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.