THE RULE APPLIED WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
Robert Young, the author of that most valuable research tool, An Analytical Concordance of the Old and New Testament, also produced a Literal Translation of the Bible.138 In his Introduction he sets forth very carefully with support from various authorities certain views regarding the use of tenses in Hebrew. He then applies these rules rigidly. The resulting narrative, while perhaps more precisely correct from the view of Hebrew syntax and grammar (assuming his "rules" are valid), is difficult indeed to read cursively with profit. The English is stilted and does not "flow". The sentences are staccato and just occasionally hardly seem to make sense at all. The lesson one learns from this is that translation demands a certain amount of freedom. In order to make literature live, a translator is justified in taking some liberties not on linguistic grounds but for dramatic reasons, though the dangers of doing this are very considerable.
Now, my reason for using this example is simply to emphasize the need for caution in insisting on obedience upon all occasions to some rule that has, after all, only been established by reference to
general usage. In language, this is the only way that rules can be established. But when a translation is made for reading (as well as for study), then some departure from the rules sometimes has to be allowed. Thus I would not argue that  must always and on all occasions be rendered "become" or "became" or even "come to be" (ie. , "happen") whenever it is found in the present or past tense. The fact is that there are sentences even in English where the word "be" really means "become" and yet we commonly accept the word "be". For example, "I refuse to be a party to it" really means "I refuse to become a party to it". So one should not always translate according to the letter of the law.
In the opening words of his Preface, Driver, after noting wthat Hebrew is particularly careful in distinguishing between the sense of "being" and "becoming" and after pointing out how little attention we are apt to pay to this difference, remarks:139
"So cumbrous is the mechanism which has to be set in motion in order to express the difference, so palpable is the strain to which our language is subjected in the process, that we feel irresistibly tempted to discard and forget it."
And again :140
"On the agreement of a verb with its subject in number, a point to which in certain cases the ancient Hebrews attached no importance whatever, we ourselves are sensitive and precise: on the other hand, the difference between being and becoming, seyn and werden,  and  has never been fully appropriated or naturalized in English.... "
The only time one ought to be particularly careful is when there is a possibility of a real misunderstanding as to the sense, when there is an ambiguity that it is important to avoid. It is an important issue with respect to Gen. 1. 2 whether one renders the Hebrew as "But the earth became.... " or merely "But the earth was.... " In such a case, to my mind, the true sense must be clearly established by reference to the rules of the language and rendered into English in such a way as to make that sense unambiguous.
In a few cases it will not matter at all: in others it may be critical. In a large number of cases which fall between these extremes, there may be considerable gain in rendering it correctly and unambiguously. Let me give a few illustrations, in none of which is  followed
by  , yet all of which are by one translator or another rendered "became" or "had become", etc.
In Gen. 3. 1, the Hebrew should be rendered, "Now the serpent had become more subtle than any beast of the field". * I believe this indicates that some circumstance had changed its character rather than that God had created it so from the beginning.
In Gen. 3. 20, it would be more proper to render the passage as Driver does, "Eve became the mother of all living". It is virtually certain that at that time Eve was not yet a mother. The development which subsequently establishes her as the mother of the human race is here recorded in retrospect and it seems likely that Adam's first name for Eve was simply Ishah, or Woman. This kind of retrospect observation surely applies to Gen. 2. 23 also, for Adam could not possibly have said that a man should leave his mother and father and cleave to his wife, since such a thought would at that time be quite foreign to his experience. I do not mean by this that the saying is not divinely inspired. Adam may very well have renamed his wife Eve after she began to beget sons and daughters and they in turn begat children.
In Gen. 21. 20, there is a nice instance of precision in the use of the verb  . Speaking of Ishmael, the original tells us "And it came to pass ( ) that God (was) with the lad ( ) and he grew and dwelt in the wilderness and became a drawer of the bow". The Vulgate has factusque est , ie. , "and he became...." And the Septuagint has  . The passage is quite similar to that of Gen. 4. 2 (except for the inverted word order found there) which according to Driver (perhaps guided in part by the LXX) is rendered "And Abel became a shepherd of the flock, while Cain had become a tiller of the ground".
* Pusey so renders this passage.
A particularly delightful passage is to be found in Gen. 29. 17 which I would render more exactly from the Hebrew (and yet quite literally too!), "Now Rachael had become sparkling eyed and beautiful, but Leah always was weepy eyed". I realize that this sounds far-fetched at first sight, yet the fact is that the actual use of the verb  (and the word order) in the first instance justifies the use of "had become" in the pluperfect: and its absence in the second case implies a static situation - which I have expressed somewhat paraphrastically but not unreasonably by the words "always was". And whereas the original does suggest "sparks" when speaking of Rachael's eyes, it also suggests "wateriness" when referring to Leah! The Authorized Version is perhaps gentler with Leah than the Hebrew original. It is quite true that the change in word order could merely be to contrast with what precedes. But this contrast is not really specific in the text, and I think it is quite reasonable to say that Rachael as she grew to womanhood had become a strikingly beautiful woman, whereas Leah may have been watery-eyed from childhood.
An excellent illustration of how some translators heeded and other did not heed the sense of "becoming" in the verb  , is in connection with Joseph's dream and the fate that intervened before it was fulfilled. In Gen. 37. 20, I would render the Hebrew "Let us see what will become of his dreams". Both Driver and the Reviset Standard Version have adopted this rendering. But the Septuagint have understood the meaning of Gen. 37. 20 rather differently for they rendered it  , ie. "What his dreams will be.. ." The Septuagint translators evidently took the text to mean that the brothers wanted to cast Joseph into the pit and leave him there to dream dreams of a somewhat less promising kind! This could be the meaning since the tense is future and therefore  would be required in the appropriate form since the circumstances are viewed as being changed - or at least the nature of his dreams! Yet I think the real significance of their remarks is that they wished to thwart the "promise" of the dream he had already told them about.
In Gen. 2. 18 ff. , we have another striking case where precision in translation is revealing. First, it is stated that it was not a good thing that Adam should be alone. He needed company of some kind. So, as I interpret the occasion, the Lord brought to the man various animals whose nature and habits (and size, presumably) might suggest to Adam that in these he would find the answer to his loneliness. It would not be so exceptional if he had done so, for many both young and old people today find greater pleasure in the company of some pet animal than they do in the society of their fellow man.
Adam's response to each creature, thus presented for his consideration as a companion, was at once reflected in the "name" he gave to it. In this process of naming, I do not think there was anything arbitrary at all. He was not merely providing a dictionary label for each creature so that it could be referred to thereafter without am biguity. He was identifying its nature. The text says: "Whatsoever he called (each animal) that (was) the name thereof". Now in the original the verb  is absent. Had it been included, the sense of the text would then have been "that became its name" - and superficially this is exactly what we might have expected the text to say. The usual interpretation of the passage is that he gave each animal a label and that the label "stuck": ie. , that became its name thereafter. But from the way the Hebrew has actually stated the matter, I think the meaning is much more profound. This was a case of precise "identification". Adam identified each creature as to its nature - and that really was in fact its nature: in short, he was absolutely right in his assessment. This, in fact, is why not one of them appeared to him to be a sufficient companion. In his unfallen state, his judgment did not deceive him. What he said of each animal was true: he marked each one for what it was, a creature far below himself whose nature was quite unlike his own. His own name was Ish, a word in some way describing his very nature. The woman he correctly identified as Ishah for he recognized her as his own counterpart: but not so, any of the other creatures. Thus what appears as a naive fairy tale turns out to be a record of a profound exercise in human judgment, an exercise which may indeed have exhausted him and prepared him for the very deep sleep which followed.
By thus observing the rule with greater care, one may discern in this simple record an event of far greater significance than a mere invitation to engage in a game of attaching labels to animals. The story as so understood tells us some very important things about Adam's mental capacity at that time as well as about his relationship to the animals that shared his paradise. As we are told in the New Testament (I Tim. 2. 14), Adam was not deceived in anything he undertook - even in eating the forbidden fruit. Thereafter his judgment undoubtedly began to suffer the noetic effects of sin and it seems unlikely that after the Fall he could any longer have identified with such perfect precision the kind of creature that each was by nature nor recognize his own true nature except by revelation. Our own judgment easily misleads us now into imagining that man is not fundamentally different from certain forms of animal life which, assuming that they existed, would almost certainly have been among those brought for his assessment.
One of the better known passages often appealed to by those who share the view presented here is Jer. 4.23-26 which reads, "I beheld the earth and lo, it (was) without form and void; and the heavens, they had no light.... and, lo, there (was) no man.... and the fruitful place was a wilderness.... etc. " The passage is an important one in the present context for several reasons, both for what it does say and what it does not say.
The overall picture reveals some striking similarities with the situation in Gen. 1. 2, the ruin and devastation, the darkness, and the absence of man. That Jeremiah is referring not to the first stages of God's creative activity but to a historical situation which faced him at the time of his vision is clear. But this does not lessen the force of his words nor the significance of the fact that his terms are precisely those employed in Gen. 1. 2. Skinner freely admits that we must see here a picure of a scene "from which life and order have fled.... a darkened and devastated earth".141 Yet, like many others, he maintains that the very same terms when used in Gen. 1. 2 must mean something quite different! There is a difference, an interesting one, between Gen. 1. 2 and Jer. 4. 23, and that is in the omission of the verb  Jeremiah. Evidently Jeremiah's vision is not a vision of the occurrence of the event in which he sees first a beautiful, inhabited, and fruitful land suddenly becoming a devastation. What his vision encompasses is the after effect, the fait accompli; in short, simply a scene of total destruction. Hence the verb  is unnecessary.
But since the terms  and  ( tohu wa bohu ) which describe the earth in Gen. 1. 2 are here applied to a scene of devastation, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that this is the correct meaning of those two terms when juxtaposed in this alliterative way. Possibly, when used independently, the meanings maybe slightly less dramatic, having merely the sense of "vanity" (at least in the case of Tohu): but when employed together, the meaning of each seems to be strongly reinforced in the destructive sense, not merely negatively "in vain', but positively destroyed.
For a better assessment of the meaning of Tohu, the reader will find a full list of references in Appendix XVI. While Tohu will not always be found to signify "destruction" but rather that which is not approved or is to no good purpose, it does not appear to equate very well with the classical Greek concept of Chaos which has the sense of something not so much mal-formed, as un-formed. Thus , while Jer. 4. 23 is not (by reason of its omission of the verb  ) an exact parallel to Gen. 1. 2, the terms it uses are certainly stamped with a meaning that conveys the sense of devastation and ruin in JUDGMENT rather than mere incompleteness.
This naturally leads to another critical passage in the Old Testament in which the word Tohu occurs twice, namely, in Isa. 45. 18 and 19. Verse 18 is often quoted by those who support the view I hold because it seems so clearly to determine the correct sense of the same word in Gen. 1. 2. Now Isa. 45. 17-18 reads as follows:
"But Israel shall be saved in the Lord with an everlasting salvation: ye shall not be ashamed nor confounded world without end. For thus saith the Lord that created the heavens; God Himself that formed the earth and made it. He hath established it, He created it not in vain (Tohu) , He formed it to be inhabited: I am the Lord; and there is none else."
It is customary to point out that in this passage it is expressly stated that the Lord did not create the earth a Tohu. It is therefore argued, reasonably enough, that Gen. 1. 2 cannot be a direct continuation of Gen.1.1, since this would imply that God did create the earth a Tohu. I believe the argument is a strong one and ought to be given due weight. But it is not compulsive, much as one might wish it were, because the word Tohu may legitimately be rendered "in vain" by treating it as an adverbial accusative. The propriety of adopting the Authorized Version rendering must be admitted in the light of verse 19 which reads "I have not spoken in secret, in a dark place of the earth: I said not unto the seed of Jacob, Seek ye Me in vain (Tohu)"
Certainly in verse 19 the translation is much more reasonable than it would have been had Tohu been rendered "a ruin", for then the sentence would have read, "Seek ye Me, a ruin" - which is nonsense. * If one must render Tohu "in vain" in this passage, it cannot be altogether unreasonable to so render it in verse 18 where such a rendering does, after all, make very good sense.
There are, however, two points worthy of note here. First, that the sentence structure in verse 19 forces one to render the noun adverbially and thus to read it as "in vain". To do anything else makes nonsense of the sentence. By contrast , this is not true in verse 18. Either rendering is equally sensible. Thus some other consideration must settle the issue or at least tip the scales in favour of one rendering as against the other. And here I think there IS something to be said in favour of rendering the noun as a noun. The burden of the passage is that Israel has suffered a serious setback as a nation. Yet, says the prophet, all is not lost. Israel shall yet be saved, and next time it will be for ever. For the Lord once created a world which He beautifully appointed as a habitation for man, which He established with that end in view. And it is true, Isaiah seems to be saying, that the earth fell into ruin and was utterly devastated in judgment, but that is not the way in which it was created: nor was it the end for which God had formed it. He intended it as a habitation for man; and God Intended Israel as a people for Himself. Both goals will yet be achieved, even as the first goal has already been.
* However, the RSV has "a chaos" in both verses., verse 19 reading., "seek me in chaos", which is allowable enough, but an odd sentence.
Seen in this light, the passage might well justify the two different renderings of Tohu, the first as "a ruin", the second as "in vain", each sentence being structured differently to convey the difference in meaning. There is nothing forced or strange about this kindof literary device. Yet - for all this - there is no absolute certainty, and each reader must decide the issue for himself, pending further light.
As we have said previously, a good case is not made stronger by an appeal to a passage, the sense of which is not unequivocably clear, and to my mind, Isa.45.18 is a strong witness only to those who already accept the alternative rendering of Gen. 1. 2. Some have argued that the command to Adam to "re-plenish" the earth tells in our favour also, but unfortunately the Hebrew word  (translated both here and in Gen. 9. 1 as "re-fill") does not necessarily bear this meaning: it is the normal verb for the simple idea of "filling", though it was also used on occasion to mean "refill".
Many passages in the Bible have been interpreted as having reference to the circumstances surrounding the devastation of Gen. 1. 2, but the case for an alternative rendering cannot be rested upon them. Granted that there was such an event, then such passages may well shed light on the matter, but the basic point at issue must be settled on other grounds first.
In conclusion, then, it is my conviction that the issue is still an open one, that all the objections raised against it thus far are not really valid, that the rules of Hebrew syntax and grammar not only allow this alternative rendering but positively favour it. The sense of "becoming" is not foreign to the verb  , nor is it merely a less common meaning that is to be allowed under certain rather limited circumstances: it is the basic meaning of the verb, the simple copulative sense being exceedingly rare, and the existential sense (though not rare) a special sense which really arises from the more basic meaning of living. Added to this is the word order inversion which can only be accounted for in one of two ways, while one of these (a change of subject) certainly cannot be argued very forcibly in view of the fact that the last word of verse 1 is the first word of verse 2.
There is no requirement for the following lamedh where the "conversion" of one thing to another is a real conversion and not merely an analogous one; and therefore there is no need for it here. And the descriptive terms in the sentence are none of them such as one would expect to find applied to something that has just come from the creative Hand of God. Nor is it easy, in the light of its use elsewhere in Scripture, to equate Tohu with the un-formed Chaos of Greek mythology.
By and large, therefore, I suggest that the rendering, "But the earth had become a ruin and a desolation", is a rendering which does more justice to the original and deserves more serious consideration as an alternative than it has been customary to afford it in recent years.
It is, after all, quite conceivable that some catastrophe did occur prior to the appearance of Man for which we do not yet have the kind of geological evidence we would like. Only twenty years ago uniformitarianism reigned supreme - but recently the Theory of Continental Drift has shaken this long established doctrine to its foundations. There could be other surprises yet in store for us. For myself, in the meantime, the most important thing of all is to know as precisely as it can be known, exactly what the Word of God really says.... even if for the time being it does conflict with current geological theory. All we can hope to do is to contribute light to minds of greater precision who may thus be enabled to hit upon the exact truth.
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