Page 46 - Foundations

confusion” (1 Cor. 14.33). And hence when it states that in the beginning God created the earth,
what He created was therefore perfect. So that the waste and void of the earth spoken of in verse 2
was not the original condition of the earth as God first created it. Would God ever create an earth
whose primeval condition would be waste and void? A true understanding of this verse will solve
the apparent problem.

“Thus saith Jehovah that created the heavens, the God that formed the earth and made it, that
established it and created it not a waste, that formed it to be inhabited: I am Jehovah; and there is
none else” (Is. 45.18). How clear God’s word is. The word “waste” here is “tohu” in Hebrew,
which signifies “desolation” or “that which is desolate.” It says here that the earth which God
created was not a waste. Why then does Genesis 1.2 state that “the earth was waste”? This may be
easily resolved. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth (Gen. 1.1). At that time, the
earth which God had created was not a waste; but later on, in passing through a great catastrophe,
the earth did become waste and void. So that all which is mentioned from verse 3 onward does not
refer to the original creation but to the restoration of the earth. God created the heavens and the
earth in the beginning; but He subsequently used the Six Days to remake the earth habitable.
Genesis 1.1 was the original world; Genesis 1.3 onward is our present world; while Genesis 1.2
describes the desolate condition which was the earth’s during the transitional period following its
original creation and before our present world.

Such an interpretation cannot only be arrived at on the basis of Isaiah 45.18, it can also be
supported on the basis of other evidences. The conjunctive word “and” in verse 2 can also be
translated as “but”: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, but the earth was
waste and void.” G. H. Pember, in his book “Earth’s Earliest Ages,” wrote that

the “and” according to Hebrew usage—as well as that of most other
languages—proves that the first verse is not a compendium of what follows, but a
statement of the first event in the record. For if it were a mere summary, the second
verse would be the actual commencement of the history, and certainly would not
begin with a copulative. A good illustration of this may be found in the fifth chapter
of Genesis (Gen. 5.1). There the opening words, “This is the book of the generations
of Adam,” are a compendium of the chapter, and, consequently, the next sentence
begins without a copulative. We have, therefore, in the second verse of Genesis no
first detail of a general statement in the preceding sentence, but the record of an
altogether distinct and subsequent event, which did not affect the sidereal [starry]
heaven, but only the earth and its immediate surroundings. And what that event was
we must now endeavour to discover.

Over a hundred years ago, Dr. Chalmers pointed out that the words “the earth was waste” might
equally be translated “the earth became waste.” Dr. I. M. Haldeman, G. H. Pember, and others
showed that the Hebrew word for “was” here has been translated “became” in Genesis 19.26: “His
wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt.” If this same Hebrew word can
be translated in 19.26 as “became,” why can it not be translated as “became” in 1.2? Furthermore,
the word “became” in 2.7 (“and man became a living soul”) is the same word as is found in Genesis
1.2. So that it is not at all arbitrary for anyone to translate “was” as “became” here: “In the