[As with all of these commentaries, any errors are mine and may I be forgiven if these deceive anyone. Any truths are due to God. May He be glorified for ever!]
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and the darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters.”
Face (panim) is mentioned 2100 times in the old testament. It can refer to God, animals, water, human beings, and the earth. Sometimes, the word “eye” is used to translate face, so one might see “eye of the earth.” Sometimes nose is used as well – “fall of the nose” or “bowing the nose” or “sweat of the nose.”
Panim (face) is a masculine term in Hebrew. In these commentaries, I will at times give attention to the masculine and feminine traits of words. These of course do not tell us everything, but the gender of a word is quite important. Hebrew words are almost always male and female (maybe always — this is just my observation). This means that in the Hebrew horizon, the world is filled with the male and the female traits. In other places (lonergan.org), I have argued that in evolutionary theory, one discerns some metaphysical foundations to male and female, namely that the male is linked to the finality of potencies, and female is linked to the fertilities of potencies. This means that male and female are appropriately analogs for opening one’s eyes to the fertility of being no matter what kind of emergent being or developing being were are examining. Quite interesting really. Male and female words thus have become clear to me as pointers to the metaphysical facets of the creativity of being and the cosmos. So, I will be highlighting these traits every so often.
Panim as masculine is linked to finality because it regards the potency of some being as “facing” somewhere, and looking for a destiny. This basically is finality. The face of the waters thus are facing to become something, and the Spirit is what will awaken this existence. The “deep” that has a face is feminine, as well be the earth that rises out of the deep. The deep as feminine is like a womb of being and life. Creatures live in the deep, and it is like their womb. The same is true of the earth, in which seeds are planted and then born to blossom and bear fruit. This feminine “deep” is found in Babylonian mythology, and linked to a feminine goddess, Tiamat. Marduk is the patron god of Babylon, a male, and his destruction of Tiamat creates the cosmos and establishes order out of, and against, her chaos. Tiamat’s body was split in two to create the firmament and the bedrock of earth. Coming-to-be is violent in that Babylonian world, and this is placed in stark contrast with the account of creation in Genesis — where all that is created is good. And it is in stark contrast to the cause of disorder and order.
This makes me think of the demons who mediate a finality of death and destructive chaos. It is the males who are the cause of the disorder. It is the male principle that has to get rightly ordered first. Sin needs to be cast back into the deep, and Israel’s conquering of the promised land also rids the land of sin so that it might become more fruitful and salvific as a homeland. The Exodus becomes God’s salvation from the chaos of the deep. Psalm 77 beautifully describes this. That rightly ordering of the male principle then allows for the beauty of the feminine to bear forth all that is good. The death and destruction of the feminine is not the way forward, but rather the liberation of the feminine as fertility is the way forward to transcending fruitfulness.
One way to think of this is that the fallen angels enslaved the authentic fertility of the whole order of the material cosmos. God’s Spirit then frees the woman — the fertile one — from this enslavement. And then she is able to give birth to good creatures, and eventual to man, and even to the Son.
As well in scripture, the deep is linked to Rahab (Is 5 — similar to Tiamat), Leviatan, rivers, seas, Tannin (monster of the deep, serpents), mighty waters, draggons, beasts who are crouching down under. The redeemed are redeemed from and through the deep, they have to pass through it. It is also linked to tame waters, life giving waters, waters that flow from God’s abode in Jerusalem (Ps 46), the rock of the Temple in Jewish tradition was built at the mouth of Tehom. This restless deep was tamed at the defeat of watery monsters (Ps 74). It is linked as well to the Garden of God, the unending waters of the deep are “harnessed for good.” This deep provides life-giving waters to Israelites in the wilderness (Ps 78). The wicked are cast into the deep (Jonah 2). Darkness abides in the deep (Ps 88). It is the realm of the dead (Job 38). It is the opposite of heaven (Gn 49, Dt 33, Ps 107). One sees a link between the abyss and the realm of the dead in Rom 10. It is an imprisonment of the wicked spirits (Lk 8, Rev 9, Rev 11, Rev 17, and Rev 20).
More philosophically, the deep is metaphysical like prime matter, which can be deformed or unformed. As deformed it is chaos and the home of the wicked, a home that chases after the living and always captures the living. It thus becomes the abode of the dead.
So one could read this passage as God creating both the angels and all of the material order together, as one finds in later tradition. As created together, the angels were made complete and at the moment of their creation they made a choice to either stay with God or they rebelled. If it is true that angels, at least some, also order the laws and ways of the material world, then the fallen angels would be disordering that material world. It seems that Satan must of had such a rule, which is why we are enslaved to him until Jesus came. However, we were not enslaved at the time of the creation of man, even though, presumably, Satan was already fallen, and perhaps had warped the material order. Maybe at first, the material order was so warped that God had to breath His Spirit over it so that it could bear fruit. Or maybe Augustine is right, that the deep, or abyss, is the nothingness from which we came (in itself thus neither ordered or disordered). But why name the nothingness “the deep” — though symbolically nothingness could be called that. Much of the later symbolism of the “deep” does seem to point to something, and many times that something is deformed. Nothing is not deformed, because no-thing, shear absence of being, can not be deformed. Interestingly, as feminine, this abyss, this deep, as deformed, thus bears forth disorder if not rightly ordered. And it was disordered by fallen angels, who are masculine. Just some thoughts to kick off this commentary.