Genesis 1:2 - The Earth

I felt that I was well underway, so I continued. The next passage is quite incomprehensible:

And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

In Genesis 1:1 God had created the Earth. But was the earth withouth form? What is meant by this? Not round? God had to have created a lot of physical laws allready, if he had created space, planets, stars and the earth. Can such passages be the reason people once believed the earth was flat? Perhaps. 

The Earth was also empty, naturally no plants or animals, perhaps the Earth even was made entirely of gases - I don't know, I'm no astronomer. But still, the Earth had to be round.

But even stranger is the fact that is was darkness. Just darkness. No light. How could he possible have created the earth before the sun? After all we are in orbit around the sun. But it's not sure we are meant to take all this literally neither. 

Surface of the deep might even suggest what I thought, gases. Hydrogen and Oxygen. And God was hovering above.