[Elamur Dictionary](https://md.dictionary.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://dictionary.elamur.ai/free/en/english/welter/)

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# welter

noun

«welter» in the English dictionary: in Jewish tradition — its meanings, how the lessons use it, and examples, each with its tree on Mova.

## In Jewish tradition

It is used in a translation of Genesis 1:2, "waste and welter," for the Hebrew tohu vavohu.

**Interpretation.** Tradition reads tohu vavohu as the formless state before God gave order to the world, and Sefer Yetzirah speaks of it too.

### Meaning

Disorder or a confused mess. [tree →](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/judaism/W/welter/#m1)

### Examples

- Most literally, it means ‘waste(land)’, the lifeless open desert, a translation of \[Genesis 1:2\] so far captured in English only by Robert Alter’s The Hebrew Bible (2019), who poetically renders תֹהוּ וָבֹהוּ tohu vavohu as “waste and welter”; cf. (Sefer Yetzirah, Sefaria community translation) [tree →](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/judaism/W/welter/#x1)

### Note

A record of the Judaism dictionary, written from the corpus.

## On Mova

- [Trees and pragmatics of «welter» in the Judaism dictionary](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/judaism/W/welter/): every meaning and example parsed by Mova, with its dependency tree and frames.
- [«welter» in the Judaism dictionary](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/dictionaries/judaism/w/welter.html) on Mova free.