Void and darkness

1:2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

A couple of minor structural points. This is one verse, but two sentences. The division into verses, while newer than the text, is still old, traditional, oddball and unimportant. The text predates modern concepts of punctuation; I think the division into sentences is also newer than the text.

More interesting is the business of starting sentences with "And". And not just sentences, but independent clauses start with "and" as well. My elementary school teachers told me not to do this, but I quite like it here. It makes for a strong sense of continuity. It's not quite as powerful as starting the whole thing off with "In the beginning", but it's still strong.

Ok, the earth was created in the first verse, and the newly-created earth is being described. It is "without form, and void". I believe the correct interpretation of "void" here is "empty"; not yet populated with people or animals or plants. What "without form" means is less clear. Not yet spherical? Maybe it's a repetition of "void" and just means not covered in plants and animals.

The next bit is fairly mysterious: "darkness was upon the face of the deep". What's "the deep"? Is it the formless earth? Is it "the heaven", also created in the first verse, but not obviously mentioned here. I'll take "face" just to mean "surface", and even that to be vague. I consider "darkness" to simply be the absence of light; but perhaps something else is intended here.

Now we come to "the Spirit of God". Is this an odd way to describe God? Is it a part of God? Is it something belonging to or working for God? Surely not clear to me. But "moved" I understand, at least somewhat. "Moved" is nice and physical, motion, action, changing position. While the first verse suggests that God is non-physical, this one suggests that the Spirit of God is physical, that it has a position, and that position changes.

Finally, "upon the face of the waters." Trivial note: one verse, two uses of the word "face". Again, "surface" seems the right interpretation; even better here, since "waters" actually can have a surface, while who knows if "the deep" does. And "the waters" is the most interesting bit. That's something we understand, something physical, concrete, and wet. We've touched water, drunk it, swam in it. Still a bit mysterious: is it part of "the earth"? Definitely in my image of Earth seen from the Moon, but it contrasts with another sense of "earth": dirt, ground. Were the waters created with the earth? Were they there before the beginning?

Well, this was a wholely unsatisfying verse. Raised a lot of questions. I only learned from it, I think, two things, both pretty minor. First, we seem to be progressing sequentially in time (albeit slowly), telling a story, by describing the earth as empty after it was created. Second and weaker, we're implying some physical reality for the Spirit of God, if not for God himself. Besides that, not much but some cool-sounding phrases.

Ok, maybe one more thing, which becomes even clearer later: God created the earth, which is pretty impressive; but didn't create it fully formed and fully populated, which would be still more impressive. Which implicitly puts a limitation on God: not all-impressive, just very impressive.