space (Gu.). But our safest guide is perhaps Jeremiah's
vision of Chaos-come-again (423-26), which is simply that
of a darkened and devastated earth, from which life and
order have fled. The idea here is probably similar, with
this difference, that the distinction of land and sea is
effaced, and the earth, which is the subj. of the sentence,
must be understood as the amorphous watery mass in
which the elements of the future land and sea were commingled.—Darkness
(an almost invariable feature of ancient
conceptions of chaos) was upon the face of the Deep] The
Deep ((
Hebrew characters)) is the subterranean ocean on which the earth
rests (Gn. 711 82 4925, Am. 74 etc.); which, therefore,
before the earth was formed, lay bare and open to the
superincumbent darkness. In the Babylonian Creation-myth
the primal chaos is personified under the name Ti'āmat.
The Heb. narrative is free from mythological associations,
and it is doubtful if even a trace of personification lingers in
the name (Hebrew characters). In Babylonian, ti'āmatu or tāmtu is a generic
term for 'ocean'; and it is conceivable that this literal
sense may be the origin of the Heb. conception of the Deep
(see p. 47).—The Spirit of God was brooding] not, as has
sometimes been supposed, a wind sent from God to dry
probable.—(Hebrew characters)] is undoubtedly the philological equivalent of Bab.
Ti'āmat: a connexion with Ar. Tihāmat, the Red Sea littoral province
(Hoffmann in ZATW, iii. 118), is more dubious (see Lane, 320 b, c;
Jensen, KIB, vi. 1, 560). In early Heb. the word is rare, and always
(with poss. exception of Ex. 155. 8) denotes the subterranean ocean,
which is the source from which earthly springs and fountains are fed
(Gn. 4925, Dt. 3313, Am. 74, and so Dt. 87, Gn. 711 82 (P); cf. Hom. Il.
xxi. 195), and is a remnant of the primal chaos (Gn. 12, Ps. 1046,
Pr. 827). In later writings it is used of the sea (pl. seas), and even
of torrents of water (Ps. 428); but, the passages being poetic, there is
probably always to be detected a reference to the world-ocean, either
as source of springs, or as specialised in earthly oceans (see Ezk. 2619).
Though the word is almost confined to poetry (except Gn. 12 711 82,
Dt. 87, Am. 74), the only clear cases of personification are Gn. 4925,
Dt. 3313 (Tĕhôm that coucheth beneath). The invariable absence of the
art. (except with pl. in Ps. 1069, Is. 6313) proves that it is a proper
name, but not that it is a personification (cf. the case of (Hebrew characters)). On the
other hand, it is noteworthy that (Hebrew characters), unlike most Heb. names of fluids,
is fem., becoming occasionally masc. only in later times when its primary
sense had been forgotten (cf. Albrecht, ZATW, xvi. 62): this might be
