The Spirit's loving desire for lifeless chaos in Gen 1:2

When God began to create heaven and earth, and the earth then was welter and waste and darkness over the deep and God’s breath hovering over the waters, God said, “Let there be light.”

(Robert Alter’s translation from Genesis: Translation and Commentary)

     If anyone thought that a former-homeschooling, mother of five might read Genesis differently than academic male theologians, you will not be disappointed! From studying Genesis I see four scenarios overlaying each other--Genesis 1, Genesis 3, Deuteronomy 32 and Acts 2--and they all look like Jesus and the Church.

     The world was in lifeless waste (the second word Alter sees as reinforcement, p.3) and darkness. The Hebrew word for “waste” here alone (tohu) means emptiness or futility. But—the Mighty Wind of God was hovering over it to lovingly to bring order out of that chaos. I agree with most theologians and see God creating by speaking order (see esp. Leon Kass’ The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis). Word Biblical Commentary (WBC) suggests “total chaos” for ESV’s “without form and void.” The Spirit of God, what WBC sees should be translated “great wind,” is hovering over the face of the waters. And “hovering” is the verb attached to God’s breath-wind-spirit (ruah), elsewhere describing an eagle fluttering. Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries has this about this “hovering”:

Not in conflict, then, but in evocative activity the Spirit of God was moving (rsv rightly retains the participle). In the Old Testament the Spirit is a term for God’s outgoing energy, creative and sustaining (cf. Job 33:4; Ps. 104:30). Any impression of Olympian detachment which the rest of the chapter might have conveyed is forestalled by the simile of the mother-bird ‘hovering’ (Moffatt) or fluttering over her brood. The verb reappears in Deuteronomy 32:11 to describe the eagle’s movements in stirring its young into flight; this aspect of intimate contact must be kept in mind throughout.1

     Here’s that Deuteronomy 32 passage in the Song of Moses near the end of the Torah (the first five books of the Hebrew Bible) referred to and the lifeless waste the LORD found Jacob in:

9 But the LORD’s portion is his people,
Jacob his allotted heritage.
10 “He found him in a desert land,
and in the howling waste of the wilderness;
he encircled him, he cared for him,
he kept him as the apple of his eye.
11 Like an eagle that stirs up its nest,
that flutters over its young,
spreading out its wings, catching them,
bearing them on its pinions,
12 the LORD alone guided him,
no foreign god was with him.

I see this passage as a clearly aluding back to Genesis 1:2 with that same word for waste and hovering/fluttering. Here's a video of a mother eagle with her young, hovering over them (watch from at 0:30 to 1:00). The Biblical writers love their envelope pattern structures, framing their material, so here is one I see here in the Torah. The Lord loves his people Jacob. He found them in the desert waste (the word from Gen 1:2). He took them in, encircling them, fluttering/hovering over them and caring for them. Similarly, man is put by God in the “garden of Eden to work it [or to serve it], and to keep it [or to guard it or to watch it]” (Kass, p.59). The world was in chaos but the Mighty Wind/Spirit of God lovingly hovered there to gather them in, creating order out of that chaos. God breathed the breath of life into man to bring His order out of the lifeless chaos of the world.

     You then see that same Hebrew base word for the Spirit “wind” again in Genesis 3:8—

And they hear the sound of Jehovah God walking up and down in the garden at the breeze of the day, and the man and his wife hide themselves from the face of Jehovah God in the midst of the trees of the garden. (YLT).

     The movement of God’s breath-wind-spirit was there to bring order out of chaos—the chaos brought on by their sin which caused Adam and Eve to hide from the presence of the Lord. Cain in 4:15, after his murder of Abel not only hides but “went away from the presence of the LORD.”

     In Christ we see the fulfillment of this loving desire of God to gather and protect us. Remember what Jesus laments over Jerusalem? “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not! (Matt 23:37, Luke 13:34) He wanted relationship with Jerusalem. He wanted to gather those together as his chicks. Here’s a 20 second video our non-agrarian society needs to see. God chose to compare his love for the world with a daily common sight of the people, the mother hen rounding up her chicks, keeping them warm and protecting them, to constantly remind them that this is what God desires to do in the world. Rabbinic texts also use the “image of finding refuge under wings for proselytes who come under the wings of the Shekinah.” (p. 336, Commentary on the Use of the Old Testament in the New).

     So Jesus sends us the mighty wind of Pentecost to bring order out of the chaos of man’s heart caused by their hiding from and leaving his presence. “When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place. And suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting” (Acts 2:1-2). The Greek and Hebrew words for “Spirit” can also mean “wind” and “breath.”2  So God’s spirit-wind-breath again came to gather together his new people. As Ben Witherington III says about this verse, “It is the beginning of the creation of God’s eschatological people, properly speaking.”3  Through the Church, God begins his ordering, begins his great reversal of the lifeless waste of the world.
 
    In Genesis we see the loving God hovering over the emptiness and futility of the world, desiring to draw us in to Himself as His portion. His mighty wind empowers God’s people to do as Adam was to do then — serve, guard and watch over this world. Jesus hovers over the waste of the world and breathes His Spirit on His new creation people to create His loving order in the world.

^[1] Kidner, D. (1967). Vol. 1: Genesis: An Introduction and Commentary. Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries (49). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.

^[2] Fernando, A. (1998). Acts. The NIV Application Commentary (87). Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House.

^[3] Witherington, B., III. (1998). The Acts of the Apostles: A socio-rhetorical commentary (132). Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.