the Berasit Hebrew Dictionary

היתה

'hiteh' means “was” or “had become”.

The word 'hiteh' first appears in Genesis 1:2.

“and the earth was formless and void” is the common translation. In this rendering, 'hiteh' is interpreted as a past tense form of the verb “to be”.

Normally however,, the word ahih is used for the verb “to be/exist/is/was”, as is the case for most of the uses in this section of text. Genesis chapter 1 uses 'ahih' multiple times, but only in this one particular instance chooses to use 'hiteh' instead.

'hiteh' is clearly not the same word as 'ahih', and the two words should not be equated.

It is important to note the difference between “was” and “had become”. hiteh may indicated an active state caused by a previous event, rather than simply a passive state. In other words, 'hiteh' might indicate “had become” rather than “was”.

The implication of the traditional rendering is that earth was in some primal state of pre-creation. This is not actually supported by the text. In fact, if our supposition is correct quite the opposite is true. The usage of the word 'hiteh' indicates that the earth had become barren. The exact phrase is “Earth had become worthless junk” (teho beho). The text appears to indicate that some earlier event had destroyed whatever had previously been on Earth, and the planet was now desolate.

'hiteh' occurs 111 times.¹⁾

- Audit these instances

LexID 101961