CHAOS. This is the name whereby we call that Confusion, wherein matter lay, when newly produced out of nothing at the beginning of the World, before God, by his Almighty Word, had put it into the order and condition wherein it was after the six days Creation. Moses makes use of the Terms Tohu and Bohu1, to express this Gen. i. 2.Chaos, which the Septuagint translate invisible, and in disorder; Symmachus, a Mass without motion, and in disorder; Aquila and Theodotion, a void and nothing. Ovid describes the Chaos very well in these verses.
——Rudis indigestaque moles,
Nec quidquam nisi pondus iners, congestaq; eodem
Non bene junctarum discordia semina rerum.
Chaos is taken likewise for an Abyss, an impenetrable Space, which prevents any one’s passing from one place to another. Thus Abraham told the rich Man, that Luke xvi. 26. Μέγα χάσμα.there was a great Chaos or Gulf (or as in the Greek a great Hollow) which separated them. Inter vos & nos chaos magnum firmamentum est.
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Footnotes
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70 .תהו ובהוἈόρατος, καὶ ἀκατασκεύαστος. ↩