Tohu vaVohu - chaos in creation

earth & skies series

“I’ve got SO MUCH potential inside of me. I don’t know why I can’t live it out!”

I was on one of many long walks with my friend as he again lamented this reality he felt deep inside. I find this conversation with him so fascinating. Somehow, he knows there are possibilities within him, even though he hasn’t experienced them.

He’s wrestling through a journey of recovery and while things look extremely dark and murky at times, he has a real sense that the darkness he feels is not the whole story. He intuitively knows that the chaos and emptiness he so often experiences has the potential to become something far greater. 

Maybe you can resonate with my dear friend. I certainly do. For years I felt like I was so overwhelmed by the grind of day-to-day life that the gifts placed deep within rarely saw the light of day. Like a treasure had been lost along the way and was now sitting somewhere beneath the surface - dormant, unrealised, and wasting away.

Maybe you too find yourself longing for your life to feel more significant, purposeful, deeper, and true.

If so, don’t feel too bad. I find that these are primordial feelings, connecting us with eons of history - or more accurately, pre-history.

There is a phrase from the Hebrew creation story in Genesis 1 that gets right at the heart of this feeling:

Tohu va-vohu is the writer’s poetic way of talking about the chaotic pre-creation state of shapelessness and unfulfilled potential. Traditionally this phrase has been translated as “formless and void”, but scholars who attempt to honour the poetic nature of this narrative have translated it as “welter and waste”,¹ and “confusion and chaos”.² However, I have to admit that I’m partial to my translation of tohu va-vohu: “a wild and watery wasteland”.³

The concept of chaotic primeval waters at the start of a creation story was a common motif for many creation myths across the ancient world. Usually, these waters had to be defeated through divine violence, played out in epic pre-cosmic battles, before an ordered cosmos could emerge.

However, once again, this Hebrew poem brings a counter-narrative about the world and about the ones running the show.⁴ The divine figure at the heartbeat of this story breathes energy and life (RUACH!) over the chaotic waters. This God enters the chaotic, the dark, and the uncertain to bring into being order and fruitfulness. Instead of violence and destruction, they use the spoken word to produce beauty and goodness, re-ordering the unproductive environment, and giving it purpose, function and form.⁵

One thing I continue to find fascinating about these ancient texts, especially some of the very early pages, is the macrocosm/microcosm feature at work in them. In other words, what the text describes in the macrocosm of the universe out there, can also be seen in the microcosm of the universe within me. God speaks into the formless and desolate landscape and begins to shape it, order it, and bring out the potential yet to be realised. The same is true within me, the same can be true for my friend, and for you.

And God forbid this be another trite thought or lofty ideal. My story contains many painful seasons of walking through genuine chaos - at times these seasons came from someone or somewhere else and other times they were self-inflicted.

I found that sometimes there were things outside of myself that needed ordering - things as complex as confronting hurtful and dysfunctional relationships, changing careers, or reigning in my runaway schedule. It could also be as simple as weeding a garden, taking things to the tip or even organising my sock drawer. Bringing order to a disordered kitchen can feel like an act of healing!

Then, in some of my darker, more difficult times, I realised that the issue wasn’t in the world out there, but in the cosmos of my soul. In those moments it was clear that a profound inner-ordering needed to take place for me to be able to move forward toward something good and true. 

Creation from chaos isn’t a one-time event, but it invites each of us to enter a universal pattern. With each new day, we’re given the opportunity to reenact this ancient creation story, to take the chaotic moments and thoughts and feelings and surroundings and to begin reordering them in such a way that freedom, peace, joy, and hope can return to our hearts again.

Often, it’s our feelings of anxiety, our past wounds, unhelpful self-narratives, and even our addictions that often end up being the soil from which we begin to discover and grow into our deepest selves. They can point the way to our purpose and begin to give us a picture of who we want to become.

The God at work in this creation story claims that he can gather up the most broken and fractured pieces of our lives and redeem them; taking them and reforming them into something beautiful that is beneficial for the world.

So, don’t be too discouraged by what feels like the wild and watery wastelands in your life. Maybe these places of chaos and unfulfilled potential you find in your work, relationships, and even the physical spaces around you simply need to be re-ordered so the possibility for new creation can emerge. Maybe you would benefit from implementing a few rituals in your day - claiming activities and moments previously ignored as sacred and holy ground.

And if you do find yourself battling against those unfruitful narratives, habits, addictions, and patterns of thoughts and behaviours, begin looking for someone to speak to about these things - a trusted friend, a spiritual director, or a therapist. Someone who will listen, without judgment, and help you find a solid footing and a new place to stand in the middle of your swampy circumstances. Who knows, maybe you’re just around the corner from the birth of something beautiful!

In reality, recognising the tohu va-vohu was only the beginning of the ordering process in this Genesis 1 creation story! So, we’ll keep exploring where it heads as this Earth & Skies series unfolds.

Until then,

peace and JOY!!

-Phil

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by the way - did you get to see/hear my recent interview with the one and only ROB BELL!? If not, check it out HERE!

1. Robert Alter, The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2018), Genesis 1:2.

2. Everett Fox, "Principle 1: The Power of the Hebrew Sound," Resources for First-Time Readers of the Bible, accessed November 20, 2024, https://wordpress.clarku.edu/efox/resources/first-time-readers/principle-1/.

3. My reason for this is because in some locations of scripture, tohu points to the wild uninhabitable desert to the east of Israel (see Deut 32:10; Job 6:18) and the emptiness and unprofitable state of something (see for example 1 Sam 12:21; Isa 29:21, 40:17, 44:9). However, here in Gen 1, the wilderness isn’t the desert, but the deep waters (Heb. tehom). Also, in Hebrew, tehom is only one letter different from tohu, and though they derive from two different roots, they have a theological, thematic, and poetic overlap and connection. Tohu is a formless chaos and tehom is a watery chaos.

4. See the other posts in this EARTH & SKIES series for more examples of this Hebrew poem offered a cultural counter-narrative.

5. I use the term “they” for a few reasons.

1. It honours the long-standing doctrine of the trinitarian nature of the Divine figure pointed to throughout scripture.

2. The term elohim, which is the noun exclusively used for “God” in Genesis 1 is a plural word in Hebrew (it carries the ending ‘im which is the form for plural in Hebrew).

3. In verse 26, the Divine figure speaking explicitly says “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness…”

Those reasons are enough for me to use the 3rd-person plural “they” (not to mention the told and untold harm that has come from a masculine-only depiction of God)