Darwin versus God in Genesis One verse Two

"When God made the Earth He hung it upon nothing" Job 26-7. 2100-1700 BC

"It is He that sitteth upon the circle of the Earth" Isaiah 40-21. 739-701 BC

So how did Job and Isaiah know that the Earth was round and suspended space? Well, God made it and He spoke the truth to His people, which we can read in passges in the Holy Bible today. We can trust what the Bible says implicitly.

This image and the images in the Thoughts for the Day page are a spectacular example of God's Creation. "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth". Genesis 1.1

Was the the flight of Apollo 8 to the moon over Christmas 1968, resulting in the epic image of Earthrise - the most famous camera shot in history - just a coincidence? No way. It was ordained. The reading of Genesis 1 by Frank Borman, James Lovell and Bill Anders was memorable.The greatest mission!

~

The above is excerpted from Spaceport with thanks to Tim Furniss. On to verse two!!!

Genesis One verse Two: The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.

So in verse one God created matter and time and the entire Universe, including the heavens and the Earth. However now He is going to get more specific and give a narrative about the order of events concerning that most interesting to the inhabitants of the Earth. Genesis isn't going to discuss the rings of Saturn or novas or background radiation or red shift.

Might I make an observation? The Bible may agree with science, but it is not a science book. It is a message from God to man. Much of it, such as Genesis, is an historical narrative. So I am going to present this book as being primarily an historical account rather than a textbook on astrophysics. On the other hand, God made science and understands it so the Bible is not going to contradict the very laws of nature God created.

Our first glance tells us that there is not yet any light but rather darkness. There is water. The Earth was still unformed. We are at the very beginning of the planet Earth and as yet God has apparently created no stars or the Sun. It seems that God's first focus is upon the Earth rather than the Universe as a whole.

This is in direct opposition to the evolutionist/naturalistic point of view that there was a big bang and clouds of dust formed stars and planets and long after this the Earth was a piece of stuff that was caught up in the gravitational pull of the Sun and eventually morphed into our planet.

Word for word in the Hebrew...DBL is the Dictionary of Bible Languages with Semantic Domains:Hebrew. Feel free to skip down to the next paragraph but you may wish to look back at the actual wording.

וְהָאָ֗רֶץ

וְ

הַ

2504

אֶרֶץ: world; land ... | DBL Hebrew

noun, common, singular, absolute

הָיְתָ֥ה

3560

היה: be; been ... | DBL Hebrew

verb, qal, perfect, third person, feminine, singular

תֹ֨הוּ֙

20

תֹּהוּ: formlessness; wasteland ... | DBL Hebrew

noun, common, singular, absolute

NASB Dictionary entry = 8414. תֹּהוּ tohu (1062c); from an unused word; formlessness, confusion, unreality, emptiness:— chaos(1), confusion(1), desolation(1), emptiness(1), empty space(1), formless(2), futile(2), futile things(1), meaningless(2), meaningless arguments(1), nothing(2), waste(3), waste place(2).

וָבֹ֔הוּ

וְ

3

בֹּהוּ: emptiness | DBL Hebrew

noun, common, singular, absolute

NASB Dictionary entry = 922. בֹּהוּ bohu (96a); from an unused word; emptiness:— emptiness(1), void(2).

וְחֹ֖שֶׁךְ

וְ

80

חֹשֶׁךְ: darkness; blackness | DBL Hebrew

noun, common, singular, absolute

פְּנֵ֣י

2127

פָּנֶה: face; mouth ... | DBL Hebrew

noun, common, masculine, plural, construct

תְה֑וֹם

36

תְּהוֹם: the deep; deep springs | DBL Hebrew

noun, common, singular, absolute

r

וְר֣וּחַ

וְ

378

רוּחַ: Spirit; spirit ... | DBL Hebrew

noun, common, singular, construct

אֱלֹהִ֔ים

2601

אֱלֹהִים: God; idol ... | DBL Hebrew

noun, common, masculine, plural, absolute

מְרַחֶ֖פֶת

3

רחף: tremble; hover | DBL Hebrew

verb, piel, participle, feminine, singular, absolute

פְּנֵ֥י

2127

פָּנֶה: face; mouth ... | DBL Hebrew

noun, common, masculine, plural, construct

הַמָּֽיִם

הַ

584

מַיִם: water; rain ... | DBL Hebrew

noun, common, masculine, plural, absolute

Why would I put the Hebrew word-for-word for Genesis 1:2? Because some have taken Tohu and Bohu (written together as tohuwabohu or tohu a bohu) and used those two words to assert that God formed a planet and then destroyed it. They then construct a scenario in which dinosaurs lived during this time, that Satan was thrown down to the earth at this time, and that perhaps millions and billions of years passed in the space between words in this verse! The claim there is a GAP between verse one and verse three somewhere in verse two in which God has hidden billions of years of evolution and suffering and the movement of light and so on. There are many variations to Gap hypotheses and not worth looking into unless one of you wishes to strongly defend it.

Logically, since God has not even created light yet, no way was there life on a planet that was then blown up and started again. Also, if God had rendered a planet formless and void then there would be no fossils and rock layering, etc, correct?

Bohu is only found in conjunction with tohu, thereby constituting a phrase that cannot be divided without losing meaning. Earlier in the blog I excerpted a bit of Spaceport, in which Tim Furniss quotes from Isaiah 26:7. Now here is what the Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament says about it:

תֹּהוּ (tōhû). Confusion, the empty place (Job 26:7; ASV “empty space”; RSV “the void”), nothing, nought, vain, vanity, waste, wilderness, without form. (ASV similar; RSV renders “chaos” in Isa 24:10; 45:18f.). Since the word has no certain cognates in other languages, its meaning must be determined solely from its ot contexts. It refers to a desert wasteland in Deut 32:10; Job 6:18 (see ASV, RSV); 12:24b = Ps 107:40b; to a destroyed city in Isa 24:10 (see also 34:11); to moral and spiritual emptiness or confusion in I Sam 12:21 (twice) and several times in Isa (29:21; 41:29; 44:9; 45:19; 59:4); and to nothingness or unreality in Isa 40:17, 23; 49:4 (see also the Heb. text of Sir 41:10). In most (if not all) of these cases, tōhû has a negative or pejorative sense.

Two passages in particular call for more extended comment. The first is Job 26:7: “(God) stretches out the north over tōhû; he hangs the earth upon nothing.” The context of chap. 26 stresses not only the omnipotence and sovereignty of God in creation and providence but also the ease with which he does whatever he pleases. While it would be improper for us to rigidly impose our own contingent, twentieth-century cosmology on this chapter and insist on interpreting it literally throughout (see, e.g., the obvious metaphor in verse 11), it is nonetheless striking that 26:7 pictures the then-known world as suspended in space. In so doing, it anticipates (at the very least!) future scientific discovery. (emphasis mine)

The other passage requiring discussion is, of course, Gen 1:2a: “The earth was tōhû wābōhû.” The meaning of bōhû itself is uncertain (it appears elsewhere only in Isa 34:11 and Jer 4:23, both times in context with tōhû), although it apparently signifies “emptiness” (cf. the possible Arabic cognate bahiya “was empty”). Therefore, the phrase tōhû wābōhû in Gen 1:2a has been variously understood as a hendiadys meaning “a formless waste” (E. A. Speiser, Genesis, p. 5), “absolutely nothing whatever” (H. Renckens, Israel’s Concept of the Beginning, p. 84), “void and vacancy” (H. E. Ryle, The Book of Genesis, p. 4–though without complete conviction). But the traditional rendering, “without form and void” (or “unformed and unfilled,” to preserve something of the euphony of the Hebrew phrase), is ably defended by W. H. Griffith Thomas in Genesis—A Devotional Commentary, p. 29, where he writes that “the adjectives ‘formless’ and ‘empty’ seem to be the key to the literary structure of the chapter. The record of the first three days refers to the heaven and earth receiving their ‘form,’ and the record of the last three days to the filling-up of their ‘emptiness.’ ” See further R. Youngblood in JETS 16:219–21.

The “gap” or “interval” theory, which posits a millennia-long period of time implied by or in Gen 1:2 and which usually translates 1:2a by the less likely “but the earth became without form and void,” has come into increasing disfavor in recent years. Its main exegetical support, Isa 45:18, reads “(God) did not create (the earth) tōhû,” and has been interpreted to mean that therefore an original creation (described briefly in Gen 1:1) was destroyed; that the geologic ages ensued (during the “gap”); and that the new creation portrayed in Gen 1:3ff. was built on the wreckage of the old. But Isa 45:18, after the phrase quoted, goes on to say that God “formed (the earth) to be inhabited,” thereby assuring the reader that tōhû was not his ultimate purpose in creation.

(For extended critiques of the “gap” theory, see especially O. T. Allis, God Spake by Moses, pp. 153–159; B. Ramm, The Christian View of Science and Scripture, pp. 195–210).

The word tōhû in Gen 1:2, likewise, refers not to the result of a supposed catastrophe (for which there is no clear biblical evidence) but to the formlessness of the earth before God’s creative hand began the majestic acts described in the following verses. As Jer 4:23 indicates, the earth always has the potential of returning to tōhû wābōhû if God decides to judge it.

It is my fond hope that no one takes the Gap Hypothesis seriously anymore, but if they do, they have some serious exegetical hurdles to cross over to get to where they wish to go.

Genesis 1:2 is part of a historical revelation by God, allowing material and temporal beings an opportunity to grasp to some degree the order and manner by which God created. Taken as historical narrative rather than myth, I believe we will see that God's explanation for the Universe makes much more sense than any Big Bang hypothesis. God cannot lie and this is His first hand eyewitness account of the creation of all things.

So at the end of verse two we see that God is poised over the waters preparing for action. What that action is will begin to be expressed in verse three, coming to a blog near you soon!