창세기 1:2 해설: Rashi, Ba'al HaTurim, Chizkuni & Rashbam

תהו ובהו DESOLATE AND VOID — The word תהו signifies astonishment and amazement, for a person would have been astonished and amazed at its emptiness.

Chaos and void (tohu vabohu): [This phrase appears] two [times]. Here, and the other one is (Jeremiah 4:23) "I have seen the earth and behold, it is chaos and void." [This] teaches that the Holy One, blessed be He, foresaw the destruction of the Temple when He created the world, [and] that it would be in the year tohu (the letters that are equal to the number, 411); since, behold the first Temple stood for 410 years and was destroyed in the 411th year. And the second Temple stood the numerical equivalent of [the word,] hayita (420), and this is [why it states] "vehaarets haita" ("and the earth was;" which is the phrase that precedes tohu in this verse). And afterwards, [it is written], "darkness," a hint to the exiles. And so is it expounded in Bereishit Rabbah 2:4. Another explanation: "and the earth was chaos and void" has a numerical equivalent (gematria) of 'two thousand years without Torah.'

והארץ היתה תוהו ובוהו; “and the earth had been in a chaotic state;” the Torah, out of respect for the heavenly regions, did not include “heaven” as having been in a chaotic state, seeing that it was the home of G-d’s Presence. According to the view expressed in the Talmud (Chagigah 2) the meaning of the line is that also this “state of chaos” had been subject to creation. In order to visualise this, we must assume that G-d created this ”chaos” in a region surrounding the earth.