And the earth was without form, and void
It was not in the form it now is, otherwise it must have a form,
as all matter has; it was a fluid matter, the watery parts were
not separated from the earthy ones; it was not put into the form
of a terraqueous globe it is now, the sea apart, and the earth by
itself, but were mixed and blended together; it was, as both the
Targums of Jonathan and Jerusalem paraphrase it, a waste and
desert, empty and destitute of both men and beasts; and it may be
added, of fishes and fowls, and also of trees, herbs, and plants.
It was, as Ovid F11 calls it, a chaos and an indigested
mass of matter; and Hesiod F12 makes a chaos first to
exist, and then the wide extended earth, and so Orpheus
F13, and others; and this is agreeably
to the notion of various nations. The Chinese make a chaos to be
the beginning of all things, out of which the immaterial being
(God) made all things that consist of matter, which they
distinguish into parts they call Yin and Yang, the one signifying
hidden or imperfect, the other open or perfect F14: and
so the Egyptians, according to Diodorus Siculus {o}, whose
opinion he is supposed to give, thought the system of the
universe had but one form; the heaven and earth, and the nature
of them, being mixed and blended together, until by degrees they
separated and obtained the form they now have: and the
Phoenicians, as Sanchoniatho F16 relates, supposed the
principle of the universe to be a dark and windy air, or the
blast of a dark air, and a turbid chaos surrounded with darkness,
as follows;
and darkness was upon the face of the deep:
the whole fluid mass of earth and water mixed together. This
abyss is explained by waters in the next clause, which seem to be
uppermost; and this was all a dark turbid chaos, as before
expressed, without any light or motion, till an agitation was
made by the Spirit, as is next observed:
and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the
waters,
which covered the earth, ( Psalms 104:6
) the earthy particles being heaviest sunk lower, and the waters
being lighter rose up above the others: hence Thales F17 the
philosopher makes water to be the beginning of all things, as do
the Indian Brahmans F18: and Aristotle F19
himself owns that this was the most ancient opinion concerning
the origin of the universe, and observes, that it was not only
the opinion of Thales, but of those that were the most remote
from the then present generation in which he lived, and of those
that first wrote on divine things; and it is frequent in Hesiod
and Homer to make Oceanus, or the ocean, with Tethys, to be the
parents of generation: and so the Scriptures represent the
original earth as standing out of the water, and consisting of
it, ( 2 Peter
3:5 ) and upon the surface of these waters, before they were
drained off the earth, "the Spirit of God moved"; which is to be
understood not of a wind, as Onkelos, Aben Ezra, and many Jewish
writers, as well as Christians, interpret it; since the air,
which the wind is a motion of, was not made until the second day.
The Targums of Jonathan and Jerusalem call it the spirit of
mercies; and by it is meant the Spirit of the Messiah, as many
Jewish writers F20 call him; that is, the third Person
in the blessed Trinity, who was concerned in the creation of all
things, as in the garnishing of the heavens, so in bringing the
confused matter of the earth and water into form and order; see (
Job 26:13 ) (
Psalms
104:30 ) ( Psalms 33:6 ) . This
same Spirit "moved" or brooded F21 upon the face of the waters,
to impregnate them, as an hen upon eggs to hatch them, so he to
separate the parts which were mixed together, and give them a
quickening virtue to produce living creatures in them. This sense
and idea of the word are finely expressed by our poet F23. Some
traces of this appear in the (nouv) or mind of Anaxagoras, which when all things
were mixed together came and set them in order F24; and
the "mens" of Thales he calls God, which formed all things out of
water F25; and the "spiritus intus alit" of
Virgil; and with this agrees what Hermes says, that there was an
infinite darkness in the abyss or deep, and water, and a small
intelligent spirit, endued with a divine power, were in the chaos
F26: and perhaps from hence is the
mundane egg, or egg of Orpheus F1: or the firstborn or first
laid egg, out of which all things were formed; and which he
borrowed from the Egyptians and Phoenicians, and they perhaps
from the Jews, and which was reckoned by them a resemblance of
the world. The Egyptians had a deity they called Cneph, out of
whose mouth went forth an egg, which they interpreted of the
world F2: and the Zophasemin of the
Phoenicians, which were heavenly birds, were, according to
Sanchoniatho F3, of the form of an egg; and in the
rites of Bacchus they worshipped an egg, as being an image of the
world, as Macrobius
(Thomas Chamlers
(1780-1847) in 1814 was the first to purpose that there is a gap
between verse 1 and 2. Into this gap he places a pre-Adamic age,
about which the scriptures say nothing. Some great catastrophe
took place, which left the earth "without form and void" or
ruined, in which state it remained for as many years as the
geologist required. F7 This speculation has been
popularised by the 1917 Scofield Reference Bible. However, the
numerous rock layers that are the supposed proof for these ages,
were mainly laid down by Noah's flood. In ( Exodus 20:11
) we read of a literal six day creation. No gaps, not even for
one minute, otherwise these would not be six normal days. Also,
in ( Romans
5:12 ) we read that death is the result of Adam's sin.
Because the rock layers display death on a grand scale, they
could not have existed before the fall of Adam. There is no
direct evidence that the earth is much older than six thousand
years. However, we have the direct eyewitness report of God
himself that he made everything in six days. Tracing back through
the biblical genealogies we can determine the age of the universe
to be about six thousand years with an error of not more than two
per cent. See Topic 8756.
Editor.)
F11 "Quem dixere chaos, rudis indigestaque
moles", Ovid Metamorph. l. 1. Fab. 1.
F12 (htoi
men protista caov) &c. Hesiodi Theogonia.
F13 Orphei Argonautica, ver. 12.
F14 Martin. Sinic. Hist. l. 1. p. 5.
F15 Bibliothec. l. 1. p. 7.
F16 Apud Euseb. Praepar. Evangel. l. 2. c.
10. p. 33.
F17 Laert. in Vita Thaletis, p. 18. Cicero
do Natura Deorum, l. 1.
F18 Strabo. Geograph. l. 15. p. 491.
F19 Metaphysic. l. 1. c. 3.
F20 Zohar in Gen. fol. 107. 3. and fol.
128. 3. Bereshit Rabba, fol. 2. 4. and 6. 3. Vajikra Rabba, sect.
14. fol. 156. 4. Baal Hatturim in loc. Caphtor Uperah, fol. 113.
2.
F21 (tpxrm) "incubabat", Junius, Tremellius, Piscator, "as
a dove on her young", T. Bab. Chagigah, fol. 15. 1.
F23 ----and, with mighty wings outspread,
Dovelike satst brooding on the vast abyss, And mad'st it
pregnant.---- Milton's Paradise Lost, B. 1. l. 20, 21, 22. The
same sentiment is in B. 7. l. 234, 235.
F24 Laert. in Vita Anaxagor. p. 91. Euseb.
Evangel. Praepar. l. 10. c. 14. p. 504.
F25 Cicero de Nat. Deorum, l. 1. Lactant,
de falsa Relig. l. 1. c. 5.
F26 Apud Drusium in loc.
F1 Hymn. (protogon) , ver. 1, 2.
F2 Euseb. Praepar. Evangel. l. 3. c. 11.
p. 115.
F3 Apud Ib. l. 2. c. 10. p. 33.
F4 Saturnal. l. 7. c. 16.
F5 Martin. Sinic. Hist. l. 1. p. 3, 4.
F6 In Avibus.
F7 Ian Taylor, p. 363, 364, "In the Minds
of Men", 1984, TEF Publishing, P.O. Box 5015, Stn. F, Toronto,
Canada.