Tehom
Do not make for yourselves images of anything in heaven or on earth or in the water under the earth.
(Deuteronomy 5:8) Good News Translation
The deep, of Genesis 1:2 became the great deep, the deeps and the depths of the created world. They’re all translated from the same Hebrew word, tehom. The deep became creation. The word became flesh.
The water which predated creation, the deep, is translated from the Hebrew word tehom. Tehom is rendered in a variety of ways which are context-dependent.
- Wisdom
- Before creation
- Creation
- second day
- third day
- Hydrological cycle
- The Ocean
- Subterranean aquifers
- Transition to sheol (the devotional for March 25)
We all have the same evidence. Our choice of paradigm determines what we think it’s evidence of.
– Matty’s Razor
Wisdom
Your righteousness is towering like the mountains;
(Psalms 36:6) Good News Translation
your justice is like the depths of the sea.
People and animals are in your care.
The depths of the sea is used as a metaphor to give us an idea of the all-encompassing nature of the judgment of God. Wisdom is the quality of having good judgement. If tehom is the body of water which predates creation, and it’s used as a metaphor for wisdom, we can glean new insight into Proverbs chapter 8.
Proverbs 8:1-21 extols the virtues of wisdom. Starting in v. 22 we get an account of creation which adds considerable depth to our understanding of the process of creation. This where we find the clue to understanding the geography of the original Earth. This chapter also includes the beginning of the Biblical doctrine of gravity and the Geocentrospheric universe.
Faith is believing in something that you can’t see, because of evidence.
– Faith, definition
Before Creation
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.
(Genesis 1:2) KJV
The universe wasn’t created from nothing. There was never, ever, nothing. Before creation began, tehom existed.
Creation
The Second Day
When he established the heavens, I was there;
(Proverbs 8:27) English Standard Version
when he drew a circle on the face of the deep,
Here is our primary statement of the doctrine of gravity which we discuss in the daily devotional for February.
The Third Day
when he made firm the skies above,
(Proverbs 8:28-29) English Standard Version
when he established the fountains of the deep,
when he assigned to the sea its limit,
so that the waters might not transgress his command,
when he marked out the foundations of the earth,
On the 3rd day the waters below the firmament were taken into the interior of the earth as it became a hollow sphere.
He gathers the waters of the sea as a heap;
(Psalms 33:7) English Standard Version
he puts the deeps in storehouses.
Who closed the gates to hold back the sea
(Job 38:8) Good News Translation
when it burst from the womb of the earth?
The sea is part of the hydrological cycle and is connected to the waters below the mantle.
Salvation
- Call upon the name of Jesus Christ,
- believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead,
- confess your sin.
Hydrological Cycle
The waters made him great, the deep set him up on high with her rivers running round about his plants, and sent out her little rivers unto all the trees of the field.
(Ezekiel 31:4) KJV
This is a description of the Old World hydrological cycle in which deep calls to deep by the noise of the waterfalls that issued from the North, West and South of Eden. We go into more detail in the post for March 5th.
The reason for creation is the manifestation of sentient life with free will.
– The Reason for Creation
The Ocean
It was you also who dried up the sea
(Isaiah 51:10) Good News Translation
and made a path through the water,
so that those you were saving could cross.
Here the sea, the great deep and the depths are used in a context which makes it quite clear that they are referring to the same thing. This passage is a reference to the passage of the Children of Israel across the floor of the Red Sea when they were led out of Egypt. The deep is used to refer to the ocean. Leviathan didn’t exist before creation, therefore this is referring to the sea after it. It appears to tell us that Leviathan was able to swim from the sea into and out of the great deep, within the earth. This clarifies the reference in Deuteronomy 5:8 to creatures in the waters beneath the earth.
He [Leviathan] churns up the sea like boiling water
(Job 41:31) Good News Translation
and makes it bubble like a pot of oil.
This is Jonah’s experience when he was cast into the sea by sailors, and would appear to have experienced death by drowning:
The water came over me and choked me;
(Jonah 2:5) Good News Translation
the sea covered me completely,
and seaweed wrapped around my head.
All three of the above references are speaking of the ocean as either the great deep, the deep, or the depths. In which case, they are all references to things that are part of creation, not before it.
The purpose of creation is to bring about the permanent physical separation of light from darkness, day from night, good from evil.
– The Purpose of Creation
Subterranean Aquifer
He split rocks open in the desert
(Psalms 78:15) Good News Translation
and gave them water from the depths.
The great depths are referred to as a source of water from which Moses watered the Israelites. This was after Noah’s flood so the great deep was no longer in the interior of the Earth. By using deduction we can conclude that this has to be a referring to an aquifer in the crust of the Earth, not a source of water below the mantle.
Read through the Bible in a year
| Reading plan | March 24 | |
| Linear | 2 Samuel 7-9 | |
| Chronological | Joshua 5-8 |
Matty's Paradigm 