Forms: 7 tohu and bohu, tohu-vavohu, -vabohu, 8–9 tohu-bohu. [a. Heb. thōhū wa-blōhū ‘emptiness and desolation,’ in Gen. i. 2, rendered in Bible of 1611 ‘without form and void.’ So F. thohu et bohu (Rabelais, 1548), tohu-bohu (Voltaire, 1776).] That which is empty and formless; chaos; utter confusion.
[1613. Purchas, Pilgrimage (1614), 219. That Prophecie … that the world should be two thousand yeares Tohu, emptie and without Law.] Ibid. (1619), Microcosm., xxviii. 275. It is … not any figure, but a Chaos, a Tohu and Bohu, a meere confusion.
1643. Trapp, Comm., Gen. i. 24–5 (1867), I. 8/2. Man’s heart is a mere emptiness, a very Tohu vabohu.
1645. A. Henderson, Serm. bef. Ho. Lords, in Life (1846), 105. That such a Tohu vavohu can be the face of the Kingdom of Christ.
1692. Ray, Disc., I. ii. (1693), 5. The Earth … which was made tohu vabohu, without form and void.
1875. Gladstone, Glean. (1879), VI. 180. Yet a judge may not only have to digest his own legal apparatus, but may also be required to dive, at a moment’s notice, into the tohu-bohu of inquiries, which have never yet emerged from the stage of chaos.
1883. Browning, Jochanan Hakkadosh, 721. How from this tohu-bohu—hopes which dive, And fears which soar.
1894. L. S. Houghton, trans. Sabatier’s St. Francis, iii. 36. That tohu-bohu of mystery and folly.
