Page 222 - Coincidences in the Bible and in Biblical Hebrew

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CHAPTER 14 IN THE BEGINNING …
CHAPTER 14 IN THE BEGINNING … 201
good demonstration of that is given by the prophet Isaiah, in one of the most
strongly expressed statements about the relationship between God and the people
of Israel: “Every one that is called by my name: for my glory I have created him, I
have formed him; yea, I have made him” (Isa. 43:7).
In the Hebrew language, each of these verbs carries distinct and different
important meaning. In particular, there is strong distinction between creating
and doing. The quotation from Isaiah makes it clear that in the book of Genesis
what we call “sky,” which God called “Heaven,” was made (not created), and it
was “made” after “the heaven” (whatever that term means) had been “created.”
(Capitalization of “heaven” (and later “earth”), when it occurs, follows the tradi-
tional biblical English translation; there is no similar capitalization in the original
Hebrew text.)
The same distinction extends to Earth. First, God created “the earth” (verse 1),
then,
“And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto
one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so. And God called the dry land
Earth” (Gen. 1:9, 10).
Again, God made “dry land” and named it “Earth,” but there is no indica-
tion that this “Earth” was created. Furthermore, obviously making “Earth” (dry

land) is distinct from creating “the earth,” as depicted in the first two verses of
Genesis. If that were not so, the Bible would then be insinuating that “Heaven”
and “Earth” were created twice!

Two major qualifications thus seem to emerge on a careful reading of the text.
First, “the heaven” and “the earth” were created. However there is no qualification

in the text as to the nature of “the heaven,” and only one qualification is given
2
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about “the earth”—namely, that it was tohu and bohu. Secondly, God made
the sky, which he called just “Heaven,” and the “dry land,” which he called just
“Earth.” These were made after the creation, and one is only left to wonder, for
lack of any source of information , why the Divine “chose” to call the sky by the
same name as the created “heaven.” Similarly, what are the lines of correspondence
that “motivated” calling “Earth,” as the term is commonly used today, by the

same name as the “created earth,” related to in the first verse of Genesis? We will
attempt some explanation regarding “Earth” later on.
Having made the distinction between the two concepts of “Heaven” and

“Earth”—one which was “created” but remains mysterious and mostly undefined,
and another that in no uncertain terms is explicitly described, yet unrelated to cre-
ation—we may proceed to analyze the linguistic contents of the only description
1
given for the creation—namely, that the created earth was tohu and bohu. 2
We start by revealing a most bizarre characteristic about the only description
of the moment of creation. A “root” analysis of verbs derived from the same roots