In the Hebrew words TOHU and BOHU there is no more meaning than can be expressed in any other language, yet these terms are frequently used in the sacred Scriptures. TOHU means "nothing," so that a TOHU earth means, in its simple reality, that which is in itself "empty" or "waste;" where there is no way, no distinction of places, no hill, no vale, no grass, no herbs, no animals, no men. And such was the first appearance of the waste and untilled earth, for while the water was mixed with the earth no distinctions of those various objects could be discerned, which are clearly seen since the earth's formation and cultivation. Thus Isaiah, 34:11, when threatening destruction to the whole earth says "There shall be stretched upon it the line of TOHU, confusion; and the plummet of BOHU, emptiness;" that is, it shall be made so desolate that neither men nor beasts shall be left upon it; all houses shall he devastated and all things hurled into chaos and confusion. Just as Jerusalem was afterwards laid waste by the Romans and Rome by the Goths, so that no vestige of the ancient city as it once was could be pointed out. You now behold the earth standing out of the waters, the heavens adorned with stars, the fields with trees, and cities with houses; but should all these things be taken away and hurled into confusion and into one chaotic heap, the state of things thus produced would be what Moses calls TOHU and BOHU. As the earth was surrounded with darkness or with waters over which darkness brooded, so also the heaven was unformed. It was not only TOHU because it was destitute of the garnishing of the stars, and BOHU because it was not yet separated and distinguished from the earth, but because it was as yet altogether destitute of light and a dark and deep abyss which like a dense cloud enveloped the earth, or that mass of mud; for the division of the waters from the waters follows later. Here then we have the first thing which Moses teaches: that the heavens and the earth were created on the first day; but, that the heaven was as yet unformed, not separated from the waters, destitute of its luminaries, and not elevated to its position; and the earth in like manner was as yet without its animals, its rivers and its mountains. As to Lyra's argument that this original matter was mere power and was afterward rendered substance by its own power, or as to what Augustine says in his book of "Confessions," that matter is as it were nothing, and that no medium matter can be thought of between the Creator and the thing created; such subtle disquisitions I by no means approve. For how could that be a mere nothing which was already of such material and substance that Moses calls it "the heavens and the earth"? Unless indeed you would call it artificially the same kind of matter which you call wood, which is not yet wrought into a chest or a bench. But this latter substance is what true philosophers would call matter in a secondary state.