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Genesis 1

In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, 2the earth was a formless void… (Genesis 1:1).

Two Hebrew words are translated here as “a formless void,” but more is going on here than the idea that once there was nothing and now there would be something.  Together these two words speak of a desolating emptiness.  They show up together in Isaiah in a brutal prophecy of Edom’s destruction using a metaphor of a builder’s tools of line and plummet creating utter desolation:

9And the streams of Edom shall be turned into pitch, 
and her soil into sulfur; 
her land shall become burning pitch.
10Night and day it shall not be quenched; 
its smoke shall go up forever. 
From generation to generation it shall lie waste; 
no one shall pass through it forever and ever.
11But the hawk and the hedgehog shall possess it; 
the owl and the raven shall live in it. 
He shall stretch the line of confusion over it, 
and the plummet of chaos over its nobles. (Isaiah 34:9-11)

The two words are used together again in Jeremiah: 

19My anguish, my anguish! I writhe in pain! 
Oh, the walls of my heart! 
My heart is beating wildly; 
I cannot keep silent; 
for I hear the sound of the trumpet, 
the alarm of war.
20Disaster overtakes disaster, 
the whole land is laid waste. 
Suddenly my tents are destroyed, 
my curtains in a moment.
21How long must I see the standard, 
and hear the sound of the trumpet?
22“For my people are foolish, 
they do not know me; 
they are stupid children, 
they have no understanding. 
They are skilled in doing evil, 
but do not know how to do good.”
23I looked on the earth, and lo, it was waste and void; 
and to the heavens, and they had no light.
24I looked on the mountains, and lo, they were quaking, 
and all the hills moved to and fro.
25I looked, and lo, there was no one at all, 
and all the birds of the air had fled.
26I looked, and lo, the fruitful land was a desert, 
and all its cities were laid in ruins 
before the Lord, before his fierce anger. (Jeremiah 4:19-26)

Jeremiah uses these words for the devastation wrought by Babylon’s armies on Judah: the famine, the death, the brutal pillaging, the destruction of palace and temple, the chains of bondage, grief, and despair for those who survived.  For Jeremiah, the world is cast back into desolating emptiness. The world has come apart.

For those who wrote and assembled Genesis in the aftermath of Judah’s destruction, it is not into nothing that God’s word speaks to bring a world to life, it is into the utter desolation this people.  It is to sorrow and despair that God speaks.  It is to hopelessness born of the tragic consequences of humanity’s rebellion from God.  Into such a desolating emptiness God speaks and the world is born, good and beautiful and at peace.

Look upon the cities of Ukraine.  Look at Gaza.  Look at the cruelty wreaked by Hamas.  Look upon the lies and desolations of our world.  Look upon all the crucified.  Look upon every sorrowing heart.  Into such emptiness comes the word: “Let there be light”.

This is God’s work – not just in beginning, but each day until every heart is healed, every weapon laid down, every table shared.

Breath of Life, 
Eternal Mercy,
let your word of life be heard
 in us and all creation.

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Photo: DKBonde
New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org
© David K Bonde, 2021, All rights reserved