תֹּ֫הוּ
to.hu
formlessness
Lexicon Entry
Lexicon data from STEPBible TIPNR, Tyndale House, Cambridge. Licensed under CC BY 4.0.
What Original Readers Understood
ExploredThe Hebrew word "to.hu" (H8414) is defined as "formlessness." This concept suggests a lack of shape, structure, or organization. In the context of creation and nature, "to.hu" implies a state of chaos or disorder, where things are not yet defined or bounded. The word "to.hu" appears 20 times in the Bible, indicating its significance in various aspects of creation and nature. Its usage range from describing the primordial state of the universe (Genesis 1:2) to the chaotic conditions of the sea (Psalm 89:9). This word highlights the idea that creation is not a static, finished product, but rather a dynamic process of formation and shaping. The concept of "to.hu" as formlessness underscores the idea that creation is not just a matter of bringing order out of chaos, but also of shaping and defining the boundaries of things. This word highlights the ongoing process of creation and the dynamic relationship between form and formlessness in the natural world.
Source data & methodology
Occurrences in Scripture
20 total occurrences across the text
The caravans that travel beside them turn away. They go up into the waste, and perish.
Job 12:24He takes away understanding from the chiefs of the people of the earth, and causes them to wander in a wilderness where there is no way.
Psalms 107:40He pours contempt on princes, and causes them to wander in a trackless waste.
Isaiah 24:10The confused city is broken down. Every house is shut up, that no man may come in.
Isaiah 29:21who cause a person to be indicted by a word, and lay a snare for the arbiter in the gate, and who deprive the innocent of justice with false testimony.
Isaiah 34:11But the pelican and the porcupine will possess it. The owl and the raven will dwell in it. He will stretch the line of confusion over it, and the plumb line of emptiness.
Isaiah 40:17All the nations are like nothing before him. They are regarded by him as less than nothing, and vanity.
Isaiah 40:23who brings princes to nothing, who makes the judges of the earth meaningless.
Isaiah 41:29Behold, all of their deeds are vanity and nothing. Their molten images are wind and confusion.
Isaiah 44:9Everyone who makes a carved image is vain. The things that they delight in will not profit. Their own witnesses don’t see, nor know, that they may be disappointed.
Isaiah 45:18For Yahweh who created the heavens, the God who formed the earth and made it, who established it and didn’t create it a waste, who formed it to be inhabited says: “I am Yahweh. There is no other.
Isaiah 45:19I have not spoken in secret, in a place of the land of darkness. I didn’t say to the offspring of Jacob, ‘Seek me in vain.’ I, Yahweh, speak righteousness. I declare things that are right.
Isaiah 49:4But I said, “I have labored in vain. I have spent my strength in vain for nothing; yet surely the justice due to me is with Yahweh, and my reward with my God.”
Isaiah 59:4No one sues in righteousness, and no one pleads in truth. They trust in vanity, and speak lies. They conceive mischief, and give birth to iniquity.
Jeremiah 4:23I saw the earth, and, behold, it was waste and void, and the heavens, and they had no light.
Job 26:7He stretches out the north over empty space, and hangs the earth on nothing.
Genesis 1:2The earth was formless and empty. Darkness was on the surface of the deep and God’s Spirit was hovering over the surface of the waters.
Deuteronomy 32:10He found him in a desert land, in the waste howling wilderness. He surrounded him. He cared for him. He kept him as the apple of his eye.
1 Samuel 12:21Don’t turn away to go after vain things which can’t profit or deliver, for they are vain.
1 Samuel 12:21Don’t turn away to go after vain things which can’t profit or deliver, for they are vain.