Was there water or lava on Earth before?

Answer

No doubt there was water first. Water (particularly in the form of ice) was an important component of the first debris that created the Earth. Rocks too, but they couldn’t turn into lava until the Earth had grown so big that it was hot inside too. And with that heat, it’s very possible that much of the water that was there evaporated, and disappeared from the Earth.

The water we see in our oceans now may have come later. It is believed to have come here from comet impacts. So when that water (in the form of ice) ended up here, there had already been lava.