Meaning of Descriptive Terms Found in Genesis 1. 2
APPENDIX XVI (Reference: p. 78)
Four descriptive terms are used: tohu, bohu, ghoshek, and tehom, translated respectively in the AV as "without form", "void", "darkness", and "deep". The following are the occurrences of tohu with their AV, RV, Berkeley, and RSV renderings (in that order).
Deut. 32. 10:
waste
wilderness
in a...waste
in a...waste
I Sam. 12. 21
vain things
vain
mere nothings
vain
Job 6. 18:
to nothing
into a waste
wastes
the waste
Job 12. 24:
a wilderness
wilderness
in a jungle
pathless waste
Job 26. 7:
empty place
empty place
empty place
the void
Isa. 40. 23:
vanity
as in a waste
like nothing
as nothing
Isa.41.29:
confusion
confusion
waste
empty
Isa. 44. 9:
vanity
confusion (m.)
in vain
nothing
Isa.45.18:
not in vain
a waste
in vain
a chaos
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Psa.107.40:
wilderness
waste
pathless wastes
trackless wastes
Isa. 24. 10:
confusion
confusion
desolate
chaos
Isa. 2 9. 2 1:
a thing of nought
thing of nought
empty
empty
Isa. 34. 11:
confusion
confusion
chaos
confusion
1 sa. 40. 17:
vanity
confusion (m.)
worthlessness
as emptiness
Isa. 45. 19:
not in vain
as in a waste
in vain
in chaos
Isa.49.4:
for nought
for nought
for nothing
for nothing
1 sa. 59.4: 4
in vanity
vanity
in confusion
emplty pleas
Jer.4.23:
without form
waste
formless
waste
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In the LXX the words Tohu and Bohu are rendered  and  , the first being found also (and only) in Isa. 45. 3 where it is translated in the AV as "hidden", and in II Macc. 9. 5 where it is rendered in the RV as "invisible" (an invisible plague!). The second is found only in Gen. 1. 2 in the LXX and is not again used. In no passage where Hebrew employs the word tohu does the Septuagint use the word Chaos ( ), though the word does appear twice elsewhere in the LXX, ie. , in Mic. 1. 6 and Zech. 14.4, in both of which it is clearly employed to indicate a dramatic disordering - not a Chaos in the classical sense of being merely as yet un-ordered. If the idea of something unformed or incomplete were the author's intent in Gen. 1. 2, it seems that the authors of the LXX could still not appropriately have used the Greek word  , since to them, evidently, (on the basis of Mic. 1. 6 and Zech. 14.4) it did not mean what was meant by the term in Classical Greek. It is hard to know what term they could have used to convey the idea of something yet incomplete - if that is what the original means. At any rate they avoided the word  as perhaps being ambiguous.
In the New Testament the opposite term  is used frequently, always with the sense of "furnishing", "making ready", "adorning". Unfortunately, the New Testament does not use the antonym chosen by the LXX for bohu so that one cannot be sure in what sense it was employed in Gen. 1. 2, whether as un-formed or de-formed. That they did not use the term  might be taken as some slight indication that the idea of something un-formed was not considered the meaning of the original. But the evidence is inconclusive in this respect.
By contrast, I do not think that the Hebrew word tohu can possibly be viewed as a word normally implying something yet incomplete. It is much more frequently, almost overwhelmingly, employed as a term descriptive of something that is, in the view of both men and God, under judgment or in disfavour, worthless or desolated rather than not yet to be made valuable or not yet put in order.
With reference to the word bohu, James Strong in his Dictionary gives the meaning (sub entry #922) as "an indistinguishable ruin", though he states that the root (an unused one) means merely "to be empty". The noun occurs only in Gen. 1. 2 and Jer. 4. 23. BDB favours, the sense of bohu as something destroyed, not something being built. Of tohu in Gen. 1. 2, they also support strongly the concept of "land reduced to primeval chaos" (my emphasis).
The word "darkness" is in Scripture frequently associated with something under judgment: but it is not always so. The word can be used merely for the absence of light, as during the night. Either interpretation of the term in Gen. 1. 2 would be equally allowable.
Of the term tehom, it is difficult to speak without becoming involved also in such words from extra-biblical sources as the Assyrian Tiamtu, etc. In the Bible it means "the abyss" or simply, "the deep sea". If one is to argue for a picture of a nebulous first-stage in the process of creation, it is hard to see how a deep sea, an ocean, or at least "waters" (verse 3), could already be in existence. In a number of other passages in Scripture wbere the word occurs (as for example: Psa. 36. 7 (Heb.); 71.20; 106. 9 , there is a suggestion of judgment or distress, but not always. The "deep" is often an agent of destruction, as at the time of the Flood, but in itself it seems to signify no more than the mystery of a great body of water whose depths are unfathomable, as it were. Once again, the evidence is inconclusive. But it does not seem unlikely that deep oceans could be thought of as existing when the earth was still part of a nebula as some have viewed Gen. 1. 2.
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