> > **(1) When God began to create heaven and earth, (2) and the earth then was welter and waste and darkness over the deep and God’s breath hovering over the waters, (3) God said, “Let there be light.” And there was light.** > > 2\. *welter and waste*. The Hebrew *tohu wabohu* occurs only here and in two later biblical texts that are clearly alluding to this one. The second word of the pair looks like a nonce term coined to rhyme with the first and to reinforce it, an effect I have tried to approximate in English by alliteration. *Tohu* by itself means “emptiness” or “futility,” and in some contexts is associated with the trackless vacancy of the desert. > > *hovering*. The verb attached to God’s breath-wind-spirit (*ruaḥ*) elsewhere describes an eagle fluttering over its young and so might have a connotation of parturition or nurture as well as rapid back-and-forth movement. (*Robert Alter, The Hebrew Bible*)