Tohu wa-bohu or Tohu va-Vohu, is a Biblical Hebrew phrase found in the Genesis creation narrative that describes the condition of the earth immediately before the creation of light in. Numerous interpretations of this phrase are made by various theological sources. The KJV translation of the phrase is "without form, and void", corresponding to LXX ἀόρατος καὶ ἀκατασκεύαστος, "unseen and unformed".
Text
Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the spirit of God was hovering over the waters. The words tohu and bohu also occur in parallel in Isaiah 34:11, where King James Version translates with the words "confusion" and "emptiness". The two Hebrew words are properly segolates, spelled tohuw and bohuw. Hebrew tohuw translates to "wasteness, that which is laid waste, desert; emptiness, vanity; nothing". tohuw is frequently used in Isaiah in the sense of "vanity", but bohuw occurs nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible, its use alongside tohu being mere paronomasia, and is given the equivalent translation of "emptiness, voidness".
Interpretation
In the early rabbinical period, the verse was a point of contention regarding the question of creatio ex nihilo. In Genesis Rabbah 1:14, Rabbi Akiva refutes gnostic and other heretical views that matter existed primordially and that God alone did not create the world. In Genesis Rabbah 2:2, rabbis Abbahu and Judah b. Simon give analogies in which tohu wa-bohu means "bewildered and astonished", referring to the Earth's confusion after, having been created simultaneously with the Heavens in Genesis 1:1, it now immediately plays an inferior role. Abraham bar Hiyya was the first to interpret the tohu and bohu of Gen. 1:2 as meaning "matter" and "form", and the same idea appears in Bahir 2.9–10. Possibly related is the Yesod hapashut in the Kabbalah, in which "everything is united as one, without differentiation".
The phrase is featured on the front of Godspeed You! Black Emperor's EPSlow Riot for New Zero Kanada, referring to the use of the phrase in Jeremiah 4:23. Jeremiah 4:23-27 is shown on the back of the album cover.
