God created the earth and the earth was without form

BeyondET

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Jeremiah 4 is the account in 2 chronicles, army on the mountain

2 chronicles 13

1In the eighteenth year of Jeroboam’s reign, Abijah became king of Judah, 2and he reigned in Jerusalem three years. His mother’s name was Micaiah daughter of Uriel; she was from Gibeah. And there was war between Abijah and Jeroboam.

3Abijah went into battle with an army of 400,000 chosen men, while Jeroboam drew up in formation against him with 800,000 chosen and mighty men of valor.

4Then Abijah stood on Mount Zemaraim in the hill country of Ephraim and said, “Hear me, O Jeroboam and all Israel!

the slain chosen men, birds fled of fighting.

17Then Abijah and his people struck them with a mighty blow, and 500,000 chosen men of Israel fell slain.
 
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FreeGrace2

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the mountains quaking hills swaying figurative of a huge army moving across the land and sky’s darkened by smoke from burning city scourged earth/land.
Your analogy pretty much is saying God found earth Israel in a condition in the beginning of genesis. Earth was formless not matter itself
No, I didn't say that. Or mean that. I am pointing out that Israel had become a wasteland. Not "formless".

Same word, different passage. But always means the same.
 
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BeyondET

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No, I didn't say that. Or mean that. I am pointing out that Israel had become a wasteland. Not "formless".

Same word, different passage. But always means the same.

Ok I noticed you bolded mountains and hills in post 78# thought you where pointing to it as something to do with genesis 1.

the verse right before are figurative also formless and void and way before the battle , God warns of it 2 cron 7, the temple formless heap of rubble and the land void of Israel

20then I will uproot Israel from the soil I have given them, and I will banish from My presence this temple I have sanctified for My Name. I will make it an object of scorn and ridicule among all the peoples.

21And when this temple has become a heap of rubble, all who pass by it will be appalled and say, ‘Why has the LORD done such a thing to this land and to this temple?’

all you pass by will see it Void and Formless
 
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ViaCrucis

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Just a note: the other textual version, the Septuagint, uses "the earth was not visible and was not prepared".

Meaning, the dry land was still under the waters.

---

I am not an YEC.

Right, because that's the description of the earth at the beginning--there was only the "great deep". The creation of the heavens and the earth described in Genesis 1 isn't the creation of the universe ex nihilo, because when God begins His creative work in Genesis 1, there is already the formless wasteland of earth under the deep abyss of the primordial ocean. The idea of a formless world and deep abyss of water are tropes that come from creation myths in the surrounding cultures of the Ancient Near East, such as the Enuma Elish. What makes Genesis unique is that the primordial ocean is not itself personal or divine, but is simply a great deep of water. God brings order and arrangement to the world.

Which isn't to say that Genesis chapter 1 doesn't contradict creation ex nihilo, only that Genesis chapter 1 doesn't describe a creation ex nihilo, but rather presents a creation ex materia--God taking what is already there and fashioning it into shape.

A dogmatically literal reading of Genesis chapter 1 would point to creation ex materia, not creation ex nihilo.

-CryptoLutheran
 
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ViaCrucis

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Gen 1:2 says God created the earth tohu.

I'm isolating this in your post because I want to address this specifically.

Genesis 1:2 doesn't say God created the earth formless, but that the earth was, at the beginning when God created heaven and earth, formless. It was formless until God began His creative work.

The first act of creation in Genesis ch. 1 is God saying "let there be light".

-CryptoLutheran
 
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FreeGrace2

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Ok I noticed you bolded mountains and hills in post 78# thought you where pointing to it as something to do with genesis 1.

the verse right before are figurative also formless and void and way before the battle , God warns of it 2 cron 7, the temple formless heap of rubble and the land void of Israel
So, you have figured out that Jer 4:23 is "figurative" but Gen 1:2 is literal??
 
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FreeGrace2

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Right, because that's the description of the earth at the beginning--there was only the "great deep".
No, Moses was quite clear. "In the beginning God created the heavens and EARTH.

The earth isn't "only the great deep". And you are missing the correct wording of v.2: But the earth BECAME an uninhabitable wasteland. "tohu wabohu".

The creation of the heavens and the earth described in Genesis 1 isn't the creation of the universe ex nihilo, because when God begins His creative work in Genesis 1, there is already the formless wasteland of earth under the deep abyss of the primordial ocean.
Could you please provide your evidence for this?

The idea of a formless world and deep abyss of water are tropes that come from creation myths in the surrounding cultures of the Ancient Near East, such as the Enuma Elish. What makes Genesis unique is that the primordial ocean is not itself personal or divine, but is simply a great deep of water. God brings order and arrangement to the world.
So do you believe that Moses was influenced by tropes and creation myths.
 
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FreeGrace2

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A dogmatically literal reading of Genesis chapter 1 would point to creation ex materia, not creation ex nihilo.
Have you read Psa 33:8,9?

8 Let all the earth fear the LORD; let all the people of the world revere him.
9 For he spoke, and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood firm.

Creation ex nihilio.
 
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FreeGrace2

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I'm isolating this in your post because I want to address this specifically.

Genesis 1:2 doesn't say God created the earth formless, but that the earth was, at the beginning when God created heaven and earth, formless. It was formless until God began His creative work.
Let's take both verses together to really see what Moses wrote:

In the beginning God CREATED the heavens and earth, and the earth WAS without form and void.

Yes, the Bible DOES say (in this incorrect rendering) that the earth was created tohu.

And Jer 45:18 says God did not create the earth tohu.
 
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BeyondET

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So, you have figured out that Jer 4:23 is "figurative" but Gen 1:2 is literal??

Both accounts where those words are use, I don’t believe they connect other than in a figurative form in Jeremiah of the ruined temple and captive people.

In the beginning Earth wasn’t a planet and void of a atmosphere to support life yet waters literally hydrogen and oxygen was in form.
 
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FreeGrace2

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FreeGrace2 said:
So, you have figured out that Jer 4:23 is "figurative" but Gen 1:2 is literal??
Both accounts where those words are use, I don’t believe they connect other than in a figurative form in Jeremiah of the ruined temple and captive people.
So, yes, you take one passage literal and the other figurative. Figures.

In the beginning Earth wasn’t a planet and void of a atmosphere to support life yet waters literally hydrogen and oxygen was in form.
What an imagination! How do you get that "Earth wasn't a planet"? Gen 1:1 SAYS God created earth. So what did He create, if not a planet?

Why do you insist on denying that earth is a planet? Of course it is.

And God created earth as a round sphere. What else could Earth be?

All you are doing is trying to dodge the problem of how matter can have no form.

All matter has form, regardless of how irregular, etc.

So "without form" is a failed translation. Tohu is used in other verses and translated as a wasteland, waste place, desolate wilderness, etc.

What God did NOT do was create a formless earth. That is impossible.

I am really amazed at the attempts to fantasize what Moses "must have meant" when he penned v.1.

God created earth but the earth became a wasteland. That is a totally legit transation when those words are compared with how they are translated in other verses.
 
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BeyondET

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So, yes, you take one passage literal and the other figurative. Figures.


What an imagination! How do you get that "Earth wasn't a planet"? Gen 1:1 SAYS God created earth. So what did He create, if not a planet?

Why do you insist on denying that earth is a planet? Of course it is.

And God created earth as a round sphere. What else could Earth be?

All you are doing is trying to dodge the problem of how matter can have no form.

All matter has form, regardless of how irregular, etc.

So "without form" is a failed translation. Tohu is used in other verses and translated as a wasteland, waste place, desolate wilderness, etc.

What God did NOT do was create a formless earth. That is impossible.

I am really amazed at the attempts to fantasize what Moses "must have meant" when he penned v.1.

God created earth but the earth became a wasteland. That is a totally legit transation when those words are compared with how they are translated in other verses.
Rather I think one is literal or the other figurative isn’t the point they don’t connect other than figurative

earth came from the waters before they got divided a expanse in between with lights and two great lights and stars also waters below dry land earth. But earth was a ball of a wasteland yea that is a imagination unless you mean the no vegetation went the dry land was called earth. Let the formless land appear from the waters dry, void of life.

they both can be figurative and literal in away,
 
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HARK!

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MOD HAT ON

241656_73a4b943f6c592cdf71a88c50d5eb4d8.jpg


MOD HAT OFF
 
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FreeGrace2

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Rather I think one is literal or the other figurative isn’t the point they don’t connect other than figurative
\
If there is one of each, then they can't "connect" in any way.

The point is that both verses uses the same 2 words. They mean the same thing in both verses.

One can claim anything they want about whether a verse is figurative or literal. But the meanings are the same.

earth came from the waters before they got divided a expanse in between with lights and two great lights and stars also waters below dry land earth.
Regardless, no human was there to record it, and the traditional translation says God created the earth formless. Which is impossible.

Even water has form. It takes the form of whatever contains it. In space, water forms a perfect sphere. One cannot get around that fact.

But earth was a ball of a wasteland yea that is a imagination unless you mean the no vegetation went the dry land was called earth.
Why "an imagination" when the very Hebrew word is translated as wasteleand in many other verses? It would take an imagination to assume/presume that "tohu" must mean something else in Gen 1:2.

Let the formless land appear from the waters dry, void of life.
Again, there is no such thing as a "formless land". If it can appear, then it surely HAS FORM. One cannot get around that.

they both can be figurative and literal in away,
Imagination. Just accept that the SAME WORD in each verse means the SAME THING in each verse.
 
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BeyondET

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If there is one of each, then they can't "connect" in any way.

The point is that both verses uses the same 2 words. They mean the same thing in both verses.

One can claim anything they want about whether a verse is figurative or literal. But the meanings are the same.


Regardless, no human was there to record it, and the traditional translation says God created the earth formless. Which is impossible.

Even water has form. It takes the form of whatever contains it. In space, water forms a perfect sphere. One cannot get around that fact.


Why "an imagination" when the very Hebrew word is translated as wasteleand in many other verses? It would take an imagination to assume/presume that "tohu" must mean something else in Gen 1:2.


Again, there is no such thing as a "formless land". If it can appear, then it surely HAS FORM. One cannot get around that.


Imagination. Just accept that the SAME WORD in each verse means the SAME THING in each verse.

You jump from Hebrew to Jeremiah to Genesis and tohu remains waste tohu waste, Strong's Hebrew: 8414. תֹּ֫הוּ (tohu) -- formlessness, confusion, unreality, emptiness

tohu has a few meanings but you choose waste because it fits your idea. If your waste tohu is the same in genesis show me a translation that uses waste in genesis 1:2 you can’t. because it’s not meant to be waste in genesis.

You can think I’m imagining maybe it is best you do, because you can’t get the universe, galaxies, solar systems, suns, black holes, nebulas, and many other things can’t be placed down in words human mind can fully comprehend on how everything was created and is still being created. I have no idea how God creates suns planets etc. neither does any body else.

It’s vast the explanation is in simple form in the Bible, in the beginning the earth was formless and void God hovering over waters.

Water in space is either ice crystals or it’s in its elemental state hydrogen oxygen and yea there is oxygen atoms in space. It’s too cold in space to form H2O liquid water
 
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BeyondET

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Haven’t found any use waste in genesis.

ב וְהָאָרֶץ, הָיְתָה תֹהוּ וָבֹהוּ, וְחֹשֶׁךְ, עַל-פְּנֵי תְהוֹם; וְרוּחַ אֱלֹהִים, מְרַחֶפֶת עַל-פְּנֵי הַמָּיִם. 2

Now the earth was unformed and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the spirit of God hovered over the face of the waters.
 
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FreeGrace2

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You jump from Hebrew to Jeremiah to Genesis and tohu remains waste tohu waste, Strong's Hebrew: 8414. תֹּ֫הוּ (tohu) -- formlessness, confusion, unreality, emptiness
First, there is no "jump" from Hebrew to ANY OT book. They were all written in Hebrew.

Second. Go to biblehub.com and check out all the 28 translations of Isa 45:18 and Jer 4:23. There are many scholars who translated "tohu" as waste/waste place/wasteland.

tohu has a few meanings but you choose waste because it fits your idea.
There are clear reasons for choosing "waste" in Gen 1:2. The word before "earth" is a form of "hayah", which is the verb of existence. The EXACT same form of that word is translated as "became/become" in nearly 60% of ALL uses in the OT, of which it occurs 111 times.

As for "was", that translation only occurs 6% of the time.

Third, The Septuagint translates the conjunction at the beginning of v.2 as "but" rather than "and". It is noteworthy that Hebrew doesn't have "and" and "but". Yet, the Hebrew Scholars chose "but" for the meaning of the conjunction, and they would understand the Hebrew FAR BETTER than anyone today.

Fourth, Heb 11:3 includes "katartizo". By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.

The bolded word is also translated as "framed".

However, the Greek is 'katartizo' and us used elsewhere for "restore", "mend", "repair", "adjust to fit". In fact, it is used just that way in the gospels of the disciples mending their nets.

And there is Gal 6:1 - Brothers and sisters, if someone is caught in a sin, you who live by the Spirit should restore that person gently. But watch yourselves, or you also may be tempted.

Yes, the bolded word "restore" is 'katartizo'.

So, these are solid reasons for understanding "tohu" as wasteland. The earth became something it wasn't created as.

If your waste tohu is the same in genesis show me a translation that uses waste in genesis 1:2 you can’t. because it’s not meant to be waste in genesis.
I can't explain why translators did what they did. And I don't care. What I KNOW is that "tohu" doesn't have vastly different meanings, as you seem to want to believe.

I CAN show you how "tohu" IS translated as "wasteland" in other translations.

My only guess is that because the translators only had Gen 1:1 as "context", they couldn't justify translating "became a wasteland", since there was no previous explanation.

But, here is a point: God obviously didn't want to provide the details. And that is enough.

You can think I’m imagining maybe it is best you do, because you can’t get the universe, galaxies, solar systems, suns, black holes, nebulas, and many other things can’t be placed down in words human mind can fully comprehend on how everything was created and is still being created.

Don't patronize me. Scientists have clearly explained quite a bit of the universe. Yes, there are some things they don't but so what.

I have no idea how God creates suns planets etc. neither does any body else.
I would like to introduce you to Isa 33:8,9
8 Let all the earth fear the LORD; let all the people of the world revere him.
9 For he spoke, and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood firm.

This is the explanation for God's creating. He spoke the universe into being.

However, comparing the key words in Gen 1:2 to HOW THEY ARE TRANSLATED in all the other passages where they occur, it is clear that something happened so that the earth BECAME a wasteland.

It’s vast the explanation is in simple form in the Bible, in the beginning the earth was formless and void God hovering over waters.
No, ALL matter has form. You are ignoring or rejecting that. Matter cannot be formless.

Just as God cannot create a square circle. Do you believe that God can sin, or be contradictory? I don't.

ALL matter has form, whether highly irregular or the common shapes/forms.

Water in space is either ice crystals or it’s in its elemental state hydrogen oxygen and yea there is oxygen atoms in space. It’s too cold in space to form H2O liquid water
Then how come the earth was made out of water?

And, explain these verses, if water can't exist in current form in space:

Gen 1:6-10
And God said, “Let there be a vault between the waters to separate water from water.” So God made the vault and separated the water under the vault from the water above it. And it was so. God called the vault “sky.” And there was evening, and there was morning —the second day.
And God said, “Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear.” And it was so. God called the dry ground “land,” and the gathered waters he called “seas.” And God saw that it was good.
 
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FreeGrace2

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Haven’t found any use waste in genesis.
That is not the point. Go to bible hub.com and type in Gen 1:2, then click the "interlinear" and then click on "tohu", and then scroll down the screen to see how that word is translated in all the other occurrences.

You will see "waste".

ב וְהָאָרֶץ, הָיְתָה תֹהוּ וָבֹהוּ, וְחֹשֶׁךְ, עַל-פְּנֵי תְהוֹם; וְרוּחַ אֱלֹהִים, מְרַחֶפֶת עַל-פְּנֵי הַמָּיִם.
See? There it is!

Now (BUT) the earth was (BECAME) unformed and void (AN UNINHABITABLE WASTELAND), and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the spirit of God hovered over the face of the waters.
I corrected the translation, using how the key words are translated elsewhere.

i've given you guidance so you can see for yourself that "tohu" IS translated as "wasteland" in the other places.

What the earth NEVER WAS was "without form". pitiful translation. Not even possible.

ALL matter has form.

Can't have "unformed" matter. Doesn't exist.

When Moses penned Genesis, and he wrote "earth" he was using the word as ALL humans at his time would understand the word. No scientific mumbo jumbo.

The earth is a spherical globe. That has form.

Keep in mind God spoke the universe into being. Psa 33:9
 
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