Hebrew word · H922

בֹּהוּ

vohu

void

Emptiness, voidness. It occurs only three times, always paired with tohu.

Appears 3 times in 3 verses of the Hebrew Old Testament. · Updated October 22, 2026

What it means

emptiness, void, waste

Abridged from Brown, Driver and Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (1906), via STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0).

Range of meaning: Emptiness, voidness. It occurs only three times, always paired with tohu.
Against the English: 'Void' (KJV, ESV, NASB, BSB) can suggest a vacuum or literal nothingness. 'Empty' (NIV, NLT, WEB) is closer.
How it drifted: In modern English 'void' brings to mind the emptiness of outer space or non-existence. In Hebrew bohu means a place with nothing in it, not the absence of any place.
Used elsewhere in the period: Jer 4:23: 'I looked at the earth, and behold, tohu wabohu; and at the heavens, and they had no light'. The prophet describes Judah's land after invasion as creation run backwards. Isa 34:11: over ruined Edom God stretches 'the line of tohu and the plumb-stones of bohu', a deserted land given over to owls and ravens. A possible Arabic cognate means 'to be empty'.

Range of meaning: Emptiness, void. It never appears on its own: always with tohu (Gen 1:2; Jer 4:23; Isa 34:11, where the two stand in parallel lines as the 'line of tohu' and 'stones of bohu' stretched over ruined Edom). A link with an Arabic root meaning 'to be empty' is often suggested but uncertain.
Against the English: 'Void' (KJV, BSB, ESV, NASB, WEB) and 'empty' (NIV) are both fine. What English loses is the rhyme: tohu wavohu is a jingle, like 'waste and paste' or the German loanword 'tohuwabohu', which means 'utter mess'.
Used elsewhere in the period: Only three occurrences, all with tohu. The exact pair 'tohu wavohu' is found only in Genesis 1:2 and here, which makes Jeremiah's wording an unmistakable allusion, whether to the Genesis text itself or to a shared creation tradition.

Range of meaning: Emptiness, void. It is never used on its own. It always rhymes with and follows tohu, and the pair works as a single idea: 'empty waste'. Its meaning comes mostly from that pairing.
Against the English: KJV 'emptiness', WEB/ESV 'emptiness', NIV 'desolation', BSB 'destruction'. 'Destruction' (BSB) names the cause, not the resulting state. The word describes what is left, not the act of tearing down.
Used elsewhere in the period: Only Gen 1:2 ('the earth was tohu wabohu'), Jer 4:23 (Jeremiah sees the land after judgment as 'tohu wabohu', with the heavens having no light, which is an explicit reversal of creation) and Isa 34:11. Some have compared it with Phoenician Baau, a goddess or primeval night mentioned by Philo of Byblos, but that link is speculative.

Genesis · 1

Genesis 1:2 וָבֹ֔הוּ and emptiness

Now the earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters.

Here: A rhyming partner to tohu. It never occurs without it. The pair works as one sound-picture, something like 'barren and bare': empty, uninhabited, with nothing in it yet.

Isaiah · 1

Isaiah 34:11 בֹֽהוּ׃ emptiness

The desert owl and screech owl will possess it, and the great owl and raven will dwell in it. The LORD will stretch out over Edom a measuring line of chaos and a plumb line of destruction.

Here: 'Of bohu': emptiness. This rare word occurs only three times in the Bible, always paired with tohu (Gen 1:2; Jer 4:23; here). Any hearer would catch the creation echo.

Jeremiah · 1

Jeremiah 4:23 וָבֹ֑הוּ and emptiness

I looked at the earth, and it was formless and void; I looked to the heavens, and they had no light.

Here: A rhyming partner to tohu that strengthens it: 'waste-and-void'. The rhyming pair appears together only here and in Genesis 1:2, so anyone who knew the creation account would hear it at once.

Word data: STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0), main text only.