תהו ובהו

The first one-and-a-half lines of Genesis go as follows:

…בראשית ברא אלהים את השמים ואת הארץ. והארץ היתה תהו ובהו וחשך על־פני תהום

In the Hebrew text above, the phrase ‘Tohu va-vohu’ is italicized, the 3rd and 4th words of the second sentence (right-to-left). These lines are commonly translated as:

“In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth. And the Earth was Tohu va-vohu and darkness was on the face of the deep…”