“God had already created the earth. But it was without form, and void. Can one actually imagine such a thing as being “without form?” And darkness covered this formless void and the darkness reached down into the depth of it and over the waters which were also present on this formless void called earth. Is there darkness before light….dusk before the dawn? Then, the Spirit of God moved upon the waters. The face of the deep (The abyss): the primordial ocean according to the ancient Semitic cosmogony. After God’s creative activity, part of this vast body forms the salt-water seas (Genesis 1:9-10); part of it is the fresh water under the earth (Psalm 33:7; Ezekiel 31:4), which wells forth on the earth as springs and fountains (Genesis 7:11; 8:2; Proverb 3:20). Part of it, “the upper water” (Psalm 148:4; Daniel 3:60), is held up by the dome of the sky (Genesis 1:6-7), from which rain descends on the earth (Genesis 7:11; 2 Kings 7:2, 19; Psalm 104:13). A mighty wind: literally, “a wind of God,” or “a spirit of God”; cf Genesis 8:1.
In a document of the early church, we read, “Now, regeneration is by water and spirit, as was all creation: ‘For the Spirit of God moved on the abyss’ And for this reason the Saviour was baptized, though not Himself needing to be so, in order that He might consecrate the whole water for those who were being regenerated. Baptism was thus emphatically seen as the sacrament of the new creation, whereby the old is purged and remade.
