the Berasit Hebrew Dictionary

היתה

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”, and is assigned the Strong number 1961.

This is very strange indeed.

Strong number 1961 does refer to a verb meaning “to be”. It is the word ahih.

'hiteh' is clearly not the same word as 'ahih'

'hiteh' occurs 111 times.¹⁾

LexID 101961