Did G-d create the earth as “formless and empty”? Did something happen between verse 1 and verse 2, wherein the earth became “waste and wild”? The Hebrew Bible that Jesus read and memorized is a strange, wonderful, mysterious, and even dangerous Text. Read with care. Read with caution. Read with humility. Read with wise friends.

Next, we will look at the next word in our Hebrew “couplet”: BOHU.