For thus says the LORD, who created the heavens (he is God!), who formed the earth and made it (he established it; he did not create it empty, he formed it to be inhabited!): “I am the LORD, and there is no other.
(Isaiah 45:18) ESV
Part of the meaning of the word translated as “formed” is pictured by how the potter’s hand shapes a hollow vessel from a solid lump of clay.
How would a potter stretch out the Earth above the waters, and establish the Earth upon the floods by forming it? What could be more poetic than the craft of the potter picturing the mode of action of the creative act of the third day? It’s not poetry for the sake of being poetic. It’s a poetic rendering of a geophysical process.
Formed: יֹצֵ֨ר – yatsar
- I. fut. to be straightened, to be distressed, anxious; and he was distressed.
- II. fut.
- (a) to form, fashion, make; part. maker, creator, potter;
- (b) to devise, meditate, against any one.
- Niph. to be formed, created, Is. 43:10.
- Pu. id. Ps. 139:16.
- Hoph. id. Is 54:17
Davidson Analytical Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon page CCCXXXIX
Matty's Paradigm 