Tehôm: Silence, Boundary, & Covenant in Genesis

This preprint reexamines Genesis 1:2 through the lens of sacred anthropology—vocation, boundary, and sacred time—to recover tehôm (תְּהוֹם) as sanctified boundary rather than primordial chaos. It argues that the deep is not a rival subdued by divine conquest but a space held in restraint, awaiting the Word that brings form and life. By contrasting Israel's covenantal memory of tehôm with Babylonian, Ugaritic, and Egyptian cosmologies, the study exposes how the nations preserved fragments of creation's pattern but lost its moral center. Later mystical and apocalyptic reinterpretations further inverted the memory, transforming divine boundary into human access. In restoring tehôm as symbol of restraint, mercy, and ordered sanctification, the essay reframes creation not as conquest but as covenant—a world kept habitable by the love that holds its depths in silence.