Tohu · תֹּהוּ
תֹּהוּ
Usually translated waste, emptiness or formlessness. The translation is what makes most of the verses it appears in sound like a warning.
In the sources
לֹא־תֹהוּ בְרָאָהּ
He did not create it for tohu. Yeshayahu 45:18
One verse later the same word turns around and becomes the place from which God is sought.
לֹא אָמַרְתִּי לְזֶרַע יַעֲקֹב תֹּהוּ בַּקְּשׁוּנִי
I did not say to the seed of Yaakov, seek Me in tohu. Yeshayahu 45:19
The reading
Read 45:18 as not for tohu because tohu is already settled, and the word stops being a void and becomes a motherland. Nothing needs creating there, which is why creation was aimed elsewhere. Translating tohu as waste is also what lets the whole arc of creation read as trash turned to treasure.
The deep in tehom is the same territory under a different name, and yam suf is the border where it ends.
Where it lives
Tohu is the spine of Volume Two and the glue of the series. Volume One is free to read in English and Hebrew.
Keep reading
- Tehom the deep that calls to another deep, and the channel that carries it
- Yam Suf the sea written with the letters of an end
- Nun fifty, and the letter that bends, stands, hangs and vanishes
The map shows how all of it connects.
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