Even though the Mishna (Chagigah 2:1) writes that asking what came before the Creation of the World and what will be after its expiration is not a worthwhile course of study, the fact remains that the Torah itself teaches (Genesis 1:2) that before the Six Days of Creation, the world consisted of tohu and bohu (or vohu). Both of these words are commonly translated as “nothingness,” but understanding the nuances expressed by these ostensible synonyms will help us better understand what exactly the Torah means to teach us about the state of the world before Creation.
The word tohu occurs exactly 20 times in the Bible. Besides its appearance in the second verse of the Torah, the only other time it appears in the Torah is when Moses praises the Jews’ devotion to Hashem by noting that their trust and belief in Him can even be found in a place of tohu, like the wilderness into which they trustingly entered (Deuteronomy 32:10 as explained by Rashi).
Most of the other instances of tohu in the Bible are in the Book of Isaiah. For example, Isaiah teaches that Hashem did not create the world for tohu, but rather created it so that it will be populated (45:18). He also uses the word tohu to describe idolatry as “nothing,” “worthless,” and “impotent” (41:29, 44:9, 59:4).
Bohu, by contrast, is used two more times in the Bible (Isaiah 34:11 and Jeremiah 4:23) in addition to its presence in the Creation narrative.
In the context of the Creation story, Targum pseudo-Jonathan and Targum Neofiti (to Genesis 1:2) translate the words tohu and bohu as tahiya and bahiya, respectively, which are simply Aramaicizations of the original Hebrew words. However, Rashi (there) and Sefer HaBahir (§2) explain that tohu refers to the idea of “astonishment” and “wonderment,” in the sense that if somebody saw the sheer nothingness of the pre-Creation world, that would induce a person to wonder and be astonished. This usage is found in the term toheh al harishonot (Kiddushin 40b), referencing a person who regretted his good deeds and was “astonished” at what he had nobly done. Tahi bah is also a phrase used in the Talmud to introduce a question of bewilderment (Brachot 38b, Eruvin 66a, Ketubot 107b, Kiddushin 55b, Bava Kamma 76b, 112b, Bava Batra 39b, Zevachim 13b, and Bechorot 42b).
Targum Onkelos (to Genesis 1:2) translates the word bohu as reikanya, which is an Aramaicization of the Hebrew word reik (a cognate of rik, discussed in the previous installment of this essay). Rashi (there) also sees the word as related to reik in the sense of “emptiness,” while Sefer HaBahir (there) explains that bohu refers to something that has some minimal amount of tangibility to it and is not completely abstract.
The Talmud (Yoma 54b) records a dispute about whether Hashem created the world starting from the middle, expanding outwards, or whether He created the world from its edges and proceeding inward. The 14th century Provencal scholar Rabbi Nissim of Marseilles (to Genesis 1:2) seemingly follows the first approach when offering his definitions of tohu and bohu. He understands both terms to allude to the moment before Creation, when the entirety of the world was concentrated in a point from which everything was supposed to expand outward (similar to how scientists today conceptualize the Big Bang). Accordingly, he explains tohu by likening it to a person who is stuck “wondering” (toheh/tamah) and thus remains immobile in place, without moving to the right or left because of his indecision. Essentially, tohu refers to that moment in time before Hashem had catalyzed the world to expand outwardly.
Similarly, he explains bohu as a contraction of bo (“inside”) and hu (“it is”), meaning that the entirety of the world was still “in the inside” (i.e., middle) and had not yet begun to spread out. (In his book The Six Days of Creation: The Garden of Eden, Dinosaurs, and the Missing Billions (Mosaica Press, 2022), Rabbi Alexander Hool argues that while modern science believes that the universe is still expanding, Judaism holds that it has actually stopped expanding.)
Nachmanides (to Genesis 1:1) famously takes a more philosophical approach, explaining that tohu and bohu refer to the philosophical notions of “matter” (chomer) and “form” (tzurah). In doing so, Nachmanides explains that tohu refers to what Greek natural philosophers called “hyle” (hiyuli), a primordial first matter, which was shaped and formed to fashion everything in creation. The concept of a name, he writes, can only apply to something that has both matter and form. Anything missing one of those two components is effectively “nothing.” As such, Nachmanides connects the word tohu to toheh (like Rashi), explaining that since tohu refers to matter without form, it eludes naming because one cannot pin down exactly what it is. Therefore, if one would theoretically encounter tohu one can only contemplate and wonder what it should be called, but cannot actually name it.
Nachmanides’ explanation echoes that of the Zohar (Bereishit 16a) and his predecessor Rabbi Avraham bar Chiyya HaNasi (1070-1136), who wrote the same thing in Higgayon HaNefesh. Interestingly, Gersonides (to Genesis 1:2) takes the exact opposite position – namely that tohu is “form” and bohu is “matter,” although Abarbanel (there) rejects Gersonides’ explanation.
Rabbi Moshe Botarel (1390-1440) cites an otherwise unknown scholar named Rabbi Levi ben Shlomo of Lunel as likewise explaining that tohu refers to matter that has no shape but is destined to later receive a shape, while bohu refers to the concept of shape. Rabbi Levi ben Shlomo of Lunel is also cited as explaining that existence hinges on polar opposites, leading him to explain that tohu refers to “absence” and bohu refers to “presence.” According to him, Hashem tempering the balance between these two poles somehow brings the world into existence. Indeed, one can observe the world as a playground in which opposites are expected to coexist – both in concrete terms (protons and electrons, light and dark, animate and inanimate, old and young, male and female, introvert and extrovert) and in abstract terms (physical and spiritual, body and soul, good and evil, true and false, pure and impure, existence and non-existence, universal and particular, immanence and transcendence) – and Hashem is the One who makes peace between them. [It should be noted, however, that Rabbi Botarel has been known to fabricate sources, so his citation might not be the most reliable.]
Rabbi Shmuel Dovid Luzzatto (1800-1865), also known as Shadal, explains that tohu refers to something pointless which brings no benefit, while bohu implies something that not only has no advantage, it is actually bad. Elsewhere, Sefer HaBahir (§11-12) connects tohu with evil and bohu with peace. Later on, Sefer HaBahir (§135, §163) elaborates on this point by connecting tohu’s association with evil with the notion that it causes people to wonder and second-guess themselves which leads them to sinning).
As an aside, Rabbi Avraham bar Chiyya HaNasi writes that the word tehom (“depths of the sea”) – inflections of which appear 36 times throughout the Bible – derives from tohu, because it denotes an unordered area which has no shape. He explains that the final mem at the end of the word tehom is akin to the letter mem at the end of the words chinam (“free”) and reikam (“empty”), which are simply declensions of the Hebrew words chein (“granting” or “gracious”) and reik (“vacant” or “empty”), respectively.
In the cases of the words tohu and bohu, Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim (1740-1814) sees the letters hey and vav as radicals added to the core root. He explains the root of bohu as the monoliteral root BET, which means “inside.” Although Rabbi Pappenheim does not mention this point, the very name of the letter bet itself relates to bayit (“house”) and refers to a place into which a person might enter. Either way, Rabbi Pappenheim explains that bohu refers to something’s external structure, whose interior still needs to be filled in.
Similarly, Rabbi Pappenheim explains that the word tohu derives from the monoliteral tav, and denotes the formation of an outline or silhouette that shapes something’s outer contours while the core inner essence has not yet been filled in. This fits with an esoteric passage in the Talmud (Chagigah 12a) that explains tohu based on Isa. 34:11 as “a green line that circumscribes the entire world” (i.e., something that establishes the boundaries of the physical universe) and bohu as “the wet stones embedded in the mantle from which water goes out” (i.e., the external source of the essential ingredient of all life – water).
