Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

CHAOS

A state of confusion, emptiness, or disorder. Chaos existed before God brought order to the universe during creation. In a parallel creation epic, the Babylonian Enuma Elish, the sea-goddess Tiamat represents the unbounded chaos and power of the ocean. Marduk defeats her in a heroic struggle and then cuts her body into pieces, thus creating the orderly boundaries of the physical world. Echoes of the Babylonian epic can be found in the book of Genesis, where the “earth was without form (Heb. tōhû) and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep (tĕhôm)” (Gen. 1:2).

Isaiah and Jeremiah often predict desolation and chaos as God’s punishment for the nations: The Lord “will lay waste the earth and make it desolate,” and Babylon will become “the city of chaos,” desolate and broken down (Isa. 24:1-12). So too Edom shall be laid waste “from generation to generation” when God uses his “plummet of chaos” (Isa. 34:10-11; cf. Jer. 49:7-22). Jeremiah directs his prophecy at Judah but urges all the nations to return to the ways of God or else the earth will be returned to its primeval state of “waste and void” (Jer. 4:23-28). In a passage where he prophesies that all nations will bow to Israel’s God, Isaiah stresses God’s omnipotence by declaring that God “did not create [the earth] a chaos, but formed it to be inhabited” (Isa. 45:18).

Henry L. Carrigan, Jr.

Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

CHAOS

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000)