“the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God
swept over the face of the waters.”
I love this NRSV translation of Genesis 1:2. Here it is again in context.
In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. 3 Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. 4 And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.
Here is what Dr. Claude Mariottini, professor of Old Testament at Northern Baptist Seminary, says in his excellent article/post The Spirit of God in Genesis 1:2
"These different meanings for the word ruah raise a problem for the translation of Genesis 1:2, a passage that Averbeck discusses in detail in his essay. To introduce the problem of translating the word rûaḥ in Genesis 1:2, I will cite three English translations below and then discuss why the translations differ (the emphases are mine):
King James Version: “And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.”
New Revised Standard Version (NRSV): “the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.”
New American Bible (NAB): “the earth was a formless wasteland, and darkness covered the abyss, while a mighty wind swept over the waters.”
The problem in translating Genesis 1:2 is whether the word rûaḥ should be translated “wind” or “spirit.”
The Targum Onkelos, an Aramaic translation of the Torah, probably translated before 120 A.D., already understood the word rûaḥ to mean “wind.” This is how Targum Onkelos translated Genesis 1:2:
“And the earth was waste and empty, and darkness was upon the face of the abyss; and a wind from before the Lord blew upon the face of the waters.”
This is the view adopted by the NRSV: “a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.”
It was a mighty wind of steady state acceleration, many times faster than the speed of light which was the force and is the force of the creation of matter. Once matter is created then that same gravity is now curved by the matter around it, creating space/time and local gravity.
Now read Genesis 1:2 again and you will see it.
