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(1)
Gen. 1: 2 indicates a state entirely different from God's creative purpose. "He
created it not tohu."
(2)
Gen. 1: 2 can be likened to a waste howling wilderness, something empty and
uninhabitable, a confusion very different from creation which was intended to
be "inhabited".
(3)
Gen. 1: 2 is seen to be a "punishment" that descended upon "high ones that are
on high" for this judgment took place long before Adam was created.
(4)
The words of Heb. 2: 5 imply that a past world had been subjected to Angels,
and that before Adam.
When we examine the two occasions where tohu and bohu occur together other than
in Gen. 1: 2, punishment is most evident.
Isa. 34:, where these words are found together, is set in a scene of judgment. Here
is a collection of terms taken from this chapter: indignation, fury, utterly destroy,
slaughter, all the host of heaven shall be dissolved, and the heavens be rolled together as
a scroll, a sword bathed in heaven, curse, judgment, for it is the day of the Lord's
vengeance and the year of recompence for the controversy of Zion, the streams turned to
pitch, the dust to brimstone, burning pitch, it shall not be quenched night nor day, it shall
lie waste. These words are all found within the compass of the first ten verses of this
chapter! With such a vocabulary nothing but judgment can possibly be the theme.
In the eleventh verse, we meet with the words tohu and bohu "without form and void":
"And He shall stretch out upon it the line of confusion (tohu) and the stones of
emptiness (bohu);"
and this judgment is followed by thorns, nettles and brambles, and the place becomes an
habitation of dragons, and a court for owls, together with wild beasts, satyrs, screech
owls, vultures and other unclean creatures. It is beyond the ability of a truthful witness to
deny that these words tohu and bohu are set in a context of dire judgment. The other
reference is Jer. 4: and here the words are translated as in Gen. 1: 2. Jeremiah sees an
evil that threatens Zion from the North, likens it to a lion, and calls it "the destroyer of
the Gentiles" who brings desolation in his train, laying cities waste, without inhabitant
(Jer. 4: 6, 7).
The prophet continues:
"I BEHELD the earth, and lo it was without form and void and the heavens, and they
had no light.
I BEHELD the mountains and lo they trembled and all the hills moved lightly.
I BEHELD, and lo, there was no man and all the birds of the heaven were fled.
I BEHELD, and lo, the fruitful place was as a wilderness and all the cities thereof
were broken down, at the presence of the Lord, and by His fierce anger" (Jer. 4: 23-26).
Here again the testimony of Scripture is clear. "Without form and void" are
indubitably terms, NOT of Creation, but of Judgment, Gen. 1: 2 therefore must refer to
an "overthrow", and the word katabole in Eph. 1: 4 must be so translated.