Page 221 - Coincidences in the Bible and in Biblical Hebrew

COINCIDENCES IN THE BIBLE AND IN BIBLICAL HEBREW
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200 COINCIDENCES IN THE BIBLE AND IN BIBLICAL HEBREW
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prophecy is about God rendering fertile land into desert, then obviously tohu and
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bohu mean “waste” and “void.”
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The prophet Isaiah uses tohu and bohu not as adjacent words, but in close
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proximity: “And he shall stretch out upon it the line of confusion [kav-tohu ],
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and the plummet of emptiness [avnei bohu ]” (Isa. 34:11). The key words here
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are kav (the biblical yardstick, or measure rod) and avnei (literally, “bricks of”).
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The Malbim (1809–79) explains that both words relate to a house. Tohu refers

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to its external appearance, while bohu refers to the internal build-up. Thus, the
former marks “Lack of the beauty, the order and the form externally,” as revealed
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by the yardstick which measures the house from the outside. By contrast, bohu
marks this lack in its internal composition, where “bricks of bohu ” insinuates lack
of inner strength to the house, and existence of disorder in the internal makeup of
the measured house.
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Referring to tohu and bohu in the book of Genesis, Malbim essentially pursues

the same explanation. He repeats previous interpreters, like the Ramban (1194–
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1270), who had regarded tohu as the primordial matter that, lacking any form, is
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the source of puzzlement (hence the word tahah, “was puzzled”). However, bohu
is the potential form of that primordial matter, which, since yet only in potential,
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is written like bo-hu, literally meaning in Hebrew, “in it, it is.” (A similar inter-
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pretation is given in Jewish tradition to the Hebrew word for “cattle,” behemah,
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which can be read, “bah-mah” —literally, “In it—what?”—appropriately relating
to the wisdom one can find in cattle.)

In this chapter, a different approach is pursued. First, we analyze the roots of
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tohu and bohu, thereby obtaining the full context of this strange combination of
words. Then we analyze verbs derived from another word, which seems to deliver
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a sense similar to that of the tohu and bohu. This analysis helps clarify further
the meaning of these qualifying words for the creation of the Earth. Finally, we
explore how compatible are these descriptive words of the universe, at creation
time, with the latest cosmology theories.
Prior to proceeding with this analysis, an important distinction needs to be

made. In the first ten verses in Genesis, it becomes apparent that “the heaven” and
“the earth” in Genesis 1:1–2 are not “Heaven” and “Earth” in Genesis 1:6–10. Let
us read the latter (verse 7) carefully:

“And God made the firmament [“sky” in Hebrew], and divided the waters

which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firma-

ment: and it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven” (Gen. 1:7–8).

This description clearly conveys two facts. First, God made the firmament; sec-
ond, he called it “Heaven.” Nothing was created when the so-called “Heaven” was

made. This is significant. Both the Bible and later Jewish mysticism (Kabbalah )
distinguish between the worlds of creating, forming, and doing (or making). A