Page:A critical and exegetical commentary on Genesis (1910).djvu/118

16 '''2. Description of Chaos.'''—It is perhaps impossible to unite the features of the description in a single picture, but the constitutive elements of the notion of chaos appear to be Confusion, Darkness, and Water. The weird effect of the language is very impressive. On the syntax, see above.—waste and void] The exact meaning of this alliterative phrase—Tōhû wā-Bōhû—is difficult to make out. The words are nouns; the connotation of ranges from the concrete 'desert' to the abstract 'nonentity'; while possibly means 'emptiness' (v.i.). The exegetical tendency has been to emphasise the latter aspect, and approximate to the Greek notion of chaos as empty

down' (Ezk. 23$47$) or 'clear ground by hewing down trees' (Jos. 17$15. 18$ [J])—a sense as remote as possible from fashion or make (Di., G-B. s.v.; We. Prol.$6$ 387). The Ar. bara'a (used chiefly of creation of animate beings) is possibly borrowed from Heb. Native philologists connect it, very unnaturally, with bari'a, 'be free'; so that 'create' means to liberate (from the clay, etc.) (Lane, 178 b, c): Di.'s view is similar. Barth (ZA, iii. 58) has proposed to identify (through mutation of liquids) with the Ass. vb. for 'create,' banū; but rejects the opinion that the latter is the common Semitic 'build' (KAT$3$, 498$1$), with which alternates in Sabæan (Müller in ZDMG, xxxvii. 413, 415).

2. ] G 🇬🇷; Aq. 🇬🇷; 🇬🇷; 🇬🇷 (or 🇬🇷) 🇬🇷; V inanis et vacua; T$O$ ('desolate and empty'); S. The fragmentary Jer. Tg. has a double trans.: "And the earth was, and (cf. T$O$) desolate from the sons of men, and empty of work." occurs along with in Jer. 4$23$, Is. 34$11$; alone in 17 pass. besides. The meaning varies between two extremes: (a) a (trackless) desert (Jb. 12$24$ [= Ps. 107$40$] 6$18$, Dt. 32$10$), and (b) unsubstantiality (, IEz.) or 'nonentity,' a sense all but peculiar to II Is. (also 1 Sa. 12$21$, and perhaps Is. 29$21$), but very frequent there. The primary idea is uncertain. It is perhaps easier on the whole to suppose that the abstract sense of 'formlessness,' or the like, gave rise to a poetic name for desert, than that the concrete 'desert' passed over into the abstract 'formlessness'; but we have no assurance that either represents the actual development of the idea. It seems not improbable that the OT usage is entirely based on the traditional description of the primæval chaos, and that the word had no definite connotation in Heb., but was used to express any conception naturally associated with the idea of chaos—'formlessness,' 'confusion,' 'unreality,' etc.—] (never found apart from ) may be connected with bahiya = 'be empty'; though Ar. is hardly a safe guide in the case of a word with a long history behind it. The identification with 🇬🇷, the mother of the first man in Phœn. mythology (see p. 49 f.), is