In the beginning God created everything-the heavens and the earth. Then the earth is described as void and waste, and (not as succeeding, but accompanying it) darkness upon the face of the deep, contemporaneously with which the Spirit of God broods upon the face of the waters. All this is an added account. The real and only force of the 1" and" is another fact; not at all as if it implied that the first and second verses spoke of the same time, any more than they decide the question of the length of the interval. The phraseology employed perfectly agrees with and confirms the analogy of revelation, that the first verse speaks of an original condition which God was pleased to bring into being; the second, of a desolation afterward brought in; but how long the first lasted, what changes may have intervened, when or by what means the ruin came to pass, is not the subject-matter of the inspired record, but open to the ways and means of human research, if indeed man has sufficient facts on which to ground a sure conclusion. It is false that scripture does not leave room for his investigation.
We saw at the close of verse 2 the introduction of the Spirit of God on the scene. " The Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." He appears most consistently and in season, when man's earth is about to be brought before 'us. In the previous description, which had not to do with man, there was silence about the Spirit of God; but, as the divine wisdom is shown in Prov. 8 to rejoice in the habitable parts of the earth, so the Spirit of God is always brought before us as the immediate agent in the Deity whenever man is to be introduced. Hence, therefore, as closing all the previous state of things, where man was not spoken of, preparing the way for the Adamic earth, the Spirit of God is seen brooding upon the face of the waters.
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The record declares that God created not a " formless earth," but " the heavens " (where at no time do we hear of disorder) " and the earth." But even as to " the earth," which was to be a scene of change, we are expressly told by an authority no less inspired, and therefore of equal authority with Moses, that such disorder was not the original state. " For thus saith the Lord that created the heavens; He is God; that formed the earth and made it; He established it, He created it not a waste, He formed it to be inhabited" (Isaiah 45:18
). The Revised V. is purposely cited, as confessedly the most correct reflection of the prophet. Here is therefore the surest warrant to separate verse 2 from verse 1 (save of course that it is a subsequent fact), severed, it may be, by a succession of geologic ages, and characterized by a catastrophe, at least as far as regards the earth. Indeed it would be strange to hear of an ordered heavens along with a "formless earth " as the first-fruits of God's creative activity. But we are not told of any such anomaly. The universe, fresh from God's will and power, consisted of " the heavens and the earth." Silence is kept as to its condition then and up to the cataclysm of verse 2; and most suitably, unless God's purpose in the Bible were altogether different from that moral end which pervades it from first to last. What had the history of those preliminary physical changes to do with His people and their relations to Himself? But it ought not to be doubted that each state which God made was a system per-. feet for its aim. Yet it was not materials only, but heaven and earth.
And the earth was [or became] waste* and empty, and darkness [was] upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God [was] brooding upon the face of the waters " (ver. 2).
(* "Without form" is hardly exact, for all matter must have form, but desolate or disordered it may be made subsequently. "To become " (not " be") is the force of the verb in some twenty places in this chapter.)
The well-known and flexible particle of connection in the Hebrew text introduces the verse. Its meaning, usually and simply copulative, is often modified, as almost all words in every language must he, by contextual considerations. Hence the learned Dathe, in 1781, renders it here " posthaec vero," expressly to distinguish the state of thing in ver. 2 from that referred to in ver. 1, and sends us to such instances asNumbers 5:23
; Deuteronomy 1:19
. Now there is no doubt that the Hebrew conjunction admits of an interval as often as facts demand it; but there is no need of departing from its primary force, " clad " (though our conjunction is not so pliant); or it may readily have a somewhat adversative force as we see in the 70. The true determination lies in what follows. For the usage of the past verb when thus employed is to express a state subsequent to and not connected with what goes before, but previous to what follows. Hebrew idiom does not use that verb simply as a copula, as may be seen twice in this verse, and almost everywhere; or it puts the verb before the noun. The right conclusion therefore is that Moses was led to indicate the desolation into which the earth was thrown at some epoch not made known, after creation, but prior to the " days " in which it was made the habitation for Adam and the race.
Kelly
BTP
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