It is an interesting coincidence that “wood,” the term here used, was regularly employed in Greek philosophy to express “original matter” (hūlē).
In the next hymn (x. 82), the theory is advanced that the waters produced the first germ of things, the source of the universe and the gods.
Who is our father, parent, and disposer,
Who knows all habitations and all beings,
Who only to the gods their names apportions:
To him all other beings turn inquiring?
What germ primeval did the waters cherish,
Wherein the gods all saw themselves together,
Which is beyond the earth, beyond that heaven,
Beyond the mighty gods’ mysterious dwelling?