Chapter V: The Desolate Void

"And the earth was desolate and empty, and darkness was upon
the surface of the deep; and the Spirit of God moved on the
surface of the waters."--Genesis i., 2.

We have here a few bold outlines of a dark and mysterious scene--a condition of the earth of which we have no certain intimation from any other source, except the speculations based on modern discoveries in physical science. It was "unshaped and empty," formless and uninhabited. The words thus translated are sufficiently plain in their meaning. The first is used by Isaiah to denote the desolation of a ruined city, and in Job and the Psalms as characteristic of the wilderness or desert. Both in connection are employed by Isaiah to express the destruction of Idumea, and by Jeremiah in a powerful description of the ruin of nations by God's judgments. When thus united, they form the strongest expression which the Hebrew could supply for solitary, uninhabited desolation, like that of a city reduced to heaps of rubbish, and to the silence and loneliness of utter decay.

In the present connection these words inform us that the earth was in a chaotic state, and unfit for the residence of organized beings. The words themselves suggest the important question: Are they intended to represent this as the original condition of the earth? Was it a scene of desolation and confusion when it sprang from the hand of its Creator? or was this state of ruin consequent on convulsions which may have been preceded by a very different condition, not mentioned by the inspired historian? That it may have been so is rendered possible by the circumstance that the words employed are generally used to denote the ruin of places formerly inhabited, and by the want of any necessary connection in time between the first and second verses. It has even been proposed, though this does violence to the construction, to read "and the earth became" desolate and empty. Farther, it seems, _a priori_, improbable that the first act of creative power should have resulted in the production of a mere chaos. The crust of the earth also shows, in its alternations of strata and organic remains, evidence of a great series of changes extending over vast periods, and which might, in a revelation intended for moral purposes, with great propriety be omitted.

For such reasons some eminent expositors of these words are disposed to consider the first verse as a title or introduction, and to refer to this period the whole series of geological changes; and this view has formed one of the most popular solutions of the apparent discrepancies between the geological and Scriptural histories of the world. It is evident, however, that if we continue to view the term "earth" as including the whole globe, this hypothesis becomes altogether untenable. The subsequent verses inform us that at the period in question the earth was covered by a universal ocean, possessed no atmosphere and received no light, and had not entered into its present relations with the other bodies of our system. No conceivable convulsions could have effected such changes on an earth previously possessing these arrangements; and geology assures us that the existing laws and dispositions in these respects have prevailed from the earliest periods to which it can lead us back, and that the modern state of things was not separated from those which preceded it by any such general chaos. To avoid this difficulty, which has been much more strongly felt as these facts have been more and more clearly developed by modern science, it has been held that the word earth may denote only a particular region, temporarily obscured and reduced to ruin, and about to be fitted up, by the operations of the six days, for the residence of man; and that consequently the narrative of the six days refers not to the original arrangement of the surface, relations, and inhabitants of our planet, but to the retrieval from ruin and repeopling of a limited territory, supposed to have been in Central Asia, and which had been submerged and its atmosphere obscured by aqueous or volcanic vapors. The chief support of this view is the fact, previously noticed, that the word earth is very frequently used in the signification of region, district, country; to which may be added the supposed necessity for harmonizing the Scriptures with geological discovery, and at the same time viewing the days of creation as literal solar days.

Can we, however, after finding that in verse 1st the term earth must mean the whole world, suddenly restrict it in verse 2d to a limited region. Is it possible that the writer who in verse 10th for the first time intimates a limitation of the meaning of this word, by the solemn announcement, "And God called the _dry land_ earth," should in a previous place use it in a much more limited sense without any hint of such restriction. The case stands thus: A writer uses the word earth in the most general sense; in the next sentence he is supposed, without any intimation of his intention, to use the same word to denote a region or country, and by so doing entirely to change the meaning of his whole discourse from that which would otherwise have attached to it. Yet the same writer when, a few sentences farther on, it becomes necessary for him to use the word earth to denote the dry land as distinguished from the seas, formally and with an assertion of divine authority, intimates the change of meaning. Is not this supposition contrary not only to sound principles of interpretation, but also to common-sense; and would it not tend to render worthless the testimony of a writer to whose diction such inaccuracy must be ascribed. It is in truth to me surprising beyond measure that such a view could ever have obtained currency; and I fear it is to be attributed to a determination, at all hazards and with any amount of violence to the written record, to make geology and religion coincide. Must we then throw aside this simple and convenient method of reconciliation, sanctioned by Chalmers, Smith, Harris, King, Hitchcock, and many other great or respectable names, and on which so many good men complacently rest. Truth obliges us to do so, and to confess that both geology and Scripture refuse to be reconciled on this basis. We may still admit that the lapse of time between the beginning and the first day may have been great; but we must emphatically deny that this interval corresponds with the time indicated by the series of fossiliferous rocks.

Before leaving this part of the subject, I may remark that the desolate and empty condition of the earth was not necessarily a chaotic mass of confusion--_rudis indigestaque moles_; but in reality, when physically considered, may have been a more symmetrical and homogeneous condition than any that it subsequently assumed. If the earth were first a vast globe of vapor, then a liquid spheroid, and then acquired a crust not yet seamed by fissures or broken by corrugations, and eventually covered with a universal ocean, then in each of these early conditions it would, in regard to its form, be a more perfect globe than at any succeeding time. That something of this kind is the intention of our historian is implied in his subsequent statements as to the absence of land and the prevalence of a universal ocean in the immediately succeeding period, which imply that the crust had not yet been ruptured or disturbed, but presented an even and uniform surface, no part of which could project above the comparatively thin fluid envelope.

The second clause introduces a new object--"_the deep_." Whatever its precise nature, this is evidently something included in the earth of verse 1st, and created with it. The word occurs in other parts of the Hebrew Scriptures in various senses. It often denotes the sea, especially when in an agitated state (Psa. xlii., 8; Job xxxviii., 10). In Psalm cxxxv., however, it is distinguished from the sea: "Whatsoever the Lord pleased, that did he in heaven, in the earth, in the seas, and _in all deeps_." In other cases it has been supposed to refer to interior recesses of the earth, as when at the deluge "the fountains of the great deep" are said to have been broken up. It is probable, however, that this refers to the ocean. In some places it would appear to mean the atmosphere or its waters; as Prov. viii., 27-29, "When he prepared the heavens, I was there; when he described a circle on the face of the deep, when he established the clouds above, when he strengthened the fountains of the deep." The Septuagint in this passage reads "throne on the winds" and "fountains under the heaven."[39] Though we can not attach much value to these readings, there seems little reason to doubt that the author of this passage understands by the deep the atmospheric waters, and not the sea, which he mentions separately. The same meaning must be attached to the word in another passage of the Book of Proverbs: "The Lord in wisdom hath founded the earth, by understanding hath he established the heavens; by his knowledge the depths are broken up, and the clouds drop down the small rain."

In the passage now under consideration, it would seem that we have both the deep and the waters mentioned, and this not in a way which would lead us to infer their identity. The darkness on the surface of the deep and the Spirit of God on the face of the waters seem to refer to the condition of two distinct objects at the same time. Neither can the word here refer to subterranean cavities, for the ascription of a surface to these, and the statement that they were enveloped in darkness, would in this case have neither meaning nor use. For these reasons I am induced to believe that the locality of the deep or abyss is to be sought, not in the universal ocean or the interior of the earth, but in the vaporous or aeriform mass mantling the surface of our nascent planet, and containing the materials out of which the atmosphere was afterward elaborated. This is a view leading to important consequences: one of which is that the darkness on the surface of the deep can not have been, as believed by the advocates of a local chaos, a mere atmospheric obscuration; since even at the _surface_ of what then represented the atmosphere darkness prevailed. "God covered the earth with the deep as with a garment, and the waters stood above the hills," and without this outer garment was the darkness of space destitute of luminaries, at least of those greater ones which are of primary importance to us. We learn from the following verses that there was no layer of clear atmosphere in this misty deep, separating the clouds from the ocean waters.

The last clause of the verse has always been obscure, and perhaps it is still impossible to form a clear idea of the operation intended to be described. We are not even certain whether it is intended to represent any thing within the compass of ordinary natural laws, or to denote a direct intervention of the Creator, miraculous in its nature and confined to one period. It is possible that the general intention of the statement may be to the effect that the agency of the divine power in separating the waters from the incumbent vapors had already commenced--that the Spirit which would afterward evoke so many wonders out of the chaotic mass was already acting upon it in an unseen and mysterious way, preparing it for its future destiny.

Some commentators, both Jewish and Christian, are, however, disposed to view the _Ruach Elohim_, Spirit, or breath of God, as meaning a wind of God, or mighty wind, according to a well-known Hebrew idiom. The word in its primary sense means wind or breath, and there are undoubted instances of the expression "wind of God" for a great or strong wind. For example, Isaiah xl., 7: "The grass withereth because the wind of the Lord bloweth upon it;" see also 2 Kings ii., 16. Such examples, however, are very rare, and by no means sufficient of themselves to establish this interpretation. Those who hold this view do so mainly in consideration of the advantage which it affords in attaching a definite meaning to the expression. Many of them are not, however, aware of its precise import in a cosmical point of view. A violent wind, before the formation of the atmosphere, and the establishment of the laws which regulate the suspension and motions of aqueous vapors and clouds, must have been merely an agitation of the confused misty and vaporous mass of the deep; since, as Ainsworth--more careful than modern interpreters--long ago observed, "winde (which is the moving of the aier) was not created till the second day, that the firmament was spred, and the aier made." Such an agitation is by no means improbable. It would be a very likely accompaniment of a boiling ocean, resting on a heated surface, and of excessive condensation of moisture in the upper regions of the atmosphere; and might act as an influential means of preparing the earth for the operations of the second day. It is curious also that the Phoenician cosmogony is said to have contained the idea of a mighty wind in connection with this part of creation, and the idea of seething or commotion in the primitive chaos also occurs in the Assyrian tablets of creation, while the Quiche legend represents Hurakon, the storm-god, as specially concerned in the creative work.[40] On the other hand, the verb used in the text rather expresses hovering or brooding than violent motion, and this better corresponds with the old fable of the mundane egg, which seems to have been derived from the event recorded in this verse. The more evangelical view, which supposes the Holy Spirit to be intended, is also more in accordance with the general scope of the Scripture teachings on this subject; and the opposite idea is, as Calvin well says, "too frigid" to meet with much favor from evangelical theologians.

Chaos, the equivalent of the Hebrew "desolation and emptiness," figures largely in all ancient cosmogonies. That of the Egyptians is interesting, not only from its resemblance to the Hebrew doctrine, but also from its probable connection with the cosmogony of the Greeks. Taking the version of Diodorus Siculus, which though comparatively modern, yet corresponds with the hints derived from older sources, we find the original chaos to have been an intermingled condition of elements constituting heaven and earth. This is the Hebrew "deep." The first step of progress is the separation of these; the fiery particles ascending above, and not only producing light, but the revolution of the heavenly bodies--a curious foreshadowing of the nebular hypothesis of modern astronomy. After these, in the terms of the lines quoted by Diodorus from Euripides, plants, birds, mammals, and finally man are produced, not however by a direct creative fiat, but by the spontaneous fecundity of the teeming earth. The Phoenician cosmogony attributed to Sancuniathon has the void, the deep, and the brooding Spirit; and one of the terms employed, "baau," is the same with the Hebrew "bohu," void, if read without the points. The Babylonians, according to Berosus, believed in a chaos--which, however, like the literal-day theory of some moderns, produced many monsters before Belus intervened to separate heaven and earth. But the Assyrian legend found in the Nineveh tablets is very precise in its intimation of the Chaos or _Tiamat_, the mother of all things; and, farther, it recognizes this personified chaos as the principle of evil, whose "dragon" becomes the tempter of the progenitors of mankind, exactly like the Biblical serpent. This "dragon of the abyss" is thus identical in name and function with the evil principle even of the last book of the New Testament, and we have in this also probably the origin of the Ahriman of the Avesta. Thus in these Eastern theologies the primeval chaos becomes the type of evil as opposed to the order, beauty, and goodness of the creation of God--a very natural association; but one kept in the background by the Hebrew Scriptures, as tending to a dualistic belief subversive of monotheism. The Greek myth of Chaos, and its children Erebus and Night, who give birth to Aether and Day, is the same tradition, personified after the fanciful manner of a people who, in the primitive period of their civilization, had no profound appreciation of nature, but were full of human sympathies.[41] Lastly, in a hymn translated by Dr. Max Mueller from the Rig-Veda, a work probably far older than the Institutes of Menu, we have such utterances as the following:

"Nor aught nor nought existed: yon bright sky
Was not, nor heaven's broad woof outstretched above.
What covered all? what sheltered? what concealed?
Was it the water's fathomless abyss? * * *
Darkness there was, and all at first was veiled
In gloom profound--an ocean without light;
The germ that still lay covered in the husk
Burst forth, one nature, from the fervent heat."

It is evident that the state of our planet which we have just been considering is one of which we can scarcely form any adequate conception, and science can in no way aid us, except by suggesting hypotheses or conjectures. It is remarkable, however, that nearly all the cosmological theories which have been devised contain some of the elements of the inspired narrative. The words of Moses appear to suggest a heated and cooling globe, its crust as yet unbroken by internal forces, covered by a universal ocean, on which rested a mass of confused vaporous substances; and it is of such materials, thus combined by the sacred historian, that cosmologists have built up their several theories, aqueous or igneous, of the early state of the earth. Geology, as a science of observation and induction, does not carry us back to this period. It must still and always say, with Hutton, that it can find "no trace of a beginning, no prospect of an end"--not because there has been no beginning or will be no end, but because the facts which it collects extend neither to the one nor the other. Geology, like every other department of natural history, can but investigate the facts which are open to observation, and reason on these in accordance with the known laws and arrangements of existing nature. It finds these laws to hold for the oldest period to which the rocky archives of the earth extend. Respecting the origin of these general laws and arrangements, or the condition of the earth before they originated, it knows nothing. In like manner a botanist may determine the age of a forest by counting the growth rings of the oldest trees, but he can tell nothing of the forests that may have preceded it, or of the condition of the surface before it supported a forest. So the archaeologist may on Egyptian monuments read the names and history of successive dynasties of kings, but he can tell nothing of the state of the country and its native tribes before those dynasties began or their monuments were built. Yet geology at least establishes a probability that a time was when organized beings did not exist, and when many of the arrangements of the surface of our earth had not been perfected; and the few facts which have given birth to the theories promulgated on this subject tend to show that this pre-geological condition of the earth may have been such as that described in the words now under consideration. I may remark, in addition, that if the words of Moses imply the cooling of the globe from a molten or intensely heated state down to a temperature at which water could exist on its surface, the known rate of cooling of bodies of the dimensions and materials of the earth shows that the time included in these two verses of Genesis must have been enormous, amounting it may be to many millions of years.

There are two other sciences besides geology which have in modern times attempted to penetrate into the mysteries of the primitive abyss, at least by hypothetical explanations--astronomy and chemistry. The magnificent nebular hypothesis of La Place, which explains the formation of the whole solar system by the condensation of a revolving mass of gaseous matter, would manifestly bring our earth to the condition of a fluid body, with or without a solid crust, and surrounded by a huge atmosphere of its more volatile materials, gradually condensing itself around the central nucleus. Chemistry informs us that this vaporous mass would contain not only the atmospheric air and water, but all the carbon, sulphur, phosphorus, chlorine, and other elements, volatile in themselves, or forming volatile compounds with oxygen or hydrogen, that are now imprisoned in various states of combination in the solid crust of the earth. Such an atmosphere--vast, dark, pestilential, and capable in its condensation of producing the most intense chemical action--is a necessity of an earth condensing from a vaporous and incandescent state. Thus, in so far as scientific speculation ventures to penetrate into the genesis of the earth, its conclusions are at one with the Mosaic cosmogony and with the traditions of most ancient nations as to the primitive existence of a chaos--formless and void, in which "nor aught nor nought existed."

Some of the details of the Mosaic vision of the primeval chaos may be supplied by the probabilities established by physics and chemistry. Our first idea of the earth would be a vast vaporous ball, recently spun out from the general mass of vapors forming the nebula which once represented the solar system. This huge cloud, whirling its annual round about the still vaporous centre of the system, would consist of all the materials now constituting the solid rocks as well as those of the seas and atmosphere, their atoms kept asunder by the force of heat, preventing not only their mechanical union, but even their chemical combination. But heat is being radiated on all sides into space, and the opposing force of gravitation is little by little gathering the particles toward the centre. At length a liquid nucleus is formed, while upon this are being precipitated showers of condensing matter from the still vast atmosphere to add to its volume. As this process advances, a new brilliancy is given to the feebly shining vapors by the incandescence of solid particles in the upper layers of the atmosphere, and in this stage our earth would be a little sun, a miniature of that which now forms the centre of our system, and which still, by virtue of its greater mass, continues in this state. But at length, by further cooling, this brilliancy is lost, and the still fluid globe is surrounded by a vast cloudy pall, in which condensing vapors gather in huge dark masses, and amid terrible electrical explosions, pour, in constantly increasing, acid, corrosive rains, upon the heated nucleus, combining with its materials, or again flashing into vapors. Thus darkness dense and gross would settle upon the vaporous deep, and would continue for long ages, until the atmosphere could be finally cleared of its superfluous vapors. In the mean time a crust of slag or cinder has been forming upon the molten nucleus. Broken again and again by the heaving of the seething mass, it at length sets permanently, and finally allows some portion of the liquid rain condensed upon it to remain as a boiling ocean. Then began the reign of the waters, under which the first stratified rocks were laid down by the deposit of earthy and saline matter suspended or dissolved in the heated sea. Such is the picture which science presents to us of the genesis of the earth, and so far as we can judge from his words, such must have been the picture presented to the mental vision of the ancient seer of creation; but he could discern also that mysterious influence, the "breath of Elohim," which moved on the face of the waters, and prepared for the evolution of land and of life from their bosom. He saw--

"An earth--formless and void;
A vaporous abyss--dark at its very surface;
A universal ocean--the breath of God hovering over it."

How could such a scene be represented in words? since it presented none of the familiar features of the actual world. Had he attempted to dilate upon it, he would, in the absence of the facts furnished by modern science, have been obliged, like the writers of some of the less simple and primitive cosmogonies already quoted,[42] to adopt the feeble expedient of enumerating the things not present. He wisely contents himself with a few well-chosen words, which boldly sketch the crude materials of a world hopeless and chaotic but for the animating breath of the Almighty, who has created even that old chaos out of which is to be worked in the course of the six creative days all the variety and beauty of a finished world.

In conclusion, the reader will perceive how this reticence of the author of Genesis strengthens the argument for the primitive age of the document, and for the vision-theory as to its origin; and will also observe that, in the conception of this ancient writer, the "promise and potency" of order and life reside not alone in the atoms of a vaporous world, but also in the will of its Creator.