"hovering over the water" (Gen 1:2)

Reading through the story of creation

We’ve spent the past week moving slowly through v. 2 of Genesis 1, giving us the context in which God’s creation could begin. Contrary to what many people think, there was not nothing at the beginning of our story, but something:

2 at the time the world was a tohu-bohu, with darkness over Deep and a God-wind hovering over the water — 

וְהָאָ֗רֶץ הָיְתָ֥ה תֹ֨הוּ֙ וָבֹ֔הוּ וְחֹ֖שֶׁךְ עַל־פְּנֵ֣י תְה֑וֹם וְר֣וּחַ אֱלֹהִ֔ים מְרַחֶ֖פֶת עַל־פְּנֵ֥י הַמָּֽיִם׃

Last time we spent the entire post discussing what might be meant by a God-wind. Now let’s continue and try to understand what this ruaḥ elohim is doing.  

hovering מְרַחֶ֖פֶת The verb meraḥefet occurs in this conjugation only one other place in the Bible, in Deut 32:11, where an eagle hovers over its young in the nest.  In Ugaritic literature too this verb is something that birds do.  Some people think it means “swoop” rather than “hover”; but its only other biblical occurrence, in a different verb conjugation, is in Jer 23:9, where it is the prophet’s bones that are trembling or shaking inside him.  It would seem that the ruaḥ elohim – whether a wind or a spirit – is not swooping from place to place, but is nonetheless in constant motion.  Though nothing in this picture is changing, it is not still but dynamic.  We might say that it is full of the potential energy that will be actualized in v. 3.

over the water עַל־פְּנֵ֥י הַמָּֽיִם al p’nei ha-mayim The Hebrew is again literally “over the face” of the water, a metaphor for its surface.  This phrase is deceivingly simple.  We think we understand at once what it means: the water is below and the ruaḥ is above it.  When we stop to consider the overall situation at the end of v. 2, though, we are somewhat puzzled.  Aren’t “the water” and “Deep” he same thing?  How then could over Deep and over the water be two different locations?  But if they are the same location, why not just say that it was dark and windy?  Why darkness here and ruaḥ there?  If ruaḥ is implying that God is somehow there, wouldn’t it make more sense to have the implicit god of ruaḥ in the same phrase with the implicit god of Deep, with (relatively) mundane darkness and water together in a second phrase?

And there is a bigger problem.  Spoiler alert:  On the second day of creation, the water will be split in two (as Tiamat is in the Enuma Elish).  Right now, the world seems to consist of nothing but water.  How then can the water — let alone Deep — have a “face,” a surface?  What would it mean to be “upon” or “above” such a surface if in fact there is nothing else but God and this amorphous, pre-creation stuff?  The depiction of the world in v. 2 has left us with questions that appear to be impossible to resolve.  Genesis 1 seems to wish to leave the ultimate questions about God and the universe unanswered.

As a side note, you may know that the first of the pre-Socratic philosophers, Thales of Miletus, considered to be the founder of philosophy, thought that everything was made out of water. (He may or may not have been influenced by earlier mythological depictions.) I have often felt that there is a great deal of philosophy in the Bible. I don’t have a strong enough background in philosophy to write about this for scholars, but I may one day write some posts about this on my WordPress Bible Guy blog.

As we conclude our study of v. 2, let me remind you that nothing has happened yet.  The first two verses of the first chapter of the first book of the Bible have set up a situation of dark, watery chaos — perhaps, though this is not explicit, the aftermath of a cosmic battle that our version of the story of creation does not wish to describe.  But we have been told the subject of the story to come: the sky and the land will be created by elohim, a god who is as yet nameless.  In v. 3, that god will act for the first time in the story.