should not be seen as sinister, nihilating, demonic powers and therefore, in Gerhard von Rad’s phrase, as “simply the threat to everything he created.” Nor should they be seen, in Brevard Childs’ words, as “a chaotic condition existing independently of God’s creative activity,” an activity “over against the chaos.” There is certainly no exegetical justification for Karl Barth’s proposal that this should be understood as das Nichtige, a nothingness which “has as such its own being, albeit malignant