God’s Word for You

Genesis 1:2a formless and empty

by Pastor Timothy Smith on Thursday, July 23, 2026

2 Now the earth was formless and empty, and darkness was over the surface of the deep.

Moses turns our attention to the earth for more details. The words he uses here are tohu and vohu. In Isaiah 24:10, tohu is “desolate.” But so is vohu in Isaiah 34:11. The words are similar, and sometimes they are used for similar things, “He spreads out the northern skies over empty space” (tohu, Job 26:7). Together, they show us that the world was empty in more than the sense of just undeveloped, like the old American west. This paring indicates a chaotic and disorganized scene, not unlike, as one of my Hebrew professors quipped, “a teenager’s bedroom.”

Not only were there no buildings or roads or even cowpaths, but there were no hills, no valleys, no stones, nor even any patches of land on which to step. It was a dark, messy, muddy mire, with plenty of water—so much that the Lord is happy with Moses calling it “the deep” (tahom, Greek “abyss,” ἄβυσσος). Perhaps some readers are familiar with the appearance of the giant gas planets in our solar system. The earth may have looked something like a smaller version of Neptune in the dark then—a gaseous blue thing with no definable features. Luther says, “You see now (that is, today) the earth standing out above the waters, the heaven adorned with stars, the fields and trees, the cities with houses, etc., but when all these are removed and thrown together into a shapeless mass—what then results is what Moses called tohu and vohu” (LW 1:7). As I said before, it was like a mixing bowl with unmixed ingredients; an emulsion of what would later be.

The vastness of this watery, messy, muddy, mire is described as being “the deep.” An abyss; a virtually bottomless region. Since our world was unformed and chaotic, without any foothold, “deep” is an excellent term to describe it. And there is no reason to describe it any further, since it was about to be changed forever.

Moses uses the word “darkness.” We do well to pause and to consider this darkness. It will later be described as “good,” even “very good,” along with everything God made (1:31). Therefore we know that this darkness should not be mistaken as a cloak for evil or a symbol of fear. Nor was it a hiding place for evil things or demons, for there were as yet no evil things at all; evil came with the fall of Satan, and we will see that Satan did not fall until sometime after the Seventh Day of creation. It would be good for us to remember some of the good and godly uses of darkness:

1, Christ prayed in the dark hours so that there would be fewer distractions. Mark tells us: “Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed” (Mark 1:35). Here darkness has the excellence of a tent, a covering to enable privacy for the best of human works.

2, Christ sometimes taught under cover of darkness to protect his disciples until they were ready to proclaim the whole gospel message: “What I tell you in the dark, speak in the daylight” (Matthew 10:27). The student should never be embarrassed that he is still learning, or that he does not yet have the full lesson learned. And the teacher must remember to protect the student and caution the student from applying an unfinished lesson. Here darkness has a similar function as a container, holding in a gift until it is full ripe.

3, There are times when the cover of darkness can allow believers to do exceptionally good things without being hindered. “Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb…” (John 20:1). And the heroic woman “rises while it is still night and provides food for her family and portions for her servant girls” (Proverbs 31:15). Darkness also offers privacy and uninterrupted time for the intimacy of marriage (Song of Solomon 7:11). Thus darkness can be an abode for certain good and godly works.

4, The Lord uses dark clouds for his dwelling so that his glory can be more brilliantly displayed (1 Kings 8:12; 2 Chronicles 6:1). The Lord uses the darkness for the sake of contrast. “Let light shine from darkness” (2 Corinthian 4:6). This is certainly a fine function of darkness as a framework or means of displaying God’s glory.

5. Darkness can give the believer the opportunity to show his faith even when the world all around is uncertain. “Let him who walks in the dark, who has no light, trust in the name of the LORD and rely on his God” (Isaiah 50:10). This, too, is an excellent function of darkness as an abode for showing one’s faith; a path for a Christian’s cross.

6, For the weary, too much light can drive away sleep. Darkness, then, is a cover for many good things, including rest for the weary (2 Samuel 11:13). “Night [is] when deep sleep falls on men as they slumber in their beds” (Job 33:15). This is a good, calming and restful function of darkness.

7, Darkness helps the cycle of cooling the heat of the day; it is one of the miracles of the rotation of our world; providing shelter and shade after the heat of the day (Isaiah 4:6). The is surely a good, even a life-giving function of darkness.

Theologically, darkness is spoken of as something that is opposed to God and to his light. “The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it” (John 1:5). But there in John’s Gospel, the light is not the light of the stars, nor of the sun, nor of a candle or lamp, but it is the light of Christ and our eternal life in him: “In him was life, and that life was the light of men” (John 1:4). That Gospel passage, like almost all other references to light and darkness in the Scriptures, uses the condition of darkness in a world of sin. But the world during the six days of creation was not the world of sin, but the world before sin. It was good, very good. Therefore we are right in pointing out that this darkness was simply what was present after the creation began but before God said, “Let there be light” (verse 3). The heavens and earth came first, then light. But even before God made the light, he was caring for the chaotic and disorganized (or, the not yet organized) mass. For Moses says that darkness was not the only thing that was over the surface of the deep. We will take up the appearance of the Holy Spirit next.

There are plenty of false teachings about the creation week. I am torn between wanting to show what is wrong with each of those and wanting in this devotional setting to simply give them no attention at all, focusing instead on what God is telling us. One of the dangers even of quoting a false doctrine is the possibility that a good Christian may later on remember that falsehood, forgetting that it is false, and instead carrying the opinion that it is “possible.” I think it is best here to incline toward God’s word and truth rather than man’s errors and falsehood, except where those errors run rampant in the world and among our people.

Our God has made all things, and in the beginning, all things were good. Remembering this, we are well-armed with the truth to help our children when they have fears about the darkness. We will also find some footing, perhaps, with people who have wandered off into false doctrines, either about the unseen spirits of the world, or about the use of reason or modern science and philosophy and the doctrine of creation. For we can point out that the Holy Spirit has provided us with precisely the information that we need regarding the origins of the universe and of the things and spirits that move unseen among us. Let us turn to God’s holy word to comfort us, to instruct us, to correct our misunderstandings, and to point us always to Jesus our Lord, who gave his life to rescue us from our sins. Therefore if a teaching or a fear leads me away from the Lord, it is something to be dropped. Let us be led rather toward Christ, through faith in Christ, and leave everything else behind.

In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith

 

Browse Devotion Archive