The creation of the world took place within a space that is ostensibly void of God’s presence.
From this perspective, before the world was created, God alone existed, with no limits or constraints.
No other entity was present outside of God; not even the most infinitesimal speck of otherness existed beyond His being.
It is thus impossible to speak of space existing as a geographic location or even an abstract dimension before the creation of the world.
It is only possible to speak of the Source from which space and the world were subsequently created.
In this sense, before there was a world, God was the “place of the world.”
Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz