1. Modern commentators often confuse and complicate things by speaking of "the existence of chaotic pre-existent matter before the work of creation began" (John H. Sailhamer, The Pentateuch as Narrative: A Biblical-Theological Commentary (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1992) 82); it was the earth that was chaotic, not the cosmos.
2. Walter Brueggemann, The Land (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977), 6.