This page was migrated in July 2022 from my older website, biblicalambiguities.net.
31 July 2022 *Navigate 'up' to the Genesis index: index-genesis.
In the Revised Version, Genesis 1:2 reads:
And the earth was waste and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep: and the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
The English waste and void translates the Hebrew tohu wa-bohu, where the wa is just Hebrew for "and." So what are these terms tohu and bohu?
Bohu is tricky, because it appears only here and in two other places in the entire Bible. In all three, it is used as a synonym of tohu, and there is not enough information to say what difference in shades of meaning there might be between it and tohu. Jeremiah describes a destroyed world, hyperbolically, as tohu and bohu, that is, in the same unliveable state as the pre-creation situation (4:23). Isaiah (34:11) has a similar usage.
With tohu, we have a little more room to work out the general meaning of the word. Things described as tohu include a wilderness hostile to habitation, worthless idols, destruction, a destroyed city, a futile search or effort, and so on.
So tohu and bohu describe the cosmos in its state of primeval chaos here, prior to God's creative work that makes it an orderly and inhabitable place, with the plants, and animals, and heavenly bodies all playing their proper roles.
That's the gist.
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