GOD’S WORD FOR YOU
GENESIS 1:2b
And the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters.
Here we find two things to take to heart. First is the appearance of the Holy Spirit. Second is the action the Holy Spirit is busy with. Why was the Holy Spirit hovering as he was?
Since the Hebrew word here can mean both “spirit” and “wind,” some people might want to explain away this is as “a mighty wind.” Wind as a phenomenon did not yet exist, since the combined masses of heaven and earth lay, stood or sloshed together in the great emulsion. No, this is not the wind, but the Spirit of the Lord God. The Father created the heavens and the earth, and he worked through the Son, whom Moses and John both call the Word of God. And over this creation the Spirit hovers and broods.
The Holy Spirit is one of the three Persons of the Holy Trinity. He is God, just as the Father is God and as the Son is God. In the New Testament, the deity of each person has direct testimony, especially in the formula Jesus gives for baptism “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:19), and in the Apostolic blessing, “the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all” (2 Corinthians 13:14). No one in the Old or New Testaments ever questions the deity of the Holy Spirit, nor the idea that God is three persons but only one God. Some question Jesus’ claim to be the Son, but never the idea that, following Psalm 2, that there is a Son of God.
But what is the Spirit of God? Is he the impulse or activity of the Father or the Son? No, he is an individual Person of the holy Trinity, just as the Father and Son are. Truly, the Father is a spirit (John 4:24), and before he took on flesh, the Son was a spirit. And so also the Holy Spirit is a spirit, but as we correctly say in the long creed, “There is one Holy Spirit and not three Holy Spirits” (Athanasian Creed, §23). The work of the Holy Spirit is, in fallen mankind, to urge us to good works and to renew us in God’s image of holiness and righteousness; to bring us to faith. He works through the means of grace. This “means” or manner or giving grace, is the gospel, which the Holy Spirit brings to us though the word of God and also in the Sacraments.
Before the fall, we see the Spirit here doing something which we would not have expected. He is “hovering over the surface of the waters.” To “hover” is to remain airborne over a place to inspect, to judge, and to protect, the way that certain birds do over their nests. In fact, just as a bird will sit on the nest to bring the eggs to life through warmth, so also the Holy Spirit was doing his part to bring the creation to life, because as we confess in the second creed, the Holy Spirit is “the Lord, the Giver of life” (Nicene Creed, third article).
The verb marachepheth is a participle, which shows constant and continuous activity here, in the Hebrew piel conjugation. The simple verb means “to grow soft” or even “to tremble” (Jeremiah 23:9). In the piel, we see this act: “The Lord guarded Jacob like an eagle that stirs up its nest and hovers over its young” (Deuteronomy 32:11). So this is not the only time this act, shown with this verb and this very conjugation, is used for God’s guarding activity.
The piel verb has many uses, more than thirty, but here this conjugation (that is, the form of the verb) shows a naturally repetitive act. With a bird, this would involve the flapping of wings to balance her location against the force of the prevailing wind, as in the Deuteronomy passage above. Moses uses the same word of the Holy Spirit to teach us that the lordly and life-giving Spirit of God was watching, inspecting, guarding and judging. Now, watching, inspecting and guarding are each a natural and obvious task, seen by almost anyone in this act of hovering. But why do I dare to say judging? Because God will declare the judgment: “It was good” (1:31). Indeed, since there was as yet no sin in the world, there was less need to guard. But the Lord watches over his creation. “The Lord watches over all” (Psalm 145:20).
Perhaps what matters most here is that we know nothing of God’s actions before the creation. But now, just as the creation has begun, already God is here, as we know him, “he is within, without, and above all” (Luther). God is here, where soon there will be light, water, sky, land, trees, grass, flowers, animals and man– but already before all of that, God is here. As our Savior promised just as he was about to ascend, “I am with you always, to the very end of the age” (Matthew 28:20).
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
Listen or watch Bible classes online. https://splnewulm.org/invisible-church/
Archives at St Paul’s Lutheran Church https://splnewulm.org/daily-devotions/ and Wisconsin Lutheran Chapel: www.wlchapel.org/connect-grow/ministries/adults/daily-devotions/gwfy-archive/2026
Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, New Ulm, Minnesota
God’s Word for You – Genesis 1:2b hovering