God allowed Job to be tested by both Satan and his fellow man, in the book of Job. However, after 37 chapters of man's nonsense, ramblings, and bad advise by those around Job, God spoke to Job.
Job 38:1, 2: "Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind, and said, Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge?"
Job had been tested to the point of losing his entire family, all his property, and he had been inflicted by sores and sickness, yet he did not curse God. He was in a poor frame of mind when God again came to Job. Job had been listening to the trash of men's doctrines for the first thirty seven verses of the book of Job, and now Job was ready to put those ramblings aside of other men, and listen directly to God.
Job 38:3 "Gird up now thy loins like a man; for I will demand of thee, and answer thou Me."
God told Job to straighten up and be a man, and listen to what He is about to tell Job. Then God spells out in detail how He laid out the foundations of the earth and the heaven, and all matters concerning them. Then in the rest of Job 38 and 39 God reveals the wisdom that we read about in Proverbs 8.
God told Job how He put the universe all together. Our God is infinite in wisdom and power, yet His love for His children is so great that He allowed Himself to be killed as a man, on the cross at Calvary hill. It was this act of love that made it possible for mankind to except Him as their Savior and approach Him as His child.
So there is a complete separation between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2. Genesis 1:1 is the first creation of heaven and earth, while Genesis 1:2 is the destruction of this earth after the fall or rebellion of Satan.
Genesis 1:2 "And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep."
Who is the Spirit of God? He is the Holy Spirit, and it is God's Spirit that moved upon the face of the waters. In the Hebrew text the translation of the word, "was" as used in this verse "...the earth was without form,..."; we see in the Massorah test it reads "(to become) without form...". The earth was not created a ruin but it became a ruin after the fall of Satan. It is the translators that changed the word from became, to was when they put it into English. This is the same thing that happened in Genesis 2:7 "...and man became a living soul."
The correct translation of the Hebrew from the Massoretic text for these words, "...without form..." is "tohu-va-bohu". So we see that the earth was not created "without form", but it became [tohu] without form and void". Lets go to Strong's Hebrew dictionary, reference number 1961 to verify the word "was", that we read in this verse. "Hayah, haw-yaw; a prime root, to exit; to become, or come to pass."
Now lets continue in the Strong's Hebrew dictionary to get the pure meaning for the word "void". # 2258, on page 36 tells us that we have to go to # 2254 for the prime root word for the meaning of the word "void". "Chabal, khaw-bal; to wind tightly as a rope, to bind, to pervert, destroy, to corrupt, spoil, travail." This corresponds with its other use in # 2255, which is "to ruin".
"Tohu" of the earth, then means that total destruction has come to pass upon the earth. The second "was" in the verse is in italics type because there is no verb "to be" in the Hebrew language. This is one of the problems in translating Hebrew into English, the verb "to be" is not distinguished from the verb, "to become".
At the end of the first earth age of Genesis 1:1 that age ceased to exist in its precious form. God created the earth to be inhabited, and then He destroyed it. There was an entire earth age that existed between the first two verses of Genesis. This first earth age is spoken of inJeremiah, Proverbs, and Jude, as well as in II Peter. We will look into these Scriptures and try to understand the deeper meaning of our Father's Word.
If you don't understand that there was a first earth age, you will not understand why God would say in Malachi 1:3; "And I hated Esau...". God hated Esau even while he was in his mother's womb. It was in the first earth age that God hated Esau, because of what he was and did in that first earth age. It was what Esau's soul did in that age, that angered God so; and that anger passed on to the embryo of Esau when his soul entered into this earth age. This is also recorded in Romans 9:13.
Genesis 1:2 then verifies that our earth is far older then 6000 years old, when in fact it is probably millions of years old. However, no matter how old this earth is, it is the only place in the universe that mankind, and the animals can exist in the flesh form that we are in and survive. We do not worship the creation, but we worship the creator, our Heavenly Father. God is in control of all of His creation, and He destroyed all forms of life that lived on earth from that first earth age.
Isaiah 45:18 "For thus saith the Lord That created the heavens: God Himself formed the earth and made it; He hath established it, He created it not in vain, He formed it to be inhabited: "I am the Lord; and there is none else." "
God is speaking and Isaiah is writing what God is saying down, and God is telling us that when He created the earth, it was not in vain. "Vain" as used here is the same Hebrew word that we saw in Genesis 1:2, which was given as "void", or ruin. God created this earth to be lived on, and to be inhabited. Genesis 1:1 told us that God created the earth to be inhabited. "Tohu", the "destruction", was not part of the creation plan, but came after the fall of Satan, when one third of all the souls followed Satan in the first earth age, in verse two.
So when we go back into II Peter 3:6, "Whereby the world that then was, being over-flowed with water, perished." We see that it was that earth age that perish, and all that was part of it. It became void at the rebellion of Satan when he drew one third of the souls with him. This is what Revelation 12:1 - 4 is all about. It was in the first earth age that this took place, and what happened then is a type of what shall happen again in our generation.