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The fruitful place has become a wilderness.
The cities thereof are broken down.
The land is to be desolate, the earth to mourn, the heavens to be black.
(Jer. iv.25-28).
No one in his senses would teach from Jer. 4: that the land thus described was
actually created a wilderness, the only legitimate interpretation is that it became so. No
one either with this parallel usage can teach that creation originally came into being
"without form and void" but that the pristine creation of Gen. 1: 1 became the chaotic
confusion of Gen. 1: 2. The next question is "why?" Jeremiah supplies the answer.
"All the cities thereof were broken down at the presence of the Lord, and by His fierce
anger." Is that not judgment? Can it by any possible way refer to initial creation?
We have another witness in Isaiah, who also uses the words translated "without form
and void", but in the A.V. they are rendered "confusion" and "emptiness".
"He shall stretch out upon it the line of confusion (same word "without form") and the
stones of emptiness (same word as "void")" (Isa. 34: 11).
Here again the context is one of judgment.
"Indignation . . . . . fury . . . . . utterly destroyed . . . . . slain . . . . . sword . . . . . curse.
It is the day of the Lord's vengeance" (Isa. 34: 2-8).
In verse four we have a passage parallel with II Pet. 3: 10-12, the dissolution which
ushers in the new heavens and the new earth:
"And all the host of heaven shall be dissolved, and the heavens shall be rolled together
as a scroll: and all the host shall fall down, as the leaf falleth off from the vine, and as a
falling fig from the fig tree" (Isa. 34: 4).
We are enjoined to compare spiritual things with spiritual, which comparison will take
note of the words "which the Holy Ghost teacheth", and in these two prophets we have
the fullest warrant that we can hope to find, for interpreting Gen. 1: 2 as a judgment that
fell, rather than as the primitive condition of creation itself. "The earth became without
form and void." Not only does this interpretation rob the scientific objection of any basis
for its objection, it does more, it throws light upon the period of time spoken of in
Eph. 1: 4 where we read:
"According as He hath chosen us in Him before the foundation of the world."
To "prove" this connexion would demand an examination of the Greek word
translated "foundation" and that we are avoiding in this more elementary approach. We
will however direct the reader to recent articles where the subject is given meticulous
care, and sincerely hope that all who desire the fullest understanding of the
distinctiveness of the calling made known in Ephesians, will spare the time to acquaint
themselves with the evidence there assembled. These articles will be found in
Volume XXXVI, pages 61, 81, 101, 121 and 141, all that we will do here is to sum up
the findings which are there set out.