The first thing I want to say about the Genesis creation account is that I am quite convinced that no claim is made that God created the waters.
“In the Beginning of Creation, when God made heaven and earth (a), the earth was without form and void, with darkness over the face of the abyss, and a mighty wind that swept (b) over the surface of the waters.”
(a) Or ‘In the beginning God created heaven and earth’
(b) Or ‘and the spirit of God hovering.’ (NEB)
The opening line is the introduction. A great void and a dark abyss holds an immense body of water that pre-existed the creation of the world. This make sense, I suppose, for surely Yahweh did not exist in a black emptiness for eons before he deciding to make planet.
I want to talk about this body of water. It does not say God created the waters. The author tells us that the first act of creation was Light.
“God said, ‘Let there be light’, and there was light; and God saw that it was good, and he separated light from darkness. He called the light day, and the darkness night. So evening came, and morning came, the first day.” (NEB)
There is no mention of God creating the waters. The next act is the gathering of the waters into one place. It really looks as though they pre-existed the creation of the world. The author of the text simply skips right over the creation of water. This does become important later on, but in the mean time I’d be interested in understanding how any of you view the waters. For example, how do you explain a large body of water that pre-exists the Sun. It is apparently hanging in space and does not freeze solid. How do you understand this?