What does an excited teenager describing something, me talking about my blood pressure, and a lukewarm conversion about a movie have in common? Well, good could have been used in all of those moments. (The teenager used slang that in my old mind does not fit.) Then I thought how God describes things and Genesis, especially Chapter 1, took over. This will help you in your own study. Hebrew Concordance: ṭō·wḇ — 271 Occurrences   Strong’s Hebrew: 2896. טוֹב (towb) — Good, pleasant, agreeable, beneficial, beautiful, best, better, bountiful, cheerful, at ease, fair, favor, fine, glad, goodly, graciously, joyful, kindly, loving, merry, pleasant, precious, prosperity, ready, sweet, wealth, welfare, well-favored

In Genesis 1 God uses the word tov. God bless translators. As you can see the base-word for tov is used in many applications. If you look in a thesaurus or dictionary, in English, there are many listings for good; add in adjectives that go above ‘good’ and the compound words of good, the idea is huge. In Hebrew those jots and tittles, and prefixes and suffixes are used by the translators to help us out. I am finding that the ‘occurrences’ list helps me with the understanding of specific uses of a word. Back to Genesis.

I have taken classes, read, and studied the first part of Genesis many times. So, I may have seen this before, but I do not remember it. Tov surprised me with its various forms, and where it was absent in the first three chapters.

Day 1 and 7, according to the Bible app/Englishmen’s Concordance that I use is ט֑וֹב. The sky/expanse is not called tov, at this time. Day 3 through the animals in Day 6 are called tov, but it is written טֽוֹב׃; the best explanation I found for those two dots was it may be a pronunciation mark. In Day 6 man got blessed but not called tov. Day 7 pronounces everything very tov, and God rest; Day 1 is light. I have more questions than answers at this point, but now maybe a time to keep silent. The only thought I had about Day 2, and the air was in Ephesians 2:2.

Chapter 2 – the food from the trees was a form of tov, but spelled וְט֣וֹב. The ‘good’ used with the Tree of Knowledge is ט֥וֹב. Hebrew Concordance: wə·ṭō·wḇ — 15 Occurrences

All of these words are tov. So, why did the Holy Spirit use these different forms of tov? The easy and possible explanation is grammar and tenses, but I find the associations of these various forms of tov in Scripture interesting.

With all that said, I now have no problem calling something tov without trying to beef up my comment using many adjectives or ‘better’ words.