This is a message that has been revealed to me from the word of God regarding the account of the creation in Genesis.


Notice in:

Genesis 1:1-2

1 In the beginning G-d created the heavens and the Earth.

2 The Earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of G-d was hovering over the face of the waters.

It was brought to my attention some time ago, that the original Hebrew word "hayah" had been translated to "was" (after "Earth" in v.2). Strong's indicates that "hayah" means "to become" or "to come to pass". the 2nd "was" after "God", had no original Hebrew and was added for clarity.

For a moment, check out Isaiah 45:18

18 For thus says the LORD, Who created the heavens, Who is God, Who formed the earth and made it, Who has established it, Who did not create it in vain, Who formed it to be inhabited: "I am the LORD, and there is no other.

I wish to draw attention first, to the translated word, "vain". the original Hebrew word is "tohuw", described in Strong's as, "empty, formless and chaos". the original Hebrew word "kuwn", translated "established", is described by Strong's as, "to be set up, stable, having order".

So here we plainly see that God created the heavens and The Earth, not formless and in chaos, but set them up with stability, structure and in order. We can now be so bold at this point to say that God created the heavens and the Earth in "perfection", as he created the first humans we have come to know as Adam and Eve. Here it seems necessary to point out that throughout the Bible, we are taught that God doesn't create things in a state of imperfection - when things become "imperfect", there is always another being at work, making this happen (ie: man, satan, fallen angels, etc...).

So, in going back to Genesis with this precept, we can now better understand the first two verses of the Bible. In verse 2, the original Hebrew for "without form" is the same word, "tohuw" found in Isaiah 45:18. the original Hebrew for "void" is "bohuw", meaning "empty waste" or "emptiness". If the original creation was being described in verse 2, the statements in Genesis and Isaiah would be contradictory, which is not an applicable possibility for the word of God.

Now having the knowledge that the word "was", or "hayah" in verse 2 means "to become", the seeming contradiction becomes harmonious. so, a better explanatory translation would have been:

1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth in perfection.

2 The earth had become without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God hovered over the face of the waters.

The next question one might ask is, "how long did it take for the earth to become "tohew" & "bohew" (formless & void), and why or how did this happen?" Well, here is a conundrum that I can only speculate about the possibilities:

Why/How? We are told that a great war broke out in heaven. We know the kind of devastation that our human race can inflict, and often has inflicted on our planet through our wars. Since the spiritual world seems to often interact with the physical world, imagine the kind of impact a war of this nature could have on the entire creation. Could a war of this magnitude render the physical creation formless and void?

How long? What is time to the creator, God? We are given examples in the Bible that one day to God is as 1000 to man. This could be literal, or could be given to give us a rough idea of the scope of how much bigger God is than time itself. Perhaps it was the war in heaven itself that somehow began the process of some different kind of "Big Bang Theory", sending random particles of matter outward from a single point of origin, as many scientists suggest. Recent scientific discoveries reveal there are some stars out there that seem to be older than what they have estimated the age of the universe to be! Perhaps these stars were in place before that great war?

Note: It would be interesting if the number of stars that appeared older than the universe was two thirds larger than the number of stars that appear to be expanding (... hummm), and how about the dinosaurs and early humanoids? could all of this not have happened perhaps during the millions of years between the time the great war broke out and the time that God said, "Let there be light" in verse 3? And perhaps it wasn't until then that He decided to create man in the image of God, or "Elohiym".

At this point in time it seems we can't know for sure, but after doing a bit of word research, we can plainly see that some kind of time went by between Genesis verse 1 and verse 2, and that the earth in verse 1 is not described the same in verse 2.

Understanding this, we had might as well call what happens onward from verse 3, "The Re-creation", instead of lumping this into what most Bible students call the "Creation".

Just something to ponder.


Mr. Bernard Baruch Carman, "RTTM"

The Sabbatarian Network
Used with permission.