Atoms of Matter

The category gathers a single reference to the primordial state of the world before Yahweh's creative work began. The verse speaks of what did not yet exist at the moment wisdom was present with God — the earth, the fields, and the beginning of the dust of the world.

Before the Dust of the World

Wisdom's speech in Proverbs 8 describes its presence before creation. Pr 8:26 places this before the most elementary material constituents of the earth existed: "While as yet he had not made the earth, nor the fields, nor the beginning of the dust of the world." The phrase "beginning of the dust of the world" points to the primordial substance from which the earth was formed, present as yet only as an uncreated potential — before Yahweh's act of making brought it into being.