Does a wasted, formless and void earth in Gen. 1:2 imply a previously existing world?

Does a wasted, formless and void earth in Gen. 1:2 imply a previously existing world?

Jumping off of the question asked in Jul 2016 here about the similarity of Gen. 1:2 with the prophesy of Jer. 4:23 - Jer. 4:23 - 26: 23 I looked to the land, and lo, waste and void, And unto the heavens, and their light is not. 24 I have looked to the mountains, And lo, they are trembling. And all the hills moved themselves lightly. 25 I have looked, and lo, man is not, And all fowls of the heavens have fled. 26 I have looked, and lo, The fruitful place is a wilderness, And all its cities have been broken down, Because of Jehovah, Because of the fierceness of His anger. YLT Jeremiahs prophesy was forward looking to a wasted destruction after Gods judgment upon Jerusalem. Does the same language in Gen. 1:2 imply that God had previously destroyed another existing world, which became then void and without form As the destruction of Jerusalem left a waste and void land, then does the Genesis account begin with a previously destroyed earth

Not necessarily. The way I see it, Jeremiah is saying here and perhaps exaggerating a bit that God will utterly destroy the land and strip it bare that the land will return to its original primordial state--formless and void, the way it was prior to creation. More importantly the land will be utterly destroyed that it will leave no trace of its previous habitable state. This motif is found elsewhere in the biblical prophetic literature, Let her remove the adulterous look from her face and the unfaithfulness from between her breasts. Otherwise I will strip her naked and make her as bare as on the day she was born; I will make her like a desert, turn her into a parched land, and slay her with thirst. Here too, the land is compared to woman that is completely stripped bare so as to return her to the original state of human nakedness. In Hoseas imagery the land too will be stripped bare in a similar manner so as to return it to its original primordial state. This I think is what Jeremiah has in mind as well. There is simply no basis for interpreting the second verse of Gen. as God creating the world from a previously destroyed world. The simplest reading of the verse is that God formed the world from a pre-existing primordial formless landmass into an habitable place for humans and animals. Indeed such an account of creation was widespread and common in ANE cosmogonies, and there is good reason to believe that the bible pursued this belief rather than the belief in creatio ex nihilo, Nearly every surviving creation account from Egypt, for example, presents an original preexisting state of darkness, watery chaos, and a yet unformed landmass prior to creation. This is especially so in the case of the Egyptian cosmogony from Hermopolis, whose primordial state prior to creation is near identical to that presented in Genesis 1:2. Personified as preexisting gods, this particular cosmogony speaks of a primeval darkness, a primordial formless earth mass or hill, and the primordial surging waters, through whose separation the earth and heavens were formed and named... The author then goes on to deal with the contentious text in Jeremiah, The rare Hebrew expression toh waboh or toh alone and the image it invoked were unique to the literature of the 6th century BCE. That is we find the same image in other texts from the 6th century BCE and specifically to depict the historical crisis so often referred to in these texts. Paying attention to these textual details allows us to see more clearly what the author of Genesis 1:1-2:3 hoped to convey through his creation account, and more importantly to whom So, foreseeing the imminent doom of Judah by the Babylonians in the earlier 6th century BCE and the coming desolation of the land and the turning of fruitful fields into wildernesses, Jeremiah professes: I looked on the earth and behold, it was formless and desolate toh waboh, and to the heavens, and they had no light Jer 4:23. The image conveyed here is remarkably similar, if not exact, to that of Genesis 1:2: the earth is in a condition of formlessness and desolationthe exact same condition as depicted in Genesis, toh wabohand darkness prevails. Is this a vision of the primordial state of creation as depicted in Genesis 1:2 Not quite. But the prophet does borrow the image to depict the harsh realities and outcome of the Babylonian destruction of the land of Judah and its people in 587 BCE. In other words, the language and image that Jeremiah and other exilic writers of the 6th century used to portray the utter annihilation of the land of Judah at the hands of the Babylonians, who decimated its land, burnt Jerusalem and Yahwehs temple down to the ground, and left the land barren and covered in ashes, was the same language and image used to describe the preexistent state of creationtoh waboh. I admit that this subject is too broad for me to attempt to prove, in this small post, that this was indeed the intention of the biblical authors when they wrote Genesis. Im merely pointing out that Jeremiah 4:23 cannot in this case settle the ongoing dispute between the biblical scholars.