God and nothing are opposites in Hebrew
There is a curiosity in Hebrew words which may challenge you. It is a real two letter combination which when inverted is also a real two letter combination and its meaning becomes the opposite of the first combination! Too abstract? (See them in the image) Read on!
The combination “aleph lamedh”(on the right) is a shorthand for “God”, and we usually transcribe it as “El” the original form being “Elohim”. If we invert the letters, that is, “Lamedh alpha”(on the left), we get the very common Hebrew word “lo” which means “no, nothing”. They are opposites in spatial arrangement and opposites in meaning as well. The opposite of God is not Satan, but nothing!
This is not the Chinese yin-yang religious symbol of two equal embracing commas, one light and the other dark. It would be more accurate to have a single circle filled with light, and no other circle near it! Is there room in the universe for anything else besides God? Is there room for me?! And we might think of the Scripture which says that at the final judgement sky and earth flee away from the face of God and there is no room for them. Perhaps that is the normal state and our current universe is the temporary state. God has temporarily breathed out the universe (as the book of Job records) and when he breathes in there is no further room outside for the universe!
How can there be room for anything beside God? Some Judaic teachers trying to explain this have argued that there was a kind of withdrawal of God in some extraordinary way to make room for a creation. Did he first create a nothing, then fill it with ordered things? Or us?
Or is his breathing out a kind of diffuse part of him?
The image found in Job, that the universe is God’s breathing out, means it could be reversed at any time. What would it be like to be breathed back into God? It might be heaven for many of us. It might be Hell for others.