God Creates by Forming and Filling
A series on music's essence and role: part 2
Welcome back to this issue of our newsletter. We continue our series on music by considering God’s creative activity. This topic thrills me, and I hope it helps you as well.
Let’s begin with Genesis chapter one. We start at the very beginning—a very good place to start. Verse one famously opens, “In the beginning God created the heavens in the earth.” Verse two describes creation with two very important terms which serve as the table of contents for the remainder of the chapter. “The earth was without form and void.” Here the text describes creation with two terms: formless and empty. The Hebrew term is “Tohu wa-bohu,” translated as “without form and void” by the ESV and the KJV. The NASB95, NIV, and CSB render the first term as “formless,” while the NET renders it “without shape.” The second term, “void” is rendered by the NIV, CSB, and NET translations as “empty” while the old NASB renders it “desolate emptiness.” Most poetically, the Message gives us this paraphrase: “Earth was a soup of nothingness, a bottomless emptiness.”
For the remainder of this creation account, God will take what is formless and void, and he will form what is formless and fill what is empty. That’s how creation works. God takes what is formless and empty, and he forms and fills it. As we read further in Genesis 1, we see God perform a stage of forming on days one through three, and then perform a stage of filling during days four through six.
Consider that first stage of three forming days and notice how God forms things in two steps: God forms things by separating and naming.
Begin on day one. Look at Genesis 1:3–4, “And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light. And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness.” Notice how God separated the light from the darkness to form that which was formless. Formless things have no boundaries; soup has no shape. God forms things by separating one from another and providing boundaries.
Next, look at verse five and observe the second stage of God’s formation—naming. Genesis 1:5, “God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.” After separating the light from the darkness, God names them “day” and “night.” God forms by first separating and then naming. At the end of the formation process, we have day and we have night.
On to day two. Look with me at Genesis 1:6–7: “And God said, ‘Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.’ And God made the expanse and separated the waters that were under the expanse from the waters that were above the expanse. And it was so.” Here, God separates the waters from the waters, and more specifically, he separated waters above from waters below. God has formed what was formless by separating—creating a shape and placing a boundary between things that used to be boundless.
Now that God has separated the waters, it’s time for him to name. Look in Genesis 1:8, “And God called the expanse Heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day.” He named the expanse heaven. At the end of the second day, we notice how God formed what was formless by separating the waters above from those below with a boundary that he has named Heaven, or the skies.
On to day three. Look at Genesis 1:9, “And God said, ‘Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.’ And it was so.” The Bible focuses our attention to the ground level where we see God separating by gathering all the waters into one place, causing dry land to appear. After separating things on the third day, the pattern leads us to expect God to name things, which is exactly what we find in verse 10: “God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good.”
While some of you have seen this pattern, it may be quite new for others. We are about to examine the next three days, but before we do, consider this passage using a grid to briefly review what we’ve seen. Place days one, two, and three in a left column under the heading of “forming.” God formed by separating and naming: day/night, sky/seas, and earth. Now God moves to the right side of the grid under the heading of filling for days four, five and six.
Remember day one, when God formed by separating and naming the darkness and the light as day and night? With that in mind, consider Day Four in Genesis 1:14–19,
“And God said, ‘Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years, and let them be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth.’ And it was so. And God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars. And God set them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth, to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day.”
On the fourth day we see God fill the day and the night. He fills the day with the “greater light” and the night with the “lesser light.” Notice the profound relationship between Day One and Day Four so that you understand why we formed that two-column grid. What God formed on the first day, he filled on the fourth day.
Let’s look at Day Five in Genesis 1:20–21, “And God said, ‘Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the heavens.’ So God created the great sea creatures and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarm, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.” Notice the relation between days 2 and 5. Remember Day Two, when God formed the skies and the seas? Now notice how on Day Five God filled the skies with birds and he filled the seas with fish.
Watch how the pattern continues for Day Six in Genesis 1: 24–25. Remember Day Three, God gathered the seas and so formed the dry land. Now, in Genesis 1:24–25 we read, “And God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds—livestock and creeping things and beasts of the earth according to their kinds.” And it was so. And God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds and the livestock according to their kinds, and everything that creeps on the ground according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.” Notice how on Day six, God filled the earth with these creatures.
Let me admit that I am doing some interpretation here. There is no “grid” or spreadsheet in your Bibles, but I am working hard to demonstrate this reality from the text. The text describes the beginning of creation as formless and empty, and God didn’t want formless and empty things to remain that way. So, God formed what was formless and filled what was empty. And the text shows us God doing this in in two moves. He spent the first three days forming: by separating and naming (light from darkness day from night; sky from seas; and seas from dry land), then the next three days were spent filling (day and night with sun and stars; filling sky and seas with birds and sea creatures, and filling the dry land with livestock and creatures).
Next week, we will use this paradigm to understand God’s command to humanity. If you’ve made it to the end, you’re my kind of reader! Click the “like” button to let me know you got here! :)