Last week we spent a little time thinking about time itself, and I hope it didn’t fry anyone’s circuits too badly. Before time even began, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit were already there. They existed before He made the heavens and the earth, and in perfect unity they determined how everything would unfold. We get a small glimpse of that divine conversation when God says, “Let us make man in our image.”
Today we’re going to look at the opening verses of Genesis 1 and start unpacking them.
The Text
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. Then God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light.”
We touched on this briefly last time, but now let’s slow down and ask some real questions.
Who Was the Original Audience?
Even though the Holy Spirit inspired Scripture for every generation—including us—the first people to hear or read these words were the Israelites. Moses wrote this account for the people of Israel, the Jewish people of that time.
When we read the Bible, it helps to remember that different parts belong to different genres. The Psalms, for example, are largely poetry—not the rhyming kind we’re used to in English, but Hebrew poetry. Genesis is true history, yet it’s written in a way that carries a poetic rhythm and style natural to the Hebrew language. The original hearers would have picked up certain nuances that we sometimes miss. That doesn’t mean we’re misunderstanding the text; it just means we can gain helpful perspective by imagining how they heard it.
The Name “God” – Elohim
The very first word for God in Genesis 1:1 is Elohim. You’ve probably heard that term before. It’s grammatically plural, yet it’s used here with singular verbs to refer to the one true God we worship. Elohim is actually a more generic word for deity. When Aaron made the golden calf, he pointed to it and said, “This is your Elohim who brought you out of Egypt.” Foreign idols and false gods were also called elohim (lowercase in our English translations to show the distinction).
Hebrew didn’t use upper- and lowercase letters, so context carried the weight. We do something similar in English when we say “the gods of the Egyptians” versus “the God of Israel.”
That plural form of Elohim—combined with phrases like “Let us make man in our image”—offers a quiet hint of the Trinity. It’s not a full explanation, but the plurality is there.
Later in chapter 2 we’ll meet another name: Yahweh (often rendered “LORD” in all capital letters in our English Bibles). That’s the personal, covenant name God gave to Moses—“I AM.” Many of us grew up saying “Jehovah,” but the more accurate pronunciation scholars use today is Yahweh. Personally, I prefer using the name when Scripture does. Saying “the LORD says” feels a little like stepping back into third-person distance, while “Yahweh says” keeps the directness of the text.
The Word That Creates – Connecting to John 1
Genesis 1:1 begins, “In the beginning God created…” John 1:1 picks up the same phrase: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
The Greek word logos means far more than a single spoken word. For the Greeks it carried the sense of wisdom, logic, reason, order—the organizing principle of the universe. John is telling us that this logos—this wisdom and commanding speech—was there in the beginning. When God said, “Let there be light,” that was the logos in action.
Later John says the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. So the one through whom God creates is none other than Jesus, the second person of the Trinity.
Psalm 33 echoes the same truth: “By the word of the LORD the heavens were made, and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth… For he spoke, and it was done; he commanded, and it stood fast.”
Why That Should Fill Us with Awe
Think about it. We can’t speak physical reality into existence. I can’t say, “Let there be a chair,” and have one appear. But God speaks, and entire realms come into being. That same word holds everything together right now. Colossians tells us that in Christ all things hold together. If He stopped sustaining creation for even an instant, it would unravel.
A being with that kind of power and reach ought to inspire both awe and a healthy fear. We were made to worship Him. When we grasp—even a little—that He can call things into existence from nothing and can just as easily call them out of existence, respect and wonder are the only right responses.
The Earth Was Without Form and Void – To hu va-bohu
Genesis 1:2 says the earth was tohu va-bohu—without form and void. Those Hebrew words roll off the tongue in a memorable way. Tohu appears far more often than bohu in Scripture, and Isaiah uses it more than anyone else.
Tohu gets translated in various places as:
- wasteland
- wilderness
- empty space
- confusion
- empty things
- nowhere
Put together, the picture is a chaotic, empty, desolate, unfinished wilderness—a dark, watery, formless expanse.
Isaiah 45:18 says God “did not create [the earth] in vain [tohu]; He formed it to be inhabited.” So the original state wasn’t the final goal. He didn’t make a permanent mess. Something was underway.
Other passages that use tohu and bohu describe places under God’s judgment—Edom turned to burning pitch and desolation (Isaiah 34), or the land shaken and emptied because of the Lord’s fierce anger (Jeremiah 4). In both cases the language echoes Genesis 1:2.
Three Ways People Have Understood This
- A blank canvas / unshaped clay God created the raw material in a formless, void state—like a potter’s lump of clay or an empty page—and then over the six days He shaped it into the ordered, inhabited world. Nothing wrong with that view.
- A result of judgment Some suggest a catastrophe happened between verses 1 and 2—perhaps tied to Satan’s fall and being cast to the earth—leaving the creation in chaos. God then reshaped it.
- A pre-Adamic world judged An older view (popularized by Scofield) proposed an entire earlier creation—animals, perhaps even people—that God judged, leaving fossils and a tohu va-bohu earth before the six-day work began. Many today (including Ken Ham) push back on that because it would place death before Adam’s sin.
We don’t have a definitive answer. What we do know is that God makes no mistakes and has no Plan B. He doesn’t say, “Oops, that didn’t work; let me try again.” Everything unfolds according to His eternal purpose.
The Spirit Hovering / Brooding
Genesis 1:2 ends with the Spirit of God “hovering” over the face of the waters. The Hebrew word carries the sense of brooding, fluttering, protecting—like a bird over its nest, wings moving, eyes focused, single-mindedly watching and guarding.
The Spirit wasn’t abandoning this dark, watery chaos. He was present, actively involved, poised for what came next. When God said, “Let there be light,” the work began.
That’s where we’ll pick up next time.
Lord willing, we’ll keep moving slowly through the chapter. There’s depth here worth taking our time with.
* Some articles on this publication or website are adapted from my recorded Bible teaching. I use transcription and editing tools (including AI-assisted editing) to convert spoken lectures into readable written form. The ideas, interpretations, and theological conclusions are my own and come directly from my teaching.