"The earth was formless and void" Did the earth exist before God created the world?

Question

Gen 1:2 reads:

• "The earth WAS without form and void"; Form-structure void-nothing occupied the earth.
• "Darkness WAS upon the deep"; Total darkness upon the waters.
• "The Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." Water was on the earth

The earth was all of water. Water planet after the dino age/ice age/melting/water planet when God found the earth.

Answer 1

We observe the following about the tight literary structure that is Gen 1:1 - 2:3 -

1. Each day follows the strict formula, “And God said, ‘Let…’ …And there was evening and morning – the nth day.” Thus, the first day of creation week begins in Gen 1:3, and the sixth day ends with Gen 1:31. That is, Gen 1:2 is not part of the first day of creation activity.
2. In all but day 2 we also have the phrase, “And God saw that it was good (Gen 1:4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25, 31) scattered through the text as well.
3. The two halves of creation week follow the same pattern. The first half (days 1-3) mostly concerns the act of separating (eg, waters above from waters below, light from darkness, land from sea, etc.), while the second half (days 4-6) mostly concerns populating these separated habitats with living creatures or lights (the sun and moon are not explicitly mentioned). This directly follows the pattern set up in Gen 1:2 where the earth is declared, “tohu and bohu” = formless and empty; God then proceeds to form and fill.
4. There are three phases of creation involving light, water, and dry ground. Each required two steps separated by three days. In the case of the land (the third phase of day 3 and day 6), two distinct creation acts are recorded each time, each terminated by the declaration that the result was good: on day 3 it is the separation of dry land from the water and then the creation of vegetation; on day 6 God made the land produce animals, and then the land (or soil Gen 2:7) was made to produce mankind.
5. The creation of the sun and moon is not recorded in this passage. All that is stated is that God created lights in the expanse of the heaven (“sky” NIV, not outer space or the starry heaven), which according to Gen 1:6 is what separated the waters below (what became on day 3 rivers, lakes and seas) from the waters above (presumably the source of dew, rain and snow in the atmosphere). Hebrew has perfectly good words for “sun” (שֶׁמֶשׁ shemesh) and “moon” (יָרֵחַ yareach) that the author obviously goes to some trouble to avoid using.
6. The passage contains several nomenclature or definition statements which are introduced by the phrase, “God called the…”. This occurs for “day” and “night” (1:4), the “sky” or “heaven” (1:8), and the “land” or “earth” and the “seas” (1:10). All these definition statements occur in the first three days only. The naming of the living creatures was (presumably) to be left to Adam (2:19).
7. Further, there is no record (in Gen 1:1–2:3) of God creating planet Earth on any of the six days. Nor is there any record of creating the water covering the planet – this was apparently all done before the first day of creation week which began in V3. Thus, at the beginning of the first day of creation week, the Earth consisted of a “formless”, planet covered in water, totally lifeless and dark, over which the Spirit of God was moving (Gen 1:2).
8. Gen 1 is written from a phenomenological point of view - what an observer would simply see. It is NOT a scientific nor astronomical record. This is reinforced with passages like Eccl 1:5 about the sun and moon rising and setting and hurrying back again.
9. The fact that the sun produces its own light and the moon is a reflector of light (as we now know from astronomical analysis) is quite irrelevant to the record of Gen 1 because all that matters is that they are both sources of light for the inhabitants on earth. The stars are also sources of light as also recorded elsewhere, such as Eze 32:7, Jer 31:35, etc.
10. One of the several functions of the Gen 1 record is as type of salvation. God takes a world that (Gen 1:2) “tohu and bohu and hosek” = formless and void and dark; and by the end of the record we have, (v31) “And God looked upon all that He had made, and indeed, it was very good.” That is, we have the opposite - form, value and brightness!
11. It is not necessary for the author of a Bible passage to fully understand what is being revealed. We see this spectacularly in passages like Dan 8:27 and others. Thus, it is possible that the author was inspired to write the passage in the style and vocabulary they did to avoid misconceptions and unfounded claims.
12. The “vault” or “firmament” (רָקִיעַ raqia) is called heavens (שָׁמַיִם shamayim) Gen 1:8 and represents the space between the waters below and waters above.
13. The Bible writers of Gen 1 makes no attempt to distinguish between what we now call the atmosphere and outer space beyond the atmosphere - they had no language nor understanding of these things and it did not matter to them. Heaven was anything above the earth or soil (where crops were grown). Birds flew in the heaven (Gen 1:20, 26, 28, 30, 2:19, 20, 6:7, etc); water came from above the heavens (Gen 1:6, 7, 7:11, 8:2, etc); the sun, moon and stars existed in the heavens (Gen 1:14), etc.
14. Similarly, there is no concept of “planet earth” in Gen 1 - it is entirely foreign to the entire Bible. “earth” (אֶרֶץ erets) is simply dry, arable land (Gen 1:10) that makes agriculture possible.
15. It is very significant that in the creation record of Gen 1 -

• The heavens are created on day #2 (Gen 1:8)
• The earth is created in day #3 (Gen 1:10)

Therefore, a simple reading of Gen 1:1–2:3 suggests that a formless, worthless, dark, lifeless, watery planet already existed at (ie, before) the beginning of creation week. This suggests that God had previously created it – a suggestion supported by Job 38:4-7, “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? … Who laid its cornerstone while the morning stars and all the sons of God shouted for joy?” Thus, other life forms existed elsewhere in the universe (apart from God) who witnessed the creation of the Earth during the planet’s very foundation.

However, there was nothing on earth such as any life, etc, before that first creation week apart from water.

Answer 2

The English translation using "was" is neither here nor there: that's just an auxiliary verb we use to make past tenses.

But a similar question arises in the original language.

Joseph Blenkinsopp writes at length about it in 'Creation, Un-Creation, Re-Creation, 2010'

p.30:-

By construing the opening sentence as a main clause rather than a subordinate temporal clause, this version provided warrant for a theology of creation from nothing (creatio ex nihilo) , the standard and orthodox theological understanding of creation in early Judaism and Christianity. Creation out of nothing can be argued on philosophical and theological grounds, it was accepted in Judaism before Christianity (see e.g. 2 Macc. 7:28 where it is explicitly stated), and if not explicitly formulated in the New Testament is hinted at indirectly (Rom. 4:17; 1Cor. 1:28; Heb 11:3). All this notwithstanding, it has been known at least from the Middle Ages - for example in the commentary of the Jewish scholar Rashi - that from the linguistical and exegetical point of view this reading of Gen 1:1-2 is not the preferred option in strictly exegetical terms.

He advances a second argument: that in the history-of-ideas (i) Gods don't necessarily create ex nihilo - e.g. in the Enuma Elish they only appear on line 8 and (ii) they sometimes have to contend with chaotic forces.

There is a third argument: that some pre-Christian Jewish texts have different sequences of creation - e.g. Wisdom being created first in Prov. 8:22-31.

The LORD possessed me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of old.

His best argument though, I think is in a different book (maybe 'Genesis: A Commentary'?): that the second word of the bible בָּרָ֣א=bara can't mean to create ex nihilo - since it's also used for the creation of humanity (Gen 1:27-28). In the sense of make/shape/create it's only used of God. Of humans it's used for (e.g.) clearing a forest (Joshua 17:15) and making someone fat with offerings (1 Samuel 2:29).

How Blenkinsopp would answer the OP I think is on p.32 - the pre-existing material was the 'shapeless mass'='tohu wabohu' occupying the space between the upper waters and the lower waters.

Answer 3

Yes because of the opening statement in the Book of Genesis, that the earth was created alongside the heavens in the beginning. Now between these two instances of time where God created the heavens and the earth and when he said let there be light, time passed. Whether the time that passed is very small or billions of years we do not know but anything that can be seen in the universe was created, that is according to the book of Genesis and The Book of John.

Genesis 1:1

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

John 1:3

All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made

The two verses show that God created the earth, how much time passed between creation of heaven and earth and God saying let there be light cannot be established but be sure God created everything visible and invisible

Answer 4

Genesis 1:1

1 In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

This verse is summarizing what is going to happen. In the beginning - a non-time specific statement - God created the sky above and the land.

2 The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.

Next we get several statements that describe the pre-creation state of the earth in different ways.

"Without form and void" is a way of talking about the unordered, uninhabited nothingness. "Darkness was over the face of the deep" or "darkness was on the face of the deep abyss" A dark chaotic ocean, a way of describing the non-reality that preceded creation.

And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters

And, in the midst of the darkness, the chaos, the unordered, uninhabited nothingness is God's presence ready to bring order so that life can flourish.

Genesis 1:1-2 tells us that God created the earth, the land and sky out of an unordered, chaotic, non-reality.
The earth did not exist before God created the world.

Answer 5

Hebrews 2:10 ESV: For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering.

This, as well as Genesis 1:1, makes it clear that God created the world: Earth, and everything we can see or otherwise sense.

[Act 17:24 NIV] "The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands."

As Lord of everything, He necessarily created all the natural laws of physics, biology, etc. In Genesis 1 we see that he did this in an order and time frame that could not be the mere natural result of starting with these laws and matter.

"The world" is the earth plus everyone on it, hence the Earth necessarily was created before it was populated. This happened in the early darkness of Day 1, according to verses 1-5.