The document discusses the theological implications of the biblical phrase 'In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth,' analyzing the meanings of creation, God, and the distinctions between various interpretations of divine names in Hebrew scripture. It asserts that this phrase implies God's existence and omnipotence, serves as a foundation for understanding the universe, and addresses misconceptions such as atheism, polytheism, and materialism. The text emphasizes that the creation of the heavens and earth marks the beginning of time and existence, framing it within a narrative context rather than as a mere header.

1. GE ESIS 1 COMME TARY
EDITED BY GLE PEASE
The Beginning
1 In the beginning God created the heavens and
the earth.
BAR ES, " - Section I - The Creation
- The Absolute Creation
‫ראשׁית‬ rᐃshıyt, the “head-part, beginning” of a thing, in point of time Gen_10:10, or
value Pro_1:7. Its opposite is ‫אחרית‬ 'achărıyth Isa_46:10. ‫בראשׁית‬ rê'shıyth, “in the
beginning,” is always used in reference to time. Here only is it taken absolutely.
‫ברא‬ bārā', “create, give being to something new.” It always has God for its subject. Its
object may be anything: matter Gen_1:1; animal life Gen_1:21; spiritual life Gen_1:27.
Hence, creation is not confined to a single point of time. Whenever anything absolutely
new - that is, not involved in anything previously extant - is called into existence, there is
creation Num_16:30. Any thing or event may also be said to be created by Him, who
created the whole system of nature to which it belongs Mal_2:10. The verb in its simple
form occurs forty-eight times (of which eleven are in Genesis, fourteen in the whole
Pentateuch, and twenty-one in Isaiah), and always in one sense.
‫אלהים‬ 'ĕlohıym, “God.” The noun ‫אלוה‬ 'elôah or ‫אלה‬ 'eloah is found in the Hebrew
scriptures fifty-seven times in the singular (of which two are in Deuteronomy, and forty-
one in the book of Job), and about three thousand times in the plural, of which
seventeen are in Job. The Chaldee form ‫אלה‬ 'elâh occurs about seventy-four times in the
singular, and ten in the plural. The Hebrew letter ‫ה‬ (h) is proved to be radical, not only
by bearing mappiq, but also by keeping its ground before a formative ending. The Arabic
verb, with the same radicals, seems rather to borrow from it than to lend the meaning
coluit, “worshipped,” which it sometimes has. The root probably means to be “lasting,
binding, firm, strong.” Hence, the noun means the Everlasting, and in the plural, the
Eternal Powers. It is correctly rendered God, the name of the Eternal and Supreme Being
in our language, which perhaps originally meant lord or ruler. And, like this, it is a
common or appellative noun. This is evinced by its direct use and indirect applications.
Its direct use is either proper or improper, according to the object to which it is
applied. Every instance of its proper use manifestly determines its meaning to be the
Eternal, the Almighty, who is Himself without beginning, and has within Himself the
power of causing other things, personal and impersonal, to be, and on this event is the

2. sole object of reverence and primary obedience to His intelligent creation.
Its improper use arose from the lapse of man into false notions of the object of
worship. Many real or imaginary beings came to be regarded as possessed of the
attributes, and therefore entitled to the reverence belonging to Deity, and were in
consequence called gods by their mistaken votaries, and by others who had occasion to
speak of them. This usage at once proves it to be a common noun, and corroborates its
proper meaning. When thus employed, however, it immediately loses most of its
inherent grandeur, and sometimes dwindles down to the bare notion of the supernatural
or the extramundane. In this manner it seems to be applied by the witch of Endor to the
unexpected apparition that presented itself to her 1Sa_28:13.
Its indirect applications point with equal steadiness to this primary and fundamental
meaning. Thus, it is employed in a relative and well-defined sense to denote one
appointed of God to stand in a certain divine relation to another. This relation is that of
authoritative revealer or administrator of the will of God. Thus, we are told Joh_10:34
that “he called them gods, to whom the word of God came.” Thus, Moses became related
to Aaron as God to His prophet Exo_4:16, and to Pharaoh as God to His creature Exo_
7:1. Accordingly, in Psa_82:6, we find this principle generalized: “I had said, gods are ye,
and sons of the Highest all of you.” Here the divine authority vested in Moses is
expressly recognized in those who sit in Moses’ seat as judges for God. They exercised a
function of God among the people, and so were in God’s stead to them. Man, indeed, was
originally adapted for ruling, being made in the image of God, and commanded to have
dominion over the inferior creatures. The parent also is instead of God in some respect
to his children, and the sovereign holds the relation of patriarch to his subjects. Still,
however, we are not fully warranted in translating ‫אלהים‬ 'ĕlohıym, “judges” in Exo_21:6;
Exo_22:7-8, Exo_22:27 (Hebrew versification: 8, 9, 28), because a more easy, exact, and
impressive sense is obtained from the proper rendering.
The word ‫מלאך‬ me
l'āk, “angel,” as a relative or official term, is sometimes applied
to a person of the Godhead; but the process is not reversed. The Septuagint indeed
translates ‫אלהים‬ 'ĕlohıym in several instances by ᅎγγελοι angeloi Psa_8:6; Psa_97:7; Psa_
138:1. The correctness of this is seemingly supported by the quotations in Heb_1:6. and
Heb_2:7. These, however, do not imply that the renderings are absolutely correct, but
only suffiently so for the purpose of the writer. And it is evident they are so, because the
original is a highly imaginative figure, by which a class is conceived to exist, of which in
reality only one of the kind is or can be. Now the Septuagint, either imagining, from the
occasional application of the official term “angel” to God, that the angelic office
somehow or sometimes involved the divine nature, or viewing some of the false gods of
the pagan as really angels, and therefore seemingly wishing to give a literal turn to the
figure, substituted the word ᅎγγελοι angeloi as an interpretation for ‫אלהים‬ 'ĕlohıym.
This free translation was sufficient for the purpose of the inspired author of the Epistle
to the Hebrews, inasmuch as the worship of all angels Heb_1:6 in the Septuagintal sense
of the term was that of the highest rank of dignitaries under God; and the argument in
the latter passage Heb_2:7 turns not on the words, “thou madest him a little lower than
the angels,” but upon the sentence, “thou hast put all things under his feet.” Moreover,
the Septuagint is by no means consistent in this rendering of the word in Similar
passages (see Psa_82:1; Psa_97:1; 1Sa_28:13).
With regard to the use of the word, it is to be observed that the plural of the Chaldee
form is uniformly plural in sense. The English version of ‫בר־אלהין‬ bar-'elâhıyn, “the Son of
God” Dan_3:25 is the only exception to this. But since it is the phrase of a pagan, the real

3. meaning may be, “a son of the gods.” On the contrary, the plural of the Hebrew form is
generally employed to denote the one God. The singular form, when applied to the true
God, is naturally suggested by the prominent thought of his being the only one. The
plural, when so applied, is generally accompanied with singular conjuncts, and conveys
the predominant conception of a plurality in the one God - a plurality which must be
perfectly consistent with his being the only possible one of his kind. The explanations of
this use of the plural - namely, that it is a relic of polytheism, that it indicates the
association of the angels with the one God in a common or collective appellation, and
that it expresses the multiplicity of attributes subsisting in him - are not satisfactory. All
we can say is, that it indicates such a plurality in the only one God as makes his nature
complete and creation possible. Such a plurality in unity must have dawned upon the
mind of Adam. It is afterward, we conceive, definitely revealed in the doctrine of the
Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
‫שׁמים‬ shāmayım, “skies, heavens,” being the “high” (shamay, “be high,” Arabic) or the
“airy” region; the overarching dome of space, with all its revolving orbs.
‫ארץ‬ 'erets, “land, earth, the low or the hard.” The underlying surface of land.
The verb is in the perfect form, denoting a completed act. The adverbial note of time,
“in the beginning,” determines it to belong to the past. To suit our idiom it may,
therefore, be strictly rendered “had created.” The skies and the land are the universe
divided into its two natural parts by an earthly spectator. The absolute beginning of
time, and the creation of all things, mutually determine each other.
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” Gen_1:1. This great
introductory sentence of the book of God is equal in weight to the whole of its
subsequent communications concerning the kingdom of nature.
Gen_1:1 assumes the existence of God, for it is He who in the beginning creates. It
assumes His eternity, for He is before all things: and since nothing comes from nothing,
He Himself must have always been. It implies His omnipotence, for He creates the
universe of things. It implies His absolute freedom, for He begins a new course of action.
It implies His infinite wisdom, for a κόσµος kosmos, “an order of matter and mind,” can
only come from a being of absolute intelligence. It implies His essential goodness, for the
Sole, Eternal, Almighty, All-wise, and All-sufficient Being has no reason, no motive, and
no capacity for evil. It presumes Him to be beyond all limit of time and place, since He is
before all time and place.
It asserts the creation of the heavens and the earth; that is, of the universe of mind and
matter. This creating is the omnipotent act of giving existence to things which before
had no existence. This is the first great mystery of things; as the end is the second.
Natural science observes things as they are, when they have already laid hold of
existence. It ascends into the past as far as observation will reach, and penetrates into
the future as far as experience will guide. But it does not touch the beginning or the end.
This first sentence of revelation, however, records the beginning. At the same time it
involves the progressive development of what is begun, and so contains within its bosom
the whole of what is revealed in the Book of God. It is thus historical of the beginning,
and prophetical of the whole of time. It is, therefore, equivalent to all the rest of
revelation taken together, which merely records the evolutions of one sphere of creation,
and nearly and more nearly anticipates the end of present things.
This sentence Gen_1:1 assumes the being of God, and asserts the beginning of things.
Hence, it intimates that the existence of God is more immediately patent to the reason of
man than the creation of the universe. And this is agreeable to the philosophy of things,

4. for the existence of God is a necessary and eternal truth, more and more self-evident to
the intellect as it rises to maturity. But the beginning of things is, by its very nature, a
contingent event, which once was not and then came to be contingent on the free will of
the Eternal, and, therefore, not evident to reason itself, but made known to the
understanding by testimony and the reality of things. This sentence is the testimony, and
the actual world in us and around us is the reality. Faith takes account of the one,
observation of the other.
It bears on the very face of it the indication that it was written by man, and for man,
for it divides all things into the heavens and the earth. Such a division evidently suits
those only who are inhabitants of the earth. Accordingly, this sentence Gen_1:1 is the
foundation-stone of the history, not of the universe at large, of the sun, of any other
planet, but of the earth, and of man its rational inhabitant. The primeval event which it
records may be far distant, in point of time, from the next event in such a history; as the
earth may have existed myriads of ages, and undergone many vicissitudes in its
condition, before it became the home of the human race. And, for ought we know, the
history of other planets, even of the solar system, may yet be unwritten, because there
has been as yet no rational inhabitant to compose or peruse the record. We have no
intimation of the interval of time that elapsed between the beginning of things narrated
in this prefatory sentence and that state of things which is announced in the following
verse, Gen_1:2.
With no less clearness, however, does it show that it was dictated by superhuman
knowledge. For it records the beginning of things of which natural science can take no
cognizance. Man observes certain laws of nature, and, guided by these, may trace the
current of physical events backward and forward, but without being able to fix any limit
to the course of nature in either direction. And not only this sentence, but the main part
of this and the following chapter communicates events that occurred before man made
his appearance on the stage of things; and therefore before he could either witness or
record them. And in harmony with all this, the whole volume is proved by the topics
chosen, the revelations made, the views entertained, the ends contemplated, and the
means of information possessed, to be derived from a higher source than man.
This simple sentence Gen_1:1 denies atheism, for it assumes the being of God. It
denies polytheism, and, among its various forms, the doctrine of two eternal principles,
the one good and the other evil, for it confesses the one Eternal Creator. It denies
materialism, for it asserts the creation of matter. It denies pantheism, for it assumes the
existence of God before all things, and apart from them. It denies fatalism, for it involves
the freedom of the Eternal Being.
It indicates the relative superiority, in point of magnitude, of the heavens to the earth,
by giving the former the first place in the order of words. It is thus in accordance with
the first elements of astronomical science.
It is therefore pregnant with physical and metaphysical, with ethical and theological
instruction for the first man, for the predecessors and contemporaries of Moses, and for
all the succeeding generations of mankind.
This verse forms an integral part of the narrative, and not a mere heading as some
have imagined. This is abundantly evident from the following reasons: 1. It has the form
of a narrative, not of a superscription. 2. The conjunctive particle connects the second
verse with it; which could not be if it were a heading. 3. The very next sentence speaks of
the earth as already in existence, and therefore its creation must be recorded in the first
verse. 4. In the first verse the heavens take precedence of the earth; but in the following
verses all things, even the sun, moon, and stars seem to be but appendages to the earth.
Thus, if it were a heading, it would not correspond with the narrative. 5. If the first verse

5. belongs to the narrative, order pervades the whole recital; whereas; if it is a heading, the
most hopeless confusion enters. Light is called into being before the sun, moon, and
stars. The earth takes precedence of the heavenly luminaries. The stars, which are
coordinate with the sun, and preordinate to the moon, occupy the third place in the
narrative of their manifestation. For any or all of these reasons it is obvious that the first
verse forms a part of the narrative.
As soon as it is settled that the narrative begins in the first verse, another question
comes up for determination; namely, whether the heavens here mean the heavenly
bodies that circle in their courses through the realms of space, or the mere space itself
which they occupy with their perambulations. It is manifest that the heavens here
denote the heavenly orbs themselves - the celestial mansions with their existing
inhabitants - for the following cogent reasons:
1. Creation implies something created, and not mere space, which is nothing, and
cannot be said to be created.
2. Since “the earth” here obviously means the substance of the planet we inhabit, so,
by parity of reason, the heavens must mean the substance of the celestial
luminaries, the heavenly hosts of stars and spirits.
3. “The heavens” are placed before “the earth,” and therefore must mean that reality
which is greater than the earth, for if they meant “space,” and nothing real, they
ought not to be before the earth.
4. “The heavens” are actually mentioned in the verse, and therefore must mean a real
thing, for if they meant nothing at all, they ought not to be mentioned.
5. The heavens must denote the heavenly realities, because this imparts a rational
order to the whole chapter; whereas an unaccountable derangement appears if the
sun, moon, and stars do not come into existence till the fourth day, though the sun
is the center of light and the measurer of the daily period.
For any or all of these reasons, it is undeniable that the heavens in the first verse mean
the fixed and planetary orbs of space; and, consequently, that these uncounted tenants of
the skies, along with our own planet, are all declared to be in existence before the
commencement of the six days’ creation.
Hence, it appears that the first verse records an event antecedent to those described in
the subsequent verses. This is the absolute and aboriginal creation of the heavens and all
that in them is, and of the earth in its primeval state. The former includes all those
resplendent spheres which are spread before the wondering eye of man, as well as those
hosts of planets and of spiritual and angelic beings which are beyond the range of his
natural vision. This brings a simple, unforced meaning out of the whole chapter, and
discloses a beauty and a harmony in the narrative which no other interpretation can
afford. In this way the subsequent verses reveal a new effort of creative power, by which
the pre-Adamic earth, in the condition in which it appears in the second verse, is
prepared for the residence of a fresh animal creation, including the human race. The
process is represented as it would appear to primeval man in his infantile simplicity,
with whom his own position would naturally be the fixed point to which everything else
was to be referred.
CLARKE, "God in the beginning created the heavens and the earth - ‫בראשית‬
‫הארץ‬ ‫ואת‬ ‫השמים‬ ‫את‬ ‫אלהים‬ ‫ברא‬ Bereshith bara Elohim eth hashshamayim veeth haarets; God in

6. the beginning created the heavens and the earth.
Many attempts have been made to define the term God: as to the word itself, it is pure
Anglo-Saxon, and among our ancestors signified, not only the Divine Being, now
commonly designated by the word, but also good; as in their apprehensions it appeared
that God and good were correlative terms; and when they thought or spoke of him, they
were doubtless led from the word itself to consider him as The Good Being, a fountain of
infinite benevolence and beneficence towards his creatures.
A general definition of this great First Cause, as far as human words dare attempt one,
may be thus given: The eternal, independent, and self-existent Being: the Being whose
purposes and actions spring from himself, without foreign motive or influence: he who is
absolute in dominion; the most pure, the most simple, and most spiritual of all essences;
infinitely benevolent, beneficent, true, and holy: the cause of all being, the upholder of
all things; infinitely happy, because infinitely perfect; and eternally self-sufficient,
needing nothing that he has made: illimitable in his immensity, inconceivable in his
mode of existence, and indescribable in his essence; known fully only to himself, because
an infinite mind can be fully apprehended only by itself. In a word, a Being who, from his
infinite wisdom, cannot err or be deceived; and who, from his infinite goodness, can do
nothing but what is eternally just, right, and kind. Reader, such is the God of the Bible;
but how widely different from the God of most human creeds and apprehensions!
The original word ‫אלהים‬ Elohim, God, is certainly the plural form of ‫אל‬ El, or ‫אלה‬
Eloah, and has long been supposed, by the most eminently learned and pious men, to
imply a plurality of Persons in the Divine nature. As this plurality appears in so many
parts of the sacred writings to be confined to three Persons, hence the doctrine of the
Trinity, which has formed a part of the creed of all those who have been deemed sound
in the faith, from the earliest ages of Christianity. Nor are the Christians singular in
receiving this doctrine, and in deriving it from the first words of Divine revelation. An
eminent Jewish rabbi, Simeon ben Joachi, in his comment on the sixth section of
Leviticus, has these remarkable words: “Come and see the mystery of the word Elohim;
there are three degrees, and each degree by itself alone, and yet notwithstanding they are
all one, and joined together in one, and are not divided from each other.” See Ainsworth.
He must be strangely prejudiced indeed who cannot see that the doctrine of a Trinity,
and of a Trinity in unity, is expressed in the above words. The verb ‫ברא‬ bara, he created,
being joined in the singular number with this plural noun, has been considered as
pointing out, and not obscurely, the unity of the Divine Persons in this work of creation.
In the ever-blessed Trinity, from the infinite and indivisible unity of the persons, there
can be but one will, one purpose, and one infinite and uncontrollable energy.
“Let those who have any doubt whether ‫אלהים‬ Elohim, when meaning the true God,
Jehovah, be plural or not, consult the following passages, where they will find it joined
with adjectives, verbs, and pronouns plural.
“Gen_1:26 Gen_3:22 Gen_11:7 Gen_20:13 Gen_31:7, Gen_31:53 Gen_35:7. “Deu_4:7
Deu_5:23; Jos_24:19 1Sa_4:8; 2Sa_7:23; “Psa_58:6; Isa_6:8; Jer_10:10, Jer_23:36.
“See also Pro_9:10, Pro_30:3; Psa_149:2; Ecc_5:7, Ecc_12:1; Job_5:1; Isa_6:3, Isa_
54:5, Isa_62:5; Hos_11:12, or Hos_12:1; Mal_1:6; Dan_5:18, Dan_5:20, and Dan_7:18,
Dan_7:22.” - Parkhurst.
As the word Elohim is the term by which the Divine Being is most generally expressed
in the Old Testament, it may be necessary to consider it here more at large. It is a maxim
that admits of no controversy, that every noun in the Hebrew language is derived from a
verb, which is usually termed the radix or root, from which, not only the noun, but all

7. the different flections of the verb, spring. This radix is the third person singular of the
preterite or past tense. The ideal meaning of this root expresses some essential property
of the thing which it designates, or of which it is an appellative. The root in Hebrew, and
in its sister language, the Arabic, generally consists of three letters, and every word must
be traced to its root in order to ascertain its genuine meaning, for there alone is this
meaning to be found. In Hebrew and Arabic this is essentially necessary, and no man can
safely criticise on any word in either of these languages who does not carefully attend to
this point.
I mention the Arabic with the Hebrew for two reasons.
1. Because the two languages evidently spring from the same source, and have very
nearly the same mode of construction.
2. Because the deficient roots in the Hebrew Bible are to be sought for in the Arabic
language. The reason of this must be obvious, when it is considered that the whole
of the Hebrew language is lost except what is in the Bible, and even a part of this
book is written in Chaldee.
Now, as the English Bible does not contain the whole of the English language, so the
Hebrew Bible does not contain the whole of the Hebrew. If a man meet with an English
word which he cannot find in an ample concordance or dictionary to the Bible, he must
of course seek for that word in a general English dictionary. In like manner, if a
particular form of a Hebrew word occur that cannot be traced to a root in the Hebrew
Bible, because the word does not occur in the third person singular of the past tense in
the Bible, it is expedient, it is perfectly lawful, and often indispensably necessary, to seek
the deficient root in the Arabic. For as the Arabic is still a living language, and perhaps
the most copious in the universe, it may well be expected to furnish those terms which
are deficient in the Hebrew Bible. And the reasonableness of this is founded on another
maxim, viz., that either the Arabic was derived from the Hebrew, or the Hebrew from
the Arabic. I shall not enter into this controversy; there are great names on both sides,
and the decision of the question in either way will have the same effect on my argument.
For if the Arabic were derived from the Hebrew, it must have been when the Hebrew was
a living and complete language, because such is the Arabic now; and therefore all its
essential roots we may reasonably expect to find there: but if, as Sir William Jones
supposed, the Hebrew were derived from the Arabic, the same expectation is justified,
the deficient roots in Hebrew may be sought for in the mother tongue. If, for example,
we meet with a term in our ancient English language the meaning of which we find
difficult to ascertain, common sense teaches us that we should seek for it in the Anglo-
Saxon, from which our language springs; and, if necessary, go up to the Teutonic, from
which the Anglo-Saxon was derived. No person disputes the legitimacy of this measure,
and we find it in constant practice. I make these observations at the very threshold of my
work, because the necessity of acting on this principle (seeking deficient Hebrew roots in
the Arabic) may often occur, and I wish to speak once for all on the subject.
The first sentence in the Scripture shows the propriety of having recourse to this
principle. We have seen that the word ‫אלהים‬ Elohim is plural; we have traced our term
God to its source, and have seen its signification; and also a general definition of the
thing or being included under this term, has been tremblingly attempted. We should
now trace the original to its root, but this root does not appear in the Hebrew Bible.
Were the Hebrew a complete language, a pious reason might be given for this omission,
viz., “As God is without beginning and without cause, as his being is infinite and
underived, the Hebrew language consults strict propriety in giving no root whence his
name can be deduced.” Mr. Parkhurst, to whose pious and learned labors in Hebrew

8. literature most Biblical students are indebted, thinks he has found the root in ‫אלה‬ alah,
he swore, bound himself by oath; and hence he calls the ever-blessed Trinity ‫אלהים‬
Elohim, as being bound by a conditional oath to redeem man, etc., etc. Most pious minds
will revolt from such a definition, and will be glad with me to find both the noun and the
root preserved in Arabic. Allah is the common name for God in the Arabic tongue, and
often the emphatic is used. Now both these words are derived from the root alaha, he
worshipped, adored, was struck with astonishment, fear, or terror; and hence, he adored
with sacred horror and veneration, cum sacro horrore ac veneratione coluit, adoravit -
Wilmet. Hence ilahon, fear, veneration, and also the object of religious fear, the Deity,
the supreme God, the tremendous Being. This is not a new idea; God was considered in
the same light among the ancient Hebrews; and hence Jacob swears by the fear of his
father Isaac, Gen_31:53. To complete the definition, Golius renders alaha, juvit,
liberavit, et tutatus fuit, “he succoured, liberated, kept in safety, or defended.” Thus
from the ideal meaning of this most expressive root, we acquire the most correct notion
of the Divine nature; for we learn that God is the sole object of adoration; that the
perfections of his nature are such as must astonish all those who piously contemplate
them, and fill with horror all who would dare to give his glory to another, or break his
commandments; that consequently he should be worshipped with reverence and
religious fear; and that every sincere worshipper may expect from him help in all his
weaknesses, trials, difficulties, temptations, etc.,; freedom from the power, guilt, nature,
and consequences of sin; and to be supported, defended, and saved to the uttermost, and
to the end.
Here then is one proof, among multitudes which shall be adduced in the course of this
work, of the importance, utility, and necessity of tracing up these sacred words to their
sources; and a proof also, that subjects which are supposed to be out of the reach of the
common people may, with a little difficulty, be brought on a level with the most ordinary
capacity.
In the beginning - Before the creative acts mentioned in this chapter all was
Eternity. Time signifies duration measured by the revolutions of the heavenly bodies:
but prior to the creation of these bodies there could be no measurement of duration, and
consequently no time; therefore in the beginning must necessarily mean the
commencement of time which followed, or rather was produced by, God’s creative acts,
as an effect follows or is produced by a cause.
Created - Caused existence where previously to this moment there was no being. The
rabbins, who are legitimate judges in a case of verbal criticism on their own language,
are unanimous in asserting that the word ‫ברא‬ bara expresses the commencement of the
existence of a thing, or egression from nonentity to entity. It does not in its primary
meaning denote the preserving or new forming things that had previously existed, as
some imagine, but creation in the proper sense of the term, though it has some other
acceptations in other places. The supposition that God formed all things out of a pre-
existing, eternal nature, is certainly absurd, for if there had been an eternal nature
besides an eternal God, there must have been two self-existing, independent, and eternal
beings, which is a most palpable contradiction.
‫השמים‬ ‫את‬ eth hashshamayim. The word ‫את‬ eth, which is generally considered as a
particle, simply denoting that the word following is in the accusative or oblique case, is
often understood by the rabbins in a much more extensive sense. “The particle ‫”,את‬ says
Aben Ezra, “signifies the substance of the thing.” The like definition is given by Kimchi

9. in his Book of Roots. “This particle,” says Mr. Ainsworth, “having the first and last
letters of the Hebrew alphabet in it, is supposed to comprise the sum and substance of
all things.” “The particle ‫את‬ eth (says Buxtorf, Talmudic Lexicon, sub voce) with the
cabalists is often mystically put for the beginning and the end, as α alpha and ω omega
are in the Apocalypse.” On this ground these words should be translated, “God in the
beginning created the substance of the heavens and the substance of the earth,” i.e. the
prima materia, or first elements, out of which the heavens and the earth were
successively formed. The Syriac translator understood the word in this sense, and to
express this meaning has used the word yoth, which has this signification, and is very
properly translated in Walton’s Polyglot, Esse, caeli et Esse terrae, “the being or
substance of the heaven, and the being or substance of the earth.” St. Ephraim Syrus, in
his comment on this place, uses the same Syriac word, and appears to understand it
precisely in the same way. Though the Hebrew words are certainly no more than the
notation of a case in most places, yet understood here in the sense above, they argue a
wonderful philosophic accuracy in the statement of Moses, which brings before us, not a
finished heaven and earth, as every other translation appears to do, though afterwards
the process of their formation is given in detail, but merely the materials out of which
God built the whole system in the six following days.
The heaven and the earth - As the word ‫שמים‬ shamayim is plural, we may rest
assured that it means more than the atmosphere, to express which some have
endeavored to restrict its meaning. Nor does it appear that the atmosphere is
particularly intended here, as this is spoken of, Gen_1:6, under the term firmament. The
word heavens must therefore comprehend the whole solar system, as it is very likely the
whole of this was created in these six days; for unless the earth had been the center of a
system, the reverse of which is sufficiently demonstrated, it would be unphilosophic to
suppose it was created independently of the other parts of the system, as on this
supposition we must have recourse to the almighty power of God to suspend the
influence of the earth’s gravitating power till the fourth day, when the sun was placed in
the center, round which the earth began then to revolve. But as the design of the inspired
penman was to relate what especially belonged to our world and its inhabitants,
therefore he passes by the rest of the planetary system, leaving it simply included in the
plural word heavens. In the word earth every thing relative to the terraqueaerial globe is
included, that is, all that belongs to the solid and fluid parts of our world with its
surrounding atmosphere. As therefore I suppose the whole solar system was created at
this time, I think it perfectly in place to give here a general view of all the planets, with
every thing curious and important hitherto known relative to their revolutions and
principal affections.
Observations On The Preceding Tables
(Editor’s Note: These tables were omitted due to outdated information)
In Table I. the quantity or the periodic and sidereal revolutions of the planets is
expressed in common years, each containing 365 days; as, e.g., the tropical revolution of
Jupiter is, by the table, 11 years, 315 days, 14 hours, 39 minutes, 2 seconds; i.e., the exact
number of days is equal to 11 years multiplied by 365, and the extra 315 days added to
the product, which make In all 4330 days. The sidereal and periodic times are also set
down to the nearest second of time, from numbers used in the construction of the tables
in the third edition of M. de la Lande’s Astronomy. The columns containing the mean
distance of the planets from the sun in English miles, and their greatest and least
distance from the earth, are such as result from the best observations of the two last

10. transits of Venus, which gave the solar parallax to be equal to 8 three-fifth seconds of a
degree; and consequently the earth’s diameter, as seen from the sun, must be the double
of 8 three-fifth seconds, or 17 one-fifth seconds. From this last quantity, compared with
the apparent diameters of the planets, as seen at a distance equal to that of the earth at
her main distance from the sun, the diameters of the planets in English miles, as
contained in the seventh column, have been carefully computed. In the column entitled
“Proportion of bulk, the earth being 1,” the whole numbers express the number of times
the other planet contains more cubic miles, etc., than the earth; and if the number of
cubic miles in the earth be given, the number of cubic miles in any planet may be readily
found by multiplying the cubic miles contained in the earth by the number in the
column, and the product will be the quantity required.
This is a small but accurate sketch of the vast solar system; to describe it fully, even in
all its known revolutions and connections, in all its astonishing energy and influence, in
its wonderful plan, structure, operations, and results, would require more volumes than
can be devoted to the commentary itself.
As so little can be said here on a subject so vast, it may appear to some improper to
introduce it at all; but to any observation of this kind I must be permitted to reply, that I
should deem it unpardonable not to give a general view of the solar system in the very
place where its creation is first introduced. If these works be stupendous and
magnificent, what must He be who formed, guides, and supports them all by the word of
his power! Reader, stand in awe of this God, and sin not. Make him thy friend through
the Son of his love; and, when these heavens and this earth are no more, thy soul shall
exist in consummate and unutterable felicity.
GILL, "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. By the heaven
some understand the supreme heaven, the heaven of heavens, the habitation of God, and
of the holy angels; and this being made perfect at once, no mention is after made of it, as
of the earth; and it is supposed that the angels were at this time created, since they were
present at the laying of the foundation of the earth, Job_38:6 but rather the lower and
visible heavens are meant, at least are not excluded, that is, the substance of them; as yet
being imperfect and unadorned; the expanse not yet made, or the ether and air not yet
stretched out; nor any light placed in them, or adorned with the sun, moon, and stars: so
the earth is to be understood, not of that properly so called, as separated from the
waters, that is, the dry land afterwards made to appear; but the whole mass of earth and
water before their separation, and when in their unformed and unadorned state,
described in the next verse: in short, these words represent the visible heavens and the
terraqueous globe, in their chaotic state, as they were first brought into being by
almighty power. The ‫ה‬ prefixed to both words is, as Aben Ezra observes, expressive of
notification or demonstration, as pointing at "those" heavens, and "this earth"; and
shows that things visible are here spoken of, whatever is above us, or below us to be
seen: for in the Arabic language, as he also observes, the word for "heaven", comes from
one which signifies high or above (a); as that for "earth" from one that signifies low and
beneath, or under (b). Now it was the matter or substance of these that was first created;
for the word ‫את‬ set before them signifies substance, as both Aben Ezra and (c) Kimchi
affirm. Maimonides (d) observes, that this particle, according to their wise men, is the
same as "with"; and then the sense is, God created with the heavens whatsoever are in
the heavens, and with the earth whatsoever are in the earth; that is, the substance of all
things in them; or all things in them were seminally together: for so he illustrates it by an
husbandman sowing seeds of divers kinds in the earth, at one and the same time; some

11. of which come up after one day, and some after two days, and some after three days,
though all sown together. These are said to be "created", that is, to be made out of
nothing; for what pre-existent matter to this chaos could there be out of which they
could be formed? And the apostle says, "through faith we understand that the worlds
were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things
which do appear", Heb_11:3. And though this word is sometimes used, and even in this
chapter, of the production of creatures out of pre-existent matter, as in Gen_1:21 yet, as
Nachmanides observes, there is not in the holy language any word but this here used, by
which is signified the bringing anything into being out of nothing; and many of the
Jewish interpreters, as Aben Ezra, understand by creation here, a production of
something into being out of nothing; and Kimchi says (e) that creation is a making some
new thing, and a bringing something out of nothing: and it deserves notice, that this
word is only used of God; and creation must be the work of God, for none but an
almighty power could produce something out of nothing. The word used is Elohimö,
which some derive from another, which signifies power, creation being an act of
almighty power: but it is rather to be derived from the root in the Arabic language, which
signifies to worship (f), God being the object of all religious worship and adoration; and
very properly does Moses make use of this appellation here, to teach us, that he who is
the Creator of the heavens and the earth is the sole object of worship; as he was of the
worship of the Jewish nation, at the head of which Moses was. It is in the plural number,
and being joined to a verb of the singular, is thought by many to be designed to point
unto us the mystery of a plurality, or trinity of persons in the unity of the divine essence:
but whether or no this is sufficient to support that doctrine, which is to be established
without it; yet there is no doubt to be made, that all the three Persons in the Godhead
were concerned in the creation of all things, see Psa_33:6. The Heathen poet Orpheus
has a notion somewhat similar to this, who writes, that all things were made by one
Godhead of three names, and that this God is all things (g): and now all these things, the
heaven and the earth, were made by God "in the beginning", either in the beginning of
time, or when time began, as it did with the creatures, it being nothing but the measure
of a creature's duration, and therefore could not be until such existed; or as Jarchi
interprets it, in the beginning of the creation, when God first began to create; and is best
explained by our Lord, "the beginning of the creation which God created", Mar_13:19
and the sense is, either that as soon as God created, or the first he did create were the
heavens and the earth; to which agrees the Arabic version; not anything was created
before them: or in connection with the following words, thus, "when first", or "in the
beginning", when "God created the heavens and the earth", then "the earth was without
form", &c (h). The Jerusalem Targum renders it, "in wisdom God created"; see Pro_3:19
and some of the ancients have interpreted it of the wisdom of God, the Logos and Son of
God. From hence we learn, that the world was not eternal, either as to the matter or
form of it, as Aristotle, and some other philosophers, have asserted, but had a beginning;
and that its being is not owing to the fortuitous motion and conjunction of atoms, but to
the power and wisdom of God, the first cause and sole author of all things; and that
there was not any thing created before the heaven and the earth were: hence those
phrases, before the foundation of the world, and before the world began, &c. are
expressive of eternity: this utterly destroys the notion of the pre-existence of the souls of
men, or of the soul of the Messiah: false therefore is what the Jews say (i), that paradise,
the righteous, Israel, Jerusalem, &c. were created before the world; unless they mean,
that these were foreordained by God to be, which perhaps is their sense.
HE RY, "
In these verses we have the work of creation in its epitome and in its embryo.

12. I. In its epitome, Gen_1:1, where we find, to our comfort, the first article of our creed,
that God the Father Almighty is the Maker of heaven and earth, and as such we believe
in him.
1. Observe, in this verse, four things: -
(1.) The effect produced - the heaven and the earth, that is, the world, including the
whole frame and furniture of the universe, the world and all things therein, Act_17:24.
The world is a great house, consisting of upper and lower stories, the structure stately
and magnificent, uniform and convenient, and every room well and wisely furnished. It
is the visible part of the creation that Moses here designs to account for; therefore he
mentions not the creation of angels. But as the earth has not only its surface adorned
with grass and flowers, but also its bowels enriched with metals and precious stones
(which partake more of its solid nature and more valuable, though the creation of them
is not mentioned here), so the heavens are not only beautified to our eye with glorious
lamps which garnish its outside, of whose creation we here read, but they are within
replenished with glorious beings, out of our sight, more celestial, and more surpassing
them in worth and excellency than the gold or sapphires surpass the lilies of the field. In
the visible world it is easy to observe, [1.] Great variety, several sorts of beings vastly
differing in their nature and constitution from each other. Lord, how manifold are thy
works, and all good! [2.] Great beauty. The azure sky and verdant earth are charming to
the eye of the curious spectator, much more the ornaments of both. How transcendent
then must the beauty of the Creator be! [3.] Great exactness and accuracy. To those that,
with the help of microscopes, narrowly look into the works of nature, they appear far
more fine than any of the works of art. [4.] Great power. It is not a lump of dead and
inactive matter, but there is virtue, more or less, in every creature: the earth itself has a
magnetic power. [5.] Great order, a mutual dependence of beings, an exact harmony of
motions, and an admirable chain and connection of causes. [6.] Great mystery. There are
phenomena in nature which cannot be solved, secrets which cannot be fathomed nor
accounted for. But from what we see of heaven and earth we may easily enough infer the
eternal power and Godhead of the great Creator, and may furnish ourselves with
abundant matter for his praises. And let our make and place, as men, remind us of our
duty as Christians, which is always to keep heaven in our eye and the earth under our
feet.
(2.) The author and cause of this great work - God. The Hebrew word is Elohim, which
bespeaks, [1.] The power of God the Creator. El signifies the strong God; and what less
than almighty strength could bring all things out of nothing? [2.] The plurality of
persons in the Godhead, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. This plural name of God, in
Hebrew, which speaks of him as many though he is one, was to the Gentiles perhaps a
savour of death unto death, hardening them in their idolatry; but it is to us a savour of
life unto life, confirming our faith in the doctrine of the Trinity, which, though but darkly
intimated in the Old Testament, is clearly revealed in the New. The Son of God, the
eternal Word and Wisdom of the Father, was with him when he made the world (Pro_
8:30), nay, we are often told that the world was made by him, and nothing made without
him, Joh_1:3, Joh_1:10; Eph_3:9; Col_1:16; Heb_1:2. O what high thoughts should this
form in our minds of that great God whom we draw nigh to in religious worship, and
that great Mediator in whose name we draw nigh!
(3.) The manner in which this work was effected: God created it, that is, made it out of
nothing. There was not any pre-existent matter out of which the world was produced.
The fish and fowl were indeed produced out of the waters and the beasts and man out of
the earth; but that earth and those waters were made out of nothing. By the ordinary

13. power of nature, it is impossible that any thing should be made out of nothing; no
artificer can work, unless he has something to work on. But by the almighty power of
God it is not only possible that something should be made of nothing (the God of nature
is not subject to the laws of nature), but in the creation it is impossible it should be
otherwise, for nothing is more injurious to the honour of the Eternal Mind than the
supposition of eternal matter. Thus the excellency of the power is of God and all the
glory is to him.
(4.) When this work was produced: In the beginning, that is, in the beginning of time,
when that clock was first set a going: time began with the production of those beings that
are measured by time. Before the beginning of time there was none but that Infinite
Being that inhabits eternity. Should we ask why God made the world no sooner, we
should but darken counsel by words without knowledge; for how could there be sooner
or later in eternity? And he did make it in the beginning of time, according to his eternal
counsels before all time. The Jewish Rabbies have a saying, that there were seven things
which God created before the world, by which they only mean to express the excellency
of these things: - The law, repentance, paradise, hell, the throne of glory, the house of the
sanctuary, and the name of the Messiah. But to us it is enough to say, In the beginning
was the Word, Joh_1:1.
2. Let us learn hence, (1.) That atheism is folly, and atheists are the greatest fools in
nature; for they see there is a world that could not make itself, and yet they will not own
there is a God that made it. Doubtless, they are without excuse, but the god of this world
has blinded their minds. (2.) That God is sovereign Lord of all by an incontestable right.
If he is the Creator, no doubt he is the owner and possessor of heaven and earth. (3.)
That with God all things are possible, and therefore happy are the people that have him
for their God, and whose help and hope stand in his name, Psa_121:2; Psa_124:8. (4.)
That the God we serve is worthy of, and yet is exalted far above, all blessing and praise,
Neh_9:5, Neh_9:6. If he made the world, he needs not our services, nor can be benefited
by them (Act_17:24, Act_17:25), and yet he justly requires them, and deserves our
praise, Rev_4:11. If all is of him, all must be to him.
II. Here is the work of creation in its embryo, Gen_1:2, where we have an account of
the first matter and the first mover.
1. A chaos was the first matter. It is here called the earth (though the earth, properly
taken, was not made till the third day Gen_1:10), because it did most resemble that
which afterwards was called earth, mere earth, destitute of its ornaments, such a heavy
unwieldy mass was it; it is also called the deep, both for its vastness and because the
waters which were afterwards separated from the earth were now mixed with it. This
immense mass of matter was it out of which all bodies, even the firmament and visible
heavens themselves, were afterwards produced by the power of the Eternal Word. The
Creator could have made his work perfect at first, but by this gradual proceeding he
would show what is, ordinarily, the method of his providence and grace. Observe the
description of this chaos. (1.) There was nothing in it desirable to be seen, for it was
without form and void. Toho and Bohu, confusion and emptiness; so these words are
rendered, Isa_34:11. It was shapeless, it was useless, it was without inhabitants, without
ornaments, the shadow or rough draught of things to come, and not the image of the
things, Heb_10:1. The earth is almost reduced to the same condition again by the sin of
man, under which the creation groans. See Jer_4:23, I beheld the earth, and lo it was
without form, and void. To those who have their hearts in heaven this lower world, in
comparison with that upper, still appears to be nothing but confusion and emptiness.
There is no true beauty to be seen, no satisfying fulness to be enjoyed, in this earth, but

14. in God only. (2.) If there had been any thing desirable to be seen, yet there was no light
to see it by; for darkness, thick darkness, was upon the face of the deep. God did not
create this darkness (as he is said to create the darkness of affliction, Isa_45:7), for it
was only the want of light, which yet could not be said to be wanted till something was
made that might be seen by it; nor needs the want of it be much complained of, when
there was nothing to be seen but confusion and emptiness. If the work of grace in the
soul is a new creation, this chaos represents the state of an unregenerate graceless soul:
there is disorder, confusion, and every evil work; it is empty of all good, for it is without
God; it is dark, it is darkness itself. This is our condition by nature, till almighty grace
effects a blessed change.
2. The Spirit of God was the first mover: He moved upon the face of the waters. When
we consider the earth without form and void, methinks it is like the valley full of dead
and dry bones. Can these live? Can this confused mass of matter be formed into a
beautiful world? Yes, if a spirit of life from God enter into it, Eze_37:9. Now there is
hope concerning this thing; for the Spirit of God begins to work, and, if he work, who or
what shall hinder? God is said to make the world by his Spirit, Psa_33:6; Job_26:13;
and by the same mighty worker the new creation is effected. He moved upon the face of
the deep, as Elijah stretched himself upon the dead child, - as the hen gathers her
chickens under her wings, and hovers over them, to warm and cherish them, Mat_
23:37, - as the eagle stirs up her nest, and flutters over her young (it is the same world
that is here used), Deu_32:11. Learn hence, That God is not only the author of all being,
but the fountain of life and spring of motion. Dead matter would be for ever dead if he
did not quicken it. And this makes it credible to us that God should raise the dead. That
power which brought such a world as this out of confusion, emptiness, and darkness, at
the beginning of time, can, at the end of time, bring our vile bodies out of the grave,
though it is a land of darkness as darkness itself, and without any order (Job_10:22),
and can make them glorious bodies.
JAMISO , "Gen_1:1, Gen_1:2. The Creation of the Heaven and Earth.
In the beginning — a period of remote and unknown antiquity, hid in the depths of
eternal ages; and so the phrase is used in Pro_8:22, Pro_8:23.
God — the name of the Supreme Being, signifying in Hebrew, “Strong,” “Mighty.” It is
expressive of omnipotent power; and by its use here in the plural form, is obscurely
taught at the opening of the Bible, a doctrine clearly revealed in other parts of it, namely,
that though God is one, there is a plurality of persons in the Godhead - Father, Son, and
Spirit, who were engaged in the creative work (Pro_8:27; Joh_1:3, Joh_1:10; Eph_3:9;
Heb_1:2; Job_26:13).
created — not formed from any pre-existing materials, but made out of nothing.
the heaven and the earth — the universe. This first verse is a general introduction
to the inspired volume, declaring the great and important truth that all things had a
beginning; that nothing throughout the wide extent of nature existed from eternity,
originated by chance, or from the skill of any inferior agent; but that the whole universe
was produced by the creative power of God (Act_17:24; Rom_11:36). After this preface,
the narrative is confined to the earth.
ELLICOTT, "THE CREATIVE WEEK (Genesis 1:1 to Genesis 2:3).

15. (1) In the beginning.—Not, as in John 1:1, “from eternity,” but in the beginning of this
sidereal system, of which our sun, with its attendant planets, forms a part. As there
never was a time when God did not exist, and as activity is an essential part of His being
(John 5:17), so, probably, there was never a time when worlds did not exist; and in the
process of calling them into existence when and how He willed, we may well believe that
God acted in accordance with the working of some universal law, of which He is Himself
the author. It was natural with St. John, when placing the same words at the
commencement of his Gospel, to carry back our minds to a more absolute conceivable
“beginning,” when the work of creation had not commenced, and when in the whole
universe there was only God.
God.—Heb., Elohim. A word plural in form, but joined with a verb singular, except when
it refers to the false gods of the heathen, in which case it takes a verb plural. Its root-
meaning is strength, power; and the form Elohim is not to be regarded as a pluralis
majestatis, but as embodying the effort of early human thought in feeling after the Deity,
and in arriving at the conclusion that the Deity was One. Thus, in the name Elohim it
included in one Person all the powers, mights, and influences by which the world was
first created and is now governed and maintained. In the Vedas, in the hymns recovered
for us by the decipherment of the cuneiform inscriptions, whether Accadian or Semitic,
and in all other ancient religious poetry, we find these powers ascribed to different
beings; in the Bible alone Elohim is one. Christians may also well see in this a
foreshadowing of the plurality of persons in the Divine Trinity; but its primary lesson is
that, however diverse may seem the working of the powers of nature, the Worker is one
and His work one.
Created.—Creation, in its strict sense of producing something out of nothing, contains
an idea so noble and elevated that naturally human language could only gradually rise up
to it. It is quite possible, therefore, that the word bârâ, “he created,” may originally have
signified to hew stone or fell timber; but as a matter of fact it is a rare word, and
employed chiefly or entirely in connection with the activity of God. As, moreover, “the
heaven and the earth” can only mean the totality of all existent things, the idea of
creating them out of nothing is contained in the very form of the sentence. Even in
Genesis 1:21; Genesis 1:27, where the word may signify something less than creation ex
nihilo, there is nevertheless a passage from inert matter to animate life, for which
science knows no force, or process, or energy capable of its accomplishment.
The heaven and the earth.—The normal phrase in the Bible for the universe
(Deuteronomy 32:1; Psalms 148:13; Isaiah 2). To the Hebrew this consisted of our one
planet and the atmosphere surrounding it, in which he beheld the sun, moon, and stars.
But it is one of the more than human qualities of the language of the Holy Scriptures
that, while written by men whose knowledge was in accordance with their times, it does
not contradict the increased knowledge of later times. Contemporaneous with the
creation of the earth was the calling into existence, not merely perhaps of our solar
system, but of that sidereal universe of which we form so small a part; but naturally in
the Bible our attention is confined to that which chiefly concerns ourselves.
ELLICOTT, "EXCURSUS B: ON THE NAMES ELOHIM AND JEHOVAH-ELOHIM.
Throughout the first account of creation (Genesis 1:1 to Genesis 2:3) the Deity is simply

16. called Elohim. This word is strictly a plural of Eloah, which is used as the name of God
only in poetry, or in late books like those of Nehemiah and Daniel. It is there an
Aramaism, God in Syriac being Aloho, in Ohaldee Ellah, and in Arabic Allahu—all of
which are merely dialectic varieties of the Hebrew Eloah, and are used constantly in the
singular number. In poetry EJoah is sometimes employed with great emphasis, as, for
instance, in Psalms 18:31 : “Who is Eloah except Jehovah?” But while thus the sister
dialects used the singular both in poetry and prose, the Hebrews used the plural Elohim
as the ordinary name of God, the difference being that to the one God was simply power,
strength (the root-meaning of Eloah); to the other He was the union of all powers, the
Almighty. The plural thus intensified the idea of the majesty and greatness of God; but
besides this, it was the germ of the doctrine of a plurality of persons in the Divine unity.
In the second narrative (Genesis 2:4 to Genesis 3:24), which is an account of the fall of
man, with only such introductory matter regarding creation as was necessary for making
the history complete, the Deity is styled Jehovah-Elohim. The spelling of the word
Jehovah is debatable, as only the consonants ( J, h, v, h) are certain, the vowels being
those of the word Adonai (Lord) substituted for it by the Jews when reading it in the
synagogue, the first vowel being a mere apology for a sound, and pronounced a or e,
according to the nature of the consonant to which it is attached. It is generally
represented now by a light breathing, thus—Y’hovah, ‘donai. As regards the spelling,
Ewald, Gesenius, and others argue for Yahveh; Fürst for Yehveh, or Yeheveh; and Stier,
Meyer, &c, for Yehovah. The former has the analogy of several other proper names in its
favour; the second the authority of Exodus 3:14; the last, those numerous names like
Yehoshaphat, where the word is written Yeho. At the end of proper names the form it
takes is Yahu, whence also Yah. We ought also to notice that the first consonant is really
y; but two or three centuries ago j seems to have had the sound which we give to y now,
as is still the case in German.
But this is not a matter of mere pronunciation; there is a difference of meaning as well.
Yahveh signifies “He who brings into existence;” Yehveh “He who shall be, or shall
become;” what Jehovah may signify I do not know. We must further notice that the
name is undoubtedly earlier than the time of Moses. At the date of the Exodus the v of
the verb had been changed into y. Thus, in Exodus 3:14, the name of God is Ehyeh, “I
shall become,” not Ehveh. Had the name, therefore, come into existence in the days of
Moses, it would have been Yahyeh, Yehyeh, or Yehoyah, not Yahveh, &c.
The next fact is that the union of these two names—Jehovah-Elohim—is very unusual. In
this short narrative it occurs twenty times, in the rest of the Pentateuch only once
(Exodus 9:30); in the whole remainder of the Bible about nine times. Once, moreover, in
Psalms 1:1, there is the reversed form, Elohim-Jehovah. There must, therefore, be some
reason why in this narrative this peculiar junction of the two names is so predominant.
The usual answer is that in this section God appears in covenant with man, whereas in
Genesis 1:1 to Genesis 2:3 He was the Creator, the God of nature and not of grace,
having, indeed, a closer relation to man, as being the most perfect of His creatures
(Genesis 1:26), but a relation different only in degree and not in kind. This is true, but
insufficient; nor does it explain how Jehovah became the covenant name of God, and
Elohim His generic title. Whatever be the right answer, we must expect to find it in the
narrative itself. The facts are so remarkable, and the connection of the name Jehovah

17. with this section so intimate, that if Holy Scripture is to command the assent of our
reason we must expect to find the explanation of such peculiarities in the section
wherein they occur.
What, then, do we find? We find this. The first section gives us the history of man’s
formation, with the solemn verdict that he was very good. Nature without man was
simply good; with man, creation had reached its goal. In this, the succeeding section,
man ceases to be very good. He is represented in it as the object of his Maker’s special
care, and, above all, as one put under law. Inferior creatures work by instinct, that is,
practically by compulsion, and in subjection to rules and forces which control them.
Man, as a free agent, attains a higher rank. He is put under law, with the power of
obeying or disobeying it. God, who is the infinitely high and self-contained, works also
by law, but it comes from within, from the perfectness of His own nature, and not from
without, as must be the case with an imperfect being like man, whose duty is to strive
after that which is better and more perfect. Add that, even in the first section, man was
described as created “in God’s image, after His likeness.” But as law is essential to God’s
nature—for without it He would be the author of confusion—so is it to man’s. But as this
likeness is a gift conferred upon him, and not inherent, the law must come with the gift,
from outside, and not from himself; and it can come only from God. Thus, then, man
was necessarily, by the terms of his creation, made subject to law, and without it there
could have been no progress upward. But he broke the law, and fell. Was he, then, to
remain for ever a fallen being, hiding himself away from his Maker, and with the bonds
of duty and love, which erewhile bound him to his Creator, broken irremediably? No.
God is love; and the purpose of this narrative is not so much to give us the history of
man’s fall as to show that a means of restoration had been appointed. Scarcely has the
breach been made I before One steps in to fill it. The breach had been caused by a subtle
foe, who had beguiled our first parents in the simplicity of their innocence; but in the
very hour of their condemnation they are promised an avenger, who, after a struggle,
shall crush the head of their enemy (Genesis 3:15).
Now this name, Y-h-v-h, in its simplest form Yehveh, means “He shall be,” or “shall
become.” With the substitution of y for v, according to a change which had taken place
generally in the Hebrew language, this is the actual spelling which we find in Exodus
3:14 : namely, Ehyeh ‘sher Èhyeh, “I shall be that I shall be.” Now, in the New Testament
we find that the received name for the Messiah was “the coming One” (Matthew 21:9;
Matthew 23:39; Mark 11:9; Luke 7:19-20; Luke 13:35; Luke 19:38; John 1:15; John 1:27;
John 3:31; John 6:14; John 11:27; John 12:13; Acts 19:4; Hebrews 10:37); and in the
Revelation of St. John the name of the Triune God is, “He who is and who was, and the
coming One” (Genesis 1:4; Genesis 1:8; Genesis 11:17). But St. Paul tells us of a notable
change in the language of the early Christians. Their solemn formula was Maran-atha,
“Our Lord is come” (1 Corinthians 16:22). The Deliverer was no longer future, no longer
“He who shall become,” nor “He who shall be what He shall be.” It is not now an
indefinite hope: no longer the sighing of the creature waiting for the manifestation of
Him who shall crush the head of his enemy. The faint ray of light which dawned in
Genesis 3:15 has become the risen Sun of Righteousness; the Jehovah of the Old
Testament has become the Jesus of the New, of whom the Church joyfully exclaims, “We
praise Thee as God: we acknowledge Thee to be Jehovah.”
But whence arose this name Jehovah? Distinctly from the words of Eve, so miserably
disappointed in their primary application: “I have gotten a man, even Jehovah,” or

18. Yehveh (Genesis 41). She, poor fallen creature, did not know the meaning of the words
she uttered, but she had believed the promise, and for her faith’s sake the spirit of
prophecy rested upon her, and she gave him on whom her hopes were fixed the title
which was to grow and swell onward till all inspired truth gathered round it and into it;
and at length Elohim, the Almighty, set to it His seal by calling Himself “I shall be that I
shall be” (Exodus 3:14). Eve’s word is simply the third person of the verb of which Ehyeh
is the first, and the correct translation of her speech is, “I have gotten a man, even he
that shall be,” or “the future one.” But when God called Himself by this appellation, the
word, so indefinite in her mouth, became the personal name of Israel’s covenant God.
Thus, then, in this title of the Deity, formed from the verb of existence in what is known
as the future or indefinite tense, we have the symbol of that onward longing look for the
return of the golden age, or age of paradise, which elsewhere in the Bible is described as
the reign of the Branch that shall grow out of Jesse’s root (Isaiah 11:4-9). The hope was
at first dim, distant, indistinct, but it was the foundation of all that was to follow.
Prophets and psalmists were to tend and foster that hope, and make it clear and definite.
But the germ of all their teaching was contained in that mystic four-lettered word, the
tetragrammaton, Y-h-v-h. The name may have been popularly called Yahveh, though of
this we have no proof; the Jews certainly understood by it Yehveh—“the coming One.”
After all, these vowels are not of so much importance as the fact that the name has the
pre-formative yod. The force of this letter prefixed to the root form of a Hebrew verb is
to give it a future or indefinite sense; and I can find nothing whatsoever to justify the
Assertion that Jehovah—to adopt the ordinary spelling—means “the existent One,” and
still less to attach to it a causal force, and explain it as signifying “He who calls into
being.”
Finally, the pre-Mosaical form of the name is most instructive, as showing that the
expectation of the Messiah was older than the time of the Exodus. The name is really
man’s answer to and acceptance of the promise made to him in Genesis 3:15; and why
should not Eve, to whom the assurance was given, be the first to profess her faith in it?
But in this section, in which the name occurs twenty times in the course of forty-six
verses, there is a far deeper truth than Eve supposed. Jehovah (Yehveh) is simply “the
coming One,” and Eve probably attached no very definite idea to the words she was led
to use. But here He is called Jehovah-Elohim, and the double name teaches us that the
coming One, the future deliverer, is God, the very Elohim who at first created man. The
unity, therefore, and connection between these two narratives is of the closest kind: and
the prefixing in this second section of Jehovah to Elohim, the Creator’s name in the first
section, was the laying of the foundation stone for the doctrine that man’s promised
Saviour, though the woman’s seed, was an Emmanuel, God as well as man.
COFFMAN, "This marvelous chapter is not history, for it provides information
concerning events that antedate all history. It is not myth, because it carries within it a
credibility that never belonged to any myth. It is not science, because it deals with the
BEGINNING, which no science has ever even attempted to describe. It is
INSPIRATION, a revelation from Almighty God Himself; and the highest and best
intelligence of all ages has so received and accepted it.
For the preposterous and irresponsible fulminations of critical enemies of the Bible, and
their utter futility and incompetence to cast any believable shadow upon the sacred truth

19. here revealed, reference is made to the Introduction to Genesis elsewhere. Suffice it to
say here that this chapter contains and presents to human intelligence the ONLY
believable account of creation ever to receive the serious attention of thoughtful minds.
In this series of commentaries, we are concerned with what the Bible says, because it is
the Word of God; and, a single syllable of it outweighs all of the vain speculations of
unbelieving and sinful men. If one would know the truth of how our universe began, and
of the origin and responsibility of human life upon our planet, let him read it here. He
will certainly not find it anywhere else!
THE FIRST DAY
"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."
There is absolutely nothing either unreasonable or hard to understand about this. That
there was indeed a beginning of our universe and the world we live in is absolutely
certain. No matter how far back into the mists of prehistoric time men may postulate the
point of origin for our universe, it is precisely THERE that they must confront God, the
omnipotent, eternal, all-pervading, omniscient First Cause, known to Christians as the
God of the Bible.
For example, if some theory regarding how our galaxy (the universe) began from the
explosion of a dense star, should be received as true, then how did the dense star begin?
The only intelligent answer to questions of this type appears in this verse.
"In the beginning ..." This says nothing at all of when the beginning occurred, but
declares emphatically that there was indeed a beginning, a fact which no reputable
science on earth has ever denied. The source of that beginning was in the will and the
power of the Eternal God. It was not merely a beginning of life, or of material things, but
a beginning of ALL THINGS.
"God created ..." The word for "God" here is "[~'Elohiym]," a plural term, and by far the
most frequent designation of the Supreme Being in the O.T., being used almost 2,000
times.[1] Despite the plurality of this name, it is connected with verbs and adjectives in
the singular. Thus, in the very first verse of the Bible there would appear to be embedded
embryonically in the very name of God Himself a suggestion: (1) of the Trinitarian
conception more fully revealed in the N.T., and (2) also a witness of the unity of the
Godhead. Some have questioned this, of course; but we have never encountered any
other adequate explanation of it.
"The heavens ..." There are three heavens visible in the Word of God, these being: (1) the
earth's atmosphere, where "birds of the heaven" fly (Jeremiah 15:3); (2) the heaven of
the galaxies and constellations (Isaiah 13:10); and (3) the heaven where God dwells
(Psalms 11:4). The heavens here include the first two and perhaps others of which we do
not know.
"And the earth ..." If our understanding of "the heavens" is correct, the earth and all the

20. planets would have to be included also, but the singling out of the earth and its specific
designation here would indicate God's special creation of it to be the repository of all life,
and of human life particularly. That such a special creation of the earth did indeed occur
appears to be absolutely certain, as attested by the utter failure of man to discover any
evidence whatever of life anywhere else except upon earth.
Many learned men have written extensively concerning the multitude of physical and
environmental factors which appear to be absolutely unique, found upon earth alone,
the sum total of which supports and sustains life on our planet. The gravitational
influence of the moon, the exact composition of atmospheric gases, the atypical behavior
of water when it freezes, the atmospheric mantle of protection, the exact inclination of
the earth upon the plane of its orbit giving the seasons, the exact distance of the earth
from the sun, etc., etc. - these and literally hundreds of other peculiar and necessary
factors come together to make life possible on earth. And, from this, it is mandatory to
conclude that the special mention of "the earth" in this verse indicates the special
creation of that essential environment without which life would be impossible, as is the
case, apparently, everywhere else in the sidereal universe.
K&D, "
“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” - Heaven and earth have not
existed from all eternity, but had a beginning; nor did they arise by emanation from an
absolute substance, but were created by God. This sentence, which stands at the head of
the records of revelation, is not a mere heading, nor a summary of the history of the
creation, but a declaration of the primeval act of God, by which the universe was called
into being. That this verse is not a heading merely, is evident from the fact that the
following account of the course of the creation commences with w (and), which connects
the different acts of creation with the fact expressed in Gen_1:1, as the primary
foundation upon which they rest. ‫יח‬ ִ‫רשׁ‬ ְ (in the beginning) is used absolutely, like ᅚν ᅊρχሀ
in Joh_1:1, and ‫יח‬ ִ‫אשׁ‬ ֵ‫ר‬ ֵ‫מ‬ in Isa_46:10. The following clause cannot be treated as
subordinate, either by rendering it, “in the beginning when God created ..., the earth
was,” etc., or “in the beginning when God created...(but the earth was then a chaos, etc.),
God said, Let there be light” (Ewald and Bunsen). The first is opposed to the grammar of
the language, which would require Gen_1:2 to commence with ‫ץ‬ ֶ‫ר‬ፎ ָ‫ה‬ ‫י‬ ִ‫ה‬ ְ ַ‫;ו‬ the second to
the simplicity of style which pervades the whole chapter, and to which so involved a
sentence would be intolerable, apart altogether from the fact that this construction is
invented for the simple purpose of getting rid of the doctrine of a creatio ex nihilo, which
is so repulsive to modern Pantheism. ‫יח‬ ִ‫אשׁ‬ ֵ‫ר‬ in itself is a relative notion, indicating the
commencement of a series of things or events; but here the context gives it the meaning
of the very first beginning, the commencement of the world, when time itself began. The
statement, that in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth, not only
precludes the idea of the eternity of the world a parte ante, but shows that the creation
of the heaven and the earth was the actual beginning of all things. The verb ‫א‬ ָ‫ר‬ ָ , indeed,
to judge from its use in Jos_17:15, Jos_17:18, where it occurs in the Piel (to hew out),
means literally “to cut, or new,” but in Kal it always means to create, and is only applied
to a divine creation, the production of that which had no existence before. It is never

21. joined with an accusative of the material, although it does not exclude a pre-existent
material unconditionally, but is used for the creation of man (Gen_1:27; Gen_5:1-2), and
of everything new that God creates, whether in the kingdom of nature (Num_16:30) or
of that of grace (Exo_34:10; Psa_51:10, etc.). In this verse, however, the existence of any
primeval material is precluded by the object created: “the heaven and the earth.” This
expression is frequently employed to denote the world, or universe, for which there was
no single word in the Hebrew language; the universe consisting of a twofold whole, and
the distinction between heaven and earth being essentially connected with the notion of
the world, the fundamental condition of its historical development (vid., Gen_14:19,
Gen_14:22; Exo_31:17). In the earthly creation this division is repeated in the
distinction between spirit and nature; and in man, as the microcosm, in that between
spirit and body. Through sin this distinction was changed into an actual opposition
between heaven and earth, flesh and spirit; but with the complete removal of sin, this
opposition will cease again, though the distinction between heaven and earth, spirit and
body, will remain, in such a way, however, that the earthly and corporeal will be
completely pervaded by the heavenly and spiritual, the new Jerusalem coming down
from heaven to earth, and the earthly body being transfigured into a spiritual body
(Rev_21:1-2; 1Co_15:35.). Hence, if in the beginning God created the heaven and the
earth, “there is nothing belonging to the composition of the universe, either in material
or form, which had an existence out of God prior to this divine act in the beginning”
(Delitzsch). This is also shown in the connection between our verse and the one which
follows: “and the earth was without form and void,” not before, but when, or after God
created it. From this it is evident that the void and formless state of the earth was not
uncreated, or without beginning. At the same time it is obvious from the creative acts
which follow (vv. 3-18), that the heaven and earth, as God created them in the beginning,
were not the well-ordered universe, but the world in its elementary form; just as
Euripides applies the expression οᆒρανᆵς καᆳ γαሏα to the undivided mass (οπφᆱµία),
which was afterwards formed into heaven and earth.
CALVI , "Verse 1
1.In the beginning. To expound the term “beginning,” of Christ, is altogether
frivolous. For Moses simply intends to assert that the world was not perfected at its
very commencement, in the manner in which it is now seen, but that it was created
an empty chaos of heaven and earth. His language therefore may be thus explained.
When God in the beginning created the heaven and the earth, the earth was empty
and waste. (35) He moreover teaches by the word “created,” that what before did
not exist was now made; for he has not used the term ‫,יצר‬ (yatsar,) which signifies to
frame or forms but ‫,ברא‬ (bara,) which signifies to create. (36) Therefore his meaning
is, that the world was made out of nothing. Hence the folly of those is refuted who
imagine that unformed matter existed from eternity; and who gather nothing else
from the narration of Moses than that the world was furnished with new ornaments,
and received a form of which it was before destitute. This indeed was formerly a
common fable among heathens, (37) who had received only an obscure report of the
creation, and who, according to custom, adulterated the truth of God with strange
figments; but for Christian men to labor (as Steuchus does (38)) in maintaining this
gross error is absurd and intolerable. Let this, then be maintained in the first place,
(39) that the world is not eternal but was created by God. There is no doubt that
Moses gives the name of heaven and earth to that confused mass which he, shortly
afterwards, (Genesis 1:2.) denominates waters. The reason of which is, that this

22. matter was to be the seed of the whole world. Besides, this is the generally
recognized division of the world. (40)
God. Moses has it Elohim, a noun of the plural number. Whence the inference is
drawn, that the three Persons of the Godhead are here noted; but since, as a proof
of so great a matter, it appears to me to have little solidity, will not insist upon the
word; but rather caution readers to beware of violent glosses of this, kind. (41) They
think that they have testimony against the Arians, to prove the Deity of the Son and
of the Spirit, but in the meantime they involve themselves in the error of Sabellius,
(42) because Moses afterwards subjoins that the Elohim had spoken, and that the
Spirit of the Elohim rested upon the waters. If we suppose three persons to be here
denoted, there will be no distinction between them. For it will follow, both that the
Son is begotten by himself, and that the Spirit is not of the Father, but of himself.
For me it is sufficient that the plural number expresses those powers which God
exercised in creating the world. Moreover I acknowledge that the Scripture,
although it recites many powers of the Godhead, yet always recalls us to the Father,
and his Word, and spirit, as we shall shortly see. But those absurdities, to which I
have alluded, forbid us with subtlety to distort what Moses simply declares
concerning God himself, by applying it to the separate Persons of the Godhead.
This, however, I regard as beyond controversy, that from the peculiar circumstance
of the passage itself, a title is here ascribed to God, expressive of that powers which
was previously in some way included in his eternal essence. (43)
On the plural form of the word he quotes from the Jewish Rabbis the assertion, that
it is intended to signify ‘Dominus potentiarum omnium,’ ‘The Lord of all powers’.
He refers to Calvin and others as having opposed, though without immediate effect,
the notion maintained by Peter Lombard, that it involved the mystery of the Trinity.
He repels the profane intimation of Le Clerc, and his successors of the oological
school, that the name originated in polytheism; and then proceeds to show that
“there is in the Hebrew language a widely extended use of the plural which
expresses the intensity of the idea contained in the singular.” After numerous
references, which prove this point, he proceeds to argue, that “if, in relation to
earthly objects, all that serves to represent a whole order of beings is brought before
the mind by means of the plural form, we might anticipate a more extended
application of this method of distinguishing in the appellations of God, in whose
being and attributes there is everywhere a unity which embraces and comprehends
all multiplicity.” “The use of the plural,” he adds, “answers the same purpose which
elsewhere is accomplished by an accumulation of the Divine names; as in Joshua
22:22; the thrice holy in Isaiah 6:3; and ‫אדנים‬ ‫אדני‬ in Deuteronomy 10:17. It calls the
attention to the infinite riches and the inexhaustible fullness contained in the one
Divine Being, so that though men may imagine innumerable gods, and invest them
with perfections, yet all these are contained in the one ‫אלהים‬ (Elohim).” See
Dissertations, pp.268-273.
It is, perhaps, necessary here to state, that whatever treasures of biblical learning
the writings of this celebrated author contains, and they are undoubtedly great, the
reader will still require to be on his guard in studying them. For, notwithstanding

23. the author’s general strenuous opposition to the and — supernaturalism of his own
countrymen, he has not altogether escaped the contagion which he is attempting to
resist. Occasions may occur in which it will be right to allude to some of his
mistakes. — Ed.
BE SO , " OTES O CHAPTER 1.
WITH a view to teach us the knowledge of God and his will, the only sure
foundation of genuine piety and virtue, and therefore of infinite importance to us,
the Holy Scriptures pursue that method, which, of all others, is the most convincing
and instructive, and the best calculated to answer the end intended: they present us
with a history of his mighty acts, and set before us the displays which he has made
of his nature and attributes in his wonderful works. In this way we learn, not only
what he is in himself, but what he is to us, and become acquainted, as well with the
various relations in which he stands to us, and our duty to him according to these
relations, as with his own inherent and essential perfections. And as his sustaining
the relation of a Creator must, in the nature of things, precede his bearing any
other, he is first exhibited to us in that character. As we proceed with the sacred
narrative, we behold him in his providence, preserving, superintending, and
governing the world he had made, and giving law to the intelligent part of his
creatures, as also predicting future events and accomplishing his predictions. We
likewise view him in his grace, redeeming and saving fallen man; and, last of all, in
his justice, judging, acquitting, or condemning, rewarding, or punishing his free,
accountable, and immortal offspring.
Verse 1
Genesis 1:1. In the beginning — That is, of this material, visible, and temporal
world, (which was not without beginning, as many of the ancient heathen
philosophers supposed,) and of time with relation to all visible beings. The creation
of the spiritual, invisible, and eternal world, whether inhabited by the holy or fallen
angels, is not here included or noticed. God — The Hebrew word ‫אלהים‬ Elohim, here
and elsewhere translated God, has been considered by many learned men as
signifying God in covenant, being derived from the word ‫אלה‬ Alah, he sware, or
bound himself by an oath. It is in the plural number, and must often, of necessity, be
understood as having a plural meaning in the Holy Scriptures, being a name
sometimes given to the false gods of the heathen, who were many, and to angels and
magistrates, who are also occasionally called elohim, gods. When intended, as here,
of the one living and true God, which it generally is, it has, with great reason, been
thought by most Christian divines to imply a plurality of persons or subsistences in
the Godhead, and the rather, as many other parts of the inspired writings attest that
there is such a plurality, comprehending the Father, the Word, or Son, and the Holy
Spirit, and that all these divine persons equally concurred in the creation of the
world. Of these things we shall meet with abundant proof in going through this
sacred volume Created — That is, brought into being, gave existence to what had no
existence before, either as to matter or form; both making the substance of which
the different parts of the universe were formed, and giving them the particular
forms which they at present bear. How astonishing is the power that could produce

24. such a world out of nothing! What an object for adoration and praise; and what a
foundation for confidence and hope have we in this wonderful Being, who thus calls
things that are not as though they were! The heaven and the earth — Here named
by way of anticipation, and spoken of more particularly afterward.
The aerial and starry heavens can only be included here. For what is termed by St.
Paul the third heaven, 2 Corinthians 12., the place where the pure in heart shall see
God, and which is the peculiar residence of the blessed angels, was evidently formed
before, (see Job 38:6-7,) but how long before, who can say?
SBC, "I. What is meant by creation? The giving being to that which before was not. The
expression, "the heavens and the earth," is the most exhaustive phrase the Hebrews
could employ to name the universe, which is regarded as a twofold whole, consisting of
unequal parts. Writing for men, Moses writes as a man. The moral importance of the
earth, as the scene of man’s probation, is the reason for the form which the phrase
assumes. The truth of the creation governs the theology of the Old and New Testaments,
and may have influenced the formation of heathen cosmogonies, such as the Etruscan
and the Zendavesta. Creation is a mystery, satisfactory to the reason, but strictly beyond
it. We can modify existing matter, but we cannot create one particle of it. That God
summoned it into being is a truth which we believe on God’s authority, but which we can
never verify.
II. Belief in the creation of the universe out of nothing is the only account of its origin
which is compatible with belief in a personal and moral God.
Creation suggests Providence, and Providence leads the way to Redemption. If love or
goodness were the true motive in creation, it implies God’s continuous interest in
created life. By His love, which led Him to move out of Himself in creation at the first,
He travels with the slow, onward movement of the world and of humanity, and His
Incarnation in time, when demanded by the needs of the creatures of His hand, is in a
line with that first of mysteries, His deigning to create at all. Belief in creation keeps man
in his right place of humble dependence and thankful service. A moral God will not
despise the work of His own hands, and Creation leads up to Redemption.
H. P. Liddon, University Sermons, 2nd series, p. 38.
The Bible spoke in the language and through the knowledge of its time. It was content to
reveal spiritual truth, but left men to find out scientific truth for themselves. It is
inspired with regard to principles, but not as regards details of fact. The principles laid
down in this chapter are: (1) the unity of God; (2) that all noble work is gradual; (3) the
interdependence of rest and work; (4) that man was made in the image of God.
S. A. Brooke, Sermons, p. 222.

25. I. Man naturally asks for some account of the world in which he lives. The answer of the
text as to the creation of the heavens and the earth is: (1) simple; (2) sublime; (3)
sufficient.
If God created all things, then (a) all things are under His government; (b) the heavens
and the earth may be studied religiously; (c) it is reasonable that He should take an
interest in the things which He created.
II. Biblical theology teaches: (1) that creation is an expression of God’s mind; (2) that
creation may form the basis for the consideration of God’s personality and character; (3)
that God’s word is its own security for fulfilment; (4) that the word which accounts for
the existence of nature accounts also for the existence of man.
Parker, People’s Bible, vol. i., p. 118.
The whole Trinity, each in His separate office, though all in unity, addressed themselves
to the work of creation: (1) the Holy Spirit brooded over the watery chaos; (2) the Son,
the Lord Jesus Christ, was that power, or "Arm of the Lord," by which the whole work
was executed,—"In the beginning was the Word;" (3) the Father’s mind willed all,
planned all, and did all. God created only "the heaven and the earth." He provided a
heaven, but He did not provide a hell. That was provided, not for our world at all, but for
the devil and his angels. If we ask why God created this universe of ours, three purposes
suggest themselves: (1) it was the expression and out-going of His wisdom, power, and
love; (2) it was for the sake of His noblest work, His creature, man; (3) the heaven and
the earth were meant to be the scene of the exhibition of His own dear Son. Remember,
that marvellously grand as it was, that first creation was only a type and earnest of a
better.
J. Vaughan, Sermons, 15th series, p. 37.
References: Gen_1:1—H. P. Liddon, Penny Pulpit, No. 205 (see Old Testament
Outlines, p. 1); J. Van Oosterzee, The Year of Salvation, vol. ii., p. 320; H. Alford,
Quebec Chapel Sermons, vol. iv., p. 1; A. P. Peabody, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xii.,
p. 333; J. Cumming, Church before the Flood, p. 79; Homiletic Quarterly, vol. i., p.
87, vol. iv., p. 420; Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. xx., p. 19, vol. xxii., p. 82; S. Leathes,
Truth and Life, p. 1; J. E. Gibberd, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xvii., p. 249; M. G.
Pearse, Some Aspects of the Blessed Life, p. 25; C. Kingsley, Discipline and other
Sermons, p. 112; C. Kingsley, The Gospel of the Pentateuch, p. 1; R. S. Candlish, The
Book of Genesis, Discourses, vol. i., p. 18; B. Waugh, The Sunday Magazine (1887),
p. 59. Gen_1:1-3—F. W. Robertson, Notes on Genesis, p. 1. Gen_1:1-5.—Spurgeon,
Sermons, vol. xi., No. 660.
Genesis 1:1-31
Genesis 1
It is possible that God made at first only one kind of matter, the germ of all the universe.
Indeed, Scripture seems to hint this in the sublime record of the origin of light: "And
God said, Let there be light, and there was light." Here light is evidently regarded as the
first of all sublunary things.
The principal agent in this work was the Son of God. He had made the third heaven. He

26. had created angels. The strong Satan himself was originally the workmanship of Christ.
It is no strange hand that moulded the worlds. Go wherever you may, the hand of Christ
has been before you, and He Who made all these strange suns, and all these mighty
systems, is the very Victim that suffered, bled, and died on Calvary.
I. The creation was a gradual process, a process probably extending over millions of
ages; not merely a process, but a procession of things and beings, from inferior to
superior, from the less to the more perfect. The reasons might be: (1) to show that God’s
works were not the offspring of hasty impulse, but that they were planned from
everlasting, and executed with minute and lingering care; (2) to discover the variety of
methods which a God infinitely rich in resources can employ in effecting His great
purposes. This gradual creative work occupied the Creator for millions of ages. This we
gather, not from the Bible, but from the discoveries of geology.
II. The creative process at last came to a point in man, who, amidst ten thousand other
animated forms, alone was made, in the full sense of that word, perfect, and who became
the best and highest work of God. From the Scripture statements about the creation of
man we deduce the following principles: (1) that man was formed by a direct act of
Omnipotence; (2) that he was made after the model of his Maker, and therefore perfect;
(3) that he was immeasurably superior to the lower animals, and entitled to dominion
over them; (4) that he was the object of God’s peculiar blessing; (5) that one main
purpose of his creation was to subdue and cultivate the earth; (6) that he consisted of
two parts—a body taken out of the dust of the ground, and an immaterial part breathed
into him by his Creator; (7) that although created a unit, he was potentially plural, too,
and was destined to be joined by a companion in his original state of innocence and
purity; (8) and that he was in a state of probation, and exposed to temptation and the
hazard of fall.
G. Gilfillan, Alpha and Omega, vol. i., p. 49.
NISBET, "THE BEGINNING
‘In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.’
Genesis 1:1
I. What is meant by creation? The giving being to that which before was not. The
expression, ‘the heavens and the earth,’ is the most exhaustive phrase the Hebrews could
employ to name the universe, which is regarded as a twofold whole, consisting of
unequal parts. Writing for men, Moses writes as a man. The moral importance of the
earth, as the scene of man’s probation, is the reason for the form which the phrase
assumes. The truth of the Creation governs the theology of the Old and New Testaments,
and may have influenced the formation of heathen cosmogonies, such as the Etruscan
and the Zendavesta. Creation is a mystery, satisfactory to the reason, but strictly beyond
it. We can modify existing matter, but we cannot create one particle of it. That God
summoned it into being is a truth which we believe on God’s authority, but which we can
never verify.
II. Belief in the creation of the universe out of nothing is the only account of its origin
which is compatible with belief in a personal and moral God.

27. Creation suggests Providence, and Providence leads the way to Redemption. If love or
goodness were the true motive in creation, it implies God’s continuous interest in
created life. By His love, which led Him to move out of Himself in creation at the first,
He travels with the slow, onward movement of the world and of humanity, and His
Incarnation in time, when demanded by the needs of the creatures of His hand, is in a
line with that first of mysteries, His deigning to create at all. Belief in creation keeps man
in his right place of humble dependence and thankful service. A moral God will not
despise the work of His own hands, and Creation leads up to Redemption.
Canon Liddon.
Illustration
(1) ‘What sacredness the thought that God is the Creator should stamp on every object in
nature!
I go forth amid all the glories and the beauties of the earth, which He has so
marvellously framed. He is there; it is with Him I walk; in His works I see something of
Himself. Thus there is a tongue in every breeze; there is a voice in the song of every bird;
there is a silent eloquence in every green field and quiet wood. They speak to me about
my God. In a measure they reveal and interpret Him. He made them; He made them
what they are; He made them for me. Thus the sights and sounds around me should be
means of grace.
And, if He is Creator, I must be careful how I use nature’s gifts and bounties. The wheat,
the corn, the vine, this piece of money, this brother or sister, He formed them, and
formed them for gracious and holy ends. My hand should be arrested, my mouth should
be shut, my spirit should shrink back in awe, if ever I am tempted to abuse and wrong
them. Let me tell myself: ‘They came from God, and they are meant to be employed for
God; for His pleasure they are, and were created.’ I move through a world mystic,
wonderful.’
(2) The keynote of the whole chapter is struck in its first verse: ‘In the beginning God
created the heaven and the earth.’ As Professor Elmslie well says, ‘The concern of the
chapter is not creation, but the character, being and glory of the Almighty Maker. If we
excerpt God’s speeches and the rubrical formulas, the chapter consists of one continuous
chain of verbs, instinct with life and motion, linked or in swift succession, and, with
hardly an exception, the subject of every one of them is God. It is one long adoring
delineation of God loving, yearning, willing, working in creation. Its interest is not in the
work, but the Worker. Its subject is not creation, but the Creator. What it gives is not a
world, but a God. It is not geology; it is theology.’ It matters little to this writer whether
the birds or fishes come first in the scale of creation; it matters everything that his
readers see, behind and above all, God. ‘And God said’—let the intermediary stages be as
many as they may, we come to that at last. Let science take all the æons of time it needs
for the great creative processes it is slowly unravelling before our eyes; let it go on
adding link after link to the mighty chain of created being; sooner or later the question
must be asked, ‘On what shall we hang the last?’ And when that question is asked, the

28. wise men and the little child will go back together to the Bible to read over again the old
words past which no science ever takes us, so simple and yet so sublime—‘In the
beginning, God.’
EBC, "THE CREATION
IF anyone is in search of accurate information regarding the age of this earth, or its
relation to the sun, moon, and stars, or regarding the order in which plants and animals
have appeared upon it, he is referred to recent textbooks in astronomy, geology, and
palaeontology. No one for a moment dreams of referring a serious student of these
subjects to the Bible as a source of information. It is not the object of the writers of
Scripture to impart physical instruction or to enlarge the bounds of scientific knowledge.
But if any one wishes to know what connection the world has with God, if he seeks to
trace back all that now is to the very fountain-head of life, if he desires to discover some
unifying principle, some illuminating purpose in the history of this earth, then we
confidently refer him to these and the subsequent chapters of Scripture as his safest, and
indeed his only, guide to the information he seeks. Every writing must be judged by the
object the writer has in view. If the object of the writer of these chapters was to convey
physical information, then certainly it is imperfectly fulfilled. But if his object was to give
an intelligible account of God’s relation to the world and to man, then it must be owned
that he has been successful in the highest degree.
It is therefore unreasonable to allow our reverence for this writing to be lessened
because it does not anticipate the discoveries of physical science; or to repudiate its
authority in its own department of truth because it does not give us information which it
formed no part of the writer’s object to give. As well might we deny to Shakespeare a
masterly knowledge of human life, because his dramas are blotted by historical
anachronisms. That the compiler of this book of Genesis did not aim at scientific
accuracy in speaking of physical details is obvious, not merely from the general scope
and purpose of the Biblical writers, but especially from this, that in these first two
chapters of his book he lays side by side two accounts of man’s creation which no
ingenuity can reconcile. These two accounts, glaringly incompatible in details, but
absolutely harmonious in their leading ideas, at once warn the reader that the writer’s
aim is rather to convey certain ideas regarding man’s spiritual history and his
connection with God, than to describe the process of creation. He does describe the
process of creation, but he describes it only for the sake of the ideas regarding man’s
relation to God and God’s relation to the world which he can thereby convey. Indeed
what we mean by scientific knowledge was not in all the thoughts of the people for whom
this book was written. The subject of creation, of the beginning of man upon earth, was
not approached from that side at all; and if we are to understand what is here written we
must burst the trammels of our own modes of thought and read these chapters not as a
chronological, astronomical, geological, biological statement, but as a moral or spiritual
conception.
It will, however, be said, and with much appearance of justice, that although the first
object of the writer was not to convey scientific information, yet he might have been
expected to be accurate in the information he did advance regarding the physical
universe. This is an enormous assumption to make on a priori grounds, but it is an
assumption worth seriously considering because it brings into view a real and important
difficulty which every reader of Genesis must face. It brings into view the twofold
character of this account of creation. On the one hand it is irreconcilable with the

29. teachings of science. On the other hand it is in striking contrast to the other
cosmogonies which have been handed down from prescientific ages. These are the two
patent features of this record of creation and both require to be accounted for. Either
feature alone would be easily accounted for; but the two co-existing in the same
document are more baffling. We have to account at once for a want of perfect
coincidence with the teachings of science, and for a singular freedom from those errors
which disfigure all other primitive accounts of the creation of the world. The one feature
of the document is as patent as the other and presses equally for explanation.
Now many persons cut the knot by simply denying that both these features exist. There
is no disagreement with science, they say. I speak for many careful enquirers when I say
that this cannot serve as a solution of the difficulty. I think it is to be freely admitted
that, from whatever cause and however justifiably, the account of creation here given is
not in strict and detailed accordance with the teaching of science. All attempts to force
its statements into such accord are futile and mischievous. They are futile because they
do not convince independent enquirers, but only those who are unduly anxious to be
convinced. And they are mischievous because they unduly prolong the strife between
Scripture and science, putting the question on a false issue. And above all, they are to be
condemned because they do violence to Scripture, foster a style of interpretation by
which the text is forced to say whatever the interpreter desires, and prevent us from
recognising the real nature of these sacred writings. The Bible needs no defence such as
false constructions of its language bring to its aid. They are its worst friends who distort
its words that they may yield a meaning more in accordance with scientific truth. If, for
example, the word "day" in these chapters, does not mean a period of twenty-four hours,
the interpretation of Scripture is hopeless. Indeed if we are to bring these chapters into
any comparison at all with science, we find at once various discrepancies. Of a creation
of sun, moon, and stars, subsequent to the creation of this earth, science can have but
one thing to say. Of the existence of fruit trees prior to the existence of the sun, science
knows nothing. But for a candid and unsophisticated reader without a special theory to
maintain, details are needless.
Accepting this chapter then as it stands, and believing that only by looking at the Bible as
it actually is can we hope to understand God’s method of revealing Himself, we at once
perceive that ignorance of some departments of truth does not disqualify a man for
knowing and imparting truth about God. In order to be a medium of revelation a man
does not need to be in advance of his age in secular learning. Intimate communion with
God, a spirit trained to discern spiritual things, a perfect understanding of and zeal for
God’s purpose, these are qualities quite independent of a knowledge of the discoveries of
science. The enlightenment which enables men to apprehend God and spiritual truth has
no necessary connection with scientific attainments. David’s confidence in God and his
declarations of His faithfulness are none the less valuable, because he was ignorant of a
very great deal which every schoolboy now knows. Had inspired men introduced into
their writings information which anticipated the discoveries of science, their state of
mind would be inconceivable, and revelation would be a source of confusion. God’s
methods are harmonious with one another, and as He has given men natural faculties to
acquire scientific knowledge and historical information, He did not stultify this gift by
imparting such knowledge in a miraculous and unintelligible manner. There is no
evidence that inspired men were in advance of their age in the knowledge of physical
facts and laws. And plainly, had they been supernaturally instructed in physical
knowledge they would so far have been unintelligible to those to whom they spoke. Had
the writer of this book mingled with his teaching regarding God, an explicit and exact
account of how this world came into existence-had he spoken of millions of years instead

30. of speaking of days-in all probability he would have been discredited, and what he had to
say about God would have been rejected along with his premature science. But speaking
from the point of view of his contemporaries, and accepting the current ideas regarding
the formation of the world, he attached to these the views regarding God’s connection
with the world which are most necessary to be believed. What he had learned of God’s
unity and creative power and connection with man, by "the inspiration of the Holy
Ghost," he imparts to his contemporaries through the vehicle of an account of creation
they could all understand. It is not in his knowledge of physical facts that he is elevated
above his contemporaries, but in his knowledge of God’s connection with all physical
facts. No doubt, on the other hand, his knowledge of God reacts upon the entire contents
of his mind and saves him from presenting such accounts of creation as have been
common among polytheists. He presents an account purified by his conception of what
was worthy of the supreme God he worshipped. His idea of God has given dignity and
simplicity to all he says about creation, and there is an elevation and majesty about the
whole conception, which we recognise as the reflex of his conception of God.
Here then instead of anything to discompose us or to excite unbelief, we recognise one
great law or principle on which God proceeds in making Himself known to men. This has
been called the Law of Accommodation. It is the law which requires that the condition
and capacity of those to whom the revelation is made must be considered. If you wish to
instruct a child, you must speak in language the child can understand. If you wish to
elevate a savage, you must do it by degrees, accommodating yourself to his condition,
and winking at much ignorance while you instil elementary knowledge. You must found
all you teach on what is already understood by your pupil, and through that you must
convey further knowledge and train his faculties to higher capacity. So was it with God’s
revelation. The Jews were children who had to be trained with what Paul somewhat
contemptuously calls "weak and beggarly elements," the A B C of morals and religion.
Not even in morals could the absolute truth be enforced. Accommodation had to be
practised even here. Polygamy was allowed as a concession to their immature stage of
development: and practices in war and in domestic law were permitted or enjoined
which were inconsistent with absolute morality. Indeed the whole Jewish system was an
adaptation to an immature state. The dwelling of God in the Temple as a man in his
house, the propitiating of God with sacrifice as of an Eastern king with gifts; this was a
teaching by picture, a teaching which had as much resemblance to the truth and as much
mixture of truth as they were able then to receive. No doubt this teaching did actually
mislead them in some of their ideas; but it kept them on the whole in a right attitude
toward God, and prepared them for growing up to a fuller discernment of the truth.
Much more was this law observed in regard to such matters as are dealt with in these
chapters. It was impossible that in their ignorance of the rudiments of scientific
knowledge, the early Hebrews should understand an absolutely accurate account of how
the world came into being; and if they could have understood it, it would have been
useless, dissevered as it must have been from the steps of knowledge by which men have
since arrived at it. Children ask us questions in answer to which we do not tell them the
exact full truth, because we know they cannot possibly understand it. All that we can do
is to give them some provisional answer which conveys to them some information they
can understand, and which keeps them in a right state of mind, although this
information often seems absurd enough when compared with the actual facts and truth
of the matter. And if some solemn pedant accused us of supplying the child with false
information, we would simply tell him he knew nothing about children. Accurate
information on these matters will infallibly come to the child when he grows up; what is
wanted meanwhile is to give him information which will help to form his conduct

31. without gravely misleading him as to facts. Similarly, if any one tells me he cannot accept
these chapters as inspired by God, because they do not convey scientifically accurate
information regarding this earth, I can only say that he has yet to learn the first
principles of revelation, and that he misunderstands the conditions on which all
instruction must be given.
My belief then is, that in these chapters we have the ideas regarding the origin of the
world and of man which were naturally attainable in the country where they were first
composed, but with those important modifications which a monotheistic belief
necessarily suggested. So far as merely physical knowledge went, there is probably little
here that was new to the contemporaries of the writer; but this already familiar
knowledge was used by him as the vehicle for conveying his faith in the unity, love, and
wisdom of God the creator. He laid a firm foundation for the history of God’s relation to
man. This was his object, and this he accomplished. The Bible is the book to which we
turn for information regarding the history of God’s revelation of Himself, and of His will
towards men; and in these chapters we have the suitable introduction to this history. No
changes in our knowledge of physical truth can at all affect the teaching of these
chapters. What they teach regarding the relation of man to God is independent of the
physical details in which this teaching is embodied, and can as easily be attached to the
most modern statement of the physical origin of the world and of man.
What then are the truths taught us in these chapters? The first is that there has been a
creation, that things now existing have not just grown of themselves, but have been
called into being by a presiding intelligence and an originating will. No attempt to
account for the existence of the world in any other way has been successful. A great deal
has in this generation been added to our knowledge of the efficiency of material causes
to produce what we see around us; but when we ask what gives harmony to these
material causes, and what guides them to the production of certain ends, and what
originally produced them, the answer must still be, not matter but intelligence and
purpose. The best informed and most penetrating minds of our time affirm this. John
Stuart Mill says: "It must be allowed that in the present state of our knowledge the
adaptations in nature afford a large balance of probability in favor of creation by
intelligence." Professor Tyndall adds his testimony and says: "I have noticed during
years of self-observation that it is not in hours of clearness and vigor that [the doctrine
of material atheism] commends itself to my mind-that in the hours of stronger and
healthier thought it ever dissolves and disappears, as offering no solution of the mystery
in which we dwell and of which we form a part."
There is indeed a prevalent suspicion, that in presence of the discoveries made by
evolutionists the argument from design is no longer tenable. Evolution shows us that the
correspondence of the structure of animals, with their modes of life, has been generated
by the nature of the case; and it is concluded that a blind mechanical necessity and not
an intelligent design rules all. But the discovery of the process by which the presently
existing living forms have been evolved, and the perception that this process is governed
by laws which have always been operating, do not make intelligence and design at all less
necessary, but rather more so. As Professor Huxley himself says: "The teleological and
mechanical views of nature are not necessarily exclusive. The teleologist can always defy
the evolutionist to disprove that the primordial molecular arrangement was not intended
to evolve the phenomena of the universe." Evolution, in short, by disclosing to us the
marvellous power and accuracy of natural law, compels us more emphatically than ever
to refer all law to a supreme, originating intelligence.
This then is the first lesson of the Bible; that at the root and origin of all this vast

32. material universe, before whose laws we are crushed as the moth, there abides a living
conscious Spirit, who wills and knows and fashions all things. The belief of this changes
for us the whole face of nature, and instead of a chill, impersonal world of forces to
which no appeal can be made, and in which matter is supreme, gives us the home of a
Father. If you are yourself but a particle of a huge and unconscious universe-a particle
which, like a flake of foam, or a drop of rain, or a gnat, or a beetle, lasts its brief space
and then yields up its substance to be moulded into some new creature; if there is no
power that understands you and sympathises with you and makes provision for your
instincts, your aspirations, your capabilities; if man is himself the highest intelligence,
and if all things are the purposeless result of physical forces; if, in short, there is no God,
no consciousness at the beginning as at the end of all things, then nothing can be more
melancholy than our position. Our higher desires which seem to separate us so
immeasurably from the brutes, we have, only that they may be cut down by the keen
edge of time, and wither in barren disappointment; our reason we have, only to enable
us to see and measure the brevity of our span, and so live our little day, not joyously as
the unforeseeing beasts, but shadowed by the hastening gloom of anticipated, inevitable,
and everlasting night; our faculty for worshipping and for striving to serve and to
resemble the perfect living One, that faculty which seems to be the thing of greatest
promise and of finest quality in us, and to which is certainly due the largest part of what
is admirable and profitable in human history, is the most mocking and foolishest of all
our parts. But, God be thanked, He has revealed himself to us; has given us in the
harmonious and progressive movement of all around us, sufficient indication that, even
in the material world, intelligence and purpose reign; an indication which becomes
immensely clearer as we pass into the world of man; and which, in presence of the
person and life of Christ, attains the brightness of a conviction which illuminates all
besides.
The other great truth which this writer teaches is, that man was the chief work of God,
for whose sake all else was brought into being. The work of creation was not finished till
he appeared: all else was preparatory to this final product. That man is the crown and
lord of this earth is obvious. Man instinctively assumes that all else has been made for
him, and freely acts upon this assumption. But when our eyes are lifted from this little
ball on which we are set and to which we are confined, and when we scan such other
parts of the universe as are within our ken, a keen sense of littleness oppresses us; our
earth is after all so minute and apparently inconsiderable a point, when compared with
the vast suns and planets that stretch system on system into illimitable space. When we
read even the rudiments of what astronomers have discovered regarding the
inconceivable vastness of the universe, the huge dimensions of the heavenly bodies, and
the grand scale on which everything is framed, we find rising to our lips, and with
tenfold reason, the words of David: "When I consider Thy heavens, the work of Thy
fingers: the moon and the stars which Thou hast ordained; what is man that Thou art
mindful of him, or the son of man that Thou visitest him?" Is it conceivable that on this
scarcely discernible speck in the vastness of the universe, should be played out the
chiefest act in the history of God? Is it credible that He whose care it is to uphold this
illimitable universe, should be free to think of the wants and woes of the insignificant
creatures who quickly spend their little lives in this inconsiderable earth?
But reason seems all on the side of Genesis. God must not be considered as sitting apart
in a remote position of general superintendence, but as present with all that is. And to
Him who maintains these systems in their respective relations and orbits, it can be no
burden to relieve the needs of individuals. To think of ourselves as too insignificant to be
attended to is to derogate from God’s true majesty and to misunderstand His relation to

33. the world. But it is also to misapprehend the real value of spirit as compared with
matter. Man is dear to God because he is like Him. Vast and glorious as it is, the sun
cannot think God’s thoughts; can fulfil but cannot intelligently sympathise with God’s
purpose. Man, alone among God’s works, can enter into and approve of God’s purpose in
the world and can intelligently fulfil it. Without man the whole material universe would
have been dark and unintelligible, mechanical and apparently without any sufficient
purpose. Matter, however fearfully and wonderfully wrought, is but the platform and
material in which spirit, intelligence, and will may fulfil themselves and find
development. Man is incommensurable with the rest of the universe. He is of a different
kind and by his moral nature is more akin to God than to His works.
Here the beginning and the end of God’s revelation join hands and throw light on one
another. The nature of man was that in which God was at last to give His crowning
revelation, and for that no preparation could seem extravagant. Fascinating and full of
marvel as is the history of the past which science discloses to us; full as these slow-
moving millions of years are in evidences of the exhaustless wealth of nature, and
mysterious as the delay appears, all that expenditure of resources is eclipsed and all the
delay justified when the whole work is crowned by the Incarnation, for in it we see that
all that slow process was the preparation of a nature in which God could manifest
Himself as a Person to persons. This is seen to be an end worthy of all that is contained
in the physical history of the world: this gives completeness to the whole and makes it a
unity. No higher, other end need be sought, none could be conceived. It is this which
seems worthy of those tremendous and subtle forces which have been set at work in the
physical world, this which justifies the long lapse of ages filled with wonders
unobserved, and teeming with ever new life, this above all which justifies these latter
ages in which all physical marvels have been outdone by the tragical history of man upon
earth. Remove the Incarnation and all remains dark, purposeless, unintelligible: grant
the Incarnation, believe that in Jesus Christ the Supreme manifested Himself personally,
and light is shed upon all that has been and is.
Light is shed on the individual life. Are you living as if you were the product of blind
mechanical laws, and as if there were no object worthy of your life and of all the force
you can throw into your life? Consider the Incarnation of the Creator, and ask yourself if
sufficient object is not given to you in His call that you be conformed to His image and
become the intelligent executor of His purposes? Is life not worth having even on these
terms? The man that can still sit down and bemoan himself as if there were no meaning
in existence, or lounge languidly through life as if there were no zest or urgency in living,
or try to satisfy himself with fleshly comforts, has surely need to turn to the opening
page of Revelation and learn that God saw sufficient object in the life of man, enough to
compensate for millions of ages of preparation. If it is possible that you should share in
the character and destiny of Christ, can a healthy ambition crave anything more or
higher? If the future is to be as momentous in results as the past has certainly been filled
with preparation, have you no caring to share in these results? Believe that there is a
purpose in things; that in Christ, the revelation of God, you can see what. that purpose
is, and that by wholly uniting yourself to Him and allowing yourself to be penetrated by
His Spirit you can participate with Him in the working out of that purpose.
GTB, "The Creation and the Creator
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.—Gen_1:1.
This is a sublime sentence with which the Bible opens. Will the sentences that follow be

34. in keeping with the musical throb and stately massiveness of these opening words? Even
when we regard the book simply as a monument of literature we find it impossible to
conceive a more appropriate introduction than this: “In the beginning God created the
heaven and the earth.” Yet the end is not less majestic than the beginning: “And I saw a
new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth are passed away.”
How should we approach the study of a book which opens and closes with words of such
sublimity? There is a sentence or two in the preface to John Wesley’s first volume of
sermons, in which the great evangelist gives us the secret of his method of Bible-study.
“Here am I,” he says, “far from the busy ways of men. I sit down alone; only God is here.
In His presence I open, I read His Book; for this end—to find the way to heaven. Does
anything appear dark or intricate? I lift my heart to the Father of Lights. I then search
after and consider parallel passages of Scripture, comparing spiritual things with
spiritual. I meditate thereon with all the attention and earnestness of which my mind is
capable. And what I thus learn, that I teach.” To Wesley, then, there were two great
realities—the visible Book, and its invisible but ever-present Author; and to a man of his
training and susceptibilities the one would have been an enigma without the other. He
saw God at the beginning of every section of Holy Scripture.
Let us attempt to explain this great but difficult text by considering—
I. The Creation.
i. The meaning of “In the beginning,” and of “the heaven and the earth.”
ii. The idea in the word “created.”
iii. Other explanations of the origin of the world.
iv. In what sense God continues to create.
II. The Creator.
i. What does Creation tell us about the Creator?
ii. What other works of God follow from Creation?
1. Providence.
2. Redemption.
iii. Three things in Creation to encourage us.
I
The Creation
i. Two Phrases
1. “In the beginning” does not mean here “from all eternity.” There is no “beginning” in
eternity. It means in the beginning of the existing universe as conditioned by time. The
expression is used in precisely the same sense in the prologue of St. John’s Gospel, the
difference between the opening of Genesis and the opening of the Fourth Gospel being
due to the use of the verbs. In the beginning—that is, of the things which we see and
among which our human history unfolds itself—God created the universe. In the same
beginning the Word was, as existing from all eternity. When the beginning was we are
not told; it may have been thousands or millions of years ago; but there was a beginning.
Matter is not eternal.
When I was a student at College, the Standard book on divinity which was put into our

35. hands was Bishop Pearson’s Exposition of the Creed, in which it was laid down as quite
an authoritative statement that heaven and earth were created most certainly within not
more than six, or, at the farthest, seven, thousand years from the age in which we were
living. Astronomers who have gone into this question, however, now say that the time
when the moon became separated from the earth—an event which might be regarded as
the commencement of the earth’s history—could not be placed at any period less than
fifty-seven millions of years ago. Even the historians find records of men living in a high
state of civilization more than eight thousand years ago—and that state of civilization
must itself have taken long centuries for its development. Similarly, the geologist, when
he tries to read the book of Nature, finds, in the relics of the river-drift man, evidences
that man had existed on this earth more than twenty thousand years.1 [Note: J. Lightfoot.]
2. “The heaven and the earth” does not mean the chaotic mass, the rough material, so to
speak, but the whole cosmos, the universe as it appears in its present order. This is the
common mode of expression in Hebrew for what we call the universe. The nearest
approach to this idea of “universe” is found in Jer_10:16, where the English versions
have “all things,” the Hebrew being literally “the whole.” Taking the first verse as
complete in itself, we have here the broad general statement of creation; then follows the
early dark, empty, lifeless condition, not of the whole, but of the earth; and then the
gradual preparation of the earth to be the abode of man. The history of the visible
heavens and earth is bound together throughout Scripture till the final consummation,
when the heavens shall be rolled together as a scroll: the earth also and the works that
are therein shall be burned up, to make way for the new heavens and the new earth,
wherein dwelleth righteousness.
The conception which we express by the term “universe” is usually expressed in the Old
Testament by this phrase, “the heaven and the earth.” But there is a still more complete
expression: “heaven above, earth beneath, and the water under the earth” (Exo_20:4). A
similar phrase is found on the Assyrian Creation-tablet: “the heaven above, the earth
beneath” (line 1), and “the ocean” (line 3).
BI, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth
The Christian doctrine of creation
In considering the subject of creation we see, first of all, that a distinction must be drawn
between what I would call primary and secondary creation.
Primary creation is creation proper. It is that grand act whereby Almighty God in the
beginning called into being the finite world. Secondary creation, on the other hand,
belongs to the sphere of Providence, or to the sphere of the history of the finite world. If
we look at the history of the finite world, we see that during its course a vast series of
beings have been called into existence. All the generations of mankind have come into
existence during ages gone by. In like manner all the countless hosts of living creatures,
the animals and plants that inhabit the world. Nor is this all. Men of science now tell us,
that even the earth itself, the sun, the moon, and the planets, have come into existence
during the history of the world. There was a time in the history of the finite world when
there was neither sun, nor moon, nor earth, when the matter of which all these bodies
are composed was diffused in a previous state. They have, therefore, like ourselves,
received their existence during the history of the world. Now, the origination or bringing
into existence of all these things I call a creation. Creation is that which is the work of an
intelligent being. It is the giving of existence, by an intelligent being, to that which had
previously none. And since all these things have received existence, and have received it

36. at the hand of God, their origination is a creation.
I. In regard to SECONDARY CREATION, the great difficulty is this—If you will think
over what I have been saying to you about it, you will see that the truth of my view all
depends upon this, that the laws of nature alone and unaided are not sufficient to govern
the course of nature. The view which I have given requires us to suppose that, in
addition to the laws of nature, there is needed the Divine Intelligence to combine and
direct them. In a word, we must suppose that the Divine Intelligence never leaves
nature, but continually guides and directs its course to those great ends and purposes
which God has in view. Now here it is that the difficulty comes in. It is held, by a large
class of reasoners, that the laws of nature alone and unaided are perfectly sufficient for
the purpose indicated. But is this view true? I think not. In fact there are many ways in
which I could show its inadequacy were this the place to discuss the question. I shall not
attempt any such discussion, but shall content myself with simply pointing out one fact
which makes it impossible; I mean the fact that the course of nature is a history. If the
course of nature were governed solely by the laws of nature, it must, as a necessary
consequence, flow in grooves or cycles. But, in point of fact, it does neither. If we look at
the course of nature, we see that it is a varied and ever-varying stream. From the
beginning of the world up to the present moment, no two events, and no two objects,
however similar, have been exactly the same in all respects. The course of nature is a
free, orderly, progressive sequence, or series of events flowing towards, and attaining
high ends and purposes. The course of nature being thus confessedly a history, what
principle is it, which alone can account for it? You may ponder over the matter as much
as you please, you may turn it and twist it in every possible way, but you will in the end
be obliged to confess that the only principle sufficient for the purpose, is Intelligence. No
other principle but Intelligence can account for the order of a free, varied, and
progressive whole such as the course of nature actually is. Why is it that the conviction
of a never-ceasing Providence in the affairs of the world is written in such living
characters on the hearts of all men? It is from the perception that the course of nature is
a history, and the inference which is instantaneously drawn, that it must be ordered by
intelligence. The result then is, that the course of nature cannot be conceived by us as
possible apart from the Divine Intelligence. We must suppose that the Divine
Intelligence presided over it in the beginning and has ever since continuously guided its
course. Now what follows from this? It follows that the first chapter of Genesis is literally
true, in the sense in which the ordinary English reader understands it. It is still literally
true that God created the sun, the moon, the sea, the dry land, the various species of
plants and animals. For God prepared the conditions under which all these things came
into existence. He guided the course of nature so that it should aid or abut in their
production. They are, therefore, His creations; and owe their existence to His creative
fiat. I wish I could stay to point out the many striking consequences which flow from this
view—the air of grandeur and living interest it imparts to nature, the Divine light it
sheds into every corner and crevice of it. But I must content myself with merely
indicating one point, viz., how this view satisfies all our religious aspirations. It brings us
very near to God. It brings God all round us and within us. But what comes home
especially to the religious mind is the assurance which this view gives us, that we, as
individuals, owe our existence not to dead and unintelligent laws, but to the will and
purpose of the living God. Our individual existence was prepared and intended by God.
We are His creation.
II. We have next to consider PRIMARY CREATION, which is far more difficult. Primary
creation, as I have said, is that grand act whereby God called into being the finite world.
It differs from secondary creation in these two respects: first, that there were no pre-

37. existent materials out of which the finite world was formed, and secondly, in that the
process whereby it was made was not one of natural law, but a process of intelligence.
The difficulties which have been raised in modern times against this cardinal doctrine
have been very great, and in dealing with them I do not well know how to make myself
intelligible to some of you. One of the most perplexing of these difficulties is the view
which regards creation as a breach of the law of continuity. The law of continuity obliges
us to suppose that each state of the material world was preceded by a previous state.
Hence, according to this law, it is impossible that the material world could ever have had
a beginning. For the law compels us to add on to each state of things, a previous state,
without ever coming to a stop. If we do stop short we break the law. And hence those
who take this view would exclude creation, as being nothing else but a stopping short,
and consequent breaking of the law. Creation, they say, is the doctrine that there is an
absolutely first link in this grand chain, and if we are to adhere to the law of continuity
we must exclude it. But this whole view of the matter is radically wrong. In supposing
creation to be the first link in the chain of continuity, we necessarily suppose that, like all
the other links, it took place in time. There was a time before, and a time after it. But if
you will think over the matter, you will see that this could not be; for time only came into
existence when the creative process was completed. In fact, space and time, the laws of
nature, and the law of continuity, are all relations of the finite world; and they could not
possibly have any existence till the finite world itself existed, that is, till the creative act
was completed. Hence, if we would grasp in thought the creative act, we must transcend
the law of continuity; we must transcend all the laws of nature; we must transcend and
forget even space and time. If we would understand aright the creative act, we must view
the finite world solely in relation ‘to the Divine Intelligence, of which it is the product.
The great question in regard to primary creation is, Is it conceivable by us? There is a
sect of people called agnostics, who say that it is utterly inconceivable, that no intelligible
meaning can be attached to the word. They have wrongly compared creation to a process
of natural law, and finding no analogy in this comparison, they have rashly set it down as
unthinkable by us. But I have shown you that creation is not a process of natural law; I
have shown you that it transcends natural law; I have shown you that it is purely a
process of intelligence. Regarded in this point of view, I will now show you that it is
intelligible to us, not, perhaps, perfectly intelligible, but still so much so, as to afford us a
very tangible notion. The Bible conception of creation is simply this. The finite world as
a whole, and in each one of its details, was formed as an image or idea in the Divine
Intelligence, and in and by that act of formation it obtained objective or substantial
reality. God had not, like us, to seek for paper whereon to describe His plan, nor for
materials wherein to embody it. By His absolute power, the image of the world formed in
the Divine Intelligence became the actual, substantial, external world. It obtained, as we
say, objective reality. Thus the finite world was not a creation out of nothing, neither was
it the fall of the finite out of the infinite, nor a necessary evolution out of the Divine
Essence, it was the objectified product of the Divine Intelligence. It may, however, be
said that this goes a very little way in making the act of creation conceivable to us, for we
have no experience of the immediate and unconditioned externalization of a mere
mental idea, and we cannot imagine how it could be possible. I admit that we have not
the experience indicated. And yet, I would ask you, which is the most marvellous point in
the whole process—the act by which the image of the finite world was constituted in the
Divine Intelligence, or the act by which it obtained objective reality? Plainly it is the
former. It is far more marvellous that the finite world in its first beginning, and in its
whole subsequent development, should be imaged forth in the Divine Intelligence, than
that this image should crystallize into concrete objective existence. Thus the very point
of creation which is the most difficult is made conceivable to us by being reflected in the

38. processes of our own minds. We can create to the extent of forming the mental image. It
is only in the externalization of our idea that we are hemmed in and hampered by
conditions. I maintain, therefore, that the Bible doctrine, whether we believe it or not, is
conceivable by us. We have, first of all, a clear notion of the human intelligence, which is
infinite and absolute in one of its aspects; this gives us a notion, inadequate no doubt,
but still a tangible notion of the Divine Intelligence which is infinite and absolute in
every aspect. Then we have a clear notion of the origination or creation of mental images
or plans of things by the human intelligence; this enables us to understand how the plan
or pattern of the finite world originated in the Divine Intelligence. The last point, viz.,
the externalization of the Divine idea, is the most difficult. But though a hard one to you
and me, you see it did not present the same elements of difficulty to those great men who
had made the powers and processes of intelligence their peculiar study. But I will say
more for the Bible doctrine. It is the only philosophical account of the finite world that
does not throw human knowledge into irretrievable confusion. The bearing of the
question is simply this. If we view the finite world apart from intelligence, the moment
we begin to reason on it, we fall into contradiction and absurdity. The consequence of
this is, that we land ourselves first of all in agnosticism, and then in utter scepticism;
disbelieving in God, in the moral world, nay, even in the most assured results of physical
science. Hence, if we would save human knowledge, the finite world must be viewed in
relation to intelligence; and the whole question lies between the Bible and a doctrine
such as that of Fichte. Is the finite world the product of our intelligence? or is it the
product of the Divine Intelligence? We cannot hesitate between the two. Indeed the logic
of facts has already decided for us. (D. Greig, M. A.)
Import of faith in a Creator
When man looks out from himself upon the wonderful home in which he is placed, upon
the various orders of living things around him, upon the solid earth which he treads,
upon the heavens into which he gazes, with such ever-varying impressions, by day and
by night; when he surveys the mechanism of his own bodily frame; when he turns his
thought, as he can turn it, in upon itself, and takes to pieces by subtle analysis the
beautiful instrument which places him in conscious relation to the universe around him;
his first and last anxiety is to account for the existence of all that thus interests him; he
must answer the question, How and why did this vast system of being come to be?
Science may unveil in nature regular modes of working, and name their laws. But the
great question still awaits her—the problem of the origin of the universe. This question is
answered by the first verse in the Bible: “In the beginning God created,” etc. And that
answer is accepted by every believer in the Christian Creed: “I believe in one God,” etc.
I. WHAT IS MEANT BY CREATION? The giving being to that which before was not.
Creation is a mystery eminently satisfactory to reason, but strictly beyond it. We men
can do much in the way of modifying existing matter, but we cannot create the minutest
particle of it. That God summoned it into being is a truth which we believe on God’s
authority, but which we can never verify.
II. BELIEF IN THE CREATION OF THE UNIVERSE OUT OF NOTHING IS THE ONLY
ACCOUNT OF ITS ORIGIN WHICH IS COMPATIBLE WITH BELIEF IN A PERSONAL
AND MORAL GOD.
1. Men have conceived of the relation between the universe and a higher power in
four different ways. Either God is a creation of the world, that is to say, of the
thinking part of it; or God and the world are really identical; or God and the world,

39. although distinct, are co-existent; or God has created the world out of nothing.
(1) If God is a product of human thought, it follows that the universe is self-
existent, and that it alone exists. A purely subjective deity is in truth no deity at
all.
(2) If God and the world are two names for the same thing, though the name of
God be retained, the reality has vanished as truly as in the blankest atheism. For
such a deity is neither personal nor moral. Murder and adultery become
manifestations of the Infinite One as truly and in the same sense as benevolence
or veracity.
(3) If, to avoid this revolting blasphemy, we suppose God and the world to be
distinct, yet eternally co-existent, do we thereby secure in human thought a place
for a moral and personal God? Surely not. God has ceased to be if we are right in
imagining that there never was a time when something else did not exist
independently of Him.
(4) It is necessary, then, to believe in the creation out of nothing, if we are to
believe also in God’s self-existent, personal, moral life.
2. Again, belief in the creation of the universe by God out of nothing naturally leads
to belief in God’s continuous providence; and providence, in turn, considering the
depth of man’s moral misery, suggests redemption. If love or goodness was the true
motive for creation, it implies God’s continuous interest in created life.
3. Belief in creation, indeed, must govern the whole religious thought of a consistent
believer. It answers many a priori difficulties as to the existence of miracle, since the
one supreme inexplicable miracle, compared with which all others are insignificant,
is already admitted.
4. Once more, belief in creation is of high moral value. It keeps a man in his right
place. “It is He that hath made us, and not we ourselves.” At first sight, man is
insignificant when confronted with external nature. Yet we know that this is not so.
The heavens and the earth will pass away. But the soul will still remain, face to face
with God. (Canon Liddon.)
The Creator and the creation
I. THE WHOLE TRINITY, each in His separate office, though all in unity, addressed
themselves to the work of creation.
1. The Holy Spirit brooded over the watery chaos.
2. The Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, was that power, or “Arm of the Lord,” by which
the whole work was executed. “In the beginning was the Word.”
3. The Father’s mind willed all, planned all, and did all.
II. God created ONLY “the heaven and the earth.” He provided a heaven, but He did not
provide a hell. That was provided, not for our world at all, but for the devil and his
angels.
III. If we ask WHY God created this universe of ours, three purposes suggest
themselves.

40. 1. It was the expression and out-going of His wisdom, power, and love.
2. It was for the sake of His noblest work, His creature, man.
3. The heaven and the earth were meant to be the scene of the exhibition of His own
dear Son. Remember, that marvellously grand as it was, that first creation was only a
type and earnest of a better. (J. Vaughan, M. A.)
The Creator and His work
I. THEN ATHEISM IS A FOLLY. Atheism is proved absurd—
1. By the history of the creation of the world. It would be impossible for a narrative
to be clearer, more simple, or more divinely authenticated than this of the creation.
The very existence of things around us is indisputable evidence of its reality.
2. By the existence of the beautiful world around us. The world standing up around
us in all its grandeur—adaptation—evidence of design—harmony—is a most
emphatic assertion of the Being of God. Every flower is a denial of atheism. Every
star is vocal with Deity.
3. By the moral convictions of humanity. There is probably not an intelligent man in
the wide universe, who does not believe in, and pay homage to, some deity or other.
II. THEN PANTHEISM IS AN ABSURDITY. We are informed by these verses that the
world was a creation, and not a spontaneous, or natural emanation from a mysterious
something only known in the vocabulary of a sceptical philosophy. Thus the world must
have had a personal Creator, distinct and separate from itself.
III. THEN MATTER IS NOT ETERNAL. “In the beginning.” Thus it is evident that
matter had a commencement. It was created by Divine power. It had a birthday.
IV. THEN THE WORLD WAS NOT THE RESULT OF A FORTUITOUS COMBINATION
OF ATOMS. “In the beginning God created.” Thus the world was a creation. There was
the exercise of supreme intelligence. There was the expression in symbol of great
thoughts, and also of Divine sympathies.
V. THEN CREATION IS THE OUTCOME OF SUPERNATURAL POWER. “In the
beginning God created.” There must of necessity ever be much of mystery connected
with this subject. Man was not present to witness the creation, and God has only given
us a brief and dogmatic account of it. God is mystery. The world is a mystery. But there
is far less mystery in the Mosaic account of the creation than in any other, as it is the
most natural, the most likely, and truly the most scientific, as it gives us an adequate
cause for the effect. The re-creation of the soul is the best explanation of the creation of
the universe, and in fact of all the other mysteries of God. (J. S.Exell, M. A.)
The theology of creation
Man naturally asks for some account of the world in which he lives. Was the world
always in existence? If not, how did it begin to be? Did the sun make itself? These are not
presumptuous questions. We have a right to ask them—the right which arises from our
intelligence. The steam engine did not make itself; did the sun? In the text we find an
answer to all our questions.

41. I. THE ANSWER IS SIMPLE. There is no attempt at learned analysis or elaborate
exposition. A child may understand the answer. It is direct, positive, complete. Could it
have been more simple? Try any other form of words, and see if a purer simplicity be
possible. Observe the value of simplicity when regarded as bearing upon the grandest
events. The question is not who made a house, but who made a world, and not who made
one world, but who made all worlds; and to this question the answer is, God made them.
There is great risk in returning a simple answer to a profound inquiry, because when
simplicity is not the last result of knowledge, it is mere imbecility.
II. THE ANSWER IS SUBLIME. God! God created!
1. Sublime because far reaching in point of time: in the beginning. Science would
have attempted a fact, religion has given a truth. If any inquirer can fix a date, he is
not forbidden to do so. Dates are for children.
2. Sublime because connecting the material with the spiritual. There is, then,
something more than dust in the universe. Every atom bears a superscription. The
wind is the breath of God. The thunder is a note from the music of his speech.
3. Sublime, because revealing, as nothing else could have done, the power and
wisdom of the Most High.
III. THE ANSWER IS SUFFICIENT. It might have been both simple and sublime, and
yet not have reached the point of adequacy. Draw a straight line, and you may describe it
as simple, yet who would think of calling it sublime? We must have simplicity which
reaches the point of sublimity, and sublimity which sufficiently covers every demand of
the case. The sufficiency of the answer is manifest: Time is a drop of eternity; nature is
the handiwork of God; matter is the creation of mind; God is over all, blessed for
evermore. This is enough. In proportion as we exclude God from the operation, we
increase difficulty. Atheism never simplifies. Negation works in darkness. The answer of
the text to the problem of creation is simple, sublime, and sufficient, in relation—
1. To the inductions of geology.
2. To the theory of evolution.
Practical inferences:
1. If God created all things, then all things are under His government.
2. Then the earth may be studied religiously.
3. Then it is reasonable that He should take an interest in nature. (J. Parker, D. D.)
What we learn here about God
1. His being.
2. His eternity.
3. His omnipotence.
4. His absolute freedom.
5. His infinite wisdom.
6. His essential goodness. (J. White.)

42. A revelation of God and of nature
I. A REVELATION OF GOD.
1. His name: names have meaning.
2. His nature: spirituality, personality.
3. His mode of existence: manifold unity.
II. A REVELATION OF NATURE.
1. Matter not eternal.
2. The antiquity of the earth.
3. The order of creation. (Pulpit Analyst.)
Love in the fact of creation
I. WHAT IS CREATION? Creation is a work of free condescension on the part of God.
There was a time when it was not, and God willed that it should be. It was by Him called
into existence out of nothing. It is not only not God, but it is not Divine—partakes in no
way of His essence, nor (except in one, its spiritual department, where He has specially
willed it) of His nature; has in itself no principle of permanence, cannot uphold itself,
but depends altogether for its being, and well being, on the good pleasure of Him, whose
Divine love created and upholds it. The world is a standing proof of God’s
condescension—that He lowers Himself to behold the things which are in heaven and in
earth, which He needeth not. Creation, viewed in its true light, is as really a proof of the
self-forgetting, self-humbling love of our God, as redemption; for in it He left His glory
which He had, the Father with the Son, and the Holy Spirit with both, before the worlds
began, and descended to converse with and move among the works of His own hands; to
launch the planets on their courses through space, and uphold in them all things living
by His ever-abiding Spirit.
II. WHY IS CREATION? May we presume to ask, What moved Him who was perfect in
Himself, who needed nothing beyond Himself, whose character of love was fulfilled in
the unity of the Three Persons in the God-head—what moved Him to lower Himself to
the creation and upholding of matter, and of life organized in matter? We have already
attributed the act to free condescending love; but what love—love for whom? Here again
Scripture gives us an answer. “The Father loveth the Son, and hath given all things into
His hand.” “By Him (the Son) were all things created, that are in heaven and that are in
earth, visible and invisible—all things were created by Him and for Him.” I hesitate not
then in saying that all creation was the result of the love of the Father for the Son; the
result of His Almighty will to carry forward, and to glorify, His Divine character of love,
by the glorification of His beloved and only-begotten Son. This world is Christ’s world—
made by and made for Christ—made as the theatre whereon, to all created beings, and
even to the Father Himself, was to be shown forth the glorious self-denying love of the
Son of God. Thus the world is to the Christian a fact in the very path and process of his
faith, and hope, and love. Thus creation is to him part of redemption; the first free act of
love of his God, which provided for his being called into existence, as the next free act of
love provided for his being called to be a partaker of the Divine nature. (Dean Alford.)

43. Creation
I. GOD. No attempt made to prepare mind of reader for idea of God; as though every
human being had this naturally; and so they all have.
II. CREATED. God made world out of nothing; then He must have absolute power over
it and all in it. Nothing can hurt those whom God loves, and protects. Events of world
are still in His hands. All must work for Him.
III. COURSE AND PROGRESS OF CREATION’S WORK.
1. Gradual, in measured stages, deliberate. But, observe, never lingering or halting;
no rest until complete. Each day has its work; and each day’s work, done for God,
and as God appoints, has its reward. Result may not always be seen; as seed is not
seen unfolding beneath ground, yet as truly growing there as when it shoots up green
in face of day. So in a good man’s life. He looks onward.
2. Orderly. (C. P. Eden, M. A.)
Creation
The language of man follows things and imitates them; the Word of God precedes and
creates them. Man speaks because things are; but these are because God hath spoken.
Let Him speak again, and things will revert together with man who speaks of them, to
nothing. Let us be content to perceive in creation a character which belongs only to God,
and which distinguishes His work from that of His creatures. The human mind works
only with the materials with which God supplies it; it observes, imitates, combines, but
does not create. The best painter in the world, composing the most beautiful picture that
ever proceeded from the hand of man, creates nothing: neither the canvas, nor the
colours, nor the brushes, nor his own hands, nor even the conception of his work, since
that conception is the fruit of his genius, which he has not given unto himself. Trace to
the origin of each of the several things which have combined to form this picture, and
you will find that all the channels from which they came, converge towards, and meet in
the Creator, who is God. In thus showing us from its first page that the visible world has
had such a wonderful beginning, the Bible informs us that it is also as a Creator that God
saves souls. He not only develops the natural dispositions of our hearts, but creates in
them new ones, “For we are labourers together with God”; but labourers working like the
painter, with what God has given to us. We hear, read, seek, believe, pray, but even these
come from God. “For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of His good
pleasure”; and if we seek the principle of our salvation we shall find that we owe all to
God from the beginning, and from the beginning of the beginning. “For we are His
workmanship created in Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that
we should walk in them.” “You have been taught in Christ,” writes St. Paul to the
Ephesians, “to put off the old man, to be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and to put
on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.” “In
Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new
creature.” Thus speaks the New Testament. The Old uses the same language. Not only
does David, rising from his fall, pray in these words by the Spirit: “Create in me a clean
heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me” (Psa_51:12); but all the Lord’s dealings
towards the people of Israel, that type of the future Church, are compared by Isaiah to a
creation—“I am the Lord, your Holy One, the Creator of Israel, your Isa_43:15). If He

44. alternately deals out to them good and badfortune—He creates. “I am the Lord, and
there is none else. I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I,
the Lord, do all these things” (Isa_45:6-7). If He tries them for a time by chastisingthem
through the hands of their enemies, He creates: “Behold, I have created the smith that
bloweth the coals in the fire, and that bringeth forth an instrument of destruction for his
work” (Isa_54:16). If He raises up prophets to them, He creates: “I create the fruit of the
lips; Peace, peace, to him that is far off, and to him that is near” (Isa_57:19); and if
ultimately He give to that people, after many vicissitudes, happier days and an eternal
rest, He will create: “For, behold, I create new heavens and a new earth: but be ye glad
and rejoice forever in that which I create; for, behold, I create Jerusalem a rejoicing”
(Isa_65:17-18). The creation of the world affords us a new lesson as to the manner in
which God acts in the dispensation of grace. There again, all that God makes is good, and
very good; what is evil proceeds from another source. For all that is good and holy, let us
ascribe the glory to God; for what is evil let us accuse ourselves. This doctrine, too, is
necessary in order that you should not make a false application of what you have just
heard respecting the sovereignty of God. He acts as Creator, we should say in things
which belong to His government, but He only uses this sovereign power for good; He
only gives birth to good thoughts, holy desires and dispositions, consistent with
salvation. God creates, but how does He create? At first view we only see here the
sovereign Lord, alone at first in His eternity, alone afterwards in the work of creation.
But a more deliberate contemplation leads us to discern in this singleness a certain
mysterious union of persons previously hidden in the depths of the Divine nature, and
displaying itself at the creation, as it was to be manifested at a later period in the
redemption of our race. And have you the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost? The
Three unite in the creation of the world; they unite in the redemption of man; are they
also united within you? Are you born of the Father, and become His children? Are you
washed in the blood, of the Son, and become members of His body? Are you baptized
with the Spirit, and become His temples? Ponder upon these things; for it is not a vain
thing for you, because it is your life. Finally, God creates, but for what purpose? does He
only wish to spread before you an enchanting exhibition? No, He has nobler designs. The
Lord has created all things for His glory, and His first object is to render visible the
invisible things hidden within Himself, by giving them a body, and, if one may so speak,
by exhibiting them in the form of flesh. (A. Monod, D. D.)
Chance cannot explain order in creation
How often might a man, after he had jumbled a set of letters in a bag, fling them upon
the ground before they would fall into an exact poem, yea, or so much as make a good
discourse in prose! And may not a little book be as easily made by chance as this great
volume of the world? How long might a man be in sprinkling colours upon a canvas with
a careless hand before they could happen to make the exact picture of a man? And is a
man easier made by chance than his picture? How long might twenty thousand blind
men, which should be sent out from the several remote parts of England, wander up and
down before they would all meet in Salisbury Plains, and fall into rank and file in the
exact order of an army? And yet this is much more easy to be imagined than how the
innumerable blind parts of matter should rendezvous themselves into a world.
(Archbishop Tillotson.)

45. Chance not creative
Athanasius Kircher, the celebrated German astronomer, had an acquaintance whom he
much esteemed, but who was unfortunately infected by atheistical principles, and denied
the very existence of a God. Kircher, sincerely desirous to rescue his friend from his
mistaken and ruinous opinion, determined to try to convince him of his error upon his
own principles of reasoning. He first procured a globe of the heavens, handsomely
decorated, and of conspicuous size, and placed it in a situation in his study where it
would be immediately observed. He then called upon his friend with an invitation to visit
him, which was readily responded to, and on his arrival he was shown into the study. It
happened exactly as Kircher had planned. His friend no sooner observed it than he
inquired whence it had come, and to whom it belonged. “Shall I tell you, my friend,” said
Kircher, “that it belongs to no one; that it was never made by anyone, but came here by
mere chance?” “That,” replied the atheist, “is impossible; you jest.” This was Kircher’s
golden opportunity, and he promptly and wisely availed himself of it. “You will not, with
good reason, believe that this small globe which you see before you originated in mere
chance, and yet you will contend that those vast heavenly bodies, of which this is but a
faint diminutive resemblance, came into existence without either order, design, or a
creation!” His friend was first confounded, then convinced, and, ultimately abandoning
all his former scepticisms, he gladly united with all who reverence and love God in
acknowledging the glory and adoring the majesty of the great Creator of the heavens and
earth and all their host.
Order no proof of evolution
His (Professor Huxley’s) conclusion is an hypothesis evolved from an hypothesis. To see
that this is indeed the case, let us put his argument in syllogistic form. It is as follows:
Wherever we have an ascending series of animals with modifications of structure rising
one above another, the later forms must have evolved themselves from the earlier. In the
case of these fossil horses we have such a series, therefore the theory of evolution is
established universally for all organized and animal life. Now, even if we admit his
premises, everyone must see that the conclusion is far too sweeping. It ought to have
been confined to the horses of which he was treating. But passing that, let us ask where
is the proof of the major premise? Indeed, that premise is suppressed altogether, and he
nowhere attempts to show that the existence of an ascending series of animals, with
modifications of structure ascending, one above another, is an infallible indication that
the higher members of the series evolved themselves out of the lower. The existence of a
series does not necessarily involve the evolution of the higher members of it from the
lower. The steps of a stair rise up one above another, but we cannot reason that therefore
the whole staircase has developed itself out of the lowest step. It may be possible to
arrange all the different modifications of the steam engine, from its first and crudest
form up to its latest and most complete organized structure, in regular gradation; but
that would not prove that the last grew out of the first. No doubt in such a case there has
been progress—no doubt there has been development too—but it was progress guided
and development directed by a presiding and intervening mind. All present experience is
against this major premise which Huxley has so quietly taken for granted. It is a pure
conjecture. I will go so far as to say that even if he should find in the geologic records all
the intervening forms he desires, these will not furnish evidence that the higher
members of the series rose out of the lower by a process of evolution. The existence of a
graduated series is one thing; the growth of the series out of its lowest member is quite
another. (W. M. Taylor, D. D.)

46. The creation
I. In the first place, THE OBJECT OF THIS INSPIRED COSMOGONY, OR ACCOUNT
OF THE WORLD’S ORIGIN, IS NOT SCIENTIFIC BUT RELIGIOUS. Hence it was to be
expected, that while nothing contained in it could ever be found really and in the long
run to contradict science, the gradual progress of discovery might give occasion for
apparent and temporary contradictions.
II. Then again, in the second place, let it be observed that THE ESSENTIAL FACTS IN
THIS DIVINE RECORD are,—the recent date assigned to the existence of man on the
earth, the previous preparation of the earth for his habitation, the gradual nature of the
work, and the distinction and succession of days during its progress.
III. And, finally, in the third place, let it be borne in mind that the sacred narrative of
the creation is evidently, in its highest character, MORAL, SPIRITUAL, AND
PROPHETICAL. The original relation of man, as a responsible being, to his Maker, is
directly taught; his restoration from moral chaos to spiritual beauty is figuratively
represented; and as a prophecy, it has an extent of meaning which will be fully unfolded
only when “the times of the restitution of all things” (Act_3:2-11 have arrived.
Conclusion:—The first verse, then, contains a very general announcement; in respect of
time, without date,—in respect of space, without limits. (R. S. Candlish, D. D.)
On the existence and character of God
I. THE ARGUMENT FOUNDED ON THE PRINCIPLE OF CAUSATION. The belief in
causation is one of the primary convictions of the human mind. It will be unnecessary
for the purposes of this argument to discuss its origin. It is also certain that this
conviction is not the result of any conscious process of reasoning. We acquiesce in it
because we cannot help doing so. Anyone may satisfy himself that this is the case, by
trying whether it is possible for him to believe that any particular phenomenon has come
into existence without a cause. One of these primary beliefs is that every phenomenon
must owe its existence to a cause adequate to produce it. This proposition therefore
constitutes one of the highest rectitudes which is attainable by man, and lies at the
foundation of all reasoned truth. Such being the case, it becomes necessary to determine
what we mean by the term “cause,” not what philosophers mean by it, but what is the
idea which the common sense of mankind attaches to it? Unless we are under the bias of
some particular theory, we invariably associate the idea of efficiency with that of cause.
We may frequently mistake non-causes for causes, but efficiency, i.e., power to produce
the effect, is the fundamental idea which underlies the conception of cause in the minds
of ordinary men. This being so, the following important consequences follow.
1. Whatever exists in the effect, must exist either actively or potentially in the cause.
2. The cause of one effect may be the effect of some preceding cause.
3. Various things, which philosophers and men of science have designated causes,
are not causes, but necessary conditions of the existence of a particular thing. Thus
space is the necessary condition of the existence of extended bodies, but is certainly
not the cause of their existence. In a similar manner, in the language of the
Darwinian theory, the environment of a thing is frequently spoken of as its cause. It
may be the necessary condition of the existence of a thing in that particular form, but
to designate it its cause is an inaccuracy of thought. The truth is, necessary

47. conditions limit the action of causes, and may direct their activity into this or that
channel; but to treat them as causes is absurd, for they neither do, nor can produce
anything.
4. Law is not a cause. The reader’s attention cannot be too carefully directed to this
fact, for, in scientific language, law is habitually used as the equivalent of force, and
the greatest confusion of thought has been the result; nay, more, it is frequently
personified even by those who refuse to allow that we have any means of knowing
that the First Cause of the universe is a personal Being. Thus even scientific men are
constantly in the habit of affirming that the laws of nature effect this or that; and that
feeble man is unable to resist their overwhelming power. The truth is, that while the
forces of nature effect much, the laws of nature can effect nothing. What are the laws
of nature? They are merely expressions of the definite order of the occurrence of
phenomena. I must now recur to one more point above referred to, as fraught with
consequences of extreme importance. I have observed that the very conception of an
efficient cause (and an efficient cause is the only one which satisfies the idea of real
causation), involves the consequence that it must contain within itself, either actively
or potentially, all the effects of which it is the cause; otherwise, such portions of the
effects which are not inherent in the cause must be self-produced, which is a self-
contradiction, or be produced by the energy of an independent Creator, a conclusion
which the theist will readily accept. This being so, all the effects, or in other words,
the phenomena, which exist in the universe, must exist either actively or potentially
in its first cause, i.e., in God. Now, one of the phenomena of the universe is
intelligence. Intelligence therefore must exist in God. Another of its phenomena is
the moral nature of man, and the principles of morality founded on the moral law.
God therefore must be a moral Being. Another of its phenomena is free agency as it
exists in man. The first cause of man (i.e., God)
must therefore be a free agent. Another of its phenomena is will, for it exists in man.
Volition therefore must exist in God. Another of its phenomena is personality, for it
exists in man. Personality therefore must exist in God. Another of its phenomena is
that its forces act in accordance with invariable law, from which action the order of
the universe springs. Invariable law therefore must be an expression of the Divine
will, and the love of order must exist in God. This argument may be pursued to a
much greater length; but this will be sufficient to indicate its character.
II. THE ARGUMENT FOUNDED ON THE ORDER OF THE UNIVERSE. This argument
proves that its first cause (i.e., God)
must be possessed of intelligence. It is one of the instinctive beliefs of our minds, when
our rational powers have attained their full development, that whenever we contemplate
an orderly arrangement of a complicated character, we instinctively draw the inference
that it denotes the presence of intelligence. We feel that this is an inference which we
cannot help drawing, for order and intelligence are in our minds mutually correlated.
Observe, I make this affirmation under the qualification that we cannot help drawing
this inference when our rational powers have attained to their full development. I do so
because I maintain that the ideal of human nature and the testimony which its
constitution affords to the realities of things, are to be found in the perfect and not in the
imperfect man. The opponents of theism dispute the correlation of order and
intelligence on two grounds. First, they affirm that the conception is an
anthropomorphic one, inapplicable to the works of nature. Secondly, that the production
of all the phenomena of the universe by the unintelligent forces of nature, acting in
conformity with laws from which they are incapable of varying, is an adequate account of
these orderly arrangements. With respect to the tact of these objections to the validity of

48. our argument, I answer—First, that our belief in this correlation between order and
intelligence is not a relative, but an absolute belief, embracing all things, all places, and
all times. Secondly, that even if the objection were valid, it makes no attempt to
propound an alternative theory of the origin of these orderly arrangements. Thirdly, the
affirmation that the alternative theory, viz., that all existing phenomena have been
evolved by the action of the unintelligent forces of nature, in conformity with invariable
law,—affords an adequate account of the existence of this order, contradicts alike our
reason and our experience. First, it contradicts our reason. What, I ask, is the conclusion
which we draw, when we contemplate an orderly arrangement of a complicated
character? I answer that we cannot help inferring that it has originated in intelligence. If
the suggestion is made, that it is due to what is commonly called chance, we reject it with
scorn. Scientific unbelief, I know, affirms that there is no such thing as chance. Let me
adduce one or two simple illustrations. Suppose a traveller had met in some foreign
country a construction (it is my misfortune, and not my fault, that I can only express
myself in language which has the appearance of assuming the point at issue), which on
examination he found to bear a striking resemblance to the machinery in the arsenal at
Woolwich, and that no one could tell him how it had originated. Further, that he
succeeded in setting it in motion; and that after carefully observing it, he discovered that
all its movements took place in a constantly recurring definite order. Let us also further
suppose, that on making inquiry how it got there, he was told that during some distant
period of the past, a number of the unintelligent forces of nature, after a prolonged
struggle, had succeeded in evolving this singular result. Would he, I ask, consider this an
adequate account of its origin, or view it as an attempt to impose on his credulity? Or let
us take a case nearer home, the library of the British Museum for example, or its
collections of minerals or fossils. On walking round them he could observe that their
contents were arranged in a certain definite order, yet he is entirely ignorant how they
got arranged in this order. But he would scorn the idea, if it were suggested to him, that
these arrangements were the result of the concurrence of a number of unintelligent
forces, and would without a moment’s hesitation draw the conclusion that they were due
to the agency of intelligence. Of this he would feel as certain as of his own existence.
These instances will be equally suitable as illustrations of the argument from adaptation.
But it will be needless to multiply examples. I therefore ask if in these, and in an
indefinite number of similar cases, we esteem this conclusion to be one of the most
unquestionable of certitudes, why should the inference become inconclusive, when we
observe similar arrangements in the phenomena of nature, the only difference being that
the latter are on a vaster scale, and in an endless variety of complication? It follows,
therefore, that the alternative suggested by unbelief contradicts the convictions of the
reason of an overwhelming majority of civilized men. Secondly, the alternative theory
derives no support from experience. No one has ever witnessed an orderly arrangement
issue from the meeting together of a number of the unintelligent forces of nature. If on
throwing up twelve dice an equal number of times, they invariably fall in the same order,
the conclusion is inevitable—they are loaded. In a similar manner the conclusion is
equally inevitable, when we contemplate the orderly arrangements of the universe. They
are loaded with a Divine intelligence.
III. THE ARGUMENT FOUNDED ON THE INNUMERABLE CORRELATIONS AND
ADAPTATIONS WHICH EXIST IN THE UNIVERSE, COMMONLY CALLED THE
ARGUMENT FROM FINAL CAUSES. The argument from adaptation may be best
exhibited under two heads. First, those adaptations which denote plan, or the realization
of an idea through a gradual course of evolution; and, secondly, those adaptations by
which a particular result is produced, and which alone render its production possible. To

49. take an example of each. The human hand, if contemplated as a piece of mechanism, is
one of the most wonderful of contrivances. We all know the innumerable and the
delicate functions which it is capable of executing. It consists of a number of parts
marvellously adjusted and correlated together, which, if any one of them had been
different from what it is, or had been differently correlated one to the other, the
mechanism in question would either never have come into existence, or it would have
failed to produce the results which it is now capable of accomplishing. This serves as an
illustration of the argument from both kinds of adaptation above referred to. This
marvellous instrument, as it exists in man, is found in embryo in the fore feet of the
lowest form of vertebrate animals. Its parts are all found there, yet in such a form that
they are utterly unable to produce the results which they do in man. They exist there in
type only, or idea, of which the human hand is the realization. Before it has attained to
this realization it has appeared in different orders of animals, each time making a nearer
approach to the realization which the idea has received in the hand of man, and each
time correlated to a corresponding advance in mind. Throughout the whole series of
these improvements in the instrument, we recognize what in ordinary language we
designate a plan, or, the gradual realization of an idea, commencing in a very
rudimentary form, and gradually attaining to higher stages of perfection, until it has
culminated in the human hand. A process of this kind, when we witness it under
ordinary circumstances, we designate a plan. But a plan implies the presence of
intelligence. When, therefore, we see such plans carried out in nature, which only differ
from ordinary ones in the multitude of the adaptations and correlations which are
necessary to enable them to become realities, we may surely draw the inference that they
must have originated in intelligence. But the hand forms an apt illustration of the other
kind of adaptation. I have already observed that it is admitted on all hands to be a
marvellous piece of mechanism, so constituted as to be capable of executing an almost
endless variety of functions. The unbeliever, however, asks us to believe that this affords
no proof that it has originated in intelligence. But if he were to fall in with an instrument
devoid of life, which was capable of executing only ball of the functions which are
performed by the human hand, he would not only infer that it had had a contriver, but
he would be loud in the praises of his ingenuity. Why then, I ask, should the
contemplation of the one piece of mechanism afford unquestionable evidence of the
presence of an intelligent contriver, and the contemplation of that of which it is the copy,
only far more elaborate and perfect, afford none? The reason why the opponent of
theism accepts the one inference, and rejects the other, must be left to him to explain. I
will only adduce one further illustration, viz., our faculty of hearing, because this is
effected by three sets of adjustments, each of which is entirely independent of the others;
and each of which consists of a number of complicated correlations. The first of these
adjustments consists of the vocal organs, which form a musical instrument of a far more
complicated character than has ever been invented by man. Be it observed also that this
musical instrument is so constituted, that it subserves a multitude of purposes beyond
the production of noise. Yet exquisite as this instrument is, it never would have
produced a single sound unless it had been correlated to the atmospheric air, or the air
to it, in such a manner that its waves should correspond with the different movements of
the instrument. These correlations, in order theft they may produce musical sounds,
must be of the most complicated character; and yet the one set are absolutely
independent of the other. Yet both these sets of marvellous adjustments and correlations
would fail to produce a single sound, except for the existence of another highly
complicated set of correlations and adjustments, independent of both, viz., the human
ear, adapted to receive the impressions of the waves of sound, the auric nerves, and the
brain to perceive them, and the human mind to interpret their meaning. Each of these is

50. composed of a number of the most complicated adjustments; and unless the entire
series, of which all three sets of adaptations are composed, had been mutually correlated
the one to the other, with the utmost care, hearing would have been impossible, and the
remaining complicated adjustments would have existed in vain. I have only adduced
these two examples for the purpose of illustrating the nature of the argument. The
reader must estimate its force, remembering only that the universe is admitted on all
hands to be full of similar adjustments, in numbers which surpass the powers of the
human intellect even to conceive. What then must be the conjoint force of the whole? Let
me draw the inference, Reason affirms that the theory that these adaptations,
adjustments, and correlations, with which every part of the universe abounds, have
originated in an intelligence which possesses a power adequate to their production, is an
account of their origin which satisfies the requirements alike of common sense and a
sound philosophy; or to employ the metaphor used above, these adjustments,
adaptations, and correlations proclaim the fact that the forces of the universe are
everywhere loaded with intelligence. This argument acquires an additional
conclusiveness, the amount of which it is difficult to estimate, from considerations
derived from the mathematical doctrine of chances. I have already observed that these
adjustments and correlations are conditioned on a number of the forces of the universe
concurring in meeting together at the same time and place; and that if any one of them
had failed to do so, the result produced by their correlation would have either not existed
at all, or would have been a different one from that which would have been produced by
the conjoint action of the whole. Now, it is obvious that if these adaptations, etc., have
not been produced by a superintending intelligence, they can only have been the result of
that fortuitous concurrence of forces which we have above described as constituting
what is popularly designated chance. This being so, the production of those sets of
complicated correlations, which I have above described as necessary for the production
of that infinite variety of sounds which the ear is capable of distinguishing, by the
fortunate meeting together of a number of independent forces at the same time and
place, in accordance with the mathematical doctrine of chances, could only be expressed
by a fraction, which, if its numerator is unity, its denominator would be some number
followed by an array of ciphers, the length of which I must leave to the reader to
conjecture. But this is only an inconsiderable part of the difficulty which besets the
theory which I am controverting. This process would have to be repeated in the case of
every independent correlation in the universe; and to get at the combined result, these
fractions would have to be multiplied together; and the result would be a fraction whose
numerator is unity, having for its denominator some number followed by an array of
ciphers continued ad infinitum. According, then, to the mathematical doctrine of
chances, it is an improbability, amounting to an impossibility, that these adaptations
and correlations can have been the result of a fortuitous concurrence of the unintelligent
forces of nature. They must then originate in intelligence. The theory which opponents
of theism ask us to accept, as affording a rational account of the origin of those
adaptations and correlations with which the universe is full, is this. The forces of the
universe have gone on energizing in conformity with laws from which they cannot
deviate during the eternal ages of the past; and in their course have passed through
every possible combination. The unstable ones have perished, and the stable ones have
survived, and by means of this ever-reiterated process have at length emerged the order
and adaptations of that portion of the universe which is destitute of life, without the
intervention of intelligence. How these forces originated, and became endowed with
their specific qualities, which have rendered them capable of effecting such marvellous
results, we are asked to believe to be a secret into which the limitations of the human
mind render it impossible for us to penetrate, and which must therefore remain forever

51. unknown. But with respect to the process by which animated existence has been evolved,
its language is less vague. Its theory is as follows. The original germs of life, the existence
of which it is compelled to postulate, and which, in a manner wholly unaccounted for,
became possessed of a most convenient power of generating their like, with a number of
inconsiderable variations, produced a progeny greatly in excess of their means of
subsistence. Hence originated among them a struggle for life, with the effect that the
weaker living forms have perished, and the stronger, i.e., those better adapted to their
environment, have survived. This struggle has been continued during an indefinite
number of ages. This theory is called the theory of natural selection, or the survival of
the fittest in the struggle for existence; and modern atheistic unbelief propounds it,
aided by another theory, viz., that of sexual selection, and a third, viz., that of the
accumulation of habits through a long succession of transmissions from remote
ancestors, which have gradually become fixed, as an adequate account of the origin of all
the adaptations and correlations which are presented in the existing forms of animal and
vegetable life. This theory utterly breaks down, as affording even a specious account of
the origin of these adaptations and correlations at several points. First, it fails to account
for the origin of life, or to show that it is possible to produce living out of non-living
matter. Until it can effect this, it is simply useless for the purposes of atheism. Strange to
say, unbelief is now compelled to live by faith. It is confident that the discovery will be
made hereafter. Secondly, it fails to give any account of the origin of those qualities,
which the original germs of life must have possessed, in order that a starting point may
be found for the course of evolution which it propounds. Thirdly, it assumes the
concurrence of a multitude of fortunate chances (I use the word “chance” in the sense
above described), so numerous as to approximate to the infinite, of what common sense
and reason refuse to believe to be possible, and which hopelessly conflicts with the
mathematical doctrine of chances and probabilities. Fourthly, it demands an interval of
time for the carrying out of this vast process of evolution, which although abstractedly
possible, other branches of science refuse to concede to it as lying within the existing
order of things. Fifthly, it utterly fails to bridge over that profound gulf which separates
the moral from the material universe, the universe of freedom from the universe of
necessity. All that it can urge with respect to the origin of life and of free agency, is that it
hopes to be able to propound a theory at some future time which shall be able to account
for these phenomena. Sixthly, the theory in question, including the Darwinian theory of
the production of the entire mass of organisms that have existed in the past, and exist in
the present, by the sole agency of natural selection, without the intervention of
intelligence, is, in fact, a restatement in a disguised form of the old theory of the
production of all the adaptations and correlations in the universe, by the concurrence of
an infinite number of fortunate chances—a theory which contradicts the primary
intuitions of our intellectual being. Seventhly, as a fact, the recorded observations by
mankind for the last, say, four thousand years, show no instance of evolution of one
species from another, but display variation, not infinite but limited, and recurrent to the
original form. Eighthly, as a fact, geology (Palaeontology) shows the same absence of
such evolution and of indefinite variation. Ninthly, all the ascertained facts point only to
creation by a plan, or in accordance with a rule, which permits variability within
discoverable limits, and requires adaptation, and therefore furnishes no evidence of
evolution of species. Let me set before the reader in two sentences the result of the
foregoing reasonings. The atheistic theory of evolution utterly breaks down as affording
a rational account of the origin of adaptations and correlations with which every region
of the universe abounds. Consequently the theistic account of their origin, which
satisfies alike sound philosophy and common sense, is the only adequate one; or, in
other words, they have originated in an intelligence which is possessed of a power

52. adequate to their production.
IV. THE EVIDENCE WHICH IS FURNISHED BY CONSCIENCE AND THE MORAL
NATURE OF MAN. Two universes exist beside each other. One, in which the laws of
necessity dominate; the other in which free agency is the essential factor. The first may
be designated the material, and the second the moral universe. These are separated from
each other by a gulf which no theory of evolution can bridge over. When the first free
agent came into existence, a power essentially different from any which had preceded it
was introduced into that universe, where necessary law had hitherto reigned supreme.
The question therefore presents itself, and demands solution: How did it originate? It
could not have produced itself. It therefore issued from a cause adequate to produce it.
That cause must ultimately resolve itself into the first cause of the universe, that is, God.
From this follow the following conclusions—Man is a free agent; therefore God must be a
free agent. Man’s free agency is limited by conditions; but God is not limited by
conditions. Therefore His free agency is more absolute and perfect than the free agency
of man. A moral universe exists. God is the cause of its existence. Therefore the essential
principles of morality, as affirmed by conscience, and witnessed by the moral nature of
man, must exist in God. Personality exists in man as an essential portion of his moral
nature; therefore, He who framed man, i.e., God, must be a person, who is at the same
time the Creator, the Upholder, and the moral Governor of the universe which He has
created. Such are the inferences which we are entitled to draw by the aid of our reason
respecting the existence and the moral character of God. (Preb. Row, M. A.)
Pantheism
We object to this system as follows.
1. Its idea of God is self-contradictory, since it makes Him infinite, yet consisting
only of the finite; absolute, yet existing in necessary relation to the universe;
supreme, yet shut up to a process of self-evolution and dependent for self-
consciousness on man; without self-determination, yet the cause of all that is.
2. Its assumed unity of substance is not only without proof, but it directly
contradicts our intuitive judgments. These testify that we are not parts and particles
of God, but distinct personal subsistences.
3. It assigns no sufficient cause for that fact of the universe which is highest in rank,
and therefore most needs explanation, namely, the existence of personal
intelligences. A substance which is itself unconscious, and under the law of necessity,
cannot produce beings who are self-conscious and free.
4. It therefore contradicts the affirmations of our moral and religious natures by
denying man’s freedom and responsibility; by making God to include in Himself all
evil as well as all good; and by precluding all prayer, worship, and hope of
immortality.
5. Our intuitive conviction of the existence of a God of absolute perfection compels
us to conceive of God as possessed of every highest quality and attribute of men, and
therefore, especially, of that which constitutes the chief dignity of the human spirit,
its personality. (A. H. Strong, D. D.)

53. The end of God in creation
I. LET US FIRST EXPLAIN WHAT WE MEAN BY THE END OF GOD IN CREATION. It
will be seen at once that an ultimate end, or that for which all other ends in the series
exist, and from which they derive their importance, is in the mind of the agent his chief
end. It is contended by some that the same series of subordinate ends may have more
than one ultimate end, of which one may be chief, and the others inferior ends. This was
the opinion of Edwards. He says: “Two different ends may be both ultimate ends, and yet
not be chief ends. They may be both valued for their own sake, and both sought in the
same work or acts, and yet one valued more highly and sought more than another. Thus
a man may go a journey to obtain two different benefits or enjoyments, both which may
be agreeable to him in themselves considered, and so both may be what he values on
their own account, and seeks for their own sake; and yet one may be much more
agreeable than the other; and so be what he sets his heart chiefly upon, and seeks most
after in his going a journey. Thus a man may go a journey partly to obtain the possession
and enjoyment of a bride that is very dear to him, and partly to gratify his curiosity in
looking in a telescope, or some new invented and extraordinary optic glass. Both may be
ends that he seeks in his journey, and the one not properly subordinate, or in order to
another. One may not depend on another, and therefore both may be ultimate ends; but
yet the obtaining his beloved bride may be his chief end, and the benefit of the optic
glass his inferior end. The former may be what he sets his heart most upon, and so be
properly the chief end of his journey.” Our view differs somewhat from that of Edwards
upon this point. As these different objects are to be obtained by the same course of
action, or by the same series of subordinate ends, we believe it would be speaking more
correctly to represent them as forming one compound ultimate end, rather than two
distinct ultimate ends. Again: The ends or purposes of intelligent beings are divided into
subjective and objective ends. The subjective end has reference to the feelings and
desires of the agent or being, which are to be gratified by the selection and
accomplishment of the objective end. It consists in the gratification of these feelings and
desires. The objective end is the thing to be done or brought to pass, and to the
accomplishment of which the agent is prompted by these feelings, affections, or desires.
It is not the subjective end of God in creating the universe that we seek. We know this
must have been based in the perfections of His character; it must have been for the
gratification of His infinite benevolence, His boundless love, that He adopted and spake
into being the present system of things. But there must be some objective end toward
which He is impelled by His benevolence and love, and for the accomplishment of which
the present system was caused to exist. It is this objective end that we are endeavouring
to ascertain.
II. WE PROCEED TO POINT OUT WHAT WE CONSIDER GOD’S END IN CREATION
TO HAVE BEEN. And here we premise that whatever this end was, it was something in
the order of time future; that is, something yet to be obtained or accomplished. It would
be absurd to suppose a being to adopt and carry out a plan to obtain a good, or to
accomplish an end which was already obtained or accomplished. We are now prepared
for the general statement that, according to our view, the end of God in creation is not to
be found in Himself—that God is not His own end. The differences between Edwards
and ourself upon this point may be traced mainly to a distinction which he has omitted
to make, but which we deem of great importance. We mean the distinction which exists
between the display of the attributes and perfections of God, and the effect produced by
that display upon the mind of the beholder. These attributes and perfections belong to
God; their display is the act of God; but the impression made upon the mind of another,
by this display, forms no part of God; it is not the act of God, but the result of that act; it

54. is an effect which was not produced, nor does it exist in the mind of God, but which was
produced and exists in the mind of the creature. The importance of this distinction will
be made apparent hereafter. That God could not have been His own end in creation, we
argue from the infinite fulness of His nature. We can conceive of but one way in which a
being can become his own objective end in anything he does, and that is by supposing
that he is destitute of something of which he feels the needs, and consequently desires
for himself. To illustrate: Take the scholar who pursues with diligence his studies; he
may do this because he delights in knowledge, and his ultimate objective end may be an
increase of knowledge; or he may do it because knowledge will render him more worthy
of esteem. In either case, the ultimate end is to be found in himself, and in both the idea
of defect on the part of the agent is prominent. Were his knowledge already perfect,
there would be no need that he should study to increase it. Now until some defect is
found to exist in God—until it can be shown that He does not possess, and has not from
eternity possessed, infinite fulness; that there is in His case some personal want
unsupplied, it is impossible to show that God is His own end in creation. But it may be
well to dwell more at large upon this part of the subject.
1. God’s own happiness could not be His ultimate end in creation. It will be borne in
mind, that the ultimate end is something in the future, something yet to be
accomplished. God’s happiness can be made His end in creation in only two ways—
by increasing it, or by continuing it, But this happiness can never be increased, for it
is already perfect in kind, and infinite in degree. And the only way in which the
continuance of this happiness can be made God’s end in creation is by supposing it
necessary order to the continued gratification of His benevolent feelings. While the
feelings of God’s heart are fully gratified He must be happy; and we admit that His
failing to accomplish any purpose, and thus failing to gratify these feelings, would
disappoint and render Him unhappy. So that the continued gratification of these
feelings, and thus the continuance of His happiness, was undoubtedly an end of God
in creation; but, as we have seen, this was His subjective, and not His objective end.
We perceive, then, that God’s happiness, either in its increase or continuance, is not
the end for which we seek.
2. God’s attributes, natural or moral, could not have been His end in creation. The
only ways in which we can conceive the attributes of God to be His end in creation,
are to increase them, to exercise them, or to display them. The first could not have
been His end, for the increase of attributes already infinite is impossible. It will be
seen that Edwards makes the exercise of God’s infinite attributes a thing desirable in
itself, and one of His ends in creation. If we understand him, he teaches that God
exerted His infinite power and wisdom in creation for the sake of exerting them;
their exercise was in itself excellent, and one ultimate object or end which Deity had
in view in exerting them, was that they might be exerted. That is, the exercise itself,
and the end of that exercise, are the same thing. To show the absurdity of this
position, we remark—
(1) The moral attributes of God were not exercised at all in the work of creation.
Benevolence cannot create, nor justice, nor mercy. The only attributes which
were, or could have been exerted by God in the work of creation, are His infinite
wisdom to contrive, and His eternal power to execute. We admit that the
gratification of the benevolent feelings of God’s heart led Him to exercise these
natural attributes in one direction rather than another; but the gratification of
these feelings, as has been already shown, is the subjective end of God in
creation. But it may be asked, Did not the work of creation furnish an occasion
for the exercise of God’s moral attributes, viz., His benevolence, justice, and

55. mercy? Certainly it did. But that which is a mere incident of creation cannot be
its end.
(2) To suppose God to exercise His natural attributes or powers, simply for the
sake of exercising them, or that this forms any part of His ultimate end in
exercising them, is a supposition entirely unworthy of Deity. We deny that there
is anything excellent in itself in the exercise of natural powers, simply for the sake
of exercising them: and this denial holds good whether these powers are finite or
infinite; whether they belong to the creature or to the Creator. The truth is, that
all the excellence which attaches to the exercise of natural powers, depends upon
and is borrowed from, their designed results. The exercise of God’s wisdom and
power in the work of creation is excellent, because the designed result is
excellent, and for no other reason. It is evident, then, that the mere exercise of
God’s attributes, whether natural or moral, forms no part of His ultimate end in
creation. Nor can the mere display of His attributes form any part of God’s end in
creation. Now the position we take is, that such a display as this, considered
separately from any effect to be produced upon mind by it, formed no part of
God’s end in creation. We are led to this conclusion, because such a display,
simply in the light of a display, and aside from the effect it produces upon
intelligent mind, is entirely valueless. God understood and delighted in His own
attributes just as perfectly before this display as afterward, and, aside from its
effect upon other minds, it must be made in vain; which is unworthy of the Great
Supreme. What would be thought of an author who should write and publish a
book simply to display the powers of his mind, without any idea of having it read
to produce an effect upon other minds? Let us recapitulate, and see to what point
we have arrived. We started with the proposition, that God was not His own end
in creation; or that God’s end in creation cannot be found in Himself. We have
shown that God’s happiness was not His end; that His attributes, natural and
moral, whether we consider their increase, their exercise, or their display, were
not, and could not have been His end. We have shown that His end, could not
consist in any good which He expected to receive, or was capable of receiving
from His creatures, owing to impressions made upon their minds by the display
of His attributes in the work of creation. We know of no other way in which God
can be His own end in creation. And if there is no other way, then the end which
we seek is not to be found in God, and we must look for it in some other
direction. To this view it is objected by Edwards, that the supposition that God’s
end is out of Himself militates against His entire and absolute independence.
“We must,” says he, “conceive of the efficient as depending on His ultimate end.
He depends on this end in His desires, aims, actions, and pursuits; so that He
fails in all His desires, actions, and pursuits, if He fails of His end. Now if God
Himself be His last end, then in His dependence on His end, He depends on
nothing but Himself. If all things be of Him, and to Him, and He the first and
last, this shows Him to be all in all: He is all to Himself. He goes not out of
Himself for what He seeks; but His desires and pursuits, as they originate from,
so they terminate in Himself; and He is dependent on none but Himself in the
beginning or end of any of His exercises or operations. But if not Himself, but the
creature, be His last end, then, as He depends on His last end, He is in some sort
dependent on the creature.” The fallacy of the position assumed in this objection
lies in the supposition that the relation which subsists between the happiness of a
being and the accomplishment of his ends has to do with his independence. The
question of independence is based upon entirely a different principle, viz., that of

56. the power or ability of the being. If he possesses in himself the power to
accomplish his ends, without aid from any other source, then, as far as they are
concerned, he is entirely independent; and this is equally true, whether these
ends are within or without himself. If a being had no power, or not power
sufficient to accomplish his ends, were they all within himself, he would still be
dependent: on the other hand, if he has within himself absolute power to
accomplish all his ends, although these ends are out of himself, he is still
independent. The question of independence has nothing to do with the position
of these ends; but it has everything to do with the ability of the agent to execute
them. So the question of God’s independence does not depend upon the position
of His ends, but upon His perfect ability to accomplish them, whatever they are,
and wherever they may be located. Having shown that God’s end in creation is
not in Himself—and having answered the objection of Edwards to this position,
the question returns, Where and what is this end? We shall now attempt to
answer this question by the following train of reasoning:—
1. The attributes of God are most wonderfully displayed in the work of creation. His
power and wisdom are everywhere conspicuous. So, likewise, the moral excellencies
of His character are written in sunbeams upon the works of His hand: and to minds
not darkened by sin, these excellencies stand out in bold relief. Now a display of this
character must produce a powerful effect upon intelligent mind; and upon the
supposition that the mind is perfectly formed and rightly attuned, the effect must be
blessed indeed. The result to which we come, then, is, that the display of the Divine
perfections would produce an effect upon mind, perfectly organized and undisturbed
by adverse influences, which would cause the recipient to admire and love the Lord
his God with all his heart, mind, and strength; and this effect would be limited only
by his capacity.
2. There is another display or exhibition secured by, or consequent upon, the work of
creation, viz., that of the attributes, both natural and moral, of the creatures
themselves.
3. There is still another effect secured by the work of creation, and the display
consequent upon, it, viz., that produced “upon a being by the display of his own
powers, attributes, or qualities. These he becomes acquainted with by consciousness,
and by a careful observation of their workings in various directions. The impression
which these attributes of self must make upon the mind of self, provided this mind is
perfect in its organization, and undisturbed by adverse influences, will be in exact
proportion to the worth of self in the scale of being. This is self-love as distinguished
from selfishness; which is self-love overleaping its boundaries, or overflowing its
banks. We have arrived, then, at the following result, viz., that the effect which the
display of character consequent upon the work of creation is calculated to produce
upon perfect mind, is admiration of love toward, and delight in God, to the full
extent of the powers of the creature, and love to self, and all creature intelligences,
measured by their worth in the scale of being. In other words, it is entire conformity
to the moral law, which consists in loving God with all the soul, mind, and strength,
and our neighbour as ourself. This is the result of the action of perfect mind in the
direction of perfection itself, it is easy to perceive that perfect bliss, happiness, or
delight midst inhere in, or constitute a part of such action—and this, not merely in
the sense of art effect, but that it must be woven into its very texture, so as to form a
part of its web and woof. This effect is denominated holiness; and as it is produced in
the mind of the creature, and not in the mind of God (who was perfectly and
infinitely holy before creation began), we call it creature holiness, i.e., holiness

57. belonging to the creature; and the happiness which inheres therein and forms a part
of it is, for the same reason, creature happiness. The production of this effect upon
the minds of intelligent creatures, we believe to have been God’s end in creation—
that end without which the universe would not have existed. This position thrown
into the form of a proposition would run thus: God’s last end in creation was to
secure the greatest possible amount of creature holiness, and of that happiness
which inheres in and forms a part of such holiness. Or thus: The ultimate, objective
end for which God created the universe, was the production of the greatest possible
amount of creature holiness and happiness. We use the term creature holiness and
happiness in opposition to the position of Edwards, that this holiness and happiness
are emanations from God in such a sense, that they are communicated to the
creature from His fulness; so that, in fact, they are God’s holiness and happiness
diffusing themselves among the creatures of His empire. He holds that
communication of holiness and happiness formed a part of God’s last end, or one of
His ultimate ends, in creation. But then, to carry out his theory, which makes God
His own end, he calls this holiness and happiness an emanation from Deity Himself,
like a fountain overflowing its banks, or sending forth its waters in streams. The idea
that creation is an emanation from God is not strictly true. It is a production of God,
and a production of something out of nothing, not an emanation from Him. We can
see how the benevolence of God could lead Him to purpose from all eternity to create
the universe at a certain time,—in which case, the universe would not exist until that
time arrived. But we cannot see how an original tendency can exist in God, for
something to flow out of Himself, as water streams from a fountain, unless the
flowing out co-exists with the tendency; and if so, then the universe has co-existed
with God, that is, it has existed from eternity. The phraseology used by Edwards
would go to show that the universe is a part of God; and that the holiness of the
creature is simply God’s holiness communicated to the creature. He says: “The
disposition to communicate Himself, or diffuse His own fulness, which we must
conceive of as being originally in God as a perfection of His nature, was what moved
Him to create the world.”. . .”But the diffusive disposition that excited God to give
creatures existence was rather a communicative disposition in general, or a
disposition in the fulness of the divinity to flow out and diffuse itself.” If these
statements are correct, then the creation must be a part of the fulness of God. If the
act of creating was the flowing out and the diffusion of the Divinity itself, then the
result must have been a part of that divinity; or, in other words, the universe must be
a part of God. Again, in speaking of the knowledge, holiness, and joy of the creature,
he says: “These things are but the emanations of God’s own knowledge, holiness, and
joy.” So that the universe is not only a part of God, but the very attributes of His
intelligent creatures, their perfections, their holiness and happiness, are only
communications of the perfections, the holiness and happiness of God: they are
God’s perfections, God’s holiness and happiness, communicated by Him to the
creature. We believe that the universe, instead of being an emanation from Deity, is
the work of His hand; instead of being the overflowing of His fulness, it is a creation
of His omnipotence—a causing something to exist out of nothing; and the holiness
and happiness of creatures, instead of being the holiness and happiness of God
communicated to them, consists in their conformity to the rule of right, and that
delight which inheres in and is consequent upon such conformity. The production of
these, or the securing them to the greatest possible extent, we hold to be God’s last
end in creation. We repeat, then, that the ultimate objective end of God in creating
the universe was, to secure the greatest possible amount of creature holiness and

58. happiness. Our reasons for this opinion are as follows:
1. As we have seen, God’s ultimate end must be something desirable in itself, and not
desired merely as a means to an end. The holiness of God is the most excellent thing
in the universe; and next to it, is the holiness of His creatures. God’s end in creation
could not have been to promote the former, for it was perfect from eternity. It must,
therefore, have been to promote the latter, which is so excellent in itself, and so
much to be prized for its results, that it is entirely worthy to be the ultimate end of
Jehovah. But it may be asked, May not God’s end in creation have been to display
His own holiness, on account of the delight He takes in having that holiness praised,
loved, and adored? No doubt God delights to have the perfections of His character
praised, loved, and adored; but, is this delight selfish, or is it benevolent? If selfish,
then it is sin. If benevolent, then it is a delight in holiness. God delights to be praised,
loved, and adored, because this praise, love, and adoration, form the principal
ingredient in holiness; and as it is the creature who praises, loves, and adores, so that
this effect is produced in the mind and heart of the creature, we call it creature
holiness.
2. We argue that creature holiness is the end of God in creation, from the fact that
for God to promote His own glory, or to promote such a state of mind in the creature
as will lead the creature to glorify Him, is the same thing as to promote holiness in
the creature. The Scriptures teach that God does what He does for His own name’s
sake, or, which is the same thing, for His glory’s sake; and we are commanded,
“whether we eat or drink, or whatever we do, to do all to the glory of God.” If,
therefore, “God’s glory,” and “God’s being glorified,” as they are set forth in the
Scriptures, differ from creature holiness, then His holiness is not the end of God in
creation; but if they can be shown to be the same thing, then is it His last great end in
creating the universe. God’s glory consists either in that which constitutes His
intrinsic glory, or in that in which He delights and glories, as something which He
desires and seeks to accomplish above everything else; or in that state of mind in
others, which leads them to praise and glorify Him. That God’s intrinsic glory was
not, and could not have been His end in creation, is evident from the fact that it was
and is the same from eternity, before creation existed; it has never been in any sense
changed or altered, nor is it possible that such change should take place: and it is
perfectly evident that that which existed before an event, and is not in the least
changed by the event, could not have been the end or object of that event. Again: If
we mean, by God’s glory, that in which He delights and glories, as something which
He desires and seeks to accomplish above everything else; then, as we contend, this
something is holiness: and as it cannot be His own holiness (for He cannot seek to
accomplish what is already accomplished), it must be creature holiness. That
holiness is what God delights in above everything else, and desires to promote, is
evident from the following considerations:
(1) It is the most excellent or desirable thing in the universe, and, therefore, God
must delight in it supremely; it must be that in which He glories. This we have
already illustrated.
(2) The moral law contains the foundation and essence of true holiness; and, if
this law is (as it is universally admitted to be) a transcript of God, then does He
delight supremely in holiness.
(3) The rewards and penalties which God has attached to His law, and the
development which He has made of his feelings in the death of Christ, and the
work of the Spirit, all go to show that He has set His heart supremely upon

59. holiness, that He delights and glories in it, and seeks, above everything else, to
promote it.
(4) The Scriptures teach that, without holiness, it is impossible to please God;
and that faith is peculiarly pleasing in His sight, because of its relation to
holiness; it appropriates the righteousness of Christ; it purifies the heart, and
produces good works.
(5) It must be evident to every student of the Bible, and close observer of the
providences of God, as they are developed in the history of the Church, that the
whole economy of grace has for its object the production and conservation of
sanctification or holiness; and that, when this is accomplished, the gracious
economy will he exchanged for one purely legal.
(6) The transcendent glory of heaven consists in its holiness—nothing unclean or
impure shall be admitted into it. These considerations go to show that God
delights supremely in holiness, and that its production to the greatest possible
extent is the thing upon which He has supremely set His heart. Again: If we mean
by God’s glory, the impression made upon the minds of others, which leads them
to praise and glorify Him, then vie say, This impression is holiness, and as it is
made in the minds of creatures, it is creature holiness. When we love the Lord
our God with all our soul, mind, and strength, we glorify Him for what He is in
Himself; and when we love His creatures, according to their worth in the scale of
being, we glorify Him through His creatures, as the servants of His household,
and the subjects of His empire. If we are holy, we shall glorify God; and if we
glorify God, we shall be holy. The one cannot exist without the other; and they
resolve themselves into the same thing. This view perfectly accords with the
Scriptures. As our limits forbid an extended examination, we will select from
those passages quoted by Edwards, to prove that God is His own end in creation.
The first class are those which speak of God as the first and the last, the
beginning and the end (Isa_44:6; Rev Rev_1:11). These passages simply teach
the eternity and absolute sovereignty of God. They have nothing to do with His
end in creation; and the wonder is that a divine like Edwards should have quoted
them for such a purpose. A second class of passages are those which declare
everything to have been created for God (Col_1:16; Heb_2:10). These texts teach
that God is the Creator and Proprietor of all things—that they were made by Him,
and for His use; but they do not decide what use God intends to make of them,
nor what end He means to accomplish by them. They have no sort of bearing
upon the question under discussion. A third class are those passages which speak
of God’s glory as the end of all things. They may be arranged under three heads.
1. Those passages which speak of what God does as being done for His name’s sake,
or for His own glory (Isa_43:6-7; Isa_60:21;2Sa_7:23; Psa_106:8). These texts
teach that God does what He does, to lead His subjects to praise and glorify Him,
and to magnify His great and holy name; in other words, to love Him with all their
soul, mind, and strength: and what is that but creature holiness?
2. Those passages which enjoin it upon the creature to do what he does to the glory
of God (1Co_6:20; 1Co_10:31).
3. Those passages which speak of the glory of God as the result of certain acts of the
creature (Php_1:11; Joh_15:8). But how is itthat, “being filled with the fruits of
righteousness,” and “bearing much fruit,” glorifies God? It does this in two ways:
These fruits are holiness embodied in the life, and they present the transcendent

60. excellence of God’s ultimate end in creation. They produce their effect upon other
minds, and lead them to praise and glorify God, and thus promote holiness in them.
To love and adore God with all the heart, is to glorify God; and to love and adore God
with all the heart, is holiness in exercise: so that, in this sense, God’s glory and the
exercise of holy affections are the same thing. And to lead others to love and adore
God with all the heart, is to lead them to glorify God; and to lead others to love and
adore God with all the heart, is to lead them to exercise holy affections: so that to
promote the glory of God in others, and to promote holiness in them, is the same
thing. The end of God in creation, then, as we think we have shown, is not in
Himself, but consists in the promotion of creature holiness, and that happiness
which may appropriately be called the happiness of holiness. (W. C. Wisner.)
The creative laws and the Scripture revelation
It is proposed to examine the general teaching of the Scriptures in the light of six laws,
according to which, by the common consensus of competent authorities, the Creator
worked in the production of this present terrestrial order.
1. The first of these laws is the law of progress. It may be taken as a fact, settled by
overwhelming scientific evidence, and no less clearly affirmed in Genesis, that the
world was not created all at once, and that there was a certain order in which its
various parts appeared. It was, without an exception, an order under a law of
progress; first, that which was lower, afterward that which was higher. The
illustrations are so familiar that they scarcely need to be mentioned. Is this law of
progress still in force; or is the progress ended, and is man, as we know him, the last
and highest form of life that earth shall see? The impossibility of further progress
cannot therefore be argued on the ground of inconceivability. It can only be
established if it be proved beyond controversy that the end of creation has been
reached in man. Is there sufficient reason to believe this? Reason itself teaches that if
there be a personal God, the Creator of all, then the self-manifestation of God must
be the highest end of the earthly creation. When, therefore, the Holy Scripture tells
us of the appearance on earth of a God-man, the perfect “image of the invisible God,”
and of a new order of manhood begotten by a new birth into union with this second
man, and renewed after the image of the Creator, to be manifested hereafter in a
corresponding embodiment and in a changed environment, through a resurrection
from the dead, all this is so far from being contrary to the order established in
creation, that it is in full accord therewith, and only furnishes a new illustration of
that law of progress according to which God worked from the beginning.
2. A second law which has been discovered to have been characteristic of the creative
process, is the law of progress by ages. That this was the law of Divine procedure is
clear both from the book of revelation and of nature. There were periods of creative
activity. The work had its evenings and its mornings, repeatedly recurring. The line
of progress was not a uniform gradient; not an inclined plane, but a stairway, in
which the steps were aeons. In each instance a “new idea in the system of progress”
was introduced, and that fact constituted, in part at least, the new age. But it may be
further remarked, that each new age was marked, not merely by the presence, but by
the dominance, of a higher type of life than the one preceding. Now we have seen
that, according to Scripture, the law of progress is still in force; after man as he now
is, shall appear manifested in the earth a humanity of a higher type than the present
animal man, namely, the “spiritual man,” as Paul calls him. Does the Scripture also

61. recognize this plan of progress by ages as still the plan of God? The contrast between
the present age and that which is to come, is indeed one of the fundamental things in
the inspired representation of the divinely established order. And we can now see
how, in this mode of representation, the Scriptures speak with scientific precision,
and harmonize completely with the best certified conceptions of nineteenth century
science. Not only, according to their teaching, is there to be still further progress,
progress manifested in the introduction of a new and higher type of manhood, even
that which is “from heaven,” but the introduction of that new manhood of the
resurrection to dominance in the creation is uniformly represented as marking the
beginning of a new age. And just herein, according to the Scripture, lies the contrast
between the age which now is and that which is to come; that in the age which is
now, the dominant type of life is that of the natural, or “animal,” man; in that which
is to come, the dominant type of life shall be “spiritual” or resurrection manhood,
manifested in men described by our Lord as those “who cannot die any more, but are
equal unto the angels.”
3. Another law of the Divine working in the bygone ages of the earth’s history, we
may call the law of anticipative or prophetic forms. This law has been formulated by
Professor Agassiz in the following words, which have been endorsed by the most
recent authorities as correctly representing the facts: “Earlier organic forms often
appear to foreshadow and predict others that are to succeed them in time, as the
winged and marine reptiles of the Mesozoic age foreshadow the birds and cetaceans
(that were to succeed them in the next age). There were reptiles before the Reptilian
age; mammals before the Mammalian age. These appear now like a prophecy in that
earlier time of an order of things not possible with the earlier combinations then
prevailing in the animal kingdom.” Such, then, has been the law in all the past ages.
Is it still in force, or is its operation ended? What a momentous question! How full of
both scientific and religious interest! For even on scientific grounds, as has been
shown, we are led to anticipate an age to come which shall be marked by the
dominance of a type of life higher than the present. And, as we have seen, the
suggestion of science is in this case confirmed by Scripture, which describes the life
and characteristics of that “age to come,” as science could not. Such descriptions are
not very minute, but so far as they go they are very definite and clear. Perhaps the
most full and clear single statement is that found in the words of Christ to the
Sadducees, to whom He spoke of an age to follow the present, to be inherited by men
in resurrection; a type of men who “neither marry nor are given in marriage. Neither
can they die any more: for they are equal unto the angels; and are sons of God, being
sons of the resurrection.” (Luk_20:35-36). Men incapable of subjection to death,
sons of God, perfectly holy—such is the race which shall come to headship in
creation in the future age. Herein again, then, the record of Scripture is consistent at
once with the system of law as revealed in the past, and with itself, in that, having
predicted an age to come, to be inherited by the higher order of resurrection
manhood, it sets forth also, as historic fact, the appearance of anticipative forms in
the age which now is. Not to speak of the cases of Enoch and Elijah, we have an
Illustrious instance of a prophetic type in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. In Him
was manifested a type of life transcending beyond measure embodied life as we know
it here. It appeared in One who claimed to be the Son of God, and who manifested
powers, in proof of this claim, such as well befitted it—powers which later, by one of
His disciples, were suggestively called “powers of the age to come,” and who finally
became the firstborn from the dead, being the firstborn son of the resurrection.
4. Another law to be observed in the Divine working in the early history of the earth,

62. is the law of creative interpositions. We must, on scientific grounds, affirm creative
intervention at least in the origination of matter, and of life, and of free moral agents.
The only alternative is absolute agnosticism on this subject. So much, then, as
regards the past. Creative interposition appears as included in the system of law.
How is it as regards the future? Are we now done with these manifestations of
creative power, or shall they, according to the Scripture, be witnessed again in the
future? For we are taught, as we have seen, that the present age, marked by the
presence and dominance of the animal man, shall end; and that another age shall
then follow, marked by the introduction of a new physical order, “a new heavens and
a new earth,”—an order of things to be inherited by an order of men called by our
Lord “children of God and sons of the resurrection,” sexless, sinless, and incapable of
dying. Has the man of the present age power to raise himself into this exalted order
of life? No one will pretend this. In particular, the natural, or psychical, animal man
of the present age cannot by any self-development or self-culture raise himself into
the order of the spiritual manhood of the coming age. For regeneration and for
resurrection alike he is powerless. Hence Holy Scripture tells us with utmost
plainness that what has been in time past, is now and shall be again. It tells us that
even in this present age the creative power of God is secretly working, in the “new
birth” of those who are chosen to become the sons of God and heirs of the age to
come, and therefore styles the regenerated man “a new creature.” As yet, however, it
is but the faint dawn of the creative morning. When the day breaks, the same
Scriptures teach us, shall be seen a new and magnificent display of the creative might
of God, introducing “a new heavens and a new earth,” and bringing in also the sons
of the resurrection with their spiritual bodies to inherit the glory. For as the new
order of the new age shall itself be introduced by creative power, so shall the new
manhood which is destined to inherit that order. For resurrection is by no possibility
the outcome of a natural process; it will be the direct result of an act of the almighty
power of God.
5. Reference may be made to another law of the Divine administration in the earlier
terrestrial history. It may be called the law of exterminations. The rocks bear
testimony to the fact that from time to time during the long creative ages, at the close
of one great period after another, there occurred exterminations, more or less
extensive, of various orders of life. Professor Dana, for instance, tells us, “At the close
of each period of the Palaeozoic ages, there was an extermination of a large number
of living species; and, as each epoch terminated . . . one, in most cases, less general.”
In particular, he says, again, that at the close of the Cretaceous age there was an
extermination “remarkable for its universality and thoroughness”; “the vast majority
of the species, and nearly all the characteristic genera disappeared.” The same thing
occurred again at the close of the Tertiary, and again in the Quaternary. The causes
of these various exterminations were different in different instances. Often they were
due to the elevation or submergence of extensive areas of the earth’s surface;
sometimes to the more sudden and rapid action of earthquakes; sometimes, within
narrow limits, they were caused by fiery eruptions from the interior of the earth.
Sometimes, again, they were due to changes of climate more or less extensive,
through the operation of causes which need not be here detailed. As a matter of fact,
it appears that the inbringing of a higher order of life and organization commonly
involved the extermination of various genera and species unsuited to the new
environment. This was demonstrably a part of the plan of God in the development of
His creative thoughts. Even lesser divisions of the great creative aeons were
sometimes marked in like manner. Up to the present human period, therefore, there

63. has been in force a law of exterminations, operating under the conditions specified.
But yet another age, according to Scripture, is to succeed the present. Is there reason
to anticipate that when the point shall be reached of transition from the present to
the coming age, the law of exterminations will again take effect? Does Scripture give
any hint in answer to this question, and is it here again in harmony with scientific
discovery as regards the laws of the past? The reader will have anticipated the
answer which must be given. For it is the repeated declaration of the New Testament
Scriptures that the present age shall end, as earlier ages have sometimes ended, with
catastrophic changes; this next time, with a catastrophe, not of water, but of fire,
giving a new and very terrible application of the ancient law of exterminations. For
we are told that a day is coming when “the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the
earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.” The day for which the
present heavens and earth are “reserved into fire,” shall also be a “day of the
perdition of ungodly men.” 2Pe_3:7).
6. Yet one other law of the creative working may be discerned as we study the record
of the rocks. We may well call it the law of preparation. It were thinkable, since God
is almighty, that each age should have been introduced as something absolutely new,
having no connection with the ages that had preceded it; that He should have
prepared the earth for the new orders of life which were to inhabit it, by a direct act
of creative power. But, as a matter of fact, God did not do in this way. On the
contrary, He so constituted the successive ages in the earth’s history that each was a
preparation for that which was to come afterward. Illustrations are as numerous as
the ages and periods of geologic time. Each age had its roots, so to speak, in the age
or ages that had preceded it. Indeed, the whole Scripture history is a series of
illustrations of this law. Just as in the geologic ages, here were subordinate periods,
less sharply distinct indeed, into which the greater ages were subdivided, so the
Scriptures divide the whole present age of the natural man into what, in theological
and biblical language, we call successive “dispensations.” In the case of each of these
we may see this law of preparation exemplified. Each dispensation was in order to
another which was to follow. The Adamic age prepared for the Noachian; the
Noachian, for the Mosaic; the Mosaic—and indeed all of these again—for the
Christian. So also, according to the same revelation, shall it prove to be as regards
the whole great age of the natural man. In a manner still more momentous and
comprehensive, this age is set forth as a preparation for the age which is to come, the
resurrection age. This may be true even in a physical sense. For in the new age,
according to Isaiah, Peter, and John, there is to be a new earth, which shall appear
out of the fires which shall yet consume the present world; and for this and the
physical changes which shall thus be brought about, we know not what forces may
not even now silently be working beneath our very feet. They teach this as regards
regeneration and sanctification. These are preparatory in their nature. It is thus that
the new man is “made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the
earth.” Even death, whether it be of the saint or of the sinner, has its part in the
preparatory plan. The application of this is evident. Whence such a harmony in the
one case, and in such unexpected directions, for which we search in the authoritative
books of other religions in vain? Whence had these men who wrote the Scriptures
this their wisdom? Assume what they claim for themselves, a special inspiration
from the Former of the universe Himself, and then the harmony with the original
system of natural law which pervades the representations of the past, present, and
future, is what we should expect. Deny this, and how shall the fact be explained?
Further, it is evident that the facts to which our attention has been directed, reverse

64. the argument which one often hears from unbelievers against the probability of the
truth of Scripture history and prophecy, derived from the observed uniformity of the
system of natural law. Instead of saying that the observed invariability of the system
of natural law makes the Scripture teachings with regard to the incarnation, the
resurrection, the new heavens and the new earth, and the judgment by which they
shall be introduced, to be intrinsically improbable, we must say the opposite! These
thoughts also have a bearing on the theodicy. Much in the present age is dark with
painful mystery. If there be a God infinite in holiness, goodness, and power, then, it
has been asked in all ages, Why such a miserable, imperfect world? Why the
earthquake, the pestilence, and the famine, with the destruction and agony they
bring? Why sorrow, and sin, and death? Why the disappointed hopes, the darkened
homes, empires wrecked, races degenerating, and disappearing from sight at last in a
morass of moral corruptions? These questions burden the holy, while the scoffer
answers in his desperation, “There is no God such as you dream!” If this were the last
age of earth, it is hard to see how such questions could be answered. But if we recall
to mind the ancient law of progress, and progress by ages, and that other law of
preparation, we may be able to see—not indeed the answer to our questionings, but
so much as shall enable us to hold fast, without wavering, our faith in the God of
nature, of history, and of revelation. (S. Kellogg, D. D.)
Creation
I. DEFINITION OF CREATION. By creation we mean that free act of the triune God by
which in the beginning for His own glory He made, without the use of pre-existing
materials, the whole visible and invisible universe. In explanation we notice—
1. Creation is not “production out of nothing,” as if “nothing” were a substance out of
which “something” could be formed.
2. Creation is not a fashioning of preexisting materials, nor an emanation from the
substance of Deity, but is a making of that to exist which once did not exist, either in
form or substance.
3. Creation is not an instinctive or necessary process of the Divine nature, but is the
free act of a rational will, put forth for a definite and sufficient end. Creation is
different in kind from that eternal process of the Divine nature in virtue of which we
speak of generation and procession. Begetting is eternal, out of time; creation is in
time, or with time.
4. Creation is the act of the triune God, in the sense that all the persons of the
Trinity, themselves uncreated, have a part in it—the Father as the originating, the
Son as the mediating, the Spirit as the realizing cause.
II. PROOF OF THE DOCTRINE OF CREATION. Creation is a truth of which mere
science or reason cannot fully assure us. Physical science can observe and record
changes, but it knows nothing of origins. Reason cannot absolutely disprove the eternity
of matter. For proof of the doctrine of Creation, therefore, we rely wholly upon
Scripture. Scripture supplements science, and renders its explanation of the universe
complete,
III. THEORIES WHICH OPPOSE CREATION.
1. Dualism. Of dualism there are two forms.

65. (1) That which holds to two self-existent principles, God and matter. These are
distinct from and co-eternal with each other. Matter, however, is an unconscious,
negative, and imperfect substance, which is subordinate to God, and is made the
instrument of His will. This was the view of the Alexandrian Gnostics. It was
essentially an attempt to combine with Christianity the Platonic conception of
the ᆖλη. In this way it thought to account for the existence of evil, and to escape
the difficulty of imagining a production without use of preexisting material. A
similar view has been held in modern times by John Stuart Mill, and apparently
by Frederick W. Robertson. With regard to this view we remark:
(a) The maxim ex nihilo nihil fit, upon which it rests, is true only in so far as
it asserts that no event takes place without a cause. It is false, if it mean that
nothing can ever be made except out of material previously existing. The
maxim is therefore applicable only to the realm of second causes, and does
not bar the creative power of the great first Cause. The doctrine of creation
does not dispense with a cause; on the other hand, it assigns to the universe a
sufficient cause in God. Martensen, “Dogmatics,” 116—“The nothing out of
which God creates the world, is the eternal possibilities of His will, which are
the sources of all the actualities of the world.”
(b) Although creation without the use of pre-existing material is
inconceivable, in the sense of being unpicturable to the imagination, yet the
eternity of matter is equally inconceivable. For creation without pre-existing
material, moreover, we find remote analogies in our own creation of ideas
and volitions, a fact as inexplicable as God’s bringing of new substances into
being. Mivart, “Lessons from Nature,” 371,372—“We have to a certain extent
an aid to the thought of absolute creation in our own free volition, which, as
absolutely originating and determining, may be taken as the type to us of the
creative act.” We speak of “the creative faculty” of the artist or poet. We
cannot give reality to the products of our imaginations, as God can to his. But
if thought were only substance, the analogy would be complete. Shedd,
“Dogm. Theol.,” 1.467—“Our thoughts and volitions are created ex nihilo, in
the sense that one thought is not made out of another thought, nor one
volition out of another volition.”
(c) It is unphilosophical to postulate two eternal substances, when one self-
existent Cause of all things will account for the facts.
(d) It contradicts our fundamental notion of God as absolute sovereign to
suppose the existence of any other substance to be independent of His will.
(e) This second substance with which God must of necessity work, since it is,
according to the theory, inherently evil and the source of evil, not only limits
God’s power, but destroys His blessedness.
(f) This theory does not answer its purpose of accounting for moral evil,
unless it be also assumed that spirit is material—in which case dualism gives
place to materialism. The other form of dualism is:
(1) That which holds to the eternal existence of two antagonistic spirits, one evil
and the other good. In this view, matter is not a negative and imperfect substance
which nevertheless has self-existence, but is either the work or the instrument of
a personal and positively malignant intelligence, who wages war against all good.
This was the view of the Manichaeans. Manichaeanism is a compound of

66. Christianity and the Persian doctrine of two eternal and opposite intelligences.
Zoroaster, however, held matter to be pure, and to be the creation of the good
Being. Mani apparently regarded matter as captive to the evil spirit, if not
absolutely his creation. Of this view we need only say that it is refuted
(a) by all the arguments for the unity, omnipotence, sovereignty, and
blessedness of God;
(b) by the Scripture representations of the prince of evil as the creature of
God and as subject to God’s control.
2. Emanation. This theory holds that the universe is of the same substance with God,
and is the product of successive evolutions from His being. This was the view of the
Syrian Gnostics. Their system was an attempt to interpret Christianity in the forms
of Oriental theosophy. A similar doctrine was taught, in the last century, by
Swedenborg. We object to it upon the following grounds:
(1) It virtually denies the infinity and transcendence of God—by applying to Him
a principle of evolution, growth, and progress which belongs only to the finite
and imperfect.
(2) It contradicts the Divine holiness—since man, who by the theory is of the
substance of God, is nevertheless morally evil.
(3) It leads logically to pantheism—since the claim that human personality is
illusory cannot be maintained without also surrendering belief in the personality
of God.
3. Creation from eternity. This theory regards creation as an act of God in eternity
past. It was propounded by Origen, and has been held in recent times by Martensen.
The necessity of supposing such creation from eternity has been argued upon the
grounds—
(1) That it is a necessary result of God’s omnipotence. But we reply that
omnipotence does not necessarily imply actual creation; it implies only power to
create. Creation, moreover, is in the nature of the case a thing begun. Creation
from eternity is a contradiction in terms, and that which is self-contradictory is
not an object of power.
(2) That it is impossible to conceive of time as having had a beginning, and since
the universe and time are co-existent, creation must have been from eternity. But
we reply that the argument confounds time with duration. Time is duration
measured by successions, and in this sense time can be conceived of as having
had a beginning.
(3) That the immutability of God requires creation from eternity. But we reply
that God’s immutability requires not an eternal creation but only an eternal plan
of creation.
(4) That God’s love renders necessary a creation from eternity. Although this
theory claims that creation is an act, in eternity past, of God’s free will, yet its
conceptions of God’s omnipotence and love, as necessitating creation, are
difficult to reconcile with the Divine independence or personality.
4. Spontaneous generation. This theory holds that creation is but the name for a
natural process still going on—matter itself having in it the power, under proper
conditions, of taking on new functions, and of developing into organic forms. This

67. view is held by Owen and Bastian. We object that
(1) It is a pure hypothesis, not only unverified, but contrary to all known facts.
(2) If such instances could be authenticated, they would prove nothing as against
a proper doctrine of creation—for there would still exist an impossibility of
accounting for these vivific properties of matter, except upon the Scriptural view
of an intelligent Contriver and Originator of matter and its laws. In short,
evolution implies previous involution—if anything comes out of matter, it must
first have been put in.
(3) This theory, therefore, if true, only supplements the doctrine of original,
absolute, immediate creation, with another doctrine of mediate and derivative
creation, or the development of the materials and forces originated at the
beginning. This development, however, cannot proceed to any valuable end
without the guidance of the same intelligence which initiated it.
IV. GOD’S END IN CREATION. In determining this end, we turn first to—
1. The testimony of Scripture. This may be summed up in four statements. God finds
His end
(1) in Himself;
(2) in His own will and pleasure;
(3) in His own glory;
(4) in the making known of His power, His wisdom, His holy name.
All these statements may be combined in the following, namely, that God’s supreme end
in creation is nothing outside of Himself, but is His own glory—in the revelation, in and
through creatures, of the infinite perfection ofHis own being. Since holiness is the
fundamental attribute in God, to make Himself, His own pleasure, His own glory, His
own manifestation, to be His end in creation, is to find His chief end in His own
holiness, its maintenance, expression, and communication. To make this His chief end,
however, is not to exclude certain subordinate ends, such as the revelation of His
wisdom, power, and love, and the consequent happiness of innumerable creatures to
whom this revelation is made.
2. The testimony of reason. That His own glory, in the sense just mentioned, is God’s
supreme end in creation, is evident from the following considerations:
(1) God’s own glory is the only end actually and perfectly attained in the
universe. But while neither the holiness nor the happiness of creatures is actually
and perfectly attained, God’s glory is made known and will be made known in
both the saved and the lost. This, then, must be God’s supreme end in creation.
This doctrine teaches us that none can frustrate God’s plan. God will get glory out
of every human life.
(2) God’s glory is the end intrinsically most valuable. The good of creatures is of
insignificant importance compared with this. Wisdom dictates that the greater
interest should have precedence of the less.
(3) His own glory is the only end which consists with God’s independence and
sovereignty. If anything in the creature is the last end of God, God is dependent
upon the creature. But since God is dependent only on Himself, He must find in
Himself His end. To create is not to increase His blessedness, but only to reveal

68. it.
(4) His own glory is an end which comprehends and secures, as a subordinate
end, every interest of the universe. The interests of the universe are bound up in
the interests of God. Glory is not vain-glory, and in expressing His ideal, that is,
in expressing Himself, in His creation, He communicates to His creatures the
utmost possible good. This self-expression is not selfishness but benevolence. No
true poet writes for money or for fame. God does not manifest Himself for the
sake of what He can make by it. Self-manifestation is an end in itself. But God’s
self-manifestation comprises all good to His creatures.
(5) God’s glory is the end which in a right moral system is proposed to creatures.
This must therefore be the end which He in whose image they are made proposes
to Himself.
V. RELATION OF THE DOCTRINE OF CREATION TO OTHER DOCTRINES.
1. To the holiness and benevolence of God. This is not a perfect world. It was not
perfect even when originally constituted. Its imperfection is due to sin. God made it
with reference to the Fall—the stage was arranged for the great drama of sin and
redemption which was to be enacted thereon. We accept Bushnell’s idea of
“anticipative consequences,” and would illustrate it by the building of a hospital
room while yet no member of the family is sick, and by the salvation of the patriarchs
through a Christ yet to come. If the earliest vertebrates of geological history were
types of man and preparations for his coming, then pain and death among those
same vertebrates may equally have been a type of man’s sin and its results of misery.
If sin bad not been an incident, foreseen and provided for, the world might have been
a Paradise. As a matter of fact, it will become a paradise only at the completion of the
redemptive work of Christ.
2. To the wisdom and free-will of God.
3. To providence and redemption. (A. H. Strong, D. D.)
The creation as a revelation of God
1. His omnipotence.
2. His wisdom.
3. His goodness.
4. His love. (J. P. Lange, D. D.)
The world according to its various forms
1. As creation.
2. As nature.
3. As cosmos.
4. As aeon. (J. P. Lange, D. D.)

69. The work of God and the work of man
What is different, and what is common to both.
1. The order.
2. The constancy.
3. The gradual progression.
4. The aim. (J. P. Lange, D. D.)
The creation and revelation of life from God
1. The foundations of life in the elementary world.
2. The symbolical phenomena of life in the animal world.
3. The reality and truth of life in the human world. (J. P.Lange, D. D.)
The birth of the world also the birth of time
1. The fact that the world and time are inseparable.
2. The application.
(1) The operations in the world are bound to the order of time.
(2) Time is given for labour. (J. P. Lange, D. D.)
The outline of creation
heaven and earth:—
1. Heaven and earth in union.
2. Earth for heaven.
3. Heaven for earth. (J. P. Lange, D. D.)
Creation
How to begin to write the Bible must have been a question of great difficulty. The
beginning which is given here commends itself as peculiarly sublime. Regard it as you
please, as literal, historical, prabolical, it is unquestionably marked by adequate energy
and magnificence of style. He finds that he must say something about the house before
he says anything about the tenant, but he feels that that something must be the least
possible.
I. THIS ACCOUNT OF CREATION IS DEEPLY RELIGIOUS, and from this fact I infer
that the whole book of which it is the opening chapter is intended to be a religious and
not a scientific revelation.
II. THIS ACCOUNT OF CREATION EVIDENTLY ADMITS OF MUCH ELUCIDATION
AND EXPANSION. Moses does not say, “I have told you everything, and if any man shall

70. ever arise to make a note or comment upon my words, he is to be regarded as a liar and a
thief.” He gives rather a rough outline which is to be filled up as life advances. He says in
effect “This is the text, now let the commentators come with their notes.” This first
chapter of Genesis is like an acorn, for out of it have come great forests of literature; it
must have some pith in it, and sap, and force, for verily its fertility is nothing less than a
miracle.
III. This account of creation, though leaving so much to be elucidated, is in harmony
with fact in a sufficient degree to GIVE US CONFIDENCE IN THE THINGS WHICH
REMAIN TO BE ILLUSTRATED.
IV. THERE IS A SPECIAL GRANDEUR IN THE ACCOUNT WHICH IS HERE GIVEN
OF THE ORIGIN OF MAN. “Let Us make man”—“make,” as if little by little, a long
process, in the course of which man becomes a party to his own malting! Nor is this
suggestion so wide of the mark as might at first appear. Is man not even now in process
of being “made”? Must not all the members of the “Us” work upon him in order to
complete him and give him the last touch of imperishable beauty? The Father has
shaped him, the Son has redeemed him, the Spirit is now regenerating and sanctifying
him, manifold ministries are now working upon him, to the end that he may “come to a
perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.” (J. Parker, D. D.)
God the Maker of heaven and earth
I. As regards the time of creation we are told nothing. There is no note of date or time
until after the creation of Adam. Six successive periods of creation are spoken of, with no
indication as to the length of each.
II. There is no contradiction, I think, between any result as to the world’s age at which
science may arrive, and the record with which the Book of Genesis opens. Are there not
clear indications that the creation of the world was not the result of the omnipotent act
of a moment, but of the Divine creative energy working (as we ever still see it working)
through gradual processes, through successive gradations?
III. As long as science keeps to her own great sphere of discovering and codifying facts,
we have only to thank her for her labours. I need scarcely say, however, that a certain
school of scientific men are not content with this. They leave the boundaries of science,
and enter the domain of theology. They say, because we find these successive stages of
progress in creation—this development of one period from another—we will regard
matter as having in itself all power and potency of life. They will not mention God at all,
or if they do it is merely as another name for law. In the law which they discover from its
operations—in the potency which they find in matter itself, they see sufficient to account
for all creation; and we can dispense with that myth which we call “God the Father
Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth.” It is here they impugn Genesis. It was not “God”
who created these things; they were evolved from eternal matter, in accordance with
irresistible law. The Bible is primarily a religious book. This chapter is not meant to tell
us all the varied processes through which God carried on His great creative work. The
lesson Moses had to tell the people he ruled when he brought them out of a land where
material force was everything; where men worshipped the physical universe—the fruits
of the field, and the moon and stars of heaven—was, that there was a God beyond all
these; that these were only the works of His creative power. Without Him they could not
be. It was not a scientific view of the material universe, but a religious view, that Moses
wished to give these people. He sought to impress on them that, though these things

71. passed through various add successive stages, God was there. God did it. (T. T. Shore, M.
A.)
The creation
We must judge the book by the times.
I. The first principle to be inferred is that of THE UNITY OF GOD. One Divine Being is
represented as the sole Cause of the universe. Now this is the only foundation of a true
religion for humanity.
II. The next principle in this chapter is that ALL NOBLE WORK IS GRADUAL. God
spent six days at His work, and then said it was very good. In proportion to the nobility
of anything, is it long in reaching its perfection. The greatest ancient nation took the
longest time to develope its iron power; the securest political freedom in a nation did not
advance by bounds, or by violent revolutions, but in England “broadened slowly down
from precedent to precedent.” The greatest modern society—the Church of Christ—grew
as Christ prophesied, from a beginning as small as a grain of mustard seed into a noble
tree, and grows now more slowly than other society has ever grown—so slowly, that
persons who are not far-seeing say that it has failed. The same law is true of every
individual Christian life. Faith, to be strong, must be of gradual growth. Love, to be
unconquerable, must be the produce not of quick-leaping excitement, but of patience
having her perfect work. Spiritual character must be moulded into the likeness of Christ
by long years of battle and of trial, and we are assured that eternity is not too long to
perfect it.
III. Connected with this universal principle is another—that THIS GRADUAL GROWTH
OF NOBLE THINGS, CONSIDERED IN ITS GENERAL APPLICATION TO THE
UNIVERSE, IS FROM THE LOWER TO THE HIGHER—is, in fact, a progress, not a
retrogression. We are told in this chapter that first arose the inorganic elements, and
then life—first the life of the plant, then of the animal, and then of man, “the top and
crown of things.” It is so also in national life—first family life, then pastoral, then
agricultural, then the ordered life of a polity, the highest. It is the same with religion.
First, natural religion, then the dispensation of the law, then the more spiritual
dispensation of the prophets, then the culmination of the external revelation through
man in Christ, afterwards the higher inward dispensation of the universal Spirit, to be
succeeded by a higher still—the immediate presence of God in all. So also with our own
spiritual life. First, conviction of need, then the rapture of felt forgiveness, then God’s
testing of the soul, through which moral strength and faith grow firm; and as these grow
deeper, love, the higher grace, increasing; and as love increases, noble work and nobler
patience making life great and pure, till holiness emerges, and we are at one with God;
and then, finally, the Christian calm—serene old age, with its clear heaven and sunset
light, to prophesy a new and swift approaching dawn for the emancipated spirit.
IV. The next truth to be inferred from this chapter is that THE UNIVERSE WAS
PREPARED FOR THE GOOD AND ENJOYMENT OF MAN. I cannot say that this is
universal, for the stars exist for themselves, and the sun for other planets than ours; and
it is a poor thing to say that the life of animals and plants is not for their own enjoyment
as well as ours! but so far as they regard us, it is an universal truth, and the Bible was
written for our learning. Therefore, in this chapter, the sun and stars are spoken of only
in their relation to us, and man is set as master over all creation. It is on the basis of this
truth that man has always unconsciously acted, and made progress in civilization.

72. V. The next principle is THE INTERDEPENDENCE OF REST AND WORK. The
Sabbath is the outward expression of God’s recognition of this as a truth for man. It was
commanded because it was necessary. “The Sabbath was made for man,” said Christ.
And the same principle ought to be extended over our whole existence.
VI. Lastly, there is one specially spiritual principle which glorifies this chapter, and the
import of which is universal, “GOD MADE MAN IN HIS OWN IMAGE.” It is the divinest
revelation in the Old Testament. In it is contained the reason of all that has ever been
great in human nature or in human history. In it are contained all the sorrows of the race
as it looks back to its innocence, and all the hope of the race as it aspires from the depths
of its fall to the height of the imperial palace whence it came. In it is contained all the joy
of the race as it sees in Christ this great first principle revealed again. In it are contained
all the history of the human heart, all the history of the human mind, all the history of
the human conscience, all the history of the human spirit. It is the foundation stone of all
written and unwritten poetry, of all metaphysics, of all ethics, of all religion. (Stopford A.
Brooke, M. A.)
Creation’s birth
1. What a strange opening to a book! Without observation, parade, flourish.
2. Strange that there is no argument on the being of God. The Architect is simply
named in the description of the building. A portrait in oil suggests a painter.
3. There is a gradual unveiling of God as you proceed with the book. God reveals
Himself to us by slow processes.
I. What was BEFORE the beginning?
1. God in underived and perfect existence.
2. God dwelling in the silence and grandeur of His own eternity.
II. What was IN the beginning?
1. When was the beginning? Date not fixed here. We only know the fact, that there
was a beginning.
2. What occurred in the beginning? The material universe began to be.
III. What FOLLOWED the beginning?
1. Law.
2. Life.
3. History.
4. Redemption.
Remarks:
1. From a beginning we know not what may come.
2. The beginning contains what follows. (J. S. Withington.)
God first

73. I. THE DEVOUT RECOGNITION OF GOD SHOULD PRECEDE ALL PHILOSOPHY.
The God whom we worship is not a metaphysical idea; a form of thought; a
philosophical abstraction; but a living, personal, eternal Being, apart from and prior to
all human thought. He is not a creation of the intellect, but the intellect’s Creator. We
must begin with Him. Is not this one of the child’s first thoughts, and one which life’s
long experience but deepens and confirms—that it was God who created all things? Does
not the bare statement carry with it its own conviction? What need is there of proof?
Who argues that there is a solid earth on which he stands; a sun shining in midday sky?
Who constructs arguments to prove his own existence? And does not God stand at the
beginning of all thought and all argument? And is not the denial of Him a sheer and
wilful absurdity which no attempt at proof can make even plausible?
II. THE DEVOUT RECOGNITION OF GOD SHOULD PRECEDE ALL SCIENCE. The
fact of His existence lies at the foundation of all physical science, and must be admitted
as its first and most essential fact. For what is science in general, or a science in
particular, but the knowledge of facts—their qualities, relations, and causes—arranged
and classified? But if science begins by refusing to admit, or by failing to perceive, the
First Fact, and the Great Cause of all things? Does nothing exist but what the knife of the
anatomist, or the tests of the chemist can detect? Matter and force do exist, or matter
under some plastic power passing through innumerable changes. But what is it? And is
this all? Are there no marks of intelligence?—purpose?—will? Is there no distinction of
beauty?—of right and wrong? And what are these but marks of the ever-present God?
Atheism explains nothing, and Pantheism nothing. No! Science cannot discover God. It
is in the light of God’s presence that science is best revealed. Science and philosophy
alike presuppose HIM.
III. THE DEVOUT RECOGNITION OF GOD PRECEDES ALL MORALITY AND
RELIGION. It lies at the basis of any sound ethical theory, and any true religious system
of doctrine and practice. Religion, whether natural or revealed, is based on this fact. It is
no more the part of religion than it is of philosophy and science to discover or to
demonstrate the existence of God, but to worship Him. (F. J. Falding, D. D.)
The creation
I. THERE WAS A BEGINNING, AND THIS WAS THE ACT OF GOD.
II. THE DISORDER OF PRIMAL CREATION IS REDUCED TO ORDER BY THE
POWER AND INTELLIGENCE OF THE DIVINE WILL. The life of God is imparted to
the chaotic world.
III. THIS PROGRESS OF CREATION PASSES FROM ORDER, THROUGH
ORGANIZATION, INTO LIFE, UNTIL IT CULMINATES IN MAN. Plants and animals
are “after their kind.” Not so with man. He is “after the likeness” of God. Lessons:
1. The adaptation of this world to be man’s place of abode while God tries him by the
duty He has placed upon him to perform.
2. All things are subject to man’s use and government.
3. The human race is of one blood, derived from one pair.
4. God loves order. (L. D. Bevan, LL. B.)

74. Creation
This simple sentence—
I. DENIES ATHEISM. It assumes the being of God.
II. DENIES POLYTHEISM. Confesses the one eternal Creator.
III. DENIES MATERIALISM. Asserts the creation of matter.
IV. DENIES PANTHEISM. Assumes the existence of God before all things, and apart
from them.
V. DENIES FATALISM. Involves the freedom of the Eternal Being. (James G. Murphy,
LL. D.)
Moses and Darwin
Though the Hebrew prophet was not a teacher of science, he has in this chapter given us
the alphabet of religious science. The great principles of things were disclosed to him,
and in these verses he has given us a rapid and suggestive sketch of the great outlines of
God’s creative work. His instructions were not incorrect, but incomplete, in order to
meet the pupil’s capacity.
I. LOOK AT THE HARMONY BETWEEN MOSES AND DARWIN.
1. According to Moses, creation has its origin in God. Darwin has gone down into the
bowels of the earth, he has traced this globe to a nebulous light, and pursued the
molecules to their furthest point. But he has confessed that beyond there is a mystery
which baffles all skill, and this mystery he calls God. According to him the material
universe has a spiritual origin, and before and after each creation he would write the
word “God.”
2. According to Moses, God’s method of creation was by slow development.
Evolution is the great faith of the scientific world today. It directs us to trace
everywhere the processes of unfolding growth. And according to Darwin these
processes are the methods of creative wisdom.
II. THE GROUNDLESSNESS OF ALL FEARS FROM THE TEACHING OF TRUE
SCIENCE.
1. No honest criticism can destroy God’s truth.
2. Evolution does not banish God or design from nature.
III. LESSONS FROM THE LIFE OF DARWIN.
1. Patience and perseverance in study. He accumulated facts, but he took time to
reflect upon them before he formed them into systems. All great work is slow work.
2. Darwin loved nature, and therefore could interpret her.
3. Darwin lived a simple, true, and loving life. (D. B. James.)
The creation
I. THE ORIGIN OF THE UNIVERSE.

75. 1. The universe not self-existent, self-evolved, or eternal, but
“created.”
2. Brought into existence by the exercise of Divine power. “God created.”
3. Stages in process of formation implied.
II. THE ORIGIN OF THE PRESENT ORDER OF OUR PLANET.
1. The chaotic condition of the planet described.
2. The Divine Author of the present order.
3. The first recorded fiat.
III. THE SUMMARY OF THE CREATIVE WEEK (Gen_2:4-8). Lessons:
1. Learn the comprehensiveness of the opening sentence of the
Bible.
2. Learn to appreciate this clear, refreshing, and authoritative declaration that the
origin of the universe and of man is a personal, all-wise, almighty, and loving God.
3. Learn the lofty dignity of our primal spiritual nature in its identification with the
ineffable nature of God.
4. Learn that to worship, love, and obey God, is our reasonable service. (D. C.
Hughes, M. A.)
Genesis of the universe
I. A FUNDAMENTAL QUESTION. What is the origin of things? Perhaps the sublimest
question mortal man can ask. A profoundly religious question, going down to the very
roots of Truth, and Science, and Theology, and Character, and Worship.
II. THE PRECISE PROBLEM. It is not touching the shaping of matter already existing;
it is touching the origin of matter itself.
III. IMMENSITY OF THE PROBLEM. The universe, practically speaking, is infinite.
IV. THE PROBLEM ITSELF. Here are sixty or seventy elements which, so far as we
know at present, make up the existing universe. And the point to be exactly observed is
this: not one solitary atom of these elements which make up the universe can man make.
All that man can do is to operate on these elements, compounding them in various
proportions, using the compounds in various ways, shaping them, building with them,
and so on. In short, man must have something on which, as well as with which, to
operate. Here, then, is the mighty question: “How account for this tremendous fact?
Whence came this inconceivable amount of material?”
1. The question is legitimate. We cannot help asking it. Every effect must have a
cause. Here is a stupendously measureless effect: what caused it? Not one man, not
all mankind together, with the most perfect machinery conceivable, can make one
solitary atom of matter. Where, then, did all this measureless, unutterable,
inconceivable quantity of matter composing this material universe come from?
Suppose you say it came from a few cells or germs, or perhaps one. That does not
answer the question. The axiom, “Every effect must have a cause,” implies another
axiom: “Effects are proportional to their causes”—that is to say, causes are measured

76. by their effects. If the whole material universe came from a few germs and from
nothing else, then the weight of these germs must be equal to the weight of the
universe. You cannot get out of a thing more than is in it.
2. Only two answers are possible.
(1) The answer of logic. The first is this: Matter never had any origin at all; it has
always existed. It is the one and only conclusion at which the logician, trusting
solely to the logical processes and denying miracles, can possibly arrive.
(2) The answer of Scripture. The other answer is the first verse of the Book of
God: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” Ah, here comes
out the infinite difference between man and God: Man is only a builder,
constructing with materials; God is a Creator, constructing without materials.
God creates atoms; man fashions molecules.
3. Grandeur of the answer. Thus this word “create” is the divinest word in language,
human or angelic. It is the august separatrix between the creature and the Creator,
between the finite and the Infinite. Well, then, may our text stand forth as the
opening sentence of God’s communication to man. For all theology is wrapped up in
this one simple, majestic word—Created. It gives us an unbeginning, almighty,
personal, self-conscious, voluntary God.
4. Final cause of creation. Why did God create the material universe? Let us not be
wise above what is written. And yet I cannot help thinking that there is a reason for
the creation in the very constitution of our spiritual nature. We need the excitation of
sensible objects. We need a material arena for self-discipline. As a matter of fact, we
receive our moral training for eternity in the school of matter. It is the material world
around us, coming into contact with our moral personalities through the senses of
touching and seeing, and hearing and tasting, which tests our moral character. And
so it comes to pass that the way in which we are impressed by every object we
consciously see or touch probes us, and will testify for us or against us on the great
day. But while this is one of the proximate causes of the creation, the final cause is
the glory of God. It is the majestic mirror from which we see His invisible things,
even His eternal power and Godhead (Rom_1:20). (G. D. Boardman.)
Creation
I. THE MAKER OF THE WORLD, God. The great I AM. The First Cause.
II. THE MAKING OF THE WORLD.
1. By God’s Word.
2. By God’s Spirit.
III. THE MEANING OF THE WORLD. God created the world—
1. For His own pleasure and glory (Rev_4:11).
2. For the happiness of all His creatures (Psa_104:1-35).
LESSONS:
1. Faith in God, as the Almighty, the All-wise Creator.
2. Reverence for God, as wonderful in all His doings.

77. 3. Gratitude to God, as providing for the wants of His creatures. (W. S. Smith, B. D.)
The word “earth” as used in Scripture
In Scripture, as well as in ordinary language, the word “earth” is used in two different
meanings: sometimes it means the whole globe on which we live; and sometimes only
the solid dust with which the globe is covered, which is supposed not to be much more
than from nine to twelve miles in thickness.
1. The word “earth” is used to express the whole globe in the 1st verse of Genesis—
“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth”; and it is so used also in the
40th chapter of Isaiah, verse 22; and again in the 26th chapter of Job, verse 7, where
we are told that the Lord “hangeth the earth upon nothing.”
2. The word “earth” is also used to express the solid and rocky crust with which our
globe is everywhere covered, and on which rest the vast waters of the ocean. It is
used in this sense in the 10th verse of the 1st chapter of Genesis: “God called the dry
land earth.” Earth is the dry land as distinguished from the sea; it means the
continents and islands which appear above the waters.
(1) You know that it is round.
(2) We know that our earth goes round the sun once every year in an immense
oval course, turning round upon itself at the same time as a ball does when it
rolls along.
(3) The earth has been measured. It is 25,000 miles all round, or in
circumference, and nearly 8,000 miles straight through, or in diameter. You may
imagine its size when I tell you that it has been reckoned that Mont Blanc, the
highest mountain of Europe, is no larger when compared with the earth than the
thickness of one of your hairs is to your head, or like a small grain of sand placed
on a house twenty feet in height.
(4) This earth, although covered all round with a solid crust, is all on fire within.
Its interior is supposed to be a burning mass of melted, glowing metals, fiery gas,
and boiling lava. This was mentioned in the Bible long before learned men had
found it out for themselves by observation. It is spoken of in the Book of Job,
about three thousand years ago (Job_28:5). We often read also in Scripture of
the mountains being “melted like wax,” rising and leaping like Iambs, and raised
from the depths of the earth by the force of the inward fire (Psa_97:5). We read
in the Psalms of a time “before the mountains were brought forth” (Psa_90:2);
and we read also in Proverbs of a time “before the mountains were settled” Pro_
8:25), while they were yet being tossed and thrown up by the mighty power of
fire. So great is the heat within the earth, that in Switzerland and other countries
where the springs of water are very deep, they bring to the surface the warm
mineral waters so much used for baths and medicine for the sick; and it is said
that if you were to dig very deep down into the earth, the temperature would
increase at the rate of a degree of the thermometer for every hundred feet, so that
at the depth of seven thousand feet, or a mile and a half, all the water that you
found would be boiling, and at the depth of about ten miles all the rocks would be
melted. (Prof. Gaussen.)

78. Design
Creation is not caprice or chance. It is design. The footprints on the sands of time speak
of design, for geology admits that her discoveries all are based upon design. And this
verse, as the whole creation narrative, confirms the admission of science as to design.
Therefore, both the Revelation of God and the Revelation of Nature go hand in hand.
Which, then, is the higher? Surely, Revelation. And why?
1. Because Revelation alone can tell the design. Nature is a riddle without revelation.
I may admire the intricate mechanism of machinery, or even part of the design
hanging from the loom; but all is apparent confusion until the master takes me to the
office, places plans before me, and so discloses the design. Revelation is that plan—
that key by which man is able to unlock the arcana of nature’s loom.
2. Because that design is the law of Christ. All are parts of one mighty creation, of
which Christ is the centre. (Wm. Adamson.)
On beginnings
I. VARIOUS KINDS OF BEGINNINGS.
1. Some beginnings are thoroughly evil, and their evil nature is beyond dispute. To
begin to steal, however small the theft; to begin to lie, however trifling the falsehood;
to begin selling things for what they are not, and by false weight and measure,
however the deception may escape discovery; to begin to swear, however silent the
oath may be kept; to begin dissolute practices, however trimly they may be dressed
up.
2. Other beginnings are innocent, but such as are easily turned into an evil course.
One begins to take proper recreation, and ends in a pleasure seeking, self-indulgent,
idle, undutiful habit.
3. Other beginnings are a mixture of good and evil. It is undoubtedly well that a
drunkard should become a total abstainer; but it is not an unmixed good when with
his abstention he mingles self-righteous pride and unjust reflections on others.
4. Moreover, there are good beginnings whose good character is complete and
unquestionable. It is always good to set ourselves, for Christ’s sake, to do honestly, to
work diligently, to show mercy, to pray believingly, to help and succour, and
sympathize with one another. Every really Christian beginning is an entire good.
II. HOW BEGINNINGS ARE MADE.
1. Bad beginnings are made without forethought and resolve, without definite
intention, choice, and premeditation; in a word, heedlessly.
2. Good beginnings are made with forethought, and election, and predetermination.
“What shall I do with my life?” is a question for every man who would be right
minded.
(1) Good beginnings are made in the light. An enlightened choice is a first
requisite.
(2) Good beginnings are made with worthy ends in view.
(3) Good beginnings are to be made earnestly. If our desire is for the beginning
of the goodness of God in our characters, it is a desire which shames sloth. (J. E.

79. Gibberd.)
God the Author of all things.
“In the corner of a little garden,” said the late Dr. Beattie, of Aberdeen, “without
informing any one of the circumstance, I wrote in the mould with my finger the initial
letters of my son’s name, and sowed garden cress in the furrows, covered up the seed,
and smoothed the ground. Ten days after this he came running up to me, and with
astonishment in his countenance told me his name was growing in the garden. I laughed
at the report, and seemed to disregard it, but he insisted on my going to see what had
happened. “Yes,” said I carelessly, “I see it is so, but what is there in this worth notice? Is
it not mere chance?” “It cannot be so,” he said, “somebody must have contrived matters
so as to produce it.” “Look at yourself,” I replied, “and consider your hands and fingers,
your legs and feet; came you hither by chance?” “No,” he answered, “something must
have made me.” “And who is that something?” I asked. He said, “I don’t know.” I
therefore told him the name of that Great Being who made him and all the world. This
lesson affected him greatly, and he never forgot it or the circumstances that introduced
it.”
Seeking the true God
Twenty years ago, when Christian missions scarcely existed in Japan, a young Japanese
of good family met with a book on geography in the Chinese language, which had been
compiled by an American missionary in China. It began with these words: “In the
beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” What could this mean? Who was that
God? Certainly He was not known in Japan; perhaps He might live in America, whence
the author of the book came. The young man determined to go to America and seek for
God. He left Japan secretly, at the peril of his life; for the old law was then still in force,
under which death was the penalty incurred by any Japanese who quitted his country.
He made his way to China, and thence to the United States. There, after some perplexing
experiences, he did find the God he had been seeking, and with his whole heart
embraced the faith of Christ. That young man, Joseph Nisima, is now Principal of a
Native Christian College at Kioto, the ancient sacred capital of Japan. (E. Stock.)
A question for atheists
Napoleon the First, with all his disdain for men, bowed to one power that he was pleased
to regard as greater than himself. In the heart of an atheistic age he replied to the
smattering theorists of his day, “Your arguments gentlemen, are very fine. But who,”
pointing up to the evening sky, “who made all these?” And even the godless science of
our times, while rejecting the scriptural answer to this question, still confesses that it has
no other to give. “The phenomena of matter and force,” says Tyndall, “lie within our
intellectual range; and as far as they reach we will, at all hazard, push our inquiries. But
behind, and above, and around all, the real mystery of the universe lies unsolved, and as
far as we are concerned, is incapable of solution.” But why incapable of solution? Why
not already solved, so far as we are concerned, in this “simple, unequivocal, exhaustive,
majestic” alpha of the Bible—“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth”?
(J. B. Clark.)

80. The folly of atheism
A suggestive scene took place lately in a railway car that was crossing the Rocky
Mountains. A quiet business man, who with the other passengers, had been silently
watching the vast range of snow-clad peaks, by him seen for the first time, said to his
companion: “No man, it seems to me, could look at that scene without feeling himself
brought nearer to his Creator.” A dapper lad of eighteen, who had been chiefly engaged
in caressing his moustache, pertly interrupted, “If you are sure there is a Creator.” “You
are an atheist,” said the stranger, turning to the lad. “I am an agnostic,” raising his voice.
“I am investigating the subject. I take nothing for granted. I am waiting to be convinced.
I see the mountains, I smell the rose, I hear the wind; therefore, I believe that
mountains, roses, and wind exist. But I cannot see, smell, or hear God. Therefore—” A
grizzled old cattle raiser glanced over his spectacles at the boy. “Did you ever try to smell
with your eyes?” he said, quietly. “No.” “Or hear with your tongue, or taste with your
ears?” “Certainly not.” “Then why do you try to apprehend God with faculties which are
only meant for material things?” “With what should I apprehend Him?” said the youth,
with a conceited giggle. “With your intellect and soul?—but I beg your pardon”—here he
paused—“some men have not breadth and depth enough of intellect and soul to do this,
This is probably the reason that you are an agnostic.” The laugh in the car effectually
stopped the display of any more atheism that day.
Creation a comforting thought
When Mr. Simeon, of Cambridge, was on his dying bed, his biographer relates that,
“After a short pause, he looked round with one of his bright smiles, and asked, ‘What do
you think especially gives me comfort at this time? The creation! Did Jehovah create the
world, or did I? I think He did; now, if He made the world, He can sufficiently take care
of me.’”
Man’s limited knowledge of nature
Systems of nature! To the wisest man, wide as is his vision, nature remains of quite
infinite depth, of quite infinite expansion; and all experience thereof limits itself to some
few computed centuries and square miles, The course of nature’s phases, on this our
little fraction of a planet, is partially known to us, but who knows what deeper courses
these depend on! What infinitely larger cycle (of causes) our little epicycle revolves on!
To the minnow every cranny and pebble, and quality and accident, of its little native
creek may have become familiar; but does the minnow understand the ocean tides and
periodic currents, the trade winds and monsoons, and moon’s eclipses; by all which the
condition of its little creek is regulated? (T. Carlyle.)
COKE, "Genesis 1:1. This verse may be understood as a general introduction to the
account of the creation, which Moses is about to give; asserting, in confutation of all who
held the eternity or fortuitous formation of the world, that the Almighty God gave a
beginning to it, by creating the heaven and the earth. It may also be understood as a part
of the following account, expressing, that God, in the first place, created that substance
in a chaotic form, out of which the regular and beautiful system of the heaven and earth
arose, according to the process described in the subsequent verses.
In the beginning— i.e.. The beginning of time.

81. God— The Hebrew word is ‫אלהים‬ Elohim, which speaks, (1.) The power of God, Creator.
El signifies the strong God. (2.) The plurality of persons in the Godhead, Father, Son,
and Holy Spirit. This plural name of God in Hebrew, which speaks of him as many
though he be one, is to us a savour of life unto life, confirming our faith in the doctrine of
the Trinity; whatever it might have been to the Gentile world.
Learn hence the object of our worship, the Creator, the Elohim, three persons, but only
one and true God. His right to us is undoubted; all we have, and are, is of his bounty.
Most justly, therefore, should we yield up ourselves to him, in love and adoration, by
whom, and for whom are all things. Happy that heart which is thus led to answer the end
of its creation!
Created the heaven— Some commentators, who could no sooner read the word
heaven, than their ideas were carried into the superior realms, and peculiar residence of
God, have strangely asserted, that the creation of the angels and the beatific heavens,
is expressed here: whereas there is nothing plainer, from Genesis 1:8 than that the
heaven here meant is that firmament, with its furniture of sun, moon, stars, &c. which is
the object of our immediate sight and attention.
LANGE, "This account of the world’s creation evidently forms an ascending line, a series
of generations whose highest point and utmost limit is reached in man. The six days’
works arrange themselves in orderly contrast; and in correspondence to this are the
sections as they have been distinguished by us: a. The creation of heaven and earth in
general, and which may also be regarded as the first constituting of the symbolical
opposition of the two; b. the three first creative days, or the three great divisions which
constitute the great elementary oppositions or polarities of the world, and which are the
conditioning of all creature-life: 1. The element of light and the dark shadow-casting
masses, or the concrete darkness, and which we must not confound with the evening and
the morning; 2. the gaseous form of the æther, especially of the atmosphere, and the
fluid form of the earth-sphere; 3. the opposition between the water and the firm land. In
respect to this it must be observed that the waters, of Genesis 1:2, are a different thing
from the waters of Genesis 1:6; Genesis 1:9, since it still encloses the light and the matter
of the earth. Moreover, “the waters” of Genesis 1:6 is not yet properly water; since it
encloses still the earth material. The first mention of elementary water in the proper
sense, is at Genesis 1:9. c. The three last creative days, wherein the above parallel is to be
observed; d. the limit or aim of creation—man—the sabbath of God.
4. Genesis 1:1-2, the ground-laying for the creation of the heaven and the earth.
Considered cosmologically and geologically.—In the beginning.— The construction
maintained by Bunsen and others (Raschi, Ewald, Aben Ezra) is as follows: In the
beginning when God created heaven and earth, and when the earth was waste and
desolate, and darkness was over the primeval flood, and the breath of God moved upon
the waters, then God said, Let there be light, and there was light. This construction
Isaiah, in the first place, opposed throughout to the language of Genesis, as in its brief
yet grand declarations it proceeds from one concluded sentence to another. Secondly, it
contradicts the context, in which the creation of light is a significant, yet still an isolated,
moment. If we were to follow Bunsen, it would be the introduction of the Persian light-

82. religion rather than the religion of the Old Testament. And, finally, in the third place, it
obliterates that distinguishing ground-idea of the theocratic monotheism with which, in
the very start, the word of revelation confronts all pagan dualism,—in other words, the
truth, that in regard to the manner of creation, God is the sole causality of heaven and
earth in an absolute sense. The view of Aben Ezra that ‫ית‬ ִ‫אׁש‬ ֵ‫ְר‬‫ּב‬ is ever in the construct
state, and that it means here, “in the beginning of the creation of the heavens and the
earth,” etc, is contradicted by the occurrence of the word in the absolute state,
Deuteronomy 33:21.—‫ית‬ ִ‫אׁש‬ ֵ‫ְר‬‫ּב‬ (from ‫ֹאש‬ ‫ר‬=‫אׁש‬ ֵ‫ר‬ ). The substantive without the article. It is
true, this cannot be rendered in the beginning, taken absolutely, so that the beginning
should have a significance, or an existence for itself. It would be, moreover, a tautology
to say in the beginning of things when God created them, etc, that Isaiah, when there
was the beginning of things; or else we must take bereshith mystically: in principio, that
Isaiah, in filio, as Basil, Ambrose, and others (see Leop. Schmid, Explanation of the
Holy Scriptures, p4), which is not allowable, although it is true that the New Testament
doctrine advances at once to the determination that God created all things through the
Son ( John 1:3; John 1:11; Hebrews 1:2; comp. Psalm 33:6). It is not easy to take the
word adverbially: originally, or in the first place (Knobel); for the immediately following
enumeration of the creative days shows that the author would have time begin with the
creation of the world. According to Delitzsch the author does not mean “to express the
doctrinal proposition that the world had its beginning in time, and is not eternal, but only
that the creation of the heavens and the earth was the beginning of all history.” This
interpretation seems arbitrary. Bereshith relates especially to time, or to the old, the first
time ( Isaiah 46:10; Job 42:12). It may be further said that ְ‫ּב‬ can mean with or through. It
Isaiah, therefore, the most obvious way to interpret it: in a beginning, and that, too, the
first, or the beginning of time, God created the heavens and the earth (with the time the
space; the latter denoted through the antitheses of heaven and earth). From that first
beginning must be distinguished the six new beginnings of the six days’ works; for the
creating goes on through the six days. In a beginning of time, therefore, that lies back of
the six days’ works, must that first foundation-plan of the world have been made, along
with the creation of the heaven and the earth in their opposition. The first verse is
therefore not a superscription for the representation that follows, but the completed
ouranology despatched in one general declaration, although the cosmical generation,
which is described Genesis 1:3 and Genesis 1:14, is again denoted along with it. That
the sun, moon, and stars are perfected for the earth on the fourth day, is an indication
that God’s creating still goes on in the heavens, even as the creating of the periods of
development in the earth, after its first condition as waste and desolate, when it went
forth from the hand of God as a spherical form without any distinct inward
configuration.—‫א‬ ָ‫ָר‬‫ּב‬, in Piel to cut, hew, form; but in Kal it is usually employed of divine
productions new, or not previously existing in the “sphere of nature or history ( Exodus
34:10; Numbers 16:30, and frequently in the Prophets), or of spirit ( Psalm 51:12, and
the frequent κτίζειν in the N. T.); but never denoting human productions, and never used
with the accusative of the material.” Delitzsch. And thus the conception of creating is
akin to that of the miraculous, in so far that the former would mean a creating in respect
to initial form, the latter in respect to novelty of production. (On the kindred expressions
in the Zendavesta, see Delitzsch.) It is to be noted how ‫א‬ ָ‫ָר‬‫ּב‬ differs from ‫ה‬ ָ‫ׂש‬ָ‫ע‬ and ‫ֶר‬‫צ‬ִ‫י‬ (
Genesis 2:2 and Genesis 1:7). That in this creating there is not meant, at all, any
demiurgical forming out of pre-existing material, appears from the fact that the kind of
material, as something then or just created, is strongly signified in the first condition of
the earth, Genesis 1:2, and in the creation of light. This shows itself, in like manner, in
the general unconditioned declaration that God is the creative author, or original, of
heaven and earth.—Elohim, see the Divine Names in the Introduction.—‫ִם‬‫י‬ ַ‫מ‬ ָ‫ׁש‬ַ‫.ה‬
According to the Arabic it would denote the antithesis of the High (or the height) to the

83. Lower—that Isaiah, the earth. The plural form is significant, denoting the abundance
and the variety of the upper spaces.[FN5] This appears still more in the expression, the
heaven of heavens ( Deuteronomy 10:14, and Psalm 68:34).
2 ow the earth was formless and empty,
darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the
Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.
BAR ES, "- II. The Land
‫היה‬ hāyah, “be.” It is to be noted, however, that the word has three meanings, two of
which now scarcely belong to our English “be.”
1. “Be, as an event, start into being, begin to be, come to pass.” This may be
understood of a thing beginning to be, ‫אור‬ ‫יהי‬ ye
hiy 'ôr, “be light” Gen_1:3; or of an
event taking place, ‫ימים‬ ‫מקץ‬ ‫ויהי‬ vaye
hıy mıqēts yāmıym, “and it came to pass from the
end of days.”
2. “Be,” as a change of state, “become.” This is applied to what had a previous
existence, but undergoes some change in its properties or relations; as ‫מלח‬ ‫גציב‬ ‫ותהי‬
vatehıy ne
tsıyb melach, “and she became” a pillar of salt Gen_19:26.
3. “Be,” as a state. This is the ultimate meaning to which the verb tends in all
languages. In all its meanings, especially in the first and second, the Hebrew
speaker presumes an onlooker, to whom the object in question appears coming
into being, becoming or being, as the case may be. Hence, it means to be
manifestly, so that eye-witnesses may observe the signs of existence.
‫ובהוּ‬ ‫תהוּ‬ tohû vābohû, “a waste and a void.” The two terms denote kindred ideas, and
their combination marks emphasis. Besides the present passage ‫בהוּ‬ bohû occurs in only
two others Isa_34:11; Jer_4:23, and always in conjunction with ‫תהוּ‬ tohû. If we may
distinguish the two words, ‫בהוּ‬ bohû refers to the matter, and ‫תהוּ‬ tohû refers to the form,
and therefore the phrase combining the two denotes a state of utter confusion and
desolation, an absence of all that can furnish or people the land.

84. ‫השׁך‬ choshek, “darkness, the absence of light.”
‫פגים‬ pānıym, “face, surface.” ‫פנה‬ panah, “face, look, turn toward.”
‫תהום‬ te
hôm, “roaring deep, billow.” ‫הוּם‬ hûm, “hum, roar, fret.”
‫רוּח‬ rûach, “breath, wind, soul, spirit.”
‫רחף‬ rāchaph, “be soft, tremble.” Piel, “brood, flutter.”
‫והארץ‬ ve
hā'ārets, “and the earth.” Here the conjunction attaches the noun, and not the
verb, to the preceding statement. This is therefore a connection of objects in space, and
not of events in time. The present sentence, accordingly, may not stand closely conjoined
in point of time with the preceding one. To intimate sequence in time the conjunction
would have been prefixed to the verb in the form ‫ותהי‬ vate
hıy, “then was.”
‫ארץ‬ 'erets means not only “earth,” but “country, land,” a portion of the earth’s surface
defined by natural, national, or civil boundaries; as, “the land of” Egypt, “thy land” Exo_
23:9-10.
Before proceeding to translate this verse, it is to be observed that the state of an event
may be described either definitely or indefinitely. It is described definitely by the three
states of the Hebrew verb - the perfect, the current, and the imperfect. The latter two
may be designated in common the imperfect state. A completed event is expressed by the
former of the two states, or, as they are commonly called, tenses of the Hebrew verb; a
current event, by the imperfect participle; an incipient event, by the second state or
tense. An event is described indefinitely when there is neither verb nor participle in the
sentence to determine its state. The first sentence of this verse is an example of the
perfect state of an event, the second of the indefinite, and the third of the imperfect or
continuous state.
After the undefined lapse of time from the first grand act of creation, the present verse
describes the state of things on the land immediately antecedent to the creation of a new
system of vegetable and animal life, and, in particular, of man, the intelligent inhabitant,
for whom this fair scene was now to be prepared and replenished.
Here “the earth” is put first in the order of words, and therefore, according to the
genius of the Hebrew language, set forth prominently as the subject of the sentence;
whence we conclude that the subsequent narrative refers to the land - the skies from this
time forward coming in only incidentally, as they bear upon its history. The disorder and
desolation, we are to remember, are limited in their range to the land, and do not extend
to the skies; and the scene of the creation now remaining to be described is confined to
the land, and its superincumbent matter in point of space, and to its present geological
condition in point of time.
We have further to bear in mind that the land among the antediluvians, and down far
below the time of Moses, meant so much of the surface of our globe as was known by
observation, along with an unknown and undetermined region beyond; and observation
was not then so extensive as to enable people to ascertain its spherical form or even the
curvature of its surface. To their eye it presented merely an irregular surface bounded by
the horizon. Hence, it appears that, so far as the current significance of this leading term
is concerned, the scene of the six days’ creation cannot be affirmed on scriptural
authority alone to have extended beyond the surface known to man. Nothing can be
inferred from the mere words of Scripture concerning America, Australia, the islands of
the Pacific, or even the remote parts of Asia, Africa, or Europe, that were yet unexplored

85. by the race of man. We are going beyond the warrant of the sacred narrative, on a flight
of imagination, whenever we advance a single step beyond the sober limits of the usage
of the day in which it was written.
Along with the sky and its conspicuous objects the land then known to the primeval
man formed the sum total of the observable universe. It was as competent to him with
his limited information, as it is to us with our more extensive but still limited knowledge,
to express the all by a periphrasis consisting of two terms that have not even yet arrived
at their full complement of meaning: and it was not the object or the effect of divine
revelation to anticipate science on these points.
Passing now from the subject to the verb in this sentence, we observe it is in the
perfect state, and therefore denotes that the condition of confusion and emptiness was
not in progress, but had run its course and become a settled thing, at least at the time of
the next recorded event. If the verb had been absent in Hebrew, the sentence would have
been still complete, and the meaning as follows: “And the land was waste and void.”
With the verb present, therefore, it must denote something more. The verb ‫היה‬ hāyâh
“be” has here, we conceive, the meaning “become;” and the import of the sentence is
this: “And the land had become waste and void.” This affords the presumption that the
part at least of the surface of our globe which fell within the cognizance of primeval man,
and first received the name of land, may not have been always a scene of desolation or a
sea of turbid waters, but may have met with some catastrophe by which its order and
fruitfulness had been marred or prevented.
This sentence, therefore, does not necessarily describe the state of the land when first
created, but merely intimates a change that may have taken place since it was called into
existence. What its previous condition was, or what interval of time elapsed, between the
absolute creation and the present state of things, is not revealed. How many
transformations it may have undergone, and what purpose it may have heretofore
served, are questions that did not essentially concern the moral well-being of man, and
are therefore to be asked of some other interpreter of nature than the written word.
This state of things is finished in reference to the event about to be narrated. Hence,
the settled condition of the land, expressed by the predicates “a waste and a void,” is in
studied contrast with the order and fullness which are about to be introduced. The
present verse is therefore to be regarded as a statement of the needs that have to be
supplied in order to render the land a region of beauty and life.
The second clause of the verse points out another striking characteristic of the scene.
“And darkness was upon the face of the deep”: Here again the conjunction is connected
with the noun. The time is the indefinite past, and the circumstance recorded is merely
appended to that contained in the previous clause. The darkness, therefore, is connected
with the disorder and solitude which then prevailed on the land. It forms a part of the
physical derangement which had taken place on this part at least of the surface of our
globe.
It is further to be noted that the darkness is described to be on the face of the deep.
Nothing is said about any other region throughout the bounds of existing things. The
presumption is, so far as this clause determines, that it is a local darkness confined to
the face of the deep. And the clause itself stands between two others which refer to the
land, and not to any other part of occupied space. It cannot therefore be intended to
describe anything beyond this definite region.
The deep, the roaring abyss, is another feature in the pre-Adamic scene. It is not now a
region of land and water, but a chaotic mass of turbid waters, floating over, it may be,
and partly laden with, the ruins of a past order of things; at all events not at present

86. possessing the order of vegetable and animal life.
The last clause introduces a new and unexpected clement into scene of desolation. The
sentence is, as heretofore, coupled to preceding one by the noun or subject. This
indicates still a conjunction of things, and not a series of events. The phrase ‫אלהים‬ ‫רוּח‬
rûach 'ĕlohıym means “the spirit of God,” as it is elsewhere uniformly applied to spirit,
and as ‫רחף‬ rıchēp, “brooded,” does not describe the action of wind. The verbal form
employed is the imperfect participle, and therefore denotes a work in the actual process
of accomplishment. The brooding of the spirit of God is evidently the originating cause
of the reorganization of things on the land, by the creative work which is successively
described in the following passage.
It is here intimated that God is a spirit. For “the spirit of God” is equivalent to “God
who is a spirit.” This is that essential characteristic of the Everlasting which makes
creation possible. Many philosophers, ancient and modern, have felt the difficulty of
proceeding from the one to the many; in other words, of evolving the actual multiplicity
of things out of the absolutely one. And no wonder. For the absolutely one, the pure
monad that has no internal relation, no complexity of quality or faculty, is barren, and
must remain alone. It is, in fact, nothing; not merely no “thing,” but absolutely naught.
The simplest possible existent must have being, and text to which this being belongs,
and, moreover, some specific or definite character by which it is what it is. This
character seldom consists of one quality; usually, if not universally, of more than one.
Hence, in the Eternal One may and must be that character which is the concentration of
all the causative antecedents of a universe of things. The first of these is will. Without
free choice there can be no beginning of things. Hence, matter cannot be a creator. But
will needs, cannot be without, wisdom to plan and power to execute what is to be willed.
These are the three essential attributes of spirit. The manifold wisdom of the Eternal
Spirit, combined with His equally manifold power, is adequate to the creation of a
manifold system of things. Let the free behest be given, and the universe starts into
being.
It would be rash and out of place to speculate on the nature of the brooding here
mentioned further than it is explained by the event. We could not see any use of a mere
wind blowing over the water, as it would be productive of none of the subsequent effects.
At the same time, we may conceive the spirit of God to manifest its energy in some
outward effect, which may bear a fair analogy to the natural figure by which it is
represented. Chemical forces, as the prime agents, are not to be thought of here, as they
are totally inadequate to the production of the results in question. Nothing but a creative
or absolutely initiative power could give rise to a change so great and fundamental as the
construction of an Adamic abode out of the luminous, aerial, aqueous, and terrene
materials of the preexistent earth, and the production of the new vegetable and animal
species with which it was now to be replenished.
Such is the intimation that we gather from the text, when it declares that “the spirit of
God was brooding upon the face of the waters.” It means something more than the
ordinary power put forth by the Great Being for the natural sustenance and development
of the universe which he has called into existence. It indicates a new and special display
of omnipotence for the present exigencies of this part of the realm of creation. Such an
occasional, and, for ought we know, ordinary though supernatural interposition, is quite
in harmony with the perfect freedom of the Most High in the changing conditions of a
particular region, while the absolute impossibility of its occurrence would be totally at
variance with this essential attribute of a spiritual nature.

87. In addition to this, we cannot see how a universe of moral beings can be governed on
any other principle; while, on the other hand, the principle itself is perfectly compatible
with the administration of the whole according to a predetermined plan, and does not
involve any vacillation of purpose on the part of the Great Designer.
We observe, also, that this creative power is put forth on the face of the waters, and is
therefore confined to the land mentioned in the previous part of the verse and its
superincumbent atmosphere.
Thus, this primeval document proceeds, in an orderly way, to portray to us in a single
verse the state of the land antecedent to its being prepared anew as a meet dwelling-
place for man.
CLARKE, "The earth was without form and void - The original term ‫תהו‬ tohu
and ‫בהו‬ bohu, which we translate without form and void, are of uncertain etymology; but
in this place, and wherever else they are used, they convey the idea of confusion and
disorder. From these terms it is probable that the ancient Syrians and Egyptians
borrowed their gods, Theuth and Bau, and the Greeks their Chaos. God seems at first to
have created the elementary principles of all things; and this formed the grand mass of
matter, which in this state must be without arrangement, or any distinction of parts: a
vast collection of indescribably confused materials, of nameless entities strangely mixed;
and wonderfully well expressed by an ancient heathen poet: -
Ante mare et terras, et, quod tegit omnia, caelum,
Unus erat toto naturae vultus in orbe, Quem dixere
Chaos; rudis indigestaque moles,
Nec quicquam nisi pondus iners; congestaque eodem
Non bene junctarum discordia semina rerum.
Ovid.
Before the seas and this terrestrial ball,
And heaven’s high canopy that covers all,
One was the face of nature, if a face;
Rather, a rude and indigested mass;
A lifeless lump, unfashion’d and unframed,
Of jarring seeds, and justly Chaos named.
Dryden.
The most ancient of the Greeks have spoken nearly in the same way of this crude,
indigested state of the primitive chaotic mass.
When this congeries of elementary principles was brought together, God was pleased
to spend six days in assimilating, assorting, and arranging the materials, out of which he
built up, not only the earth, but the whole of the solar system.
The spirit of God - This has been variously and strangely understood. Some think a
violent wind is meant, because ‫,רוח‬ ruach often signifies wind, as well as spirit, as πνευµα,
does in Greek; and the term God is connected with it merely, as they think, to express
the superlative degree. Others understand by it an elementary fire. Others, the sun,
penetrating and drying up the earth with his rays. Others, the angels, who were
supposed to have been employed as agents in creation. Others, a certain occult principle,

88. termed the anima mundi or soul of the world. Others, a magnetic attraction, by which all
things were caused to gravitate to a common center. But it is sufficiently evident from
the use of the word in other places, that the Holy Spirit of God is intended; which our
blessed Lord represents under the notion of wind, Joh_3:8; and which, as a mighty
rushing wind on the day of Pentecost, filled the house where the disciples were sitting,
Act_2:2, which was immediately followed by their speaking with other tongues, because
they were filled with the Holy Ghost, Act_2:4. These scriptures sufficiently ascertain the
sense in which the word is used by Moses.
Moved - ‫מרחפת‬ merachepheth, was brooding over; for the word expresses that
tremulous motion made by the hen while either hatching her eggs or fostering her
young. It here probably signifies the communicating a vital or prolific principle to the
waters. As the idea of incubation, or hatching an egg, is implied in the original word,
hence probably the notion, which prevailed among the ancients, that the world was
generated from an egg.
GILL, "And the earth was without form, and void,.... It was not in the form it
now is, otherwise it must have a form, as all matter has; it was a fluid matter, the watery
parts were not separated from the earthy ones; it was not put into the form of a
terraqueous globe it is now, the sea apart, and the earth by itself, but were mixed and
blended together; it was, as both the Targums of Jonathan and Jerusalem paraphrase it,
a waste and desert, empty and destitute of both men and beasts; and it may be added, of
fishes and fowls, and also of trees, herbs, and plants. It was, as Ovid (k) calls it, a chaos
and an indigested mass of matter; and Hesiod (l) makes a chaos first to exist, and then
the wide extended earth, and so Orpheus (m), and others; and this is agreeably to the
notion of various nations. The Chinese make a chaos to be the beginning of all things,
out of which the immaterial being (God) made all things that consist of matter, which
they distinguish into parts they call Yin and Yang, the one signifying hidden or
imperfect, the other open or perfect (n): and so the Egyptians, according to Diodorus
Siculus (o), whose opinion he is supposed to give, thought the system of the universe
had but one form; the heaven and earth, and the nature of them, being mixed and
blended together, until by degrees they separated and obtained the form they now have:
and the Phoenicians, as Sanchoniatho (p) relates, supposed the principle of the universe
to be a dark and windy air, or the blast of a dark air, and a turbid chaos surrounded with
darkness, as follows,
and darkness was upon the face of the deep: the whole fluid mass of earth and
water mixed together. This abyss is explained by waters in the next clause, which seem to
be uppermost; and this was all a dark turbid chaos, as before expressed, without any
light or motion, till an agitation was made by the Spirit, as is next observed:
and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters, which covered the
earth, Psa_104:6 the earthy particles being heaviest sunk lower, and the waters being
lighter rose up above the others: hence Thales (q) the philosopher makes water to be the
beginning of all things, as do the Indian Brahmans (r): and Aristotle (s) himself owns
that this was the most ancient opinion concerning the origin of the universe, and
observes, that it was not only the opinion of Thales, but of those that were the most
remote from the then present generation in which he lived, and of those that first wrote
on divine things; and it is frequent in Hesiod and Homer to make Oceanus, or the ocean,
with Tethys, to be the parents of generation: and so the Scriptures represent the original

89. earth as standing out of the water, and consisting of it, 2Pe_3:5 and upon the surface of
these waters, before they were drained off the earth, "the Spirit of God moved"; which is
to be understood not of a wind, as Onkelos, Aben Ezra, and many Jewish writers, as well
as Christians, interpret it; since the air, which the wind is a motion of, was not made
until the second day. The Targums of Jonathan and Jerusalem call it the spirit of
mercies; and by it is meant the Spirit of the Messiah, as many Jewish writers (t) call him;
that is, the third Person in the blessed Trinity, who was concerned in the creation of all
things, as in the garnishing of the heavens, so in bringing the confused matter of the
earth and water into form and order; see Job_26:13. This same Spirit "moved" or
brooded (u) upon the face of the waters, to impregnate them, as an hen upon eggs to
hatch them, so he to separate the parts which were mixed together, and give them a
quickening virtue to produce living creatures in them. This sense and idea of the word
are finely expressed by our poet (w). Some traces of this appear in the νους or mind of
Anaxagoras, which when all things were mixed together came and set them in order (x);
and the "mens" of Thales he calls God, which formed all things out of water (y); and the
"spiritus intus alit", &c. of Virgil; and with this agrees what Hermes says, that there was
an infinite darkness in the abyss or deep, and water, and a small intelligent spirit,
endued with a divine power, were in the chaos (z): and perhaps from hence is the
mundane egg, or egg of Orpheus (a): or the firstborn or first laid egg, out of which all
things were formed; and which he borrowed from the Egyptians and Phoenicians, and
they perhaps from the Jews, and which was reckoned by them a resemblance of the
world. The Egyptians had a deity they called Cneph, out of whose mouth went forth an
egg, which they interpreted of the world (b): and the Zophasemin of the Phoenicians,
which were heavenly birds, were, according to Sanchoniatho (c), of the form of an egg;
and in the rites of Bacchus they worshipped an egg, as being an image of the world, as
Macrobius (d) says; and therefore he thought the question, whether an hen or an egg
was oldest, was of some moment, and deserved consideration: and the Chinese say (e),
that the first man was produced out of the chaos as from an egg, the shell of which
formed the heavens, the white the air, and the yolk the earth; and to this incubation of
the spirit, or wind, as some would have it, is owing the windy egg of Aristophanes (f).
(Thomas Chamlers (1780-1847) in 1814 was the first to purpose that there is a gap
between verse 1 and 2. Into this gap he places a pre-Adamic age, about which the
scriptures say nothing. Some great catastrophe took place, which left the earth "without
form and void" or ruined, in which state it remained for as many years as the geologist
required. (g) This speculation has been popularised by the 1917 Scofield Reference Bible.
However, the numerous rock layers that are the supposed proof for these ages, were
mainly laid down by Noah's flood. In Exo_20:11 we read of a literal six day creation. No
gaps, not even for one minute, otherwise these would not be six normal days. Also, in
Rom_5:12 we read that death is the result of Adam's sin. Because the rock layers display
death on a grand scale, they could not have existed before the fall of Adam. There is no
direct evidence that the earth is much older than six thousand years. However, we have
the direct eyewitness report of God himself that he made everything in six days. Tracing
back through the biblical genealogies we can determine the age of the universe to be
about six thousand years with an error of not more than two per cent.
JAMISO , "the earth was without form and void — or in “confusion and
emptiness,” as the words are rendered in Isa_34:11. This globe, at some undescribed
period, having been convulsed and broken up, was a dark and watery waste for ages
perhaps, till out of this chaotic state, the present fabric of the world was made to arise.

90. the Spirit of God moved — literally, continued brooding over it, as a fowl does,
when hatching eggs. The immediate agency of the Spirit, by working on the dead and
discordant elements, combined, arranged, and ripened them into a state adapted for
being the scene of a new creation. The account of this new creation properly begins at
the end of this second verse; and the details of the process are described in the natural
way an onlooker would have done, who beheld the changes that successively took place.
SBC, "We should be sure we understand both Nature and Scripture before we
pronounce certainly on their agreement or disagreement, and it can hardly be said that
either is quite understood. To attempt to reconcile all the expressions in this chapter
with the details of science is a mistake. It has certain true things to declare, facts of
nature which have a religious bearing, and are a needed introduction to the revelation
which follows; and these facts it presents in the poetic form natural to the East, and
most suited to impress all kinds of readers. The "six days" are fit stages in a poetical
account of the great evolution, even as a play acted in a few hours represents the events
of years. Three great lessons are impressed in this chapter: (1) that God is the Maker of
heaven and earth; (2) that by means of His operation on dead and formless matter the
order and beauty of the varied and living world were produced; (3) that the change was
gradual. The Spirit of God brought order and development to the material world. We
cannot see the Intelligence, the Mind which directs the works of nature; but it is equally
true that we cannot see them in the works of man. It is truer to say that the Invisible
Mind, the unseen Spirit of God, moved upon the formless earth and brought it to its
present ordered form, than to say it happened so. The Spirit of God moved, i.e., brooded
as a bird over her young. This indicates the quiet, untiring ways in which God works in
the heavens and the earth. The Spirit of God must bring order and development (1) to
the spiritual world, (2) to the individual soul. The Spirit of God must move or brood
upon the worse than darkness of sinful and godless hearts.
T. M. Herbert, Sketches of Sermons, p. 1.
CALVI , "2.And the earth was without form and void. I shall not be very solicitous
about the exposition of these two epithets, ‫,תוהו‬ (tohu,) and ‫,בוהו‬ (bohu.) The
Hebrews use them when they designate anything empty and confused, or vain, and
nothing worth. Undoubtedly Moses placed them both in opposition to all those
created objects which pertain to the form, the ornament and the perfection of the
world. Were we now to take away, I say, from the earth all that God added after the
time here alluded to, then we should have this rude and unpolished, or rather
shapeless chaos. (44) Therefore I regard what he immediately subjoins that
“darkness was upon the face of the abyss,” (45) as a part of that confused emptiness:
because the light began to give some external appearance to the world. For the same
reason he calls it the abyss and waters, since in that mass of matter nothing was
solid or stable, nothing distinct.
And the Spirit of God Interpreters have wrested this passage in various ways. The
opinion of some that it means the wind, is too frigid to require refutation. They who
understand by it the Eternal Spirit of God, do rightly; yet all do not attain the
meaning of Moses in the connection of his discourse; hence arise the various
interpretations of the participle ‫,מרחפת‬ (merachepeth.) I will, in the first place, state

91. what (in my judgment) Moses intended. We have already heard that before God had
perfected the world it was an undigested mass; he now teaches that the power of the
Spirit was necessary in order to sustain it. For this doubt might occur to the mind,
how such a disorderly heap could stand; seeing that we now behold the world
preserved by government, or order. (46) He therefore asserts that this mass,
however confused it might be, was rendered stable, for the time, by the secret
efficacy of the Spirit. ow there are two significations of the Hebrew word which
suit the present place; either that the spirit moved and agitated itself over the
waters, for the sake of putting forth vigor; or that He brooded over them to cherish
them. (47) Inasmuch as it makes little difference in the result, whichever of these
explanations is preferred, let the reader’s judgment be left free. But if that chaos
required the secret inspiration of God to prevent its speedy dissolution; how could
this order, so fair and distinct, subsist by itself, unless it derived strength elsewhere?
Therefore, that Scripture must be fulfilled,
‘Send forth thy Spirit, and they shall be created, and thou shalt renew the face of
the earth,’ (Psalms 104:30;)
so, on the other hand, as soon as the Lord takes away his Spirit, all things return to
their dust and vanish away, (Psalms 104:29.)
BE SO , "Genesis 1:2. The earth — When first called into existence, was without
form and void: confusion and emptiness, as the same original words are rendered,
Isaiah 34:11. It was without order, beauty, or even use, in its present state, and was
surrounded on all sides with thick darkness, through the gloom of which there was
not one ray of light to penetrate not even so much as to render the darkness visible.
The Spirit of God moved, &c. — To cherish, quicken, and dispose them to the
production of the things afterward mentioned. The Hebrew word here rendered
moved, is used, Deuteronomy 32:11, of the eagle fluttering over her young, and of
fowls brooding over their eggs and young ones, to warm and cherish them: but, we
must remember, that the expression, as here used, is purely metaphorical, and must
not be considered as conveying any ideas that are unworthy of the infinite and
spiritual nature of the Holy Ghost.
COFFMA , "Verse 2
"And the earth was waste and void; and darkness was upon the face of the waters:
and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters."
"And the earth was waste and void ..." This refers to the state of the earth in the
first phase of its creation, and it is also an apt description of the other planets as
they are observed to continue in our solar system to the present time. Mars, Venus,
Mercury, etc. are still waste and void. It is not necessary to postulate billions of
years between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2 in order to help God find the time to do
all that He did for our earth. It is true, of course, that no revelation has been given
with reference to the time-lag between these verses; but men's imagining that

92. billions or trillions of years elapsed here or there does nothing to diminish the
mysterious miracle visible in Genesis. If it should be supposed that God launched a
waste and void earth upon a journey that required billions of years to accomplish
His wise designs, then, God's power in doing a thing like that is one and the same
thing as His ability to have spoken the perfect and completed earth into existence
instantaneously.
"And darkness was upon the face of the deep ..." This is a reference to the state of
the earth when it was waste and void. The melancholy waste of the mighty seas; and
it is not necessary to understand this as a reference to the molten, superheated
earth, in which metals, earth and all elements, with the abundant waters might be
referred to collectively as "the deep." In such a condition all waters would have
been driven into the earth's atmosphere. The big thing that appears in this verse is
the abundant water supply, one of the principle prerequisites of life in any form.
This water supply was evidently part of the special creation benefiting our earth,
making the passage a further detail of God's creating the earth (Genesis 1:1).
"And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters ..." Significantly, the
Third Person of the Godhead appears here alongside God Himself. Whitelaw
assures us that the term for "moved" actually means "brooded" as in the older
versions; and it means "to be tremulous with love."[2] The Spirit here is the Blessed
Holy Spirit, concerning whom much more information appears in the .T. The
primeval chaos that characterized this early phase of our planet is most significant.
The complex, systematic order that characterized it later could never have evolved
from chaos. Without the fiat of Almighty God, the unaided chaos would have
become more and more chaotic. The Second Law of Thermodynamics is absolutely
irreversible. Only creation could have changed chaos into order and symmetry. God
made all things "ex nihilo."
COKE, "Genesis 1:2. And the earth was without form, and void— In its first state
the earth, or the whole of the terraqueous globe, was a mere confused chaos, without
any regular form, or without any of its present furniture, plants, trees, animals, &c.
Darkness on the face of the deep— Every thing was yet in a stagnant, black, and
unformed state; and the whole face of the deep, or vast abyss of primordial matter,
was inveloped in total darkness: there was an absolute privation of all light.
And the Spirit of God— ‫רוח‬ ruach, i.e.. The Holy Spirit, the third person in the
Trinity; or, as some of the ancient Jews called him, the Spirit of the Messiah, who
was the first mover in this creative operation: which explains the Evangelist St.
John, who, in the beginning of his Gospel, says, that all things were made by the
eternal ΛΟΓΟΣ, or Word of God, (the same with the νους , or mind of the ancient
philosophers,) whose Almighty Spirit agitated the vast confused mass of matter, and
put it into form.
Moved— The word ‫ףּרח‬ rechep, whence ‫מרחפת‬ mera-chepeth, seems properly to
signify to make a tremulous or fluttering motion, such as that of an eagle fluttering

93. over her nest; in which sense it is used, Deuteronomy 32:11 fluttereth over her
young.
Face of the waters— The same with the face of the deep, the abyss just mentioned,
the terraqueous unformed mass: which perhaps may the rather be called waters, as
the earthy particles, being the heaviest, would naturally sink to the center; and the
watery, in consequence, would occupy the superficies of the mass. It may be worth
while to observe here, how much the heathens have borrowed of their theogony
from the account given by Moses: Chaos and darkness, according to them, were in
the beginning:
Love, or a plastic spirit, brooded over this chaos, as over an egg: and from water,
many of their greatest philosophers derived the beginning of all things.
REFLECTIO S.—Such as appeared the material world before the Spirit of God
quickened the lifeless lump; such is now the spiritual world, till the same Divine
Power interposes. 1. The soul of man by sin, is become a heap of confusion: as dead
to God, and incapable of producing any fruits of holiness, as the unformed chaos to
produce trees or flowers. 2. Darkness covers it: we have neither the faculty of vision
to descry, nor light to illuminate spiritual objects. We know nothing of ourselves,
our God, our Saviour, our proper work, our happiness, as we ought to know. 3. The
whole world, which now lieth in wickedness, presents to the enlightened mind a
lively image of this original confusion and emptiness. Darkness surrounds it, no
beauty appears, God is forgotten; the jarring elements of corrupt nature breed wild
uproar; and universal desolation seems diffused around. The heart that hath been
taught its true rest, daily cries after that new heaven and new earth, wherein
dwelleth righteousness. 4. As incapable as this chaos was, of forming itself into
order; as impossible as it was for this darkness to produce the light, or kindle up the
sun; so impossible is it for man, by any powers or ability of his own, to restore his
fallen soul to the image of God, or to produce one beam of heavenly light, or spark
of spiritual life. 5. It is the office of the Spirit of God alone to produce light and
order in the dark and chaotic soul. 6. Be our mortal bodies however dissolved in
earth, fire, water, air, He who first moved upon the face of the waters, can by the
same energy recall the scattered particles of our dust, and from the dissipated and
disjointed atoms raise up a glorious body, bright as the sun when it shineth in its
strength.
ELLICOTT, "s and empty waste.
Without form, and void.—Literally, tohu and bohu, which words are both
substantives, and signify wasteness and emptiness. The similarity of their forms,
joined with the harshness of their sound, made them pass almost into a proverb for
everything that was dreary and desolate (Isaiah 34:11; Jeremiah 4:23). It expresses
here the state of primæval matter immediately after creation, when as yet there was
no cohesion between the separate particles.
Darkness.—As light is the result either of the condensation of matter or of

94. vibrations caused by chemical action, this exactly agrees with the previous
representation of the chaos out of which the earth was to be shaped. It existed at
present only as an incoherent waste of emptiness.
The deep.—Tĕhôm. This word, from a root signifying confusion or disturbance, is
poetically applied to the ocean, as in Psalms 42:7, from the restless motion of its
waves, but is used here to describe the chaos as a surging mass of shapeless matter.
In the Babylonian legend, Tiàmat, the Hebrew tĕhôm, is represented as overcome by
Merodach, who out of the primæval anarchy brings order and beauty (Sayce,
Chaldean Genesis, pp. 59, 109, 113).
The Spirit of God.—Heb., a wind of God, i.e., a mighty wind, as rendered by the
Targum and most Jewish interpreters. (See ote on Genesis 23:6.) So the wind of
Jehovah makes the grass wither (Isaiah 40:7); and so God makes the winds His
messengers (Psalms 104:4). The argument that no wind at present existed because
the atmosphere had not been created is baseless, for if water existed, so did air. But
this unseen material force, wind (John 3:8), has ever suggested to the human mind
the thought of the Divine agency, which, equally unseen, is even mightier in its
working. When, then, creation is ascribed to the wind (Job 26:13; Psalms 104:30),
we justly see, not the mere instrumental force employed, but rather that Divine
operative energy which resides especially in the Third Person of the Holy Trinity.
But we must be upon our guard against the common error of commentators, who
read into the text of these most ancient documents perfect doctrines which were not
revealed in their fulness until the Gospel was given. It is a marvellous fact that
Genesis does contain the germ of well-nigh every evangelical truth, but it contains it
in a suggestive and not a completed form. So here this mighty energising wind
suggests to us the thought of the Holy Ghost, and is far more eloquent in its original
simplicity than when we read into it a doctrine not made known until revelation was
perfected in Christ (John 7:39).
Moved.—Heb., fluttered lovingly. (See Deuteronomy 32:11.) This word also would
lead the mind up to the thought of the agency of a Person. In Syriac the verb is a
very common one for the incubation of birds; and, in allusion to this place, it is
metaphorically employed, both of the waving of the hand of the priest over the cup
in consecrating the wine for the Eucharist, and of that of the patriarch over the
head of a bishop at his consecration. Two points must here be noticed: the first, that
the motion was not self-originated, but was external to the chaos; the second, that it
was a gentle and loving energy, which tenderly and gradually, with fostering care,
called forth the latent possibilities of a nascent world.
PETT, "Introduction
The Creation of the World.
Coming from the ancient world, this account of creation must be seen as quite
remarkable. Yet it must not be considered as an attempt at primitive science. Its
purpose is wholly theological. The ancients, apart from a few ‘learned men’ of a
type unknown to Israel, were not interested in scientific explanations. They were

95. practical people and interested in ‘who’ and ‘why’. They did not ask themselves
‘how’. We must not tie them down to the speculations of a few Babylonian priests
and their like.
What the writer wants us to know is that all we have has come from God. He is not
concerned with how God did it, except in the sense that He did it through His all-
powerful word.
This is in accord with the Bible as a whole. It constantly describes the world as men
saw it and experienced it, using metaphors to describe it which were not intended to
be scientific or to be pressed too closely. When they spoke of ‘foundations’ they were
thinking from their own standpoint of what they saw below them, not speculating as
to the nature of the cosmos. When they spoke of a firmament, something which held
up the clouds, they were doing the same thing, just as we do when we describe the
sun as ‘rising’ and ‘setting’. We are describing what we see. It does, of course, do
neither. And they described things in the same way without speculating as to their
nature.
The account is unique in the fact that it totally and deliberately excludes the thought
of any other gods than the One God. The sun and the moon are specifically shown to
be merely luminaries and he refers to the stars almost as an afterthought - ‘He made
the stars also’. To other nations these stars were important, they were gods in their
own right, and the sun and moon were important gods to be worshipped, but to the
writer they were inanimate objects made by God.
There may be what seem like vague connections with the language of ancient
creation myths, as we might expect when speaking of the same kind of events in the
same environment, but if they exist the connections are genuinely indirect and
purified. For example ‘Tehom’ need no longer be seen as derived etymologically
from Tiamat, the creation monster, for it has now been established by archaeology
(from Ugarit) as a word in its own right. It is true that there is the idea of emptiness
and waste, but there is no suggestion of violent conflict, which is remarkably absent.
Rather the emptiness is because he considers that all form and purpose must come
actively from God. He does not see a devastated creation, he sees an unformed
universe. If he has had in mind anything from ancient myths he has avoided directly
drawing on it and has given it a different content and significance.
Approaches to the Interpretation of Genesis 1:1-31.
There are a number of different schemes of interpretation applied to these verses in
the modern day, and perhaps we should consider these first of all. But we intend to
be brief and would ask those who would like to look into them further to consult
those who propose them, for we must not allow these schemes to take our minds
away from the central message of the creation account, which is to enable us to
recognise how God has, in His own time, established all things for our good. Thus
we will not mention them in the commentary, except in passing.

96. The main interpretations are:
1). The belief that God created the universe in seven twenty-four hour days. This is
an interpretation based on comparatively modern views of time claimed as self
evident. It also holds that those who accept it either assume that God deliberately
planted fossils in the world so as to give an impression other than the reality, to test
the faith of the nineteenth and later centuries, or that scientific ‘laws’ have changed
so that the complexities of fossilisation took place on very different time scales.
Those who hold this view may quite rightly point out that scientific ‘laws’ are not
inviolate, they are simply interpretations of experience. Scientists vary their scope
constantly with new discoveries. They are simply variations of how scientists see
things as having always happened, in accord with the hypothesis of cause and effect.
They assume these ‘laws’ or principles are unchanging, for without them their
application at the present time science could not exist, and in practical terms it
serves us well. But they are not inviolate. They describe the set up of the world as we
see it now, not necessarily as God made it.
Those who hold this view usually also claim that the earth has only existed for a
number of millenniums rather than millions of years.
2). The belief that Genesis 1:1 describes the original creation, and that a time gap
occurs between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2. They translate the latter ‘and the earth
BECAME without form and waste’. This latter situation is usually connected by
them with the fall of the Devil and his angels. This then leaves room for as many
millions of years as they believe the fossils require, while at the same time usually
accepting that the seven days are literal twenty-four hour days during which God
regenerated the world.
The main problem with this theory is that, although the word for ‘was’ can
sometimes be translated ‘became’ (Hebrew words were not as exact as in more
modern languages), this is usually only when the context makes this clear. However
in this context it is far from clear. Indeed, the connection between Genesis 1:1 and
Genesis 1:2 is so close and specific that it must be considered extremely doubtful
whether the verses can be separated in this way. The writer could not, in fact, have
made the connection any closer (there are no verse divisions in the original). The
Hebrew is - ‘ha aretz (the earth) we ha aretz (and the earth)’ - and thus we read ‘---
created the heavens and the earth, and the earth was ---’. The second verse is
describing what was the condition of what was created, not what became of it.
3). The belief that the seven days are not days of creation but days of revelation.
They are thus seen as being a comment of the writer as he describes his series of
visions. ‘The evening and the morning was ---’ being an indication of the day in
which he had each vision. The problem with this view is that it does not naturally
arise out of the way the words are used in the text. There is no preliminary
explanation to suggest that a series of visions are in mind. or does it solve the
problem as to why the seventh day does not end in this way.

97. 4). The belief that the ‘days’ of creation are intended to be read as literal earth days
but are not to be taken as factual but rather simply as a mythical presentation. This
view is usually held by those who do not see the Bible as God’s inerrantly inspired
word, although there are those who do hold the latter but see the creation account as
a parable of creation rather than as a factual account. The difficulty with this view
for the latter is that there really are no grounds for differentiating this account from
later accounts in this way. At what point, and how, do we differentiate between
parable and history?
5). The belief that the writer did not intend his words to be read as restricting days
to twenty-four hours, but as representing a working week of God with the time scale
being read accordingly. Thus they are to be seen as ‘days of God’, to Whom a
thousand years are but as yesterday, and to Whom a few billion years are but a tick
of His clock. This position has been argued in detail in the introduction and we will
not add anything further at this stage. It is a view held by many of all persuasions.
Many of those who hold this view do consider it remarkable that the writer
expressed the centrality of electro-magnetic waves (light) to the basis of the universe,
that he differentiated between ‘creation’, when God specifically stepped in with
something new (the universe, animal life, the human spirit) and ‘making’ or
‘bringing forth’, which suggest a process of adaptation. Some even argue for
evolution or adaptation as Scriptural on this basis.
They usually consider that the sun, moon and stars were created at the beginning,
but that on the fourth ‘day’ they appeared through the deep cloud and mists and
began to exercise their control over times and seasons. They point to the agreement
between ‘science’ and Genesis 1:1-31 that the world was once covered in water, that
dry land appeared as a result of the upheaval of land below the sea, that the earth
would be covered with cloud so that for a period the sun would not be seen,
although its effects would filter through to aid the growth of vegetation, that various
types of vegetation would develop, ‘brought forth’ by the ground, that eventually
the cloud cover would thin so that the sun would appear and times and seasons be
established, that creatures would first arise in the waters, and that from these would
come birds and dry land creatures. Many who believe this also argue that the
creation of life, and of the spirit in man, were new acts of God.
That is as may be but the writer was not writing as a scientist but as a believer, and
he wrote without attempting to explain how God did it. This is why all the above
views can find some justification for their positions and many theories will fit the
text. This was his genius. He did not try to go above what he knew, or claim to
knowledge he did not have.
We will now consider the text in more detail, and as we do so we should note that
emphasised throughout it is ‘God’ (Elohim). It begins with God, and God is
prominent all through it. If we spend our time in studying it from any other aspect
of it we are missing the writer’s point, God created everything, God produced light,

98. God adapted what He had made, God set the heavenly lights in their places, God
established a world ready to receive life, God produced life, God created man. All is
of God.
Verse 1
‘In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.’
God Creates The Heaven And The Earth And All That Is In Them (Genesis 1:1-31;
Genesis 2:1-4 a).
“In the beginning”. This phrase is signifying the beginning of existence as we know
it, the beginning of our universe. The writer is considering the beginning as it relates
to man. It does not refer to the creation of God, Who has no beginning, nor
necessarily to the creation of the angelic or spiritual world which is outside the
scope of the universe as we know it. This was the point at which God began His
exercise of creation of the world which would lead to the creation of man. Thus it is
not the beginning of all things, but of all things physical, of all things as far as man
was concerned.
That the ‘heavenly world’ was already in existence comes out later in that God
speaks to them in Genesis 1:26; Genesis 3:22, and calls on the cherubim in Genesis
3:24. God did, of course, create that heavenly world too, and we may read it into the
words ‘created the heavens’. The writer certainly did believe that all things that are
were created by God. But that is a spiritual world, not a physical one, and not
prominently in mind here. Here action is concentrated on the earth and its environs.
But in the end it is indicating that all things came from God.
“God” - the word is ‘elohim’ which is in the plural signifying three or more. It is the
plural of El (or strictly eloah, which in the Bible is used in poetry), the Hebrew and
Canaanite word for a divine or supernatural being. It can also be used of
supernatural beings such as angels or other world beings (e.g. 1 Samuel 28:13) or of
the ‘gods’ of other nations, but there it is used with a plural verb. The plural here,
however, which is used with a singular verb, is intensive indicating that God is
greater than the norm. He is complex and great beyond description. The writer did
not however think in terms of a trinity (as shown by its use with a singular verb),
although we may see that as nascent within it.
“Created” - the word is ‘bara’. It is never used in connection with creative material,
and there is no suggestion in the account of any such material. In this form (qal) it is
only ever used of the divine workmanship, and always indicates the production of
something new. It never has an accusative of material. While it is not directly stated
it thus implies creation from nothing, but that is not its main emphasis. Its main
emphasis is the sovereign activity of God. It is used three times in this account, - of
the first creation of the ‘world stuff’, of the creation of animal life and of the
creation of man ‘in the image of God’. These were seen as three unique beginnings,
where what was added was totally new and not obtained from what already existed.
But the stress is on the fact that they were created by God.

99. God first creates the ‘stuff’ of the Universe, ‘the heavens and the earth. From then
on He will act upon the earth and adjust it and shape it so that it produces a world
suitable for life, bringing in the activity of the heavens in the fourth day. Then He
will create life. Until the creation of life all will be produced from what was first
created. We note here that light precedes life. Without light there could be no life.
This idea will later be taken up by the Apostle John and spiritualised (John 1:1-18).
“The heavens and the earth” - this is probably not to be seen as including ‘the
heaven of heavens’ (1 Kings 8:27; ehemiah 9:6) or the ‘third heaven’ (2
Corinthians 12:2), which are spiritual realms, but has in mind the heavens in
relation to the earth, the whole physical cosmos (see on 2:1). The writer is not
speculating on questions that we would like to know the answer to, such as the
creation of supernatural beings, he is considering God’s preparation for the creation
of man.
As the Psalmist says, ‘by the word of the Lord were the heavens made, and all their
host by the breath of His mouth’ (Psalms 33:6). These are the physical heavens
whose formation is later described. The spiritual heavens are referred to indirectly
in Genesis 1:26.
ELLICOTT, "Verse 2-3
Let There Be Light
And the earth was waste and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep: and
the spirit of God moved (R.V. m. was brooding) upon the face of the waters. And
God said, Let there be light: and there was light.—Genesis 1:2-3.
This is the second stage in the history of the Creation. After the first verse, it is of
the earth, and of the earth only, that the narrative speaks. The earth did now exist,
but in the form of chaos. This expression does not mean a state of disorder and
confusion, but that state of primitive matter in which no creature had as yet a
distinctive existence, and no one element stood out in distinction from others, but all
the forces and properties of matter existed, as it were, undivided. The materials
were indeed all there, but not as such—they were only latent. However, the creative
spirit, the principle of order and life, brooded over this matter, which, like a rich
organic cell, comprehended in itself the conditions, and up to a certain point the
elementary principles, of all future forms of existence. This Spirit was the efficient
cause, not of matter itself, but of its Organization, which was then to begin. He was
the executant of each of those Divine commands, which from this time were to
succeed each other, stroke after stroke, till this chaos should be transformed into a
world of wonders.
We cannot tell how the Spirit of God brooded over that vast watery mass. It is a
mystery, but it is also a fact, and it is here revealed as having happened at the very
commencement of the Creation, even before God had said, “Let there be light.” The
first Divine act in fitting up this planet for the habitation of man was for the Spirit
of God to move upon the face of the waters. Till that time, all was formless, empty,
out of order, and in confusion. In a word, it was chaos; and to make it into that

100. thing of beauty which the world is at the present moment, even though it is a fallen
world, it was needful that the movement of the Spirit of God should take place upon
it. How the Spirit works upon matter, we do not know; but we do know that God,
who is a Spirit, created matter, and fashioned matter, and sustained matter, and
that He will yet deliver matter from the stain of sin which is upon it. We shall see
new heavens and a new earth in which materialism itself shall be lifted up from its
present state of ruin, and shall glorify God; but without the Spirit of God the
materialism of this world must have remained for ever in chaos. Only as the Spirit
came did the work of creation begin.1 [ ote: C. H. Spurgeon.]
We have first chaos, then order (or cosmos); we have also first darkness, then light.
It is the Spirit of God that out of chaos brings cosmos; it is the Word of God that out
of darkness brings light. Accordingly, the text is easily divided in this way—
I. Cosmos out of Chaos.
i. Chaos.
ii. The Spirit of God.
iii. Cosmos.
II. Light out of Darkness.
i. Darkness.
ii. God’s Word.
iii. Light.
I
Cosmos out of Chaos
i. Chaos
“The earth was without form (R.V. waste) and void.” The Hebrew (tôhû wâ-bôhû) is
an alliterative description of a chaos, in which nothing can be distinguished or
defined. Tôhû is a word which it is difficult to express consistently in English; but it
denotes mostly something unsubstantial, or (figuratively) unreal; cf. Isaiah 45:18 (of
the earth), “He created it not a tôhû, he fashioned it to be inhabited,” Genesis 1:19,
“I said not, Seek ye me as a tôhû (i.e. in vain).” Bôhû, as Arabic shows, is rightly
rendered empty or void. Compare the same combination of words to suggest the
idea of a return to primeval chaos in Jeremiah 4:23 and Isaiah 34:11 (“the line of
tôhû and the plummet of bôhû”).
Who seeketh finds: what shall be his relief
Who hath no power to seek, no heart to pray,
o sense of God, but bears as best he may,
A lonely incommunicable grief?
What shall he do? One only thing he knows,
That his life flits a frail uneasy spark
In the great vast of universal dark,

101. And that the grave may not be all repose.
Be still, sad soul! lift thou no passionate cry,
But spread the desert of thy being bare
To the full searching of the All-seeing Eye:
Wait—and through dark misgiving, blank despair,
God will come down in pity, and fill the dry
Dead place with light, and life, and vernal air.1 [ ote: J. C. Shairp.]
ii. The Spirit of God
1. In the Old Testament the spirit of man is the principle of life, viewed especially as
the seat of the stronger and more active energies of life; and the “spirit” of God is
analogously the Divine force or agency, to the operation of which are attributed
various extraordinary powers and activities of men, as well as supernatural gifts. In
the later books of the Old Testament, it appears also as the power which creates and
sustains life. It is in the last-named capacity that it is mentioned here. The chaos of
Genesis 1:2 was not left in hopeless gloom and death; already, even before God
“spake,” the Spirit of God, with its life-giving energy, was “brooding” over the
waters, like a bird upon its nest, and (so it seems to be implied) fitting them in some
way to generate and maintain life, when the Divine fiat should be pronounced.
This, then, is the first lesson of the Bible; that at the root and origin of all this vast
material universe, before whose laws we are crushed as the moth, there abides a
living conscious Spirit, who wills and knows and fashions all things. The belief of
this changes for us the whole face of nature, and instead of a chill, impersonal world
of forces to which no appeal can be made, and in which matter is supreme, gives us
the home of a Father.
In speaking of Divine perfection, we mean to say that God is just and true and
loving—the Author of order and not of disorder, of good and not of evil. Or rather,
that He is justice, that He is truth, that He is love, that He is order; … and that
wherever these qualities are present, whether in the human soul or in the order of
nature, there is God. We might still see Him everywhere if we had not been
mistakenly seeking Him apart from us, instead of in us; away from the laws of
nature, instead of in them. And we become united to Him not by mystical
absorption, but by partaking, whether consciously or unconsciously of that truth
and justice and love which He Himself is.1 [ ote: Benjamin Jowett.]
I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity,
or harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,

102. Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods,
And mountains.2 [ ote: Wordsworth, Tintern Abbey.]
2. The doctrine of the all-pervading action of the Spirit of God, and the living Power
underlying all the energies of ature, occupies a wider space in the pages of Divine
revelation than it holds in popular Christian theology, or in the hymns, the teaching,
and the daily thoughts of modern Christendom. In these the doctrine of the Spirit of
God is, if we judge by Scripture, too much restricted to His work in Redemption
and Salvation, to His wonder-working and inspiring energy in the early Church,
and to His secret regenerating and sanctifying energy in the renewal of souls for life
everlasting. And in this work of redemption He is spoken of by the special
appellation of the Holy Ghost, even by the revisers of the Authorized Version;
although there seems to be not the slightest reason for the retention of that equivocal
old English word, full of unfortunate associations, more than there would be in so
translating the same word as it occurs in our Lord’s discourse at the well of Jacob—
“God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in
truth”—where the insertion of this ancient Saxon word for spirit would create a
painful shock by its irreverence. All these redeeming and sanctifying operations of
the Spirit of God in the soul of man have been treated with great fulness in our own
language, in scores of valuable writings, from the days of John Owen, the Puritan
Vice-Chancellor of Oxford, down to the present time, when Bishop Moule has given
us his excellent work entitled Veni Creator, a most delightful exposition of Scripture
doctrine on the Holy Spirit in His dealings with the souls of men. In few of these
works, however, appears any representation of the Scripture doctrine of the Spirit
of God, as working in ature, as the direct agent of the Eternal Will in the creation
and everlasting government of the physical and intellectual universe.
It has been the fault of religious teachers, and it is also the fault of much of what
prevails in the tone of the religious world—to draw an unwarrantably harsh
contrast between the natural and the spiritual. A violent schism has thereby been
created between the sacred and the secular, and, consequently, many disasters have
ensued. Good people have done infinite mischief by placing the sacred in opposition
to the secular. They have thus denied God’s presence and God’s glory in things
where His presence should have been gladly acknowledged, and have thereby cast a
certain dishonour on matters which should have been recognized as religious in the
truest sense. The result has been that others, carefully studying the things thus
handed over to godlessness, and discovering therein rich mines of truth, and beauty,
and goodness, have too frequently accepted the false position assigned to them, and
have preached, in the name of Agnosticism or Atheism, a gospel of natural law, in
opposition to the exclusive and narrow gospel of the religionists I have described.1
[ ote: Donald Macleod, Christ and Society, 243.]

103. 3. It is an ennobling thought that all this fair world we see, all those healthful and
strong laws in ceaseless operation around us, all that long history of change and
progress which we have been taught to trace, can be linked on to what we behold at
Pentecost. It is the same Spirit who filled St. Peter and St. John with the life and
power and love of Christ, who also “dwells in the light of setting suns, in the round
ocean, and the living air.” There is no opposition. All are diverse operations of the
same Spirit, who baptized St. Paul with his glowing power, and St. John with his
heavenly love, and who once moved over the face of the waters, and evoked order
out of chaos. The Bible calls nothing secular, all things are sacred, and only sin and
wickedness are excluded from the domain which is claimed for God. But if we
believe that He has never left Himself without a witness, and that the very rain and
sunshine and fruitful seasons are the gifts of Him whose Spirit once moved over the
waters and brought order out of confusion, then are we entitled to go further and to
say that in the love of parent and child, in the heroic self-sacrifice of patriots, in the
thoughts of wisdom and truth uttered by wise men, by Sakyamuni or Confucius,
Socrates or Seneca, we must see nothing less than the strivings of that same Divine
Spirit who spake by the prophets, and was shed forth in fulness upon the Church at
Pentecost.
In the Life of Sir E. Burne-Jones, there is an account by his wife of the effect first
made upon her by coming into contact with him and his artist friends, Morris and
Rossetti. She says, “I wish it were possible to explain the Impression made upon me
as a young girl, whose experience so far had been quite remote from art, by sudden
and close intercourse with those to whom it was the breath of life. The only
approach I can make to describing it is by saying that I felt in the presence of a new
religion. Their love of beauty did not seem to me unbalanced, but as if it included
the whole world and raised the point from which they regarded everything. Human
beauty especially was in a way sacred to them, I thought; and a young lady who was
much with them, and sat for them as a model, said to me, ‘It was being in a new
world to be with them. I sat to them and I was there with them. And I was a holy
thing to them—I was a holy thing to them.’”
Wherever through the ages rise
The altars of self-sacrifice,
Where love its arms has opened wide,
Or man for man has calmly died,
I see the same white wings outspread,
That hovered o’er the Master’s head!
Up from undated time they come,
The martyr souls of heathendom;
And to His cross and passion bring
Their fellowship of suffering.
So welcome I from every source
The tokens of that primal Force,
Older than heaven itself, yet new

104. As the young heart it reaches to,
Beneath whose steady impulse rolls
The tidal wave of human souls;
Guide, comforter, and inward word,
The eternal spirit of the Lord!1 [ ote: Whittier.]
iii. Cosmos
1. The Spirit of God was brooding upon the face of the waters. The word rendered
“brooded” (or “was brooding,” R.V.m.) occurs elsewhere only in Deuteronomy
32:11, where it is used of an eagle (properly, a griffon-vulture) hovering over its
young. It is used similarly in Syriac. It is possible that its use here may be a survival,
or echo, of the old belief, found among the Phœnicians, as well as elsewhere, of a
world-egg, out of which, as it split, the earth, sky, and heavenly bodies emerged; the
crude, material representation appearing here transformed into a beautiful and
suggestive figure.
2. The hope of the chaotic world, and the hope of the sinning soul, is all in the
brooding Spirit of God seeking to bring order out of chaos, to bring life out of death,
light out of darkness, and beauty out of barrenness and ruin. It was God’s Spirit
brooding over the formless world that put the sun in the heavens, that filled the
world with warmth and light, that made the earth green with herbage, that caused
forests to grow upon the hillsides, with birds to sing in them, and planted flowers to
exhale their perfume in the Valleys. So God’s Spirit broods over the heart of man
that has fallen into darkness and chaos through sin.
(1) As the movement of the Holy Spirit upon the waters was the first act in the six
days’ work, so the work of the Holy Spirit in the soul is the first work of grace in
that soul. It is a very humbling truth, but it is a truth notwithstanding its
humiliating form, that the best man that mere morality ever produced is still “waste
and void” if the Spirit of God has not come upon him. All the efforts of men which
they make by nature, when stirred up by the example of others or by godly precepts,
produce nothing but chaos in another shape; some of the mountains may have been
levelled, but valleys have been elevated into other mountains; some vices have been
discarded, but only to be replaced by other vices that are, perhaps, even worse; or
certain transgressions have been forsaken for a while, only to be followed by a
return to the selfsame sins, so that it has happened unto them, “According to the
true proverb, The dog is turned to his own vomit again; and the sow that was
washed to her wallowing in the mire” (2 Peter 2:22). Unless the Spirit of God has
been at work within him, the man is still, in the sight of God, “without form and
void” as to everything which God can look upon with pleasure.
(2) To this work nothing whatever is contributed by the man himself. “The earth
was waste and void,” so it could not do anything to help the Spirit. “Darkness was
upon the face of the deep.” The Spirit found no light there; it had to be created. The
heart of man promises help, but “the heart is deceitful above all things, and
desperately wicked.” The will has great influence over the man, but the will is itself
depraved, so it tries to play the tyrant over all the other powers of the man, and it
refuses to become the servant of the eternal Spirit of truth.

105. (3) ot only was there nothing whatever that could help the Holy Spirit, but there
seemed nothing at all congruous to the Spirit. The Spirit of God is the Spirit of
order, but there was disorder. He is the Spirit of light, but there was darkness. Does
it not seem a strange thing that the Spirit of God should have come there at all?
Adored in His excellent glory in the heaven where all is order and all is light, why
should He come to brood over that watery deep, and to begin the great work of
bringing order out of chaos? Why should the Spirit of God ever have come into our
hearts? What was there in us to induce the Spirit of God to begin a work of grace in
us? We admire the condescension of Jesus in leaving Heaven to dwell upon earth;
but do we equally admire the condescension of the Holy Spirit in coming to dwell in
such poor hearts as ours? Jesus dwelt with sinners, but the Holy Ghost dwells in us.
(4) Where the Spirit came, the work was carried on to completion. The work of
creation did not end with the first day, but went on till it was finished on the sixth
day. God did not say, “I have made the light, and now I will leave the earth as it is”;
and when He had begun to divide the waters, and to separate the land from the sea,
He did not say, “ ow I will have no more to do with the world.” He did not take the
newly fashioned earth in His hands, and fling it back into chaos; but He went on
with His work until, on the seventh day, when it was completed, He rested from all
His work. He will not leave unfinished the work which He has commenced in our
souls. Where the Spirit of God has begun to move, He continues to move until the
work is done; and He will not fail or turn aside until all is accomplished.1 [ ote: C.
H. Spurgeon.]
Burning our hearts out with longing
The daylight passed:
Millions and millions together,
The stars at last!
Purple the woods where the dewdrops,
Pearly and grey,
Wash in the cool from our faces
The flame of day.
Glory and shadow grow one in
The hazel wood:
Laughter and peace in the stillness
Together brood.
Hopes all unearthly are thronging
In hearts of earth:
Tongues of the starlight are calling
Our souls to birth.
Down from the heaven its secrets
Drop one by one;
Where time is for ever beginning
And time is done.
There light eternal is over
Chaos and night:

106. Singing with dawn lips for ever,
“Let there be light!”
There too for ever in twilight
Time slips away,
Closing in darkness and rapture
Its awful day.1 [ ote: A. E., The Divine Vision, 20.]
II
Light out of Darkness
i. Darkness
“Darkness was upon the face of the deep.” The deep (Heb. tehôm) is not here what
the deep would denote to us, i.e. the sea, but the primitive undivided waters, the
huge watery mass which the writer conceived as enveloping the chaotic earth.
Milton (Paradise Lost, vii. 276 ff.) gives an excellent paraphrase—
The Earth was formed, but, in the womb as yet
Of waters, embryon, immature, involved,
Appeared not; over all the face of Earth
Main ocean flowed.
The darkness which was upon the face of the deep is a type of the natural darkness
of the fallen intellect that is ignorant of God, and has not the light of faith. “Behold,
the darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the people.” Very often in
Holy Scripture darkness is the symbol of sin, and the state of those who are
separated from God. Satan is the prince of “the power of darkness,” while in God
there “is no darkness at all.”
The intermixture in our life of the material and the spiritual has no more striking
illustration than in the influence upon us of darkness. The “power of darkness” is a
real power, and that apart from any theological considerations. The revolution of
this planet on its axis, which for a certain number of hours out of the twenty-four
shuts from us the light of day, has had in every age the profoundest effect on man’s
inner states. It has told enormously on his religion. It has created a vocabulary—a
very sinister one. It lies at the origin of fear. It binds the reason and sets loose the
Imagination. We are not the same at midnight as at midday. The child mind, and
the savage mind, which is so closely akin to it, are reawakened in us. “I do not
believe in ghosts,” said Fontenelle, “but I am afraid of them.” We can all feel with
him there.1 [ ote: J. Brierley, Life and the Ideal, 248.]
ii. God’s Word
1. And God said.—This gives the keynote to the narrative, the burden ten times
repeated, of this magnificent poem. To say is both to think and to will. In this
speaking of God there is both the legislative power of His intelligence, and the
executive power of His will; this one word dispels all notion of blind matter, and of
brute fatalism; it reveals an enlightened Power, an intelligent and benevolent
Thought, underlying all that is.
Says Carlyle: “Man is properly an incarnated word; the word that he speaks is the
man himself.” In like manner, and with still more truth, might it be said of God that

107. His Word is Himself; only John’s assertion is not that the Word is God, but that it
was God, implying is of course.2 [ ote: J. W., Letters of Yesterday, 48.]
2. And at the same time that this word, “And God said,” appears to us as the
veritable truth of things, it also reveals to us their true value and legitimate use.
Beautiful and beneficent as the work may be, its real worth is not in itself; it is in the
thought and in the heart of the Author to whom it owes its existence. Whenever we
stop short in the work itself, our enjoyment of it can only be superficial, and we are,
through our ingratitude, on the road to an idolatry more or less gross. Our
enjoyment is pure and perfect only when it results from the contact of our soul with
the Author Himself. To form this bond is the true aim of ature, as well as the
proper destination of the life of man.
We read, “God created”; “God made”; “God saw”; “God divided”; “God called”;
“God set”; “God blessed”; “God formed”; “God planted”; “God took”; “God
commanded”; but the most frequent word here is “God said.” As elsewhere, “He
spake and it was done”; “He commanded the light to shine out of darkness”; “the
worlds were framed by the Word of God”; “upholding all things by the word of His
power.” God’s “word” is then the one medium or link between Him and creation.…
The frequency with which it is repeated shows what stress God lays on it.…
Between the “nothing” and the “something”—non-existence and creation—there
intervenes only the word—it needed only the word, no more; but after that many
other agencies come in—second causes, natural laws and processes—all evolving the
great original fiat. When the Son of God was here it was thus He acted. He spake:
“Lazarus, come forth”; “Young man, arise”; “Damsel, arise”; “Be opened,” and it
was done. The Word was still the medium. It is so now. He speaks to us (1) in
Creation, (2) in the Word, (3) in Providence, (4) by His Sabbaths.1 [ ote: Horatius
Bonar.]
3. This word, “And God said,” further reveals the personality of God. Behind this
veil of the visible universe which dazzles me, behind these blind forces of which the
play at times terror-strikes me, behind this regularity of seasons and this fixedness
of laws, which almost compel me to recognize in all things only the march of a fixed
Fate, this word, “And God said,” unveils to me an Arm of might, an Eye which sees,
a Heart full of benevolence which is seeking me, a Person who loves me. This ray of
light which, as it strikes upon my retina, paints there with perfect accuracy, upon a
surface of the size of a centime, a landscape of many miles in extent—He it is who
commanded it to shine.
Be kind to our darkness, O Fashioner, dwelling in light,
And feeding the lamps of the sky;
Look down upon this one, and let it be sweet in Thy sight
I pray Thee, to-night.
O watch whom Thou madest to dwell on its soil, Thou Most High!
For this is a world full of sorrow (there may be but one);
Keep watch o’er its dust, else Thy children for aye are undone,
For this is a world where we die.2 [ ote: Jean Ingelow.]

108. iii. Light
1. Let there be light.—The mention of this Divine command is sufficient to make the
reader understand that this element, which was an object of worship to so many
Oriental nations, is neither an eternal principle nor the product of blind force, but
the work of a free and intelligent will. It is this same thought that is expressed in the
division of the work of Creation into six days and six nights. The Creation is thus
represented under the image of a week of work, during which an active and
intelligent workman pursues his task, through a series of phases, graduated with
skill and calculated with certainty, in view of an end definitely conceived from the
first.
“Let there be light.” This is at once the motto and the condition of all progress that
is worthy of the name. From chaos into order, from slumber into wakefulness, from
torpor into the glow of life—yes, and “from strength to strength”; it has been a
condition of progress that there should be light. God saw the light, that it was good.
2. The Bible is not a handbook of science, and it matters little to us whether its
narrative concerning the origin of the world meets the approval of the learned or
not. The truths which it enfolds are such as science can neither displace nor
disprove, and which, despite the strides which we have made, are yet as important
to mankind as on the day when first they were proclaimed. Over the portal that
leads to the sanctuary of Israel’s faith is written, in characters that cannot be
effaced, the truth which has been the hope and stay of the human race, the source of
all its bliss and inspiration, “the fountain light of all our day, the master light of all
our seeing”; it is the truth that there is a central light in the universe, a power that
in the past has wrought with wisdom and purposive intelligence the order and
harmony of this world of matter, and has shed abroad in the human heart the
creative spark which shall some day make aglow this mundane sphere with the
warmth and radiance of justice, truth, and loving-kindness. “Let there be light: and
there was light.”
Let me recall to your remembrance the solemnity and magnificence with which the
power of God in the creation of the universe is depicted; and here I cannot possibly
overlook that passage of the sacred historian, which has been so frequently
commended, in which the importance of the circumstance and the greatness of the
idea (the human mind cannot, indeed, well conceive a greater) are no less
remarkable than the expressive brevity and simplicity of the language:—“And God
said, Let there be light: and there was light.” The more words you would
accumulate upon this thought, the more you would detract from the sublimity of it;
for the understanding quickly comprehends the Divine Power from the effect, and
perhaps most completely when it is not attempted to be explained; the perception in
that case is the more vivid, inasmuch as it seems to proceed from the proper action
and energy of the mind itself. The prophets have also depicted the same conception
in poetical language, and with no less force and magnificence of expression. The
whole creation is summoned forth to celebrate the praise of the Almighty—
Let them praise the name of Jehovah;

109. For He commanded, and they were created.
And in another place—
For He spoke, and it was;
He commanded, and it stood fast.1 [ ote: R. Lowth, Lectures on the Sacred Poetry
of the Hebrews, 176.]
3. In creation it was the drawing near of God, and the utterance of His word, that
dispersed the darkness. In the Incarnation, the Eternal Word, without whom “was
not anything made that was made,” drew nigh to the fallen world darkened by sin.
He came as the Light of the world, and His coming dispersed the darkness. On the
first Christmas night this effect of the Incarnation was symbolized when to the
“shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night … the angel
of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them.”
The message to the shepherds was a call to them and to the world, “Arise, shine; for
thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee. For, behold, the
darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the people: but the Lord shall
arise upon thee, and his glory shall be seen upon thee. And the Gentiles shall come
to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising.”
Thirty years ago last December I went to a place where they practised cannibalism,
and before I left those people to go to ew Guinea, and start a mission there, so
completely were idolatry and cannibalism swept away that a gentleman who tried to
get an idol to bring as a curiosity to this country could not find one; they had all
been burnt, or disposed of to other travellers. I saw these people myself leaving their
cannibalism and their idolatry, and building themselves tolerably good houses. We
had our institutions among them, and I had the honour of training a number of
young men as native pastors and pioneer teachers. What is the use of talking to me
of failure? I have myself baptized more than five thousand of these young people—
does that look like failure? In thirteen or fourteen years these men were building
houses and churches for themselves, and attending schools, and, if you have read the
mission reports, you will know that some of them have gone forth as teachers to ew
Guinea, and across ew Caledonia, and some of the islands of the ew Hebrides.
The people, too, have been contributing handsomely to the support of the London
Missionary Society, for the purpose of sending the Gospel, as they say, to the people
beyond. They have seen what a blessing it has been, and their grand idea is to hand
it on to those who are still in heathen darkness.1 [ ote: S. McFarlane.]
Meet is the gift we offer here to Thee,
Father of all, as falls the dewy night;
Thine own most precious gift we bring—the light
Whereby mankind Thy other bounties see.
Thou art the Light indeed; on our dull eyes
And on our inmost souls Thy rays are poured;
To Thee we light our lamps: receive them, Lord,
Filled with the oil of peace and sacrifice.2 [ ote: Prudentius, translated by R.
Martin Pope.]

110. LA GE, "Genesis 1:2-5. Preparation of the geologico-cosmological description of
the days’ works. First Creative Day.—‫ֹהוּ‬ ‫ָב‬‫ו‬ ‫ֹהוּ‬ ‫.תּ‬ The earth was. This is spoken of its
unarranged original or fundamental state, or of heaven and earth in general. Thohu
Vabohu, alliteratives and at the same time rhymes, or like sounding; similar
alliteratives occurring thus in all the Pentateuch as signs of very old and popular
forms of expression ( Genesis 4:12; Exodus 23:1; Exodus 23:5; umbers 5:18;
Deuteronomy 2:15). We find them also in Isaiah and elsewhere as characteristic
features of a poetical, artistic, keen, and soaring spirit. They are at the same time
pictorial and significant of the earth’s condition. For, according to Hupfeld and
Delitzsch, ‫ֹהוּ‬ ‫ת‬ passes over from the primitive sense of roaring to that of desolateness
and confusion. The last becomes the common sense, or that which characterizes the
natural waste ( Deuteronomy 32:10) as a positive desolation, as, for example, of a
city ( Isaiah 34:11). It is through the conception of voidness, nothingness, that
Thohu and Bohu are connected. Delitzsch regards the latter word as related to ‫,בהם‬
which means to be brutal. Both seem doubtful, but the more usual reference to ‫בהה‬
in the sense of void or emptiness is to be preferred. We have aimed at giving the
rhyming or similarity of the sounds in our translation (German: öden-wüst and
wüsten-öd). The desert is waste, that Isaiah, a confused mass without order; the
waste is desert, that Isaiah, void, without distinction of object. The first word
denotes rather the lack of form, the second the lack of content in the earliest
condition of the earth. It might, therefore, be translated form-less, matter-less.
“Rudis indigestaque moles, in a word, a chaos,” says Delitzsch. It would be odd if in
this the biblical view should so cleanly coincide with the mythological. Chaos
denotes the void space (as in a similar manner the old orthern Ginnun-gagap,
gaping of yawnings, the gaping abyss, which also implies present existing material),
and in the next place the rude unorganized mass of the world-material. There
Isaiah, however, already here the world-form, heaven and earth, and along with this
a universal heaven-and-earth-form is presupposed. It is not said that in the
beginning the condition of the heavens was thohu and bohu,—at least of the heavens
of the earth-world, as Delitzsch maintains; at all events, the earth goes neither out of
chaos, nor out of “the same chaos” as the heavens. It is clean against the text to say
that the chaos, as something that is primarily the earth, embraces, at the same time,
the heaven that exists with and for the earth. For it is very clear that the language
relates to the original condition of the earth, although the genesis of the earth may
serve, by way of analogy, for the genesis of the universe. ‫ך‬ ֶ‫ְחשׁ‬‫ו‬, the first condition of
the earth was ‫הוֹם‬ְ‫ת‬ (from ‫,הום‬ to roar, be in commotion), wave, storm-flood, ocean,
abyss. The first state of the earth was itself the Thehom, and over this roaring-flood
lay the darkness spread abroad. It is wholly anticipatory when we say that “this
undulating mass of waters was not the earth itself in the condition of thohu and
bohu, but that it enclosed it; for on the third day the firm land (‫ץ‬ ֶ‫)אָר‬ goes forth from
the waters.” Delitzsch. Further on, Psalm 104:6 is cited to show that, originally,
water proper surrounded the firm earth-kernel, and Job 38:8, according to which
the sea breaks forth out of the mother’s womb (the earth)—poetical representations
that are true enough, if one does not take them according to the letter; in which case
they are in direct contradiction to each other. The waters, of Genesis 1:2, is quite
another thing than the water proper of the third creative day; it is the fluid (or
gaseous) form of the earth itself in its first condition. 2 Peter 3:5 is not opposed to

111. this; for as the water takes form, the earth breaks out of the water, just as the water
comes forth from the earth in consequence of the creative division. The darkness is
just the absence of the phenomenal, or the absence of light (for the vision view) in
the condition of the earth itself,—in other words, night.—ַ‫ח‬‫ְרוּ‬‫ו‬, But the spirit of God
hovered over (Ang, moved upon). The breath of Prayer of Manasseh, the wind of
the earth, and the spirit, especially the spirit of God, are symbolical analogies. The
breath is the life-unity and life-motion of the physical creature, the wind is the unity
and life-motion of the earth, the spirit is the unity and life-motion of the life proper
to which it belongs; the spirit of God is the unity and life-motion of the creative
divine activity. It is not a wind of God to which the language here primarily relates
(Theodoret, Saadia, Herder, and others), but the spirit of God truly (wherefore the
word ‫,רחף‬ Delitzsch; comp. Psalm 33:6). From this place onward, and throughout
the whole Scripture, the spirit of God is the single formative principle evermore
presenting itself with personal attributes in all the divine creative constitutions,
whether of the earth, of nature, of the theocracy, of the Tabernacle, of the church, of
the new life, or of the new man. The Grecian analogue is that of Eros (or Love) in its
reciprocal action with the Chaos, and to this purpose have the later Targums
explained it: the spirit of love. It was ‫ֶת‬‫פ‬ֶ‫ח‬ ַ‫ְר‬‫מ‬ (hovering) over the waters. The
conception of brooding cannot be obtained out of Deuteronomy 32:11 (Delitzsch),
for the eagle does not brood over the living young, but wakes them, draws them out
(educates), makes them lively.[F 6] The mythological world-egg of the Persians has
no place here. Should we adopt any view of this formative energy of the spirit of
God (which may have worked upon the unorganized mass through the medium of a
great wind of God) it would consist in this, that by its inflowing it differentiated this
mass, that Isaiah, conformably to its being, called out points of unity, and divisions
which fashioned the mass to multiplicity in the contrasts that follow. It separated
the heterogenous, and bound together the homogenous, and so prepared the way for
the dividing the light from the darkness. It cannot be said, however, that “all the co-
energizing powers in the formation of the world were the emanations or
determinations of this spirit of God.” For we must distinguish the creative words
with ‫א‬ ָ‫ָר‬‫ב‬ from ‫ַר‬‫צ‬ָ‫י‬, or the forming by the spirit of God.[F 7] The object, however, of
this forming is not the primitive matter, but the flowing earth-sphere. Just as little
can one say that the six days’ works have their beginning in Genesis 1:3; for the
result of the first day is not the light merely, but also the darkness (see Isaiah 45:7).
Concerning the theosophic interpretation of thohu vabohu as a world in ruins which
had come from God’s judgment on the Fall of the Angels (see Genesis 1:3).
PETT, "Verse 2
‘And the earth was without form and empty. And darkness was on the face of the
deep. And the Spirit of God moved on the face of the waters.’
“And the earth” - the connecting ‘’ (‘waw’) really excludes the suggestion of a gap
between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2. The writer could not have made the
connection any closer (there are no verse divisions in the original) - ‘ha aretz we ha
aretz’ - ‘---the heavens and the earth, and the earth was ---’. Having spoken of the
creation of heavens and earth he is now turning his attention directly to the earth’s
condition as created. It should be noted that what is now immediately described is
therefore limited to ‘the earth’. The remainder of the universe is not in mind.

112. It was ‘tohu wa bohu’ - ‘without form and devoid of anything positive’. Try
pronouncing the Hebrew quickly and deeply (pronouncing toe - hoo wah boe -hoo).
Like many Hebrew words it conveys its meaning by its sound as well as by its
interpretation. This is the condition in which God created the earth. He had made it
formless that He may give it form, He had made it empty that He might fill it. He
had made it covered with water that from that He might produce what is, as altered
by His hand. There is no thought that it had ‘become’ this way, or was naturally so.
or that forces of chaos were at work against which God had to fight. It was as He
had determined it to be. God had created the earth covered in water and now He
began His work upon it. o conflict is involved.
“Tohu” is used in both Hebrew and Arabic to indicate a waste place. The meaning
of ‘bohu’ is uncertain, but in Arabic it means ‘to be empty’. In the Old Testament it
is only used in connection with ‘tohu’ (three times). Thus the idea here is of an
uninhabitable, lifeless and empty, water-covered earth.
“And darkness was on the face of the deep.” The point is that without God’s word
there is no light. Darkness is seen as negative. It is God’s positive action that brings
light. Unless God acts the universe such as it is will remain forever dark. So the
primeval world is seen as formless, empty and dark, as without shape or evident
light. It is covered with water. ote that all that was outside of God and was visible
was described as ‘the deep’, and that everything that happens is seen from the point
of view of earth. But the fact that he speaks of ‘the face of the deep’ demonstrates
that it is apart from God. This dark, unshaped, mass is not God, it is not everything
that is. It has a surface, and over that surface God waits and is about to act.
But why ‘the deep’. ‘The deep’ - ‘tehom’ (in Ugaritic ‘thm’) means ‘the deeps’, thus
usually referring to the oceans and seas. To the Israelite the deep itself was a
mystery. It was dark, impenetrable, shapeless and for ever fluid. It formed nothing
solid or specific. Thus it indicated that which was impenetrable, and beyond man’s
sphere, that which was shapeless, dark and fluid. It had no form or shape, was ever
changing and temporary, and was suitable as a description of ultimate formlessness
and barrenness. Here in the beginning it was dark and unformed because light and
shape and form and all significance had yet to come from God, and He had not yet
acted. There is no suggestion of a struggle. It is impersonal. We may speak of
‘chaos’ as long as we do not read in ideas that are not there. It is chaos in the sense
of being unshaped and unformed and not controlled, utterly waste and shapeless
and void. As being ‘empty’.
“And the Spirit of God hovered over the face of the waters.” This could also be
translated ‘wind of God’. Either way the idea is of God hovering over earth ready
for action. In view of this, ‘Spirit’ is the most likely meaning. It is the creative
energy of God waiting to act. He Who is light is ready to act on darkness. He Who is
all that is significant would bring significance to this shapeless mass. (The
translation ‘mighty wind’ is extremely doubtful. The word ‘God’ appears too many
times in this narrative for its appearance here to be just adjectival, and there is no

113. suggestion in the later narrative of the activity of a mighty wind. Creation takes
place through His word, not through a wind).
In the Old Testament when God’s direct action is seen in the world it is often
described in terms of the ‘Spirit of God’. To the Old Testament the Spirit of God is
God extending Himself to act positively, locally and visibly in the world. Basically
the writer is saying here that God is now hovering over His world about to reveal
Himself in action. It should be noted that this description already assumes a kind of
‘heaven’ where the Spirit is hovering, but not our heaven. Our earth and heaven is
seen as not all that there is. It is probable therefore that he intends us to see the
Spirit in action in the following verses, acting through God’s word.
“Hovered”. Compare its use in Deuteronomy 32:11 of a bird hovering over its
young. The same root in Ugaritic means ‘hover, soar’. The word as used here
suggests intimate concern.
“The face of the waters.” As light was positive and darkness was absence of light, so
‘land’ was positive and ‘waters’ or ‘deeps’ represented absence of land, in other
words here there was the absence of the means of creaturely existence and absence
of shape and form. The deeps were fluid, unshaped, dark and mysterious. They had
no form. There was no atmosphere. They were therefore to the writer a perfect
symbol of unformed existence.
But while ‘the deep’ was formless and shapeless and fluid, the sphere of hovering
was outside of this emptiness, outside the beginnings of creation as we know it. God
was not a part of the stuff of creation. He was there ready to act upon it. This deep
was the incomprehensibly mysterious described in terms of what was indescribable,
that which was formless and shapeless and waiting for God to give it shape, and
form, and significance. And God is pictured as by His Spirit waiting apart from it to
act on it from the outside.
BI, "And the earth was without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the
deep
Genesis of order
I. EXPLANATION OF THE PASSAGE.
1. The primeval chaos.
(1) Origin of chaos. The direct issue of the Creative Will. God created the atoms
of the universe, starting with them in a chaotic state.
(2) Picture of chaos. All the elements which now exist were doubtless there; but
all were out of relation.
(3) Confirmation of science. If the magnificent nebular hypothesis of the
astronomers—first propounded by Swedenborg, adopted by Kant, elaborated by
Laplace and Herschel, and maintained with modifications by such scientists as
Cuvier, Humboldt, Arago, Dana, and Guyot—be true, there has been a time when
the earth, and indeed the whole universe, was in a state of nebula, or chaotic

114. gaseous fluid. As such, the earth was indeed without form and void, and darkness
was on the face of the deep. Being in a gaseous state, it was “without form and
void”; being as yet in an inactive state, it was “dark”; being in a state of indefinite
expansion, it was a “deep.”
2. The organizing energy.
(1) The breath of God.
(2) Moved over the face of the fluids.
II. And now let us attend to THE MORAL MEANING OF THE STORY.
1. And, first: all life begins chaotically. It is true of physical life. Look at this bioplast;
the most powerful microscope fails to detect in it much sign of system, or structure:
the most that it detects is a tiny grouping of seemingly unarranged, chaotic material;
in fact, so structureless does it seem, that the microscope declines to prophesy
whether it will unfold into a cedar, an elephant, or a man. Again, it is true of
intellectual life. Look at this newborn infant: how nebulous and chaotic its
conceptions! Your little one may grow into a Shakespeare; but at present, and
intellectually surveyed—forgive me, fond mother, for saying it—your little one is
scarcely more than a little animal. Do we not apply indiscriminately to infants and
animals the impersonal pronoun “it”? Once more: it is true of moral life. That is not
first which is spiritual, but that which is natural: then that which is spiritual. Look at
humanity as a whole, and through the ages, ancient, mediaeval, modern, How vast
but abortive its endeavours! How besmeared its history with idolatries, barbarisms,
wars, butcheries, oppressions, crimes, blasphemies! Verily, humanity, compared
with its latent, transcendent possibilities, is indeed a chaos, without form, and void,
and darkness is over its deep. And what is so sadly true of humanity as a whole, is as
sadly true of each member of humanity, at least in his natural, or rather unnatural,
denatured state. For each man is a microcosm, a miniature world of his own. And
each man, compared with what is conceivable concerning him, is a chaos.
2. Is there any hope here? Thank God, there is. That same breath of God which
moved over the face of those ancient fluids, is moving today over the soul of
humanity. Ah, this is the blessed energy by which the chaos of our moral nature is
being organized into order and beauty. Observe: as, in shaping the material earth out
of the old chaos, the Spirit of God added no new elements, but simply fashioned into
order the old; so, in organizing the spiritual chaos, He adds no new faculties, but
simply quickens and organizes the old. What man needs is not creation, but re-
creation; not generation, but regeneration. And this it is which the Holy Ghost is
achieving. Brooding, incubating as God’s Holy Dove over the chaos of humanity, He
is quickening its latent forces, arranging its elements, assorting its capacities,
organizing its functions, apportioning its gifts, perfecting its potentialities: in short,
completing, fulfilling consummating man in the sphere of Jesus Christ. (G. D.
Boardman.)
An emblem of unrenewed man
I. EMPTINESS OF GOOD. Chaos was absolutely unproductive. Not a single tree, bush,
or flower. Not even the seeds of any useful herbs. So is man as a spiritual being till God’s
Spirit begins to work on his fallen nature. “In me, that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good
thing.”

115. II. DARKNESS. A meet covering for such an unsightly spectacle. The wicked man is said
to “walk in darkness” (1Jn_1:6); “darkness blindeth his eyes” (1Jn_2:11); his
“understanding is darkened” Eph_4:18); his “foolish heart is darkened” (Rom_1:21); he
“loves darkness rather than light” (1Jn_3:21); “he knows not nor understands, but walks
on in darkness” (Psa_82:5); and if he repent not he “shall be cast into outer darkness”
(Mat_25:30). The children of God were “at one time darkness, but now are light in the
Lord; “ “they walk as children of light” (Eph_5:8); they are “called out of darkness into
marvellous light” (1Pe_2:9); they are “delivered from the power of darkness” (Col_1:13);
they “cast off the works of darkness, and walk honestly as in the day” (Rom_13:12-13).
III. CONFUSION. The chaos was a hideous mixture of all discordant materials—earth
and water; mud and rock; vegetable and mineral; mire, slime, lees, scum, clay, marl,
crag, and pool. This is but a faint image of the turmoil, struggle, and strife that go on
continually in the heart of a man who is under the dominion of “lusts and passions that
war against the soul.” Was there a visible form? If so it may have been some white cloud
like the Shechinah. But if cloud there were, there was no vitality in that; it was only a
symbol made use of by the vitalizing Agent to intimate that He was present. This power
was—
1. Silent in its operation.
2. Efficacious.
3. Instantaneous.
In one word, the chaotic state of man’s soul before God can only be restored to light,
warmth, order, beauty, and life by the working of the Divine Spirit, through applying
“the truth as it is in Christ Jesus” as the means. This work is done silently and gently.
Zaccheus was thus awakened Luk_19:5-8); Nathanael (Joh_1:47-49); the woman of
Samaria Joh_4:9-29).
The teaching of chaos
I. THAT THE MOST ELEMENTARY AND RUDE CONDITIONS OF THINGS ARE NOT
TO BE REJECTED OR OVERLOOKED. “And the earth was without form and void.”
1. This may be true of the world of matter.
2. This may be true of the world of mind. Desolate. Not peopled with great thoughts.
Not animated by great and noble convictions.
3. This may be true of the world of the soul. The soul life of many lacks architecture.
II. THAT THE MOST RUDE AND ELEMENTARY CONDITIONS OF THINGS, UNDER
THE CULTURE OF THE DIVINE SPIRIT, ARE CAPABLE OF THE HIGHEST UTILITY
AND BEAUTY.
1. This is true of the material world. The earth was without form and void; but now it
is everywhere resplendent with all that is esteemed useful and beautiful. It manifests
a fertility most welcome to the husbandman. Whence this transition? It was the gift
of God. It was the result of the Spirit’s hovering over the darkness of Nature. The
world is under a Divine ministry.
2. This is true of the world of mind. The chaos of the human mind is turned into
order, light, and intellectual completion, by the agency of the Divine Spirit.
3. This is true of the world of soul. The chaos of the soul of man can only be restored
by the creative ministry of the Holy Spirit. He will cause all the nobler faculties of the

116. soul to shine out with their intended splendour. He will make the soul a fit world for
the habitation of all that is heavenly. (J. S.Exell, M. A.)
Without form and void
1. A type of many souls.
2. A type of many lives.
3. A type of many books.
4. A type of many sermons.
5. A type of many societies. (J. S. Exell, M. A.)
On looking back to original condition
The best way to judge of things aright is to consider them in their first original.
1. To bring down our pride.
2. To quicken our endeavours.
3. To fill our mouths with praises to Him that made us what we are, and might have
continued, without His free and infinite mercy. (J. White.)
The chaos
The text is easily divided into two parts: first, the earth was without form, and void, and
darkness was upon the face of the deep: second, the Spirit of God moved upon the face of
the waters.
I. The first subject then for our consideration is THE STATE OF THE WORLD IN THE
BEGINNING OF TIME. The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon
the face of the deep: that is, the earth lay a hideous, barren, and desolate heap; as a
waste, howling wilderness, earth and sea mingled together. How short and wretched
must have been the existence of creatures, if God had doomed any to dwell in such a
state!—how utterly impossible would it have been for them to fix a comfortable
habitation, or to remedy one even of the existing evils! Where should we have made our
pleasant homes and warm firesides? Could we “have commanded the morning, and
caused the day spring to know its place”? Could we have driven away the darkness, or
“have shut up the sea with doors”?
1. Here, then, we are led to reflect, first, upon the wisdom and goodness of God
manifested in His gracious design in the creation. God had no design to form
creatures for misery, but for happiness, as the apostle declares when speaking of the
Christian dispensation: “God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain mercy by
Jesus Christ.” So here He had determined to make man; but to make him, not a child
of sorrow, but a comfortable and happy creature: He therefore first begins, with
infinite goodness, to prepare him a pleasant and goodly dwelling place. But which
among the angels would have supposed that He would form it from this gloomy
chaos, this miserable and barren spot we have been considering? They had no such
power themselves, not the mightiest of them; and it is probable they did not yet

117. know the almighty power of God, or, at least, that they had not seen it so
marvellously displayed. When, therefore, He fixed the foundation of the earth, and
formed the world, He tells Job that then “the morning stars sung together, and all
the sons of god shouted for joy”: they sung of the mighty power and glory of God:
they shouted for joy at the goodness and wisdom of their everlasting Father, here
displayed so gloriously. Thus, when we consider the works of the Holy Spirit, how
lovely does He himself appear to us!—how worthy of our highest adoration and
gratitude! But, further, the word here translated “moved,” literally means settled or
brooded, and it is understood by some to express that act of the Holy Spirit by which
He imparted life and activity. This is the peculiar office of the Holy Spirit, “it is the
Spirit that quickeneth,” saith our Saviour: “the Spirit giveth life,” says St. Paul: it was
the Spirit that “raised Jesus from the dead”: it is the Spirit that shall breathe upon
our dry bones, that they may live; for in like manner it was the Spirit of God that
entered Adam, and man became a living soul. To this Holy Spirit of God then we are
indebted, not only for our own life and preservation from day to day and from year to
year, but for all those living creatures which increase and multiply to supply us with
food and clothing, and many other comforts. As often, therefore, as we use them,
should not our hearts be grateful to Him who is the author of them, and take heed
not to abuse them? Now, we have considered the state of this world before the Word
of God and the Spirit of God began their operations upon it. You have seen its
disorder and confusion, its barren, empty, and useless condition, and the utter
darkness in which it was buried. You have seen, then, an exact representation of the
fallen state of man, and what the Word and Spirit of God, and these only, can do for
him. The whole soul and body of man without these is without form, and void: his
heart is a misshapen, hideous, and disordered mass of empty, unprofitable, and
good-for-nothing matter; and, when the Holy Spirit of God enters it, He finds it
lifeless, dark, and barren, and, like the unrestrained and troubled waters, all ruinous
and in wild disorder, as in chaos. This is the state of man, and therefore he is fit for
nothing else but destruction, except he is rendered “fit for a habitation of God
through the Spirit.” There is, as in chaos, a continued strife of elements within us, a
continual war and confusion among “our lusts, which war in our members”: we “are
full of uncleanness,” ungodliness, intemperance, and sin: while the ungoverned
waters struggle for a vent, and rage and swell, the earth is rent and torn asunder, and
at last overwhelmed; and thus, while one desire, one lust, one inclination in our
frame rages, and is indulged, another part of us is convulsed and disordered, and at
last perhaps “sudden destruction comes upon us.” Here, then, we see the free mercy
of God towards us, in His willingness to rescue us from this chaotic state. It is plain,
then, that a change must be wrought in us if we would be saved: for think not that
God will pollute His heavens with such creatures: think not that He will suffer the
holiness and harmony of heaven to be interrupted by unsubdued, deformed man.
This change, then, from darkness to light, from barrenness to fruitfulness, from
confusion to peace, from sin to holiness and loveliness, and happiness, in short
“from the power of Satan unto God,” this change is needed in all, and none can be
saved without it; and it is the work of the Word and Spirit of God: none other can do
it; none other has any part in it. I say it is the work of the Word and Spirit: not the
Word alone, nor the Spirit alone; but it is the work of the two conjointly. (J.
Matthews, M. A.)
The inability of chaos apart from God to evolve order

118. It would be unphilosophical to hold that chaos evolved from herself the order that
everywhere appears. Can I believe that the pile of rubbish that marks the site of Babylon
will ever produce a city so beautiful and magnificent as that which witnessed nightly the
revels of the Chaldean Monarchs? Shall I see, as if by magic, street after street arise,
square after square occupy its ancient position, temple after temple point its glittering
canopy to heaven; shall I see the city enclosed by walls, filled with a busy, trading,
pleasure-seeking population, and be told that all this order, and magnificence, and life,
has come of the pile of ruins? (G. Wight.)
The chaos of the earth illustrated by the chaotic condition of the moon
Of such a condition of the earth, a definite idea may be formed by an examination of the
moon’s surface—a very chaos of explosive action. Thousands of small pits are there, and,
as certainly, immense chasms, whose flattened interiors rival a congeries of English
counties, while stupendous ridges and peaks encompass them, standing out like the
Apennines and Pyrenees, and sometimes transcending the loftiest eminences of the Alps.
He who has traversed the Great Schiedegg and the Wengun Alp, beneath the shadow of
the almost vertical steeps of the Wetterhorn and the Eiger, has been awe-struck by
summits so towering, and descents so profound; and yet feeble is their image of the
heights and depths of the moon’s Himalayas. What evidences are these of volcanic
agency, while other elevations, due possibly to the same mighty power, astound him who
steadily contemplates them, by their rectilinear extent.
Yet, amidst these cindery plains, no river makes a path, no stream meanders; down
those precipices neither silver thread of water winds its way, nor is there the gushing,
the tumbling, and foaming of some huge cascade; and hence the great desert of Africa
resembles the naked and arid wastes, where no life springs forth to relieve, much less to
cheer, this immense scene of unmitigated desolation. As, then, the moon is, so was this
earth of ours, when Moses described not its contents, of which he knew nothing, but its
surface, as without form and void. (C. Williams.)
And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters:—
The work of the Holy Spirit
It is a significant, suggestive fact, that the work of the Holy Spirit is historically coeval
with the work of creation. The Divine Being who inspired the Bible appears upon its first
page, a mystic centre of light and beauty in the midst of an universe of darkness. And St.
Paul tells us that God the Holy Spirit, who first illumined the dark world of matter, still
illuminates the dark world of mind. All is midnight in the heart, mind, and soul of a
sinner, until He, the Light of Life, saith, “Let there be light.”
I. The work of the Spirit in the NATURAL man. The force of Paul’s allusion to the
creation in Genesis implies that man’s original earth, in its perennial darkness, waste,
and submersion, is a type of man’s heart, as nature moulds it, and sin corrupts it. “The
earth was without form and void”; and the heart is without grace, or capacity of spiritual
discernment, till the Spirit of God moves in His creative, enlightening energy, upon both
the one and the other. This is equally true of every man, for “who maketh thee to differ?
and what hast thou, O man, that thou didst not receive? “It is our part to preach Christ,
but it is the Spirit’s office to convince “of sin, righteousness, and judgment.” The Spirit
Himself is the foundation of all spirituality. “It is the Spirit that quickeneth, and the

119. Spirit giveth life: the words that I speak unto you, they are Spirit,” because He spake in
the Spirit, lived in the Spirit, and commanded His disciples “to wait” for the Spirit,
before they commenced their ministry, that they might be “endued with power from on
high.” That is the only power still to convert souls. The most powerful ministry is simply
that which is the most spiritual, which most prays in the Spirit, preaches in the Spirit,
lives in the Spirit, and most constantly insists upon congregations seeking the Spirit, and
resting on His gifts and graces as their only source and secret of edification.
II. The work of the Spirit in the REGENERATE man. “The path of the just is as a shining
light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day,” for He who gives the first
convicting and converting impulse, “giveth more grace.” As the original motion of the
Spirit of life and light was followed by the creation of the sun, the moon, and the stars,
each in their appointed orbits, fulfilling their Creator’s munificent purposes of love and
goodness; so the work of the quickening Spirit in individual regeneration is succeeded by
ampler revelations of Christ as the “Sun of Righteousness,” the centre of His redeeming
system; of the Church, as His satellite, “fair as the moon,” borrowing all her light and
influence upon many waters from the Lord, whose fainter image she is, a light shining in
dark places: and of Christ’s ministers and sacraments, as stars in His right hand, by
whose “lesser lights” He deigns to carry on His gracious offices of mercy to “a world lying
in darkness, and in the power of the wicked.” But it is the Spirit which gives the weight
and efficacy to all these means of grace, and channels of edification, by which the child of
God is built up in his most holy faith, and rendered more and more conformed to the
image of God’s dear Son. At every step there is the scriptural impress of the Spirit, from
first to last. (J. B. Owen, M. A.)
The Spirit of God considered as the chief agent in the work of the new
creation
In fulfilment of this process of new creation, the Spirit of God descends upon the
benighted surface of the human soul.
1. In order to dissipate the darkness in which it is naturally involved. The mind of
man, as disordered, corrupted, and clouded by sin, may well be compared to that
confused and rayless obscurity which rested over the face of the abyss. It is
enveloped in a thick, impenetrable mantle of ignorance, prejudice, and unconcern.
And it is only when the Spirit of God begins to move upon the stagnant waters of his
cold and damp indifference, that light breaks in upon his mind.
2. Another function equally necessary and important, which the Spirit of God
performs in the new creation of the soul, is that of purification. The mind of each one
of us, by nature, is full of all impurity and pollution. In this condition we are utterly
unfit for the service of God here, and the presence of God hereafter—unfit for
communion with God by prayer and devout meditation—unfit for the suitable and
acceptable discharge of any one of the duties of God’s worship—unfit for life—unfit
for death. Under these circumstances it becomes a question of supreme and
paramount importance, whether a renovating process has been commenced upon
us—whether, under the influence of the salutary motions of the Spirit of God, we
have made it our endeavour to cleanse ourselves from all impurity of flesh and spirit,
and to perfect holiness in the fear of God—whether the various streams of thought,
feeling, and conduct, are gradually purifying from their drossy and turbid aspect, and
whether our whole character from day to day becomes more thoroughly assimilated

120. to the Divine image, and assumes more of the complexion and the hue of heaven.
3. In connection with the effects already specified, the human soul requires to be
reduced to order, and to be harmonized in its various principles and habits. By the
fatal shock which it received in Eden, the whole system has been disorganized. In
relation to the character and attributes of Jehovah—to His revealed will and the
whole range of His service—to the objects and pursuits connected with a spiritual
and eternal world, it is altogether out of joint. By the original apostasy from God, in
fact, the whole nature of man went to wreck. The various elements of his being
forsook their proper combination and position in the system, and entered into new
and most destructive relations. The wild and tumultuous anarchy of his affections is
like the troubled sea when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt. The
scene of chaos, in which heaven and earth, fire and water, were commingled together
into one vast ocean of jarring elements, was not more replete with confusion than is
the mind, when let loose unto itself, and freed from the soothing restraints, and the
controlling and regulating impulses, of that Spirit which moved upon the face of the
waters. It is this Spirit alone, who can rectify the deep disorders of our nature. It is
He alone who can separate, direct, soothe, and harmonize the warring elements of
our carnal and unsubdued mind, and reduce every faculty and affection into the
cheerful and meek obedience of the faith. It is He alone who can restrain the
aberrations of the judgment—who can check the wanderings of the imagination—
who can curb the impetuosity of the passions, and attemper the whole soul and spirit
into one harmonious and well-balanced scheme of Christian character and conduct.
Other means may be used, indeed, and ought to be used. The Bible should be read—
the ordinances of religion should be attended—the duties of prayer, and devout
meditation and reflection, should be solemnly and uninterruptedly discharged; but
other means, without the accompanying and moving energies of the Spirit, will be
found ineffectual.
4. Nor is the Spirit merely the author of light, purity, and order, in the formation of
the new creature, but life itself: that which is essential to the exercise and enjoyment
of all other endowments in His special gift. While He moved upon the face of the
waters, the command went forth, and they were at once seen to teem with animated
existence. Impregnated with His vital energies, the great deep became instinct with
life and motion. The various forms of vegetable and organized existence—the tenants
of the ]and, and those that wing their flight through the regions of air, were seen to
burst forth from its capacious bosom, until every quarter of the universe became
peopled with its appropriate inhabitants. The great Spirit, who was thus the primary
agent in kindling material nature into life, is also the author of that higher life which
pervades the new creation. (J. Davies, B. D.)
The creation
I. THE SPIRIT OF GOD BROUGHT ORDER AND DEVELOPMENT TO THE
MATERIAL WORLD. How did that shapeless mass become such a world as this? What
account of the transition does science give? It says, “Change succeeded to change, in
strict accordance with physical law, very slowly but surely, with no sudden transitions,
till, step by step, the one condition passed into the other.” Those regular changes were all
that appeared; and they are all which appear now, though the same changes are still
going on. We cannot see the intelligence, the mind, which directs the works of nature;
but it is equally true that we cannot see them in the works of man. Yet the mind of man

121. is at work, though invisible, animating his body; and it is truer to speak of his mind as
planning the house he builds, and the steam engine he sets to work, than to say that the
materials came together into their right places, though that is all that we see. And so it is
truer to say that the Invisible Mind, the unseen Spirit of God, moved upon the formless
earth, and brought it to its present ordered form, than to say it happened so. Science
mentions only what appeared; but Genesis tells the deeper truth, that the informing
mind accomplished all—Genesis, which was written centuries before science was born.
There is special fitness in the words employed, “The Spirit of God moved upon the face
of the waters.” It indicates the quiet untiring ways in which God works in the heavens
and the earth.
II. THE SPIRIT OF GOD MUST BRING ORDER AND DEVELOPMENT TO THE
SPIRITUAL WORLD. The moral and spiritual nature of man forms quite another world
from the material universe, and yet how closely the two are linked in the human body
and soul! Look at the moral and spiritual nature of men. How high they can rise! so high
that there is fitness in speaking of God’s image in them as a real kinship of nature with
God. What noble examples there have been among men, of righteousness, faithfulness,
and love—the very attributes of God—yet we feel man has not realized the greatness and
goodness that he may. But how low men can sink! to what extremes of wrong, and
treachery, and selfishness, and cruelty! We cannot picture it all; to do so would be to
have present to the mind what human society has been and is—the crimes, the woes, the
degradation, and shame, of generations of human lives and hearts. To picture human
society as it is—I mean especially its evils—would be more, not only than imagery could
realize, but more than any feeling heart could bear. The material chaos is but a faint
image of this deeper spiritual chaos; but taking it as such, we may ask, Does God leave
the world in this chaos of degradation and woe? Turn to another Bible picture: “I beheld,
and, lo, a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and
people, and tongues, stood before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed in white
robes” (emblems of purity), “and palms in their hands” (emblems of victory). (T. M.
Herbert, M. A.)
3 And God said, “Let there be light,” and there
was light.
BAR ES, " - III. The First Day

122. 3. ‫אמר‬ 'āmar, “say, bid.” After this verb comes the thing said in the words of the
speaker, or an equivalent expression. In this respect it corresponds with our English
“say.”
‫אור‬ 'ôr, “light.” Light is simply what makes a sensible impression on the organs of
vision. It belongs to a class of things which occasionally produce the same effect.
‫ויאמר‬ vayo'mer “then said.” Here we have come to the narrative or the record of a series
of events. The conjunction is prefixed to the verb, to indicate the connection of the event
it records with what precedes. There is here, therefore, a sequence in the order of time.
In a chain of events, the narrative follows the order of occurrence. Collateral chains of
events must of necessity be recorded in successive paragraphs. The first paragraph
carries on one line of incidents to a fit resting-place. The next may go back to take up the
record of another line. Hence, a new paragraph beginning with a conjoined verb is to be
connected in time, not with the last sentence of the preceding one, but with some
sentence in the preceding narrative more or less distant from its terminating point (see
on Gen_1:5, and Gen_2:3). Even a single verse may be a paragraph in itself referring to a
point of time antecedent to the preceding sentence.
A verb so conjoined in narrative is in Hebrew put in the incipient or imperfect form, as
the narrator conceives the events to grow each out of that already past. He himself
follows the incidents step by step down the pathway of time, and hence the initial aspect
of each event is toward him, as it actually comes upon the stage of existence.
Since the event now before us belongs to past time, this verb is well enough rendered
by the past tense of our English verb. This tense in English is at present indefinite, as it
does not determine the state of the event as either beginning, continuing, or concluded.
It is not improbable, however, that it originally designated the first of these states, and
came by degrees to be indefinite. The English present also may have denoted an
incipient, and then an imperfect or indefinite.
3. ‫ראה‬ rā'âh, “see” ᆇράω horaō, ‫אור‬ 'ôr, “emit light,” ‫ראה‬ rā'âh, “see by light.”
‫טיב‬ ᑛôb, “good.” Opposite is: ‫רע‬ rā‛.
4. ‫קרא‬ qārā', “cry, call.”
‫ערב‬ ‛ereb, “evening, sunset.” A space of time before and after sunset. ‫ערבים‬ ‛are
bayım,
“two evenings,” a certain time before sunset, and the time between sunset and the end of
twilight. ‫הערבים‬ ‫בין‬ bēyn hā‛arbayım “the interval between the two evenings, from sunset
to the end of twilight,” according to the Karaites and Samaritans; “from sun declining to
sunset,” according to the Pharisees and Rabbinists. It might be the time from the
beginning of the one to the beginning of the other, from the end of the one to the end of
the other, or from the beginning of the one to the end of the other. The last is the most
suitable for all the passages in which it occurs. These are ten in number, all in the law
Exo_12:6; Exo_16:12; Exo_29:31, Exo_29:41; Exo_30:8; Lev_23:5; Num_9:3, Num_
9:5,Num_9:8; Num_28:4. The slaying of the evening lamb and of the passover lamb, the
eating of the latter and the lighting of the lamps, took place in the interval so designated.
At the end of this portion of the sacred text we have the first ‫פ‬ (p). This is explained in
the Introduction, Section VII.
The first day’s work is the calling of light into being. Here the design is evidently to
remove one of the defects mentioned in the preceding verse, - “and darkness was upon

123. the face of the deep.” The scene of this creative act is therefore coincident with that of
the darkness it is intended to displace. The interference of supernatural power to cause
the presence of light in this region, intimates that the powers of nature were inadequate
to this effect. But it does not determine whether or not light had already existed
elsewhere, and had even at one time penetrated into this now darkened region, and was
still prevailing in the other realms of space beyond the face of the deep. Nor does it
determine whether by a change of the polar axis, by the rarefaction of the gaseous
medium above, or by what other means, light was made to visit this region of the globe
with its agreeable and quickening influences. We only read that it did not then illuminate
the deep of waters, and that by the potent word of God it was then summoned into
being. This is an act of creative power, for it is a calling into existence what had
previously no existence in that place, and was not owing to the mere development of
nature. Hence, the act of omnipotence here recorded is not at variance with the existence
of light among the elements of that universe of nature, the absolute creation of which is
affirmed in the first verse.
Gen_1:3
Then said God. - In Gen_1:3, God speaks. From this we learn that He not only is,
but is such that He can express His will and commune with His intelligent creatures. He
is manifest not only by His creation, but by Himself. If light had come into existence
without a perceptible cause, we should still have inferred a first Causer by an intuitive
principle which demands an adequate cause for anything making its appearance which
was not before. But when God says, “Be light,” in the audience of His intelligent
creatures, and light forthwith comes into view, they perceive God commanding, as well
as light appearing.
Speech is the proper mode of spiritual manifestation. Thinking, willing, acting are the
movements of spirit, and speech is the index of what is thought, willed, and done. Now,
as the essence of God is the spirit which thinks and acts, so the form of God is that in
which the spirit speaks, and otherwise meets the observations of intelligent beings. In
these three verses, then, we have God, the spirit of God, and the word of God. And as the
term “spirit” is transferred from an inanimate thing to signify an intelligent agent, so the
term “word” is capable of receiving a similar change of application.
Inadvertent critics of the Bible object to God being described as “speaking,” or
performing any other act that is proper only to the human frame or spirit. They say it is
anthropomorphic or anthropopathic, implies a gross, material, or human idea of God,
and is therefore unworthy of Him and of His Word. But they forget that great law of
thought and speech by which we apprehend analogies, and with a wise economy call the
analogues by the same name. Almost all the words we apply to mental things were
originally borrowed from our vocabulary for the material world, and therefore really
figurative, until by long habit the metaphor was forgotten, and they became to all intents
and purposes literal. And philosophers never have and never will have devised a more
excellent way of husbanding words, marking analogies, and fitly expressing spiritual
things. Our phraseology for mental ideas, though lifted up from a lower sphere, has not
landed us in spiritualism, but enabled us to converse about the metaphysical with the
utmost purity and propriety.
And, since this holds true of human thoughts and actions, so does it apply with equal
truth to the divine ways and works. Let there be in our minds proper notions of God, and
the tropical language we must and ought to employ in speaking of divine things will
derive no taint of error from its original application to their human analogues. Scripture
communicates those adequate notions of the most High God which are the fit corrective
of its necessarily metaphorical language concerning the things of God. Accordingly, the

124. intelligent perusal of the Bible has never produced idolatry; but, on the other hand, has
communicated even to its critics the just conceptions they have acquired of the spiritual
nature of the one true God.
It ought to be remembered, also, that the very principle of all language is the use of
signs for things, that the trope is only a special application of this principle according to
the law of parsimony, and that the East is especially addicted to the use of tropical
language. Let not western metaphysics misjudge, lest it be found to misunderstand
eastern aesthetics.
It is interesting to observe in the self-manifesting God, the great archetypes of which
the semblances are found in man. Here we have the sign-making or signifying faculty in
exercise. Whether there were created witnesses present at the issue of this divine
command, we are not here informed. Their presence, however, was not necessary to give
significance to the act of speech, any more than to that of self-manifestation. God may
manifest Himself and speak, though there be none to see and hear.
We see, too, here the name in existence before the thing, because it primarily refers to
the thing as contemplated in thought.
The self-manifesting God and the self-manifesting act of speaking are here antecedent
to the act of creation, or the coming of the thing into existence. This teaches us that
creation is a different thing from self-manifestation or emanation. God is; He manifests
Himself; He speaks; and lastly He puts forth the power, and the thing is done.
Let there be light. - The word “be” simply denotes the “existence” of the light, by
whatever means or from whatever quarter it comes into the given locality. It might have
been by an absolute act of pure creation or making out of nothing. But it may equally
well be effected by any supernatural operation which removes an otherwise
insurmountable hinderance, and opens the way for the already existing light to penetrate
into the hitherto darkened region. This phrase is therefore in perfect harmony with
preexistence of light among the other elementary parts of the universe from the very
beginning of things. And it is no less consonant with the fact that heat, of which light is a
species or form, is, and has from the beginning been, present in all those chemical
changes by which the process of universal nature is carried on through all its
innumerable cycles.
CLARKE, "And God said, Let there be light - ‫אור‬ ‫ויהי‬ ‫אור‬ ‫הי‬ Yehi or, vaihi or.
Nothing can be conceived more dignified than this form of expression. It argues at once
uncontrollable authority, and omnific power; and in human language it is scarcely
possible to conceive that God can speak more like himself. This passage, in the Greek
translation of the Septuagint, fell in the way of Dionysius Longinus, one of the most
judicious Greek critics that ever lived, and who is highly celebrated over the civilized
world for a treatise he wrote, entitled Περι ᆙψους, Concerning the Sublime, both in
prose and poetry; of this passage, though a heathen, he speaks in the following terms: -
Ταυτᇽ και ᆇ των Ιουδαιων θεσµοθετης(ουχ ᆇ τυχων ανηρ,) επειδη την του θειου δυναµιν κατα
την αξιαν εχωρησε, καξεφηνεν· ευθυς εν τᇽ εισβολη γραψας των νοµων, ΕΙΠΕΝ ᆍ ΘΕΟΣ,
φησι, τιˇ ΓΕΝΕΣΘ Φ Σ· και εγενετο. ΓΕΝΕΣΘ ΓΗ· και εγενετο.“So likewise the Jewish
lawgiver (who was no ordinary man) having conceived a just idea of the Divine power,
he expressed it in a dignified manner; for at the beginning of his laws he thus speaks:
God Said - What? Let There Be Light! and there was light. Let There Be Earth! and there
was earth.” - Longinus, sect. ix. edit. Pearce.

125. Many have asked, “How could light be produced on the first day, and the sun, the
fountain of it, not created till the fourth day?” With the various and often
unphilosophical answers which have been given to this question I will not meddle, but
shall observe that the original word ‫אור‬ signifies not only light but fire, see Isa_31:9 Eze_
5:2. It is used for the Sun, Job_31:26. And for the electric fluid or Lightning, Job_37:3.
And it is worthy of remark that It is used in Isa_44:16, for the heat, derived from ‫אש‬ esh,
the fire. He burneth part thereof in the fire (‫אש‬ ‫במו‬ bemo esh): yea, he warmeth himself,
and saith, Aha! I have seen the fire, ‫אור‬ ‫ראיתי‬ raithi ur, which a modern philosopher who
understood the language would not scruple to translate, I have received caloric, or an
additional portion of the matter of heat. I therefore conclude, that as God has diffused
the matter of caloric or latent heat through every part of nature, without which there
could be neither vegetation nor animal life, that it is caloric or latent heat which is
principally intended by the original word.
That there is latent light, which is probably the same with latent heat, may be easily
demonstrated: take two pieces of smooth rock crystal, agate, cornelian or flint, and rub
them together briskly in the dark, and the latent light or matter of caloric will be
immediately produced and become visible. The light or caloric thus disengaged does not
operate in the same powerful manner as the heat or fire which is produced by striking
with flint and steel, or that produced by electric friction. The existence of this caloric-
latent or primitive light, may be ascertained in various other bodies; it can be produced
by the flint and steel, by rubbing two hard sticks together, by hammering cold iron,
which in a short time becomes red hot, and by the strong and sudden compression of
atmospheric air in a tube. Friction in general produces both fire and light. God therefore
created this universal agent on the first day, because without It no operation of nature
could be carried on or perfected.
Light is one of the most astonishing productions of the creative skill and power of
God. It is the grand medium by which all his other works are discovered, examined, and
understood, so far as they can be known. Its immense diffusion and extreme velocity are
alone sufficient to demonstrate the being and wisdom of God. Light has been proved by
many experiments to travel at the astonishing rate of 194,188 miles in one second of
time! and comes from the sun to the earth in eight minutes 11 43/50 seconds, a distance
of 95,513,794 English miles.
GILL, "And God said,.... This phrase is used, nine times in this account of the
creation; it is admired by Longinus the Heathen in his treatise "of the Sublime", as a
noble instance of it; and it is most beautifully paraphrased and explained in Psa_33:6 as
expressive of the will, power, authority, and efficacy of the divine Being; whose word is
clothed with power, and who can do, and does whatever he will, and as soon as he
pleases; his orders are always obeyed. Perhaps the divine Person speaking here is the
Logos or Word of God, which was in the beginning with God, and was God, and who
himself is the light that lightens every creature. The words spoke were,
let there be light, and there was light: it at once appeared; "God commanded light
to shine out of darkness"; as the apostle says, 2Co_4:6 this was the first thing made out
of the dark chaos; as in the new creation, or work of grace in the heart, light is the first
thing produced there: what this light was is not easy to say. Some of the Jewish Rabbins,
and also some Christian writers, think the angels are designed by it, which is not at all

126. probable, as the ends and use of this light show: others of them are of opinion, that it is
the same with the sun, of which a repetition is made on the fourth day, because of its use
and efficacy to the earth, and its plants; but others more rightly take it to be different
from the sun, and a more glimmering light, which afterwards was gathered into and
perfected in the body of the sun (f). It is the opinion of Zanchius (g), and which is
approved of by our countryman, Mr. Fuller (h), that it was a lucid body, or a small lucid
cloud, which by its circular motion from east to west made day and night (i); perhaps
somewhat like the cloudy pillar of fire that guided the Israelites in the wilderness, and
had no doubt heat as well as light; and which two indeed, more or less, go together; and
of such fiery particles this body may well be thought to consist. The word "Ur" signifies
both fire and light.
JAMISO , "Gen_1:3-5. The First Day.
God said — This phrase, which occurs so repeatedly in the account means: willed,
decreed, appointed; and the determining will of God was followed in every instance by
an immediate result. Whether the sun was created at the same time with, or long before,
the earth, the dense accumulation of fogs and vapors which enveloped the chaos had
covered the globe with a settled gloom. But by the command of God, light was rendered
visible; the thick murky clouds were dispersed, broken, or rarefied, and light diffused
over the expanse of waters. The effect is described in the name “day,” which in Hebrew
signifies “warmth,” “heat”; while the name “night” signifies a “rolling up,” as night wraps
all things in a shady mantle.
CALVI , "3.And God said Moses now, for the first time, introduces God in the act
of speaking, as if he had created the mass of heaven and earth without the Word.
(48) Yet John testifies that
‘without him nothing was made of the things which were made,’ (John 1:3.)
And it is certain that the world had been begun by the same efficacy of the Word by
which it was completed. God, however, did not put forth his Word until he
proceeded to originate light; (49) because in the act of distinguishing (50) his
wisdom begins to be conspicuous. Which thing alone is sufficient to confute the
blasphemy of Servetus. This impure caviler asserts, (51) that the first beginning of
the Word was when God commanded the light to be; as if the cause, truly, were not
prior to its effect. Since however by the Word of God things which were not came
suddenly into being, we ought rather to infer the eternity of His essence. Wherefore
the Apostles rightly prove the Deity of Christ from hence, that since he is the Word
of God, all things have been created by him. Servetus imagines a new quality in God
when he begins to speak. But far otherwise must we think concerning the Word of
God, namely, that he is the Wisdom dwelling in God, (52) and without which God
could never be; the effect of which, however, became apparent when the light was
created. (53)
Let there be light It we proper that the light, by means of which the world was to be
adorned with such excellent beauty, should be first created; and this also was the

127. commencement of the distinction, (among the creatures. (54)) It did not, however,
happen from inconsideration or by accident, that the light preceded the sun and the
moon. To nothing are we more prone than to tie down the power of God to those
instruments the agency of which he employs. The sun an moon supply us with light:
And, according to our notions we so include this power to give light in them, that if
they were taken away from the world, it would seem impossible for any light to
remain. Therefore the Lord, by the very order of the creation, bears witness that he
holds in his hand the light, which he is able to impart to us without the sun and
moon. Further, it is certain from the context, that the light was so created as to be
interchanged with darkness. But it may be asked, whether light and darkness
succeeded each other in turn through the whole circuit of the world; or whether the
darkness occupied one half of the circle, while light shone in the other. There is,
however, no doubt that the order of their succession was alternate, but whether it
was everywhere day at the same time, and everywhere night also, I would rather
leave undecided; nor is it very necessary to be known. (55)
Having given, to the best of my judgment, an explanation of Calvin’s reasoning,
truth obliges me to add, that it seems to be an involved and unsatisfactory argument
to prove —
1st, That the Second Person of the Trinity is distinctly referred to in the second
verse of this chapter; and,
2nd, That He is truly though not obviously the Creator of heaven and earth
mentioned in the first verse.
It furnishes occasion rather for regret than for surprise, that the most powerful
minds are sometimes found attempting to sustain a good cause by inconclusive
reasoning. — Ed.
BE SO , "Genesis 1:3. God said — ot by an articulate voice; for to whom should
he speak? but in his own eternal mind. He willed that the effect here mentioned
should be produced, and it was produced. This act of his almighty will is termed,
Hebrews 1:3, the word of his power. Perhaps, however, his substantial Word, his
Son, by whom he made the worlds, Hebrews 1:2, and Psalms 33:6; Psalms 33:9, is
here intended, and whom the ancient fathers of the Christian Church thought to be
termed the Word, John 1:1, chiefly for this reason. Let there be light, &c. — The
noted critic, Longinus, in his celebrated Treatise on the Sublime, expresses his
admiration of this sentence, as giving a most just and striking idea of the power of
God. In bringing order out of confusion, and forming the sundry parts of the
universe, God first gave birth to those that are the most simple, pure, active, and
powerful; which he, probably, afterward used as agents or instruments in forming
some other parts. Light is the great beauty and blessing of the universe; and as it
was the first of all visible things, so, as the firstborn, it most resembles its great
parent in purity and power, in brightness and beneficence. Probably the light was at
first impressed on some part of the heavens, or collected in some lucid body, the
revolution of which distinguished the three first days. On the fourth it was

128. condensed, increased, perfected, and placed in the body of the sun and other
luminaries.
COKE, "Genesis 1:3. And God said— To speak and to will, with the Almighty, is to
command. His word is with power. Struck with the grandeur of this passage, the
celebrated Grecian critic Longinus produces it as an instance of the true sublime.
"So likewise," says he, "the Jewish legislator, no ordinary person, ( ουχ ο τυχων
ανηρ, ) having conceived a just idea of the power of God, has nobly expressed it in
the beginning of his law. And God said—What? Let there be light: and there was
light." We may here truly say with Boileau, "Whatever noble and majestic
expression, elevation of thought, and importance of sentiment, can contribute to
sublimity, may be found in this passage."
Said— By ‫אמר‬ amar, the Hebrews often express internal volition, as well as outward
speaking, as both Mr. Locke and M. Le Clerc observe. So Exodus 2:14 it is
translated, intendest thou to kill me? 2 Samuel 21:16. He thought, designed (
διενοειτο LXX) to have slain David. The Greeks also often use the word φηµι, to
speak, in this sense. This observation will be of frequent and general use. Moses
means here, that God having purposed to create the light, no sooner willed it to
shine forth, than it shone.
Let there be light: and there was light— Many have been the questions, and great
the triumph of unbelievers, upon this declaration in the Mosaic account, "that there
was light three days before there was any sun." But the objection is founded on a
gross misconception, that light is nothing more than an emanation from the sun, or
other luminaries: according to which there can be no light, where there is no sun,
&c. But is it not easy to conceive, that God, the light of the world, might either
sustain this light, in the first act of creation, by his own immediate power; or that, in
consequence of that original motion, impressed on the chaotic mass, those particles
of matter which we call fire, (whose known properties are light and heat,) being the
lightest, strongest, and most active of the elements, disuniting themselves from the
grosser parts, ascended, and constituted that light, which, in the fourth day, was
compressed and consolidated, if we may so speak, into the body of the sun? It seems
probable, that after the first vivifying motion impressed by the Spirit of God, the
material atoms or elements were left, in some measure, to their natural and regular
operation, under the direction of the Supreme Creator. For you observe the light
first appears, as consisting of the subtlest matter; next the air or firmament; next
the waters; and so the earth, the most gross of all. But after all, I may say with Le
Clerc, "that it is unnecessary to philosophize too subtilly concerning the cause and
nature of this light; since the solutions of the most learned are attended with
difficulties; and we cannot but expect to be ignorant of various things respecting the
origin of the world."
REFLECTIO S.—1. Light is the great beauty and blessing of the universe: like the
first-born, it doth, of all visible beings, most resemble its great Parent in purity and
power, brightness and beneficence. By beholding it therefore let us be led to, and
assisted in, the believing contemplation of him who is light, infinite and eternal light,

129. and the Father of Lights, and who dwells in inaccessible light. 2. What a striking
emblem is this natural light of Christ, in whom was light, and who is the true Light,
the Light of the world? Darkness had been perpetually upon the face of fallen man,
if the Son of God had not come, and given us an understanding, that we might know
him that is true.
ELLICOTT, "(3) And God said.—Voice and sound there could be none, nor was
there any person to whom God addressed this word of power. The phrase, then, is
metaphorical, and means that God enacted for the universe a law; and ten times we
find the command similarly given. The beauty and sublimity of the language here
used has often been noticed: God makes no preparation, He employs no means,
needs no secondary agency. He speaks, and it is done. His word alone contains all
things necessary for the fulfilment of His will. So in the cognate languages the word
Emir, ruler, is literally, speaker. The Supreme One speaks: with the rest, of hear is
to obey. God, then, by speaking, gives to nature a universal and enduring law. His
commands are not temporary, but eternal; and whatever secondary causes were
called into existence when the Elohim, by a word, created light, those same causes
produce it now, and will produce it until God recalls His word. We have, then, here
nature’s first universal law. What is it?
Let there be light: and there was light.—The sublimity of the original is lost in our
language by the cumbrous multiplication of particles. The Hebrew is Yhi ôr wayhi
ôr. Light is not itself a substance, but is a condition or state of matter; and this
primæval light was probably electric, arising from the condensation and friction of
the elements as they began to arrange themselves in order. And this, again, was due
to what is commonly called the law of gravitation, or of the attraction of matter. If
on the first day electricity and magnetism were generated, and the laws given which
create and control them, we have in them the two most powerful and active energies
of the present and of all time—or possibly two forms of one and the same busy and
restless force. And the law thus given was that of gravitation, of which light was the
immediate result.
LA GE,, "Genesis 1:3. Let there be light.—Here begin the geologico-cosmical
creative periods. This new beginning, therefore, must be distinguished from that
first creation of the heavens and the earth which is to be regarded as having no
creative beginning before it. Henceforth the treatment is that of a sacred geology,
yet regarded in its biblical sense as geologico-cosmological. Hence, in Genesis 1:3,
the creation of the light-heaven; Genesis 1:8, the creation of the air-heaven; Genesis
1:14, the creation of the star-heaven; Genesis 1:26, the creation of the heavenly core
of the earth itself.[F 8]—And God said.—“Ten times is this word, ‫ֶר‬‫מ‬ֹ ‫ַיּא‬‫ו‬, repeated in
the history of the seven days.” The omnipotence of the creative word, Psalm 33:9 :
He spake and it was done, he commanded and it stood ( Romans 4:17). The creative-
word in its deeper significance: Psalm 33:6; Isaiah 40:26; John 1:1-3; Hebrews 1:2;
Hebrews 11:3; Colossians 1:16. The light, the first distinct creative formation, and,
therefore, the formation-principle, or the pre-conditioning for all further
formations. Of this formative dividing power of light, physical science teaches us. It
is now tolerably well understood, that the light is not conditioned by perfected

130. luminous bodies, but, on the contrary, that light bodies are conditioned by a
preceding luminous element. Thus there is set aside the objection taken by Celsus,
by the Manichæans, and by rationalism generally, namely, the supposed inversion
of order in having first the light and afterwards the luminous body. And yet the
light without any substratum is just as little conceivable as the darkness. The
question arises, how the author conceived the going forth of the light, whether out of
the dark bosom of the earth-flood, or out of the dark bosom of the forming heaven?
As the view of the heavenly lights (light bodies) Genesis 1:14, is geocentric, so may
the same view prevail here of the heaven-light itself. By this is meant that in the fact
of the first illumination of the earth the author presents the fact of the birth of light
generally in the world, without declaring thereby that the date of the genesis of the
earth’s light is also the date of the genesis of light universally. But we may well take
the birth of light in the earth (or the earth becoming light) as the analogue whereon
is presented the birth of light in the heaven, just as in the creation of man there is
symbolized the creation of the spirit-world collectively. We let alone here the
question whether the light is an emanation (an outflowing) of a luminous element, or
an undulation from a luminous body; only it may be remarked that sound goes on
all sides, and may, therefore, be supposed to undulate in sonorous waves, whilst the
ray of light, on the other hand, goes directly, for which reason the application to it of
such an undulation of sonorous waves would seem unsuitable. The idea of an
ætherial vibration may make a medium between emanation and undulation.
Without doubt, however, the meaning here is not merely a light-appearing which
goes forth out of the heaven-ground,[F 9] and breaks through the dark vapor of
the earth, or from heavenly clouds of light (such as the primary form of the creation
may have appeared to be), but an immediate lighting up of the luminous element in
the earth itself, something like what the Polar night gives rise to in the northern
aurora; enough that it is said of the contrast presented between the illuminating and
the shade-producing element. The light goes, however, in the first place, out of the
dark world-forms (not the mere world material) after that the spirit of God, as
formative principle, has energized in them. The spirit of God is the spiritual light
that goes out from God; therefore its working goes before the creation of the outer
light; and therefore, too, it is that this light is the symbol, and its operation similar
to the operation, of the spirit—that Isaiah, the formation and the revelation of
beauty.—And there was light.—The famed sublimity of this expression as given by
Longinus (in a somewhat doubtful text) and others, is predicated on the pure
simplicity and confidence with which it sets forth the omnipotence of the creative
word.—And God saw the light that it was good.—The first beauty is the light itself.
For the Hebrew ‫טוֹב‬ denotes the beautiful along with the good, even as the Greek
καλὸν denotes the good along with the beautiful. The sense: that it was good, does
not seem easy; and therefore Tertullian (and more lately eumann) have accepted
the quia of the Itala. On the other hand, Delitzsch remarks: “The conclusion is that
to God each single work of creation appears good.” The conclusion lies, perhaps, in
the pause of solemn contemplation, out of which, at the end, goes forth the perfect
sabbath. It is because the religious human soul recognizes the fair and the good in
the event of the appearing, that there is therein reflected to it the fountain of this
spiritual ethical satisfaction, namely the contemplation of God Himself. Still the
contemplation of God does not regard the object as though captivated by it because

131. it is fair, but it rejoices therein that it is fair; or we may say that, in a certain
manner, it is the very efficacy of this contemplation that it becomes fair.—And God
divided between the light and the darkness.—Although it is farther said that God
named the light day and the darkness night, still it must not be supposed that here
there is meant only the interchange between day and night as the ordaining of the
points of division between both, namely morning and evening. Although light and
darkness, day and night, are called after their appearing, yet are they still, all the
more, very day and night, in other words, the very causalities themselves. The light
denotes all that is simply illuminating in its efficacy, all the luminous element; the
darkness denotes all that is untransparent, dark, shadow-casting; both together
denote the polarity of the created world, as it exists between the light-formations
and the night-formations—the constitution of the day and night. “One sees,” says
Delitzsch, “how false is the current and purely privative conception of darkness; as
when, for example, a mediæval interpreter (Maxima Bibl. Lugd. vi. p868) says: sicut
silentium nihil Esther, sed ubi vox non est silentium dicitur, sic tenebrœ nihil sunt,
sed ubi lux non est tenebrœ dicuntur.” It is true, there must be presupposed for the
daylight an illuminating source or fountain of light, and so for the darkness a
shadow-casting causality ( James 1:16); but it would be quite wrong to say that light
and darkness are two principles (according to the course of the earlier theosophists:
Jacob Böhm, and a later school: Baumgarten and others). If it is farther said that
the darkness has not the witness ‫טוֹב‬ (good), it may be replied that it certainly has it
mediately, Genesis 1:31. It is indeed said still earlier: “We do not read that the tohu
and bohu, that the tehom with the darkness lying over it originated in the divine call
into being (fiat), therefore they had their origin in some other way.” This is a very
unwarranted conclusion; so also, then, must the heavens have originated in some
other way. The heaven, however, has its origin in the word of the Lord ( Psalm 33),
and so also the night and the darkness ( Isaiah 45:7) as well as the abyss ( Psalm
104:8). It Isaiah, therefore, a hard inconsequence when Delitzsch, following the
mythological views, regards the thohu wabhohu as the chaos enclosing even the
heaven in its birth (p93), and still farther regards it theosophically as the ruined
habitation of condemned demons. In the historical derivation of the last opinion
(p105) Delitzsch appears to have confounded two distinct views: the scholastic, that
God had formed the human world for the purpose of filling up the void that arose in
heaven after the fall of the angels, and the theosophic, that the terrestrial region of
the world was, in the earlier time, the abode of Lucifer and his companions, which
afterwards, through their guilt, became a thohu vabhohu out of which God laid the
foundation of a new world. In this view the thohu vabhohu is “the glowing material
mass into which the power of God’s wrath had melted the original world after it had
become corrupted by the fall of the spirits (pp105,114below),—or it was the rudis
indigestaque moles into which God had compressed and precipitated that spiritual
but now ungodly world condemned to the flames in consequence of its materializing,
and this for the purpose of making it the substratum of a new creation which had its
beginning in the fact that God had placed the chaos of this old fire-invaded world
wholly under water.” One might well ask: shall the fire-brand itself (the old burnt-
up earth) be the chaos, or the divine reaction through the quenching in water? Was
the fire-brand the work of the demons, or did it come through God’s judgment and
counteraction? All such resolutions of the difficulty are in a state of mutual

132. confusion. And this is no wonder, for a certain theosophic hankering after dualism
with its two principles can only veil itself in dark and fantastic phrases. In
opposition to these gnosticising representations of matter, the demands of a pure
monotheism require of us an acquiescence in the idea that matter too is good,
because it is from God,—in so far, indeed, as we can speak of pure matter in general
terms. The more particular fountain of this view—after certain older preludes and
popular representations (Delitzsch, p106) derived from Gnostic traditions—is Jacob
Böhm (Myst. Magn. p67) and the Gnostic teachers that arose after him, Friedrich
von Meyer, Baumgarten (Genesis), and others. With peculiar zeal hath Kurtz also
taken part in these theosophic phantasies, as also in those other of the
miscegenations or sexual confusions between the angels of heaven and the daughters
of earth ( Genesis 6). The grounds presented by Delitzsch, in opposition to his earlier
contrary view (as given in the first two editions of his Commentary), are the
following: 1. In the interpretation aforesaid one would, to be sure, expect ‫ִי‬‫ה‬ְ‫ַתּ‬‫ו‬
instead of ‫ה‬ָ‫ְת‬‫י‬ָ‫ה‬ְ‫ו‬, but the conscious connection need not lie precisely in the
consciousness of the writer; he relates simply a matter of fact. And yet he must have
been more enlightened in respect to the nature of things than our scientific man. A
blind narration of facts would here be as inconsistent as a pure indication of a
theosophic sense in thohu vabhohu2. Thohu has, indeed, a predominating privative
character; it arises, however ( Isaiah 34:11; Isaiah 24:10; Jeremiah 4:23), from a
positive destruction. But how natural was it to apply the pictorial thohu vabhohu to
such a condition. What more purely privative than the word nothing? and yet we
say it of positive states of destruction. According to Delitzsch, in the methods of its
construction (world-brand, quenching-water) must Plutonism and eptunism have
reached their deepest grounding. The grounds that follow are in no respects better
(p104). What have rendered the hypothesis suspicious from its beginning hitherto
are its apocryphal or popular origin (Delitzsch, p105), its Gnostic coloring, and its
affinity to that other scholastic phantasma that God had created men to fill up the
vacuum in the fallen angel-world. It must, however, become very evident that the
representation of an “overcoming of the darkness,” in the physical sense in which it
here presents itself, is utterly foreign to the holy text; it is like the mingling of
conceptions, namely of a physical and an ethical darkness. The representation, then,
of Genesis 1:2 will be clearly a picturing of the primitive condition of the earth, as it
became in consequence of the first general creation, Genesis 1:1. Besides, this
hypothesis obliterates that line which everywhere else appears between the angelic
and human regions and natures. Finally, Genesis 1:2, as a representation of the
flowing, form-receptive condition of the earth-mass gives the bases for all farther
ascending formations. Add to this that, in such case, the region of Lucifer would
have been visited by the fire-judgment earlier than Lucifer himself—a
representation which runs counter to the usual order of things—not to say, that, on
such a supposition, Lucifer himself should have been rightly banished from the
whole extent of the earth-region. Or, can it be that God has built the new house of
humanity upon the foul beams of a demoniac power? But it is not worth our while
to dwell more fully upon a representation which is so characterized by its own sharp
contradictions.—And there was evening and there was morning.—Here, in the first
place, we must not suppose that the evening and the morning were merely the
sequence of the preceding darkness and of the light that followed it, notwithstanding

133. that the first evening and morning so fittingly append themselves to such a contrast.
Still less are we to think of the usual evening and morning, since the earth had not
yet been astronomically arranged. Evening and morning denote rather the interval
of a creative day, and this is evidently after the Hebrew mode of reckoning; the day
is reckoned from sunset. The morning that follows stands for the second half of the
day proper. In the same manner was the day reckoned by the Arabians, the
Athenians (νυχθήµιρον), the Germans, and the Gauls. It is against the text for
Delitzsch to put as the ground here the Babylonish reckoning of the day, namely
from the dawning of the morning. The earlier theological representation, that by the
creative periods were to be understood the usual astronomical days, is now only
held by individuals (Baumgarten, Calwer Handbuch, Keil’s Genesis). It is opposed
to this, in the first place, that the creative days are already numbered before the
determination of the astronomical relation of the earth to the sun, although on other
grounds must we hold that the days from the fourth onward were not astronomical;
there are in the way, secondly, the idea of the first day whose evening had its
beginning in that dark thohu vabhohu which had no evening before it, as well as the
idea of the seventh day, the day of God’s rest, which is not defined by an evening
and a morning, but runs on through the ordained course of the world; there Isaiah,
thirdly, the idea of the day of God as it is given to us in the 90 th Psalm, which is
traditionally ascribed to Moses ( Genesis 1:4). That this time-determination of a
thousand years does not denote an exactly measured chronological period, but still a
period defined by essential marks of time, appears from the converse of Psalm 90. in
2 Peter 3:8 (a thousand years as one day, and one day as a thousand years), and also
from the thousand years of the judgment-time as the transition period from the
present state of the world to that which lies beyond ( Revelation 20). This
comprehensive significance has the divine day (God’s day) or the judgment-day pre-
eminently in the Old Testament ( Isaiah 2:12; Joel 1:15; Ezekiel 13:5). Delitzsch,
who also holds that the creative days are periods, reckons, as another argument,
that in Genesis 2:4 the six days are denoted as one day. Add to this the very usual
mode of speech, according to which, day in the Old Testament often denotes a
longer duration of time, for example, in the formula even to this day. We are not,
however, to conceive of the evening and morning of the single creative days as
merely symbolic intervals of the day of God. According to the analogy of the first
day, the evening is the time of a peculiar chaotic fermentation of things, whilst the
morning is the time of that new, fair, solemn world-building that corresponds to it.
With each evening there is also indicated a new birth-travail of things, a new earth-
revolution which elevates the old formation that went before it—a seeming
darkening, a seeming sunset or going down of the world; and so later with this same
appearance came on the flood; and Song of Solomon, too, in ZaGen Genesis 14:7,
the day of the commencing judgment Isaiah, with the highest significance, denoted
an evening. o less significant is it in the eschatological words of our Lord: and the
sun shall withdraw its light, Matthew 24:29. With each morning, on the contrary,
there is a new, a higher, a fairer, and a richer state of the world. In this way do the
evening and morning in the creative periods have the highest significance for an
agreement of the sacred geology with the results of the scientific geology. The
meaning would seem to be incorrectly taken by Delitzsch when he says: “With each
effort of the divine creating is it morning, with each remission it is evening” (p106).

134. The most peculiar work of God, we may rather say, would appear to be each of
those stormy revolutions, in which the spirit of God hovers like an eagle over the
chaotic fermentations; in the creative mornings, on the contrary, come in the holy
rests when God surveys the new work and sees how good it Isa. (Comp. Von
Rougemont, History of the Earth, p7: “Evening: a dark return of chaos.” Doubtless
the designation lacks propriety in all respects, and yet it may lead to the right.)
[ ote on the Relation of the First Verse of Genesis 1. to the Rest of the .—Among all
the interpretations of Genesis 1, the most difficult as well as the most unsatisfactory
is that which regards the first verse as referring to a period indefinitely remote, and
all that follows as comprised in six solar days. It is barely hinted at by some of the
patristic writers, but has become a favorite with certain modern commentators, as
furnishing them with a method of keeping the ordinary days, and yet avoiding the
geological difficulty, or seeming to avoid it, by throwing all its signs of the earth’s
antiquity into this chasm that intervenes between the first and second verses. The
objections to it may be thus stated:
(1) Besides the peculiar difficulties that attend any view of ordinary solar days, such
as a morning and evening without a sun, or the language of succession, of growth,
and of a seeming nature, without any consistent corresponding reality, there is
another and greater incongruity in connecting this with a former and very different
state of things, or mode of proceeding, with which, after all, it has no real connection
either in the realm of nature or of divine providence.
(2) It is a building of this world on the ruins of a former, without any natural or
moral reasons therefor. The states preceding, as understood by this hypothesis, were
in no sense preparatory. The catastrophe which makes way for it seems entirely
arbitrary, and in no sense resembles the pauses described in Genesis, each one of
which is in the upward order, and anticipatory of the work that follows.
(3) It is evidently brought in as a possible escape from the difficulties of geology, and
would never have been seriously maintained had it not been for them.
(4) It has to make the heavens of the first verse a different heavens from that of the
eighth, without any exegetical warrant therefor. This is a rationalizing
interpretation, carrying with it a conception of our modern astronomy, and almost
wholly unknown to the Scriptures, which everywhere speaks of the heavens and the
earth therein mentioned as one system. It is the heavens of our earth, built upon it as
described in Genesis 1:6; Genesis 1:8; Psalm 104; 1 Samuel 2:8, etc, and always
taken in connection with it; not a far-off astronomical heavens, though the
rudiments of such an idea come afterwards into the Hebrew. Thus in predictions,
whether of destruction or of renovation, the heavens and the earth go together. “I
create new heavens and a new earth,” Isaiah 66:22; Psalm 102:27, and other
passages. The language is exactly parallel to that of Genesis 1:1, and yet we cannot
suppose that there is included here the astronomical heaven of stars and planets, at
least according to the conceptions of our modern astronomy. It is a renewal of the
earth, in some way, together with those celestial or sky phenomena that are in

135. connection with it, as parts, in fact, of the tellurian system. It is the same language,
the same mode of conceiving, as late down in Scripture as the 2 d Epistle of Peter
Genesis 3:5-7—the “earth and heavens” that were of old before the flood are put in
contrast with “the earth and heavens that are now,” and which are to be changed
for “a new earth and heavens” “according to the promise ( Genesis 1:13) to which
we look.” It is the same language that occurs repeatedly in the Revelations ( Genesis
21:1), and which, whatever we may think of its prophetic meaning, shows the
fixedness of the conception down to the latest times of the scriptural canon.
(5) It violates the principles of a rational and grammatical exegesis, in making a
separation between the first and second verses, of which there is no trace or reason
in the language itself. If used in the same way in narrating historical events, in any
other part of the Bible, no one would have thought of the verb ‫א‬ ָ‫ָר‬‫בּ‬, in the first, and
‫ה‬ָ‫ְת‬‫י‬ָ‫ה‬, in the second verse, otherwise than as cotemporaneous or, in direct
continuation at least, with no chasm of time between them long or short. It would
have been interpreted like the precisely similar sentence, Job 1:1 : “There was a
man in the land of Uz, and the man was, etc, ‫ישׁ‬ִ‫ָא‬‫ה‬ ‫ָה‬‫י‬ָ‫ה‬ְ‫ו‬ ‫ץ־עוּץ‬ ֶ‫ר‬ֶ‫ְא‬‫ב‬ ‫ישׁ‬ִ‫א‬ ‫ָה‬‫י‬ָ‫ה‬. Who would
think of separating the second ‫ָה‬‫י‬ָ‫ה‬ here from the first, or sundering the evident
continuity? If it be said that the context in Job controls, and the very nature of the
subject, so should it also in Genesis, unless we make a new context after our own
imaginations, especially as there are clear ways in Hebrew of expressing such a
parting of the terms, had it been designed to do so.
Besides this, it is opposed to the usual force of the conjunction ‫.ו‬ Taken even as a
mere copulative, it would not allow of such a sharp and remote severance. But ‫ו‬ is
much more than this in Hebrew. It is seldom without a time sense, or an inferential
sense, showing a connection, not only of mere event, but also of reason and
causality. So here it shows the reason for the use of ‫א‬ ָ‫ָר‬‫בּ‬ in the preceding verse. “In
the beginning God created,” formed, fashioned, the earth; for it was formless and
void, or when it was formless and void, etc. Let one take oldius’ Concordance of
the Hebrew Particles, and see how often (in the great majority of cases, we may say)
the conjunction wau has this close-joining inferential sense. It is much more usual
than its bare copulative force, but even this is out of harmony with the hypothesis of
severance as commonly presented. See also Introd. to Genesis 1. pp129, 130.—T. L.]
ISBET, "‘ALL THE BLESSI GS OF THE LIGHT’
“And God said, Let there be light.’
Genesis 1:3
I. We have reason every day that we live to thank God for life and health, for
countless blessings. And not least among these may be reckoned the free gift of, and
the many ‘blessings of the light.’
For in many ways that we can tell off, at once, upon our fingers, and in very many
more ways that we neither dream of nor think of, does light minister to our health,
wealth, and comfort.

136. The very birds sing at daybreak their glad welcome to the dawn, and the rising sun.
And we all know and feel how cheering is the power of light. In the sunlight rivers
flash, and nature rejoices, and our hearts are light, and we take a bright view of
things.
So, too, light comes to revive and restore us. Darkness is oppressive. In it we are apt
to lose heart. We grow anxious, and full of fears. With the first glimmer of light in
the distance, hope awakens, and we feel a load lifted off our minds.
Again, we have often felt the reassuring power of light. In the darkness, objects that
are perfectly harmless take threatening shapes; the imagination distorts them, and
our fancy creates dangers. Light shows us that we have been alarmed at shadows;
quiets, and reassures us.
Once again, the light comes to us, often, as nothing less than a deliverer. It reveals
dangers hidden and unsuspected; the deadly reptile; the yawning precipice; the
lurking foe.
And when, over and above all this, we remember that light is absolutely essential,
not to health only, but to life in every form, animal and vegetable alike, we shall
heartily echo the words of the wise king in Ecclesiastes—‘Truly the light is sweet;
and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun.’
II. All things are double one against another. The types in the natural world all have
their antitypes in the moral and spiritual world. So we find it here. The natural light
of which we have been speaking; the sun, which is the centre of our system—is a
type of another light, of which we are now going to speak.
When God sends this light, of which we speak, into a soul that has long been
dwelling in, and rejoicing in the darkness which the evil liver loves, a man’s first
impulse generally is to shrink from it—to shut it out.
As you know very well, one of the chief characteristics of light is that it shows
things, not as they might be, not as they are said to be, not as they ought to be, not as
they are supposed to be, not as we would like them to be, but as they are!
In some way or another God sends a flood of pure light into your home; sometimes
it is through sickness; sometimes through sorrow; now by means of an accident;
now it is the innocent prattle of a little child. Your life is revealed to you just as it is!
There hang the thick cobwebs—long indulged, confirmed evil habits; here lies the
thick dust of a dulled conscience—there the dark stains of grievous sins. And the air
is full of countless motes—these are what you call ‘little sins’—motes of ill-temper;
motes of malice and unkindness; motes of forgetfulness of God, and many others.
It is from God, this light; stand in it; gaze at it; look through it, till you see His face
who sends it—God, who in the beginning said, as He saw the earth ‘without form,
and void,’ who says, as He looks at you, ‘Let there be light.’

137. —Rev. J. B. C. Murphy.
GREAT TEXTS OF THE BIBLE, "Let There Be Light
And the earth was waste and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep: and the
spirit of God moved (R.V. m. was brooding) upon the face of the waters. And God said,
Let there be light: and there was light.—Gen_1:2-3.
This is the second stage in the history of the Creation. After the first verse, it is of the
earth, and of the earth only, that the narrative speaks. The earth did now exist, but in the
form of chaos. This expression does not mean a state of disorder and confusion, but that
state of primitive matter in which no creature had as yet a distinctive existence, and no
one element stood out in distinction from others, but all the forces and properties of
matter existed, as it were, undivided. The materials were indeed all there, but not as
such—they were only latent. However, the creative spirit, the principle of order and life,
brooded over this matter, which, like a rich organic cell, comprehended in itself the
conditions, and up to a certain point the elementary principles, of all future forms of
existence. This Spirit was the efficient cause, not of matter itself, but of its Organization,
which was then to begin. He was the executant of each of those Divine commands, which
from this time were to succeed each other, stroke after stroke, till this chaos should be
transformed into a world of wonders.
We cannot tell how the Spirit of God brooded over that vast watery mass. It is a mystery,
but it is also a fact, and it is here revealed as having happened at the very
commencement of the Creation, even before God had said, “Let there be light.” The first
Divine act in fitting up this planet for the habitation of man was for the Spirit of God to
move upon the face of the waters. Till that time, all was formless, empty, out of order,
and in confusion. In a word, it was chaos; and to make it into that thing of beauty which
the world is at the present moment, even though it is a fallen world, it was needful that
the movement of the Spirit of God should take place upon it. How the Spirit works upon
matter, we do not know; but we do know that God, who is a Spirit, created matter, and
fashioned matter, and sustained matter, and that He will yet deliver matter from the
stain of sin which is upon it. We shall see new heavens and a new earth in which
materialism itself shall be lifted up from its present state of ruin, and shall glorify God;
but without the Spirit of God the materialism of this world must have remained for ever
in chaos. Only as the Spirit came did the work of creation begin.1 [Note: C. H. Spurgeon.]
We have first chaos, then order (or cosmos); we have also first darkness, then light. It is
the Spirit of God that out of chaos brings cosmos; it is the Word of God that out of
darkness brings light. Accordingly, the text is easily divided in this way—
I. Cosmos out of Chaos.
i. Chaos.
ii. The Spirit of God.
iii. Cosmos.
II. Light out of Darkness.
i. Darkness.
ii. God’s Word.
iii. Light.

138. I
Cosmos out of Chaos
i. Chaos
“The earth was without form (R.V. waste) and void.” The Hebrew (tôhû wâ-bôhû) is an
alliterative description of a chaos, in which nothing can be distinguished or defined.
Tôhû is a word which it is difficult to express consistently in English; but it denotes
mostly something unsubstantial, or (figuratively) unreal; cf. Isa_45:18 (of the earth),
“He created it not a tôhû, he fashioned it to be inhabited,” Gen_1:19, “I said not, Seek ye
me as a tôhû (i.e. in vain).” Bôhû, as Arabic shows, is rightly rendered empty or void.
Compare the same combination of words to suggest the idea of a return to primeval
chaos in Jer_4:23 and Isa_34:11 (“the line of tôhû and the plummet of bôhû”).
Who seeketh finds: what shall be his relief
Who hath no power to seek, no heart to pray,
No sense of God, but bears as best he may,
A lonely incommunicable grief?
What shall he do? One only thing he knows,
That his life flits a frail uneasy spark
In the great vast of universal dark,
And that the grave may not be all repose.
Be still, sad soul! lift thou no passionate cry,
But spread the desert of thy being bare
To the full searching of the All-seeing Eye:
Wait—and through dark misgiving, blank despair,
God will come down in pity, and fill the dry
Dead place with light, and life, and vernal air.1 [Note: J. C. Shairp.]
ii. The Spirit of God
1. In the Old Testament the spirit of man is the principle of life, viewed especially as the
seat of the stronger and more active energies of life; and the “spirit” of God is
analogously the Divine force or agency, to the operation of which are attributed various
extraordinary powers and activities of men, as well as supernatural gifts. In the later
books of the Old Testament, it appears also as the power which creates and sustains life.
It is in the last-named capacity that it is mentioned here. The chaos of Gen_1:2 was not
left in hopeless gloom and death; already, even before God “spake,” the Spirit of God,
with its life-giving energy, was “brooding” over the waters, like a bird upon its nest, and
(so it seems to be implied) fitting them in some way to generate and maintain life, when
the Divine fiat should be pronounced.
This, then, is the first lesson of the Bible; that at the root and origin of all this vast
material universe, before whose laws we are crushed as the moth, there abides a living

139. conscious Spirit, who wills and knows and fashions all things. The belief of this changes
for us the whole face of nature, and instead of a chill, impersonal world of forces to
which no appeal can be made, and in which matter is supreme, gives us the home of a
Father.
In speaking of Divine perfection, we mean to say that God is just and true and loving—
the Author of order and not of disorder, of good and not of evil. Or rather, that He is
justice, that He is truth, that He is love, that He is order; … and that wherever these
qualities are present, whether in the human soul or in the order of nature, there is God.
We might still see Him everywhere if we had not been mistakenly seeking Him apart
from us, instead of in us; away from the laws of nature, instead of in them. And we
become united to Him not by mystical absorption, but by partaking, whether consciously
or unconsciously of that truth and justice and love which He Himself is.1 [Note: Benjamin
Jowett.]
I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods,
And mountains.2 [Note: Wordsworth, Tintern Abbey.]
2. The doctrine of the all-pervading action of the Spirit of God, and the living Power
underlying all the energies of Nature, occupies a wider space in the pages of Divine
revelation than it holds in popular Christian theology, or in the hymns, the teaching, and
the daily thoughts of modern Christendom. In these the doctrine of the Spirit of God is,
if we judge by Scripture, too much restricted to His work in Redemption and Salvation,
to His wonder-working and inspiring energy in the early Church, and to His secret
regenerating and sanctifying energy in the renewal of souls for life everlasting. And in
this work of redemption He is spoken of by the special appellation of the Holy Ghost,
even by the revisers of the Authorized Version; although there seems to be not the
slightest reason for the retention of that equivocal old English word, full of unfortunate
associations, more than there would be in so translating the same word as it occurs in
our Lord’s discourse at the well of Jacob—“God is a Spirit: and they that worship him

140. must worship him in spirit and in truth”—where the insertion of this ancient Saxon
word for spirit would create a painful shock by its irreverence. All these redeeming and
sanctifying operations of the Spirit of God in the soul of man have been treated with
great fulness in our own language, in scores of valuable writings, from the days of John
Owen, the Puritan Vice-Chancellor of Oxford, down to the present time, when Bishop
Moule has given us his excellent work entitled Veni Creator, a most delightful exposition
of Scripture doctrine on the Holy Spirit in His dealings with the souls of men. In few of
these works, however, appears any representation of the Scripture doctrine of the Spirit
of God, as working in Nature, as the direct agent of the Eternal Will in the creation and
everlasting government of the physical and intellectual universe.
It has been the fault of religious teachers, and it is also the fault of much of what prevails
in the tone of the religious world—to draw an unwarrantably harsh contrast between the
natural and the spiritual. A violent schism has thereby been created between the sacred
and the secular, and, consequently, many disasters have ensued. Good people have done
infinite mischief by placing the sacred in opposition to the secular. They have thus
denied God’s presence and God’s glory in things where His presence should have been
gladly acknowledged, and have thereby cast a certain dishonour on matters which
should have been recognized as religious in the truest sense. The result has been that
others, carefully studying the things thus handed over to godlessness, and discovering
therein rich mines of truth, and beauty, and goodness, have too frequently accepted the
false position assigned to them, and have preached, in the name of Agnosticism or
Atheism, a gospel of natural law, in opposition to the exclusive and narrow gospel of the
religionists I have described.1 [Note: Donald Macleod, Christ and Society, 243.]
3. It is an ennobling thought that all this fair world we see, all those healthful and strong
laws in ceaseless operation around us, all that long history of change and progress which
we have been taught to trace, can be linked on to what we behold at Pentecost. It is the
same Spirit who filled St. Peter and St. John with the life and power and love of Christ,
who also “dwells in the light of setting suns, in the round ocean, and the living air.”
There is no opposition. All are diverse operations of the same Spirit, who baptized St.
Paul with his glowing power, and St. John with his heavenly love, and who once moved
over the face of the waters, and evoked order out of chaos. The Bible calls nothing
secular, all things are sacred, and only sin and wickedness are excluded from the domain
which is claimed for God. But if we believe that He has never left Himself without a
witness, and that the very rain and sunshine and fruitful seasons are the gifts of Him
whose Spirit once moved over the waters and brought order out of confusion, then are
we entitled to go further and to say that in the love of parent and child, in the heroic self-
sacrifice of patriots, in the thoughts of wisdom and truth uttered by wise men, by
Sakyamuni or Confucius, Socrates or Seneca, we must see nothing less than the strivings
of that same Divine Spirit who spake by the prophets, and was shed forth in fulness
upon the Church at Pentecost.
In the Life of Sir E. Burne-Jones, there is an account by his wife of the effect first made
upon her by coming into contact with him and his artist friends, Morris and Rossetti.
She says, “I wish it were possible to explain the Impression made upon me as a young
girl, whose experience so far had been quite remote from art, by sudden and close
intercourse with those to whom it was the breath of life. The only approach I can make
to describing it is by saying that I felt in the presence of a new religion. Their love of
beauty did not seem to me unbalanced, but as if it included the whole world and raised
the point from which they regarded everything. Human beauty especially was in a way
sacred to them, I thought; and a young lady who was much with them, and sat for them
as a model, said to me, ‘It was being in a new world to be with them. I sat to them and I

141. was there with them. And I was a holy thing to them—I was a holy thing to them.’ ”
Wherever through the ages rise
The altars of self-sacrifice,
Where love its arms has opened wide,
Or man for man has calmly died,
I see the same white wings outspread,
That hovered o’er the Master’s head!
Up from undated time they come,
The martyr souls of heathendom;
And to His cross and passion bring
Their fellowship of suffering.
So welcome I from every source
The tokens of that primal Force,
Older than heaven itself, yet new
As the young heart it reaches to,
Beneath whose steady impulse rolls
The tidal wave of human souls;
Guide, comforter, and inward word,
The eternal spirit of the Lord!1 [Note: Whittier.]
iii. Cosmos
1. The Spirit of God was brooding upon the face of the waters. The word rendered
“brooded” (or “was brooding,” R.V.m.) occurs elsewhere only in Deu_32:11, where it is
used of an eagle (properly, a griffon-vulture) hovering over its young. It is used similarly
in Syriac. It is possible that its use here may be a survival, or echo, of the old belief,
found among the Phœnicians, as well as elsewhere, of a world-egg, out of which, as it
split, the earth, sky, and heavenly bodies emerged; the crude, material representation
appearing here transformed into a beautiful and suggestive figure.
2. The hope of the chaotic world, and the hope of the sinning soul, is all in the brooding
Spirit of God seeking to bring order out of chaos, to bring life out of death, light out of
darkness, and beauty out of barrenness and ruin. It was God’s Spirit brooding over the
formless world that put the sun in the heavens, that filled the world with warmth and
light, that made the earth green with herbage, that caused forests to grow upon the
hillsides, with birds to sing in them, and planted flowers to exhale their perfume in the
Valleys. So God’s Spirit broods over the heart of man that has fallen into darkness and
chaos through sin.
(1) As the movement of the Holy Spirit upon the waters was the first act in the six days’
work, so the work of the Holy Spirit in the soul is the first work of grace in that soul. It is
a very humbling truth, but it is a truth notwithstanding its humiliating form, that the

142. best man that mere morality ever produced is still “waste and void” if the Spirit of God
has not come upon him. All the efforts of men which they make by nature, when stirred
up by the example of others or by godly precepts, produce nothing but chaos in another
shape; some of the mountains may have been levelled, but valleys have been elevated
into other mountains; some vices have been discarded, but only to be replaced by other
vices that are, perhaps, even worse; or certain transgressions have been forsaken for a
while, only to be followed by a return to the selfsame sins, so that it has happened unto
them, “According to the true proverb, The dog is turned to his own vomit again; and the
sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire” (2Pe_2:22). Unless the Spirit of God
has been at work within him, the man is still, in the sight of God, “without form and
void” as to everything which God can look upon with pleasure.
(2) To this work nothing whatever is contributed by the man himself. “The earth was
waste and void,” so it could not do anything to help the Spirit. “Darkness was upon the
face of the deep.” The Spirit found no light there; it had to be created. The heart of man
promises help, but “the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.” The
will has great influence over the man, but the will is itself depraved, so it tries to play the
tyrant over all the other powers of the man, and it refuses to become the servant of the
eternal Spirit of truth.
(3) Not only was there nothing whatever that could help the Holy Spirit, but there
seemed nothing at all congruous to the Spirit. The Spirit of God is the Spirit of order, but
there was disorder. He is the Spirit of light, but there was darkness. Does it not seem a
strange thing that the Spirit of God should have come there at all? Adored in His
excellent glory in the heaven where all is order and all is light, why should He come to
brood over that watery deep, and to begin the great work of bringing order out of chaos?
Why should the Spirit of God ever have come into our hearts? What was there in us to
induce the Spirit of God to begin a work of grace in us? We admire the condescension of
Jesus in leaving Heaven to dwell upon earth; but do we equally admire the
condescension of the Holy Spirit in coming to dwell in such poor hearts as ours? Jesus
dwelt with sinners, but the Holy Ghost dwells in us.
(4) Where the Spirit came, the work was carried on to completion. The work of creation
did not end with the first day, but went on till it was finished on the sixth day. God did
not say, “I have made the light, and now I will leave the earth as it is”; and when He had
begun to divide the waters, and to separate the land from the sea, He did not say, “Now I
will have no more to do with the world.” He did not take the newly fashioned earth in
His hands, and fling it back into chaos; but He went on with His work until, on the
seventh day, when it was completed, He rested from all His work. He will not leave
unfinished the work which He has commenced in our souls. Where the Spirit of God has
begun to move, He continues to move until the work is done; and He will not fail or turn
aside until all is accomplished.1 [Note: C. H. Spurgeon.]
Burning our hearts out with longing
The daylight passed:
Millions and millions together,
The stars at last!
Purple the woods where the dewdrops,
Pearly and grey,
Wash in the cool from our faces

143. The flame of day.
Glory and shadow grow one in
The hazel wood:
Laughter and peace in the stillness
Together brood.
Hopes all unearthly are thronging
In hearts of earth:
Tongues of the starlight are calling
Our souls to birth.
Down from the heaven its secrets
Drop one by one;
Where time is for ever beginning
And time is done.
There light eternal is over
Chaos and night:
Singing with dawn lips for ever,
“Let there be light!”
There too for ever in twilight
Time slips away,
Closing in darkness and rapture
Its awful day.1 [Note: A. E., The Divine Vision, 20.]
II
Light out of Darkness
i. Darkness
“Darkness was upon the face of the deep.” The deep (Heb. tehôm) is not here what the
deep would denote to us, i.e. the sea, but the primitive undivided waters, the huge
watery mass which the writer conceived as enveloping the chaotic earth. Milton
(Paradise Lost, vii. 276 ff.) gives an excellent paraphrase—
The Earth was formed, but, in the womb as yet
Of waters, embryon, immature, involved,
Appeared not; over all the face of Earth
Main ocean flowed.
The darkness which was upon the face of the deep is a type of the natural darkness of the
fallen intellect that is ignorant of God, and has not the light of faith. “Behold, the
darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the people.” Very often in Holy
Scripture darkness is the symbol of sin, and the state of those who are separated from
God. Satan is the prince of “the power of darkness,” while in God there “is no darkness at

144. all.”
The intermixture in our life of the material and the spiritual has no more striking
illustration than in the influence upon us of darkness. The “power of darkness” is a real
power, and that apart from any theological considerations. The revolution of this planet
on its axis, which for a certain number of hours out of the twenty-four shuts from us the
light of day, has had in every age the profoundest effect on man’s inner states. It has told
enormously on his religion. It has created a vocabulary—a very sinister one. It lies at the
origin of fear. It binds the reason and sets loose the Imagination. We are not the same at
midnight as at midday. The child mind, and the savage mind, which is so closely akin to
it, are reawakened in us. “I do not believe in ghosts,” said Fontenelle, “but I am afraid of
them.” We can all feel with him there.1 [Note: J. Brierley, Life and the Ideal, 248.]
ii. God’s Word
1. And God said.—This gives the keynote to the narrative, the burden ten times repeated,
of this magnificent poem. To say is both to think and to will. In this speaking of God
there is both the legislative power of His intelligence, and the executive power of His
will; this one word dispels all notion of blind matter, and of brute fatalism; it reveals an
enlightened Power, an intelligent and benevolent Thought, underlying all that is.
Says Carlyle: “Man is properly an incarnated word; the word that he speaks is the man
himself.” In like manner, and with still more truth, might it be said of God that His Word
is Himself; only John’s assertion is not that the Word is God, but that it was God,
implying is of course.2 [Note: J. W., Letters of Yesterday, 48.]
2. And at the same time that this word, “And God said,” appears to us as the veritable
truth of things, it also reveals to us their true value and legitimate use. Beautiful and
beneficent as the work may be, its real worth is not in itself; it is in the thought and in
the heart of the Author to whom it owes its existence. Whenever we stop short in the
work itself, our enjoyment of it can only be superficial, and we are, through our
ingratitude, on the road to an idolatry more or less gross. Our enjoyment is pure and
perfect only when it results from the contact of our soul with the Author Himself. To
form this bond is the true aim of Nature, as well as the proper destination of the life of
man.
We read, “God created”; “God made”; “God saw”; “God divided”; “God called”; “God
set”; “God blessed”; “God formed”; “God planted”; “God took”; “God commanded”; but
the most frequent word here is “God said.” As elsewhere, “He spake and it was done”;
“He commanded the light to shine out of darkness”; “the worlds were framed by the
Word of God”; “upholding all things by the word of His power.” God’s “word” is then the
one medium or link between Him and creation.… The frequency with which it is
repeated shows what stress God lays on it.… Between the “nothing” and the
“something”—non-existence and creation—there intervenes only the word—it needed
only the word, no more; but after that many other agencies come in—second causes,
natural laws and processes—all evolving the great original fiat. When the Son of God
was here it was thus He acted. He spake: “Lazarus, come forth”; “Young man, arise”;
“Damsel, arise”; “Be opened,” and it was done. The Word was still the medium. It is so
now. He speaks to us (1) in Creation, (2) in the Word, (3) in Providence, (4) by His
Sabbaths.1 [Note: Horatius Bonar.]
3. This word, “And God said,” further reveals the personality of God. Behind this veil of
the visible universe which dazzles me, behind these blind forces of which the play at
times terror-strikes me, behind this regularity of seasons and this fixedness of laws,
which almost compel me to recognize in all things only the march of a fixed Fate, this

145. word, “And God said,” unveils to me an Arm of might, an Eye which sees, a Heart full of
benevolence which is seeking me, a Person who loves me. This ray of light which, as it
strikes upon my retina, paints there with perfect accuracy, upon a surface of the size of a
centime, a landscape of many miles in extent—He it is who commanded it to shine.
Be kind to our darkness, O Fashioner, dwelling in light,
And feeding the lamps of the sky;
Look down upon this one, and let it be sweet in Thy sight
I pray Thee, to-night.
O watch whom Thou madest to dwell on its soil, Thou Most High!
For this is a world full of sorrow (there may be but one);
Keep watch o’er its dust, else Thy children for aye are undone,
For this is a world where we die.2 [Note: Jean Ingelow.]
iii. Light
1. Let there be light.—The mention of this Divine command is sufficient to make the
reader understand that this element, which was an object of worship to so many Oriental
nations, is neither an eternal principle nor the product of blind force, but the work of a
free and intelligent will. It is this same thought that is expressed in the division of the
work of Creation into six days and six nights. The Creation is thus represented under the
image of a week of work, during which an active and intelligent workman pursues his
task, through a series of phases, graduated with skill and calculated with certainty, in
view of an end definitely conceived from the first.
“Let there be light.” This is at once the motto and the condition of all progress that is
worthy of the name. From chaos into order, from slumber into wakefulness, from torpor
into the glow of life—yes, and “from strength to strength”; it has been a condition of
progress that there should be light. God saw the light, that it was good.
2. The Bible is not a handbook of science, and it matters little to us whether its narrative
concerning the origin of the world meets the approval of the learned or not. The truths
which it enfolds are such as science can neither displace nor disprove, and which,
despite the strides which we have made, are yet as important to mankind as on the day
when first they were proclaimed. Over the portal that leads to the sanctuary of Israel’s
faith is written, in characters that cannot be effaced, the truth which has been the hope
and stay of the human race, the source of all its bliss and inspiration, “the fountain light
of all our day, the master light of all our seeing”; it is the truth that there is a central light
in the universe, a power that in the past has wrought with wisdom and purposive
intelligence the order and harmony of this world of matter, and has shed abroad in the
human heart the creative spark which shall some day make aglow this mundane sphere
with the warmth and radiance of justice, truth, and loving-kindness. “Let there be light:
and there was light.”
Let me recall to your remembrance the solemnity and magnificence with which the
power of God in the creation of the universe is depicted; and here I cannot possibly
overlook that passage of the sacred historian, which has been so frequently commended,
in which the importance of the circumstance and the greatness of the idea (the human
mind cannot, indeed, well conceive a greater) are no less remarkable than the expressive
brevity and simplicity of the language:—“And God said, Let there be light: and there was
light.” The more words you would accumulate upon this thought, the more you would

146. detract from the sublimity of it; for the understanding quickly comprehends the Divine
Power from the effect, and perhaps most completely when it is not attempted to be
explained; the perception in that case is the more vivid, inasmuch as it seems to proceed
from the proper action and energy of the mind itself. The prophets have also depicted
the same conception in poetical language, and with no less force and magnificence of
expression. The whole creation is summoned forth to celebrate the praise of the
Almighty—
Let them praise the name of Jehovah;
For He commanded, and they were created.
And in another place—
For He spoke, and it was;
He commanded, and it stood fast.1 [Note: R. Lowth, Lectures on the Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews, 176.]
3. In creation it was the drawing near of God, and the utterance of His word, that
dispersed the darkness. In the Incarnation, the Eternal Word, without whom “was not
anything made that was made,” drew nigh to the fallen world darkened by sin. He came
as the Light of the world, and His coming dispersed the darkness. On the first Christmas
night this effect of the Incarnation was symbolized when to the “shepherds abiding in
the field, keeping watch over their flock by night … the angel of the Lord came upon
them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them.” The message to the shepherds
was a call to them and to the world, “Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of
the Lord is risen upon thee. For, behold, the darkness shall cover the earth, and gross
darkness the people: but the Lord shall arise upon thee, and his glory shall be seen upon
thee. And the Gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising.”
Thirty years ago last December I went to a place where they practised cannibalism, and
before I left those people to go to New Guinea, and start a mission there, so completely
were idolatry and cannibalism swept away that a gentleman who tried to get an idol to
bring as a curiosity to this country could not find one; they had all been burnt, or
disposed of to other travellers. I saw these people myself leaving their cannibalism and
their idolatry, and building themselves tolerably good houses. We had our institutions
among them, and I had the honour of training a number of young men as native pastors
and pioneer teachers. What is the use of talking to me of failure? I have myself baptized
more than five thousand of these young people—does that look like failure? In thirteen
or fourteen years these men were building houses and churches for themselves, and
attending schools, and, if you have read the mission reports, you will know that some of
them have gone forth as teachers to New Guinea, and across New Caledonia, and some
of the islands of the New Hebrides. The people, too, have been contributing handsomely
to the support of the London Missionary Society, for the purpose of sending the Gospel,
as they say, to the people beyond. They have seen what a blessing it has been, and their
grand idea is to hand it on to those who are still in heathen darkness.1 [Note: S. McFarlane.]
Meet is the gift we offer here to Thee,
Father of all, as falls the dewy night;
Thine own most precious gift we bring—the light
Whereby mankind Thy other bounties see.
Thou art the Light indeed; on our dull eyes

147. And on our inmost souls Thy rays are poured;
To Thee we light our lamps: receive them, Lord,
Filled with the oil of peace and sacrifice.2 [Note: Prudentius, translated by R. Martin Pope.]
BI, "Let there be light
The creation of light
I. DIVINELY PRODUCED.
1. For the protection of life. Plants could not live without light; without it, the flowers
would soon wither. Even in a brief night they close their petals, and will only open
them again at the gentle approach of the morning light. Nor could man survive in
continued darkness. A sad depression would rest upon his soul.
2. For the enjoyment of life. Light is one of God’s best gifts to the world.
(1) It is inexpensive. The world has to pay for the light produced by man; that
created by God, we get for nothing. Man has limitations; God has none. Man is
selfish; God is beneficent.
(2) It is extensive. It floods the universe. It is the heritage of the poor equally
with the rich; it enters the hut as well as the palace.
(3) It is welcome.
3. For the instruction of life. Light is not merely a protection. It is also an instructor.
It is an emblem. It is an emblem of God, the Eternal Light. It is an emblem of truth.
It is an emblem of goodness. It is an emblem of heaven. It is an emblem of
beneficence.
II. DIVINELY APPROVED. “And God saw the light, that it was good.”
1. It was good in itself. The light was pure. It was clear. It was not so fierce as to
injure. It was not so weak as to be ineffectual. It was not so loud in its advent as to
disturb.
2. It was good because adapted to the purpose contemplated by it. Nothing else
could more efficiently have accomplished its purpose toward the life of man. Hence it
is good because adapted to its purpose, deep in its meaning, wide in its realm, happy
in its influence, and educational in its tendency.
3. We see here that the Divine Being carefully scrutinises the work of His hands.
When He had created light, He saw that it was good. May we not learn a lesson here,
to pause after our daily toil, to inspect and review its worth. Every act of life should
be followed by contemplation.
III. DIVINELY PROPORTIONED. “And God called the light day, and the darkness He
called night.”
1. The light was indicative of day. In this light man was to work. The light ever active
would rebuke indolence. By this light man was to read. In this light man was to order
his moral conduct.
2. The removal of light was indicative of night. In this night man was to rest from the
excitement of pleasure, and the anxiety of toil. Its darkness was to make him feel the
need of a Divine protection. (J. S. Exell, M. A.)

148. Light and the gospel compared
I. THE APPROPRIATENESS OF THE METAPHOR.
1. Light and the gospel resemble each other in their source and Divine resemblance.
2. Light and the gospel resemble each other in their adaptation to the end designed.
3. Light and the gospel resemble each other in their purity.
4. Light and the gospel resemble each other in their inseparable connection with joy
and happiness.
II. THE WILL OF GOD RESPECTING IT.
1. That man should have the light of salvation.
2. That His Church should be the light of the world.
3. That the world should be filled with the light of the gospel of Christ.
(1) Now the gospel is adapted to all the world. It is as much suited to one part of
it as to another.
(2) It is expressly said that it is designed for the whole world. “I am the light of
the world.” “Go into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.”
(3) The whole world shall finally enjoy its saving rays. “This gospel of the
kingdom,” etc. (See Isa_11:9; Isa_60:19, and Hab_2:14.)
APPLICATION.
1. Have you the light of Divine grace in your hearts?
2. Have you this light in your families?
3. Have you this light in your neighbourhood?
4. Are you assisting to enlighten the world? (J. Burns, D. D.)
Genesis of light
I. EXPLANATION OF THE PASSAGE.
1. “God said”: an anthropomorphism.
2. The God-said of Moses the God-word of John.
3. The first light chemical.
4. “And God saw the light, that it was good.” It is to light that the cloud, the sunset,
the rainbow, the diamond, the violet, owe their exquisite hues. Truly the light is
sweet, and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the Ecc_11:7). Nay, more:
Light is one of the essential conditions of all life itself—alike vegetal, animal, human,
and, doubtless, angelic. Yes, there is a better curative than allopathy or homeopathy,
hydropathy or aeropathy; it is heliopathy, or light of the sun. Physicians understand
this, and so seek for their patients the sunny side of hospitals. And so they
unconsciously confirm the holy saying, “To you that fear My name shall the Sun of

149. Righteousness arise with healing in His wings” Mal_4:2).
5. Evening: Morning. Observe the order of the words: It is not first morning, and
then evening; it is first evening, then morning: “And there was evening, and there
was morning, day one.”
II. MORAL MEANING OF THE STORY.
1. God is light (1Jn_1:5). For aught I know, the apostle’s message is literally true.
Remember that when we are talking of light we are moving in presence of a very
subtile mystery. The origin and nature of light is still a profound problem. True, we
talk learnedly and correctly about the laws of light; its laws of reflection, refraction,
absorption, dispersion, polarization, etc. But these are only phenomena; they tell us
nothing about the nature or origin of light itself. All we know of light is merely a
knowledge of the mode and laws of its motion. We do not know the essence of light
itself. One thing is certain: light is the nearest known, sensible approach to
immateriality, being classed with its apparent kindred—heat, electricity,
magnetism—among the imponderables. Indeed, the modern magnificent undulatory
theory denies that light is material, and affirms that it is but a mode of motion. We
are accustomed to say that there are but two things in the universe—spirit and
matter—and that the chasm between these is infinite. Possibly this is one of those
assumptions which, did we know more, we would affirm less. Possibly light is an
instance of what the philosophers call tertium quid—a third something, intermediate
between spirit and matter, ethereally bridging the measureless chasm. Possibly light
is God’s natural expression, outflow, radiation, manifestation, vestment Psa_104:1-
2). Possibly, when the Creator moves in that finite world we call time, He leaves light
as His personal vestige and train. His mantle ripples into light, is light itself. In view
of this possibility, how natural as well as fitting that the ancient token of God’s
personal presence among the Hebrews should have been the shechinah, or dazzling
glory cloud.
2. And as God is light, so also are His children light. Expressly are they called Sons of
Light (Luk_16:8). Expressly is He called Father of Lights (Jas_1:17). We know that
light is latent in every form of matter; for, when sufficiently heated, it becomes
incandescent—that is to say, self-luminous. What is flame but a mass of heated,
visibly glowing gas? True, it doth not yet appear what we shall be (1Jn_3:2).
Nevertheless, I believe that light is latent within us all, and that by-and-by, at least in
the case of God’s saintly children, it will stream forth; not that it will be evolved by
the action of any heat or chemical force, but that, under the free, transcendent
conditions of the heavenly estate, it will ray forth spontaneously.
3. Jesus Christ Himself, as Incarnate, is the shadow of God’s light. Infinite God,
Deity as unconditioned and absolute, no man hath ever seen or can ever see, and live
(Exo_33:20). He dwelleth in light which no man can approach unto (1Ti_6:15), is
light itself. “Dark with excess of light,” we poor finite beings cannot behold Him
except through the softening intervention of some medium. Therefore the Son of
God, brightness of His glory and express image of His person (Heb_1:3), radiance of
His effulgence and character, or impress of His substance, became incarnate, that in
the softer morning star and suffused dayspring of the Incarnation we might be able
to look on the dazzling Father of Lights, and not be dazed into blindness.
4. Jesus Christ is not only the shadow or tempered image of God: in the very act of
becoming that shadow Jesus Christ also became the Light of the Joh_8:12). Ah, how
much the world needed His illumination!

150. 5. As Jesus Christ is the Light of the World, so also is His Church. He, clear as the
sun, she, fair as the moon, both together resplendent as an army with banners (Son_
6:10).
In conclusion:
1. A word of cheer for the saint. Ye are sons of light. Recall now how much light
means. It means all that is most bright and clean, and direct, and open, and
unselfish, and spotless, and lovely, and healthful, and true, and Divine. How
exceedingly great, then, your wealth! Oh, live worthily of your rich estate.
2. A word of entreaty to the sinner. Of what use is the most abounding light if we
persist in keeping our eyes closed? As there is an eternal day for the sons of light, so
there is an eternal night for the sons of darkness. (G. D.Boardman.)
Light and life
I. THE UPWARD PROGRESS OF NATURE, as created by God.
II. THE ORDERLY ARRANGEMENT OF NATURE, as settled by God.
III. THE VARIETY OF LIFE IN NATURE, as filled by God. LESSONS:
1. Trust in God’s overruling providence.
2. The study of nature should not be separated from religion. (W. S. Smith, B. D.)
Light
I. Light is PURE. Its property repels defilement. It traverses unstained each medium of
uncleanness.
II. Light is BRIGHT. Indeed, what is brightness but light’s clear shining.
III. Light is LOVELY. Beauty cannot live without it. So Christ decks all on whom His
beams descend.
IV. Light is FREE. The wealth of the wealthy cannot purchase, nor the poverty of the
poor debar from it. Waste not time in seeking a price for Him, compared with whom an
angel’s worth is nothing worth.
V. Light is ALL-REVEALING. By Christ’s rays, sin is detected, as lurking in every corner
of the heart; and the world, which we so fondled, is unmasked, as a monster whose
embrace is filth, and in whose hand is the cup of death.
VI. Light is the PARENT OF FRUITFULNESS. In Christ’s absence, the heart is rank
with every weed, and every noxious berry. But when His beams enliven, the seeds of
grace bud forth, the tree of faith pours down its golden fruit.
VII. Light is the chariot which CONVEYS HEAT. Without Christ, the heart is ice. But
when He enters, a glow is kindled, which can never die.
VIII. Light is the HARBINGER OF JOY. Heaven is a cloudless God. (Dean Law.)

151. The Word of God
“Let there be.”
1. How the growth of the world points back to the eternal existence of the Word.
2. How the eternal Word is the foundation for the growth of the world. (J. P. Lange,
D. D.)
Light, a source of life
1. Its good, as existing in its ground.
2. Its beauty, as disclosed in its appearing. (J. P. Lange, D. D.)
The creation of light a day’s work of God
1. The first day’s work.
2. A whole day’s work.
3. A continuous day’s work.
4. A day’s work rich in its consequences. (J. P. Lange, D. D.)
All the blessings of the light
We, who worship “the Father of lights,” have reason every day that we live to thank God
for life and health, for countless blessings. And not least among these may be reckoned
the free gift of, and the many “blessings of the light.” For in many ways that we can tell
off, at once, upon our fingers, and in very many more ways that we neither dream of nor
think of, does light minister to our health, wealth, and comfort.
1. The very birds sing at daybreak their glad welcome to the dawn, and the rising
sun. And we all know and feel how cheering is the power of light. In the sunlight
rivers flash, and nature rejoices, and our hearts are light, and we take a bright view of
things.
2. So, too, light comes to revive and restore us. Darkness is oppressive. In it we are
apt to lose heart. We grow anxious, and full of fears. With the first glimmer of light in
the distance, hope awakens, and we feel a load lifted off our minds.
3. Again, we have often felt the reassuring power of light. In the darkness, objects
that are perfectly harmless take threatening shapes; the imagination distorts them,
and our fancy creates dangers. Light shows us that we have been alarmed at
shadows: quiets and reassures us.
4. Once again, the light comes to us, often, as nothing less than a deliverer. It reveals
dangers hidden and unsuspected; the deadly reptile; the yawning precipice; the
lurking foe.
5. And when, over and above all this, we remember that light is absolutely essential,
not to health only, but to life in every form, animal and vegetable alike, we shall
heartily echo the words of the wise king in Ecclesiastes: “Truly the light is sweet; and

152. a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun.” (J. B. C. Murphy, B. A.)
The first day
The work begins with light, God said, “Let there be light,” and at once light shone where
all before was dark. God says, “Repent ye—the kingdom of heaven is at hand”: then our
darkness displeases us, and we are turned to light. Thus of all those blessings hid in
Christ from everlasting, and which are predestinated to be accomplished in the creature,
light is the first that is bestowed: “God shines in our hearts to give the light of the
knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” But the “heaven” announced
“at hand” is yet unformed. No sun yet shines, no fruits adorn the creature. Many steps
remain before the image of God will come, the man created in righteousness, to rule all
things. Then at once comes a division between what is of God and what is not; between
the natural darkness in the creature and the light which God has made. The light shines
in darkness, but the darkness comprehends it not. Two conflicting powers are striving
each to gain the day, making the old domain of darkness a continually shifting but
ceaseless battle field. Then a name is given by God both to light and darkness; that is, the
character of each is learnt according to the mind of God. Now the darkness has a name.
What God calls it, we call it. His thoughts are not altogether strange to us. Natural as the
darkness may seem to the creature, God calls it “night,” or deviation. It is a turning from
the right or straight line. The light is “day,” or movement: there is a disturbance of the
darkness. Death rules no longer; life with light is come. Besides, in this name there is a
form given to both. Until now light and darkness were unformed, but “day” and “night”
intimate order and distribution. Night is darkness put within limits. So with light; it is
not “day” till it is arranged and put in form and order. (A. Jukes.)
Light, natural and spiritual
Every saved man is a new creation.
I. THE DIVINE FIAT. “Let there be light.” The work of grace by which light enters the
soul is—
1. A needful work. No heart can be saved without spiritual light, to reveal self and
Jesus Christ.
2. An early work. First day.
3. A Divine work.
4. Wrought by the Word. God spake.
5. Unaided by the darkness itself. Darkness cannot help to bring day.
6. It was unsolicited.
7. Instantaneous.
8. Irresistible.
II. DIVINE OBSERVATION.
III. DIVINE APPROBATION. Natural light is good. Gospel light is good. Spiritual light
is good.

153. 1. Because of its source.
2. Because of its likeness. God is light.
3. Because of its effects.
4. It glorifies God.
IV. DIVINE SEPARATION. The Christian man has light and darkness contending
within him; also contending forces without him.
V. DIVINE NOMINATION. We must call things by their right names. (C. H.Spurgeon.)
Light and its laws
I. The light God has made, and His mind concerning it.
1. Physical light—good; light, sweet; pleasant. Sun, the emblem of many things;
cheerful revealing.
2. Mental light—good. Hence in some parts an idiot is called “dark.”
3. Gospel light—good; the light of the story of God; light that shined out of darkness
to enlighten Gentiles; Christ, the Light of the world, the Sun of Righteousness.
4. Spiritual light—good.
5. Essential light—light of heaven from the Father of lights.
II. The law by which it is governed.
1. Not mixed, but separated.
2. Sons of light must have no communion with darkness.
3. Churches should be lights in the world.
4. Truth not to be mixed with error.
Learn:
1. Love the light.
2. Walk in it.
3. Enforce the law concerning it. (J. C. Gray.)
The ceaseless act of the Almighty
I. THE THINGS SPOKEN OF IN THE TEXT, LIGHT AND DARKNESS. To each of these
terms there are different significations. There is what we term natural light; there are
also mental and moral light (the illumination of the understanding and of the heart);
there are also providential, spiritual, and eternal light: each of these has its opposite
state of darkness. It is true that our text speaks only of light natural; yet, as the works of
God in nature are often typical of His works of grace, we may follow the example of
Scripture, and in tracing out the truths it teaches, may endeavour to prove, that in the
whole economy of nature, providence, and grace, it is the practice and prerogative of
God to divide the light from the darkness. Is it darkness with any of the Lord’s people
present? Are His dealings mysterious? Are their state and prospects full of gloom and

154. obscurity? Child of sorrow, strive to bow with submission to the will of your Heavenly
Father. “Let patience have her perfect work.” “Light is sown for the righteous, and
gladness for the upright in heart.” “Why art thou cast down, oh my soul! and why art
thou disquieted within me?” “Hope in God, for thou shalt yet praise Him who is the
health of thy countenance.” “At evening time it shall be light.” Yes, then, when you are
expecting the darkness to increase—when the sun of enjoyment seems to have set
forever,—then, “at evening time it shall be light.” “Who is among you that feareth the
Lord and obeyeth the voice of His servant: that walketh in darkness and hath no light;
let him trust in the name of the Lord, and stay upon his God.” “Unto the upright there
ariseth light in darkness.” There are also spiritual and eternal lights, with their opposite
states of darkness. “With Thee is the fountain of life,” said the sacred writer, and “in Thy
light shall we see light.” While we are in the darkness of natural corruption and
alienation from God, we know nothing aright, nothing of the evils of sin, nothing of the
astonishing love of Jesus, we have no just conceptions of the amazing and stupendous
work of redemption, or of the work of the Holy Spirit upon the soul of man. But when in
infinite compassion Jehovah enlightens the understanding and touches the heart, we see
and feel the reality and vast importance of eternal things—we see at what an awful
distance sin has placed us from a God of spotless purity—we feel how deeply we are
steeped in the poison and pollution of iniquity—we adore the infinite wisdom manifested
in the plan of redemption, that stupendous plan, which while it redeems, pardons, and
sanctifies the sinner, satisfies also the high claims of Divine justice, magnifies the Divine
perfections, and brings “Glory to God in the highest.”
II. We have now to consider WHAT MAY BE AFFIRMED CONCERNING THE
OBJECTS HERE SET BEFORE US: GOD DIVIDES THE LIGHT FROM THE
DARKNESS. He is accomplishing this upon earth by a mysterious but infinitely wise
process. Much light and darkness dwells in the minds of individuals—in the various
religious sects throughout the land, and among the different nations of the world.
Whatever true light is in the world, it is of God. He is its Author. By nature all are under
the dominion of the prince of darkness, and are enslaved by Him. But a stronger than he
comes upon him, and delivers the captive from the dark dungeons of iniquity. Jesus
came to be a light to them that sit in darkness; He sends His Spirit with His Word to
subdue the rebellious heart, to awaken the insensible heart—to pour the light of celestial
day upon the benighted spirit—to show the sinner to himself, and to reveal the saving
mercy, of God in Christ—to reveal the dangers that lie in his pathway to eternity—to give
him right views of every essential truth connected with salvation and eternal life—to
teach him everything it is requisite he should know and experience ere he can inhabit the
realms of light above—in short, to separate the light from the darkness. Hitherto the very
light had been darkness; there had been light in the intellect perhaps, but darkness in
the soul (for in many an unrenewed character the one is strangely mixed with the other).
There may even possibly exist a theoretic knowledge of Divine things where blackest
crimes dwell in the heart and are perpetrated in the life. But where Jesus shines forth in
mercy—where the Holy Spirit exerts His power, the light is separated from the darkness:
there is no longer that heterogeneous mixture of knowledge and sin, of Divine truth in
the intellect and sin in the life, which formerly existed. Jehovah has wrought His
wondrous work, has divided the light from the darkness, has separated the sinner from
his sins, “and behold all things become new.” To conclude: The day of final separation is
hastening on, then, forever and at once, God will divide “the light from the darkness,”
truth from error, holiness from iniquity, the righteous from the wicked. Truth and
righteousness shall dwell in heaven, error and iniquity shall sink to hell. The wicked will
then be all darkness, the righteous will then be all light. (W. Burgess.)

155. Darkness before light
And do you think, children, that you were first light and then became dark? or that you
were first dark and then became light? Because when you were a baby boy or girl you did
not know much; it was very dark: now I hope that the light of the Sun of Righteousness
is upon you, that the evening has become the morning. The morning star has risen, I
hope. It is light! light! (J. Vaughan, M. A.)
Night a necessity
A remarkable effect was mentioned by Mr. Robert Hunt (to whom the public are
indebted for much valuable information on solar and other phenomena) to the present
writer. In the course of his early experiments on the active power of the sun’s rays, he
subjected a metal plate to its operation, and, of course, received upon it a picture of the
objects within its range. He now rubbed this off, making the surface clear and fresh as at
first; photographed a different picture, and then effaced this as he had done the former.
In this way he proceeded some ten or twelve times, now receiving, and now rubbing off
the traces of the sunlight, when the question arose in his mind, “What would be the
result were I to transmit an electrical current through this plate?” To determine it, he
caused a current to pass through it diagonally, when, to his astonishment, the various
objects that had been, as he supposed, effaced from the surface, rushed to it confusedly
together, so that he could detect there a medley of them all; thus proving that there had
not been merely a superficial action of the light, but that it had produced a molecular
disturbance throughout the plate. Only let, therefore, the sunbeams play uninterruptedly
on the iron, the brass, or the granite, and they will crumble into dust under an
irresistible power; the falling over them of the mantle of night alone prevents the
occurrence of a catastrophe. (C. Williams.)
It was good
The first day of creation
1. Man’s fallen nature is a very chaos, “without form and void,” with darkness thick
and sevenfold covering all. The Lord begins His work upon man by the visitation of
the Spirit, who enters the soul mysteriously, and broods over it, even as of old He
moved upon the face of the waters. He is the quickener of the dead soul.
2. In connection with the presence of the Holy Spirit the Lord sends into the soul, as
His first blessing, light. The Lord appeals to man’s understanding and enlightens it
by the gospel.
3. If you keep your eye upon the chapter you will observe that the light came into the
world at first by the Word “God said, ‘Let there be light.’” It is through the Word of
God contained in this book, the Bible, that light comes into the soul. This is that true
light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.
4. The light which broke in upon the primeval darkness was of a very mysterious
kind, and came not according to ordinary laws, for as yet neither sun nor moon had
been set as lights in the firmament. Can we tell how spiritual light first dawns on

156. nature’s night? How He removes darkness from the understanding, and illuminates
the intellect, is a secret reserved for Himself alone.
5. The light came instantaneously. Six days were occupied in furnishing the earth,
but a moment sufficed for illuminating it. God works rapidly in the operation of
regeneration: as with a flash He darts light and life into the soul. The operations of
grace are gradual, but its entrance is instantaneous. Although instantaneous, it is
not, however, shallow and short lived.
I. THE LORD SEES WHATEVER HE CREATES. “The Lord saw the light.”
1. He was the sole observer of it. Neither eye of man, nor bird, nor beast was there to
behold the golden glory; but God saw the light. Newly enlightened one, it may be you
are pained because you have no Christian companion to observe your change of
heart: cease from your sorrow, for God beholds you.
2. That light had come into the world in a noiseless manner, yet the Lord saw it. The
entrance of God’s Word which giveth light is effected in “solemn silence of the mind.”
If men make an illumination, we can hear the crackling of their fireworks over all the
city; but when God illuminates the earth with the sun, the orb of day arises without a
sound. Although the work in your soul has been so quiet, so hidden from the eyes of
men, so unremarkable and commonplace, yet take comfort from the text, “The Lord
saw the light.” No trumpet proclaimed it, but the Lord saw it; no voice went forth
concerning it, but the Lord saw it and it was enough; and in your case it is the same.
3. The earth itself could not recognize the light, yet the Lord saw it. How often do we
mourn that we have scarcely more light than suffices to reveal our darkness and
make us pine for more. Oh, troubled one, lay this home to your soul, the Lord saw
the light when earth herself could not perceive it.
4. Let us not forget that besides the light there was no other beauty. The earth,
according to the Hebrew, was “tohu and bohu,” which, in order to come near both to
the sense and sound at the same time, I will render “anyhow and nohow.” Even so
your experience may seem to be a chaos, nohow and anyhow, exactly what it should
not be, a mass of unformed conceptions, and half-formed desires, and ill-formed
prayers, but yet there is grace in you, and God sees it, even amid the dire confusion
and huge uproar of your spirit.
5. Remember, too, that when the light came it had to contend with darkness, but
God saw it none the less. So, also, in your soul there still remains the darkness of
inbred corruption, ignorance, infirmity, and tendency to sin, and these cause a
conflict, but the light is not thereby hidden from the eyes of God.
6. For many reasons the Lord sees the light, but chiefly He sees it because He made
it, and He forsakes not the work of His own hands.
II. THE LORD APPROVES OF WHAT HE CREATES. “God saw the light that it was
good.” He took pleasure in it.
1. Now, as far as this world was concerned, light was but young and new: and so in
some of you grace is quite a novelty. You were only converted a very little while ago,
and you have had no time to try yourselves or to develope graces, yet the Lord
delights in your newborn life. Light is good at dawn as well as at noon: the grace of
God is good though but newly received; it will work out for you greater things by-
and-by, and make you more happy and more holy, but even now all the elements of
excellence are in it, and its first day has the Divine blessing upon it.

157. 2. Here we must mention again that it was struggling light, yet none the less for that
approved of by the Lord. We do not understand how it was that the light and the
darkness were together until God divided them, as this verse intimates; but as John
Bunyan says, “No doubt darkness and light here began their quarrel,” for what
communion hath light with darkness. My brethren, I am sure you are no strangers to
this conflict, nor is it to you altogether a thing of the past. You are in the conflict still.
Still grace and sin are warring in you, and will do so till you are taken home. Let this
help you, O ye who are perplexed; remember that struggling as the light is, God
approves of it, and calls it good.
3. As yet the light had not been divided from the darkness, and the bounds of day
and night were not fixed. And so in young beginners; they hardly know which is
grace and which is nature, what is of themselves and what is of Christ, and they make
a great many mistakes. Yet the Lord does not mistake, but approves of that which
His grace has placed in them.
4. As yet the light and darkness had not been named: it was afterwards that the Lord
called the light “day,” and the darkness “night,” yet He saw the light that it was good.
And so, though you do not know the names of things, God knows your name.
5. The light of the first day could not reveal much of beauty, for there was none, and
so the light within does not yet reveal much to you; and what it, does reveal is
uncomely, but the light itself is good, whatever it may make manifest.
6. But why did God say that light was good?
(1) I suppose it was because its creation displayed His attributes.
(2) He loves the light, too, because it is like Himself, for “God is light, and in Him
is no darkness at all.”
(3) Light is eminently good, for the Lord spent a whole day in creating and
arranging it—a whole day out of six. This shows that He attaches great
importance to it. Moreover, he gave it the front rank by occupying the first day of
creation’s week upon it. Even thus the plan of grace was early in the mind of God;
it was and is His masterpiece, and He has never yet placed it in the background.
(4) I suppose that the Lord approved of the light because it was a seasonable
thing. It was what was wanted to begin with. Not but what God could work in the
dark, for, as to natural light, in that respect darkness and light are both alike to
Him; but we can all see that the works of His creating skill needed light, for how
could plants, animals, and men live without it?
III. THE LORD QUICKLY DISCERNS ALL THE GOODNESS AND BEAUTY WHICH
EXISTS IN WHAT HE CREATES. The Lord did not merely feel approbation for the light,
but He perceived reason for it: He saw that it was good. He could see goodness in it
where, perhaps, no one else would have been able to do so.
1. Let us note, then, that light is good in itself; and so is Divine grace. What a
wonderful thing light is! Just think of it! How simple it is, and yet how complex.
Light, too, how common it is! We see it everywhere, and all the year round. Light,
too, how feeble and yet how strong! Its beams would not detain us one-half so
forcibly as a cobweb; yet how mighty it is, and how supreme! Scarcely is there a force
in the universe of God which is more potent. The grace of God in the same manner is
contemptible in the eyes of man, and yet the majesty of omnipotence is in it, and it is
more than conqueror.

158. 2. Light is good, not only in itself, but in its warfare. The light contended with
darkness, and it was good for darkness to be battled with. Grace has come unto you,
and it will fight with your sin, and it ought to be fought with, and to be overcome.
3. The light which came from God was good in its measure. There was neither too
much of it nor too little. If the Lord had sent a little more light into the world we
might all have been dazzled into blindness, and if He had sent less we might have
groped in gloom. God sends into the newborn Christian just as much grace as he can
bear; He does not give him the maturity of after years, for it would be out of place.
4. Light was good as a preparation for God’s other works. He knew that light, though
it was but the beginning, was necessary to the completion of His work. Light was
needful, that the eye of man might rejoice in the works of God, and so God saw the
light that it was good, in connection with what was to be. And, oh, I charge you who
have to deal with young people, look at the grace they have in them in relation to
what will be in them.
5. What a mass of thought one might raise from this one truth of the goodness of
light and the goodness of grace, as to their results. Light produces the beauty which
adorns the world, for without it all the world were uncomely blackness. Light’s pencil
paints the whole, and even so all beauty of character is the result of grace. Light
sustains life, for life in due time would dwindle and die out without it, and thus grace
alone sustains the virtues and graces of the believer; without daily grace we should
be spiritually dead. Light heals many sicknesses, and grace brings healing in its
wings. Light is comfort, light is joy, the prisoner in his darkness knows it to be so;
and so the grace of God produces joy and peace wherever it is shed abroad. Light
reveals and so does grace, for without it we could not see the glory of God in the face
of Jesus Christ.
IV. GOD RECORDED HIS ESTIMATE OF THIS FIRST DAY’S PRODUCT. “God saw the
light that it was good.”
1. This leads me to say to the young Christian, the Lord would have you encouraged.
2. My last word is to older Christian people. If the Lord says that His work in the
first day is good, I want you to say so too. Do not wait till you see the second, third,
fourth, fifth, or sixth day before you feel confidence in the convert and offer Him
fellowship. If God speaks encouragingly so soon, I want you to do the same. (C. H.
Spurgeon.)
4 God saw that the light was good, and he
separated the light from the darkness.

159. BAR ES, "Gen_1:4
Then saw God the light that it was good. - God contemplates his work, and
derives the feeling of complacence from the perception of its excellence. Here we have
two other archetypal faculties displayed in God, which subsequently make their
appearance in the nature of man, the understanding, and the judgment.
The perception of things external to Himself is an important fact in the relation
between the Creator and the creature. It implies that the created thing is distinct from
the creating Being, and external to Him. It therefore contradicts pantheism in all its
forms.
The judgment is merely another branch of the apprehensive or cognitive faculty, by
which we note physical and ethical relations and distinctions of things. It comes
immediately into view on observing the object now called into existence. God saw “that it
was good.” That is good in general which fulfills the end of its being. The relation of good
and evil has a place and an application in the physical world, but it ascends through all
the grades of the intellectual and the moral. That form of the judgement which takes
cognizance of moral distinctions is of so much importance as to have received a distinct
name, - the conscience, or moral sense.
Here the moral rectitude of God is vindicated, inasmuch as the work of His power is
manifestly good. This refutes the doctrine of the two principles, the one good and the
other evil, which the Persian sages have devised in order to account for the presence of
moral and physical evil along with the good in the present condition of our world.
Divided between the light and between the darkness. - God then separates
light and darkness, by assigning to each its relative position in time and space. This no
doubt refers to the vicissitudes of day and night, as we learn from the following verse:
CLARKE, "God divided the light from the darkness - This does not imply that
light and darkness are two distinct substances, seeing darkness is only the privation of
light; but the words simply refer us by anticipation to the rotation of the earth round its
own axis once in twenty-three hours, fifty-six minutes, and four seconds, which is the
cause of the distinction between day and night, by bringing the different parts of the
surface of the earth successively into and from under the solar rays; and it was probably
at this moment that God gave this rotation to the earth, to produce this merciful
provision of day and night. For the manner in which light is supposed to be produced,
see Gen_1:16, under the word sun.
GILL, "And God saw the light, that it was good,.... Very pleasant and delightful,
useful and beneficial; that is, he foresaw it would be good, of great service, as Picherellus
(k) interprets it; for as yet there were no inhabitants of the earth to receive any
advantage by it; see Ecc_11:7 besides, it was doubtless good to answer some present
purposes, to prepare for the work of the two following days, before the great luminary
was formed; as to dispel the darkness of heaven, and that which covered the deep; to
rarefy, exhale, and draw up the lighter parts of the chaos, in order to form the wide
extended ether, the expanded air, and the surrounding atmosphere, while the Spirit of
God was agitating the waters, and separating them from the earthy parts; and which also

160. might serve to unite and harden those which were to form the dry land, and also to
warm that when it appeared, that it might bring forth grass, herbs, and fruit trees:
and God divided the light from the darkness: by which it should seem that they
were mixed together, the particles of light and darkness; but "by what way is the light
parted", severed and divided from darkness, is a question put to men by the Lord
himself, who only can answer it, Job_38:24 he has so divided one from the other that
they are not together at the same place and time; when light is in one hemisphere,
darkness is in the other (l); and the one by certain constant revolutions is made to
succeed the other; and by the motion of the one, the other gives way; as well as also God
has divided and distinguished them by calling them by different names, as Aben Ezra,
and is what next follows:
JAMISO , "divided the light from darkness — refers to the alternation or
succession of the one to the other, produced by the daily revolution of the earth round its
axis.
K&D, "The expression in Gen_1:4, “God saw the light that it was good,” for “God
saw that the light was good,” according to a frequently recurring antiptosis (cf. Gen_6:2;
Gen_12:14; Gen_13:10), is not an anthropomorphism at variance with enlightened
thoughts of God; for man's seeing has its type in God's, and God's seeing is not a mere
expression of the delight of the eye or of pleasure in His work, but is of the deepest
significance to every created thing, being the seal of the perfection which God has
impressed upon it, and by which its continuance before God and through God is
determined. The creation of light, however, was no annihilation of darkness, no
transformation of the dark material of the world into pure light, but a separation of the
light from the primary matter, a separation which established and determined that
interchange of light and darkness, which produces the distinction between day and
night.
CALVI , "4And God saw the light Here God is introduced by Moses as surveying
his work, that he might take pleasure in it. But he does it for our sake, to teach us
that God has made nothing without a certain reason and design. And we ought not
so to understand the words of Moses as if God did not know that his work was good,
till it was finished. But the meaning of the passage is, that the work, such as we now
see it, was approved by God. Therefore nothing remains for us, but to acquiesce in
this judgment of God. And this admonition is very useful. For whereas man ought to
apply all his senses to the admiring contemplation of the works of God, (56) we see
what license he really allows himself in detracting from them.
BE SO , "Genesis 1:4. God saw the light, &c. — He beheld it with approbation, as
being exactly what he designed it to be, pleasant and useful, and perfectly adapted
to answer its intended end. God divided — Made a separation between the light and
the darkness, as to time, place, and use, that the one should succeed and exclude the
other, and that by their vicissitudes they should make the day and the night. Though
the darkness was now scattered by the light, it has its place, because it has its use:
for as the light of the morning befriends the business of the day, so the shadows of
the evening befriend the repose of the night. God has thus divided between light and

161. darkness, because he would daily impress upon our minds that this is a world of
mixture and changes. In heaven there is perpetual light and no darkness; in hell,
utter darkness and no light: but in this world they are counter-changed, and we
pass daily from the one to the other, that we may expect the like vicissitudes in the
providence of God.
ELLICOTT, "(4) And God saw.—This contemplation indicates, first, lapse of time;
and next, that the judgment pronounced was the verdict of the Divine reason.
That it was good.—As light was a necessary result of motion in the world-mass, so
was it indispensable for all that was to follow, inasmuch as neither vegetable nor
animal life can exist without it. But the repeated approval by the Deity of each part
and portion of this material universe (comp. Psalms 104:31) also condemns all
Manichæan theories, and asserts that this world is a noble home for man, and life a
blessing, in spite of its solemn responsibilities.
And God divided . . . —The first three creative days are all days of order and
distribution, and have been called “the three separations.” But while on the first two
days no new thing was created, but only the chaotic matter (described in Genesis
1:2) arranged, on day three there was the introduction of vegetable life. The division
on the first day does not imply that darkness has a separate and independent
existence, but that there were now periods of light and darkness; and thus by the
end of the first day our earth must have advanced far on its way towards its present
state. (See ote, Genesis 1:5.) It is, however, even more probable that the ultimate
results of each creative word are summed up in the account given of it. o sooner
did motion begin, than the separation of the air and water from the denser particles
must have begun too. The immediate result was light; removed by a greater interval
was the formation of an open space round the contracting earth-ball; still more
remote was the formation of continents and oceans; but the separations must have
commenced immediately that the “wind of Elohim” began to brood upon and move
the chaotic mass. How far these separations had advanced before there were
recurrent periods of light and darkness is outside the scope of the Divine narrative,
which is not geological, but religious.
COFFMA , ""And God saw the light that it was good: and God divided the light
from the darkness."
"And God saw the light that it was good." The intelligence of the Supreme Being,
His concern with and His interest in the affairs of His creation, and His personal
preference for that which is "good" appear as legitimate deductions from what is
revealed here. It seems highly improbable that the creation of light merely means
the making of light visible upon the earth. The text does not state that God made
light visible, but that He created it.
"And God divided the light from the darkness ..." This statement is enigmatical,
and that should not surprise us. It was inevitable that in the creation of all things
there were countless facts about it that were incapable of being revealed to the finite

162. intelligence of mortal man. God's dividing the light from the darkness simply
indicates a time previously when they were mingled; and there is no rational
understanding on the part of men with reference to that prior state of mingled
darkness and light. The very presence of light dispels darkness. The diurnal
revolution of the earth, excluding the sun's light at night, is usually cited as the
explanation of this; but we reject such an explanation, preferring to view it as
something beyond the ability of men to understand it. Besides, the relationship
between sun, moon, and the earth did not appear until the fourth day, and this is the
first day.
PETT, "Verse 4-5
‘And God saw the light, that it was good, and God separated the light from the
darkness, and God called the light day and the darkness he called night. And there
was evening and there was morning one day.’
“The light, that it was good”. It is not that God was in any doubt about the outcome
of His word. These words are just to confirm that His word achieved what He
wanted to achieve. He saw that it was as good as He knew it would be. His creation
was in perfect harmony with His desires.
ow He separates light from darkness so that there will be periods of both, and the
periods of light He calls ‘day’ (yom) and the periods of darkness He calls ‘night’. So
the term ‘yom’ is used in this sentence with two meanings. In the one it describes the
periods of light, in the other it describes the whole first period of creation. This
reminds us that even today long periods of light in the Arctic are called an ‘Arctic
day’. The term ‘day’ is not quite so circumscribed as some suggest, even in our
scientifically oriented era.
The truth is that this verse presents a problem for any ‘natural day’ view (see
introduction in book comments). ot only is ‘yom’ shown to be capable of different
meanings, and therefore not quite as specific a word as some would suggest, but also
total darkness, where there is no light, and never has been, is called ‘evening’. This
is a strange and unnatural use of the term evening. Surely evening, in its natural
meaning, is the gloaming going into night, not the total darkness before there was
light? Evening was the time for rest and relaxation, but when morning came it was
the time for action. So in creation’s story, having created all things, God rested and
relaxed and then He acted. So in each yom, evening is the time before God acted.
Furthermore, are we then to assume that having created the heavens and the earth
He waited the length of a so-called ‘natural night, before saying ‘let there be light’,
and then produced a ‘day’ of ‘normal’ length? Surely not. God works in His own
time. This ‘day’ is certainly extraordinary. At first, light pervades the darkness, and
then God acts to separate them so as to form periods of light and darkness (of ‘days’
and ‘nights’) which are not said to be of any determinate length. Light is made the
basic yeast of the universe and of the world, and then it becomes something which
contrasts with the darkness. Is this a natural day? It is rather the principle of light
and darkness, and its fluctuation, that is established here. He made the process.
There is no suggestion that it is formulated into time cycles. That is something that

163. he stresses happened on ‘day four’, when the sun specifically determines the length
of a day.
So we are asked by some to assume that God, for the first three ‘days, artificially
made light appear according to the time span that will be fixed on day four. If this is
the natural meaning of the words it appears a little strange. Surely the truth is that
we are meant by the writer to see these first periods as being accomplished in God’s
time, and thus within the time span of His days? And thus that the ‘evening and the
morning’ of the first ‘day’, and of each ‘day’, is simply the use of a man-oriented
description to indicate start and finish and to describe a completed time period, the
length of which we do not know, indicating the completion of the first stage of God’s
purposes. God’s nights results in God’s days. This is not pandering to science, but
simply using God-given intelligence in considering the narrative. What the writer is
saying is that God is laying the basis for what is to follow, in His own way. If
‘evening’ is not used in its ‘natural meaning’, why should ‘day’ be?
“There was evening and there was morning one day.” The Hebrew day was
measured from sunset to sunset, and this thus indicated the passing of a ‘day’. But
on this first day there had been no evening, unless we see it as merely a period of
waiting and relaxing in readiness for the next act. And it had not resulted from a
sunset, for there was no light. The phrase is metaphorical describing an evening and
morning of God’s activity expressed as a day of God, concerning which a thousand
years is but a watch in the night (Psalms 90:4).
HAWKER, "And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from
the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the
evening and the morning were the first day.
Several sweet thoughts arise here. God’s approbation of his work.
The light was good: Jas_1:17. And how good and precious is Jesus who cometh to us
from the Father, and who is the light and the life of men. God divided the light from
darkness. Yes: there is an everlasting separation, as in the natural world so in the
spiritual, between light and darkness. 2Co_6:14. The first day of the world was a day of
light: so the first day in the spiritual world, in the new life in Jesus, is light indeed from
the dead. Thus there is a beautiful correspondence in both. Hail, thou holy Lord! As the
sons of God shouted for joy when the light at creation sprung out of darkness: so angels
celebrated thy victory when, by the glories of thy resurrection, life arose from the dead.
And how ought thy people to adore thee, who are interested in this great salvation?
5 God called the light “day,” and the darkness he

164. called “night.” And there was evening, and there
was morning—the first day.
BAR ES, "Gen_1:5
Called to the light, day, ... - After separating the light and the darkness, he gives
them the new names of day and night, according to the limitations under which they
were now placed. Before this epoch in the history of the earth there was no rational
inhabitant, and therefore no use of naming. The assigning of names, therefore, is an
indication that we have arrived at that stage in which names for things will be necessary,
because a rational creature is about to appear on the scene.
Naming seems to be designating according to the specific mode in which the general
notion is realized in the thing named. This is illustrated by several instances which occur
in the following part of the chapter. It is the right of the maker, owner, or other superior
to give a name; and hence, the receiving of a name indicates the subordination of the
thing named to the namer. Name and thing correspond: the former is the sign of the
latter; hence, in the concrete matter-of-fact style of Scripture the name is often put for
the thing, quality, person, or authority it represents.
The designations of day and night explain to us what is the meaning of dividing the
light from the darkness. It is the separation of the one from the other, and the orderly
distribution of each over the different parts of the earth’s surface in the course of a night
and a day. This could only be effected in the space of a diurnal revolution of the earth on
its axis. Accordingly, if light were radiated from a particular region in the sky, and thus
separated from darkness at a certain meridian, while the earth performed its daily
round, the successive changes of evening, night, morning, day, would naturally present
themselves in slow and stately progress during that first great act of creation.
Thus, we have evidence that the diurnal revolution of the earth took place on the first
day of the last creation. We are not told whether it occurred before that time. If there
ever was a time when the earth did not revolve, or revolved on a different axis or
according to a different law from the present, the first revolution or change of revolution
must have produced a vast change in the face of things, the marks of which would
remain to this day, whether the impulse was communicated to the solid mass alone, or
simultaneously to all the loose matter resting on its surface. But the text gives no
intimation of such a change.
At present, however, let us recollect we have only to do with the land known to
antediluvian man, and the coming of light into existence over that region, according to
the existing arrangement of day and night. How far the breaking forth of the light may
have extended beyond the land known to the writer, the present narrative does not
enable us to determine.
We are now prepared to conclude that the entrance of light into this darkened region
was effected by such a change in its position or in its superincumbent atmosphere as
allowed the interchange of night and day to become discernible, while at the same time

165. so much obscurity still remained as to exclude the heavenly bodies from view. We have
learned from the first verse that these heavenly orbs were already created. The luminous
element that plays so conspicuous and essential a part in the process of nature, must
have formed a part of that original creation. The removal of darkness, therefore, from
the locality mentioned, is merely owing to a new adjustment by which the pre-existent
light was made to visit the surface of the abyss with its cheering and enlivening beams.
In this case, indeed, the real change is effected, not in the light itself, but in the
intervening medium which was impervious to its rays. But it is to be remembered, on the
other hand, that the actual result of the divine interposition is still the diffusion of light
over the face of the watery deep, and that the actual phenomena of the change, as they
would strike an onlooker, and not the invisible springs of the six days’ creation, are
described in the chapter before us.
Then was evening, then was morning, day one. - The last clause of the verse is
a resumption of the whole process of time during this first work of creation. This is
accordingly a simple and striking example of two lines of narrative parallel to each other
and exactly coinciding in respect of time. In general we find the one line overlapping
only a part of the other.
The day is described, according to the Hebrew mode of narrative, by its starting-point,
“the evening.” The first half of its course is run out during the night. The next half in like
manner commences with “the morning,” and goes through its round in the proper day.
Then the whole period is described as “one day.” The point of termination for the day is
thus the evening again, which agrees with the Hebrew division of time Lev_23:32.
To make “the evening” here the end of the first day, and so “the morning” the end of
the first night, as is done by some interpreters, is therefore equally inconsistent with the
grammar of the Hebrews and with their mode of reckoning time. It also defines the
diurnal period, by noting first its middle point and then its termination, which does not
seem to be natural. It further defines the period of sunshine, or the day proper, by “the
evening,” and the night by the morning; a proceeding equally unnatural. It has not even
the advantage of making the event of the latter clause subsequent to that of the former.
For the day of twenty-four hours is wholly spent in dividing the light from the darkness;
and the self-same day is described again in this clause, take it how we will. This
interpretation of the clause is therefore to be rejected.
The days of this creation are natural days of twenty-four hours each. We may not
depart from the ordinary meaning of the word without a sufficient warrant either in the
text of Scripture or in the law of nature. But we have not yet found any such warrant.
Only necessity can force us to such an expedient. Scripture, on the other hand, warrants
us in retaining the common meaning by yielding no hint of another, and by introducing
“evening, night, morning, day,” as its ordinary divisions. Nature favors the same
interpretation. All geological changes are of course subsequent to the great event
recorded in the first verse, which is the beginning of things. All such changes, except the
one recorded in the six days’ creation, are with equal certainty antecedent to the state of
things described in the second verse. Hence, no lengthened period is required for this
last creative interposition.
Day one - is used here for the first day, the cardinal one being not usually employed
for the ordinal in Hebrew Gen_8:13; Exo_10:1-2. It cannot indicate any emphasis or
singularity in the day, as it is in no respect different from the other days of creation. It
implies that the two parts before mentioned make up one day. But this is equally implied
by all the ordinals on the other days.
This day is in many ways interesting to us. It is the first day of the last creation; it is

166. the first day of the week; it is the day of the resurrection of the Messiah; and it has
become the Christian Sabbath.
The first five verses form the first parashah (‫פרשׁ‬ pārāsh) or “section” of the Hebrew
text. If this division come from the author, it indicates that he regarded the first day’s
work as the body of the narrative, and the creation of the universe, in the first verse, and
the condition of the earth, in the second, as mere preliminaries to introduce and
elucidate his main statement. If, on the contrary, it proceeds from some transcriber of a
subsequent period, it may indicate that he considered the creative work of the first day
to consist of two parts, - first, an absolute creation; and, second, a supplementary act, by
which the primary universe was first enlightened.
GILL, "And God called the light day, and the darkness he called night,....
Either by the circulating motion of the above body of light, or by the rotation of the
chaos on its own axis towards it, in the space of twenty four hours there was a vicissitude
of light and darkness; just as there is now by the like motion either of the sun, or of the
earth; and which after this appellation God has given, we call the one, day, and the other,
night:
and the evening and the morning were the first day: the evening, the first part of
the night, or darkness, put for the whole night, which might be about the space of twelve
hours; and the morning, which was the first part of the day, or light, put also for the
whole, which made the same space, and both together one natural day, consisting of
twenty four hours; what Daniel calls an "evening morning", Dan_8:26 and the apostle
νυχθηµερον, a "night day", 2Co_11:25. Thales being asked which was first made, the
night or the day, answered, the night was before one day (m). The Jews begin their day
from the preceding evening; so many other nations: the Athenians used to reckon their
day from sun setting to sun setting (n); the Romans from the middle of the night, to the
middle of the night following, as Gellius (o) relates; and Tacitus (p) reports of the
ancient Germans, that they used to compute not the number of days, but of nights,
reckoning that the night led the day. Caesar (q) observes of the ancient Druids in Britain,
that they counted time not by the number of days, but nights; and observed birthdays,
and the beginnings of months and years, so as that the day followed the night; and we
have some traces of this still among us, as when we say this day se'nnight, or this day
fortnight. This first day of the creation, according to James Capellus, was the eighteenth
of April; but, according to Bishop Usher, the twenty third of October; the one beginning
the creation in the spring, the other in autumn. It is a notion of Mr. Whiston's, that the
six days of the creation were equal to six years, a day and a year being one and the same
thing before the fall of man, when the diurnal rotation of the earth about its axis, as he
thinks, began; and in agreement with this, very remarkable is the doctrine Empedocles
taught, that when mankind sprung originally from the earth, the length of the day, by
reason of the slowness of the sun's motion, was equal to ten of our present months (r).
The Hebrew word ‫,ערב‬ "Ereb", rendered "evening", is retained by some of the Greek
poets, as by Hesiod (s), who says, out of the "chaos" came "Erebus", and black night, and
out of the night ether and the day; and Aristophanes (t), whose words are,
chaos, night, and black "Erebus" were first, and wide Tartarus, but there were neither
earth, air, nor heaven, but in the infinite bosom of Erebus, black winged night first
brought forth a windy egg, &c. And Orpheus (u) makes night to be the beginning of all
things. (Hugh Miller (1802-1856) was the first person to popularise the "Day-Age"

167. theory. In his book, "Testimony of the Rocks", that was published in the year after his
untimely death, he speculated that that the days were really long ages. He held that
Noah's flood was a local flood and the rock layers were laid down long periods of time.
(v) This theory has been popularised by the New Scofield Bible first published in 1967.
JAMISO , "first day — a natural day, as the mention of its two parts clearly
determines; and Moses reckons, according to Oriental usage, from sunset to sunset,
saying not day and night as we do, but evening and morning.
K&D, "Gen_1:5
Hence it is said in Gen_1:5, “God called the light Day, and the darkness Night;” for, as
Augustine observes, “all light is not day, nor all darkness night; but light and darkness
alternating in a regular order constitute day and night.” None but superficial thinkers
can take offence at the idea of created things receiving names from God. The name of a
thing is the expression of its nature. If the name be given by man, it fixes in a word the
impression which it makes upon the human mind; but when given by God, it expresses
the reality, what the thing is in God's creation, and the place assigned it there by the side
of other things.
“Thus evening was and morning was one day.” ‫ד‬ ָ‫ח‬ ֶ‫א‬ (one), like εᅽς and unus, is used at
the commencement of a numerical series for the ordinal primus (cf. Gen_2:11; Gen_
4:19; Gen_8:5, Gen_8:15). Like the numbers of the days which follow, it is without the
article, to show that the different days arose from the constant recurrence of evening and
morning. It is not till the sixth and last day that the article is employed (Gen_1:31), to
indicate the termination of the work of creation upon that day. It is to be observed, that
the days of creation are bounded by the coming of evening and morning. The first day
did not consist of the primeval darkness and the origination of light, but was formed
after the creation of the light by the first interchange of evening and morning. The first
evening was not the gloom, which possibly preceded the full burst of light as it came
forth from the primary darkness, and intervened between the darkness and full, broad
daylight. It was not till after the light had been created, and the separation of the light
from the darkness had taken place, that evening came, and after the evening the
morning; and this coming of evening (lit., the obscure) and morning (the breaking)
formed one, or the first day. It follows from this, that the days of creation are not
reckoned from evening to evening, but from morning to morning. The first day does not
fully terminate till the light returns after the darkness of night; it is not till the break of
the new morning that the first interchange of light and darkness is completed, and a
ᅧερονύκτιον has passed. The rendering, “out of evening and morning there came one
day,” is at variance with grammar, as well as with the actual fact. With grammar,
because such a thought would require 'echaad ‫ד‬ ָ‫ח‬ ֶ‫א‬ ‫יוֹם‬ ְ‫;ל‬ and with fact, because the time
from evening to morning does not constitute a day, but the close of a day. The first day
commenced at the moment when God caused the light to break forth from the darkness;
but this light did not become a day, until the evening had come, and the darkness which
set in with the evening had given place the next morning to the break of day. Again,
neither the words ‫ערב‬ ‫ויהי‬ ‫בקר‬ ‫,ויהי‬ nor the expression ‫בקר‬ ‫,ערב‬ evening-morning (= day),
in Dan_8:14, corresponds to the Greek νυχθηʷ̀ερον, for morning is not equivalent to day,
nor evening to night. The reckoning of days from evening to evening in the Mosaic law

168. (Lev_23:32), and by many ancient tribes (the pre-Mohammedan Arabs, the Athenians,
Gauls, and Germans), arose not from the days of creation, but from the custom of
regulating seasons by the changes of the moon. But if the days of creation are regulated
by the recurring interchange of light and darkness, they must be regarded not as periods
of time of incalculable duration, of years or thousands of years, but as simple earthly
days. It is true the morning and evening of the first three days were not produced by the
rising and setting of the sun, since the sun was not yet created; but the constantly
recurring interchange of light and darkness, which produced day and night upon the
earth, cannot for a moment be understood as denoting that the light called forth from
the darkness of chaos returned to that darkness again, and thus periodically burst forth
and disappeared. The only way in which we can represent it to ourselves, is by supposing
that the light called forth by the creative mandate, “Let there be,” was separated from the
dark mass of the earth, and concentrated outside or above the globe, so that the
interchange of light and darkness took place as soon as the dark chaotic mass began to
rotate, and to assume in the process of creation the form of a spherical body. The time
occupied in the first rotations of the earth upon its axis cannot, indeed, be measured by
our hour-glass; but even if they were slower at first, and did not attain their present
velocity till the completion of our solar system, this would make no essential difference
between the first three days and the last three, which were regulated by the rising and
setting of the sun.
(Note: Exegesis must insist upon this, and not allow itself to alter the plain sense
of the words of the Bible, from irrelevant and untimely regard to the so-called certain
inductions of natural science. Irrelevant we call such considerations, as make
interpretation dependent upon natural science, because the creation lies outside the
limits of empirical and speculative research, and, as an act of the omnipotent God,
belongs rather to the sphere of miracles and mysteries, which can only be received by
faith (Heb_11:3); and untimely, because natural science has supplied no certain
conclusions as to the origin of the earth, and geology especially, even at the present
time, is in a chaotic state of fermentation, the issue of which it is impossible to
foresee.)
SBC, "(1) One of the first lessons which God intends us to learn from the night is a
larger respect for wholesome renovation. Perhaps this may not show itself in any great
lengthening of our bodily life, but rather in a more healthy spirit, less exposed to that
prevailing unrest which fills the air and which troubles so many minds. (2) The night is
the season of wonder. A new and strangely equipped population, another race of beings,
another sequence of events, comes into and fills the world of the mind. Men who have
left their seal upon the world, and largely helped in the formation of its deepest
history,—men whose names stand up through the dim darkness of the past, great leaders
and masters, have admitted that they learned much from the night. (3) The next thought
belonging to the night is that then another world comes out and, as it were, begins its
day. There is a rank of creatures which moves out into activity as soon as the sun has set.
This thought should teach us something of tolerance; senses, dispositions, and
characters are very manifold and various among ourselves. Each should try to live up to
the light he has, and allow a brother to do the same. (4) Such extreme contrasts as are
involved in light and darkness may tell us that we have as yet no true measure of what
life is, and it must be left to some other conditions of existence for us to realize in
anything like fulness the stores, the processes, the ways of the Kingdom of the Lord
which are provided for such as keep His law. (5) Let us learn that, whether men wake or
sleep, the universe is in a state of progress, "the whole creation groaneth and travaileth

169. in pain together." (6) Let us learn to use day rightly and righteously, to accept the grace
and the forces of the Lord while it is called today, and then the night shall have no
forbidding, no repulsive significance.
H. Jones, The Family Churchman, Oct. 20th, 1886.
CALVI , "5.And God called the light That is, God willed that there should be a
regular vicissitude of days and nights; which also followed immediately when the
first day was ended. For God removed the light from view, that night might be the
commencement of another day. What Moses says however, admits a double
interpretation; either that this was the evening and morning belonging to the first
day, or that the first day consisted of the evening and the morning. Whichever
interpretation be chosen, it makes no difference in the sense, for he simply
understands the day to have been made up of two parts. Further, he begins the day,
according to the custom of his nation, with the evening. It is to no purpose to dispute
whether this be the best and the legitimate order or not. We know that darkness
preceded time itself; when God withdrew the light, he closed the day. I do not doubt
that the most ancient fathers, to whom the coming night was the end of one day and
the beginning of another, followed this mode of reckoning. Although Moses did not
intend here to prescribe a rule which it would be criminal to violate; yet (as we have
now said) he accommodated his discourse to the received custom. Wherefore, as the
Jews foolishly condemn all the reckonings of other people, as if God had sanctioned
this alone; so again are they equally foolish who contend that this modest reckoning,
which Moses approves, is preposterous.
The first day Here the error of those is manifestly refuted, who maintain that the
world was made in a moment. For it is too violent a cavil to contend that Moses
distributes the work which God perfected at once into six days, for the mere
purpose of conveying instruction. Let us rather conclude that God himself took the
space of six days, for the purpose of accommodating his works to the capacity of
men. We slightingly pass over the infinite glory of God, which here shines forth;
whence arises this but from our excessive dullness in considering his greatness? In
the meantime, the vanity of our minds carries us away elsewhere. For the correction
of this fault, God applied the most suitable remedy when he distributed the creation
of the world into successive portions, that he might fix our attention, and compel us,
as if he had laid his hand upon us, to pause and to reflect. For the confirmation of
the gloss above alluded to, a passage from Ecclesiasticus is unskilfully cited. ‘He
who liveth for ever created all things at once,’ (Sirach 18:1.) For the Greek adverb
κοινὣ which the writer uses, means no such thing, nor does it refer to time, but to all
things universally. (57)
BE SO , "Genesis 1:5. God called, &c. — God distinguished them from each other
by different names, as the Lord of both. The day is thine, the night also is thine. He
is the Lord of time, and will be so till day and night shall come to an end, and the
stream of time be swallowed up in the ocean of eternity. The evening — Including
the following night, and the morning, including the succeeding day, were the first
natural day, of twenty-four hours. Some, indeed, by evening understand the

170. foregoing day as being then concluded, and by the morning the preceding night: but
the Jews, who had the best opportunity of understanding Moses, who here declares
the mind of God in this matter, began both their common and sacred days in the
evening, see Leviticus 23:32. The darkness of the evening, preceding the light of the
morning, sets it off and makes it shine the brighter.
ELLICOTT, "(5) God called the light Day . . . ight.—Before this distinction of
night and day was possible there must have been outside the earth, not as yet the
sun, but a bright phosphorescent mass, such as now enwraps that luminary; and,
secondly, the earth must have begun to revolve upon its axis. Consequent upon this
would be, not merely alternate periods of light and darkness, but also of heat and
cold, from which would result important effects upon the formation of the earth’s
crust. Moreover, in thus giving “day” and “night” names, God ordained language,
and that vocal sounds should be the symbols of things. This law already looks
forward to the existence of man, the one being on earth who calls things by their
names.
And the evening and the morning.—Literally, And was an evening and was a
morning day one, the definite article not being used till Genesis 1:31, when we have
“day the sixth,” which was also the last of the creative days.
The word “evening” means a mixture. It is no longer the opaque darkness of a
world without light, but the intermingling of light and darkness (comp. Zechariah
14:6-7). This is followed by a “morning,” that is, a breaking forth of light. Evening
is placed first because there was a progress from a less to a greater brightness and
order and beauty. The Jewish method of calculating the day from sunset to sunset
was not the cause, but the result of this arrangement.
The first day.—A creative day is not a period of twenty-four hours, but an œon, or
period of indefinite duration, as the Bible itself teaches us. For in Genesis 2:4 the six
days of this narrative are described as and summed up in one day, creation being
there regarded, not in its successive stages, but as a whole. So by the common
consent of commentators, the seventh day, or day of God’s rest, is that age in which
we are now living, and which will continue until the consummation of all things. So
in Zechariah 14:7 the whole Gospel dispensation is called “one day;” and constantly
in Hebrew, as probably in all languages, day is used in a very indefinite manner, as,
for instance, in Deuteronomy 9:1. Those, however, who adopt the very probable
suggestion of Kurtz, that the revelation of the manner of creation was made in a
succession of representations or pictures displayed before the mental vision of the
tranced seer, have no difficulties. He saw the dark gloom of evening pierced by the
bright morning light: that was day one. Again, an evening cleft by the light, and he
saw an opening space expanding itself around the world: that was day two. Again
darkness and light, and on the surface of the earth he saw the waters rushing down
into the seas: that was day three. And so on. What else could he call these periods
but days? But as St. Augustine pointed out, there was no sun then, and “it is very
difficult for us to imagine what sort of days these could be” (De Civ. Dei, xi. 6, 7). It

171. must further be observed that this knowledge of the stages of creation could only
have been given by revelation, and that the agreement of the Mosaic record with
geology is so striking that there is no real difficulty in believing it to be inspired. The
difficulties arise almost entirely from popular fallacies or the mistaken views of
commentators. Geology has done noble service for religion in sweeping away the
mean views of God’s method of working which used formerly to prevail. We may
add that among the Chaldeans a cosmic day was a period of 43,200 years, being the
equivalent of the cycle of the procession of the equinoxes (Lenormant, Les Origines
de l’Histoire, p. 233).
COKE, "Genesis 1:5. God called the light day, and the darkness he called night—
He gave them names as Lord of both, for the day is his, the night also is his. He is
the Lord of time, and will be so till day and night shall come to an end, and the
stream of time be swallowed up in the ocean of eternity. Let us then acknowledge
him in the constant succession of day and night, and consecrate both to his honour,
by working for him every day, and resting in him every night, and meditating in his
law day and night.
Some have observed that the names here given to the two grand divisions of the day,
are proofs of the expressiveness of the Hebrew language; ‫יום‬ jom, the day,
expressing the tumult and business which attends it: and ‫לילה‬ lilah, the night, being
derived from a word signifying the howling and yelling of the wild beasts, which
then appear.
The evening and the morning— It is acknowledged by all, that each of these is put
by a synecdoche for one half of the natural day. The darkness of the evening, or
night, was before the light of the morning: it served as a foil to it, to set it off, and
make it shine the brighter. It was on the ground of this and similar passages, that
the Jews began both their common and sacred days with the evening. But this was
not only the first day of the world, but the first day of the week. I observe it to the
honour of that day, because the new world began likewise on the first day of the
week in the Resurrection of Christ, as the Light of the world, early in the morning.
In him the day-spring from on high hath visited the world; and happy are we if that
day-star arise in our hearts.
COFFMA , "Verse 5
"And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called ight. And there was
evening and there was morning, one day."
Although this verse appears to mean that the separation of light and darkness was
the same as creating Day and ight, this meaning is not consistent with the
appearance of the sun and moon on the fourth day. It is likely that light and
darkness in some cosmic sense were divided on the first day.
"And there was evening and there was morning, one day ..." This is generally hailed
as requiring that the days of Genesis 1 be understood strictly as twenty-four hour
periods of time, answering in every way to our days of the week in an ordinary

172. sense, but tremendous words of caution against such a view are thundered from the
pages of inspiration. The very basis for calculating days and nights did not appear
in this narrative until the fourth day; and that forbids any dogmatic restriction
based upon our methods of calculating days and nights. It certainly did not require
any twenty-four hours for God to say, "Let there be light", and our understanding
that God's creation was by fiat, that He spoke the worlds into existence, and that all
things appeared instantly upon the Divine word, forbid any notion that Almighty
God required a time budget in any of His creative acts. Certainly, we reject any view
that puts God to work for uncounted billions of years in the production of that
creation which is now visible to man. We find no fault whatever with the view that
the "days" here were indeed very brief periods such as our days. For ages, devout
souls have taken exactly that view of them; and no one can prove that they were
wrong.
However, "days" are surely mentioned here; and before deciding that we know
exactly the duration of them, there is a point of wisdom in remembering that God
has revealed some things in the Bible which shed a great deal of light upon this very
question:
"But forget not this one thing, beloved, that O E DAY is with the Lord as a
thousand years, and a thousand years as O E DAY" (2 Peter 3:8). For a thousand
years in thy sight are but as YESTERDAY when it is past, and as a watch in the
night (Psalms 90:4). The apostle Paul referred to the entire present dispensation of
the grace of God as "the DAY of salvation" (2 Corinthians 6:2).
There is also another .T. passage in Hebrews 4:4-6ff:
"For he hath said somewhere of the seventh day on this wise, God rested on the
seventh day ... seeing therefore that it remaineth that some should enter thereinto ...
let us therefore give diligence to enter into that rest (Hebrews 4:4,6,11).
Without any doubt whatever, the last of the passage cited above denominates all of
the period of time following the sixth day of creation and reaching all the way to the
final Judgment as "the seventh day." When it is considered that the very same day
mentioned here in Genesis and called here the "seventh day," using the very same
word for "day" as was used for the other six days, there appears to be imposed
upon us the utmost restraints and caution with reference to any dogmatic
postulations about exactly HOW LO G any of those days was. The Bishop of
Edinburgh's comment on the above passage from Hebrews is an emphatic statement
of what this writer believes the passage means: "From this argument, we must
conclude that the seventh day of God's rest, which followed the six days of His work
of creation, is not yet completed."
(1) Some see it as the Hebrew method of reckoning days from sunset to sunset,
concluding therefore that these were ordinary twenty-four hour days.
(2) Cotterill, just quoted, saw their meaning as an implication, that "each day had
its beginning and its close."[4]

173. (3) Others connect the words with progression from darkness to light, a movement
upward to higher and higher forms of life in the cycle of creation.
(4) A number have viewed this as a reference to "the day" the inspired writer,
Moses, was given the vision of God's days of creation, corresponding somewhat to
the successive visions of Revelation.
"One day ..." Significantly, the entire six days of creation are spoken of as a
SI GLE DAY in Genesis 2:4, "In the day that Jehovah God made earth and
heaven." There are serious objections to receiving any of the "explanations"
mentioned above. Any basis for dogmatic assurance concerning exactly what is
meant by the days of this chapter has eluded us; and we therefore leave it as one of
the "secret things which belong unto Jehovah our God" (Deuteronomy 29:29).
There is certainly no impediment to a childlike acceptance of the days of Genesis as
ordinary days in exactly the same manner that the first generation to receive this
revelation in all probability accepted them, as most of our parents understood them,
and as every soul humbled by a consciousness of the phenomenal ignorance of
mankind may also find joy in believing and accepting them, fully aware, of course,
that there may be, indeed must be, oceans of truth concerning what is revealed here
that men shall never know until we see our Savior face to face.
ISBET, "‘DAY A D IGHT’
‘God called the light day, and the darkness He called night.’
Genesis 1:5
(I.) One of the first lessons which God intends us to learn from the night is a larger
respect for wholesome renovation. Perhaps this may not show itself in any great
lengthening of our bodily life, but rather in a more healthy spirit, less exposed to
that prevailing unrest which fills the air and which troubles so many minds.
(II.) The night is the season of wonder. A new and strangely equipped population,
another race of beings, another sequence of events, comes into and fills the world of
the mind. Men who have left their seal upon the world, and largely helped in the
formation of its deepest history,—men whose names stand up through the dim
darkness of the past, great leaders and masters, have admitted that they learned
much from the night. (III.) The next thought belonging to the night is that then
another world comes out and, as it were, begins its day. There is a rank of creatures
which moves out into activity as soon as the sun has set. This thought should teach
us something of tolerance; senses, dispositions, and characters are very manifold
and various among ourselves. Each should try to live up to the light he has, and
allow a brother to do the same. (IV.) Such extreme contrasts as are involved in light
and darkness may tell us that we have as yet no true measure of what life is, and it
must be left to some other conditions of existence for us to realise in anything like
fulness the stores, the processes, the ways of the Kingdom of the Lord which are
provided for such as keep His law. (V.) Let us learn that, whether men wake or
sleep, the universe is in a state of progress, ‘the whole creation groaneth and
travaileth in pain together.’ (VI.) Let us learn to use day rightly and righteously, to

174. accept the grace and the forces of the Lord while it is called to-day, and then the
night shall have no forbidding, no repulsive significance.
Rev. H. Jones.
Illustration
(1) ‘Light in verse 3 is not the same word as is rendered lights (ver. 14, etc.), to
describe light-giving bodies or lamps. There is light in nature quite apart from the
sun or stars. The dividing of light from darkness, and their naming as day and night
are difficult to explain apart from a possible anticipation (by no means surprising in
a Hebrew author) of the subsequent events (ver. 14 to 19), but may refer to facts
beyond our present knowledge. It is believed, on good scientific grounds, that the
earth had light and heat for vast ages before any differences of climate existed such
as are produced by sunlight, and this accords with the general teaching of Genesis.’
(2) ‘The heretofore dark mass began to give light—at first poor in quality, but
improving as condensation went on—until our planet attained the temperature of
our sun, and then the light was good for all its present uses. This completion of the
evolution of good light occurred before the earth was covered with a dark crust, and
by its opaque body divided the light on the sun side from the darkness on the other.’
(3) ‘Take the reference to the appointment of sun and moon, “the great light to rule
the day, and the lesser light to rule the night.” Again the purpose of the narrative is
not scientific but religious. “In the teeth of an all but universal worship of sun,
moon, and stars, it declares them the manufacture of God, and the ministers and
servants of man.” As Calvin puts it, with characteristic shrewdness and good sense,
“Moses, speaking to us by the Holy Spirit, did not treat of the heavenly luminaries
as an astronomer, but as it became a theologian, having regard to us rather than to
the stars.”’
BI, "And God called the light day, and the darkness He called night:—
Light, natural and spiritual
The Holy Ghost mysteriously quickens the dead heart, excites emotions, longings,
desires.
I. DIVINE FIAT: God said, Let there be light, and there was light. The Lord Himself
needed no light to enable Him to discern His creatures. He looked upon the darkness,
and resolved that He would transform its shapeless chaos into a fair and lovely world.
1. We shall observe that the work of grace by which light enters the soul is a needful
work. God’s plan for the sustaining of vegetable and animal life, rendered light
necessary. Light is essential to life. It is light which first shows us our lost estate; for
we know nothing of it naturally. This causes pain and anguish of heart; but that pain
and anguish are necessary, in order to bring us to lay hold on Jesus Christ, whom the
light next displays to us. No man ever knows Christ till the light of God shines on the
cross.

175. 2. Next observe it was a very early work. Light was created on the first day, not on
the third, fourth, or sixth, but on the first day; and one of the first operations of the
Spirit of God in a man’s heart is to give light enough to see his lost estate, and to
perceive that he cannot save himself from it but must look elsewhere.
3. It is well for us to remember that light giving is a Divine work. God said, “Let there
be light,” and there was light.
4. This Divine work is wrought by the Word. God did not sit in solemn silence and
create the light, but He spake. He said, “Light be,” and light was. So the way in which
we receive light is by the Word of God. Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the
Word of God. Christ Himself is the essential Word, and the preaching of Christ Jesus
is the operative Word. We receive Christ actually when God’s power goes with God’s
Word—then have we light. Hence the necessity of continually preaching the Word of
God.
5. While light was conferred in connection with the mysterious operation of the Holy
Spirit, it was unaided by the darkness itself. How could darkness assist to make itself
light? Nay, the darkness never did become light. It had to give place to light, but
darkness could not help God. The power which saves a sinner is not the power of
man.
6. As this light was unassisted by darkness, so was it also unsolicited. There came no
voice out of that thick darkness, “Oh God, enlighten us”; there was no cry of prayer.
The first work of grace in the heart does not begin with man’s desire, but with God’s
implanting the desire.
7. This light came instantaneously.
8. As it is instantaneous, so it is irresistible. Darkness must give place when God
speaks.
II. DIVINE OBSERVATION. “And God saw the light.” Does He not see everything? Yes,
beloved, He does; but this does not refer to the general perception of God of all His
works, but is a something special. “God saw the light”—He looked at it with
complacency, gazed upon it with pleasure. A father looks upon a crowd of boys in a
school and sees them all, but there is one boy whom he sees very differently from all the
rest: he watches him with care: it is his own child, and his eye is specially there. Though
you have come here sighing and groaning because of inbred sin, yet the Lord sees what is
good in you, for He has put it there. Satan can see the light and he tries to quench it: God
sees it and preserves it. The Lord watches you, and He sees the light. He has His eye
always fixed upon the work of grace that is in your soul.
III. DIVINE APPROBATION. “God saw the light, that it was good.” Light is good in all
respects.
1. The natural light is good. Solomon says, “It is a pleasant thing to behold the sun”;
but you did not want Solomon to inform you upon that point. Any blind man who
will tell you the tale of his sorrows will be quite philosopher enough to convince you
that light is good.
2. Gospel light is good. “Blessed are the eyes which see the things which ye see.” You
only need to travel into heathen lands, and witness the superstition and cruelty of the
dark places of the earth, to understand that gospel light is good.
3. As for spiritual light, those that have received it long for more of it, that they may
see yet more and more the glory of heaven’s essential light! O God, Thou art of good

176. the unmeasured Sea; Thou art of light both Soul, and Source, and Centre.
(1) It must be good from its source. The light emanates from God, in whom is no
darkness at all, and, as it comes absolutely and directly from Him, it must be
good.
(2) It is good, again, when we consider its likeness. Light is like to God. It is a
thing so spiritual, so utterly to be ungrasped by the hand of flesh, that it has often
been selected as the very type of God. Ignatius used to call himself, Theophorus,
or the God bearer. The title might seem eccentric, but the fact is true of all the
saints—they bear God about with them. God dwelleth in His saints as in a temple.
(3) It is good, also, in its effect. It is good for a man to know his danger—it makes
him start from it. It is good for him to know the evil of his sin—it makes him
avoid it, and repent of it.
(4) It is good, moreover, because it glorifies God. Where were God’s glory in the
outward universe without light? Could we gaze upon the landscape? Spiritual
light shows us our emptiness, our poverty, our wretchedness, but it reveals in
blessed contrast His fulness, His riches, His freeness of grace. The more light in
the soul, the more gratitude to God.
(5) Let me say of the work of God in the soul as compared to light, that it is good
in the widest possible sense. The new nature which God puts in us never sins: it
cannot sin, because it is born of God. “What!” say you, “does a Christian never
sin?” Not with the new nature; the new nature never sins: the old nature sins. It
is the darkness which is dark: the light is not darkness; the light is always light.
IV. DIVINE SEPARATION. It appears that though God made light there was still
darkness in the world: “And God divided the light from the darkness.” Beloved, the
moment you become a Christian, you will begin to fight. You will be easy and
comfortable enough, as long as you are a sinner, but as soon as you become a Christian,
you will have no more rest.
1. One part of the Divine work in the soul of man is to make a separation in the man
himself. Do you feel an inward contention and war going on? Permit me to put these
two verses together—“O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body
of this death? There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ
Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.” How can these two things be
consistent? Ask the spiritual man: he will tell you, “The Lord divideth between light
and darkness.”
2. Whereas there is a division within the Christian, there is certain to be a division
without. So soon as ever the Lord gives to any believer light, he begins to separate
himself from the darkness. He separates himself from the world’s religion, finds out
where Christ is preached, and goes there. Then as to society, the dead, carnal
religionist can get on very well in ordinary society, but it is not so when he has light. I
cannot go to light company, wasting the evening, showing off my fine clothes, and
talking frivolity and nonsense.
V. DIVINE NOMINATION. Things must have names; Adam named the beasts, but God
Himself named the day and the night. “And God called the light day, and the darkness
called He night.” It is a very blessed work of grace to teach us to call things by their right
names. The spiritual aspirations of God’s people never can be evil. Carnal reason calls
them folly, but the Lord would have us call them good. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

177. Lessons from the night
1. One of the first lessons which God intends us to learn from the night is a larger
respect for wholesome renovation. Perhaps this may not show itself in any great
lengthening of our bodily life, but rather in a more healthy spirit, less exposed to that
prevailing unrest which fills the air and which troubles so many minds.
2. The night is the season of wonder. A new and strangely equipped population,
another race of beings, another sequence of events, comes into and fills the world of
the mind. Men who have left their seal upon the world, and largely helped in the
formation of its deepest history—men whose names stand up through the dim
darkness of the past, great leaders and masters, have admitted that they learned
much from the night.
3. The next thought belonging to the night is that then another world comes out, and
as it were, begins its day. There is a rank of creatures which moves out into activity
as soon as the sun has set. This thought should teach us something of tolerance;
senses, dispositions, and characters are very manifold and various among ourselves.
Each should try to live up to the light he has, and allow a brother to do the same.
4. Such extreme contrasts as are involved in light and darkness may tell us that we
have as yet no true measure of what life is, and it must be left to some other
conditions of existence for us to realize in anything like fulness the stores, the
processes, the ways of the Kingdom of the Lord which are provided for such as keep
His law.
5. Let us learn that, whether man wake or sleep, the universe is in a state of progress,
“the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together.”
6. Let us learn to use day rightly and righteously, to accept the grace and the forces
of the Lord while it is called today, and then the night shall have no forbidding, no
repulsive significance.
The evening and the morning were the first day
The first day
I. THINK OF THE DAY’S BEGINNING. Evening came before morning. Light issued out
of darkness. The first goings of creative power were in obscurity.
II. THE DAY’S CHARACTER—“Evening and morning.” In all life are alternations of
darkness and light—shadow and sunshine. Rest is the condition of labour, and labour of
rest.
III. THE DAY’S RELIGION. There was a morning and an evening sacrifice.
IV. THE DAY’S END. That which began in darkness is followed by darkness, which
ushers in a new day. “The night cometh.” (The Preacher’s Monthly.)
The evening and the morning
I. Let us reflect on what is God’s way of estimating THE PERIODS OF HISTORY. I do no
unjust disparagement to the common way of recording the course of human history,
when I say that it takes the form of a record of failures and catastrophes coming down
upon splendid beginnings of empire. It is the morning and the evening that make the

178. day; not the evening and the morning. For one Motley to tell the story of the Rise, there
be many Gibbons to narrate the Decline and Fall. History, as told in literature, is a
tragedy, and ends with a death. So human history is ever looking backward; and the
morning and the evening make the day. But it is not so that God writes history. The
annals of mankind in the Holy Book begin in the darkness of apostasy; but the darkness
is shot through with gleams of hope, the first rays of the dawn. The sentence of death is
illuminated with the promise of a Saviour: and the evening and the morning are the first
day. There is night again when the flood comes down and the civilization and the
wickedness of the primeval world are whelmed beneath it. But the flood clears off with a
rainbow, and it is proved to have been the clearing of the earth for a better progress, for
the rearing of a godly race, of whom by and by the Christ shall come according to the
flesh: and the evening and the morning are the second day. And again the darkness falls
upon the chosen race. They have ceased from off the land of promise. They are to be
traced through a marvellous series of events down into the dark, where we dimly
recognize the descendants of heroic Abraham and princely Joseph in the gangs and
coffles of slaves, wearing themselves out in the brickyards of the land of Egypt, the house
of bondage. And this—is this the despairing evening of so bright a patriarchal age as that
gone by? No, no! it is so that men reckon, but not God. This is the evening, not of
yesterday, but of tomorrow. The elements of a new civilization are brooding there in that
miserable abode of slavery: of a civilization that shall take “the learning of the Egyptians”
and infuse into it the spirit of a high and fraternal morality, that shall take its religious
pomps and rituals and cleanse them of falsehoods and idolatries and inform them with
the spiritual worship of the one invisible God. The holy and priestly civilization of David
and Solomon, of the sons of Asaph and the sons of Korah, is to come forth out of that
dark chaos of Egyptian slavery. And the evening and the morning shall be the fourth day.
We need not trace the history of humanity and of the Church on through all its pages.
We have only to carry the spirit of this ancient story forward into later times, and the
dark places of history become irradiated, and lo! the night is light about us. We behold
“the decline and fall of the Roman Empire”—that awful convulsion of humanity; nation
dashing against nation; civilization, with its monuments and records, its institutions and
laws, going down out of sight, overwhelmed by an inrushing sea of barbaric invasion,
and it looks to us, as we gaze, like nothing but destruction and the end, ruin and failure.
So it seems to us at this distance: so it seemed to that great historian, Gibbon. But in the
midst of the very wreck and crash of it sat that great believer, Augustine, and wrote
volume after volume of the Civitas Dei—the “city of God,” the “city that hath
foundations,” the “kingdom that cannot be moved.” This awful catastrophe, he tells the
terrified and quaking world, is not the end—it is the beginning. History does not end so.
This is the way its chapters open. The night was a long night, but it had an end: and now
we look back and see how through all its dark and hopeless hours God was slowly
grinding materials for the civilization of modern times. So long, so long it seemed: but
the morning came at last. And the evening and the morning made the day. And we,
today, are only in the morning twilight, after just such another convulsion and
obscuration of the world. I have spoken to you now of this principle of the divine order,
which begins the day with the evening, as illustrated, first in creation, and then in
history; and now, can I safely leave it with you to make the more practical application of
it—
II. TO THE COURSE OF HUMAN LIFE? For this is where you most need to know and
feel it, and where, I suspect, you most fail to see it. It has been such a common blunder,
from the days of Job and his friends down to the days when Christ rebuked the
Pharisees, and from those days again down to ours—the blunder of supposing that the

179. evening goes with the day before, and not with the day after—that the dark times of
human life are a punishment for what is past, instead of being, as they always are to
them that love God, a discipline and preparation for what is coming. There are many and
many such eventides in life—times of enforced repose; hard times, when business
stagnates or runs with adverse current; times of sickness, pain, seclusion; times of
depression, sorrow, bereavement, fear. Such are the night times of life; and blessed are
they who at such times have learned to “look forward, and not back”; to say, not, What
have I done, that this thing should befall me? but, rather, What is God preparing for me,
and for what is He preparing me, that thus He should lovingly chasten and instruct me
in the night season? Then lift your heads, ye saints, and answer: “No, no! this is not the
end; this is the beginning. The evening is come, and the morning also cometh; and the
evening and the morning are the day. Look! look at the glory of the evening sky. It shall
be fair weather in the morning, for the sky is red.” So shall it “come to pass that at
evening time it shall be light.” (L. W. Bacon.)
The first day
“The evening and the morning were the first day.” The evening came first. God’s glorious
universe sprang into existence in obscurity. “There was the hiding of His power.” It is
very remarkable that the creation work and the redemption work of God were both alike
shrouded in darkness. When God spake, and the worlds were made, it is said, “darkness
was upon the face of the deep.” When Christ hung upon the cross, having finished His
work of love, it is said, “There was a darkness over all the land unto the ninth hour.”
What a lesson does this teach us! The glory was so exceeding that it needed to be
overshadowed: for us the veil was thrown over Jehovah’s brightness; the light would
have been too strong for mortal eyes; the diadem of the King of kings would have been
too dazzling to meet our gaze, had it not been dimmed for our sakes. Nevertheless,
hidden as He is in unapproachable majesty, His secret is with them that fear Him; and
while the evening lasts, they wait with longing expectation for that morning when they
shall see no longer through a glass darkly, but rather face to face. “The evening and the
morning were the first day.” It was the alternation of light and shade which constituted
this first day; and is it not so with the spiritual days of a Christian? Darkness and light
succeed each other. If, then, thou art one who, ass child of God, art sitting in darkness,
there is comfort in this word for thee. If it is evening now, the sunlight shall arise again.
Even the record of God’s creation speaks to thee of consolation: there is in it a promise
of joy to come; thy day would not be perfect, if there were not a morning to succeed thy
night. But if thou art one with whom there is the brightness of sunshine in providence
and in grace, this sentence speaks to thee in warning. Although now thou canst look up
to an unclouded sky, and there is light in thy dwelling and in thine heart; remember the
evening shadows. The longest day has its sunset. God hath ordained the alternation of
light and darkness. As it is with individuals, so it is with the whole Church of Christ; and
now it is peculiarly with her the night time, the deepest night she has ever known, and,
blessed be God, the last night. She standeth now beneath the darkened sky of that
“tribulation” which is to issue in the millennial brightness of her coming Bridegroom’s
kingdom. How often does she inquire, “Watchman, what of the night?” and the answer
is, “The morning cometh, still as yet there will be night: if ye inquire already, yet must ye
return; come and inquire again” (Isa_21:12, Geneva version). It shallbe darker yet with
her, ere the breaking morn appeareth: but how glorious will be the dawn of that light,
when the Sun of Righteousness Himself shall arise with healing in His beams. Truly, said
David, when he saw the glory of the King of kings and spake of Him—“He shall be as the

180. light of the morning when the sun ariseth, even a morning without clouds.” “Even so,”
Saviour, “come quickly,” “The evening and the morning were the first day.” I cannot help
noticing another thing in the consideration of this subject. The evening of a natural day
is the season of rest from labour: “Man goeth forth unto his work and to his labour until
the evening.” In the darkness of the night, the various occupations of busy men are laid
aside, and the world is hushed in silence, waiting the returning morning. Is there
nothing of this in the Christian’s experience? Can he work when the night sets in upon
his soul? Does not he, too, wait and long for sunrise? “The evening and the morning
were the first day.” There is yet another lesson in these words, which I would notice.
What is it which constitutes the evening of a natural day? It is not that the position of the
sun is changed; but that the inhabitants of the earth are turned from Him. Let us not
forget that it is so with the evening of the soul. There are some in the religious world,
who seem to be just like the philosophers of a former day, who believed and taught that
the sun moved round our planet; they speak as if the light of the Christian were caused
by some change in Christ, the eternal Sun of Righteousness. Nay, it is not so. Our
Saviour God is ever the same, in the glory of His salvation, in the brightness of His
redemption; but we alas I turn away our faces from Him, and are in darkness, it is sin
which causes it to be evening with us; it is our iniquity which has made it dark. There is
one thought connected with the evening and the morning, which is so precious to me,
that I cannot pass it over. There was, under the law, a sacrifice appointed both for the
morning and the evening. Ah! when it is daylight with thee, Christian, and thou goest
into the sanctuary, having boldness to enter into the very holiest, having free access unto
the Father; thy soul can there offer its sacrifice of willing, loving praise. But the evening
cometh, and then thou dost shrink back from saying aught to God, from bringing thine
offering with so heavy a heart. Still, go even then; and pleading the blood of that richer
sacrifice which never faileth to bring down a blessing, lay the tribute of thy broken heart
beside it, and ask thy God, for His sake not to despise it. He will not do so, for, in the
provisions of His temple service, there was a sacrifice for the evening too. (The
Protoplast.)
The record of the first day of creation reminds us of the first day of human
life
How rapidly do the “few days” which succeed the first evening and morning in the life of
man, pass away. I think I have somewhere read of a philosopher who was seen in tears,
and on being asked, “Why weepest thou?” answered, “I weep because there is so much
for me to do, and my life is too short to do it in.” Whether the philosopher said so or not,
I am sure my own heart has said it oftentimes, and so, I doubt not, have the hearts of
others. Sorrow and sickness are the two great means by which many a young heart has
become aged; the mind is early matured, and the stranger wondering says, “How old
such an one is in character!” Yet every day of natural life has its burden, as foreordained
of God. There is one thought connected with the day, that is a very solemn one. The
evening and the morning will succeed each other, without break or change, year after
year; but a day will come upon us, the evening of which we shall never see; a sun will rise
that we shall never see go down; the morning will come and find us in a body of sin and
suffering, and before the evening we shall have passed away. (The Protoplast.)

181. 6 And God said, “Let there be a vault between the
waters to separate water from water.”
BAR ES 6-8, " - IV. The Second Day
6. ‫רקיע‬ rāqıya‛, “expanse;” στερέωµα stereōma, ‫רקע‬ rāqa‛, “spread out by beating, as leaf
gold.” This expanse was not understood to be solid, as the fowl is said to fly on the face of
it Gen_1:21. It is also described as luminous Dan_12:3, and as a monument of divine
power Psa_150:1.
7. ‫עשׂה‬ ‛āśâh “work on,” “make out of already existing materials.”
The second act of creative power bears upon the deep of waters, over which the
darkness had prevailed, and by which the solid crust was still overlaid. This mass of
turbid and noisy water must be reduced to order, and confined within certain limits,
before the land can be reached. According to the laws of material nature, light or heat
must be an essential factor in all physical changes, especially in the production of gases
and vapors. Hence, its presence and activity are the first thing required in instituting a
new process of nature. Air naturally takes the next place, as it is equally essential to the
maintenance of vegetable and animal life. Hence, its adjustment is the second step in
this latest effort of creation.
Gen_1:6
Let there be an expanse in the midst of the water. - For this purpose God now
calls into existence the expanse. This is that interval of space between the earth on the
one side and the birds on the wing, the clouds and the heavenly bodies on the other, the
lower part of which we know to be occupied by the air. This will appear more clearly
from a comparison of other passages in this chapter (Gen_1:14, Gen_1:20).
And let it be dividing between water and water. - It appears that the water in a
liquid state was in contact with another mass of water, in the shape of dense fogs and
vapors; not merely overhanging, but actually resting on the waters beneath. The object
of the expanse is to divide the waters which are under it from those which are above it.
Hence, it appears that the thing really done is, not to create the space that extends
indefinitely above our heads (which, being in itself no thing, but only room for things,
requires no creating), but to establish in it the intended disposition of the waters in two
separate masses, the one above, and the other below the intervening expanse. This we
know is effected by means of the atmosphere, which receives a large body of water in the
state of vapor, and bears up a visible portion of it in the form of clouds. These ever-
returning and ever-varying piles of mist strike the eye of the unsophisticated spectator;

182. and when the dew is observed on the grass, or the showers of rain, hail, and snow are
seen falling on the ground, the conclusion is obvious - that above the expanse, be the
distance small or great, is laid up an unseen and inexhaustible treasury of water, by
which the earth may be perpetually bedewed and irrigated.
The aqueous vapor is itself, as well as the element with which it is mingled, invisible
and impalpable; but when condensed by cold it becomes apparent to the eye in the form
of mists and clouds, and, at a certain point of coolness, begins to deposit itself in the
palpable form of dew, rain, hail, or snow. As soon as it becomes obvious to the sense it
receives distinguishing names, according to its varying forms. But the air being invisible,
is unnoticed by the primitive observer until it is put in motion, when it receives the name
of wind. The space it occupies is merely denominated the expanse; that is, the interval
between us and the various bodies that float above and hang upon nothing, or nothing
perceptible to the eye.
The state of things before this creative movement may be called one of disturbance
and disorder, in comparison with the present condition of the atmosphere. This
disturbance in the relations of air and water was so great that it could not be reduced to
the present order without a supernatural cause. Whether any other gases, noxious or
innocuous, entered into the constitution of the previous atmosphere, or whether any
other ingredients were once held in solution by the watery deep, we are not informed.
Whether any volcanic or plutonic violence had disturbed the scene, and raised a dense
mass of gaseous damp and fuliginous matter into the airy region, is not stated. How far
the disorder extended we cannot tell. We are merely certain that it reached over all the
land known to man during the interval between this creation and the deluge. Whether
this disorder was temporary or of long standing, and whether the change was effected by
altering the axis of the earth’s rotation, and thereby the climate of the land of primeval
man, or by a less extensive movement confined to the region under consideration, are
questions on which we receive no instruction, because the solution does not concern our
well-being. As soon as human welfare comes to be in any way connected with such
knowledge, it will by some means be made attainable.
The introduction of the expanse produced a vast change for the better on the surface
of the earth. The heavy mass of murky damp and aqueous steam commingling with the
abyss of waters beneath is cleared away. The fogs are lifted up to the higher regions of
the sky, or attenuated into an invisible vapor. A leaden mass of clouds still overshadows
the heavens. But a breathing space of pure pellucid air now intervenes between the
upper and lower waters, enveloping the surface of the earth, and suited for the
respiration of the flora and fauna of a new world.
Let it be noted that the word “be” is here again employed to denote the
commencement of a new adjustment of the atmosphere. This, accordingly, does not
imply the absolute creation on the second day of our present atmosphere: it merely
indicates the constitution of it out of the materials already at hand, - the selecting and
due apportionment of the proper elements; the relegation of all now foreign elements to
their own places; the dissipation of the lazy, deadening damps, and the establishment of
a clear and pure air fit for the use of the future man. Any or all of these alterations will
satisfy the form of expression here adopted.
CLARKE, "And God said, Let there be a firmament - Our translators, by
following the firmamentum of the Vulgate, which is a translation of the στερεωµα of the

183. Septuagint, have deprived this passage of all sense and meaning. The Hebrew word ‫רקיע‬
rakia, from ‫רקע‬ raka, to spread out as the curtains of a tent or pavilion, simply signifies
an expanse or space, and consequently that circumambient space or expansion
separating the clouds, which are in the higher regions of it, from the seas, etc., which are
below it. This we call the atmosphere, the orb of atoms or inconceivably small particles;
but the word appears to have been used by Moses in a more extensive sense, and to
include the whole of the planetary vortex, or the space which is occupied by the whole
solar system.
GILL, "And God said, let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters,....
On which the Spirit of God was sitting and moving, Gen_1:2 part of which were formed
into clouds, and drawn up into heaven by the force of the body of fire and light already
produced; and the other part left on the earth, not yet gathered into one place, as
afterwards: between these God ordered a "firmament to be", or an "expanse" (v);
something stretched out and spread like a curtain, tent, or canopy: and to this all those
passages of Scripture refer, which speak of the stretching out of the heavens, as this
firmament or expanse is afterwards called; seePsa_104:2 and by it is meant the air, as it
is rendered by the Targum on Psa_19:1 we call it the "firmament" from the (w) word
which the Greek interpreter uses, because it is firm, lasting, and durable: and it has the
name of an expanse from its wide extent, it reaching from the earth to the third heaven;
the lower and thicker parts of it form the atmosphere in which we breathe; the higher
and thinner parts of it, the air in which fowls fly, and the ether or sky in which the sun,
moon, and stars are placed; for all these are said to be in the firmament or expanse,
Gen_1:17. These are the stories in the heavens the Scriptures speak of, Amo_9:6 and the
air is divided by philosophers into higher, middle, and lower regions: and so the Targum
of Jonathan places this firmament or expanse between the extremities of the heaven,
and the waters of the ocean. The word in the Syriac language has the sense of binding
and compressing (x); and so it is used in the Syriac version of Luk_6:38 and may denote
the power of the air when formed in compressing the chaos, and dividing and separating
the parts of it; and which it now has in compressing the earth, and the several parts that
are in it, and by its compression preserves them and retains them in their proper places
(y):
and let it divide the waters from the waters; the waters under it from those above
it, as it is explained in the next verse; of which more there.
HE RY 6-8, "We have here an account of the second day's work, the creation of the
firmament, in which observe, 1. The command of God concerning it: Let there be a
firmament, an expansion, so the Hebrew word signifies, like a sheet spread, or a curtain
drawn out. This includes all that is visible above the earth, between it and the third
heavens: the air, its higher, middle, and lower, regions - the celestial globe, and all the
spheres and orbs of light above: it reaches as high as the place where the stars are fixed,
for that is called here the firmament of heaven (Gen_1:14, Gen_1:15), and as low as the
place where the birds fly, for that also is called the firmament of heaven, Gen_1:20.
When God had made the light, he appointed the air to be the receptacle and vehicle of its
beams, and to be as a medium of communication between the invisible and the visible
world; for, though between heaven and earth there is an inconceivable distance, yet
there is not an impassable gulf, as there is between heaven and hell. This firmament is

184. not a wall of partition, but a way of intercourse. See Job_26:7; Job_37:18; Psa_104:3;
Amo_9:6. 2. The creation of it. Lest it should seem as if God had only commanded it to
be done, and some one else had done it, he adds, And God made the firmament. What
God requires of us he himself works in us, or it is not done. He that commands faith,
holiness, and love, creates them by the power of his grace going along with his word, that
he may have all the praise. Lord, give what thou commandest, and then command what
thou pleasest. The firmament is said to be the work of God's fingers, Psa_8:3. Though
the vastness of its extent declares it to be the work of his arm stretched out, yet the
admirable fineness of its constitution shows that it is a curious piece of art, the work of
his fingers. 3. The use and design of it - to divide the waters from the waters, that is, to
distinguish between the waters that are wrapped up in the clouds and those that cover
the sea, the waters in the air and those in the earth. See the difference between these two
carefully observed, Deu_11:10, Deu_11:11, where Canaan is upon this account preferred
to Egypt, that Egypt was moistened and made fruitful with the waters that are under the
firmament, but Canaan with waters from above, out of the firmament, even the dew of
heaven, which tarrieth not for the sons of men, Mic_5:7. God has, in the firmament of
his power, chambers, store-chambers, whence he watereth the earth, Psa_104:13; Psa_
65:9, Psa_65:10. He has also treasures, or magazines, of snow and hail, which he hath
reserved against the day of battle and war, Job_38:22, Job_38:23. O what a great God
is he who has thus provided for the comfort of all that serve him and the confusion of all
that hate him! It is good having him our friend, and bad having him our enemy. 4. The
naming of it: He called the firmament heaven. It is the visible heaven, the pavement of
the holy city; above the firmament God is said to have his throne (Eze_1:26), for he has
prepared it in the heavens; the heavens therefore are said to rule, Dan_4:26. Is not God
in the height of heaven? Job_22:12. Yes, he is, and we should be led by the
contemplation of the heavens that are in our eye to consider our Father who is in
heaven. The height of the heavens should remind us of God's supremacy and the infinite
distance there is between us and him; the brightness of the heavens and their purity
should remind us of his glory, and majesty, and perfect holiness; the vastness of the
heavens, their encompassing of the earth, and the influence they have upon it, should
remind us of his immensity and universal providence.
JAMISO , "Gen_1:6-8. Second day.
firmament — an expanse - a beating out as a plate of metal: a name given to the
atmosphere from its appearing to an observer to be the vault of heaven, supporting the
weight of the watery clouds. By the creation of an atmosphere, the lighter parts of the
waters which overspread the earth’s surface were drawn up and suspended in the visible
heavens, while the larger and heavier mass remained below. The air was thus “in the
midst of the waters,” that is, separated them; and this being the apparent use of it, is the
only one mentioned, although the atmosphere serves other uses, as a medium of life and
light.
K&D, "The Second Day. - When the light had been separated from the darkness, and
day and night had been created, there followed upon a second fiat of the Creator, the
division of the chaotic mass of waters through the formation of the firmament, which
was placed as a wall of separation (‫יל‬ ִ ְ‫ב‬ ַ‫)מ‬ in the midst of the waters, and divided them
into upper and lower waters. ַ‫יע‬ ִ‫ק‬ ָ‫ר‬ .s, from ‫ע‬ ַ‫ק‬ ָ‫ר‬ to stretch, spread out, then beat or tread

185. out, means expansum, the spreading out of the air, which surrounds the earth as an
atmosphere. According to optical appearance, it is described as a carpet spread out
above the earth (Psa_54:2), a curtain (Isa_40:22), a transparent work of sapphire (Exo_
24:10), or a molten looking-glass (Job_37:18); but there is nothing in these poetical
similes to warrant the idea that the heavens were regarded as a solid mass, a σιδήρεον, or
χάλκεον or πολύχαλκον, such as Greek poets describe. The ַ‫יע‬ ִ‫ק‬ ָ‫ר‬ (rendered Veste by
Luther, after the στερέωα of the lxx and firmamentum of the Vulgate) is called heaven in
Gen_1:8, i.e., the vault of heaven, which stretches out above the earth. The waters under
the firmament are the waters upon the globe itself; those above are not ethereal waters
(Note: There is no proof of the existence of such “ethereal waters” to be found in
such passages as Rev_4:6; Rev_15:2; Rev_22:1; for what the holy seer there beholds
before the throne as “a sea of glass like unto crystal mingled with fire,” and “a river of
living water, clear as crystal,” flowing from the throne of God into the streets of the
heavenly Jerusalem, are wide as the poles from any fluid or material substance from
which the stars were made upon the fourth day. Of such a fluid the Scriptures know
quite as little, as of the nebular theory of La Place, which, notwithstanding the bright
spots in Mars and the inferior density of Jupiter, Saturn, and other planets, is still
enveloped in a mist which no astronomy will ever disperse. If the waters above the
firmament were the elementary matter of which the stars were made, the waters
beneath must be the elementary matter of which the earth was formed; for the
waters were one and the same before the creation of the firmament.) But the earth
was not formed from the waters beneath; on the contrary, these waters were merely
spread upon the earth and then gathered together into one place, and this place is
called Sea. The earth, which appeared as dry land after the accumulation of the
waters in the sea, was created in the beginning along with the heavens; but until the
separation of land and water on the third day, it was so completely enveloped in
water, that nothing could be seen but “the deep,” or “the waters” (Gen_1:2). If,
therefore, in the course of the work of creation, the heaven with its stars, and the
earth with its vegetation and living creatures, came forth from this deep, or, to speak
more correctly, if they appeared as well-ordered, and in a certain sense as finished
worlds; it would be a complete misunderstanding of the account of the creation to
suppose it to teach, that the water formed the elementary matter, out of which the
heaven and the earth were made with all their hosts. Had this been the meaning of
the writer, he would have mentioned water as the first creation, and not the heaven
and the earth. How irreconcilable the idea of the waters above the firmament being
ethereal waters is with the biblical representation of the opening of the windows of
heaven when it rains, is evident from the way in which Keerl, the latest supporter of
this theory, sets aside this difficulty, viz., by the bold assertion, that the mass of
water which came through the windows of heaven at the flood was different from the
rain which falls from the clouds; in direct opposition to the text of the Scriptures,
which speaks of it not merely as rain (Gen_7:12), but as the water of the clouds. Vid.,
Gen_9:12., where it is said that when God brings a cloud over the earth, He will set
the rainbow in the cloud, as a sign that the water (of the clouds collected above the
earth) shall not become a flood to destroy the earth again.)
beyond the limits of the terrestrial atmosphere, but the waters which float in the
atmosphere, and are separated by it from those upon the earth, the waters which
accumulate in clouds, and then bursting these their bottles, pour down as rain upon the
earth. For, according to the Old Testament representation, whenever it rains heavily, the
doors or windows of heaven are opened (Gen_7:11-12; Psa_78:23, cf. 2Ki_7:2, 2Ki_7:19;

186. Isa_24:18). It is in (or with) the upper waters that God layeth the beams of His
chambers, from which He watereth the hills (Psa_104:13), and the clouds are His
tabernacle (Job_36:29). If, therefore, according to this conception, looking from an
earthly point of view, the mass of water which flows upon the earth in showers of rain is
shut up in heaven (cf. Gen_8:2), it is evident that it must be regarded as above the vault
which spans the earth, or, according to the words of Psa_148:4, “above the heavens.”
(Note: In Gen_1:8 the lxx interpolates καᆳ εᅼδεν ᆇ Θεᆵς ᆋτι καλόν (and God saw that it
was good), and transfers the words “and it was so” from the end of Gen_1:7 to the close of
Gen_1:6 : two apparent improvements, but in reality two arbitrary changes. The
transposition is copied from Gen_1:9, Gen_1:15, Gen_1:24; and in making the interpolation,
the author of the gloss has not observed that the division of the waters was not complete till
the separation of the dry land from the water had taken place, and therefore the proper
place for the expression of approval is at the close of the work of the third day.)
CALVI , "6Let there be a firmament (58) The work of the second day is to provide
an empty space around the circumference of the earth, that heaven and earth may
not be mixed together. For since the proverb, ‘to mingle heaven and earth,’ denotes
the extreme of disorder, this distinction ought to be regarded as of great importance.
Moreover, the word ‫רקיע‬ (rakia) comprehends not only the whole region of the air,
but whatever is open above us: as the word heaven is sometimes understood by the
Latins. Thus the arrangement, as well of the heavens as of the lower atmosphere, is
called ‫רקיע‬ (rakia) without discrimination between them, but sometimes the word
signifies both together sometimes one part only, as will appear more plainly in our
progress. I know not why the Greeks have chosen to render the word ςτερέωµα,
which the Latins have imitated in the term, firmamentum ; (59) for literally it means
expanse. And to this David alludes when he says that ‘the heavens are stretched out
by God like a curtain,’ (Psalms 104:2.) If any one should inquire whether this
vacuity did not previously exist, I answer, however true it may be that all parts of
the earth were not overflowed by the waters; yet now, for the first time, a separation
was ordained, whereas a confused admixture had previously existed. Moses
describes the special use of this expanse, to divide the waters from the waters from
which word arises a great difficulty. For it appears opposed to common sense, and
quite incredible, that there should be waters above the heaven. Hence some resort to
allegory, and philosophize concerning angels; but quite beside the purpose. For, to
my mind, this is a certain principle, that nothing is here treated of but the visible
form of the world. He who would learn astronomy, (60) and other recondite arts, let
him go elsewhere. Here the Spirit of God would teach all men without exception;
and therefore what Gregory declares falsely and in vain respecting statues and
pictures is truly applicable to the history of the creation, namely, that it is the book
of the unlearned. (61) The things, therefore, which he relates, serve as the garniture
of that theater which he places before our eyes. Whence I conclude, that the waters
here meant are such as the rude and unlearned may perceive. The assertion of some,
that they embrace by faith what they have read concerning the waters above the

187. heavens, notwithstanding their ignorance respecting them, is not in accordance with
the design of Moses. And truly a longer inquiry into a matter open and manifest is
superfluous. We see that the clouds suspended in the air, which threaten to fall upon
our heads, yet leave us space to breathe. (62) They who deny that this is effected by
the wonderful providence of God, are vainly inflated with the folly of their own
minds. We know, indeed that the rain is naturally produced; but the deluge
sufficiently shows how speedily we might be overwhelmed by the bursting of the
clouds, unless the cataracts of heaven were closed by the hand of God. or does
David rashly recount this among His miracles, that God layeth the beams of his
chambers in the waters, (Psalms 104:31;) and he elsewhere calls upon the celestial
waters to praise God, (Psalms 148:4.) Since, therefore, God has created the clouds,
and assigned them a region above us, it ought not to be forgotten that they are
restrained by the power of God, lest, gushing forth with sudden violence, they
should swallow us up: and especially since no other barrier is opposed to them than
the liquid and yielding, air, which would easily give way unless this word prevailed,
‘Let there be an expanse between the waters.’ Yet Moses has not affixed to the work
of this day the note that God saw that it was good: perhaps because there was no
advantage from it till the terrestrial waters were gathered into their proper place,
which was done on the next day, and therefore it is there twice repeated. (63)
BE SO , "Genesis 1:6. Let there be a firmament — This term, which is an exact
translation of the word used by the Septuagint, or Greek translation of the Old
Testament, by no means expresses the sense of the word used by Moses, ‫,רקיע‬
rakiang, which merely means extension or expansion. And as this extension or
expansion was to be in the midst of the waters, and was to divide the waters from
the waters, it chiefly, if not solely, means the air or atmosphere which separates the
water in the clouds from that which is in and upon the earth. Thus the second great
production of the Almighty was the element which is next in simplicity, purity,
activity, and power, to the light, and no doubt was also used by him as an agent in
producing some subsequent effects, especially in gathering the waters into one place.
It is true, we afterward read of the sun, moon, and stars being set in the firmament
of heaven: but the meaning seems only to be that they are so placed as only to be
visible to us through the atmosphere.
COKE, "Some have observed that the names here given to the two grand divisions
of the day, are proofs of the expressiveness of the Hebrew language; ‫יום‬ jom, the
day, expressing the tumult and business which attends it: and ‫לילה‬ lilah, the night,
being derived from a word signifying the howling and yelling of the wild beasts,
which then appear.
The evening and the morning— It is acknowledged by all, that each of these is put
by a synecdoche for one half of the natural day. The darkness of the evening, or
night, was before the light of the morning: it served as a foil to it, to set it off, and
make it shine the brighter. It was on the ground of this and similar passages, that
the Jews began both their common and sacred days with the evening. But this was
not only the first day of the world, but the first day of the week. I observe it to the

188. honour of that day, because the new world began likewise on the first day of the
week in the Resurrection of Christ, as the Light of the world, early in the morning.
In him the day-spring from on high hath visited the world; and happy are we if that
day-star arise in our hearts.
ELLICOTT, "(6) A firmament.—This is the Latin translation of the Greek word
used by the translators of the Septuagint Version. Undoubtedly it means something
solid; and such was the idea of the Greeks, and probably also of the Hebrews. As
such it appears in the poetry of the Bible, where it is described as a mighty vault of
molten glass (Job 37:18), upheld by the mountains as pillars (Job 26:11; 2 Samuel
22:8), and having doors and lattices through which the Deity pours forth abundance
(Genesis 7:11; Psalms 78:23). Even in this “Hymn of Creation” we have poetry, but
not expressed in vivid metaphors, but in sober and thoughtful language. Here,
therefore, the word rendered “firmament” means an expanse. If, as geologists tell
us, the earth at this stage was an incandescent mass, this expanse would be the ring
of equilibrium, where the heat supplied from below was exactly equal to that given
off by radiation into the cold ether above. And gradually this would sink lower and
lower, until finally it reached the surface of the earth; and at this point the work of
the second day would be complete.
COFFMA , "THE SECO D DAY
"And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide
the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters
which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament:
and it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven. And there was evening and
there was morning, a second day."
The creation of the earth's atmosphere was God's work on the second day of
creation. Jamieson pointed out that the term "firmament" carries the meaning of
"an expanse ... the beating out as of a plate of metal,"[5] suggesting the utility of a
shield, an apt figure indeed when it is recalled that the earth would long ago have
been destroyed by showers of meteorites (as upon the moon) had it not been for the
protection of our atmosphere.
"Divide the waters from the waters ..." Water exists upon earth in both liquid and
vapor forms, and it is precisely the atmosphere which separates these. Again from
Jamieson:
"By the creation of an atmosphere, the lighter parts of the waters which overspread
the earth's surface were drawn up and suspended in the visible heavens, while the
larger and heavier mass remained below. The air was thus `in the midst of the
waters.'"[6]
Men should marvel indeed at this creation, when it is remembered that millions and
billions of tons of water are constantly suspended in the atmosphere in the form of

189. clouds; and of course being much heavier than the atmosphere, only an act of
creation could have accomplished such a thing. The patriarch Job marveled at this
wonder:
"Dost thou know the balancing of the clouds,
The wondrous works of Him who is perfect in knowledge?"
- Job 37:16
Some have considered it strange that such an expression as, "divide the waters from
the waters" should have been used here, but, as it must be true in countless other
instances, God was limited in His communication with mankind, not by any
limitation within Himself, but by the limitations within man. In the days when this
revelation was given, "The Hebrew had no word for gas (vapors)."[7] Therefore,
God said, "Divide the waters (liquid) from the waters (gaseous)."
"And God called the firmament Heaven ..." This is the lower heaven of the earth's
atmosphere. See under Genesis 1:1.
LA GE, " Genesis 1:6-8. Second Creative Day.—Let there be a firmament.—Rakia
(from ‫ַע‬‫ק‬ ָ‫,ר‬ to stretch, spread out, beat out) an extension or expansion, rendered in
the LXX and by others, στερέυµα, and in the Vulgate firmamentum,—names which
are more material than ַ‫ע‬‫ִי‬‫ק‬ ָ‫.ר‬ Knobel: “The heaven was to the Hebrews a material
substance ( Exodus 24:10), a fixed vault established upon the waters that
surrounded the circle of the earth ( Proverbs 8:27), firm as a molten mirror ( Job
37:18), and borne up by the highest hills, which are therefore called the pillars and
foundations of the heaven ( 2 Samuel 22:8; Job 26:11); openings or doors are
ascribed to it ( Genesis 7:11; Genesis 28:17; Psalm 78:23). There are the same
representations elsewhere.” But we must not forget that Hebrew modes of
expression for objects that have a religious bearing, do ever contain a symbolical
element which disdains the literal pressure. Therefore the stars which in Genesis
1:17 are fixed in the heaven, can nevertheless, according to Isaiah 40:26, set
themselves in motion as a host of God; and hence it is that the one heaven expands
itself into a heaven of heavens. And thus the heavens bends down to the earth (
Psalm 18:10); or is spread out like tapestry ( Psalm 104:2), or its beams are waters (
Genesis 1:3), whilst the same heaven again is called the footstool of God.—In the
midst of the waters.—We must beware here of thinking of a mass of elementary
water; quite as little could a fluid mass which is yet identified with the light be
elementary, and just as little can it be a flood, or collection of water, which consists
of the three factors air, earth, and water. At this point then is completed the second
division. The true standpoint of contemplation would seem to be the view, that in
the azure welkin of the sky the clouds appear to give out their evaporation, and to
withdraw themselves behind the blue expanse like a supercelestial gathering of
water ( Psalm 104:3; Psalm 104:13). It follows from this, however, that the visible
clouds and the rain may be assigned to the lower collection of waters, and that there
is meant here the gaseous water as it forms a unity with the air, and so makes an

190. ethereal atmosphere (not “the water-masses that hover over the air-strata of the
atmosphere”). Delitzsch here mistakes the symbolical element. “It must be
admitted,” he says, “that in this the Old Testament is chargeable with a defect, for a
physical connection between the descending rain-waters and the heavenly waters,
which is also indicated in the ew Testament ( Revelation 4:6) cannot be
maintained.” Indeed, it is with the actual physical connection between the invisible
collection of water (the gas-formed) and the visible, that the contrast is established;
it is the polaric tension which even the phenomenological extension brings to view.
But why should the Septuagint correct the text here with the addition, Genesis 1:8 :
And God saw, whilst the Hebrew text has it not? Had the prophetic author some
anticipation that the blue vault of heaven was merely an appearance, whilst the
savans of the Septuagint had no such anticipation, and, therefore, proceeded to
doctor the passage? There may, indeed, be an exaggeration of this conception of the
upper waters, since Philoponus and the other church fathers understand by the
same the ether that is beyond the earth’s atmosphere; nevertheless, their view would
seem to be more correct than that which refers the expression to a proper cloud-
formed atmospheric water.—And God named the firmament heaven, ‫ִם‬‫י‬ָ‫מ‬ָ‫.שׁ‬ See
Genesis 1:1. Delitzsch: Here is meant the heaven of the earth-world; Genesis 1:1, on
the contrary, refers to the heaven and the heaven of heavens. But if the firmament is
“the immeasurable far-reaching height,” there is a failure, or falling short, in the
limiting of the conception. A main point appears to be, that the rakia is presented to
view as the symbolic dividing of the super-earthly heaven, a phenomenal
appearance of that house of God to which all who pray to God look up. For the later
cosmological interpretations of the upper waters, see Delitzsch, p108.
PETT, "Verse 6
‘And God said “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it
separate the waters from the waters.’
Up to this time there has been no atmosphere, for creation is seen as being one
blanket of ‘primeval water’. All is ‘liquid’; all is primeval, unshaped, formless
matter, but now given body by ‘light’. And now God acts to produce an atmosphere
with ‘water’ below and clouds above.
The word for ‘expanse’ or ‘firmament’ is raqia which originally indicated
‘something trodden on and stamped out’, and then ‘to make thin like a piece of
metal beaten into shape’, and thus ‘to spread out, to expand’.
The ancients saw the water come down through the atmosphere from the heavens,
but we know from later descriptions that they recognised that this came from the
clouds (e.g. Deuteronomy 11:11; Judges 5:4; 2 Samuel 22:12; 1 Kings 18:45; Job
36:27). And people then as now had climbed mountains and found themselves above
the clouds and above the rain (we must stop thinking of them as stupid).
Thus the writer is not suggesting that there is a physical cupola somehow holding up
the water. He is using a vivid metaphorical description to describe a reality, water
held above by something ‘stretched out’ by God, and water below. He does not
pretend to understand the mechanics of it, he does not try to explain it. He simply

191. describes what he sees. He just knows that God has made some way of holding the
water up. He sees that it is so, and He knows that it is so at the behest of God.
The Bible writers give many descriptions of this ‘firmament’. It is described in
terms of being like a transparent work of sapphire stone (Exodus 24:10), in terms of
a molten mirror (Job 37:18), in terms of the curtains of a tent (Isaiah 40:22; Isaiah
54:2), but all were vividly descriptive, not an attempt to explain the universe.
We must not over-literalise the descriptions of poetic minds and make them hold
views that they did not hold, however simple minded we make them to be. They saw
things as an artist sees them, not a scientist. Their very ‘simplicity’ and practicality
of mind prevented them from trying to formulate scientific theories, but that did not
prevent their ideas from being profound. This writer was not investigating world
phenomena, he was taken up with what God was doing. He was not analysing ‘how’,
he was asking ‘Who?’ and ‘Why?’, profounder questions far. The how he left to
God.
BI 6-8, "Let there be a firmament
The atmosphere
I. THE ATMOSPHERE IS NECESSARY TO THE POSSIBILITY OF HUMAN LIFE.
1. Gathers up the vapours.
2. Throws them down again in rain, snow, or dew, when needed.
3. Modifies and renders more beautiful the light of the sun.
4. Sustains life.
II. IT IS NECESSARY FOR THE PRACTICAL PURPOSES OF LIFE.
1. The atmosphere is necessary for the transmission of sound. If there were no
atmosphere, the bell might be tolled, the cannon might be fired, a thousand voices
might render the music of the sweetest hymn, but not the faintest sound would be
audible. Thus all commercial, educational, and social intercourse would be at an end,
as men would not be able to hear each other speak. We seldom think of the worth of
the atmosphere around us, never seen, seldom felt, but without which the world
would be one vast grave.
2. The atmosphere is necessary for many purposes related to the inferior objects of
the world. Without it the plants could not live, our gardens would be divested of
useful vegetables, and beautiful flowers. Artificial light would be impossible. The
lamp of the mines could not be kindled. The candle of the midnight student could
never have been lighted. The bird could not have wended its way to heaven’s gate to
utter its morning song, as there would have been no air to sustain its flight.
III. LET US MAKE A PRACTICAL IMPROVEMENT OF THE SUBJECT.
1. To be thankful for the air we breathe. How often do we recognize the air by which
we are surrounded as amongst the chief of our daily blessings, and as the immediate
and continued gift of God? How seldom do we utter praise for it.
2. To make the best use of the life it preserves. To cultivate a pure life. To speak
golden words. To make a true use of all the subordinate ministries of nature. (J. S.

192. Exell, M. A.)
Uses of the atmosphere
1. The atmosphere is the great fund and storehouse of life to plants and animals; its
carbonic acid is the food of the one, and its oxygen the nourishment of the other;
without its carbonic acid the whole vegetable kingdom would wither, and without its
oxygen the blood of animals, “which is the life thereof,” would be only serum and
water.
2. It is a refractor of light. Without it the sun’s rays would fall perpendicularly and
directly on isolated portions of the world, and with a velocity which would probably
render them invisible; but by means of the atmosphere they are diffused in a
softened effulgence through the entire globe.
3. It is a reflector of light. Hence its mysterious, beautiful, and poetical blue,
contrasting and yet harmonizing with the green mantle of the world.
4. It is the conservator and disperser and modifier of heat. By its hot currents
constantly flung from the equatorial regions of the world, even the cold of the frigid
zones is deprived of its otherwise unbearable rigour; while the mass of cold air
always rushing from about the poles towards the equator quenches half the heat of
tropical suns, and condenses the vapour so needful to the luxuriant vegetation.
5. It is the great vibratory of sound, the true sounding board of the world, and
without it the million voices and melodies of this earth would all be dumb; it would
be a soundless desert, where an earthquake would not make a whisper. By its
pressure the elastic fluids of animal bodies are prevented from bursting their slender
vessels and causing instantaneous destruction. Its winds propel our ships, its
electricity conveys our messages. By the aid of its warm gales and gentle dews the
desert can be made to blossom as the rose. (John Cobley.)
The composition of the atmosphere
But the atmosphere with which the Creator has surrounded the earth is wonderful also
in its composition. The two elements of which it chiefly consists—oxygen and nitrogen—
are mixed in definite proportions, as 20 to 80 in 100 parts. If this proportion were but
slightly altered, as nitrogen destroys life and extinguishes flame, the result of any
perceptible increase of it would be that fires would lose their strength and lamps their
brightness, plants would wither, and man, with the whole animal kingdom, would
perform their functions with difficulty and pain. Or if the quantity of nitrogen were
much diminished, and the oxygen increased, the opposite effect would be produced. The
least spark would set anything combustible in a flame; candles and lamps would burn
with the most brilliant blaze for a moment, but would be quickly consumed. If a house
caught fire, the whole city would be burnt down. The animal fluids would circulate with
the greatest rapidity, brain fever would soon set in, and the lunatic asylums would be
filled. A day is coming when “the elements shall melt with fervent heat.” God has but to
subtract the nitrogen from the air, and the whole world would instantly take fire; such is
the activity and energy of the oxygen when left uncontrolled. (Brewer.)

193. Interesting illustrations of design in the atmosphere
Vast quantities of oxygen are daily consumed by animals, and by combustion. Carbonic
acid gas is evolved instead. But this gas is so injurious that when the air is charged with
only one-tenth part of it, it is wholly unfit for animals to breathe, and is unsuitable to the
support of fires. The vegetable kingdom meets the whole difficulty. It gives out oxygen
and takes in carbonic acid in amply sufficient measure to balance the disturbance
created by the animals. Thus every breath we draw instructs us to admire the wisdom of
Him who doeth all things well. (Brewer.)
Again, oxygen is a little heavier and nitrogen a little lighter than common air. Had it
been otherwise, had nitrogen been a little heavier, and carbonic acid gas been a little
lighter, we must have breathed them again, so that, instead of breathing wholesome air,
we should have been constantly inhaling the very gases which the lungs had rejected as
offal. The consequences would have been most fatal. Life would have been painful;
diseases ten times more prevalent than they now are; and death would have cut us off at
the very threshold of our existence. (Brewer.)
Further, if the air had possessed an odour, such as that of phosphuretted hydrogen, it
would have interfered not only with the perfume of flowers, but also with our faculty of
discriminating wholesome foods by their smell. If it had been coloured like chlorine gas,
or a London fog, we should have seen only the thick air, and not the objects around us.
Had it been less transparent than it now is, it would have obstructed the rays of the sun,
diminished their light and warmth, and abridged our power of distant vision. (Brewer.)
The air is the great means of life, not only to man, but to all living things. It is also
essential to combustion. Without it no fire would burn, and all our industries which
depend on the use of fire would necessarily be at a standstill. By the heat of the sun an
immense quantity of water in the form of vapour is daily carried up from the earth,
rivers, and seas—amounting, indeed, to many millions of gallons! In the course of a year
it is not less than forty thousand cubic miles! But if there were no atmosphere this
circulation could not exist. There would be no rain, rivers, or seas, but one vast desert.
Neither could the clouds be buoyed up from the surface of the earth, nor could the winds
blow to disperse noxious vapours, and produce a system of ventilation among the abodes
of men. (Brewer.)
The influence of sin seen in its deterioration
There is something in the earth’s atmosphere that blights and injures. It is not the same
healthful, genial, joyous firmament that it was when God created it. (H. Bonar.)
Genesis of the sky
I. EXPLANATION OF THE PASSAGE.
1. Ancient conception of the sky. To the ancient Hebrew the sky seemed a vast,

194. outstretched, concave surface or expansion, in which the stars were fastened, and
over which the ethereal waters were stored. (See Pro_8:27; Heb_1:12; Isa_34:4; Isa_
40:22; Job_22:14; Job_37:18; Psa_148:4.) “Ah, all this,” you tell me, “is
scientifically false; the sky is not a material arch, or tent, or barrier, with outlets for
rain; it is only the matterless limit of vision.” Neither, let me again remind you, is
there any such thing as “sunrise” or “sunset.” To use such words is to utter what
science declares is a falsehood. And yet your astronomer, living in the blaze of
science, fresh from the discovery of spectrum analysis and satellites of Mars, and
knowing too that his words are false, still persists in talking of sunrise and sunset.
Will you, then, deny to the untutored Moses, speaking in the child-like language of
that ancient infarct civilization, the privilege which you so freely accord to the
nineteenth-century astronomer?
2. Panorama of the emerging sky. Everywhere is still a shapeless, desolate chaos.
And now a sudden break is seen. A broad, glorious band or expanse glides through
the angry, chaotic waste, separating it into two distinct masses—the lower, the heavy
fluids; the upper, the ethereal vapours. The band, still bearing upward the vapour,
swells and mounts and arches and vaults, till it becomes a concave hemisphere or
dome. That separating, majestic dimension we cannot to this day call by a better
name than the expanse. And that expanse God called heavens. And there was evening
and there was morning, a second day.
II. MORAL MEANING OF THE STORY.
1. The heavens suggest the soul’s true direction—it is upward. To express moral
excellence by terms of altitude is an instinct. How naturally we use such phrases as
these: “Exalted worth, high resolve, lofty purpose, elevated views, sublime character,
eminent purity!” How naturally, too, we use opposite phrases: “Low instincts, base
passions, degraded character, grovelling habits, stooping to do it!” Doubtless here,
too, is the secret of the arch, and especially the spire, as the symbol of Christian
architecture: the Church is an aspiration. Even the very word “heaven” itself, like the
Greek Ouranos, means height, and, according to the etymologists, is an Anglo-Saxon
word, heo-fan; meaning what is heaved up, lifted, heav-en—heaven. Well, then, may
the vaulting sky stand as a symbol of human aspiration. The true life is a perpetual
soaring and doming; or rather, like the mystic temple of Ezekiel’s vision, it is an
inverted spiral, forever winding upward, and broadening as it winds (Eze_41:7). The
soul’s true life is a perpetual exhalation; her affections evermore evaporating from
her own great deep, and mounting heavenward in clouds of incense.
2. As the heavens suggest human aspirations, so do the heavens suggest their
complement, Divine perfections. It is true, e.g., in respect to God’s immensity.
Nothing seems so remote from us, or gives such an idea of vastness, as the dome of
heaven. Climb we ever so high on mountain top, the stars are still above us. Again: It
is true in respect to God’s sovereignty. Nothing seems to be so absolutely beyond
human control or modification as the sun and stars of heaven. Again: It is true in
respect to God’s spirituality. Nothing seems so like that rarity of texture which we
instinctively ascribe to pure, incorporeal spirit, as that subtile, tenuous ether which,
it is believed, pervades the clear, impalpable sky, and, indeed, all immensity. And in
this subtile ether, so invisible to sight, so impalpable to touch, so diffused
throughout earth and the spaces of the heavenly expanse, we may behold a symbol of
that invisible, intangible, ever-omnipresent One who Himself is Spirit; and who,
accordingly, can be worshipped only in spirit and truth (Joh_4:24). Again: it is true
in respect to God’s purity. Nothing is so exquisite an emblem of absolute

195. spotlessness and eternal chastity, as the unsullied expanse of heaven, untrodden by
mortal foot, unswept by aught but angel wings. Again: It is true in respect to God’s
beatitude. We cannot conceive a more perfect emblem of felicity and moral
splendour than light. Everywhere and evermore, among rudest nations as well as
among most refined, light is instinctively taken as the first and best possible emblem
of whatever is most intense and perfect in blessedness and glory. And whence comes
light—the light which arms us with health, and fills us with joy, and tints flower and
cloud with beauty, and floods mountain and mead with splendour—but from the
sky? Well, then, may the shining heaven be taken as the elect emblem of Him who
decketh Himself with light as with a robe (Psa_104:2), who dwelleth in light which
no man can approach unto (1Ti_6:16), who Himself is the Father of lights (Jas_1:17).
(G. D.Boardman.)
The atmosphere
The word “atmosphere” indicates, in general, its character and its relation to the earth. It
is compounded of two Greek words, one signifying vapour and the other sphere, and,
taken together, they denote a sphere of vapour enveloping or enwrapping the whole
earth. The ancients regarded the air, as children do now, as nothing at all. A vessel filled
only with air, had nothing in it. “As light as air” is a proverbial expression, but a very
false one, to denote nothingness. We may not be aware of it, but yet it is true that the
breathing of the air yields us three-quarters of our nourishment, while the other quarter
only is supplied by the food, solid and liquid, of which we partake. The principal parts of
this food are oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and carbonic acid, and these, too, are the
constituent elements of the atmosphere. There is a sense, therefore, in which we may
truly say of the air, what the apostle and the old Greek poet before him said of God, “In it
we live and move and have our being.” The weight of the atmosphere is so great that its
pressure upon a man of ordinary size has been computed to be about fourteen or fifteen
tons. A man of large frame would have to carry one or two tons additional. But as the
air’s pressure is lateral as well as vertical, and equal upon all sides and parts of every
body, it not only does not crush or injure the frailest flower, but actually feeds and
nourishes it. There are other than atmospheric burdens, and those which consciously
press more heavily, which yet a man may find a great blessing ill carrying with a cheerful
face and courage. The atmosphere is tenanted by myriad forms of life, vegetable and
animal. A French naturalist of great eminence, M. Miquel, writing upon “Living
Organisms of the Atmosphere,” has found numberless organisms dancing in the light of
a single sunbeam. The atmosphere, moreover, is the great agent by which nature
receives the wonderful colours which are her most beautiful adorning. It is owing to the
reflection of the sun’s rays that the sky and the distant horizon assume that beautiful
azure hue which is subject to endless variations. It is owing to the refraction of these rays
as they pass obliquely through the aerial strata, that we have the splendours of the
morning and evening twilight, and that we seem to see the sun three or four minutes
before he actually rises above the eastern horizon, and three or four minutes after he
actually disappears below the western horizon. If it were not for the atmosphere, the
light would instantaneously disappear as the sun sank below the horizon, and leave the
world in utter darkness, while at his rising in the morning the world would pass in an
instant from complete darkness into a flood of dazzling and blinding light. Such daily
and sudden shocks to vision would be painful, and probably destructive to sight.
Without the atmosphere there would have been no place in the universe for the dwelling
place of man, because without it the waters would have prevailed. But as by the

196. atmosphere the waters below were, on the second day of the creative week, divided from
those above, a place was provided suitable for the abode of man. Without the air, which
gathers the moisture in the clouds and sends it down again upon the earth, there could
be no precipitation of rain or snow. Without the atmosphere there could be no purifying
winds, which are but air in motion, no medium to transmit and diffuse the light and heat
of the sun, no agent to modify and make surpassingly beautiful the light of the sun, and
no possibility of respiration for plants or animals, without which it would be impossible
to maintain any form of organic life. The atmosphere, too, is indispensable for all the
practical purposes of life. If by some miraculous intervention it should be made possible
for human life to exist without the air, it would be useless and vain. The air is necessary
for the transmission of sound. Without it, the bell might be tolled, the cannon might be
fired, a great multitude of voices might unite to render the music of the sweetest hymn,
but not the faintest sound would be audible either to the performers or to the listeners.
In the worship of God we should need no tune books, no organ, no choir, no preacher,
“for there is no speech nor language where their voice is not heard,” and the voices of
none of these could be heard. You might breathe or even loudly speak your words of love
into the very ear of some dear one, and yet not one of your words would be heard
without the presence of air in the ear to empower its wondrous mechanism for hearing.
As light is indispensable for seeing, so in exactly the same way is the air necessary for
hearing, and without it the ear would be a perfectly useless organ, instead of being, as
now, a wonderful organ to minister to our joy and delight. And since without the
atmosphere we could not hear each other speak, it follows that all commercial,
educational, and social intercourse would be at an end, and the earth would become one
vast grave.
1. Let us learn from the air a lesson—and it is a most impressive one—as to the
inestimable value of our “common mercies,” which we enjoy every moment, without
a thought and without an emotion of gratitude to the great Giver of them.
2. Let us learn from the atmosphere a lesson as to how to overcome our difficulties.
The dove in the fable was irritated because the wind ruffled its feathers and opposed
its flight. It foolishly desired to have a firmament free from air, through the empty
spaces of which it vainly thought it could fly with the speed of lightning. Silly bird! It
did not know that without the air it could not fly at all, nor even live. And just so it is
with the difficulties we encounter. Without them and without conquering them, a
high Christian manhood or character is unattainable.
3. Let us learn from the atmosphere a lesson of thankfulness. It is amongst the chief
of our daily blessings, and is the immediate and continuous gift of God, to whom our
praises are continually due.
4. Let us learn from the atmosphere to make the best use possible of the life it
nourishes and preserves. As in itself the air is sweet, wholesome, and life-giving, let
us be taught by it to live pure and noble lives which shall yield for others wholesome
and helpful and not poisonous and corrupt influences. Our example makes a moral
atmosphere for others to breathe, which is wholesome or noxious, according as the
example is good or bad. (G. C.Noyes, D. D.)
The atmosphere
The atmosphere, like an ocean, overlies the whole surface of the earth; in fact, it is an
ocean; and it is literally true, that, like crabs and lobsters, we live and move and spend

197. our days at the bottom of a sea—an aerial sea. This atmospheric ocean rises far above us,
and, like that of waters, has its waves, its currents, and its tides. It is found to grow more
rarified, as well as colder, as we ascend towards its upper limit, which is supposed to be
about forty-five miles above the level of the sea. Barometrical observations, however,
show that on ascending to the height of three and a half miles (nearly that of Cotopaxi),
we leave behind us, by weight, more than one-half the whole mass of the atmosphere.
And from the experience of aeronauts, it is believed that there is no such air as man can
breathe at an elevation of eight miles; probably death would be the certain consequence
of exceeding seven, though some, of late, at great risk and suffering, have ascended to
nearly that height. On the summit of Mont Blanc, which is a trifle under three miles, the
sensations of those who make the ascent are very painful, owing to the levity of the air;
the flesh puffs out, the head is oppressed, the respiration is difficult, and the face
becomes livid; whilst the temperature is cold almost past endurance. This ocean of air,
like that of water, has also its weight and pressure. People, in general, are not aware,
because they are not conscious, of any weight resting upon them from the atmosphere;
yet reliable experiments prove that at the sea level it presses with a force equal to
fourteen and three-fifths pounds on every square inch, or 2,100 pounds on every square
foot, or 58,611,548,160 pounds on every square mile; or on the whole surface of the
earth with a weight equal to that of a solid globe of lead sixty miles in diameter! How few
reflect that they live under an ocean of such stupendous weight! But to bring this fact
more sensibly before the mind, we may state that the atmospheric pressure on the whole
surface of a medium sized man is no less than fourteen tons—a weight that would
instantly crash him, as hollow vessels collapse when sunk deep in the ocean, but for the
elasticity and equal pressure of the air on every part without, and the counterbalancing
pressure and elasticity of the air within. The air encompassing the earth is a compound
substance, made up of two gases, mixed in the proportion of twenty-one parts of oxygen
to seventy-nine parts of nitrogen, by measure; mixed with these is a small proportion of
carbonic acid gas, which does not exceed one two-thousandth part of the whole volume
of the atmosphere. Whether the air is taken from the greatest depths, or the most
exalted heights which man has ever reached, this proportion of the oxygen and nitrogen
gases is maintained invariably. Considering the vast and varied exhalations that
constantly ascend from sea and land, together with the incessant agitation of winds and
tempests, this stands before us a most astonishing fact, indeed! But it is not more
wonderful than it is important. No possible change could be made in the composition of
the air, without rendering it injurious both to animal and vegetable life. If the quantity of
nitrogen were but a little increased, all the vital functions of man would be performed
with difficulty, pain, and slowness, and the pendulum of life would soon come to a stand.
If, on the other hand, the proportion of oxygen were increased, all the processes of life
would be quickened into those of a fever, and the animal fabric would soon be destroyed,
as it were, by its own fires. (H. W. Morris, D. D.)
Reflections
1. On the mass of the atmosphere. Vast an appendage as this is to our globe, its
dimensions and density have been adapted with the utmost exactness to the
constitution of all organized existences. Any material change in its mass would
require a corresponding change in the structure of both plants and animals, and,
indeed, in the whole economy of the world. If its mass were considerably reduced, all
the difficulties experienced by travellers on the summits of lofty mountains, and by
aeronauts at great elevations above the earth, would ensue; on the other hand, if

198. much increased, opposite and equally disastrous results would follow. If the
atmosphere had been twice or three times its present mass, currents of air would
move with double or triple their present force. With such a change nothing on sea or
land could stand against a storm. But how happily do we find all things balanced as
now constituted. And how obvious, that, ere ever God had breathed forth the fluid
air, in His all-comprehending Mind, its mass was measured and weighed, and the
strength and wants of all living creatures duly estimated before one of them had been
called into being. All the works of God have been done according to a determinate
counsel and infallible foreknowledge.
2. On the pressure of the atmosphere. Contemplating the enormous weight of the
air, resting upon all things and all persons, who but must devoutly admire both the
wisdom and the goodness of the Creator, in so adjusting all the properties of the
firmament, that under it we can breathe and walk and act with ease, unconscious of
weight or oppression, while in fact we are every moment under a load, which, when
reduced to figures, surpasses both our comprehension and belief.
3. On the composition of the atmosphere. How very wonderful is this! When we
reflect upon the proportions and combinations of its constituent elements, we cannot
but look up with adoring reverence to its Divine Author. What wisdom, what power,
what benevolence, have been exercised in arranging the chemical constitution and
agencies of this world, to adapt them unfailingly to the strength and wants of animals
and of plants, even the most delicate and minute! How very slightly the atmosphere
of life differs from one that would produce instant and universal death How trifling
the change the Almighty had need make in the air we hourly breathe, to lay all the
wicked and rebellious sons of men lifeless and silent in the dust! (H. W. Morris, D.
D.)
A type of prayer and its answer
In the natural world, the sun pours down its light and heat, and diffuses his genial
influences over all; yet warming and animating, in a special degree, those fields and
hillsides turned more directly towards him, and drawing upward from them a
proportionally greater amount of vapour; this vapour, as we have seen, in due time,
returns in showers, refreshing and beautifying all nature. So in the world of Christian
devotion. Under the benignant beams of the Sun of Righteousness, the exhalations of
prayer and praise are drawn upwards to the heavenly throne, more abundantly, as in
nature, from those more completely under His gracious influences; and these
exhalations of the heart, through a Saviour’s mediation, are made to return in richer
showers, even showers of grace, to refresh and strengthen those souls to bring forth fruit
unto everlasting life. Again: As the earth, without showers, would soon become parched
and barren and dead; so, without the rain and dew of Divine grace, the moral earth
would become as iron, and its heavens as brass; every plant of holiness, every flower of
piety, and every blade of virtue, would soon droop and die. Nor does the parallel end
here: as in the physical world, the greater the quantity of vapours drawn up from sea and
land, the greater will be the amount of rain that sooner or later will come down on plain
and mountain; so in the spiritual, the more abundant the exhalations of prayer and
supplication from the children of men, the more copious the showers of grace that will
be poured out in return. Let prayer, therefore, daily ascend as the vapours from the ends
of the earth, and rise as clouds of incense before the throne, and this wilderness shall yet
blossom as the rose, flourish as the garden of the Lord, and bloom with all the beauties

199. of an unblighted paradise. (H. W. Morris, D. D.)
Atmospherical adjustments
The atmosphere constitutes a machinery which, in all its complicated and admirable
adjustments, offers the most striking displays and convincing proofs of this. This vast
and wonderful appendage of our globe has been made expressly to meet the nature and
wants of the living creatures and growing vegetation that occupy its surface; and all
these plants and animals have been created with distinct reference to the properties of
the atmosphere. Throughout design and mutual adaptation are most manifest. The
atmosphere has been composed of those elements, and composed of them in just the
proportions that are essential to the health and nurture of all living creatures. The
atmosphere has been made for lungs; and lungs have been made for the atmosphere,
being elaborately constructed for its alternate admission and expulsion. And how
beautiful that adjustment by which animals breathe of the oxygen of the air, and set
carbonic acid free for the use of plants, while plants absorb carbonic acid, and set oxygen
free for the benefit of animals! The atmosphere and the ear have also been formed one
for the other. This organ is so constructed that its use depends entirely upon the elastic
properties of the air. In like manner the atmosphere and the organs of speech have been
formed in mutual adaptation. The whole mouth, the larynx, the tongue, the lips, have
been made with inimitable skill to form air into words. Equally evident is the mutual
adaptation of the atmosphere and the organs of smell, as the latter can effect their
function only in connection with the former. In one word, all the parts of all animal
organizations, even to the very pores of the skin, have been contrived with minute nicety
in adaptation to the constituent elements and elastic properties of the atmosphere. Add
to all the foregoing, its admirable qualities for disseminating h, at evaporating moisture,
equalizing climate, producing winds, forming clouds, and diffusing light—and we behold
in the Firmament of heaven a concourse of vast contrivances, that constitute a sublime
anthem to the Creator’s praise! The various elements composing the atmosphere, its
gases, and vapours, and electricity, are, indeed, as if instinct with life and reason.
Animated by the solar beams, they are everywhere in busy and unerring activity,—
sometimes acting singly, sometimes in combination, but always playing into each other’s
hands with a certainty and perfection which might almost be called intelligence, and
which nothing short of Infinite Wisdom could have devised. Thus, by their manifold and
beneficial operations, “the heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth
His handiwork.” (H. W. Morris, D. D.)
The firmament
The use of it was to “divide the waters from the waters”: that is, the waters on the earth
from the waters in the clouds, which are well known to be supported by the buoyant
atmosphere. The “division” here spoken of is that of distribution. God having made the
substance of all things, goes on to distribute them. By means of this the earth is watered
by the rain of heaven, without which it would be unfruitful, and all its inhabitants perish.
God makes nothing in vain. There is a grandeur in the firmament to the eye; but this is
not all: usefulness is combined with beauty. Nor is it useful only with respect to animal
subsistence: it is a mirror, conspicuous to all, displaying the glory of its Creator, and
showing His handiworks. The clouds also, by emptying themselves upon the earth, set us
an example of generosity; and reprove those who, full of this world’s good, yet keep it

200. principally to themselves. (A. Fuller.)
The second day
The second day’s work is the forming of an expanse or heaven in the creature, by which
the hitherto unbounded waters are divided from the waters. God then names the
expanse. At this stage the state of the creature, that it is drowned in waters, begins to be
perceived. Such is the second state or stage in the new creation. In the midst of the
waters a heaven is formed in the once benighted creature. That unstable element, so
quickly moved by storms, is the well-known type of the restless desires of the heart of
fallen man; for “the wicked are like the troubled sea, which cannot rest, whose waters
cast up mire and dirt.” Before regeneration, unquiet lusts everywhere prevail: the whole
man or creature is drowned and buried in them. In the progress of the new creation,
these waters are not at once removed: indeed, they are never wholly removed till that
other creation comes, when there is “no more sea.” They are first divided by a heaven;
then bounded on the third day, when the dry land rises up out of them. This heaven
represents the understanding opened, as the rising earth upon the third day shows us
the will liberated. For till now, “the understanding has been darkened”; nay, it is written
of the natural man that he has “no understanding.” But now the heaven is stretched.
Christ “opens the understanding” of those who before this had been His disciples. And
thus another precious gift, once hid with Christ in God, now by Christ is wrought in us
also. A heaven is formed within the creature; a heaven into which darkness may return,
and through which clouds shall pour as well as bright sunshine; a heaven which for sin
may be shut up and become like brass, but which was made to be the home and treasure
house of sweet and dewy showers; a heaven like Israel’s path through the sea of old,
sorely threatened by dark and thick waters, but, like that same path, a step to
resurrection power, and worthy to be called “heaven,” even by God Himself; influencing
the earth in untold ways, here attracting, there repelling; the great means after light of
arranging and disposing all things. (A. Jukes.)
7 So God made the vault and separated the water
under the vault from the water above it. And it
was so.
BAR ES, "Gen_1:7
Then made God the expanse. - Here the distinction between command and

201. execution is made still more prominent than in the third verse. For the word of
command stands in one verse, and the effect realized is related in the next. Nay, we have
the doing of the thing and the thing done separately expressed. For, after stating that
God made the expanse, it is added, “and it was so.” The work accomplished took a
permanent form, in which it remained a standing monument of divine wisdom and
power.
CLARKE, "Gen_1:7
Then made God the expanse. - Here the distinction between command and
execution is made still more prominent than in the third verse. For the word of
command stands in one verse, and the effect realized is related in the next. Nay, we have
the doing of the thing and the thing done separately expressed. For, after stating that
God made the expanse, it is added, “and it was so.” The work accomplished took a
permanent form, in which it remained a standing monument of divine wisdom and
power.
GILL, "And God made the firmament,.... By a word speaking, commanding it into
being, producing it out of the chaos, and spreading it in that vast space between the
heaven of heavens and our earth (z),
And divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters
which were above the firmament; the lower part of it, the atmosphere above, which
are the clouds full of water, from whence rain descends upon the earth; and which
divided between them and those that were left on the earth, and so under it, not yet
gathered into one place; as it now does between the clouds of heaven and the waters of
the sea. Though Mr. Gregory (a) is of opinion, that an abyss of waters above the most
supreme orb is here meant; or a great deep between the heavens and the heaven of
heavens, where, as in storehouses, the depth is laid up; and God has his treasures of
snow, hail, and rain, and from whence he brought out the waters which drowned the
world at the universal deluge. Others suppose the waters above to be the crystalline
heaven, which for its clearness resembles water; and which Milton (b) calls the
"crystalline ocean",
And it was so: the firmament was accordingly made, and answered this purpose, to
divide the waters below it from those above it; or "it was firm" (c), stable and durable;
and so it has continued.
ELLICOTT, "(7) God made the firmament.—This wide open expanse upon earth’s
surface, supplied by the chemistry of nature—that is, of God—with that marvellous
mixture of gases which form atmospheric air, was a primary necessity for man’s
existence and activity. In each step of the narrative it is ever man that is in view; and
even the weight of the superincumbent atmosphere is indispensable for the health
and comfort of the human body, and for the keeping of all things in their place on
earth. (See ote, Genesis 1:8.) And in this secondary sense it may still rightly be
called the firmament.
The waters which were under the firmament . . . the waters which were above the
firmament.—While this is a popular description of what we daily see—namely,

202. masses of running water congregated upon earth’s surface, and above a cloudland,
into which the waters rise and float—it is not contrary to, but in accordance with,
science. The atmosphere is the receptacle of the waters evaporated from the earth
and ocean, and by means of electrical action it keeps these aqueous particles in a
state of repulsion, and forms clouds, which the winds carry in their bosom. So full of
thoughtful contrivance and arrangement are the laws by which rain is formed and
the earth watered, that they are constantly referred to in the Bible as the chief
natural proof of God’s wisdom and goodness. (See Acts 14:17.) Moreover, were
there not an open expanse next the earth, it would be wrapped in a perpetual mist,
unvisited by sunshine. and the result would be such as is described in Genesis 2:5,
that man could not exist on earth to till the ground. The use, however, of popular
language and ideas is confessedly the method of Holy Scripture, and we must not
force upon the writer knowledge which man was to gain for himself. Even if the
writer supposed that the rains were poured down from an upper reservoir, it would
be no more an argument against his being inspired than St. Mark’s expression,
“The sun did set” (Mark 1:32), disproves the inspiration of the Gospels. For the
attainment of all such knowledge God has provided another way.
COKE, "Genesis 1:7. And God called, &c.— And this expanse God called heaven,
shemmim, (because waters were there placed,) from ‫שׁם‬ sham, there, and ‫מים‬ maim,
waters: a derivation the rather to be approved, because, as we shall see throughout
the scriptures, the Hebrew names were generally given from the actions immediately
at hand.
REFLECTIO S.—1. God having made the light, a proper medium is now provided
through which its rays may pass. But though this firmament is stretched over us, the
way is open to the throne of God, and faith can even here enter within the vail, and
prayer hath wings which mount beyond the skies. Observe, 2. the design of this
firmament, to divide the waters from the waters. There are waters beneath the
firmament that cover the great deep, and rivers which run among the vallies; and
there are waters above the firmament, in clouds which drop down fatness, and in
treasure-houses reserved for purposes of judgment.
PETT, "Verse 7-8
‘And God made the firmament and separated the waters which were under the
firmament from the waters which were above the firmament, and it was so. And
God called the firmament Sky (or Heaven). And there was evening and there was
morning the second day.’
So by His word the waters were separated to produce atmosphere, and the waters
above were held up by His ‘sky’. And it was all done by His word. As we have
already seen the writer knew about clouds and rain. He is using metaphorical
language to describe what he sees.
The first ‘yom’ has established light as the basis of the positive aspects of the
universe, and has established light and darkness and called them ‘day’ and ‘night’.
The second ‘yom’ has established an atmosphere above the waters so that fish and

203. birds might enjoy their benefit, and He has called the upper canopy Sky (or
Heaven). The giving of names by God is an indication of His authority over them.
Man will have no control over them. They are outside man’s control.
8 God called the vault “sky.” And there was
evening, and there was morning—the second day.
BAR ES, "Gen_1:8
Then called God to the expanse, heaven. - This expanse is, then, the proper and
original skies. We have here an interesting and instructive example of the way in which
words expand in their significance from the near, the simple, the obvious, to the far and
wide, the complex and the inferential: The heaven, in the first instance, meant the open
space above the surface in which we breathe and move, in which the birds fly and the
clouds float. This is the atmosphere. Then it stretches away into the seemingly boundless
regions of space, in which the countless orbs of luminous and of opaque surfaces
circumambulate. Then the heavens come to signify the contents of this indefinitely
augmented expanse, - the celestial luminaries themselves. Then, by a still further
enlargement of its meaning, we rise to the heaven of heavens, the inexpressibly grand
and august presence-chamber of the Most High, where the cherubim and seraphim, the
innumerable company of angels, the myriads of saints, move in their several grades and
spheres, keeping the charge of their Maker, and realizing the joy of their being. This is
the third heaven 2Co_12:2 to the conception of which the imaginative capacity of the
human mind rises by an easy gradation. Having once attained to this majestic
conception, man is so far prepared to conceive and compose that sublime sentence with
which the book of God opens, - “In the beginning God created ‘the heavens’ and the
earth.”
The expanse, or aerial space, in which this arrangement of things has been effected,
having received its appropriate name, is recognized as an accomplished fact, and the
second day is closed.
GILL, "And God called the firmament heaven,.... Including the starry and airy
heavens: it has its name from its height in the Arabic language, it being above the earth,
and reaching to the third heaven; though others take the word "shamaim" to be a
compound of two words, "sham" and "maim", that is, there are waters, namely, in the
clouds of heaven:
and the evening; and the morning were the second day; these together made up
the space of twenty four hours, which was another natural day; the body of light, created
on the first day, having again moved round the chaos in that space of time; or else the

204. chaos had turned round on its own axis in that time, which revolution produced a
second day; and which, according to Capellus, was the nineteenth of April, and
according to Bishop Usher the twenty fourth of October. It is an observation that
everyone may make, that the phrase,
and God saw that it was good, is not used at the close of this day's work, as of the
rest: the reason some Jewish writers give is, because the angels fell on this day; but it is a
much better which Jarchi gives, and that is, because the work of the waters was not
finished; it was begun on the second day, and perfected on the third (d); and therefore
the phrase is twice used in the account of the third day's work: the Septuagint version
adds it here indeed, but without any foundation.
ELLICOTT, "(8) God called the firmament (the expanse) Heaven.—This is a Saxon
word, and means something heaved up. The Hebrew probably means the heights, or
upper regions, into which the walls of cities nevertheless ascend (Deuteronomy
1:28). In Genesis 1:1, “the heaven” may include the abysmal regions of space; here it
means the atmosphere round our earth, which, at a distance of about forty-five
miles from the surface, melts away into the imponderable ether. The work of the
second day is not described as being good, though the LXX. add this usual formula.
Probably, however, the work of the second and third days is regarded as one. In
both there was a separation of waters; but it was only when the open expanse
reached the earth’s surface, and reduced its temperature, that water could exist in
any other form than that of vapour. But no sooner did it exist in a fluid form than
the pressure of the atmosphere would make it seek the lowest level. The cooling,
moreover, of the earth’s surface would produce cracks and fissures, into which the
waters would descend, and when these processes were well advanced, then at the
end of the third day “God saw that it was good.”
9 And God said, “Let the water under the sky be
gathered to one place, and let dry ground
appear.” And it was so.
BAR ES, "- V. The Third Day
9. ‫קוה‬ qāvâh “turn, bind, gather, expect.”

205. ‫יבשׁה‬ yabāshâh “the dry, the ground.” ‫יבשׁ‬ yabēsh, “be dry.” ‫בושׁ‬ bôsh, “be abashed.”
11. ‫דשׁא‬ deshe', “green thing, grass.”
‫עשׂב‬ ‛ēśāb, “herb.”
‫זרע‬ zēra‛, “seed.” ‫זרע‬ zāra‛, “sow,” sero.
‫פרי‬ pe
rıy, “fruit.” ‫ברה‬ pārâh, “bear”; φέρω pherō.
The work of creation on this day is evidently twofold, - the distribution of land and
water, and the creation of plants. The former part of it is completed, named, reviewed,
and approved before the latter is commenced. All that has been done before this, indeed,
is preparatory to the introduction of the vegetable kingdom. This may be regarded as the
first stage of the present creative process.
Gen_1:9
Let the water be gathered to one place; let the ground appear. - This refers
to the yet overflowing deep of waters Gen_1:2 under “the expanse.” They must be
confined within certain limits. For this purpose the order is issued, that they be gathered
into one place; that is, evidently, into a place apart from that designed for the land.
GILL, "And God said, let the waters under the heaven be gathered together
unto one place,.... Which are before called the waters under the firmament; and which
were either on the surface of the earth, or in the bowels of it, or mixed with it, which by
the compressure of the expanse or air were separated from it and these, by apertures and
channels made, were caused to flow as by a straight line, as the word (e) used signifies,
unto the decreed place that was broke up for them, the great hollow or channel which
now contains the waters of the ocean: this was done by the word of the Lord, at his
rebuke; and when it seems there was a clap thunder, and perhaps an earthquake, which
made the vast cavity for the sea, as well as threw up the hills and mountains, and made
the valleys; seeJob_38:10,
and let the dry land appear: clear of the waters, dried by the expanded air, hardened
by the fiery light, and as yet without any herb or tree upon it:
and it was so; immediately done, the waters were drained off the earth, directed to
their proper channels, and caused to run as by line to their appointed place; and the
solid parts of the earth became dry, and appeared in sight.
HE RY 9-13, "The third day's work is related in these verses - the forming of the sea
and the dry land, and the making of the earth fruitful. Hitherto the power of the Creator
had been exerted and employed about the upper part of the visible word; the light of
heaven was kindled, and the firmament of heaven fixed: but now he descends to this
lower world, the earth, which was designed for the children of men, designed both for
their habitation and for their maintenance; and here we have an account of the fitting of
it for both, and building of their house and the spreading of their table. Observe,
I. How the earth was prepared to be a habitation for man, by the gathering of the
waters together, and the making of the dry land to appear. Thus, instead of the confusion
which there was (Gen_1:2) when earth and water were mixed in one great mass, behold,
now, there is order, by such a separation as rendered them both useful. God said, Let it

206. be so, and it was so; no sooner said than done. 1. The waters which had covered the
earth were ordered to retire, and to gather into one place, namely, those hollows which
were fitted and appointed for their reception and rest. The waters, thus cleared, thus
collected, and thus lodged, in their proper place, he called seas. Though they are many,
in distant regions, and washing several shores, yet, either above ground or under
ground, they have communication with each other, and so they are one, and the
common receptacle of waters, into which all the rivers flow, Ecc_1:7. Waters and seas
often, in scripture, signify troubles and afflictions, Psa_42:7; Psa_69:2, Psa_69:14, Psa_
69:15. God's own people are not exempted from these in this world; but it is their
comfort that they are only waters under the heaven (there are none in heaven), and that
they are all in the place that God has appointed them and within the bounds that he has
set for them. How the waters were gathered together at first, and how they are still
bound and limited by the same Almighty had that first confined them, are elegantly
described, Psa_104:6-9, and are there mentioned as matter of praise. Those that go
down to the sea in ships ought to acknowledge daily the wisdom, power, and goodness,
of the Creator, in making the great waters serviceable to man for trade and commerce;
and those that tarry at home must own themselves indebted to him that keeps the sea
with bars and doors in its decreed place, and stays its proud waves, Job_38:10, Job_
38:11. 2. The dry land was made to appear, and emerge out of the waters, and was called
earth, and given to the children of men. The earth, it seems, was in being before; but it
was of no use, because it was under water. Thus many of God's gifts are received in vain,
because they are buried; make them to appear, and they become serviceable. We who, to
this day, enjoy the benefit of the dry land (though, since this, it was once deluged, and
dried again) must own ourselves tenants to, and dependents upon, that God whose
hands formed the dry land, Psa_95:5; Jon_1:9.
II. How the earth was furnished for the maintenance and support of man, Gen_1:11,
Gen_1:12. Present provision was now made, by the immediate products of the upstart
earth, which, in obedience to God's command, was no sooner made than it became
fruitful, and brought forth grass for the cattle and herb for the service of man. Provision
was likewise made for time to come, by the perpetuating of the several kinds of
vegetables, which are numerous, various, and all curious, and every one having its seed
in itself after its kind, that, during the continuance of man upon the earth, food might be
fetched out of the earth for his use and benefit. Lord, what is man, that he is thus visited
and regarded - that such care should be taken, and such provision made, for the support
and preservation of those guilty and obnoxious lives which have been a thousand times
forfeited! Observe here, 1. That not only the earth is the Lord's, but the fulness thereof,
and he is the rightful owner and sovereign disposer, not only of it, but of all its furniture.
The earth was emptiness (Gen_1:2), but now, by a word's speaking, it has become full of
God's riches, and his they are still - his corn and his wine, his wool and his flax, Hos_
2:9. Though the use of them is allowed to us, the property still remains in him, and to his
service and honour they must be used. 2. That common providence is a continued
creation, and in it our Father worketh hitherto. The earth still remains under the
efficacy of this command, to bring forth grass, and herbs, and its annual products; and
though, being according to the common course of nature, these are not standing
miracles, yet they are standing instances of the unwearied power and unexhausted
goodness of the world's great Maker and Master. 3. That though God, ordinarily, makes
use of the agency of second causes, according to their nature, yet he neither needs them
nor is tied to them; for, though the precious fruits of the earth are usually brought forth
by the influences of the sun and moon (Deu_33:14), yet here we find the earth bearing a
great abundance of fruit, probable ripe fruit, before the sun and moon were made. 4.
That it is good to provide things necessary before we have occasion to use them: before

207. the beasts and man were made, here were grass and herbs prepared for them. God thus
dealt wisely and graciously with man; let not man then be foolish and unwise for himself.
5. That God must have the glory of all the benefit we receive from the products of the
earth, either for food or physic. It is he that hears the heavens when they hear the earth,
Hos_2:21, Hos_2:22. And if we have, through grace, an interest in him who is the
fountain, when the streams are dried up and the fig-tree doth not blossom we may
rejoice in him.
JAMISO , "Gen_1:9-13. Third Day.
let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place — The
world was to be rendered a terraqueous globe, and this was effected by a volcanic
convulsion on its surface, the upheaving of some parts, the sinking of others, and the
formation of vast hollows, into which the waters impetuously rushed, as is graphically
described (Psa_104:6-9) [Hitchcock]. Thus a large part of the earth was left “dry land,”
and thus were formed oceans, seas, lakes, and rivers which, though each having its own
bed, or channel, are all connected with the sea (Job_38:10; Ecc_1:7).
K&D 9-13, "The Third Day. - The work of this day was twofold, yet closely connected.
At first the waters beneath the heavens, i.e., those upon the surface of the earth, were
gathered together, so that the dry (‫ה‬ ָ‫שׁ‬ ָ ַ ַ‫,ה‬ the solid ground) appeared. In what way the
gathering of the earthly waters in the sea and the appearance of the dry land were
effected, whether by the sinking or deepening of places in the body of the globe, into
which the water was drawn off, or by the elevation of the solid ground, the record does
not inform us, since it never describes the process by which effects are produced. It is
probable, however, that the separation was caused both by depression and elevation.
With the dry land the mountains naturally arose as the headlands of the mainland. But
of this we have no physical explanations, either in the account before us, or in the
poetical description of the creation in Psa_54:1-7. Even if we render Ps. 54:8, “the
mountains arise, and they (the waters) descend into the valleys, to the place which Thou
(Jehovah) hast founded for them,” we have no proof, in this poetical account, of the
elevation-theory of geology, since the psalmist is not speaking as a naturalist, but as a
sacred poet describing the creation on the basis of Gen 1. “The dry” God called Earth,
and “the gathering of the waters,” i.e., the place into which the waters were collected,
He called Sea. ‫ים‬ ִ ַ‫,י‬ an intensive rather than a numerical plural, is the great ocean, which
surrounds the mainland on all sides, so that the earth appears to be founded upon seas
(Psa_24:2). Earth and sea are the two constituents of the globe, by the separation of
which its formation was completed. The “seas” include the rivers which flow into the
ocean, and the lakes which are as it were “detached fragments” of the ocean, though they
are not specially mentioned here. By the divine act of naming the two constituents of the
globe, and the divine approval which follows, this work is stamped with permanency;
and the second act of the third day, the clothing of the earth with vegetation, is
immediately connected with it. At the command of God “the earth brought forth green
(‫א‬ ֶ‫שׁ‬ ִ ), seed yielding herb (‫ב‬ ֶ‫שׂ‬ ֵ‫(ע‬ breh ), and fruit-bearing fruit-trees (‫י‬ ִ‫ר‬ ְ ‫ץ‬ ֵ‫”.)ע‬ These three
classes embrace all the productions of the vegetable kingdom. ‫א‬ ֵ‫שׁ‬ ֶ , lit., the young, tender
green, which shoots up after rain and covers the meadows and downs (2Sa_23:4; Job_
38:27; Joe_2:22; Psa_23:2), is a generic name for all grasses and cryptogamous plants.

208. ‫ב‬ ֶ‫שׂ‬ ֵ‫,ע‬ with the epithet ‫ע‬ ַ‫ר‬ֶ‫ז‬ ַ‫יע‬ ִ‫ר‬ְ‫ז‬ ַ‫,מ‬ yielding or forming seed, is used as a generic term for all
herbaceous plants, corn, vegetables, and other plants by which seed-pods are formed.
‫פרי‬ ‫:עץ‬ not only fruit-trees, but all trees and shrubs, bearing fruit in which there is a seed
according to its kind, i.e., fruit with kernels. ‫ץ‬ ֶ‫ר‬ፎ ָ‫ה‬ ‫ל‬ ַ‫ע‬ (upon the earth) is not to be joined
to “fruit-tree,” as though indicating the superior size of the trees which bear seed above
the earth, in distinction from vegetables which propagate their species upon or in the
ground; for even the latter bear their seed above the earth. It is appended to ‫א‬ ֵ‫שׁ‬ ְ‫ד‬ ַ , as a
more minute explanation: the earth is to bring forth grass, herb, and trees, upon or
above the ground, as an ornament or covering for it. ‫ּו‬‫ג‬‫י‬ ִ‫מ‬ ְ‫ל‬ (after its kind), from ‫ין‬ ִ‫מ‬
species, which is not only repeated in Gen_1:12 in its old form ‫הוּ‬ֵ‫יג‬ ִ‫מ‬ ְ‫ל‬ in the case of the
fruit-tree, but is also appended to the herb. It indicates that the herbs and trees sprang
out of the earth according to their kinds, and received, together with power to bear seed
and fruit, the capacity to propagate and multiply their own kind. In the case of the grass
there is no reference either to different kinds, or to the production of seed, inasmuch as
in the young green grass neither the one nor the other is apparent to the eye. Moreover,
we must not picture the work of creation as consisting of the production of the first
tender germs which were gradually developed into herbs, shrubs, and trees; on the
contrary, we must regard it as one element in the miracle of creation itself, that at the
word of God not only tender grasses, but herbs, shrubs, and trees, sprang out of the
earth, each ripe for the formation of blossom and the bearing of seed and fruit, without
the necessity of waiting for years before the vegetation created was ready to blossom and
bear fruit. Even if the earth was employed as a medium in the creation of the plants,
since it was God who caused it to bring them forth, they were not the product of the
powers of nature, generatio aequivoca in the ordinary sense of the word, but a work of
divine omnipotence, by which the trees came into existence before their seed, and their
fruit was produced in full development, without expanding gradually under the influence
of sunshine and rain.
CALVI , "9.Let the waters... be gathered together This also is an illustrious
miracle, that the waters by their departure have given a dwelling-place to men. For
even philosophers allow that the natural position of the waters was to cover the
whole earth, as Moses declares they did in the beginning; first, because being an
element, it must be circular, and because this element is heavier than the air, and
lighter than the earth, it ought cover the latter in its whole circumference. (64) But
that the seas, being gathered together as on heaps, should give place for man, is
seemingly preternatural; and therefore Scripture often extols the goodness of God in
this particular. See Psalms 33:7,
‘He has gathered the waters together on a heap,
and has laid them up in his treasures.’
Also Psalms 78:13,
‘He has collected the waters as into a bottle.’ (65)

209. Jeremiah 5:22,
‘Will ye not fear me? will ye not tremble at my presence,
who have placed the sand as the boundary of the sea?’
Job 38:8,
‘Who has shut up the sea with doors? Have not I surrounded it with gates and bars?
I have said,
Hitherto shalt thou proceed; here shall thy swelling waves be broken.’
Let us, therefore, know that we are dwelling on dry ground, because God, by his
command, has removed the waters that they should not overflow the whole earth.
BE SO , "Genesis 1:9-10. God said, &c. — From the production, or separation
from gross matter, of light and air, and the assigning them their proper places and
uses in the creation, God proceeds, on the third day, to separate, put in order, and
control the clement nearest to them in quality and use, fluid like them,
comparatively simple, and pure, and although not elastic, yet of great power. Let the
waters be gathered into one place — The abyss in the bowels of the earth, Genesis
7:11, and the hollows connected therewith. Thus, instead of the confusion which
existed when the earth and the water were mixed in one great mass, there was now
order; and by such a separation, both were rendered useful: the earth was prepared
for the habitation and support of man, and various orders of land animals, and the
waters for the still more numerous tribes of living creatures, formed to abide and
seek their sustenance in the seas, lakes, and rivers.
COKE, "Genesis 1:9. And God said, Let the waters be gathered together— After
the elements of light and air were appointed to their proper places, the next in
density, the water, i.e.. the lower water, or that under the air, is separated, by the
divine direction; and thus, at length, the earth, or dry land, emerges and appears. It
is to be observed, that Moses introduces every mutation with the words God said;
intimating, that the power and energy of the Divinity over-ruled and conducted each
operation; and, however natural causes might work, was the primum mobile, or the
first great Mover throughout the whole formation.
Unto one place— All the waters of the world have one general communication. The
rivers and the fountains all return themselves into the sea; and all seas have either a
visible or secret communication with each other. I have no doubt but the Caspian
sea disgorges itself, by subterraneous passages, into the Euxine, or the Ocean, which
may be considered as the grand reservoir (the O E PLACE) of all the waters of the
earth. This observation is confirmed by the name given Genesis 1:10 to this one
place, this conflux, or great receptacle, of all the congregated waters, seas, or ocean.
All the waters make, in this sense, but one ocean, as all the dry land makes but one
earth. How all this was brought about, how the channels were hollowed, the rocks
and mountains formed, &c. it is impossible for us to determine! Only this we know,

210. that the Divine Power continued his interposition, and by his omnipotent energy, to
which all things are easy, directed the whole!
ELLICOTT, "(9) Let the waters be gathered together.—The verb, as Gesenius
shows, refers rather to the condensation of water, which, as we have seen, was
impossible till the surface of the earth was made cool by the radiation of heat into
the open expanse around it.
Unto one place.—The ocean bed. We must add the vast depth of the ocean to the
height of the mountains before we can rightly estimate the intensity of the forces at
work on the third day. Vast, too, as the surface of the ocean may appear compared
with the dry land, it is evidently only just sufficient to supply the rain necessary for
vegetation. Were it less, either the laws of evaporation must be altered, with painful
and injurious effects, or much of the earth’s surface would be barren.
Let the dry land appear.—Simple as this might appear, it yet required special
provision on the part of the Creator; for otherwise the various materials of the earth
would have arranged themselves in concentric strata, according to their density, and
upon them the water would have reposed evenly, and above it the air. But geologists
tell us that these strata have been broken up and distorted from below by volcanic
agencies, while the surface has been furrowed and worn by the denuding power of
water. This was the third day’s work. By the cooling of the crust of the earth the
vast mass of waters, which now covers two-thirds of its surface, and which hitherto
had existed only as vapour, began to condense, and pour down upon the earth as
rain. Meanwhile the earth parted with its internal heat but slowly, and thus, while
its crust grew stiff, there was within a mass of molten fluid. As this would be acted
upon by the gravity of the sun and moon, in just the same way as the ocean is now,
this inner tidal wave would rupture the thin crust above, generally in lines trending
from northeast to south-west. Hence mountain ranges and deep sea beds, modified
by many changes since, but all having the same final object of providing dry land
for man’s abode.
COFFMA , "Verse 9
THE THIRD DAY
"And God said, Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together unto one
place, and let the dry land appear; and it was so. And God called the dry land
Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called the Seas: and God saw that it
was good."
There is far more than sufficient water upon the earth to inundate all of the
continents and the highest mountains; and it took an act of creation to separate the
dry land from the seas. othing is revealed here as to HOW God did this. Many
things might have entered into it. The stacking of water miles deep upon the polar
caps of the earth, the fracture of the earth's crust by mighty cracks, and
earthquakes thrusting above the primeval seas, the continents, and the mighty
mountain systems are things which men suppose took place.

211. "Let the waters be gathered together ... unto one place ..." One who examines a
global map of the earth will see that the oceans are all connected literally, in "one
place." And yet a division among the seas is inherent in the very word "seas"
(plural). There can be no adequate explanation of this accuracy apart from
understanding it as inspired of God. either Moses, nor any other writer of that
ancient time, had any personal knowledge that could have led to such a statement.
LA GE, "Genesis 1:9-13. Third Creative Day.
Genesis 1:9. Let the waters be gathered together.—The bringing the earth into form
and the creation of the vegetable world.—That the physical dividing of the earth-
mass and of the water-mass is here presented, is clear. There would appear,
however, to be signified a preceding chemical separation of both elements, which
had withdrawn themselves from the inner or under core of the earth. The
expression ‫ִם‬‫י‬ַ‫מּ‬ַ‫ה‬ ‫ָווּ‬‫קּ‬‫י‬denotes properly not merely an outward assembling, but an
intensive close combining (see Gesenius, ‫ָה‬‫ו‬ָ‫ק‬). Upon the formation of the water
proper, as it is now introduced, is conditioned the firm underlying of the earth. The
completing of this division, however, has for its consequence that flowing together of
the water into its peculiar place, with which immediately the self-forming earth-soil
now comes into visibility. It is thereby implied that the elevations and depressions of
the earth’s surface—the hills and vales, the highlands and the ocean-depths—are
here formed, just as it is so precisely set forth, Psalm 104:6-8 (with which compare
Proverbs 8:24). And Song of Solomon, too, the creation of the hills is here only
indicated, or rather presented, as a consequence of the creation of the sea (see Psalm
90:2; Deuteronomy 33:15; Habakkuk 3:3). Thus much is clear: as long as the water
and the earth-mass are not divided, there can be no mention of any origination of
the hills. With the sea-life, however, must begin also the earth-life, that Isaiah, the
working of the inner earth-fire that causes the up-heavings. It is a wrong
apprehension of the waters of Genesis 1:2 and Genesis 1:6, when one takes the story
of cretion as favoring a one-sided eptunism (Wagner). The volcanic action of the
earth in the formation of the earth, is not expressed, indeed, but it is throughout
freely implied; it would appear to be indicated, Psalm 104:8. There is truly no
difficulty in supposing that the formation of the hills kept on through the succeeding
creative days. In respect to this, Delitzsch expresses himself better than Hofmann:
“Generally,” says Hebrews, “the works of the single creative days consist only in
laying foundations; the birth-process that is introduced in each, extends its efficacy
beyond it, and, in this sense we say with Hofmann (i. p278): ‘ ot how long, but how
many times, God created is the thing intended to be set forth.’ ” Much more have we
to distinguish between the distinct creative acts and the creative evolutions. Even
after the creative division of the first day the evolving of light may still go on, and
the same thought holds good of the efficacy of the succeeding acts of each of the
other days. The act itself means the introduction of a new principle out of the word
of God, which, as such, has the form of an epoch-creating even.
PETT, "Verse 9-10
‘And God said, “Let the waters that are under the heaven be gathered together in

212. one place and let the dry land appear”, and it was so. And God called the dry land
‘eretz’ and the waters that were gathered together he called seas. And God saw that
it was good.’
As with the word ‘yom’ the word ‘eretz’ is not fixed in meaning. Originally ‘eretz’
was the whole earth including the waters (Genesis 1:1-2), now it is the dry land as
opposed to the waters. It can mean the earth as opposed to the heavens (Genesis 1:1-
2), land as opposed to sea (as here), and within that definition a particular area of
land. Thus the people of Israel were later the ‘people of the land ('eretz'), which
meant Israel. As ‘yom’ means a period of time, so ‘eretz’ means the idea of
somewhere to dwell.
God is here causing dry land ‘to appear’ in preparation for animals and man. It was
already there but comes out of the sea. The birds too will benefit, as will many river
fish. Again the writer expresses satisfaction with the situation by saying that God
sees it as good. He is satisfied with the provision He has made for man. Thus we
should be filled with praise at His wonderful provision.
It will be noted that the dry land is seen as already being under the waters. It is
intrinsic within the waters. This is not a new act of creation, but a shaping by His
word of what is already there. From the formlessness He produces form. From the
shapeless He produces shape. But those who see ‘evolution’ at work here must
recognise that it happens under God’s command and control.
So the dry land is surrounded by water, and there is abundant water above. All are
held in their place and controlled by the hand of God. But let God withdraw His
hand and total inundation will result, as later it will (Genesis 1:7-8).
So now we have light and shape and differentiation, the building blocks of life are
being put in place. But darkness ever threatens to envelop all things if God
withdraws His word, and shapelessness will overcome what has been formed unless
God sustains it.
BI 9-10, "The gathering together of the waters called He seas
The sea and the dry land
I. THE SEA. “Let the waters . . . unto one place.”
1. The method of their location. Perhaps by volcanic agency.
2. The degree of their proportion. If the sea were smaller, the earth would cease to be
verdant and fruitful, as there would not be sufficient water to supply our rivers and
streams, or to distil upon the fields. If the sea was larger, the earth would become a
vast uninhabitable marsh, from the over abundance of rain. Hence, we see how
needful it is that there should be a due proportion between the sea and dry land, and
the wisdom and goodness of the Creator, in that it is established so exactly and
beneficently.
3. The extent of their utility. They not only give fertility to the earth, but they answer
a thousand social and commercial purposes.

213. II. THE DRY LAND.
1. The dry land was made to appear. The land had been created before, but it was
covered with a vast expanse of water. Even when things are created, when they
merely exist, the Divine call must educate them into the full exercise of their utility,
and into the complete manifestation of their beauty. So it can remove the tide of
passion from the soul, and make all that is good in human nature to appear.
2. It was made to be verdant. “And let the earth bring forth grass.” The plants now
created are divided into three classes: grass, herb, and tree. In the first, the seed is
not noticed, as not obvious to the eye. In the second, the seed is the striking
characteristic. In the third, the fruit. This division is simple and natural.
3. It was made to be fruitful. “And the fruit tree yielding fruit.” The earth is not
merely verdant and beautiful to look at, but it is also fruitful and good for the supply
of human want. Nature appears friendly to man, that she may gain his confidence,
invite his study, and minister to the removal of his poverty.
III. AND IT WAS GOOD.
1. For the life and health of man.
2. For the beauty of the universe.
3. For the commerce and produce of the nations. (J. S. Exell, M. A.)
Various uses of the sea
1. Water is as indispensable to all life, whether vegetable or animal, as is the air itself.
But this element of water is supplied entirely by the sea. All the waters that are in the
rivers, the lakes, the fountains, the vapours, the dew, the rain, the snow, come alike
out of the ocean. It is a common impression that it is the flow of the rivers that fills
the sea. It is a mistake. It is the flow of the sea that fills the rivers.
2. A second use of the sea is to moderate the temperature of the world. A common
method of warming houses in the winter is by the use of hot water. The water, being
heated in the basement, is carried by iron pipes to the remotest parts of the building,
where, parting with its warmth and becoming cooler and heavier, it flows back again
to the boiler, to be heated anew, and so to pass round in the same circuit
continuously. The advantage of this method is, that the heat can be carried to great
distances, and in any direction.
3. A third important use of the sea is to be a perpetual source of health to the world.
Without it there could be no drainage for the lands. The process of death and decay,
which is continually going on in the animal and vegetable kingdoms, would soon
make the whole surface of the earth one vast receptacle of corruption, whose
stagnant mass would breathe a pestilence, sweeping away all the life of a continent.
The winds would not purify it; for, having no place to deposit the burden, it would
only accumulate in their hands, and filling their breath with its poisonous effluvia, it
would make them swift ministers of death, carrying the sword of destruction into
every part of the world at once.
4. It may be mentioned, as a fourth office of the sea, that it is set to furnish the great
natural pathways of the world. Instead of a barrier, the sea is a road across the
barrier. Hence the ocean has been the great educator of the world. The course of

214. empire began on its shores, and has always kept within sight of its waters. No great
nation has ever sprung up except on the seaside, or by the banks of those great
navigable rivers which are themselves but an extension of the sea. Had it not been for
the Mediterranean, the history of Egypt, of Phoenicia, of Greece and Rome and
Carthage, would have been impossible.
5. A fifth office of the sea is to furnish an inexhaustible storehouse of power for the
world. Of the three great departments of labour which occupy the material industry
of the race,—agriculture, commerce, and manufactures,—we have seen how the first
depends upon the ocean, the one for the rains which support all vegetable life, the
other for the thousand paths on which its fleets are travelling. We now find that the
third one also, though at first appearing not to have very intimate connection with
the ocean, does in fact owe to it almost the whole of its efficiency. Ninety-nine
hundredths of all the mechanical power now at work in the world is furnished by the
water wheel and the steam engine.
6. A sixth office of the sea is to be a vast storehouse of life. The sea has a whole world
of life in itself. It is said that the life in the sea far exceeds all that is out of it. There
are more than twenty-five thousand distinct species of living beings that inhabit its
waters. Incredible numbers of them are taken from the sea; in Norway, four hundred
millions of a single species in a single season; in Sweden, seven hundred millions;
and by other nations, numbers without number.
7. Omnipresent and everywhere is this need and blessing of the sea. It is felt as truly
in the centre of the continent, where, it may be, the rude inhabitant never beard of
the ocean, as it is on the circumference of the wave-beaten shore. He is surrounded,
every moment, by the presence and bounty of the sea. It is the sea that looks out
upon him from every violet in his garden bed; from the broad forehead of his cattle,
and the rosy faces of his children; and from the cool-dropping well at his door. It is
the sea that feeds him. It is the sea that clothes him, It is the sea that cools him with
the summer cloud, and that warms him with the blazing fires in winter.
8. There is a sea within us which responds to the sea without. Deep calleth unto
deep, and it is the answer and the yearning of these inward waves, in reply to that
outward call, which makes our hearts to swell, our eyes to grow dim with tears, and
our whole being to lift and vibrate with such strong emotion when we stand upon the
shore and look out upon the deep, or sit in the stern of some noble ship and feel
ourselves cradled on the pulsations of its mighty bosom. There is a life within us
which calls to that sea without—a conscious destiny which only its magnitude and its
motion can symbolize and utter. (Bib. Sacra.)
Genesis of the lands
I. EXPLANATION OF THE PASSAGE.
1. Panorama of emergent lands. A sublime spectacle it is—this resurrection of the
terrestrial forms out of ocean’s baptismal sepulchre—this emergence of island, and
continent, and mountain—this heaving into sight of Britain and Madagascar and
Cuba and Greenland, of Asia and Africa and Australia and America, of Alps and
Himalayas and Andes and Sierra Nevada; more thrilling still, of Ararat and Sinai and
Pisgah and Carmel and Lebanon and Zion and Olivet.
2. Geologic confirmation. How could the geologist make out his magnificent

215. geological calendar, if it were not for the successive layers of deposited or stratified
rocks of the lands upheaved into view from the depths of old ocean’s sepulchre? And
so, at this very point, the ancient seer and the modern sceptic agree; both say that
the earth was formed out of water and by means of water (2Pe_3:5). But they differ
as to the explanation. The ancient seer said, “The secret of Nature is God.” The
modern sceptic says, “The secret of Nature is Law.” And yet both speak truly, for
Truth is evermore unutterably large: God is the cause of Nature, and Law is God’s
means.
3. Beneficence of the arrangement. “God saw that it was good.” And well might He
delight in it. For a blessed thing this Divine distribution of lands and seas was.
II. MORAL MEANING OF THE STORY.
1. The birth of individuality.
2. The birth of duty. Each man is in himself a little world. The individualization of
each man is not so much for the man’s own sake as for the sake of all men. This,
then, is the stirring thought of the hour: Individualization for the sake of mankind.
Go forth then, brother, inspired with the majestic thought that you are a personal
unit—a man among men—individualized from the mass of humanity for the sake of
humanity andhumanity’s King. Yes, happy the day, let me again say it, when God
says to thee: “Let the waters gather themselves to one place, and let the dry land
appear.” Thrice happy the day when thou obeyest, looking upward to the opening
heavens and outward to the broadening horizon. (G. D.Boardman.)
The third day
Up to this point the unquiet element, which is naturally uppermost in the creature, has
prevailed everywhere. Light has come, and shown the waste; a heaven is formed within
it; but nothing fixed or firm has yet appeared. Just as in the saint there is first light, and
a heaven too within, while as yet he is all instability, with nothing firm or settled. But
now the firm earth rises. The state desired by Paul,—“that we be no more tossed to and
fro with every wind of doctrine, but may grow up in all things into Him who is the Head,
even Christ,”—here begins to be accomplished. Now the will, long buried and
overwhelmed with tossing lusts, rises above them to become very fruitful; and the soul,
once lost in passions, emerges from the deep, like “the earth which He hath founded
forever.” There is yet more for us to mark in this emerging earth. Not only does it escape
the floods: it comes up also into the expanse of heaven. That creature, so long buried,
now mounts up to meet the skies, as though aspiring to touch and become a part of
heaven; while on its swelling bosom rest the sweet waters, the clouds, which embrace
and kiss the hills. When the man by resurrection is freed from restless lusts; when he
comes up from under the dominion of passions into a state of rest and peace; not only is
he delivered from a load, but he also meets a purer world, an atmosphere of clear and
high blessing; where even his hard rocks may be furrowed into channels for the rain;
heaven almost touching earth, and earth heaven, Not without awful convulsions can
such a change be wrought. The earth must heave before the waters are gathered into one
place. (See Psa_104:7-8.) Many a soul shows rents and chasms like the steep mountains.
Nevertheless, “the mountains bring peace, and the little hills righteousness.” And this is
effected on the third or resurrection day; for in creation, as elsewhere, the “third day”
always speaks of resurrection. Then the earth brings forth fruit. Fruitfulness, hitherto
delayed, at once follows the bounding of the waters. For, “being made free from sin, we

216. have fruit unto righteousness, and the end everlasting life.” The order of the produce is
instructive; first the grass, then the herb, then the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind:
as ever, the blade before the ear, the small before the great, from imperfection onwards
to perfection. The first thing borne is “grass,” the common emblem of the flesh. Is it
asked how the risen creature can bring forth fruits, which are, like the goodliness of the
grass, of the flesh and carnal? Because for long the regenerate man is yet “carnal,” and
his fruits are in the flesh, though with sincere desires for God’s glory. The development
of Adam, as exhibited in the Word, not to say experience, gives proofs on proofs of this.
The Corinthians, too, were “carnal,” though with many spiritual gifts. But after “grass”
comes “herb and tree,” with “seed and fruit”; some to feed the hungry, some to cure the
serpent’s bite; some hid in a veil of leaves, or bound in shapeless husks; some exposing
their treasures, as the lovely vine and olive; the one to cheer man’s heart, the other to
give the oil to sustain the light for God’s candlestick. Such is the faithful soul, with many-
coloured fruits, “as the smell of a field which the Lord blesses.” The form of the fruit may
vary; its increase may be less or more—some thirty, some sixty, some an hundredfold;
for “the fruit of the Spirit may be love, or peace, or faith, or truth, or gentleness”: but all
to the praise of His grace, who bringeth forth fruit out of the earth, “fruits of
righteousness, which are by Jesus Christ.” Nor let us forget,—“whose seed is in itself,
after his kind.” God’s fruits all multiply themselves: this is their constitution. (A. Jukes.)
Distribution of sea and land
By means of this distribution the waters are ever in motion, which preserves them and
almost everything else from stagnancy and putrefaction. That which the circulation of
the blood is to the animal frame, that the waters are to the world: were they to stop, all
would stagnate and die. See how careful our heavenly Father was to build us a habitation
before He gave us a being. Nor is this the only instance of the kind: our Redeemer has
acted on the same principle, in going before us to prepare a place for us. (A. Fuller.)
10 God called the dry ground “land,” and the
gathered waters he called “seas.” And God saw
that it was good.
BAR ES, "Gen_1:10

217. Then called God to the ground, land. - We use the word “ground” to denote the
dry surface left after the retreat of the waters. To this the Creator applies the term ‫ארץ‬
'erets, “land, earth.” Hence, we find that the primitive meaning of this term was land, the
dry solid surface of matter on which we stand. This meaning it still retains in all its
various applications (see note on Gen_1:2). As it was soon learned by experience that the
solid ground was continuous at the bottom of the water-masses, and that these were a
mere superficial deposit gathering into the hollows, the term was, by an easy extension
of its meaning, applied to the whole surface, as it was diversified by land and water. Our
word “earth” is the term to express it in this more extended sense. In this sense it was
the meet counterpart of the heavens in that complex phrase by which the universe of
things is expressed.
And to the gathering of the waters called he seas. - In contradistinction to the
land, the gathered waters are called seas; a term applied in Scripture to any large
collection of water, even though seen to be surrounded by land; as, the salt sea, the sea of
Kinnereth, the sea of the plain or valley, the fore sea, the hinder sea Gen_14:3; Num_
34:11; Deu_4:49; Joe_2:20; Deu_11:24. The plural form “seas” shows that the “one
place” consists of several basins, all of which taken together are called the place of the
waters.
The Scripture, according to its manner, notices only the palpable result; namely, a
diversified scene of “land” and “seas.” The sacred singer possibly hints at the process in
Psa_104:6-8 : “The deep as a garment thou didst spread over it; above the mountains
stood the waters. At thy rebuke they fled; at the voice of thy thunder they hasted away.
They go up the mountains; they go down the valleys; unto the place that thou hast
founded for them.” This description is highly poetical, and therefore true to nature. The
hills are to rise out of the waters above them. The agitated waters dash up the stirring
mountains, but, as these ascend, at length sink into the valleys, and take the place
allotted for them. Plainly the result was accomplished by lowering some and elevating
other parts of the solid ground. Over this inequality of surface, the waters, which before
overspread the whole ground, flowed into the hollows, and the elevated regions became
dry land. This is a kind of geological change which has been long known to the students
of nature. Such changes have often been sudden and violent. Alterations of level, of a
gradual character, are known to be going on at all times.
This disposition of land and water prepares for the second step, which is the main
work of this day; namely, the creation of plants. We are now come to the removal of
another defect in the state of the earth, mentioned in the second verse, - its deformity, or
rude and uncouth appearance.
CLARKE, "And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together
of the waters called he Seas - These two constitute what is called the terraqueous
globe, in which the earth and the water exist in a most judicious proportion to each
other. Dr. Long took the papers which cover the surface of a seventeen inch terrestrial
globe, and having carefully separated the land from the sea, be weighed the two
collections of papers accurately, and found that the sea papers weighed three hundred
and forty-nine grains, and the land papers only one hundred and twenty-four; by which
experiment it appears that nearly three-fourths of the surface of our globe, from the
Arctic to the Antarctic polar circles, are covered with water. The doctor did not weigh the
parts within the polar circles, because there is no certain measurement of the proportion
of land and water which they contain. This proportion of three-fourths water may be
considered as too great, if not useless; but Mr. Ray, by most accurate experiments made

218. on evaporation, has proved that it requires so much aqueous surface to yield a
sufficiency of vapors for the purpose of cooling the atmosphere, and watering the earth.
See Ray’s Physico-theological Discourses.
An eminent chemist and philosopher, Dr. Priestley, has very properly observed that it
seems plain that Moses considered the whole terraqueous globe as being created in a
fluid state, the earthy and other particles of matter being mingled with the water. The
present form of the earth demonstrates the truth of the Mosaic account; for it is well
known that if a soft or elastic globular body be rapidly whirled round on its axis, the
parts at the poles will be flattened, and the parts on the equator, midway between the
north and south poles, will be raised up. This is precisely the shape of our earth; it has
the figure of an oblate spheroid, a figure pretty much resembling the shape of an orange.
It has been demonstrated by admeasurement that the earth is flatted at the poles and
raised at the equator. This was first conjectured by Sir Isaac Newton, and afterwards
confirmed by M. Cassini and others, who measured several degrees of latitude at the
equator and near the north pole, and found that the difference perfectly justified Sir
Isaac Newton’s conjecture, and consequently confirmed the Mosaic account. The result
of the experiments instituted to determine this point, proved that the diameter of the
earth at the equator is greater by more than twenty-three and a half miles than it is at the
poles, allowing the polar diameter to be 1/334th part shorter than the equatorial,
according to the recent admeasurements of several degrees of latitude made by Messrs.
Mechain and Delambre - L’Histoire des Mathem. par M. de la Lande, tom. iv., part v., liv.
6.
And God saw that it was good - This is the judgment which God pronounced on
his own works. They were beautiful and perfect in their kind, for such is the import of
the word ‫טוב‬ tob. They were in weight and measure perfect and entire, lacking nothing.
But the reader will think it strange that this approbation should be expressed once on
the first, fourth, fifth, and sixth days; twice on the third, and not at all on the second! I
suppose that the words, And God saw that it was good, have been either lost from the
conclusion of the eighth verse, or that the clause in the tenth verse originally belonged to
the eighth. It appears, from the Septuagint translation, that the words in question
existed originally at the close of the eighth verse, in the copies which they used; for in
that version we still find, Και ειδεν ᆇ Θεος ᆇτι καλον· And God saw that it was good. This
reading, however, is not acknowledged by any of Kennicott’s or De Rossi’s MSS., nor by
any of the other versions. If the account of the second day stood originally as it does
now, no satisfactory reason can be given for the omission of this expression of the Divine
approbation of the work wrought by his wisdom and power on that day.
GILL, "And God called the dry land earth,.... The whole chaos, that was a turbid
fluid, a mixture of earth and water, a rude unformed mass of matter, was called earth
before; but now that part of the terraqueous globe, which was separated from the waters,
and they from it, is called "earth": which has its name in the Arabic language from its
being low and depressed; the lighter parts having been elevated, and moved upwards,
and formed the atmosphere; the grosser parts subsiding and falling downwards, made
the earth, which is low with respect to the firmament, which has its name in the same
language from its height (f), as before observed,
And the gathering together of the waters called he seas; for though there was
but one place into which they were collected, and which is the main ocean, with which all

219. other waters have a communication, and so are one; yet there are divers seas, as the Red
sea, the Mediterranean, Caspian, Baltic, &c. or which are denominated from the shores
they wash, as the German, British, &c. and even lakes and pools of water are called seas,
as the sea of Galilee and Tiberias, which was no other than the lake of Gennesaret,
And God saw that it was good; that these two should be separate, that the waters
should be in one place, and the dry land appear, and both have the names he gave them:
and this is here mentioned, because now the affair of the waters, the division aud
separation of them, were brought to an end, and to perfection: but because this phrase is
here used, and not at the mention of the second day, hence Picherellus, and some others,
have thought, that this work is to be ascribed to the second day, and not to the third, and
render the beginning of the ninth verse, and "God had said", or "after God had said, let
the waters under the heaven", &c. Gen_1:9.
LA GE, "Genesis 1:10. And God named the dry earth land, that Isaiah, earth-soil
in the narrower sense, and, therefore, it is that ‫ץ‬ ֶ‫ר‬ֶ‫א‬ has no article.—And the water
named he sea.—Properly seas, “or rather ocean; for it is more intensive than a
numerical plural, and is therefore (as in Psalm 46:4) construed in the singular.”
Delitzsch. On the other hand, Knobel would make prominent the singleness of the
seas in the rendering Weltmeer, or world-sea, main sea, or ocean.—And God saw.—
ow has the earth-formation come into visibility, though only in its first outlines, or,
according to the idea of the naturalist, as an insular appearing of the land-region as
it unfolds itself to view.—Let the earth bring forth (sprout, germinate).—It is
agreeable to the nature of the earth as well as of the plant that both are together as
soon as possible. The earth has an inclination to germinate, the plant to appear. In
truth, its origination is a new creative act. In the proper place is this creation
narrated; for the plant denotes the transformation of the elementary materials,
earth, air, water, which are now present in organic life through the inward working
of the light. It forms the preconditioning, as the sign or prognostic, of the awaiting
animal creation. And though it has need of the light too in some measure, it does not
yet want the sunshine in its first subordinate kinds. The question now arises,
whether we must distinguish three kinds of plants: ‫א‬ ֶ‫שׁ‬ֶ‫,דּ‬ tender green;‫ב‬ ֶ‫ֵשׁ‬‫ע‬, herbs
and shrubs, vegetables and grain (or the smaller growths generally), and ‫י‬ ִ‫ְר‬‫כּ‬ ‫ֵץ‬‫ע‬,
fruit-tree, according to the view of Knobel, embracing all trees inasmuch as they all
bear seed. Delitzsch, as well as Knobel, assumes this threefold division. Farther on,
however, we see that the more general kinds precede (lights, water-swarmings), in
order that they may become more or less specific. And here ‫א‬ ֶ‫שׁ‬ֶ‫דּ‬ may present the
universal conception of all vegetable life in its first germination (although including
along with it the more particular kinds of cryptogamic and the grasses), whilst in
this way the contrast between the herbaceous plants and the trees becomes more
prominent (Umbreit, Ewald). Thence, too, it appears that the sign of seed-formation,
of propagation, and of particular specification, is ascribed to all plants. Closer
observations in respect to single particulars may be found in Knobel. We must
protest against the exposition of Delitzsch: “Its origination follows in that way which
is unavoidable to a creative beginning, and which is to it essentially what is called a
generatio equivoca; that Isaiah, it does this in measure as the earth, through the
word of the divine power, receives strength to generate the vegetable germ.” The
sentence contains a contradiction in so far as the question still relates to the divine

220. word of power; but this divine word of power creates not merely a strength, or
force, in general;[F 10] each new and distinct creative word introduces a new and
distinct principle into the already existing sphere of nature—a principle which
hitherto had not been present in it. Along with the various species and seeds, along
with the determinate propagation of plants, each after its kind, there clearly and
distinctly comes in that conception of nature which is already announced in the
great contrasts. The words: upon the earth, ‫ץ‬ ְ‫ָאָר‬‫ה‬‫ַל־‬‫ע‬ ( Genesis 1:11), are interpreted
by Knobel of the high growth of the trees (over the earth) in contrast with the plants
which cleave closer to the ground, and which are regarded by Delitzsch as a present
clothing of the earth. With respect to Genesis 1:20, we may assume that Knobel is
right. In the contemplation of the young world, this majestic rising above the earth
in the case of the tall trees, as in that of the birds, has a peculiar excitement for the
imagination. With the plants there appears the first thing that is distinctly symbolic
of life as well as of their individual beauty.
11 Then God said, “Let the land produce
vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the
land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to
their various kinds.” And it was so.
BAR ES, "Gen_1:11
Let the land grow. - The plants are said to be products of the land, because they
spring from the dry ground, and a margin round it where the water is so shallow as to
permit the light and heat to reach the bottom. The land is said to grow or bring forth
plants; not because it is endowed with any inherent power to generate plants, but
because it is the element in which they are to take root, and from which they are to
spring forth.
Grass, herb yielding seed, fruit tree bearing fruit. - The plants now created are
divided into three classes - grass, herb, and tree. In the first, the seed is not noticed, as
not obvious to the eye; in the second, the seed is the striking characteristic; in the third,
the fruit, “in which is its seed,” in which the seed is enclosed, forms the distinguishing
mark. This division is simple and natural. It proceeds upon two concurrent marks - the
structure and the seed. In the first, the green leaf or blade is prominent; in the second,
the stalk; in the third, the woody texture. In the first, the seed is not conspicuous; in the
second, it is conspicuous; in the third, it is enclosed in a fruit which is conspicuous. This

221. division corresponds with certain classes in our present systems of botany. But it is
much less complex than any of them, and is founded upon obvious characteristics. The
plants that are on the margin of these great divisions may be arranged conveniently
enough under one or another of them, according to their several orders or species.
After its kind. - This phrase intimates that like produces like, and therefore that the
“kinds” or species are fixed, and do not run into one another. In this little phrase the
theory of one species being developed from another is denied.
CLARKE, "Let the earth bring forth grass - herb - fruit-tree, etc. - In these
general expressions all kinds of vegetable productions are included. Fruit-tree is not to
be understood here in the restricted sense in which the term is used among us; it
signifies all trees, not only those which bear fruit, which may be applied to the use of
men and cattle, but also those which had the power of propagating themselves by seeds,
etc. Now as God delights to manifest himself in the little as well as in the great, he has
shown his consummate wisdom in every part of the vegetable creation. Who can account
for, or comprehend, the structure of a single tree or plant? The roots, the stem, the
woody fibres, the bark, the rind, the air-vessels, the sap-vessels, the leaves, the flowers,
and the fruits, are so many mysteries. All the skill, wisdom, and power of men and angels
could not produce a single grain of wheat: A serious and reflecting mind can see the
grandeur of God, not only in the immense cedars on Lebanon, but also in the endlessly
varied forests that appear through the microscope in the mould of cheese, stale paste,
etc., etc.
GILL, "And God said, let the earth bring forth grass,.... Which had been
impregnated by the Spirit of God that moved upon it when a fluid; and though now
become dry land, it retained sufficient moisture in it, and was juicy and fit to produce
vegetables; and especially as it had the advantage of the expanded air about it, and the
warmth of the primordial light or fire; though all this would have been insufficient to
produce plants and trees at full growth, with their seed in them, and fruit on them,
without the interposition of almighty power: this seems to intend the germination or
budding out of the tender grass, and the numerous spires of it which cover the earth,
and by their verdure and greenness give it a delightful aspect, as well as afford food for
the creatures:
the herb yielding seed; this is distinct from the former; that denotes herbage in
general, which grows up of itself without being sown or manured, and is the food of
beasts; this in particular, herbs and plants for the use of man, which yield a seed which
either falling from it sows itself again, or is taken from it and sown on purpose to
reproduce it, being useful or delightful:
and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind; as apples, pears, plums, apricots,
nectars, peaches, oranges, lemons, &c,
whose seed is in itself upon the earth; each of which produce a seed according to
the nature of them, which being sown produce the like, and so there is a continuance of
them upon the earth:
and it was so; as God commanded it should, as appears from the following verse.

222. JAMISO , "let the earth bring forth — The bare soil was clothed with verdure,
and it is noticeable that the trees, plants, and grasses - the three great divisions of the
vegetable kingdom here mentioned - were not called into existence in the same way as
the light and the air; they were made to grow, and they grew as they do still out of the
ground - not, however, by the slow process of vegetation, but through the divine power,
without rain, dew, or any process of labor - sprouting up and flourishing in a single day.
CALVI , "11.Let the earth bring forth grass Hitherto the earth was naked and
barren, now the Lord fructifies it by his word. For though it was already destined to
bring forth fruit, yet till new virtue proceeded from the mouth of God, it must
remain dry and empty. For neither was it naturally fit to produce anything, nor had
it a germinating principle from any other source, till the mouth of the Lord was
opened. For what David declares concerning the heavens, ought also to be extended
to the earth; that it was
‘made by the word of the Lord, and was adorned and furnished by the breath of his
mouth,’ (Psalms 33:6.)
Moreover, it did not happen fortuitously, that herbs and trees were created before
the sun and moon. We now see, indeed, that the earth is quickened by the sun to
cause it to bring forth its fruits; nor was God ignorant of this law of nature, which
he has since ordained: but in order that we might learn to refer all things to him he
did not then make use of the sun or moon. (66) He permits us to perceive the efficacy
which he infuses into them, so far as he uses their instrumentality; but because we
are wont to regard as part of their nature properties which they derive elsewhere, it
was necessary that the vigor which they now seem to impart to the earth should be
manifest before they were created. We acknowledge, it is true, in words, that the
First Cause is self-sufficient, and that intermediate and secondary causes have only
what they borrow from this First Cause; but, in reality, we picture God to ourselves
as poor or imperfect, unless he is assisted by second causes. How few, indeed, are
there who ascend higher than the sun when they treat of the fecundity of the earth?
What therefore we declare God to have done designedly, was indispensably
necessary; that we may learn from the order of the creation itself, that God acts
through the creatures, not as if he needed external help, but because it was his
pleasure. When he says, ‘Let the earth bring forth the herb which may produce
seed, the tree whose seed is in itself,’ he signifies not only that herbs and trees were
then created, but that, at the same time, both were endued with the power of
propagation, in order that their several species might be perpetuated. Since,
therefore, we daily see the earth pouring forth to us such riches from its lap, since
we see the herbs producing seed, and this seed received and cherished in the bosom
of the earth till it springs forth, and since we see trees shooting from other trees; all
this flows from the same Word. If therefore we inquire, how it happens that the
earth is fruitful, that the germ is produced from the seed, that fruits come to
maturity, and their various kinds are annually reproduced; no other cause will be
found, but that God has once spoken, that is, has issued his eternal decree; and that
the earth, and all things proceeding from it, yield obedience to the command of God,
which they always hear.

223. BE SO , "Genesis 1:11-12. Let the earth bring forth grass — Here we rise to
organized and vegetative bodies. Thus, before God formed any living creature to
abide upon the earth, he wisely provided for its sustenance. The herb yielding, seed,
whose seed is in itself; that is, in some part of itself: either in the root, or branch, or
bud, or fruit; which is sufficient in itself for the propagation of its kind, from
generation to generation, as long as the world shall endure, without any new
creation. How astonishing the wisdom and power that could effect this! O God! how
wonderful art thou in counsel, and how excellent in working! God saw that it was
good — “This clause is so often added,” says Pool, “to show that all the disorders,
evil, and hurtful qualities that are now in the creatures, are not to be imputed to
God, who made all of them good, but to man’s sin, which hath corrupted their
nature and perverted their use.”
COKE, "Genesis 1:11. And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, &c.— The
elements being formed, the sea collected to its proper place, and the surface of the
earth appearing, the next act of Divine Power was to clothe that surface with the
beautiful furniture which we now behold upon it. Accordingly he gave his almighty
fiat; and the grass, that which springs up annually without sowing; the herbs, all
plants, corn, &c. which are sown; and the trees, in their lovely verdure, and
amazing variety, were produced.
The seeds, or first principles of all the vegetables, were very probably formed with
the first chaotic atoms or principles of all things; and we must believe that they
arose to absolute maturity and perfection, by the immediate interposition of the
Divine Power: nor can it fail to inspire us with the highest idea of the Supreme
Mind, when we reflect on the infinite variety, beauty, and regularity of this part of
the creation, every individual herb and flower of which must necessarily have been
planned and formed by his wisdom, before it was brought to being and perfection.
Whose seed is in itself— The learned Michaelis observes, that the Syriac version has
it, whose plant is in itself; which is strictly philosophical; as the best naturalists have
incontestibly proved that the seeds of plants contain the perfect draught, in
miniature—all the parts and members of the mature and complete plant. And thus
it is also in the animal creation. And as no plants can be produced without seed, we
here see, by God's wisdom, the origin of all the plants, &c. upon the earth; which
from the first have been continued, by means of this original provision of seed. But,
as Abarbanel observes, the production of plants, in the beginning, differed from
their production ever since, in these two things: 1st, That they have sprung ever
since, out of their seed, either sown by us, or falling from them: whereas, in the
beginning, they were brought out of the earth, with their seed in them, to propagate
them ever after. 2nd, That they need now, as they have ever done since the first
creation, the influence of the sun to make them germinate. But then they sprung
forth, in perfection, by the immediate power of God, before there was any sun.
Hence we may observe, that God must have the glory of all the benefit we receive, as

224. indeed from every thing, so particularly from the products of the earth. And if we
have through grace an interest in him who is the Fountain, we may rejoice in him,
when the streams are dried up, and the fig-tree doth not blossom.
ELLICOTT, "(11) Let the earth bring forth grass.—This is the second creative act.
The first was the calling of matter into existence, which, by the operation of
mechanical and chemical laws, imposed upon it by the Creator, was arranged and
digested into a cosmos, that is, an orderly and harmonious whole. These laws are
now and ever in perpetual activity, but no secondary or derived agency can either
add one atom to the world-mass or diminish aught from it. The second creative act
was the introduction of life, first vegetable, and then animal; and for this nothing
less than an Almighty power would suffice. Three stages of it are enumerated. The
first is deshe, not “grass,” but a mere greenness, without visible seed or stalk, such
as to this day may be seen upon the surface of rocks, and which, when examined by
the microscope, is found to consist of a growth of plants of a minute and mean type.
But all endogenous plants belong to this class, and are but the development of this
primary greenness. Far higher in the scale are the seed-bearing plants which follow,
among which the most important are the cerealia; while in the third class,
vegetation reaches its highest development in the tree with woody stem, and the seed
enclosed in an edible covering. Geologists inform us that cryptogamous plants,
which were the higher forms of the first class, prevailed almost exclusively till the
end of the carbonaceous period; but even independently of this evidence we could
scarcely suppose that fruit-trees came into existence before the sun shone upon the
earth; while the cerealia are found only in surface deposits in connection with
vestiges of man. Vegetation, therefore, did not reach its perfection until the sixth
day, when animals were created which needed these seeds and fruits for their food.
But so far from there being anything in the creative record to require us to believe
that the development of vegetation was not gradual, it is absolutely described as
being so; and with that first streak of green God gave also the law of vegetation, and
under His fostering hand all in due time came to pass which that first bestowal of
vegetable life contained. It is the constant rule of Holy Scripture to include in a
narrative the ultimate as well as the immediate results of an act; and moreover, in
the record of these creative days we are told what on each day was new, while the
continuance of all that preceded is understood. The dry land called into existence on
the third day was not dry enough to be the abode of terrestrial animals till the sixth
day, and not till then would it bear such vegetation as requires a dry soil; and the
evidence of geology shows that the atmosphere, created on the second day. was not
sufficiently free from carbonic acid and other vapours to be fit for animals to
breathe, until long ages of rank vegetation had changed these gases into coal. When,
then, on the third day, “God said, Let the earth bring forth grass . . . herb yielding
seed . . . tree.” He gave the perfect command, but the complete fulfilment of that
command would be gradual, as the state of the earth and the necessities of the living
creatures brought forth upon it required. For in God’s work there is always a
fitness, and nothing with Him is hurried or premature.
COFFMA , "Verse 11
"And God said, Let the earth put forth grass, herbs yielding seed, and fruit-trees

225. bearing fruit after their kind, wherein is the seed thereof, upon the earth; and it was
so. And the earth brought forth grass, herbs, yielding seed after their kind, and
trees bearing fruit, wherein is the seed thereof, after their kind; and God saw that it
was good. And there was evening and there was morning, a third day."
It is the entire kingdom of plant life, or vegetation, that appeared on the third day,
not simultaneously with the divisions of the seas and dry land, but in a separate
creative act.
"Yielding seed ... after their kind ..." Here is the law that like produces like. This
eternal law of God regarding life yielding seed "after their kind" has never been
repealed. The mutations that men are able to induce, or that infrequently appear of
their own accord, are overwhelmingly inclined to be harmful and not helpful,
frustrating completely the theories of evolution which are totally inadequate as an
explanation of various species of either plants or animals.
"And God saw that it was good ..." This statement occurs seven times in this
dignified, compact narrative. All of God's creative actions were well-pleasing to
their Creator; and God recognized them as perfect and entire. The completeness of
these actions is also inherent in such a statement as this.
PETT, "Verses 11-13
‘And God said, “Let the earth put forth vegetation, herb yielding seed, and fruit tree
bearing fruit in which is its seed, each according to its kind upon the earth.” And it
was so. And the earth brought forth vegetation, herb yielding seed according to its
kind, and tree bearing fruit in which is its seed, each according to its kind. And God
saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning the third day.’
Again God commands and then what He commands takes place. ow God provides
the sustenance that animals and man will require. otice the stress on the diversity
of what He produces. There is to be plenty of choice. When we enjoy our varied
diets we need to be grateful for the way in which He made provision for us.
Furthermore the sustenance is self-sustaining. The world is self-propagating. The
verb ‘brought forth’ indicates that what comes forth is already an essential part of
what God has already created. As far as the writer is concerned the earth produces
it through the activity of God. This is not a new creation, but the outworking of
what is already intrinsically there in God’s first creation. This is seen by some as
indicating the process of evolution, but again it must be noted that if this is so it was
at God’s command. There is no place here for a blind process, it was specifically a
process taking place under God’s designing hand. We may read what we like into it.
We may fit in our pet theories. But behind all is God.
There is no suggestion that vegetation is ‘created’. It comes forth from the earth by
natural process under the hand of God. It is a part of the first three days,
preparation for the introduction of life. Unlike the Canaanites, who saw vegetation
in terms of dying and rising again, the Israelite saw it as part of a continual process
with its idiosyncrasies of growth and adaptation and production of further growth

226. as being controlled by the hand of God.
We are not to see here ‘forced growth’. Time is given for the vegetation to spring
forth and grow, producing after their kinds. The picture is of steady progress from
wonderful beginnings.
So after three ‘days’ the world has been made ready for its essential function, the
production of life. From the first ‘day’ there have been periods of darkness and
light, but the very fact that controllers are needed demonstrate that they did not
originally appear in the controlled way necessary for man’s full benefit. If ‘days’
were ‘normal’ at this stage there would be no need for a controller. Land has risen
from the sea, and atmosphere has been instated. There is water above as well as
water below, an essential for the propagation of plant life. The plants have been
brought forth by the earth, and are reproducing themselves on the earth. All has
been prepared. ow we move into the second phase.
12 The land produced vegetation: plants bearing
seed according to their kinds and trees bearing
fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And
God saw that it was good.
BAR ES, "Gen_1:12
Here the fulfillment of the divine command is detailed, after being summed up in the
words “it was so,” at the close of the previous verse. This seems to arise from the nature
of growth, which has a commencement, indeed, but goes on without ceasing in a
progressive development. It appears from the text that the full plants, and not the seeds,
germs, or roots, were created. The land sent forth grass, herb, tree, each in its fully
developed form. This was absolutely necessary, if man and the land animals were to be
sustained by grasses, seeds, and fruits.
Thus, the land begins to assume the form of beauty and fertility. Its bare and rough
soil is set with the germs of an incipient verdure. It has already ceased to be “a waste.”
And now, at the end of this third day, let us pause to review the natural order in which
everything has been thus far done. It was necessary to produce light in the first place,
because without this potent element water could not pass into vapor, and rise on the
wings of the buoyant air into the region above the expanse. The atmosphere must in the
next place be reduced to order, and charged with its treasures of vapor, before the plants

227. could commence the process of growth, even though stimulated by the influence of light
and heat. Again, the waters must be withdrawn from a portion of the solid surface before
the plants could be placed in the ground, so as to have the full benefit of the light, air,
and vapor in enabling them to draw from the soil the sap by which they are to be
nourished. When all these conditions are fulfilled, then the plants themselves are called
into existence, and the first cycle of the new creation is completed.
Could not the Eternal One have accomplished all this in one day? Doubtless, He
might. He might have effected it all in an instant of time. And He might have
compressed the growth and development of centuries into a moment. He might even by
possibility have constructed the stratifications of the earth’s crust with all their slips,
elevations, depressions, unconformities, and organic formations in a day. And, lastly, He
might have carried on to completion all the evolutions of universal nature that have
since taken place or will hereafter take place until the last hour has struck on the clock of
time. But what then? What purpose would have been served by all this speed? It is
obvious that the above and such like questions are not wisely put. The very nature of the
eternal shows the futility of such speculations. Is the commodity of time so scarce with
him that he must or should for any good reason sum up the course of a universe of
things in an infinitesimal portion of its duration? May we not, rather, must we not,
soberly conclude that there is a due proportion between the action and the time of the
action, the creation to be developed and the time of development. Both the beginning
and the process of this latest creation are to a nicety adjusted to the preexistent and
concurrent state of things. And the development of what is created not only displays a
mutual harmony and exact coincidence in the progress of all its other parts, but is at the
same time finely adapted to the constitution of man, and the natural, safe, and healthy
ratio of his physical and metaphysical movements.
CLARKE, "Whose seed was in itself - Which has the power of multiplying itself
by seeds, slips, roots, etc., ad infinitum; which contains in itself all the rudiments of the
future plant through its endless generations. This doctrine has been abundantly
confirmed by the most accurate observations of the best modern philosophers. The
astonishing power with which God has endued the vegetable creation to multiply its
different species, may be instanced in the seed of the elm. This tree produces one
thousand five hundred and eighty-four millions of seeds; and each of these seeds has the
power of producing the same number. How astonishing is this produce! At first one seed
is deposited in the earth; from this one a tree springs, which in the course of its
vegetative life produces one thousand five hundred and eighty-four millions of seeds.
This is the first generation. The second generation will amount to two trillions, five
hundred and nine thousand and fifty-six billions. The third generation will amount to
three thousand nine hundred and seventy-four quadrillions, three hundred and forty-
four thousand seven hundred and four trillions! And the fourth generation from these
would amount to six sextillions two hundred and ninety-five thousand three hundred
and sixty-two quintillions, eleven thousand one hundred and thirty-six quadrillions!
Sums too immense for the human mind to conceive; and, when we allow the most
confined space in which a tree can grow, it appears that the seeds of the third generation
from one elm would be many myriads of times more than sufficient to stock the whole
superfices of all the planets in the solar system! But plants multiply themselves by slips
as well as by seeds. Sir Kenelm Digby saw in 1660 a plant of barley, in the possession of
the fathers of the Christian doctrine at Paris, which contained 249 stalks springing from
one root or grain, and in which he counted upwards of 18,000 grains. See my

228. experiments on Tilling in the Methodist Magazine.
GILL, "And the earth brought forth grass,.... In great abundance at once; the hills
and vales were clothed with it, and so a rich provision was made the beasts and cattle of
the earth two or three days before they were created:
and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed
was in itself after his kind: wholesome and healthful herbs and plants, and delicious
fruit to be meat and food for man, ready prepared for him when created; see Gen_1:29
on this day, though after related, were made the garden of Eden, and all the trees in it,
pleasant for sight, and good for food; and particularly the tree of life, and the tree of
knowledge of good and evil,
and God saw that it was good; which he had now caused to spring forth, grass,
herbs, and fruit trees, which were good for men and beast, and this he foresaw would be
so; See Gill on Gen_1:4.
13 And there was evening, and there was
morning—the third day.
GILL, "And the evening and the morning were the third day. The space of
twenty four hours ran out, and were measured, either by the rotation of the body of light
and heat around the earth, or of the earth upon its axis: and this was according to
Capellus the twentieth day of April, and, according to Bishop Usher, the twenty fifth of
October; though those who suppose the world was created in autumn make the first day
to be the first of September, and so this must be the third of that month; the Jews are
divided about the season of the creation; some say Nisan or March, others Tisri or
September (g).
14 And God said, “Let there be lights in the vault

229. of the sky to separate the day from the night, and
let them serve as signs to mark sacred times, and
days and years,
BAR ES, " - VI. The Fourth Day
14. ‫מאור‬ mā'ôr, “a light, a luminary, a center of radiant light.”
‫מועה‬ mô‛ēd, “set time, season.”
Words beginning with a formative ‫מ‬ musually signify that in which the simple quality
resides or is realized. Hence, they often denote place.
17. ‫נתן‬ nāthan “give, hold out, show, stretch, hold out.” Latin: tendo, teneo; τείνω teinō.
The darkness has been removed from the face of the deep, its waters have been
distributed in due proportions above and below the expanse; the lower waters have
retired and given place to the emerging land, and the wasteness of the land thus exposed
to view has begun to be adorned with the living forms of a new vegetation. It only
remains to remove the “void” by peopling this now fair and fertile world with the animal
kingdom. For this purpose the Great Designer begins a new cycle of supernatural
operations.
Gen_1:14, Gen_1:15
Lights. - The work of the fourth day has much in common with that of the first day,
which, indeed it continues and completes. Both deal with light, and with dividing
between light and darkness, or day and night. “Let there be.” They agree also in choosing
the word “be,” to express the nature of the operation which is here performed. But the
fourth day advances on the first day. It brings into view the luminaries, the light
radiators, the source, while the first only indicated the stream. It contemplates the far
expanse, while the first regards only the near.
For signs and for seasons, and for days and years. - While the first day refers
only to the day and its twofold division, the fourth refers to signs, seasons, days, and
years. These lights are for “signs.” They are to serve as the great natural chronometer of
man, having its three units, - the day, the month, and the year - and marking the
divisions of time, not only for agricultural and social purposes, but also for meeting out
the eras of human history and the cycles of natural science. They are signs of place as
well as of time - topometers, if we may use the term. By them the mariner has learned to
mark the latitude and longitude of his ship, and the astronomer to determine with any
assignable degree of precision the place as well as the time of the planetary orbs of
heaven. The “seasons” are the natural seasons of the year, and the set times for civil and
sacred purposes which man has attached to special days and years in the revolution of
time.
Since the word “day” is a key to the explanation of the first day’s work, so is the word
“year” to the interpretation of that of the fourth. Since the cause of the distinction of day
and night is the diurnal rotation of the earth on its axis in conjunction with a fixed
source of light, which streamed in on the scene of creation as soon as the natural

230. hinderance was removed, so the vicissitudes of the year are owing, along with these two
conditions, to the annual revolution of the earth in its orbit round the sun, together with
the obliquity of the ecliptic. To the phenomena so occasioned are to be added incidental
variations arising from the revolution of the moon round the earth, and the small
modifications caused by the various other bodies of the solar system. All these celestial
phenomena come out from the artless simplicity of the sacred narrative as observable
facts on the fourth day of that new creation. From the beginning of the solar system the
earth must, from the nature of things, have revolved around the sun. But whether the
rate of velocity was ever changed, or the obliquity of the ecliptic was now commenced or
altered, we do not learn from this record.
CLARKE, "And God said, Let there be lights, etc. - One principal office of these
was to divide between day and night. When night is considered a state of comparative
darkness, how can lights divide or distinguish it? The answer is easy: The sun is the
monarch of the day, which is the state of light; the moon, of the night, the state of
darkness. The rays of the sun, falling on the atmosphere, are refracted and diffused over
the whole of that hemisphere of the earth immediately under his orb; while those rays of
that vast luminary which, because of the earth’s smallness in comparison of the sun, are
diffused on all sides beyond the earth, falling on the opaque disc of the moon, are
reflected back upon what may be called the lower hemisphere, or that part of the earth
which is opposite to the part which is illuminated by the sun: and as the earth completes
a revolution on its own axis in about twenty-four hours, consequently each hemisphere
has alternate day and night. But as the solar light reflected from the face of the moon is
computed to be 50,000 times less in intensity and effect than the light of the sun as it
comes directly from himself to our earth, (for light decreases in its intensity as the
distance it travels from the sun increases), therefore a sufficient distinction is made
between day and night, or light and darkness, notwithstanding each is ruled and
determined by one of these two great lights; the moon ruling the night, i.e., reflecting
from her own surface back on the earth the rays of light which she receives from the sun.
Thus both hemispheres are to a certain degree illuminated: the one, on which the sun
shines, completely so; this is day: the other, on which the sun’s light is reflected by the
moon, partially; this is night. It is true that both the planets and fixed stars afford a
considerable portion of light during the night, yet they cannot be said to rule or to
predominate by their light, because their rays arc quite lost in the superior splendor of
the moon’s light.
And let them be for signs - ‫לאתת‬ leothoth. Let them ever be considered as continual
tokens of God’s tender care for man, and as standing proofs of his continual miraculous
interference; for so the word ‫את‬ oth is often used. And is it not the almighty energy of
God that upholds them in being? The sun and moon also serve as signs of the different
changes which take place in the atmosphere, and which are so essential for all purposes
of agriculture, commerce, etc.
For seasons - ‫מועדים‬ moadim; For the determination of the times on which the sacred
festivals should be held. In this sense the word frequently occurs; and it was right that at
the very opening of his revelation God should inform man that there were certain
festivals which should be annually celebrated to his glory. Some think we should
understand the original word as signifying months, for which purpose we know the
moon essentially serves through all the revolutions of time.
For days - Both the hours of the day and night, as well as the different lengths of the
days and nights, are distinguished by the longer and shorter spaces of time the sun is

231. above or below the horizon.
And years - That is, those grand divisions of time by which all succession in the vast
lapse of duration is distinguished. This refers principally to a complete revolution of the
earth round the sun, which is accomplished in 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, and 48
seconds; for though the revolution is that of the earth, yet it cannot be determined but by
the heavenly bodies.
GILL, "And God said, let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven,.... In
the upper part of it, commonly called the starry heaven: some writers, both Jewish and
Christian, and even modern astronomers, understand this only of the appearance of
them, and not of the formation of them; they suppose they were made on the first day,
but did not appear or shine out so clearly and visibly as now on the fourth day: but it
seems rather, that the body of fire and light produced on the first day was now
distributed and formed into several luminous bodies of sun, moon, and stars, for these
were ‫,מארת‬ "from light"; lights produced from that light, or made out of it; or were
instruments of communicating and letting down that light upon the earth (h), which was
collected and put together in them, especially in the sun: and the uses of them wero
divide the day from the night; which is the peculiar use of the sun, which by its
appearance and continuance makes the day, and by withdrawing itself, or not appearing
for a certain time, makes the night; as the light by its circular motion did for the first
three days, or the diurnal motion of the earth on its axis, then and now:
and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days and years; for "signs"
of good and bad weather; for the times of ploughing, sowing, reaping, &c. and for the
"seasons" of summer and winter, spring and autumn; for "days" by a circular motion for
the space of twenty four hours; and for "years" by annual motion for the space of three
hundred sixty five days and odd hours. The Targum of Jonathan is,
and let them be for signs and the times of the feasts, and to reckon with them the
number of days, and, sanctify the beginnings of the months, and the beginnings of the
years, and the intercalations of months and years, the revolutions of the sun, and the
new moons, and cycles. And so Jarchi interprets "seasons" of the solemn festivals, that
would hereafter be commanded the children of Israel; but those uses were not for a
certain people, and for a certain time, but for all mankind, as long as the world should
stand.
HE RY, "This is the history of the fourth day's work, the creating of the sun, moon,
and stars, which are here accounted for, not as they are in themselves and in their own
nature, to satisfy the curious, but as they are in relation to this earth, to which they serve
as lights; and this is enough to furnish us with matter for praise and thanksgiving. Holy
Job mentions this as an instance of the glorious power of God, that by the Spirit he hath
garnished the heavens (Job_26:13); and here we have an account of that garniture
which is not only so much the beauty of the upper world, but so much the blessing of
this lower; for though heaven is high, yet has it respect to this earth, and therefore
should have respect from it. Of the creation of the lights of heaven we have an account,
I. In general, Gen_1:14, Gen_1:15, where we have 1. The command given concerning
them: Let there be lights in the firmament of heaven. God had said, Let there be light
(Gen_1:3), and there was light; but this was, as it were, a chaos of light, scattered and

232. confused: now it was collected and modelled, and made into several luminaries, and so
rendered both more glorious and more serviceable. God is the God of order, and not of
confusion; and, as he is light, so he is the Father and former of lights. Those lights were
to be in the firmament of heaven, that vast expanse which encloses the earth, and is
conspicuous to all; for no man, when he has lighted a candle, puts it under a bushel, but
on a candlestick (Luk_8:16), and a stately golden candlestick the firmament of heaven
is, from which these candles give light to all that are in the house. The firmament itself is
spoken of as having a brightness of its own (Dan_12:3), but this was not sufficient to
give light to the earth; and perhaps for this reason it is not expressly said of the second
day's work, in which the firmament was made, that it was good, because, till it was
adorned with these lights on the fourth day, it had not become serviceable to man. 2. The
use they were intended to be of to this earth. (1.) They must be for the distinction of
times, of day and night, summer and winter, which are interchanged by the motion of
the sun, whose rising makes day, his setting night, his approach towards our tropic
summer, his recess to the other winter: and thus, under the sun, there is a season to
every purpose, Ecc_3:1. (2.) They must be for the direction of actions. They are for signs
of the change of weather, that the husbandman may order his affairs with discretion,
foreseeing, by the face of the sky, when second causes have begun to work, whether it
will be fair or foul, Mat_16:2, Mat_16:3. They do also give light upon the earth, that we
may walk (Joh_11:9), and work (Joh_9:4), according as the duty of every day requires.
The lights of heaven do not shine for themselves, nor for the world of spirits above, who
need them not; but they shine for us, for our pleasure and advantage. Lord, what is man,
that he should be thus regarded! Psa_8:3, Psa_8:4. How ungrateful and inexcusable are
we, if, when God has set up these lights for us to work by, we sleep, or play, or trifle away
the time of business, and neglect the great work we were sent into the world about! The
lights of heaven are made to serve us, and they do it faithfully, and shine in their season,
without fail: but we are set as lights in this world to serve God; and do we in like manner
answer the end of our creation? No, we do not, our light does not shine before God as his
lights shine before us, Mat_5:14. We burn our Master's candles, but do not mind our
Master's work.
JAMISO , "Gen_1:14-19. Fourth Day.
let there be lights in the firmament — The atmosphere being completely
purified, the sun, moon, and stars were for the first time unveiled in all their glory in the
cloudless sky; and they are described as “in the firmament” which to the eye they appear
to be, though we know they are really at vast distances from it.
CALVI , "14.Let there be lights (67) Moses passes onwards to the fourth day, on
which the stars were made. God had before created the light, but he now institutes a
new order in nature, that the sun should be the dispenser of diurnal light, and the
moon and stars should shine by night. And He assigns them this office, to teach us
that all creatures are subject to his will, and execute what he enjoins upon them. For
Moses relates nothing else than that God ordained certain instruments to diffuse
through the earth, by reciprocal changes, that light which had been previously
created. The only difference is this, that the light was before dispersed, but now
proceeds from lucid bodies; which in serving this purpose, obey the command of
God.
To divide the day from the night He means the artificial day, which begins at the

233. rising of the sun and ends at its setting. For the natural day (which he mentions
above) includes in itself the night. Hence infer, that the interchange of days and
nights shall be continual: because the word of God, who determined that the days
should be distinct from the nights, directs the course of the sun to this end.
Let them be for signs It must be remembered, that Moses does not speak with
philosophical acuteness on occult mysteries, but relates those things which are
everywhere observed, even by the uncultivated, and which are in common use. A
twofold advantage is chiefly perceived from the course of the sun and moon; the one
is natural, the other applies to civil institutions. (68) Under the term nature, I also
comprise agriculture. For although sowing and reaping require human art and
industry; this, nevertheless, is natural, that the sun, by its nearer approach, warms
our earth, that he introduces the vernal season, that he is the cause of summer and
autumn. But that, for the sake of assisting their memory, men number among
themselves years and months; that of these, they form lustra and olympiads; that
they keep stated days; this I say, is peculiar to civil polity. Of each of these mention
is here made. I must, however, in a few words, state the reason why Moses calls
them signs; because certain inquisitive persons abuse this passages to give color to
their frivolous predictions: I call those men Chaldeans and fanatics, who divine
everything from the aspects of the stars. (69) Because Moses declares that the sun
and moon were appointed for signs, they think themselves entitled to elicit from
them anything they please. But confutation is easy: for they are called signs of
certain things, not signs to denote whatever is according to our fancy. What indeed
does Moses assert to be signified by them, except things belonging to the order of
nature? For the same God who here ordains signs testifies by Isaiah that he ‘will
dissipate the signs of the diviners,’ (Isaiah 44:25;) and forbids us to be ‘dismayed at
the signs of heaven,’ (Jeremiah 10:2.) But since it is manifest that Moses does not
depart from the ordinary custom of men, I desist from a longer discussion. The
word ‫מועדים‬ (moadim,) which they translate ‘certain times’, is variously understood
among the Hebrews: for it signifies both time and place, and also assemblies of
persons. The Rabbis commonly explain the passage as referring to their festivals.
But I extend it further to mean, in the first place, the opportunities of time, which in
French are called saisons, (seasons;) and then all fairs and forensic assemblies. (70)
Finally, Moses commemorates the unbounded goodness of God in causing the sun
and moon not only to enlighten us, but to afford us various other advantages for the
daily use of life. It remains that we, purely enjoying the multiplied bounties of God,
should learn not to profane such excellent gifts by our preposterous abuse of them.
In the meantime, let us admire this wonderful Artificer, who has so beautifully
arranged all things above and beneath, that they may respond to each other in most
harmonious concert.
BE SO , "Genesis 1:14-15. Let there be lights, &c. — God had said, Genesis 1:3,
Let there be light; but that was, as it were a chaos of light, scattered and confused:
now it was called and formed into several luminaries, and so rendered more
glorious, and more serviceable. Let them be for signs,
“An horologe machinery divine!”

234. to mark and distinguish periods of time, longer or shorter; epochas, ages, years,
months, weeks, days, hours, minutes. For seasons — By their motions and
influences, to produce and distinguish the different seasons of the year, mentioned
Genesis 8:22. To give light upon the earth — That man, and other creatures, might
perform their offices by its help, as the duty of each day required; as well as to call
forth the moisture and genial virtue of the earth, in order to the production of trees,
plants, fruits, and flowers, for the profit and pleasure of both man and beast.
COKE, "Genesis 1:14. And God said, Let there be lights— The Almighty now
proceeds to furnish the heaven, or expanse of air, after having furnished the earth;
and so to complete his inanimate creation. The light, by whatever means till now
sustained, was to be collected; or, at least, two great bodies were to be formed, as
instruments of the diffusal of it; as lamps, if I may so speak, hung up in the
firmament, to enlighten the earth by day and night. For the word translated lights,
‫מארת‬ meoroth, signifies luminaries, or instruments of conveying and diffusing light:
and consequently, on this interpretation, no objection can arise from the moon's
being an opaque body; since Moses says not, that it is a luminous one; any more
than a lamp or chandelier is luminous in itself, though it is the instrument of holding
or diffusing light.
ELLICOTT, "(14) Let there be lights (luminaries) in the firmament (or expanse) of
the heaven.—In Hebrew the word for light is ôr, and for luminary, ma-ôr, a light-
bearer. The light was created on the first day, and its concentration into great
centres must at once have commenced; but the great luminaries did not appear in
the open sky until the fourth day. With this begins the second triad of the creative
days. Up to this time there had been arrangement chiefly; heat and water had had
their periods of excessive activity, but with the introduction of vegetation there came
also the promise of things higher and nobler than mechanical laws. ow, this fourth
day seems to mark two things: first, the surface of the earth has become so cool as to
need heat given it from without and secondly, there was now a long pause in
creation. o new law in it is promulgated, no new factor introduced; only the
atmosphere grows clearer, the earth more dry; vegetation does its part in absorbing
gases; and day by day the sun shines with more unclouded brilliancy, followed by
the mild radiance of the moon, and finally, by the faint gleamings of the stars. But
besides this, as the condensation of luminous matter into the sun was the last act in
the shaping of our solar system, it is quite possible that during this long fourth day
the sun finally assumed as nearly as possible its present dimensions and form. o
doubt it is still changing and slowly drawing nearer to that period when, God’s
seventh day of rest being over, the knell of this our creation will sound, and the sun,
with its attendant planets, and among them our earth, become what God shall then
will. But during this seventh day, in which we are now living, God works only in
maintaining laws already given, and no outburst either of creative or of destructive
energy can take place.
Let them be for signs—i.e., marks, means of knowing. This may be taken as
qualifying what follows, and would then mean, Let them be means for

235. distinguishing seasons, days, and years; but more probably it refers to the signs of
the zodiac, which anciently played so important a part, not merely in astronomy,
but in matters of daily life.
Seasons.— ot spring, summer, and the like, but regularly recurring periods, like
the three great festivals of the Jews. In old time men depended, both in agriculture,
navigation, and daily life, upon their own observation of the setting and rising of the
constellations. This work is now done for us by others, and put into a convenient
form in almanacks; but equally now as of old, days, years, and seasons depend upon
the motion of the heavenly orbs.
COFFMA , "THE FOURTH DAY
"And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day
from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days and years:
and let them be for lights in the firmament of heaven to give light upon the earth:
and it was so. And God made the two great lights: the greater light to rule the day,
and the lesser light to rule the night: He made the stars also. And God set them in
the firmament of heaven to give light upon the earth, and to rule over the day and
over the night, and to divide the light from darkness: and God saw that it was good.
And there was evening and there was morning, a fourth day."
The heavens were created on Day 1, and this means that the sun, moon and stars
were already created when this fourth day began. Thus, there is a recapitulation in
Day 4 regarding the making of the sun, moon, and stars, the creation of Day 4 being
the placement of them. This is a most enlightening consideration, as we shall point
out in a moment. The treatment of these days as chronologically in sequence
requires this understanding. Some scholars think they have the solution to the
meaning of those evening and morning days in the application of them to the
successive tableaux or visions by which they were revealed to the author of Genesis,
instead of accepting them as a chronological blueprint of successive events in
creation, but there are grave difficulties in accepting such a viewpoint.
The more reasonable interpretation, it appears to us, is that of understanding this
Day 4 as a record of God's positioning celestial bodies already created on Day 1 in
such a manner as to make possible the creation and sustenance of human life on
earth. That such a special act of this nature is meant appears from the declaration in
Genesis 1:17 that "God set them in the firmament of heaven to give light upon the
earth." ote that it definitely is OT said that God made them in this statement of
their utility, but that He SET them, or PLACED them. The importance of this is not
offset by the fact that it is also declared here specifically that God made the sun, the
moon, and the stars. This is partial recapitulation of what was revealed in Day 1,
but that part must be considered parenthetical in meaning.
Based upon what the holy text says, the creative act of Day 4 was the positioning of
our solar system by Divine fiat in such a manner as to provide the environment for
humanity. Who could know how God did such a thing? That He did indeed do it is

236. evident in the results. Where else in the billions of galaxies all around us in space is
there another planet of suitable size, placed at suitable distance from its mother star,
inclined at exactly the proper angle upon the plane of its orbit, possessing precisely
the kind of satellite needed, as in the case of our moon, possessing the necessary
water supply, the proper atmosphere with its delicately-balanced percentages of the
component elements, performing continually the diurnal revolutions upon its own
axis to give succession of day and night, and constantly moving in the annual
revolutions around the sun in the plane of its own orbit, providing the seasons and
marking the years? If this exceedingly complex and precise placement of the earth
was not a special act of God, why is it, as far as can be determined, absolutely
unique? Significantly, such things as signs, day and night, seasons, and years are
categorically mentioned as the result of creation on Day 4. Therefore, we identify the
placement that made all such things possible as the creative accomplishment of this
day.
Of course, this is precisely the point in the sacred account that, "The average
modern man parts company with Genesis."[8] He thinks it is absurd that the sun,
moon, and stars came into being after the earth. And, the normal conservative
answer that the sun, moon, and stars had been there all the time, obscured by the
primeval mists, and that they were made visible by the creative actions of Day 4 is
purely speculative and unprovable, such explanations being considered implausible
by skeptics. As is always the case, skepticism and unbelief are due to ignorance. The
holy record does not teach that the sun, moon, and stars were created on Day 4, but
that they were SET, or PLACED, so as to achieve the necessary environment upon
the earth. If God did not indeed do this, then who did? Only a fool could deny that it
was done! The sacred account before us is the only intelligent answer as to the
reason for our earth's existence as it is.
In the record of this day, there appears an impassable gulf separating Biblical truth
from the pagan superstitions and beliefs of ancient times. In those days, men
worshipped the sun, moon, and stars. "In pagan thought the divine stars controlled
human destiny."[9] But in this Biblical account, the celestial bodies do not control
men, they serve men. The earth, not the galaxies, appears here as the object of God's
special care and providence.
LA GE, " Genesis 1:14-19. Fourth Creative Day. Beginning of the second triad.—
The preconditions of the now expectant animal and human life, are the lights of
heaven, the stars, or heavenly bodies, partly as physical quickening powers, and
partly as signs of the division of time for the human culture-world. It is theirs, in the
first place, to make the distinction between day and night, between light and
darkness, and to rule over the day and night—to make that great contrast upon
which the human developments, as well as the animal nature-life, are essentially
conditioned, such as sleep, waking, generation, diversities in the animal world—
animals of the day and animals of the night, etc. It agrees well with the text, that
again, whilst it makes a more special mention of the ordinance of the heavenly
bodies, it gives the chief prominence to their spiritual or humane appointment: let
them be for signs and for festivals, and for days, and for years. The question arises

237. here, whether these appointments are to be taken as four (Luther, Calvin, Delitzsch,
Knobel); or that three are meant: namely, for signs of times, for days, and for years
(Rosenmüller, Eichhorn, De Wette, Baumgarten); or only two: for signs, for times,
including in the latter both days and years (Schumann, Maurer). For the first view,
indeed, there speaks the simple series of the appointments, but there Isaiah, too, the
consideration that the spiritual (or ecclesiastical) appointments of the heavenly
bodies are not exhausted in the chronological. The sign ‫אוֹת‬ has oftentimes in the Old
Testament a religious significance. Thus the rainbow is established for the sign (‫)אוֹת‬
of the covenant between Jehovah and oah, together with his sons ( Genesis 9:12).
Later, Abraham receives in the starry heaven a sign of the divine promise. But when
it is said ( Jeremiah 10:2): Ye must not be afraid of the signs of heaven, there is not
reprobated therein the meaning of the signs of heaven in their right significance, but
only the heathenish misconception of them. The primitive religion was throughout
symbolic; it was a contemplation of the invisible deity through symbolic signs, and
the most universal of them were sun, moon, and stars. It was thus that the primitive
symbolic religion became heathenish; the religious symbolic degenerated into an
irreligious mythical; the glory of God was suffered to pass away in the form of
transitory signs; it became identified with them, whilst men utterly lost the
consciousness of the difference. The true representatives of the primitive religion on
its light-side held fast this consciousness, as in the example of Melchizedek; but they
reverenced God as such under the name El Elion (God Most High). It is an
improper inference when Knobel here would refer this to the unusual phenomena of
the heaven, such as the darkening or eclipse of the sun and moon, the red aspect of
the latter (in an eclipse), the comets, the fiery appearances, etc. Moreover, we cannot
find indicated here, as Delitzsch does, an astrological importance of the heavenly
bodies, on which he remarks: “This ancient universally accepted influence is
undeniable, a thing not to be called in question in itself considered, but only in its
extent.” The question refers to the signs of the theocratic belief, such as are
celebrated Psalm 8. and Psalm 19, from which the culture-signs of agriculture,
navigation, and travel, must not be excluded. Thence, by right consequence, must be
added the festival signs, ‫ים‬ִ‫ֲד‬‫ע‬‫.מוֹ‬ Moed, it is true, denotes, in general, an appointed
time, but it comes in close connection with the word Jehovah before the festival
seasons. The significant time-sections of the Israelites were, moreover, religious
sabbaths, new moons ( Psalm 104:19), and yearly festivals which were likewise
regulated by the moon. Upon the two religious appointments of the heavenly bodies
(signs of belief, signs of worship) follow the two ethical and humane: the
determination of the days and therewith of the days-works—the determination of
the years and therewith the regulation of life and its duration. Hereupon follows the
more common determination of the heavenly lights for the animal life in general.—
To give light upon the earth.—With the light of the sun there is also determined its
vital warmth. Thus the text speaks first of the appointment of the heavenly bodies
for the earth-world ( Genesis 1:14-15), and then of the creation of the luminaries in
their variety and distinct appointments, in which the stars form a special class,
Genesis 1:16. After this there is mention of their location and their efficacy; their
place is the firmament; their primary operation is to give light; next follows their
government, that Isaiah, that peculiar determination of the day and night that is
necessary for the preservation of life. The third thing is the division between light

238. and darkness, the instituting of the vicissitude of day and night. For here must the
dividing of light from darkness denote something quite different from that of
Genesis 1:4; it is not the division of the luminous and the shadowy, but of the day-
light and the night-shadow themselves. But now arises the question: How comes it
that the first mention of the creation of the heavenly bodies is on the fourth day? It
follows from the fundamental cosmical laws that the earth, before the sun, was not
prepared for bringing forth the plants. It is saying too little to affirm that this place
must only be understood phenomenally, or that the earlier created heavenly bodies
make their first appearance on the fourth day along with the clearing-up of the
atmosphere. But, on the other hand, surely, it is saying too much, when we assume
that the formation of the starry world, or even of our own solar and planetary
system, had its beginning in the fourth creative period. This representation is
inorganic, abnormal. It is just as little supported by any sound cosmogony as
demanded by the scriptural text. As little as the text requires that in general the first
light of the universe should have its origination cotemporaneous with the light out of
the thohu vabhohu of the earth, just as little does the place before us demand that
we should date the absolutely first formation of the heavenly bodies from the fourth
creative day. This, however, agrees well with our text, that both the appearing of the
starry world, and the development and operation of the solar system, were first
made ready for the earth on that same day in which the earth became ready for the
sun. On the fourth creative day, therefore, there is completed the cosmical
regulation of the world for the earth, and of the earth for the world. See more under
the Theological and Ethical.
ISBET, "SU A D MOO
‘And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day
from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years.’
Genesis 1:14
There are few words much oftener in our mouths than that short but most
important word, ‘Time.’ It is the long measure of our labour, expectation, and pain;
it is the scanty measure of our rest and joy. And yet, with all this frequent mention
of it, there are, perhaps, few things about which men really think less, few things
upon which they have less real settled thought.
I. Two remarkable characteristics make up the best account which we can give of
time. The one, how completely, except in its issue, it passes from us; the other, how
entirely, in that issue, it ever abides with us. We are the sum of all past time. It was
the measure of our opportunities, of our growth. Our past sins are still with us as
losses in the sum of our lives. Our past acts of self-denial, our struggles with
temptation, our prayers, our times of more earnest communion with God,—these
are with us still in the blessed work which the Holy Spirit has wrought within us.
II. Such thoughts should awaken in us: (1) deep humiliation for the past; (2)
thankfulness for the past mercies of God; (3) calm trust and increased earnestness
for the future.
Bishop S. Wilberforce.

239. Illustration
‘It is noticeable that while this chapter does not profess to be a scientific account of
creation, not only is creation represented as a gradual process, but the simpler living
forms are introduced first, and the more advanced afterwards, as the fossil remains
of plants and animals prove to have been the case. God has seen fit to appoint, in the
world of mind as well as of matter, great lights, and lesser lights, and least lights,
answering to the daylight, moonlight, and starlight of the heavens.’
PETT, "Verse 14-15
‘And God said, “Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to separate the
day from the night, and let them be for signs and for seasons, for days and years,
and let them be for lights in the firmament of the heavens to give light upon the
earth”. And it was so.’
From now on periods of light and darkness will be determined by the action of sun
and moon. o longer will darkness permanently threaten for it is controlled. It is
these lights which will now determine the length of days and years. To ancient man
his ideas of time were ruled by the heavenly lights. They were the signs that guided
his thoughts on the passage of time. From them he knew the seasons. Days and
months and years resulted from their activity. And it was they under God which
ensured that permanent, enveloping darkness did not prevail.
They were also the signs to men of God’s continued provision for them. While
vegetation has been able to grow without these cycles, it will be better for man that
these functions are systematised. o more definite statement could be made that
before this act days, years and seasons had not existed as we know them. But now
those seasons will be the guarantee of the means of existence, and later the rainbow
will be God’s sign of their permanence for man (Genesis 8:22; Genesis 9:12-17).
Furthermore these lights will give light to the inhabitants of earth. The sun will
enable them to go about their daily round. At night the moon will guide the hunter
and the shepherd. But the main occurrence and emphasis of the fourth day is that
the ‘lights’ are called on to establish the times and seasons. Time and provision is
systematised and guaranteed.
K&D 14-19, "The Fourth Day. - After the earth had been clothed with vegetation, and
fitted to be the abode of living beings, there were created on the fourth day the sun,
moon, and stars, heavenly bodies in which the elementary light was concentrated, in
order that its influence upon the earthly globe might be sufficiently modified and
regulated for living beings to exist and thrive beneath its rays, in the water, in the air,
and upon the dry land. At the creative word of God the bodies of light came into
existence in the firmament, as lamps. On ‫י‬ ִ‫ה‬ְ‫,י‬ the singular of the predicate before the
plural of the subject, in Gen_1:14; Gen_5:23; Gen_9:29, etc., vid., Gesenius, Heb. Gr. §
147. ‫ּת‬‫ר‬‫אוֹ‬ ְ‫,מ‬ bodies of light, light-bearers, then lamps. These bodies of light received a
threefold appointment: (1) They were “to divide between the day and the night,” of,
according to Gen_1:18, between the light and the darkness, in other words, to regulate
from that time forward the difference, which had existed ever since the creation of light,

240. between the night and the day. (2) They were to be (or serve: ‫יוּ‬ ָ‫ה‬ְ‫ו‬ after an imperative has
the force of a command) - (a) for signs (sc., for the earth), partly as portents of
extraordinary events (Mat_2:2; Luk_21:25) and divine judgments (Joe_2:30; Jer_10:2;
Mat_24:29), partly as showing the different quarters of the heavens, and as
prognosticating the changes in the weather; - (b) for seasons, or for fixed, definite times
(‫ים‬ ִ‫ד‬ ֲ‫ּוע‬‫מ‬, from ‫יעד‬ to fix, establish), - not for festal seasons merely, but “to regulate definite
points and periods of time, by virtue of their periodical influence upon agriculture,
navigation, and other human occupations, as well as upon the course of human, animal,
and vegetable life (e.g., the breeding time of animals, and the migrations of birds, Jer_
8:7, etc.); - (c) for days and years, i.e., for the division and calculation of days and years.
The grammatical construction will not allow the clause to be rendered as a Hendiadys,
viz., “as signs for definite times and for days and years,” or as signs both for the times
and also for days and years. (3) They were to serve as lamps upon the earth, i.e., to pour
out their light, which is indispensable to the growth and health of every creature. That
this, the primary object of the lights, should be mentioned last, is correctly explained by
Delitzsch: “From the astrological and chronological utility of the heavenly bodies, the
record ascends to their universal utility which arises from the necessity of light for the
growth and continuance of everything earthly.” This applies especially to the two great
lights which were created by God and placed in the firmament; the greater to rule the
day, the lesser to rule the night. “The great” and “the small” in correlative clauses are to
be understood as used comparatively (cf. Gesenius, §119, 1). That the sun and moon were
intended, was too obvious to need to be specially mentioned. It might appear strange,
however, that these lights should not receive names from God, like the works of the first
three days. This cannot be attributed to forgetfulness on the part of the author, as Tuch
supposes. As a rule, the names were given by God only to the greater sections into which
the universe was divided, and not to individual bodies (either plants or animals). The
man and the woman are the only exceptions (Gen_5:2). The sun and moon are called
great, not in comparison with the earth, but in contrast with the stars, according to the
amount of light which shines from them upon the earth and determines their rule over
the day and night; not so much with reference to the fact, that the stronger light of the
sun produces the daylight, and the weaker light of the moon illumines the night, as to
the influence which their light exerts by day and night upon all nature, both organic and
inorganic-an influence generally admitted, but by no means fully understood. In this
respect the sun and moon are the two great lights, the stars small bodies of light; the
former exerting great, the latter but little, influence upon the earth and its inhabitants.
This truth, which arises from the relative magnitude of the heavenly bodies, or rather
their apparent size as seen from the earth, is not affected by the fact that from the
standpoint of natural science many of the stars far surpass both sun and moon in
magnitude. Nor does the fact, that in our account, which was written for inhabitants of
the earth and for religious purposes, it is only the utility of the sun, moon, and stars to
the inhabitants of the earth that is mentioned, preclude the possibility of each by itself,
and all combined, fulfilling other purposes in the universe of God. And not only is our
record silent, but God Himself made no direct revelation to man on this subject; because
astronomy and physical science, generally, neither lead to godliness, nor promise peace
and salvation to the soul. Belief in the truth of this account as a divine revelation could
only be shaken, if the facts which science has discovered as indisputably true, with
regard to the number, size, and movements of the heavenly bodies, were irreconcilable
with the biblical account of the creation. But neither the innumerable host nor the
immeasurable size of many of the heavenly bodies, nor the almost infinite distance of the
fixed stars from our earth and the solar system, warrants any such assumption. Who can

241. set bounds to the divine omnipotence, and determine what and how much it can create
in a moment? The objection, that the creation of the innumerable and immeasurably
great and distant heavenly bodies in one day, is so disproportioned to the creation of this
one little globe in six days, as to be irreconcilable with our notions of divine omnipotence
and wisdom, does not affect the Bible, but shows that the account of the creation has
been misunderstood. We are not taught here that on one day, viz., the fourth, God
created all the heavenly bodies out of nothing, and in a perfect condition; on the
contrary, we are told that in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth, and on
the fourth day that He made the sun, the moon, and the stars (planets, comets, and fixed
stars) in the firmament, to be lights for the earth. According to these distinct words, the
primary material, not only of the earth, but also of the heaven and the heavenly bodies,
was created in the beginning. If, therefore, the heavenly bodies were first made or
created on the fourth day, as lights for the earth, in the firmament of heaven; the words
can have no other meaning than that their creation was completed on the fourth day,
just as the creative formation of our globe was finished on the third; that the creation of
the heavenly bodies therefore proceeded side by side, and probably by similar stages,
with that of the earth, so that the heaven with its stars was completed on the fourth day.
Is this representation of the work of creation, which follows in the simplest way from the
word of God, at variance with correct ideas of the omnipotence and wisdom of God?
Could not the Almighty create the innumerable host of heaven at the same time as the
earthly globe? Or would Omnipotence require more time for the creation of the moon,
the planets, and the sun, or of Orion, Sirius, the Pleiades, and other heavenly bodies
whose magnitude has not yet been ascertained, than for the creation of the earth itself?
Let us beware of measuring the works of Divine Omnipotence by the standard of human
power. The fact, that in our account the gradual formation of the heavenly bodies is not
described with the same minuteness as that of the earth; but that, after the general
statement in Gen_1:1 as to the creation of the heavens, all that is mentioned is their
completion on the fourth day, when for the first time they assumed, or were placed in,
such a position with regard to the earth as to influence its development; may be
explained on the simple ground that it was the intention of the sacred historian to
describe the work of creation from the standpoint of the globe: in other words, as it
would have appeared to an observer from the earth, if there had been one in existence at
the time. For only from such a standpoint could this work of God be made intelligible to
all men, uneducated as well as learned, and the account of it be made subservient to the
religious wants of all.
(Note: Most of the objections to the historical character of our account, which have
been founded upon the work of the fourth day, rest upon a misconception of the
proper point of view from which it should be studied. And, in addition to that, the
conjectures of astronomers as to the immeasurable distance of most of the fixed
stars, and the time which a ray of light would require to reach the earth, are accepted
as indisputable mathematical proof; whereas these approximative estimates of
distance rest upon the unsubstantiated supposition, that everything which has been
ascertained with regard to the nature and motion of light in our solar system, must
be equally true of the light of the fixed stars.)
SBC, "There are few words much oftener in our mouths than that short but most
important word, "Time." It is the long measure of our labour, expectation, and pain; it is
the scanty measure of our rest and joy. And yet, with all this frequent mention of it, there
are, perhaps, few things about which men really think less, few things upon which they
have less real settled thought.

242. I. Two remarkable characteristics make up the best account which we can give of time.
The one, how completely, except in its issue, it passes from us; the other, how entirely, in
that issue, it ever abides with us. We are the sum of all past time. It was the measure of
our opportunities, of our growth. Our past sins are still with us as losses in the sum of
our lives. Our past acts of self-denial, our struggles with temptation, our prayers, our
times of more earnest communion with God,—these are with us still in the blessed work
which the Holy Spirit has wrought within us.
II. Such thoughts should awaken in us: (1) deep humiliation for the past; (2)
thankfulness for the past mercies of God; (3) calm trust and increased earnestness for
the future.
S. Wilberforce, Sermons, p. 73.
BI 14-19, "Let there be lights in the firmament
The heavenly luminaries
I. THESE LIGHTS ARE ALL GOD’S SERVANTS.
II. THE MISTAKES MAN’S EYE MAKES IN JUDGING THE WORKS OF GOD. We
“limit the Holy One of Israel.” What a small world man’s eye would make of God’s
creation!
III. THE DEEPEST HUMILITY IS THE TRUEST WISDOM. The most difficult
discovery for man to make in the world is to find out his own littleness.
IV. UNCONSCIOUS BENEFITS ARE RENDERED BY ONE. PART OF CREATION TO
ANOTHER. Here are seen the wisdom, power, and goodness of the great Creator. Little
do these distant stars know what benefits they confer on our small world.
V. THE HIGH ESTIMATE WHICH GOD PUTS ON MAN. He ordains such glorious
worlds to serve Him.
VI. THE GREAT SIN OF IDOL WORSHIP. (J. P. Millar.)
The heavenly bodies
I. THE HEAVENLY BODIES WERE CALLED INTO EXISTENCE BY GOD.
1. Their magnitude.
2. Variety.
3. Splendour.
II. THE PURPOSES FOR WHICH THE HEAVENLY BODIES ARE DESIGNED.
1. They were to be for lights. They are unrivalled, should be highly prized, faithfully
used, carefully studied, and devotionally received. These lights were regnant.
(1) Their rule is authoritative.
(2) It is extensive.
(3) It is alternate.
(4) It is munificent.

243. (5) It is benevolent.
(6) It is welcome. A pattern for all monarchs.
2. They were made to divide the day from the night. Thus the heavenly bodies were
not only intended to give light, but also to indicate and regulate the time of man, that
he might be reminded of the mighty change, and rapid flight of life. But the
recurrence of day and night also proclaim the need of exertion and repose; hence
they call to work, as well as remind of the grave.
3. To be for signs, and for seasons, and for days and years. The moon by her four
quarters, which last each a little more than seven days, measures for us the weeks
and months. The sun, by his apparent path in the sky, measures our seasons and our
years, whilst by his daily rotation through the heavens he measures the days and the
hours; and this he does so correctly that the best watchmakers in Geneva regulate all
their watches by his place at noon; and from the most ancient times men have
measured from sun dials the regular movement of the shadow. It has been well said
that the progress of a people in civilization may be estimated by their regard for
time—their care in measuring and valuing it. Our time is a loan. We ought to use it as
faithful stewards.
III. A FEW DEDUCTIONS FROM THIS SUBJECT.
1. The greatness and majesty of God. How terrible must be the Creator of the sun.
How tranquil must be that Being who has given light to the moon. One glance into
the heavens is enough to overawe man with a sense of the Divine majesty.
2. The humility that should characterize the soul of mall. “When I consider the
heavens, the work of Thine hand,” etc. (J. S. Exell, M. A.)
Reflections on the sun
In the sun we have the most worthy emblem that the visible universe presents of Him,
who, with the word of His power, kindled up its glories, and with the strength of His
right hand established it in the heavens. And the analogies between the sun of nature
and the Sun of Righteousness are both striking and instructive.
1. In the opening scene of the fourth day we have a fine image of the advent of the
Redeemer of men. On that morning the sun burst forth in its unveiled glories,
irradiating the new-made earth, and revealing upon its face scenes of loveliness and
grandeur which could neither be seen nor known before. So arose the Sun of
Righteousness upon the world of mankind, an object as wonderful and as new in His
person, and character, and office, as the great orb of day when it first came forth to
run the circuit of the heavens—pouring a flood of light from above upon benighted
humanity, and opening up to them views of truth, happiness, and immortality, such
as the world had never known or heard before; and, like the solar light, while
revealing all else, remaining Himself a glorious mystery.
2. As the natural sun is the centre of the system of creation, so the Sun of
Righteousness is the vital centre of revealed truth and religion.
3. As the sun shines by his own light, so the Son of God poured the light of truth
upon men from the fountain of His own mind. The instructions He imparted were
neither derived from tradition nor borrowed from philosophy. He was a self-
luminous and Divine Orb, rising upon the darkness of the world, shedding new light,

244. and revealing new truths to bewildered humanity.
4. As in the pure sunbeam we have combined all the colours of the rainbow in their
due proportions, so in Christ we find all virtues and graces harmoniously blended in
one perfect character. In Him we behold every principle, every affection, every
impulse, in perfect equipoise.
5. As the sunlight, on whatever foulness or corruption it may fall, remains
uncontaminated, so the Son of Man, amid all the temptations, guilt, and depravity of
earth, continued pure and unspotted.
6. As the light of the sun is unlimited and inexhaustible, so also are the healing and
saving beams of the Sun of Righteousness.
7. As the sun’s law of gravitation extends over the whole solar system, so the law of
love, proceeding from the Sun of Righteousness, extends its authority over the whole
family of man. Gravitation exercises its dominion alike over the mightiest planet and
the minutest asteroid; so the Divine law of love, with equal hand, imposes its
obligations upon kings, and peasants, and beggars; its authority is no less binding in
courts and cabinets than in churches and families, its voice is to be heeded no less by
the diplomatist sent to foreign realms, than by the preacher who remains among his
flock at home. To all it speaks alike, in the name and in the words of its Divine
original, “Love one another, as I have loved you.” (H. W. Morris, D. D.)
The great time keeper
What are the benefits God intends to secure for us, by the arrangements here made? By
this means, He—
I. Compels men, as far as they can be compelled, to reckon their time, or number their
days aright.
II. Calls us often to a reckoning with ourselves under the most impressive influences.
III. Invites us to new purposes of future life.
IV. Teaches us, in the most impressive manner possible, the value of time.
V. Impresses upon us, as a truth of practical moment, that everything must be done in
its time.
VI. Reminds us both of our rapid transit here and immortality hereafter.
VII. Teaches us that there is a changeless empire of being, which theestablished round of
seasons and years, and the mechanical order of heaven itself suggests and confirms. (H.
Bushnell, D. D.)
Light
I. ITS SPEED! Have you any idea of it? The mind becomes confused when we try to
imagine it. For instance, whence, think you, came the bright rays which this very
morning lighted up your room with their dazzling brightness? Ah! they had travelled
very far before they reached you, even all the distance between the sun and the earth. If a
man could take the same journey, travelling at the rate of ninety-five miles a day, he
would take a million of days, or nearly three thousand years to do it. And yet, how long

245. do you think those bright rays have been in travelling this morning from the sun to your
window? Only eight minutes and thirteen seconds.
II. But if you wonder at the speed of light, what will you say when you think of its
ABUNDANCE? This is, if possible, still more wonderful. Who can even imagine the
immense and immeasurable torrents of light which from age to age have gushed forth
from the sun in every direction, constantly filling with their ceaseless waves the whole
extent of planetary space? I do not speak thoughtlessly when I tell you of the ceaseless
flow of these waves of light, for they gush forth from the sun by night as well as by day.
Some young people fancy that when it is night with us, it is then night in the universe;
but this is a childish fancy, for, on the contrary, there is perpetual day in the wide
universe of space.
III. ITS BRILLIANT COLOURS. The rays of light which come to us directly from the
sun, are, you know, of a dazzling white. If you shut carefully all the shutters in your
room, so as to make it perfectly dark, and if you allow a single ray of light to enter
through a small hole, you will see it mark on the opposite wall a beautiful circle of white
light. But do you know what would happen to this ray if you were to place before the hole
a prism of finely polished glass? When the great Newton tried this experiment for the
first time, he tells us that he started with joy. The sight that he saw, and that you would
see, would be this: The prism would decompose and divide the beautiful white ray into
seven rays, still more beautiful, of bright-coloured light, which would paint themselves
each separately on the wall, in the following order: violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow,
orange, red. These brilliant-coloured rays, of which each white ray is made up, are
reflected in various ways, according to the nature and composition of different bodies,
and thus they give their varied and manifold tints to all objects in nature. (Professor
Gaussen.)
The clock of time
It is beautiful to observe how the motions of the stars of heaven in their orbits are
represented by the flowers of earth in their opening and closing, in their blossoming and
fading. The clock of time has two faces: the one above, on which the hours are marked by
the rising and setting of the orbs of heaven; the other below, on which the hours are
marked by the blossoming and the fading, the opening and the closing of the flowers.
The one exactly corresponds with the other. The movements of the living creatures
depend upon the movements of the lifeless stars. The daisy follows with its golden eye
the path of the sun through the sky, opens its blossom when he rises, and closes it when
he sets. Thus should it be with our souls. There should be a similar harmony between
them and the motions of the heavenly bodies which God has set in the firmament for
signs to us. Our spiritual life should progress with their revolutions; should keep time
with the music of the spheres; our thoughts should be widened with the process of the
suns. This is the true astrology. And as the daisy follows the sun all day to the west with
its open eye, and acknowledges no other light that falls upon it—lamplight, moonlight, or
starlight—remaining closed under them all, except under the light of the sun; so should
we follow the Sun of Righteousness whithersoever He goeth, and say with the Psalmist,
“Whom have we in the heavens but Thee; and there is none upon the earth whom we
desire besides Thee.” (H. Macmillan, D. D.)

246. The clock of the universe
It was the will of God that man should be able to measure and reckon time, that he might
learn its value and regulate its employment of it. He therefore placed in the heavens a
magnificent and perfect clock, which tells the hours, the days, the weeks, the months, the
seasons, and the years—a clock which no one ever winds up, but which yet goes
constantly, and never goes wrong. The dial plate of this clock is the blue vault of heaven
over our heads—a vault spangled with stars at night, brilliant with light by day—a vault
whose edges, rounded like the edge of a watch, rest on the horizon of our mountains
here at Geneva, while far out at sea the whole great dial plate may be seen, the dome of
the sky seeming to rest on the wide circle of the ocean. And what, think you, are the
hands of this magnificent dial plate? God has placed on it two, the greater and the lesser.
Both are ever shining, both are ever moving. They are never either too early or too late.
The greater is the great light which rules the day, and which, while it seems to turn above
our heads from east to west across the celestial vault, rising each morning over the Alps,
and setting each evening over the Jura, seems to move at the same time on the great dial
plate of the heavens in a contrary direction, that is to say, from the west to the east, or
from the Jura towards the Alps, advancing every day the length of twice its own breadth.
And the lesser hand of the clock is the lesser light which rules the night, which
progresses also in the same direction with the sun, but twelve times faster, advancing
each day from twenty-four to twenty-rive times its own breadth, and thus turning round
the dial plate in a single month. Thus, for example, if you look this evening at the moon
as she sets behind the Jura, and if you carefully observe what stars are hidden behind
her disk, tomorrow you will see her again set behind the same mountain, but three-
quarters of an hour later, because she has in the meantime moved towards the east
twenty-four times her own breadth; and then she will cover stars much nearer the Alps,
so that twenty-four moons might be placed in the sky between the place that she will
occupy tomorrow and the one she occupies today. (Prof. Gaussen.)
No note of time in the dark
When the famous Baron de Trenck came out of his dark dungeon in Magdeburg, where
he could not distinguish night from day, and in which the King of Prussia had kept him
imprisoned for ten years, he imagined that he had been in it for a much shorter period,
because he had no means of marking how the time had passed, and he had seen no new
events, and had had even few thoughts: his astonishment was extreme when he was told
how many years had thus passed away like a painful dream. (Prof. Gaussen.)
Time should be valued
The savages of North America, after their fatiguing hunting parties, and warlike
expeditions, pass whole weeks and months in amusement and repose, without once
thinking that they are wasting or losing anything that is valuable. It has been well said
that the progress of a people in civilization may be estimated by their regard for time—
their care in measuring and valuing it. If that be true even of a half-savage people, how
much more must it be true of a Christian nation! Ah, how much ought a Christian to
value his time, if he means to be a faithful steward, since his hours belong not to himself,
but to his gracious Master, who has redeemed him at so great a price; and since he
knows that he must give an account of it at last. (Prof. Gaussen.)

247. The moon, an emblem of the Church
1. As the moon, though widely separated from the earth, is attached to it by the
invisible bonds of gravitation, and ordained to travel with it in its appointed course
round the sun—so the Church militant, though distinct from the world, is connected
with it by many ties, and appointed to pursue her pilgrimage along with it to eternity.
2. As the moon receives all her natural light from the sun, so the Church receives all
her spiritual light from the Sun of Righteousness.
3. As the moon has been appointed to reflect the light she receives upon the earth to
relieve her darkness, to guide the lone mariner on the deep, to lead the belated
traveller in his path, and to cheer the shepherd keeping watch over his flock by
night—so the Church has been ordained to reflect her heavenly light for the guidance
of benighted and bewildered humanity around her. The design of her establishment,
like that of the moon, is to give light upon the earth.
4. As the moon remains not stationary in the heavens over some favoured spot, but
according to the law of her creation, pursues her career around the globe to cheer
and enlighten its every habitable region—so the Church has been organized and
commanded to carry the light of the gospel into all the world, and preach the
unsearchable riches of Christ to every creature.
5. As the moon, while shining in her usual brightness, moves forward unnoticed, but
when under an eclipse has the gaze and remarks of half the earth’s population—so
the Church while walking in light and love, enlists but little of the world’s attention;
but let her honour pass under a cloud, or her purity be tarnished by the misconduct
of but a member, and the eyes of all are fixed upon her, and her failing repeated by
every tongue. Let the Israel of God take heed to their ways. (H. W. Morris, D. D.)
God calling the luminaries into existence
1. The call was omnipotent. Man could not have kindled the great lights of the
universe.
2. The call was wise. The idea of the midnight sky, as now beheld by us, could never
have originated in a finite mind. The thought was above the mental life of seraphs. It
was the outcome of an infinite intelligence. And nowhere throughout the external
universe do we see the wisdom of God as in the complicated arrangement, continual
motions, and yet easily working and harmony of the heavenly bodies. There is no
confusion. They need no readjustment.
3. The call was benevolent. The sun is one of the most kindly gifts of God to the
world; it makes the home of man a thing of beauty. Also the light of the moon is
welcome to multitudes who have to wend their way by land or sea, amid the stillness
of night, to some far-off destination.
4. The call was typal. The same Being who has placed so many lights in the heavens
can also suspend within the firmament of the soul the lights of truth, hope, and
immortality. (J. S. Exell, M. A.)

248. God has placed the lights above us
1. As ornaments of His throne.
2. To show forth His majesty.
3. That they may the more conveniently give their light to all parts of the world.
4. To manifest that light comes from heaven, from the Father of lights.
5. The heavens are most agreeable to the nature of these lights.
6. By their moving above the world at so great a distance, they help to discover the
vast circuit of the heavens. (J. S. Exell, M. A.)
The heavenly bodies
1. Not to honour them as gods.
2. To honour God in and by them (Psa_8:1; Timothy 6:16; Isa_6:2). (J. S. Exell, M.
A.)
The place and use of creatures are assigned unto them by God
1. That He may manifest His sovereignty.
2. That He may establish a settled order amongst the creatures.
3. Let all men abide in their sphere and calling.
(1) To testify their obedience to the will of God.
(2) As God knows what is best for us.
(3) As assured that God will prosper all who fulfil His purpose concerning them.
(J. S. Exell, M. A.)
The stars and the spiritual life
Not for secular purposes alone are the divisions of time marked out for us by the
heavenly bodies; they have a still higher and more important purpose to serve in
connection with our spiritual life.
I. The lights which God hath set in the firmament BREAK UP THE MONOTONY OF
LIFE. Life is not a continuous drudgery, a going on wearily in a perpetual straight line;
but a constant ending and beginning. We do not see all the road of life before us; the
bends of its clays and months and years hide the future from our view, and allure us on
with new hopes, until at last we come without fatigue to the end of the journey.
II. The lights which God hath set in the firmament DIVIDE OUR LIFE INTO
SEPARATE AND MANAGEABLE PORTIONS. Each day brings its own work, and its
own rest.
III. The lights which God hath set in the firmament ENABLE US TO REDEEM THE
TIME; to retrieve the misspent past by the right improvement of the present. Each day is
a miniature of the whole of life and of all the seasons of the year. Morning answers to

249. spring; midday to summer; afternoon to autumn; evening to winter. We are children in
the morning, with fresh feelings and hopes; grown-up men and women, with sober and
sad experiences, at noon; aged persons, with whom the possibilities of life are over, in
the afternoon and night.
IV. The lights which God hath set in the firmament ENABLE US TO SET OUT ON A
NEW COURSE FROM SOME MARKED AND MEMORABLE POINT. God is giving to
us, with every new horizon of life, a sense of recovered freedom, separating us from past
painful experiences, and enabling us to begin a new course of life on a higher plane. And
with this division of time by the orbs of heaven—this arrangement of days and months
and years, with their perpetually recurring new opportunities of living no more unto
ourselves but unto God,—coincide the nature and design of the blessed gospel, whose
unique peculiarity is, that it is the cancelling of debts that could never be paid, the
assurance that our relations to God are entirely changed, and that all old things are
passed away, and all things become new. It is this association that gives such importance
to anniversaries, birthdays, and new year’s days-seasons considered peculiarly
auspicious for commencing life afresh, and which are generally taken advantage of to
form new resolutions. (H. Macmillan, D. D.)
Lessons of the firmament
I. LET US LOOK AT THE SUN, AS AN EMBLEM OF GOD HIMSELF. The king of the
hosts of heaven, the centre of revolving orbs, the source of light and heat.
II. THE MOON, SHINNING WITH BORROWED LIGHT, MAY REPRESENT THE
CHURCH, which, like a city set on a hill, only reflects the light that falls on it. Out of
Zion, the perfection of beauty, God shines.
III. THE STARS MAY REPRESENT CONSPICUOUS CHARACTERS. The brightest star
and best is the Star of Bethlehem, which ushered in Christ.
The star of the East is the daystar which marks our bright, guiding light, Jesus Christ.
He is the centre of attraction to all. (J. B. Smith, D. D.)
The fourth day
The fourth day’s work is “lights set in heaven”: mighty work: more glorious far than the
“light” upon the first day. Then the light was undefined. Now lights are come; one with
warmth; one cold but shining: each defined; the one direct, the other reflex; but both to
rule and mightily affect, not the earth only, but even the wide waters: giving another
cheek, too, to darkness, not only taking from it day, but invading and conquering it by
the moon and stars in its own domain of night. And so after that the seas of lust are
bounded, and the fruits of righteousness begin to grow and bud, a sun, a mighty light is
kindled in our heaven,—Christ dwells there, God’s eternal word and wisdom,—no longer
undefined, but with mighty warmth and power, making the whole creation to bud and
spring heavenward: while as a handmaid, another light, of faith, grows bright within,—
our inward moon, truth received on testimony, the Church’s light; for as men say, Christ
is the sun, the Church the moon, so is faith our moon within to rule the night. Of these
two, the lesser light must have appeared the first; for each day grew and was measured
“from the evening to the morning”; just as faith, with borrowed light, in every soul still
precedes the direct beams of this light or Word within. Now both shine to pour down

250. light. Oft would darkness fall, if our moon of faith rose not to rule the night. Yet fair as
she is, she but reminds us of present night, making us sigh for the day star and the
perfect day. These lights are “for signs and for seasons and for years,” and “to rule over
the day and over the night also.” For “signs”—first, of what we are. We have thought this
earth is fixed: but sun and moon show that we are but wanderers here. We have
supposed ourselves the centre; that it is the sun that moves. The lights will teach us in
due time that he is steadfast: it is we who journey on. Again, these lights are “for a sign”
how we stand, and where we are; by our relative positions toward them showing us, if we
will learn, our real situation. For the moon is new and feeble, when, between us and the
sun, it trenches on his place, and sets at eventide. So is our faith: put in Christ’s place, it
must be weak: dark will be our night: we shall move on unillumined. Not so when in her
place, not in His, but over against Him, our moon of faith rises at even, as our Sun
withdraws Himself. Now she trenches not upon Him; therefore she is full of light,
making the midnight almost as the noon-day. Signs they are, too, to the man, when at
length he walks upon the earth,—the image of God, which after fruits and lights is
formed in us,—to guide him through the wastes within the creature, as he seeks to know
its lengths and breadths that he may subdue it all. The lights are “for seasons” also; to
give healthful alternations of cold and heat, and light and darkness. Sharp winters with
their frosts, chill and deadness in our affections, and the hours of darkness which recur
to dim our understandings, are not unmixed evil. Ceaseless summer would wear us out:
therefore the lights are “for seasons,” measuring out warmth and light as we can profit
by it. So faith wanes and waxes, and Christ is seen and hid, each change making the
creature learn its own dependence; forcing it to feel, that, though blessed, it is a creature,
all whose springs of life and joy are not its own. These lights, too, are “to rule over the
day and over the night.” To rule the creature, much more to rule such gifts as the day,
wrought by God Himself in it, as yet has been unknown. Even to bound the natural
darkness hitherto has seemed high attainment. Now we learn that the precious gifts,
which God vouchsafes, need ruling; an earnest this of that which comes more fully on
the sixth day. A sun “to rule the day” leads to the man “to have dominion,” set to rule,
not the day only, but every creature. It is no slight step, when God’s aim, hitherto
unknown, is learnt; that in His work this gift is for this, that for the other purpose; when
it is felt that the best gifts may be misused and wasted; that they need governing, and
may and must be ruled. (A. Jukes.)
The heavenly bodies emblematic of the spiritual
It is interesting to notice the many applications made in Scripture of the heavenly bodies
as emblems of the spiritual.
1. God is a Sun and Shield (Psa_84:11).
2. Christ is the Sun of Righteousness (Mal_4:2); the Light of the Joh_8:12); the
Morning Star (Rev_2:16); the dispeller of the darkness (2Sa_23:4).
3. The Church is fair as the moon (Son_6:10); clear as the Son_6:10): the moon
under her feet (Rev_12:1); crowned with stars; the saints are to shine as the stars
(Dan_12:3); with different glories (1Co_15:41); as the sun in his Jdg_5:31); as the
sun in the kingdom of their Father Mat_13:43).
4. Christ’s ministers are likened to stars (Rev_1:16-20).
5. Apostates are likened to wandering stars (Jud_1:13).

251. 6. It was a star that lighted the wise men (Mat_2:2).
7. At the coming crisis of earth’s history, all these heavenly orbs are to be shaken and
darkened for a season (Mar_13:25). (H. Bonar, D. D.)
Lights
I. THE LIGHTS OF ANGELS, OF MEN, AND OF ANIMALS. The angels behold the face
of God and watch His plans from age to age. Compared with us, they live in the blaze of
day: we have the lesser light of human reason, which relieves, but does not banish, the
night. There are around us other conscious creatures, endowed with still feebler powers,
who grope in the dim starlight of animal existence. God is the “Father of all lights.”
II. THE LIGHTS OF HEATHENISM, JUDAISM, AND CHRISTIANITY. What a
glimmering starlight of religious knowledge is that of the heathen millions! How partial
and imperfect was the knowledge that even the Jews possessed! At last “the Sun of
Righteousness arose with healing in His wings.” The world has not exhausted, it has
scarcely touched, the wealth of spiritual light and life in Him.
III. THE LIGHTS OF CHILDHOOD, MANHOOD, AND THE HEAVENLY STATE. The
faint gleam of light in childhood develops into the stronger light of manhood, but even
that does not banish the night. “In Thy light we shall see light.” (T. M. Herbert, M. A.)
Genesis of the luminaries
I. EXPLANATION OF THE PASSAGE.
1. Twin triads of the creative week. This venerable creation archive evidently divides
into two great eras, each era consisting of three days; each day of the first era having
a corresponding day in the second era. Thus, to the chemical light of the first day
correspond the sidereal lights of the fourth day. To the terrestrial individualization of
the second day corresponds the vital individualization of the fifth day. To the genesis
of the lands and of the plants on the third day corresponds the genesis of the
mammals and of man on the sixth day. Thus, the first era of the triad was an era of
prophecy; the second era of the triad an era of fulfilment.
2. The two-fold difficulty.
(1) “Was not light already existing?” The answer is easy. Light may exist
independently of the sun. There is, e.g., the light of phosphorescence, the light of
electricity, the light of incandescence, the light of chemism, atom clashing with
atom, and discharging light at every collision.
(2) “The earth,” you remind me, “is a constituent part of the solar system; as
such, it necessitates from the beginning the contemporaneous existence of the
sun, to hold the solar system in balance, and to keep earth itself in its orbit; but if
the sun was not created till the fourth day, what becomes of the astronomic
teaching that earth has been from the beginning an integrant part of the solar
system?” Again the answer is easy. Observe, first, that our passage does not
assert that God created—that is to say, caused to come into existence for the first
time—sun, moon, and stars, on the fourth day. All that our passage asserts in this
matter is this: God on the fourth day for the first time caused sun, moon, and
stars to become visible. Remember that light is not an essential, constituent part

252. of the sun. For aught we know, the sun itself may be a dark body, as indeed the
“solar spots” have led some astronomers to think. Moreover, surveying the sun as
the centre of gravitation for the planetary system, the sun can fulfil its gravitating
office equally well whether luminous or not.
3. Panorama of the emerging luminaries. There is still light on the newly-verdured
mountain and mead. But it is a strange, weird light; perhaps like that of the zodiacal
gleam, or the dying photosphere, or perhaps like the iris-hued, lambent shimmer of
the northern aurora. Suddenly the goldening gateways of the East open, and, lo, a
dazzling orb, henceforth the lord of day, strides forth from his cloud pavilion as a
bridegroom from his chamber, and rejoices to run his course as a giant his race;
upward and upward he royally mounts; downward and downward he royally bows:
as he nears the goal of his resplendent march, lo, the blushing portals of the West
open to receive him: and lo, again, his gentle consort, “pale empress of the night,”
sweeps forth in silver sheen, while around her planet and comet, Arcturus and
Mazzaroth, Orion and Pleiades, hold glittering court.
4. Purpose of the luminaries.
(1) To bring about alternations of light and darkness. Man, as at present
constituted, must have recurrent periods of sleep. And that we may sleep and
wake at healthful intervals, how mercifully the Framer of our bodies and Father
of our spirits has divided the day from the night; at every sunset dropping the
curtains of His evening, and so inviting to repose; at every sunrise lifting the
curtains of His morning, and so inviting to labour! Ah, it is one of the perhaps
inevitable regresses of civilization that it tends to reverse our Divine Father’s
method, bidding us close our shutters, that we may sleep during His sunshine,
and light our little candles and gas jets, that we may work during His night.
(2) To be for signs, seasons, days, years.
(3) To give light on the earth.
II. MORAL MEANING OF THE STORY.
1. The luminaries are guides to Jesus Christ. The Creator has expressly bidden us
accept His ordinances of the heavenly bodies as the pledge of His covenant of grace
in the Divine Son (Jer_31:35; Jer_33:20-26; Psa_89:35-37).
2. Jesus Christ and His Church and His truths are the true luminaries, shining in the
true heavens. Jesus Christ Himself is the true Greater Light, ruling the day as the
Sun of Righteousness, coming out of the chamber of His eternity as the King of the
worlds, going forth from the ends of the heavens, circling unto the ends thereof, and
nothing is hidden from His heat Psa_19:5-6). The Church of Jesus Christ—
Immanuel’s real, spiritual Church, the aggregate of saintly characters—is the true
lesser light: ruling the night as the moon of His grace, shining because He shines
upon her, silvering the pathway of this world’s benighted travellers. The truths of
Jesus Christ—the truths which He came to disclose—are the true stars of heaven,
from age to age sparkling on His brow as His many-jewelled diadem. And Jesus
Christ and His Church and His truths are the world’s true regulators—serving for its
signs and its seasons, its days and its years. Let me cite a single instance. Why do not
the world’s scholars still measure time from the Greek Olympiads? Why do not the
world’s kings still reckon their annals from the Year of Rome? Why do not the
world’s scientists date their era from some memorable transit or occultation? Ah,
Jesus Christ and His Church and His truth are too much for them. And so they all,

253. even the most infidel, bow in unconscious homage before the Babe of Bethlehem,
reckoning their era from that manger birth, dating their correspondence, their
legislations, their discoveries, their exploits, with the august words: Anno Domini.
Yes, Christianity is humanity’s true meridian, dictating its measures of time and
space, its calendars and eras, its latitudes and longitudes. All history, if we did but
know it, is time’s great ecliptic around the eternal Son of God. Happy the hour,
brother, when the fourth day dawns on thy soul, and thou takest thy place in the
moral heavens, henceforth to shine and rule as one of earth’s luminaries!
2. A personal entreaty. Take heed, O friend, lest the day come when the stars, now
fighting in their courses for thee, shall fight against thee Jdg_5:20). In that coming
day of sack-clothed sun and crimsoned moon and falling stars, one thing shall
survive the dissolving heavens and melting elements: It is the blood-bought Church
of the living God. (G. D. Boardman.)
Time
There are few words much oftener in our mouths than that short but most important
word, time. In one sense, the thought of it seems to mingle itself with almost everything
which we do. It is the long measure of our labour, expectation, and pain; it is the scanty
measure of our rest and joy. Its shortness or its length are continually given as our
reason for doing, or leaving undone, the various works which concern our station, our
calling, our family, our souls. What present time is; which it is most difficult to conceive,
if we try it by more exact thought than we commonly bestow on it; for even as we try to
catch it, though but in idea, it slips by us. Subdivide ore” measure as we may, we never
actually reach it. It was future, it is past; it is the meeting point of these two, and itself, it
seems, is not. And so, again, whether there is really any future time; whether it can exist,
except in our idea, before it is. Or whether there can be any past time; what that can be
which is no more; whose track of light has vanished from us in the darkness; which is as
a shadow that swept by us, and is gone. All this is full of wonder, and it may become, in
many ways, most useful matter of reflection to those who can bear to look calmly into
the depths of their being. It may lead us to remember how much of what is round us
here is, after all, seeming and unreal, and so force us from our too ready commerce with
visible shadows into communion with invisible realities. It may show us how continually
we are mocked in the regions of the senses and the understanding, and so drive us for
certainty and truth to the higher gifts of redeemed reason and fellowship with God. It
may abate the pride of argument on spiritual things, and teach us to take more humbly
what has been revealed. And this should give us higher notions of that eternity towards
which we are ever drifting on. We are apt to think of it as being merely prolonged time.
But the true idea of eternity is not prolonged time, but time abolished. To enter on
eternity is to pass out of the succession of time into this everlasting present. And this
suggests to us the two remarkable characters, which together make up the best account
we can give of time. The one—how completely, except in its issue, it passes from us: the
other—how entirely, in that issue, it ever abides with us. In itself how completely does it
pass away. Past time, with all its expectations, pains, and pleasures, how it is gone from
us! The pleasures and the pains of childhood, of youth, nay, even of the last year, where
are they? Every action has tended more to strengthen the capricious tyranny of our self-
will, or to bring us further under the blessed liberty of Christ’s law. We are the sum of all
this past time. It was the measure of our opportunities, of our growth. We are the result
of all these minutes. And if we thus look on past time, how, at this break in our lives,
should we look on to the future? Surely with calm trust, and with resolutions of

254. increased earnestness. Let our thanksgivings grow into the one, our humiliation change
into the other. If time is the opportunity and measure of this growth, what a work have
we to perform in it! How should we strive to store it full with deeds which may indeed
abide! (Bishop S. Wilberforce.)
The sun
The sun is almost the heart and brain of the earth. It is the regulator of its motions, from
the orbital movement in space, to the flow of its currents in the sea and air, the silent rise
of vapours that fly with the winds to become the source of rivers over the land; and the
still more profound action in the living growth of the plant and animal. It is no creator of
life; but through its outflowing light, heat, and attraction, it keeps the whole world in
living activity, doing vastly more than simply turning off days and seasons. Without the
direct sunlight there may be growth, as many productions of the sea and shady grounds
prove. But were the sun’s face perpetually veiled, far the greater part of living beings
would dwindle and die. Many chemical actions in the laboratory are suspended by
excluding light; and in the exquisite chemistry of living beings this effect is everywhere
marked: even the plants that happen to grow beneath the shade of a small tree or hedge
in a garden evince, by their dwarfed size and unproductiveness, the power of the sun’s
rays, and the necessity of this orb to the organic period of the earth’s history. (Bib.
Sacra.)
God more glorious than the sun
We are told that the late Dr. Livingstone of America, and Louis Bonaparte, ex-king of
Holland, happened once to be fellow passengers, with many others, on board one of the
North River steamboats. As the doctor was walking the deck in the morning, and gazing
at the refulgence of the rising sun, which appeared to him unusually attractive, he passed
near the distinguished stranger, and, stopping for a moment, accosted him thus: “How
glorious, sir, is that object!” pointing gracefully with his hand to the sun. The ex-king
assenting, he immediately added, “And how much more glorious, sir, must be its Maker,
the Sun of Righteousness!” A gentleman who overheard this short incidental
conversation, being acquainted with both personages, now introduced them to each
other, and a few more remarks were interchanged. Shortly after, the doctor again turned
to the ex-king, and, With that air of polished complaisance for which he was remarkable,
invited him first, and then the rest of the company, to attend a morning prayer. It is
scarcely necessary to add that the invitation was promptly complied with.
The luminaries
The use of these bodies is said to be not only for dividing the day from the night, but “for
signs and seasons, and days and years.” They ordinarily afford signs of weather to the
husbandman; and prior to the discovery of the use of the loadstone, were of great
importance to the mariner. They appear also on some extraordinary occasions to have
been premonitory to the world. Previous to the destruction of Jerusalem, our Lord
foretold that there should be “great earthquakes in divers places, and famines, and
pestilences, and fearful sights, and great signs from heaven.” And it is said by Josephus,
that a comet like a flaming sword was seen for a long time over that devoted city, a little
before its destruction by the Romans. Heathen astrologers made gods of these creatures,
and filled the minds of men with chimerical fears concerning them. Against these God

255. warns His people; saying, “Be ye not dismayed at the signs of heaven.” This, however,
does not prove but that He may sometimes make use of them. Modern astronomers, by
accounting for various phenomena, would deny their being signs of anything: but to
avoid the superstitions of heathenism, there is no necessity for our running into atheism.
The heavenly bodies are also said to be for seasons, as winter and summer, day and
night. We have no other standard for the measuring of time. The grateful vicissitudes
also which attend them are expressive of the goodness of God. If it were always day or
night, summer or winter, our enjoyments would be unspeakably diminished. Well is it
said at every pause, “And God saw that it was good!” David improved this subject to a
religious purpose. He considered “day unto day as uttering speech, and night unto night
as showing knowledge.” Every night we retire we are reminded of death, and every
morning we arise of the resurrection. In beholding the sun also, “which as a bridegroom
cometh out of his chamber, and rejoiceth as a strong man to run his race,” we see every
day a glorious example of the steady and progressive “path of the just, which shineth
more and more unto the perfect day.” (A. Fuller.)
15 and let them be lights in the vault of the sky to
give light on the earth.” And it was so.
BAR ES, "Gen_1:15
To shine upon the earth. - The first day spreads the shaded gleam of light over the
face of the deep. The fourth day unfolds to the eye the lamps of heaven, hanging in the
expanse of the skies, and assigns to them the office of “shining upon the earth.” A
threefold function is thus attributed to the celestial orbs - to divide day from night, to
define time and place, and to shine on the earth. The word of command is here very full,
running over two verses, with the exception of the little clause, “and it was so,” stating
the result.
GILL, "And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven,.... To
continue there as luminous bodies; as enlighteners, as the word signifies, causing light,
or as being the instruments of conveying it, particularly to the earth, as follows:
to give light upon the earth; and the inhabitants of it, when formed:
and it was so: these lights were formed and placed in the firmament of the heaven for

256. such uses, and served such purposes as God willed and ordered they should.
CALVI , "15.Let them be for lights It is well again to repeat what I have said
before, that it is not here philosophically discussed, how great the sun is in the
heaven, and how great, or how little, is the moon; but how much light comes to us
from them. (71) For Moses here addresses himself to our senses, that the knowledge
of the gifts of God which we enjoy may not glide away. Therefore, in order to
apprehend the meaning of Moses, it is to no purpose to soar above the heavens; let
us only open our eyes to behold this light which God enkindles for us in the earth.
By this method (as I have before observed) the dishonesty of those men is
sufficiently rebuked, who censure Moses for not speaking with greater exactness.
For as it became a theologian, he had respect to us rather than to the stars. or, in
truth, was he ignorant of the fact, that the moon had not sufficient brightness to
enlighten the earth, unless it borrowed from the sun; but he deemed it enough to
declare what we all may plainly perceive, that the moon is a dispenser of light to us.
That it is, as the astronomers assert, an opaque body, I allow to be true, while I deny
it to be a dark body. For, first, since it is placed above the element of fire, it must of
necessity be a fiery body. Hence it follows, that it is also luminous; but seeing that it
has not light sufficient to penetrate to us, it borrows what is wanting from the sun.
He calls it a lesser light by comparison; because the portion of light which it emits to
us is small compared with the infinite splendor of the sun. (72)
ELLICOTT, "(15) To give light.—This was to be henceforward the permanent
arrangement for the bestowal of that which is an essential condition for all life,
vegetable and animal. As day and night began on the first day, it is evident that very
soon there was a concentrating mass of light and heat outside the earth, and as the
expanse grew clear its effects must have become more powerful. There was daylight,
then, long before the fourth day; but it was only then that the sun and moon became
fully formed and constituted as they are at present, and shone regularly and clearly
in the bright sky.
16 God made two great lights—the greater light to
govern the day and the lesser light to govern the
night. He also made the stars.

257. BAR ES, "Gen_1:16-19
This result is fully particularized in the next three verses. This word, “made,”
corresponds to the word “be” in the command, and indicates the disposition and
adjustment to a special purpose of things previously existing.
Gen_1:16
The two great lights. - The well-known ones, great in relation to the stars, as seen
from the earth.
The great light, - in comparison with the little light. The stars, from man’s point of
view, are insignificant, except in regard to number Gen_15:5.
CLARKE, "And God made two great lights - Moses speaks of the sun and moon
here, not according to their bulk or solid contents, but according to the proportion of
light they shed on the earth. The expression has been cavilled at by some who are as
devoid of mental capacity as of candour. “The moon,” say they, “is not a great body; on
the contrary, it is the very smallest in our system.” Well, and has Moses said the
contrary? He has said it is a great Light; had he said otherwise he had not spoken the
truth. It is, in reference to the earth, next to the sun himself, the greatest light in the
solar system; and so true is it that the moon is a great light, that it affords more light to
the earth than all the planets in the solar system, and all the innumerable stars in the
vault of heaven, put together. It is worthy of remark that on the fourth day of the
creation the sun was formed, and then “first tried his beams athwart the gloom
profound;” and that at the conclusion of the fourth millenary from the creation,
according to the Hebrew, the Sun of righteousness shone upon the world, as deeply sunk
in that mental darkness produced by sin as the ancient world was, while teeming
darkness held the dominion, till the sun was created as the dispenser of light. What
would the natural world be without the sun? A howling waste, in which neither animal
nor vegetable life could possibly be sustained. And what would the moral world be
without Jesus Christ, and the light of his word and Spirit? Just what those parts of it
now are where his light has not yet shone: “dark places of the earth, filled with the
habitations of cruelty,” where error prevails without end, and superstition, engendering
false hopes and false fears, degrades and debases the mind of man.
Many have supposed that the days of the creation answer to so many thousands of
years; and that as God created all in six days, and rested the seventh, so the world shall
last six thousand years, and the seventh shall be the eternal rest that remains for the
people of God. To this conclusion they have been led by these words of the apostle, 2Pe_
3:8 : One day is with the Lord as a thousand years; and a thousand years as one day.
Secret things belong to God; those that are revealed to us and our children.
He made the stars also - Or rather, He made the lesser light, with the stars, to rule
the night. See Claudlan de Raptu Proser., lib. ii., v. 44.
Hic Hyperionis solem de semine nasci Fecerat,
et pariter lunam, sed dispare forma, Aurorae noctisque duces.
From famed Hyperion did he cause to rise
The sun, and placed the moon amid the skies,
With splendor robed, but far unequal light,

258. The radiant leaders of the day and night.
Of the Sun
On the nature of the sun there have been various conjectures. It was long thought that
he was a vast globe of fire 1,384,462 times larger than the earth, and that he was
continually emitting from his body innumerable millions of fiery particles, which, being
extremely divided, answered for the purpose of light and heat without occasioning any
ignition or burning, except when collected in the focus of a convex lens or burning glass.
Against this opinion, however, many serious and weighty objections have been made;
and it has been so pressed with difficulties that philosophers have been obliged to look
for a theory less repugnant to nature and probability. Dr. Herschel’s discoveries by
means of his immensely magnifying telescopes, have, by the general consent of
philosophers, added a new habitable world to our system, which is the Sun. Without
stopping to enter into detail, which would be improper here, it is sufficient to say that
these discoveries tend to prove that what we call the sun is only the atmosphere of that
luminary; “that this atmosphere consists of various elastic fluids that are more or less
lucid and transparent; that as the clouds belonging to our earth are probably
decompositions of some of the elastic fluids belonging to the atmosphere itself, so we
may suppose that in the vast atmosphere of the sun, similar decompositions may take
place, but with this difference, that the decompositions of the elastic fluids of the sun are
of a phosphoric nature, and are attended by lucid appearances, by giving out light.” The
body of the sun he considers as hidden generally from us by means of this luminous
atmosphere, but what are called the maculae or spots on the sun are real openings in this
atmosphere, through which the opaque body of the sun becomes visible; that this
atmosphere itself is not fiery nor hot, but is the instrument which God designed to act on
the caloric or latent heat; and that heat is only produced by the solar light acting upon
and combining with the caloric or matter of fire contained in the air, and other
substances which are heated by it. This ingenious theory is supported by many plausible
reasons and illustrations, which may be seen in the paper he read before the Royal
Society. On this subject see the note on Gen_1:3.
Of the Moon
There is scarcely any doubt now remaining in the philosophical world that the moon is
a habitable globe. The most accurate observations that have been made with the most
powerful telescopes have confirmed the opinion. The moon seems, in almost every
respect, to be a body similar to our earth; to have its surface diversified by hill and dale,
mountains and valleys, rivers, lakes, and seas. And there is the fullest evidence that our
earth serves as a moon to the moon herself, differing only in this, that as the earth’s
surface is thirteen times larger than the moon’s, so the moon receives from the earth a
light thirteen times greater in splendor than that which she imparts to us; and by a very
correct analogy we are led to infer that all the planets and their satellites, or attendant
moons, are inhabited, for matter seems only to exist for the sake of intelligent beings.
Of the Stars
The Stars in general are considered to be suns, similar to that in our system, each
having an appropriate number of planets moving round it; and, as these stars are
innumerable, consequently there are innumerable worlds, all dependent on the power,
protection, and providence of God. Where the stars are in great abundance, Dr. Herschel
supposes they form primaries and secondaries, i.e., suns revolving about suns, as planets
revolve about the sun in our system. He considers that this must be the case in what is
called the milky way, the stars being there in prodigious quantity. Of this he gives the

259. following proof: On August 22,1792, he found that in forty-one minutes of time not less
than 258,000 stars had passed through the field of view in his telescope. What must God
be, who has made, governs, and supports so many worlds! See Clarke’s note on Gen_1:1.
GILL, "And God made two great lights,.... This was his own work which he himself
did, and not by another; and may be particularly observed to express the folly of
idolaters in worshipping these luminaries which were the creations of God, and were
placed by him in the heaven to serve some purposes on earth beneficial to men, but not
to be worshipped. These two "great lights" are the sun and the moon; and they may well
be called great, especially the former, for the diameter of the sun is reckoned to be about
eight hundred thousand miles. According to Mr. Derham (i) its apparent diameter is
computed at 822,145 English miles, its ambit at 2,582,873 miles, and its solid contents
at 290,971,000,000,000,000: the lowest account makes the sun a hundred thousand
times bigger than the earth; and according to Sir Isaac Newton it is 900,000 bigger. The
moon's diameter is to that of the earth is about twenty seven per cent, or 2175 miles, its
surface contains fourteen hundred thousand square miles (k): it is called great, not on
account of its corporeal quantity, for it is the least of all the planets excepting Mercury,
but because of its quality, as a light, it reflecting more light upon the earth than any
besides the sun,
The greater light to rule the day: not to rule men, though the heathens have
worshipped it under the names of Molech and Baal, which signify king and lord, as if it
was their lord and king to whom they were to pay homage; but to rule the day, to preside
over it, to make it, give light in it, and continue it to its proper length; and in which it
rules alone, the moon, nor any of the other planets then appearing: this is called the
"greater" light, in comparison of the moon, not only with respect to its body or
substance, but on account of its light, which is far greater and stronger than that of the
moon; and which indeed receives its light from it, the moon being, as is generally said,
an opaque body:
and the lesser light to rule the night; to give light then, though in a fainter, dimmer
way, by reflecting it from the sun; and it rules alone, the sun being absent from the earth,
and is of great use to travellers and sailors; it is called the lesser light, in comparison of
the sun. Astronomers are of opinion, as Calmet (l) observes, that it is about fifty two
times smaller than the earth, and four thousand one hundred and fifty times smaller
than the sun; but these proportions are otherwise determined by the generality of
modern astronomers: however, they all agree that the moon is abundantly less than the
sun; and that it is as a light, we all know,
He made the stars also; to rule by night, Psa_136:9 not only the planets, Saturn,
Jupiter, Mars, Mercury, Venus, but the vast numbers of stars with which the heavens are
bespangled, and which reflect some degree of light upon the earth; with the several
constellations, some of which the Scriptures speak of, as Arcturus, Orion, Pleiades, and
the chambers of the south, Job_9:9, Job_38:31 though some restrain this to the five
planets only. Ed. Contrast the foolishness of modern cosmology with the writings of the
early church father, Theophilus when he states (j):
On the fourth day the luminaries came into existence. Since God has foreknowledge, he
understood the nonsense of the foolish philosophers who were going to say that the

260. things produced on earth came from the stars, so that they might set God aside. In order
therefore that the truth might be demonstrated, plants and seeds came into existence
before stars. For what comes into existence later cannot cause what is prior to it.''
JAMISO , "two great lights — In consequence of the day being reckoned as
commencing at sunset - the moon, which would be seen first in the horizon, would
appear “a great light,” compared with the little twinkling stars; while its pale benign
radiance would be eclipsed by the dazzling splendor of the sun; when his resplendent
orb rose in the morning and gradually attained its meridian blaze of glory, it would
appear “the greater light” that ruled the day. Both these lights may be said to be “made”
on the fourth day - not created, indeed, for it is a different word that is here used, but
constituted, appointed to the important and necessary office of serving as luminaries to
the world, and regulating by their motions and their influence the progress and divisions
of time.
The signs of animal life appeared in the waters and in the air.
SBC, "It is noticeable that while this chapter does not profess to be a scientific account
of creation, not only is creation represented as a gradual process, but the simpler living
forms are introduced first, and the more advanced afterwards, as the fossil remains of
plants and animals prove to have been the case. God has seen fit to appoint, in the world
of mind as well as of matter, great lights, and lesser lights, and least lights, answering to
the daylight, moonlight, and starlight of the heavens.
I. Consider the lights of angels, of men, and of animals. The angels behold the face of
God and watch His plans from age to age. Compared with us, they live in the blaze of
day: we have the lesser light of human reason, which relieves, but does not banish, the
night. There are around us other conscious creatures, endowed with still feebler powers,
who grope in the dim starlight of animal existence. God is the "Father of all lights."
II. The lights of Heathenism, Judaism, and Christianity. What a glimmering starlight of
religious knowledge is that of the heathen millions! How partial and imperfect was the
knowledge that even the Jews possessed! At last "the Sun of Righteousness arose with
healing in His wings." The world has not exhausted, it has scarcely touched, the wealth
of spiritual light and life in Him.
III. The lights of childhood, manhood, and the heavenly state. The faint gleam of light in
childhood develops into the stronger light of manhood, but even that does not banish
the night. "In Thy light we shall see light.
T. M. Herbert, Sketches of Sermons, p. 16.
CALVI , "16.The greater light I have said, that Moses does not here subtilely
descant, as a philosopher, on the secrets of nature, as may be seen in these words.
First, he assigns a place in the expanse of heaven to the planets and stars; but
astronomers make a distinction of spheres, and, at the same time, teach that the
fixed stars have their proper place in the firmament. Moses makes two great
luminaries; but astronomers prove, by conclusive reasons that the star of Saturn,
which on account of its great distance, appears the least of all, is greater than the
moon. Here lies the difference; Moses wrote in a popular style things which without
instruction, all ordinary persons, endued with common sense, are able to

261. understand; but astronomers investigate with great labor whatever the sagacity of
the human mind can comprehend. evertheless, this study is not to be reprobated,
nor this science to be condemned, because some frantic persons are wont boldly to
reject whatever is unknown to them. For astronomy is not only pleasant, but also
very useful to be known: it cannot be denied that this art unfolds the admirable
wisdom of God. Wherefore, as ingenious men are to be honored who have expended
useful labor on this subject, so they who have leisure and capacity ought not to
neglect this kind of exercise. or did Moses truly wish to withdraw us from this
pursuit in omitting such things as are peculiar to the art; but because he was
ordained a teacher as well of the unlearned and rude as of the learned, he could not
otherwise fulfill his office than by descending to this grosser method of instruction.
Had he spoken of things generally unknown, the uneducated might have pleaded in
excuse that such subjects were beyond their capacity. Lastly since the Spirit of God
here opens a common school for all, it is not surprising that he should chiefly choose
those subjects which would be intelligible to all. If the astronomer inquires
respecting the actual dimensions of the stars, he will find the moon to be less than
Saturn; but this is something abstruse, for to the sight it appears differently. Moses,
therefore, rather adapts his discourse to common usage. For since the Lord stretches
forth, as it were, his hand to us in causing us to enjoy the brightness of the sun and
moon, how great would be our ingratitude were we to close our eyes against our
own experience? There is therefore no reason why janglers should deride the
unskilfulness of Moses in making the moon the second luminary; for he does not call
us up into heaven, he only proposes things which lie open before our eyes. Let the
astronomers possess their more exalted knowledge; but, in the meantime, they who
perceive by the moon the splendor of night, are convicted by its use of perverse
ingratitude unless they acknowledge the beneficence of God.
To rule (73) He does not ascribe such dominion to the sun and moon as shall, in the
least degree, diminish the power of God; but because the sun, in half the circuit of
heaven, governs the day, and the moon the night, by turns; he therefore assigns to
them a kind of government. Yet let us remember, that it is such a government as
implies that the sun is still a servant, and the moon a handmaid. In the meantime,
we dismiss the reverie of Plato who ascribes reason and intelligence to the stars. Let
us be content with this simple exposition, that God governs the days and nights by
the ministry of the sun and moon, because he has them as his charioteers to convey
light suited to the season.
BE SO , "Genesis 1:16. Two great lights — Or enlighteners, ‫,מארת‬ meoroth,
distinguishable from all the rest, for their beauty and use. Moses terms the moon a
great light, only according to its appearance, and the use it is of to us, and not
according to the strictness of philosophy. For there is abundant proof that most of
the stars are much greater than the moon; although their immense distance makes
them appear so much smaller to us. The greater light — ot only greater, as it
appears to us, but incomparably greater in itself; being abundantly larger even than
the earth; to rule the day — By its rise and gradual ascension in the heavens, to
cause and increase the light and heat of the day; and by its declining and setting to
impair and end the same: or to direct men in their actions and affairs during the

262. day. To rule the night — To measure the hours of it, and give some, though a lesser
light. “The best and most honourable way of ruling,” says Henry, “is by giving light
and doing good.” <19D609> Psalms 136:9, and Jeremiah 31:35, the stars are
mentioned as being joined with the moon in ruling the night.
ELLICOTT, "(16) He made the stars also.—The Hebrew is, God made two great
lights . . . to rule the night; and also the stars. Though the word “also” carries back
“the stars” to the verb “made,” yet its repetition in our version makes it seem as if
the meaning was that God now created the stars; whereas the real sense is that the
stars were to rule the night equally with the moon. But besides this, there was no
place where the stars—by which the planets are chiefly meant—could be so well
mentioned as here. Two of them, Venus and Mercury, were formed somewhere
between the first and the fourth day; and absolutely it was not till this day that our
solar system, consisting of a central sun and the planets, with their attendant
satellites, was complete. To introduce the idea of the fixed stars is unreasonable, for
it is the planets which, by becoming in their turns morning and evening stars, rule
the night; though the fixed stars indicate the seasons of the year. The true meaning,
then, is that at the end of the fourth day the distribution of land and water, the state
of the atmosphere, the alternation of day and night, of seasons and years, and the
astronomical relations of the sun, moon, and planets (with the stars) to the earth
were all settled and fixed, much as they are at present. And to this geology bears
witness. Existing causes amply suffice to account for all changes that have taken
place on our globe since the day when animal life first appeared upon the earth.
COKE, "Genesis 1:16. The stars also— The abrupt manner in which this passage
seems to be introduced, has caused some writers to imagine it an interpolation:
whereas the abruptness of the manner is owing principally to the parenthesis;
remove which, and the passage runs thus: And God made two great lights, and also
the stars: which Moses only mentions briefly, to shew that they were the
workmanship of the same Divine Creator. Grotius has produced several passages, to
prove that the ancients considered the stars as signs of the times. And very probably
Claudian drew his observation from the present passage, where, describing the
Deity, he says,
Ille Pater rerum, qui tempora dividit astris:
"He is the Father of things, who divides the times by the stars." The moon is termed
"a Light," because it reflects light to the earth in the sun's absence; and it is
reckoned one of the greater lights, because to man it appears larger than any other
of the celestial bodies, the sun excepted; and in respect to its usefulness to the earth,
it is more excellent than they. So it is with men. Those are most valuable who are
most serviceable; and they are the greater lights, not who have the best gifts, but
who humbly and faithfully do the most good.
REFLECTIO S.—l. How glorious is that visible luminary the sun! But how much
more glorious He, who placed him in his sphere, and before whom the angels veil
their faces! 2. The moon is dark in herself, and borrows all her light from the sun.

263. Do we shine? Let us never forget the fountain whence our orb is filled. 3. Let us
remember, that the scripture indulges no vain curiosity. The design of it is, not to
teach us a system of astronomy, but to instruct us in the wisdom which maketh wise
unto salvation. 4. The rising and setting sun now first began to measure the day. My
soul, let never morning rise, which does not find thee on thy bended knees; let never
evening come, without the duteous tribute of prayer and praise to him, who maketh
the outgoings of the morning and evening to rejoice.
PETT, "Verses 16-19
‘And God made the two great lights, the greater light to rule the day and the lesser
light to rule the night. He made the stars also. And God set them in the firmament of
the heaven to give light upon the world, and to rule over the day and over the night,
and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. And
there was evening and there was morning a fourth day.’
ote that the activity on the fourth day is that of the establishing of the lights in the
heavens to fulfil their functions. So the first sentence need not necessarily indicate
that the Sun and Moon were created at this stage. Indeed we have already been told
that God made ‘the heavens’ in the beginning. ow the heavens begin to impinge on
earth.As we have seen throughout, God first created and then from that creation
produced what He wanted from what had already been established. Thus the actual
creation of the lights may be seen as having taken place when creation took place
almost at the beginning and when light was first ‘drawn out’ from the primeval
stuff. ow they are being brought forth for their tasks, and seen by the world for
the first time as the atmosphere thins.
We would say in English, ‘ ow God had made the two great lights’, but Hebrew
verbs do not have the pluperfect. Hebrew is not specific as to time. Tenses in
Hebrew express either completed action (Perfect tense) or incomplete action
(Imperfect tense) without saying when they took place. Here the tense is perfect to
declare an action which is complete, the making of the great lights by God, at
whatever time He made them. This is as an introduction to what He is about to do,
the establishing of them in the heavens to control time and seasons as required for
life. He had made them to rule, now He establishes their rule.
otice that the lights are deliberately unnamed. This is in contrast with what has
gone before. They are but tools for God’s purposes, inanimate objects not worthy of
a name. And the stars are but an afterthought hardly worthy of mention. This is
deliberate. In the light of the worship of Sun, Moon and stars by the surrounding
nations, the writer wants their position to be quite clear. They are but ‘lamps’ in the
sky.
It is significant with regard to this that ‘naming’ occurs in the first three
preparatory days, and that in days five and six what is made is ‘blessed’ as living
and reproductive, but the ‘lights’ are neither named nor blessed. God does not give
them names indicating their background nature. They control from afar. They are
not actively involved, nor are they living. They are ‘formed’ not ‘created’. All
thought of their divinity or importance except as devices is deliberately excluded.

264. Their task is clearly stated. They mechanically ruled day and night and separated
light from darkness. The latter must mean as related to the length of day and night
or else it is just a repetition of ‘day one’. Thus up to this point there have been no
evenings or mornings in a literal sense. The phrase ‘and the evening and the
morning were of the --- day’ must therefore be metaphorical, denoting beginning
and ending (and will continue to be so. They are God’s days, not earthly days).
17 God set them in the vault of the sky to give
light on the earth,
BAR ES, "Gen_1:17
God gave them. - The absolute giving of the heavenly bodies in their places was
performed at the time of their actual creation. The relative giving here spoken of is what
would appear to an earthly spectator, when the intervening veil of clouds would be
dissolved by the divine agency, and the celestial luminaries would stand forth in all their
dazzling splendor.
GILL, "And God set them in the firmament of the heaven,.... He not only
ordered that there they should be, and made them that there they might be, but he
placed them there with his own hands; and they are placed, particularly the sun, at such
a particular distance as to be beneficial and not hurtful: had it been set nearer to the
earth, its heat would have been intolerable; and had it been further off it would have
been of no use; in the one case we should have been scorched with its heat, and in the
other been frozen up for the want of it. The various expressions used seem to be
designed on purpose to guard against and expose the vanity of the worship of the sun
and moon; which being visible, and of such great influence and usefulness to the earth,
were the first the Heathens paid adoration to, and was as early as the times of Job, Job_
31:26 and yet these were but creatures made by God, his servants and agents under him,
and therefore to worship them was to serve the creature besides the Creator,
To give light upon the earth; this is repeated from Gen_1:15 to show the end for

265. which they were made, and set up, and the use they were to be of to the earth; being
hung up like so many lamps or chandeliers, to contain and send forth light unto the
earth, to the inhabitants of it, that they may see to walk and work by, and do all the
business of life, as well as be warmed and comforted thereby, and the earth made fertile
to bring forth its precious fruits for the use of creatures in it: and it is marvellous that
such light should be emitted from the sun, when it is at such a vast distance from the
earth, and should reach it in so short a space. A modern astronomer (m) observes, that a
bullet discharged from a cannon would be near twenty five years, before it could finish
its journey from the sun to the earth: and yet the rays of light reach the earth in seven
minutes and a half, and are said to pass ten millions of miles in a minute.
18 to govern the day and the night, and to
separate light from darkness. And God saw that it
was good.
BAR ES, "Gen_1:18
To rule. - From their lofty eminence they regulate the duration and the business of
each period. The whole is inspected and approved as before.
Now let it be remembered that the heavens were created at the absolute beginning of
things recorded in the first verse, and that they included all other things except the
earth. Hence, according to this document, the sun, moon, and stars were in existence
simultaneously with our planet. This gives simplicity and order to the whole narrative.
Light comes before us on the first and on the fourth day. Now, as two distinct causes of a
common effect would be unphilosophical and unnecessary, we must hold the one cause
to have been in existence on these two days. But we have seen that the one cause of the
day and of the year is a fixed source of radiating light in the sky, combined with the
diurnal and annual motions of the earth. Thus, the recorded preexistence of the celestial
orbs is consonant with the presumptions of reason. The making or reconstitution of the
atmosphere admits their light so far that the alternations of day and night can be
discerned. The making of the lights of heaven, or the display of them in a serene sky by
the withdrawal of that opaque canopy of clouds that still enveloped the dome above, is
then the work of the fourth day.
All is now plain and intelligible. The heavenly bodies become the lights of the earth,
and the distinguishers not only of day and night, but of seasons and years, of times and
places. They shed forth their unveiled glories and salutary potencies on the budding,
waiting land. How the higher grade of transparency in the aerial region was effected, we

266. cannot tell; and, therefore, we are not prepared to explain why it is accomplished on the
fourth day, and not sooner. But from its very position in time, we are led to conclude
that the constitution of the expanse, the elevation of a portion of the waters of the deep
in the form of vapor, the collection of the sub-aerial water into seas, and the creation of
plants out of the reeking soil, must all have had an essential part, both in retarding until
the fourth day, and in then bringing about the dispersion of the clouds and the clearing
of the atmosphere. Whatever remained of hinderance to the outshining of the sun,
moon, and stars on the land in all their native splendor, was on this day removed by the
word of divine power.
Now is the approximate cause of day and night made palpable to the observation. Now
are the heavenly bodies made to be signs of time and place to the intelligent spectator on
the earth, to regulate seasons, days, months, and years, and to be the luminaries of the
world. Now, manifestly, the greater light rules the day, as the lesser does the night. The
Creator has withdrawn the curtain, and set forth the hitherto undistinguishable
brilliants of space for the illumination of the land and the regulation of the changes
which diversify its surface. This bright display, even if it could have been effected on the
first day with due regard to the forces of nature already in operation, was unnecessary to
the unseeing and unmoving world of vegetation, while it was plainly requisite for the
seeing, choosing, and moving world of animated nature which was about to be called
into existence on the following days.
The terms employed for the objects here brought forward - “lights, the great light, the
little light, the stars;” for the mode of their manifestation, “be, make, give;” and for the
offices they discharge, “divide, rule, shine, be for signs, seasons, days, years” - exemplify
the admirable simplicity of Scripture, and the exact adaptation of its style to the
unsophisticated mind of primeval man. We have no longer, indeed, the naming of the
various objects, as on the former days; probably because it would no longer be an
important source of information for the elucidation of the narrative. But we have more
than an equivalent for this in variety of phrase. The several words have been already
noticed: it only remains to make some general remarks.
(1) The sacred writer notes only obvious results, such as come before the eye of the
observer, and leaves the secondary causes, their modes of operation, and their less
obtrusive effects, to scientific inquiry. The progress of observation is from the
foreground to the background of nature, from the physical to the metaphysical, and from
the objective to the subjective. Among the senses, too, the eye is the most prominent
observer in the scenes of the six days. Hence, the “lights,” they “shine,” they are for
“signs” and “days,” which are in the first instance objects of vision. They are “given,”
held or shown forth in the heavens. Even “rule” has probably the primitive meaning to
be over. Starting thus with the visible and the tangible, the Scripture in its successive
communications advance with us to the inferential, the intuitive, the moral, the spiritual,
the divine.
(2) The sacred writer also touches merely the heads of things in these scenes of
creation, without condescending to minute particulars or intending to be exhaustive.
Hence, many actual incidents and intricacies of these days are left to the well-regulated
imagination and sober judgment of the reader. To instance such omissions, the moon is
as much of her time above the horizon during the day as during the night. But she is not
then the conspicuous object in the scene, or the full-orbed reflector of the solar beams,
as she is during the night. Here the better part is used to mark the whole. The tidal
influence of the great lights, in which the moon plays the chief part, is also unnoticed.
Hence, we are to expect very many phenomena to be altogether omitted, though
interesting and important in themselves, because they do not come within the present

267. scope of the narrative.
(3) The point from which the writer views the scene is never to be forgotten, if we
would understand these ancient records. He stands on earth. He uses his eyes as the
organ of observation. He knows nothing of the visual angle, of visible as distinguishable
from tangible magnitude, of relative in comparison with absolute motion on the grand
scale: he speaks the simple language of the eye. Hence, his earth is the meet counterpart
of the heavens. His sun and moon are great, and all the stars are a very little thing. Light
comes to be, to him, when it reaches the eye. The luminaries are held forth in the
heavens, when the mist between them and the eye is dissolved.
(4) Yet, though not trained to scientific thought or speech, this author has the eye of
reason open as well as that of sense. It is not with him the science of the tangible, but the
philosophy of the intuitive, that reduces things to their proper dimensions. He traces not
the secondary cause, but ascends at one glance to the great first cause, the manifest act
and audible behest of the Eternal Spirit. This imparts a sacred dignity to his style, and a
transcendent grandeur to his conceptions. In the presence of the high and lofty One that
inhabiteth eternity, all things terrestrial and celestial are reduced to a common level.
Man in intelligent relation with God comes forth as the chief figure on the scene of
terrestrial creation. The narrative takes its commanding position as the history of the
ways of God with man. The commonest primary facts of ordinary observation, when
recorded in this book, assume a supreme interest as the monuments of eternal wisdom
and the heralds of the finest and broadest generalizations of a consecrated science. The
very words are instinct with a germinant philosophy, and prove themselves adequate to
the expression of the loftiest speculations of the eloquent mind.
GILL, "And to rule over the day, and over the night,.... The one, namely the sun,
or greater light, to rule over the day, and the moon and stars, the lesser lights, to rule
over the night: this is repeated from Gen_1:16 to show the certainty of it, and that the
proper uses of these lights might be observed, and that a just value might be put upon
them, but not carried beyond due bounds:
and to divide the light from the darkness; as the day from the night, which is done
by the sun, Gen_1:14 and to dissipate and scatter the darkness of the night, and give
some degree of light, though in a more feeble manner, which is done by the moon and
stars:
and God saw that it was good; or foresaw it would be, that there should be such
lights in the heaven, which would be exceeding beneficial to the inhabitants of the earth,
as they find by good experience it is, and therefore have great reason to be thankful, and
to adore the wisdom and goodness of God; see Psa_136:1. See Gill on Gen_1:4.
HE RY, "
JAMISO , "
CALVI , "

268. 19 And there was evening, and there was
morning—the fourth day.
GILL, "And the evening and the morning were the fourth day. Made by the
rotation of the earth on its own axis, in the space of twenty four hours: this according to
Capellus was the twenty first of April, and according to Bishop Usher the twenty sixth of
October; or, as others, the fourth of September: and thus, as on the fourth day of the
creation the sun was made, or appeared, so in the fourth millennium the sun of
righteousness arose on our earth.
20 And God said, “Let the water teem with living
creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across
the vault of the sky.”
BAR ES, " - VII. The Fifth Day
20. ‫שׁרץ‬ shārats, “crawl, teem, swarm, abound.” An intransitive verb, admitting,
however, an objective noun of its own or a like signification.
‫נפשׁ‬ nephesh, “breath, soul, self.” This noun is derived from a root signifying to breathe.
Its concrete meaning is, therefore, “that which breathes,” and consequently has a body,
without which there can be no breathing; hence, “a breathing body,” and even a body
that once had breath Num_6:6. As breath is the accompaniment and sign of life, it
comes to denote “life,” and hence, a living body, “an animal.” And as life properly
signifies animal life, and is therefore essentially connected with feeling, appetite,
thought, ‫נפשׁ‬ nephesh, denotes also these qualities, and what possesses them. It is
obvious that it denotes the vital principle not only in man but in the brute. It is therefore
a more comprehensive word than our soul, as commonly understood.
21. ‫תנין‬ tannıyn, “long creature,” a comprehensive genus, including vast fishes,
serpents, dragons, crocodiles; “stretch.”
22. ‫ברך‬ bārak “break, kneel; bless.”

269. The solitude ‫בהוּ‬ bohû, the last and greatest defect in the state of the earth, is now to be
removed by the creation of the various animals that are to inhabit it and partake of its
vegetable productions.
On the second day the Creator was occupied with the task of reducing the air and
water to a habitable state. And now on the corresponding day of the second three he calls
into existence the inhabitants of these two elements. Accordingly, the animal kingdom is
divided into three parts in reference to the regions to be inhabited - fishes, birds, and
land animals. The fishes and birds are created on this day. The fishes seem to be
regarded as the lowest type of living creatures.
They are here subdivided only into the monsters of the deep and the smaller species
that swarm in the waters.
Gen_1:20
The crawler - ‫שׁרץ‬ sherets apparently includes all animals that have short legs or no
legs, and are therefore unable to raise themselves above the soil. The aquatic and most
amphibious animals come under this class. “The crawler of living breath,” having breath,
motion, and sensation, the ordinary indications of animal life. “Abound with.” As in
Gen_1:11 we have, “Let the earth grow grass,” (‫דשׁא‬ ‫תדשׁע‬ tadshē‛ deshe', so here we have,
“Let the waters crawl with the crawler,” ‫שׁרץ‬ ‫ישׁרצוּ‬ yıshre
tsû sherets; the verb and noun
having the same root. The waters are here not the cause but the element of the fish, as
the air of the fowl. Fowl, everything that has wings. “The face of the expanse.” The
expanse is here proved to be aerial or spatial; not solid, as the fowl can fly on it.
CLARKE, "Let the waters bring forth abundantly - There is a meaning in these
words which is seldom noticed. Innumerable millions of animalcula are found in water.
Eminent naturalists have discovered not less than 30,000 in a single drop! How
inconceivably small must each be, and yet each a perfect animal, furnished with the
whole apparatus of bones, muscles, nerves, heart, arteries, veins, lungs, viscera in
general, animal spirits, etc., etc. What a proof is this of the manifold wisdom of God! But
the fecundity of fishes is another point intended in the text; no creature’s are so prolific
as these. A Tench lay 1,000 eggs, a Carp 20,000, and Leuwenhoek counted in a middling
sized Cod 9,384,000! Thus, according to the purpose of God, the waters bring forth
abundantly. And what a merciful provision is this for the necessities of man! Many
hundreds of thousands of the earth’s inhabitants live for a great part of the year on fish
only. Fish afford, not only a wholesome, but a very nutritive diet; they are liable to few
diseases, and generally come in vast quantities to our shores when in their greatest
perfection. In this also we may see that the kind providence of God goes hand in hand
with his creating energy. While he manifests his wisdom and his power, he is making a
permanent provision for the sustenance of man through all his generations.
GILL, "And God said, let the waters bring forth abundantly,.... The waters
gathered together in one place, the waters of the ocean, and those in rivers, pools and
lakes, and which, before their collection into those places, had been sat on, moved, and
impregnated by the Spirit of God; so that they could, as they did, by the divine order
accompanied with his power, bring forth abundance of creatures, next mentioned:
the moving creature that hath life: an animal life, of which sort of creatures as yet

270. there had been none made; vegetables, or such as have a vegetative life, were made on
the third day; but those that have a sensitive and animal life not till this day, the fifth;
and the less perfect, or lower sort of these, were first produced, even such as move or
"creep" (n), as the word used signifies; which is applied to fishes as well as creeping
things, because in swimming their bellies touch the water, and are close to it, as reptiles
on the earth: and of these creeping things in the seas there are innumerable, as the
Psalmist says, Psa_104:25. Pliny (o) reckons up an hundred and seventy six kinds of
fishes, which he puts in an alphabetical order:
and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven;
which according to our version were to be produced out of the waters also; not out of
mere water, but out of earth and water mixed together, or out of the earth or clay (p)
that lay at the bottom of the waters: and it may be observed of some fowls, that they live
on the waters, and others partly on land and partly on water; and as the elements of fowl
and fish, the air and water, bear a resemblance to each other, so do these creatures, some
fowls both fly and swim; and what wings are to the one, fins are to the other; and both
steer their course by their tails, and are both oviparous: though it should seem,
according to Gen_2:19, that the fowls were produced from the earth, and the words may
be rendered here, "let the fowl fly above the earth", &c. as they are in the Samaritan and
Syriac versions, and in others (q).
HE RY 20-23, "Each day, hitherto, has produced very noble and excellent beings,
which we can never sufficiently admire; but we do not read of the creation of any living
creature till the fifth day, of which these verses give us an account. The work of creation
not only proceeded gradually from one thing to another, but rose and advanced
gradually from that which was less excellent to that which was more so, teaching us to
press towards perfection and endeavour that our last works may be our best works. It
was on the fifth day that the fish and fowl were created, and both out of the waters.
Though there is one kind of flesh of fishes, and another of birds, yet they were made
together, and both out of the waters; for the power of the first Cause can produce very
different effects from the same second causes. Observe, 1. The making of the fish and
fowl, at first, Gen_1:20, Gen_1:21. God commanded them to be produced. He said, Let
the waters bring forth abundantly; not as if the waters had any productive power of
their own, but, “Let them be brought into being, the fish in the waters and the fowl out of
them.” This command he himself executed: God created great whales, etc. Insects,
which perhaps are as various and as numerous as any species of animals, and their
structure as curious, were part of this day's work, some of them being allied to the fish
and others to the fowl. Mr. Boyle (I remember) says he admires the Creator's wisdom
and power as much in an ant as in an elephant. Notice is here taken of the various sorts
of fish and fowl, each after their kind, and of the great numbers of both that were
produced, for the waters brought forth abundantly; and particular mention if made of
great whales, the largest of fishes, whose bulk and strength, exceeding that of any other
animal, are remarkable proofs of the power and greatness of the Creator. The express
notice here taken of the whale, above all the rest, seems sufficient to determine what
animal is meant by the Leviathan, Job_41:1. The curious formation of the bodies of
animals, their different sizes, shapes, and natures, with the admirable powers of the
sensitive life with which they are endued, when duly considered, serve, not only to
silence and shame the objections of atheists and infidels, but to raise high thoughts and
high praises of God in pious and devout souls, Psa_104:25, etc. 2. The blessing of them,
in order to their continuance. Life is a wasting thing. Its strength is not the strength of
stones. It is a candle that will burn out, if it be not first blown out; and therefore the wise

271. Creator not only made the individuals, but provided for the propagation of the several
kinds; God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful and multiply, Gen_1:22. God will bless his
own works, and not forsake them; and what he does shall be for a perpetuity, Ecc_3:14.
The power of God's providence preserves all things, as at first his creating power
produced them. Fruitfulness is the effect of God's blessing and must be ascribed to it; the
multiplying of the fish and fowl, from year to year, is still the fruit of this blessing. Well,
let us give to God the glory of the continuance of these creatures to this day for the
benefit of man. See Job_12:7, Job_12:9. It is a pity that fishing and fowling, recreations
innocent in themselves, should ever be abused to divert any from God and their duty,
while they are capable of being improved to lead us to the contemplation of the wisdom,
power, and goodness, of him that made all these things, and to engage us to stand in awe
of him, as the fish and fowl do of us.
JAMISO , "Gen_1:20-23. Fifth Day. The signs of animal life appeared in the
waters and in the air.
moving creature — all oviparous animals, both among the finny and the feathery
tribes - remarkable for their rapid and prodigious increase.
fowl — means every flying thing: The word rendered “whales,” includes also sharks,
crocodiles, etc.; so that from the countless shoals of small fish to the great sea monsters,
from the tiny insect to the king of birds, the waters and the air were suddenly made to
swarm with creatures formed to live and sport in their respective elements.
A farther advance was made by the creation of terrestrial animals, all the various
species of which are included in three classes: (1) cattle, the herbivorous kind capable of
labor or domestication.
K&D 20-23, "The Fifth Day. - “God said: Let the waters swarm with swarms, with
living beings, and let birds fly above the earth in the face (the front, i.e., the side turned
towards the earth) of the firmament.” ‫צוּ‬ ְ‫ר‬ ְ‫שׁ‬ִ‫י‬ and ‫ף‬ ֵ‫עוֹפ‬ְ‫י‬ are imperative. Earlier translators,
on the contrary, have rendered the latter as a relative clause, after the πετεινᆭ πετόµενα of
the lxx, “and with birds that fly;” thus making the birds to spring out of the water, in
opposition to Gen_2:19. Even with regard to the element out of which the water animals
were created the text is silent; for the assertion that ‫שׁרץ‬ is to be understood “with a
causative colouring” is erroneous, and is not sustained by Exo_8:3 or Psa_105:30. The
construction with the accusative is common to all verbs of multitude. ‫ץ‬ ֶ‫ר‬ ֶ‫שׁ‬ and ‫ץ‬ ַ‫ר‬ ָ‫,שׁ‬ to
creep and swarm, is applied, “without regard to size, to those animals which congregate
together in great numbers, and move about among one another.” ‫ה‬ָ ַ‫ח‬ ‫שׁ‬ ֶ‫פ‬ֶ‫,ג‬ anima viva,
living soul, animated beings (vid., Gen_2:7), is in apposition to ‫ץ‬ ֶ‫ר‬ ֶ‫,שׁ‬ “swarms consisting
of living beings.” The expression applies not only to fishes, but to all water animals from
the greatest to the least, including reptiles, etc. In carrying out His word, God created
(Gen_1:21) the great “tanninim,” - lit., the long-stretched, from ‫ן‬ַ‫נ‬ ָ , to stretch-whales,
crocodiles, and other sea-monsters; and “all moving living beings with which the
waters swarm after their kind, and all (every) winged fowl after its kind.” That the
water animals and birds of every kind were created on the same day, and before the land
animals, cannot be explained on the ground assigned by early writers, that there is a
similarity between the air and the water, and a consequent correspondence between the
two classes of animals. For in the light of natural history the birds are at all events quite

272. as near to the mammalia as to the fishes; and the supposed resemblance between the
fins of fishes and the wings of birds, is counterbalanced by the no less striking
resemblance between birds and land animals, viz., that both have feet. The real reason is
rather this, that the creation proceeds throughout from the lower to the higher; and in
this ascending scale the fishes occupy to a great extent a lower place in the animal
economy than birds, and both water animals and birds a lower place than land animals,
more especially the mammalia. Again, it is not stated that only a single pair was created
of each kind; on the contrary, the words, “let the waters swarm with living beings,” seem
rather to indicate that the animals were created, not only in a rich variety of genera and
species, but in large numbers of individuals. The fact that but one human being was
created at first, by no means warrants the conclusion that the animals were created
singly also; for the unity of the human race has a very different signification from that of
the so-called animal species. - (Gen_1:22). As animated beings, the water animals and
fowls are endowed, through the divine blessing, with the power to be fruitful and
multiply. The word of blessing was the actual communication of the capacity to
propagate and increase in numbers.
CALVI , "20.Let the waters bring forth... the moving creature (74) On the fifth day
the birds and fishes are created. The blessing of God is added, that they may of
themselves produce offspring. Here is a different kind of propagation from that in
herbs and trees: for there the power of fructifying is in the plants, and that of
germinating is in the seed; but here generation takes place. It seems, however, but
little consonant with reason, that he declares birds to have proceeded from the
waters; and, therefore this is seized upon by captious men as an occasion of
calumny. But although there should appear no other reason but that it so pleased
God, would it not be becoming in us to acquiesce in his judgment? Why should it
not be lawful for him, who created the world out of nothing, to bring forth the birds
out of water? And what greater absurdity, I pray, has the origin of birds from the
water, than that of the light from darkness? Therefore, let those who so arrogantly
assail their Creator, look for the Judge who shall reduce them to nothing.
evertheless if we must use physical reasoning in the contest, we know that the
water has greater affinity with the air than the earth has. But Moses ought rather to
be listened to as our teacher, who would transport us with admiration of God
through the consideration of his works. (75) And, truly, the Lord, although he is the
Author of nature, yet by no means has followed nature as his guide in the creation of
the world, but has rather chosen to put forth such demonstrations of his power as
should constrain us to wonder.
BE SO , "Genesis 1:20. The moving creature that hath life — Endued with self-
motion and animal life. — How much soever we may be astonished at the
stupendous vastness and magnificence of inanimate matter, the least piece that is
animated and has life, is still more admirable. But who can conceive the nature of
life? We see it daily around us, but cannot comprehend it!
We observe that it enables millions and millions of creatures to act, as it were, of
themselves, and to seek and obtain such enjoyments as give them a sensible
pleasure; but how it does this surpasses all understanding: and we can reach no

273. more of its nature, than that it is such an amazing property, as, if we think at all,
must carry up our thoughts to that Almighty Being, who alone could bestow such a
wonderful blessing, and who, in his exuberant goodness, has conferred it, not on one
or a few merely, but on innumerable millions, and has inclined and enabled them to
communicate it to millions and millions more of the same species with themselves,
that shall succeed one another till time shall be no more! Thus in the work of
creation, after the formation of light, air, water, and earth, the originals of all
things, he proceeds from creatures less excellent to those that are more so: from
vegetables to animals; and then from animals less perfect in their form to the more
perfect. Such was the Creator’s progress in his work; and, in imitation of him, we
should be continually advancing to greater excellence and perfection in our
dispositions and actions. Fish and fowl were both formed out of the water: there
being a nearer alliance and greater resemblance between the form of the bodies in
general, and the motions of creatures that swim and of those that fly, than there is
between either of these and such as creep or walk on the earth: and their bodies
being intended to be lighter, and their motions swifter, the wise Creator saw fit to
form them from a lighter and fluid element.
The waters are said to produce them abundantly; to signify the prodigious and
rapid multiplication, especially of all the various species of fishes. The word in
Hebrew, which generally stands for fish, also means multiplication; no creatures, it
seems, multiplying so fast as they do.
COKE, "Genesis 1:20. And God said, Let the waters, &c.— The formation of things
inanimate being completed, the all-wise Creator proceeds, from the most noble of
these, the heavenly bodies, to those which are next in degree, the least noble of the
animate creation, namely, the inhabitants of the waters. Houbigant justly prefers
the English translation here to all those which render the original by the word
reptilia, reptiles, or creeping things, under which denomination, certainly, neither
the fish, nor the birds, do come; and therefore, after the English, he translates it,
animam motabilem; as we, the moving creature. The Hebrew verb and noun here
are of the same derivation; ‫ישׁרצו‬ ishretzu, ‫שׁרצ‬ sheretz: and the lexicographers tell
us, that ‫שׁרצ‬ sheretz, is derived from that verb which signifies to produce or increase
abundantly, on account of the abundant production, or increase of these creatures.
This being the case, the passage may be rendered with the strictest propriety, 'Let
the waters produce abundantly their productions, which have life:' in which general
expressions the whole increase of the watery world is included.
And fowl that may fly, &c.— It should seem by our translation as if the fowl, as well
as the fish, were the production of the waters: but you see, from the margin of the
Bible, that the Hebrew is, and let fowl fly above the earth, in the open firmament of
heaven; i.e.. in the air; which is not only more agreeable to the original, but more
consistent with what is said in chap. Genesis 2:19. that God formed the fowl out of
the ground. Some birds being of an amphibious nature, living partly by land, and
partly by water, and all birds having many things similar to the fishy kind, may be
the reason why they are thus united. For naturalists have observed, that the eyes of
both are formed similar; as is the conformation of the brain: their bodies are poised

274. alike to swim, the one in the air, and the other in the water: they are each oviparous,
and in many other particulars correspond. This may afford some ground for the
conjecture of Dr. Gill, that they were created out of earth and water mixed together,
or out of the earth or clay that lay at the bottom of the waters.— ote; the
Samaritan and Syriac versions agree with our marginal translation.
ELLICOTT, "(20) Let the waters . . . in the open firmament.—The days of the
second creative triad correspond to those of the first. Light was created on the first
day, and on the fourth it was gathered into light-bearers; on the second day air and
water were called into being, and on the fifth day they were peopled with life; lastly,
on the third day the dry land appeared, and on the sixth day it became the home of
animals and man.
Bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life.—Literally, let the waters
swarm a swarm of living soul. But the word soul properly signifies “breath,” and
thus, after the long pause of the fourth day, during which vegetation was advancing
under the ripening effects of solar heat, we now hasten onward to another creative
act, by which God called into being creatures which live by breathing. And as
vegetation began with a green tinge upon the rocks, so doubtless animal life began in
the most rudimentary manner, and advanced through animalcules and insects up to
fish and reptiles. The main point noticed in the text as to the living things produced
on this day is their fecundity. They are all those creatures which multiply in masses.
It does not, however, follow that the highest forms of fish and reptiles were reached
before the lowest form of land animal was created. All that we are taught is that the
Infusoria and Ovipara preceded the Mammalia. As the most perfect trees may not
have been produced till the Garden of Eden was planted, so the peacock may not
have spread his gaudy plumes till the time was approaching when there would be
human eyes capable of admiring his beauty.
And fowl that may fly.—Heb., and let fowl, or winged creatures, fly above the earth.
It does not say that they were formed out of the water (comp. Genesis 2:19). or is it
confined to birds, but includes all creatures that can wing their way in the air.
In the open firmament.—Literally, upon the face of the expanse of heaven—that is,
in front of it, upon the lower surface of the atmosphere near to the earth.
COFFMA , "THE FIFTH DAY
"And God said, Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, and let birds
fly above the earth in the firmament of heaven. And God created the great sea-
monsters, and every living creature that moveth, wherewith the waters swarmed,
after their kind, and every winged bird after its kind: and God saw that it was good.
And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the
seas, and let birds multiply on the earth. And there was evening and there was
morning, a fifth day."
Just as Day 4 was parallel with Day 1, Day 5 is parallel with Day 2. Just as the

275. waters and the firmament were in focus there, so are they here. This parallelism
does not deny the chronological sequence of the six days. But, the creation of Day 1
of the heavens and the earth was followed by a special creation regarding the earth
and its solar system in Day 4. In like manner, the seas and the dry land of Day 2 are
on Day 5 endowed with the life for which they had been designed previously.
The great message of this day is that God created life, there being utterly no other
possible source of it. The plain and simple implication of the passage is that God
created all of the species of life mentioned here simultaneously. The balance in
creation that is still witnessed by the ecological systems in nature could not have
come into being except by fiat. othing is more unreasonable and ridiculous than
the various hypotheses of evolution. If it could be proved, which is impossible, that
all life originated from a single one-celled creature in some pre-Azoic sea, the
existence of that one-celled creature with the potential to produce all that is alleged
to have come out of it, in any such postulation, GOD ALMIGHTY is just as
necessary to get that one-celled beginning; and it would have been in every way a
creation just as magnificent and glorious as the simultaneous creation of myriad
forms of life by one Divine fiat. Evolution as a means of getting rid of God is a false
crutch indeed!
It is clear in this six-day sequence that, "The progress of God's creative activity was
upward toward man."[10] In fact, the special thrust of this entire creation narrative
is pointed squarely at the emergence of man upon earth as the crowning act of all
creation!
LA GE, " Genesis 1:20-23. Fifth Creative Day.—Corresponding then to the second
day (of the first triad) we have here (on the second day of the second triad) the
animation of the water and the air in the marine and winged creatures. The creation
of the marine animals begins first. It is not only because they are the most imperfect
creatures, but because the water is a more quickening and a more primitive
conditioning of life than the earth. The like holds true of the air. It is clear,
moreover, that the land-animals in their organization stand nearer to men than the
birds; nevertheless they are not, in all respects, more perfect than the birds; and of
these latter, as of the trees, it is emphatically said that they hover high over the
earth. Indeed, as birds of the heaven, they are assigned to the heaven, as the fish to
the water, as the land-animals to the earth, and so far correctly, since they not
merely soar above the earth, and have their proper life in the air, but also because
they are in part water-fowl and not merely land-birds. This graphic nature-limning
Isaiah, moreover, to be noticed here in the formation of the fishes and the birds, as
at an earlier stage in the formation of the plants. The first animals are now more
carefully denoted as living souls, ‫ָח‬‫יּ‬ַ‫ח‬ ‫ֶשׁ‬‫פ‬ֶ‫נ‬ (soul of life). On this Delitzsch remarks:
“The animal does not merely have soul, it is soul; since the soul is its proper being,
and the body is only its appearing.” That might hold in respect to men, but it could
hardly be said of the animal (see Psalm 104:29-30). It is true, the beast is animated;
it has an animal principle of sensation and of motion which is the ground of its
appearing, but as soul it is inseparably connected with all animal soul-life,[F 11]
that Isaiah, the life of nature. Knobel translates: Let the waters swarm a swarm.

276. This conception is still more lively and pictorial than that of our translation (es
sollen wimmeln die Wasser vom Gewimmel, let the water swarm with or from a
swarm); nevertheless we hold the latter to be more correct, since the causality of the
swarm cannot lie in the water itself,[F 12] but in the creative word.—And let birds
fly and fly (fly about).—The strong sense of the Hebrew conjugation Pilel (‫ֵף‬‫פ‬‫ְעוֹ‬‫י‬)
cannot be expressed by the simple words let fly. The element of the formation, the
air, is not here given; for it is clear that they are not referred to the water in their
origin.[F 13] One might think here in some way of the upper waters; but the birds
are under the firmament. Their element is the very firmament of heaven, just where
the two waters are divided. On its underside, or that which is turned towards the
earth (‫ֵי‬‫נ‬ְ‫פּ‬‫ַל־‬‫ע‬), must the birds fly. They belong just as much to the earth as to the
water and the air; therefore are they assigned to no special district, Genesis 1:21.
The great water-animals (‫ִין‬‫נּ‬ַ‫,תּ‬ long-extended), a word which is elsewhere used of the
serpent, the crocodile, the marine monsters, but not specially of fishes. “These, with
the insects that live in the water, worms, etc, are all here to be understood under ‫ֶשׁ‬‫פ‬ֶ‫נ‬
‫ָה‬‫יּ‬ַ‫ה‬ (soul of life).” Knobel. That the animal creation had its beginning mainly with
the water-animals we learn from natural science; but whether with the vertebrated
animals? (Delitzsch.) All birds of wing, translates Knobel. We would rather take ‫ָף‬‫נ‬ָ‫כּ‬
as a more general designation: winged, which would also include the insects.
Delitzsch correctly rejects the old view, which is restored by Knobel, namely that the
author meant to represent God as having always created each species of animals in
one pair; for one pair cannot swarm, and with a swarm the animal creation begins.
With good ground, however, does Delitzsch maintain that for the animals there were
determined central points of creation, p117. one the more, however, can we
approve what he says of the generatio æquivoca of the water and air-animals out of
water and earth; since we must throughout acquiesce in the opinion that the
creative word establishes something new—new life-principles, and here also the
respective animal-principles, in water and air.
PETT, "Verses 20-23
‘And God said, “Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that has
life, and let birds fly above the earth on the face of the expanse of the heaven”. And
God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, which the
waters brought forth abundantly according to their kinds, and every winged bird
according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. And God blessed them and
said, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply
on the earth.” And there was evening and there was morning a fifth day.’
We note here a remarkable fact. Firstly that God commanded the creatures to be
‘bought forth’ by the waters, and secondly that He ‘created’ them. Thus there
would appear to be a twofold process. The first, adaptation from what was in the
waters, the second, creation of something from nothing. The creatures are to be seen
as a part of that from which they come, and yet also to be seen as being distinctive.
Thus the life of living creatures is distinguished from plant life. It is new and
unique. They receive their life from God. As with the vegetation God determines
that there will be many ‘kinds’ so as to provide diversity. These ‘kinds’ are the
result of God’s activity.

277. “Living creatures” - nephesh chayah. The word nephesh comes from Akkadian
‘napishtu’ where it meant throat. That is where the breath was seen as coming from
and thus it developed to mean the life within and ‘alive’, thus ‘living things’ The
whole phrase therefore means ‘living things that have life’.
“The great sea monsters”. The writer was aware, as all men were, of huge creatures
in the sea. To many they must have seemed terrifying. But he knew that they were
creatures of God. Many ancient myths spoke of semi-divine sea monsters (tannin)
who caused distress and chaos, (and the Psalmists use the ideas pictorially to
demonstrate God’s control over creation), but the writer wants it to be clear that
they are no such thing. They are made by God and they are under His control and
will.
“Brought forth abundantly” from the root ‘to swarm’, thus things which appear in
swarms. The waters were filled with swarming things.
“And every winged bird.” First the fish and then the birds. These filled the waters
and the area under the firmament (Genesis 1:7).
“And God saw that it was good.” This brings out God’s personal interest in what He
has produced. He is, as it were, making sure that the world into which man will
come is a good place for him to be. Yes, even the sea-monsters are good in His eyes.
They are no enemy to Him.
Then God blesses the creatures. Again this is new, stressing that a new distinctive
beginning has been achieved. The vegetation was not ‘blessed’. The heavenly lights
were not blessed. The creatures are seen as in some special way distinctive and
personal. The main blessing is that those who have received life can pass on life.
They can be fruitful, and multiply. Sexual functions, rightly used, are blessed by
God to the furtherance of life. A clear distinction is made between animate life and
inanimate life. Animism, the belief that inanimate objects have souls, is here rejected
by God. Such objects are not ‘blessed’ for they have no ‘life’.
BI 20-23, "Let the waters bring forth abundantly
Fish and fowl
I. THAT LIFE IS THE IMMEDIATE CREATION OF GOD.
1. Life was not an education.
2. It was not the result of combination.
3. It was a miraculous gift. There are two words in this sentence that should be
remembered, and joined together most closely, they are “God” and “life.” This should
be so in the soul of man, as God is the source of its true and higher life. If the Church
were to remember the connection of these two great words, she would be much more
powerful in her toil. Life was at first the miraculous gift of God. Its continuance is
His gift.
II. THAT LIFE IS VARIED IN ITS MANIFESTATION AND CAPABILITY.

278. 1. Life is varied in its manifestations. There were created on this day both fish and
fowl. Thus life is not a monotony. It assumes different forms. It grows in different
directions. It has several kingdoms. It has numerous conditions of growth.
2. Life is varied in its capability. The fish swim in the water. The fowls fly in the air;
the abilities and endowments of each are distinct and varied. Each takes a part in the
great ministry of the universe. The whole in harmony is the joy of man.
3. Life is abundant and rich in its source. The waters brought forth abundantly.
There was no lack of life-giving energy on the part of God. The world is crowded with
life. The universe will not soon become a grave, for even in death there is life, hidden
but effective to a new harvest.
4. Life is good in its design.
III. THAT THE LOWER SPHERES OF LIFE ARE RICHLY ENDOWED WITH THE
DIVINE BLESSING.
1. It was the blessing of increasing numbers.
2. It was the blessing of an extended occupation of the land and sea.
3. Let us always remember that the blessing of God rests upon the lower spheres of
life. (J. S. Exell, M. A.)
Genesis of the animals
I. EXPLANATION OF THE PASSAGE.
1. Animals the issue of fifth and sixth days.
2. Panorama of the emerging animals. Lo! the nautilus spreads his sail, and the
caterpillar winds his cocoon, and the spider weaves his web, and the salmon darts
through the sea, and the lizard glides among the rocks, and the eagle soars the sky,
and the lion roams the jungle, and the monkey chatters among the trees, and all
animate creation waits the advent and lordship of man, God’s inspiration and
therefore God’s image, God’s image and therefore God’s viceroy.
3. The animal succession a progress.
(1) Animals of the water.
(2) Animals of the air.
(3) Animals of the land.
(4) Man.
And with this Mosaic account of the origin of life, ascending from plant, by way of
animal, to man, the geological records substantially agree: first, plants and fishes of the
Palaeozoic period; secondly, birds and reptiles of the Mesozoic period; thirdly, mammals
and man of the Neozoic period.
4. “After their kind.” Almost like a prophetic caveat against the modern hypothesis
of the mutability of species.
5. The Creator’s blessing. The benediction of fertility.
6. The Divine delight.

279. II. MORAL MEANING OF THE STORY.
1. Animals have “souls.” What in man we call reason, in animals we call instinct. As
that mysterious force which vitalizes and builds up the fabric of the human body is
the same mysterious force which vitalizes and builds up the fabric of the animalcule,
so that mysterious guide which teaches Newton how to establish the law of gravity,
and Shakespeare how to write his “Hamlet,” and Stephenson how to bridge the St.
Lawrence, seems substantially to be the same mysterious guide which teaches the
beaver how to build his dam, and the spider how to weave his web, and the ant how
to dig his spiral home. The difference does not seem to be so much a difference in
nature or kind, as in degree or intensity. As the diamond is the same substance with
charcoal—only under superior crystalline figure—so reason seems to be substantially
the same with instinct—only in an intensely organized state. One thing is common to
man and animals: it is that mysterious principle or force which, in want of a better
name, and in distinction from the term spirit, we call “soul.”
2. Animals perhaps are immortal. I quote from that profound treatise by Louis
Agassiz, entitled “Essay on Classification”: “Most of the arguments of philosophy in
favour of the immortality of man apply equally to the permanency of the immaterial
principle in other living beings. May I not add that a future life in which man should
be deprived of that great source of enjoyment and intellectual and moral
improvement, which results from the contemplation of the harmonies of an organic
world, would involve a lamentable loss? And may we not look to a spiritual concert of
the combined worlds and all their inhabitants in presence of their Creator, as the
highest conception of paradise?” (See Rom_8:19-23.) (G. D.Boardman.)
The prolific character of the life of the ocean
The finny tribes are specially prolific. The eggs of fish, or spawn, produce vast
multitudes. The row of a codfish contains nine millions of eggs, of a flounder, about a
million and a half, and of a mackerel, half a million. “The unchecked produce of one pair
of herrings would in a very few years crowd the Atlantic.” So is it also with birds. The
passenger pigeon of North America has been seen in flocks a mile broad, and taking four
hours in passing, at the rate of a mile a minute, and was calculated to contain 250
millions of Psa_104:24-25). The microscope also shows there are beings with perfect
organs of nutrition and locomotion, a million of which would not exceed in bulk one
grain of sand, and eight millions of which might be compressed within a grain of
mustard seed. Others are so small that 500 millions of them could live in a dish of water.
There are even animalcules so minute that a cubic inch could contain a million millions
of them. (Jacobus.)
Shoals of animalculae
Some few years ago a newspaper correspondent, writing from the Gulf of Siam, said:
“We steamed forward at the rate of six or seven knots an hour, and a wonderful spectacle
presented itself. Athwart the vessel, long white waves of light were seen rushing towards
it, ever brighter and in swifter motion, till they seemed to flow together, and at length
nothing could be seen on the water but a whirling white light. Looking stedfastly at it,
the water, the air, and the horizon seemed blended in one; thick streamers of mist
seemed to float by both sides of the ship with frantic speed. The appearances of colour

280. resembled those which arise when one turns a black-and-white striped ball so quickly
that the white stripes seem to run together. The spectacle lasted for five minutes, and
was repeated once again for two minutes. No doubt it was caused by shoals of
animalculae in the water.”
Resemblances between fishes and birds
I must tell you of a discovery made by a very dear friend whom I have lost, the excellent
Dr. Prevost, a learned anatomist of Geneva. He often mentioned it to me as affording a
remarkable testimony to the Word of God. It helps to explain the words of the 20th
verse. We may perhaps wonder that two such apparently different kinds of creatures as
fishes and birds should be classed together. Who among us would have thought of such
an arrangement? But, dear children, scientific men have discovered, on examination,
that there are very close resemblances between them in their anatomical structure and in
some other things. Both spring from eggs; and while the one class—the birds—swim in
the air with wings, the other—the fishes—fly in the water with fins. And besides these
points of resemblance, the discovery made by Dr. Prevost, which astonished himself and
interested the learned world very much, was this, that the globules of the blood of fishes
and birds are seen to be the same, when closely examined, and do not at all resemble the
globules of the blood of those animals which sprang from the earth on the sixth day.
(Prof. Gaussen.)
Some of the faculties and organs of fishes
Fishes appear to be endowed with the senses common to land animals. Those of touch
and taste are supposed to be feeble, in general: though some are furnished with flexible
feelers, or organs of touch. Their organs of smelling and hearing are more acute, and are
in their structure happily adapted to the element in which they live. These latter senses
have no external avenues, as in land animals; for immediate and perpetual contact with
the dense element of water would soon prove ruinous to their delicate and sensitive
nerves. Smelling is said to be the most acute of all their senses. The olfactory membrane
and nerves in them are of remarkable extent; in a large shark they expand over a surface
of no less than twelve or thirteen square feet. Hence, by this sense the finny tribes can
discover their prey or their enemies at a great distance, and direct their course in the
thickest darkness, and amid the most agitated waves. Possessing the foregoing faculties
fishes are not without a degree of sagacity. They have been found even capable of
instruction, and been taught to come when called by their names, and to assemble for
their food at the sound of a whistle or bell. They are said to be among the most long-lived
of all animals. The carp has been known to reach more than a hundred years of age. And
Kirby relates that a pike was taken in 1754, at Kaiserslautern, which had a ring fastened
to the gill covers, from which it appeared to have been put into the pond of that castle by
order of Frederick II in 1487—a period of two hundred and sixty-seven years. Fishes
excel in strength, and seem to be capable of prolonged exertion without apparent fatigue.
Even the feathered tribe, in this, must yield the palm to the finny race. The shark will out
travel the eagle, and the salmon will out strip the swallow in speed. The thunny will dart
with the rapidity of an arrow, and the herring will travel for days and weeks at the rate of
sixteen miles an hour, without respite or repose. Sharks have been observed to follow
and play around a ship through its whole voyage across the Atlantic; and the same fish,
when harpooned, has been known to drag a vessel of heavy tonnage at a high speed
against wind and tide. (Prof. Gaussen.)

281. Fecundity of fishes
This “blessing” is to be regarded, not simply as a solemn word of command, but the
imparting of reproducing energies to the varied tribes of the deep. And to see how
effective this blessing was, we need but look at the results which followed. Nothing can
exceed that “abundance” brought forth. If we attempt to estimate the number of eggs in
the toes of various kinds of fish, we may be able to form some faint conception of it. The
roe of the cod fish, according to Harmer’s estimate, contains 3,686,000 eggs; of the
flounder, 225,000; of the mackerel, 500,000; of the tench, 350,000; of the carp,
203,000; of the roach, 100,000; of the sole, nearly 100,000; of the pike, 50,000; of the
herring, the perch, and the smelt, from 20,000 to 30,000. Other species are equally
prolific. Such numbers present an idea of fecundity that is truly overwhelming. It must
be observed, however, that a large proportion of the eggs deposited are destroyed in
various ways; they are eagerly sought after by other fishes, by aquatic birds, and by
reptiles, as food; and in the young state, they are pursued and devoured by larger ones of
their own species, as well as by those of others. Still the numbers which arrive at
maturity surpass all comprehension, as appears from the countless myriads of those that
are of gregarious and migratory habits. Impelled and guided by that mysterious power
we call instinct, fishes, at certain seasons, migrate and travel in immense droves to seek
a suitable place and temperature for the reproduction of their species. Vast migrations
take place from the oceans into all the rivers of the earth; the salmon and others often
ascend large streams in great numbers for hundreds and even thousands of miles. Vaster
yet by far are the migrations that occur in the ocean from one region to another. The
migratory tribes of the sea are very numerous; of these, among the best known is the
cod; at spawning time these fish proceed northward, and frequent the shallows of the
ocean, such as the banks of Newfoundland, where they are found in infinite multitudes.
The haddock resorts, in like manner, to northern coasts, and has been found in immense
shoals of more than twenty miles long and three miles broad. The mackerel also is a
migratory tribe; these winter in the Arctic and Antarctic oceans, from whence in the
spring they emerge from their hiding places in innumerable myriads, and proceed to
more genial seas to deposit their eggs. The thunny travels for the same end in numbers
without number. But the most notable of all the migratory species are the herrings;
these, like many others, pass the winter in high northern latitudes, and at different times
through the summer, proceed southward in search of food, and to deposit their spawn.
Some idea of their numbers may be formed from the vast quantities that are taken. Many
years since, when the business was prosecuted on a more limited scale than at present, it
was reported that on the coast of Norway no less than 20,000,000 were frequently taken
at a single fishing; and that the average capture of the season exceeded 400,000,000. At
Gottenberg, 700,000,000 were annually caught. Yet all these millions were but a
fraction of the numbers taken by the English, Dutch, and other nations. But all that are
taken by all nations put together, are no more missed from the countless hosts of the
ocean than a drop out of the full bucket. Their shoals, says Kirby, consist of millions of
myriads, and are many leagues in width, many fathoms in depth, and so dense that the
fishes touch each other; and this stream continues to move at a rapid rate past any
particular point nearly all summer. If, then, these single groups of a few species that
happen to fall under the observation of man be thus numerous, or rather innumerable, it
is obvious that the aggregate of all the orders, genera, and species, making up the whole
population of the deep, must infinitely transcend all the powers of human enumeration!
(Prof. Gaussen.)

282. Birds
As in the beauteous creations of the vegetable world, and among the countless living
tenants of the deep, so also among the birds of the air, we behold indubitable evidences
and most impressive displays of the universal and constant agency of God. In all their
doings and movements, the guiding finger of their Creator is clearly seen. Prior to all
experience, and independent of all instruction, we see the little feathered tribes
undertake and accomplish all the ingenious duties of their being; and accomplish them,
too, with a certainty and perfection which no instruction could teach, and no experience
improve. The sparrow performs and goes through with the whole process of building,
laying, hatching, and rearing, as successfully the first time as the last. And whence is all
this to the little bird of the air, if not from the omnipresent and infinite Spirit? Who or
what leads the young female bird to prepare a nest, untaught and undirected, long before
she has need of it? Who instructs each particular species in its own peculiar style of
architecture? And when the first egg is brought forth, who teaches her what she must do
with it? or that it is a thing to be taken care of, that it must be laid and preserved in the
nest? And the germ of future life being wrapped in the egg, who teaches its little owner
that heat will develop and mature that germ? Who acquaints her with the fact that her
own body possesses the precise kind and degree of warmth required? And what is it that
holds her so constantly and so long upon the nest, amid light and darkness, storm and
sunshine, without the least knowledge or idea as to what the result or fruit of all this toil
and self-denial is to be? Here, then, are operations carried on, and effects produced,
which must constrain every candid mind to recognize in them the invisible band of God.
Again, the migration of birds—how astonishing is all this! “The stork in the heavens
knoweth her appointed times; and the turtle and the crane and the swallow observe the
time of their coming.” So fixed are the dates of departing and returning with many tribes
of the feathered race that, “in certain eastern countries at the present day, almanacs are
timed and bargains struck upon the data they supply.” Now, who informs them that the
day is come for them to take their leave? or announces to them that the time has arrived
for their return? Without science, without a map, without a compass, without a
waymark, who acquaints them with the direction they are to take? or measures out for
them the length of the journey they have to perform? Who enables them to pursue
undeviatingly their course over pathless oceans, and through the trackless voids of the
atmosphere, alike in the day time and in the night season, and to arrive exactly at the
same spot from year to year? To whom shall we ascribe this extraordinary power—to
God, or to the little bird? It must be either to the one, or to the other. It is obvious that
the little bird does not possess either the reasoning powers, or the geographical
acquaintance, or the meteorological knowledge, which would enable it either to plan or
to carry out such astonishing enterprises. Indeed, could man thus, amid all storms and
darkness, infallibly steer his voyages over the main, it would render superfluous the use
of his compass and sextant, and enable him at once to dispense with his trigonometry
and logarithms. Whatever name, then, we may give this mysterious power, and in
whatever light we may regard these astonishing facts, correct and sound reasoning as
well as the Scripture, will lead us to the conviction and acknowledgment of the
illustrious Newton, that all this is done through the immediate influence and guidance of
Him, “in whom all live and move and have their being,” and without whom “not a
sparrow falleth to the ground.” In the feathered population of our globe we also behold,
not proofs only, but most interesting and delightful displays of the goodness of God. The
very introduction of the winged race into the new-made world was, in itself, a
demonstration of the benevolence of the Divine mind, as they constitute one of its most

283. beautiful and lovely features. Birds are also living parables, and as such the Great
Teacher often employed them. (Prof. Gaussen.)
Insects
On the fifth day were also produced the insect population of the new-made world, for
these, as well as birds, must be included in the term winged thing. This department of
animated nature presents to us a field of study all but illimitable, insects being by far the
most numerous and diversified of all the living orders that occupy the dry land. Not less
than 100,000 different species are already known, and many more doubtless remain to
be discovered. A distinguished naturalist has made the statement, that there are
probably six species of insects to every species of plants; this estimate, therefore, would
make the entire number of insect species on the face of the globe considerably over half a
million. The insect tribes are of all conceivable forms, habits, and instincts. (Prof.
Gaussen.)
Reflections on the insect creation
Insects, like every other class of living creatures, have their place to occupy, and their
office to fulfil in the Divine plan, and form an essential link in the great chain of
animated nature. Small and insignificant as they appear, viewed singly, yet taken
collectively, they make up armies far more potent and formidable than either Alexander,
or Caesar, or Bonaparte ever mustered; and these being everywhere dispersed, and daily
and hourly at work in their several departments, they constitute an agency of great
power, and no doubt of great good, in the economy of the world. We may not be able to
determine how, or what, each particular species contributes to the benefit of the great
whole; but we may be sure that their great variety of organs, and their wonderful
instinctive capacities, have been bestowed upon them for ends worthy of the wisdom
that produced them. The works of the Lord are perfect, and nothing has been made in
vain. Insects are an ornament to the earth’s scenery, and, no doubt, were designed by the
munificent Creator to be objects of pleasurable observation and study to man. The insect
creation teaches us that God is to be seen in the least as well as in the greatest of His
works. He is in all and through all. The guidance of His finger is to be traced as distinctly
in the circles of the spider’s web as in the orbits of the planets; and the operation of His
hand is as plainly seen in the lustre of an insect’s wing, as in the resplendent disk of the
sun, which sheds light and life on surrounding globes. In the history of insects, we meet
with the most beautiful illustration that all nature affords of the great and distinguishing
doctrine of Christianity—the resurrection of the dead. (Prof. Gaussen.)

284. 21 So God created the great creatures of the sea
and every living thing with which the water teems
and that moves about in it, according to their
kinds, and every winged bird according to its
kind. And God saw that it was good.
CLARKE, "And God created great whales - ‫הגדלים‬ ‫התנינם‬ hattanninim haggedolim.
Though this is generally understood by the different versions as signifying whales, yet
the original must be understood rather as a general than a particular term, comprising
all the great aquatic animals, such as the various species of whales, the porpoise, the
dolphin, the monoceros or narwal, and the shark. God delights to show himself in little
as well as in great things: hence he forms animals so minute that 30,000 can be
contained in one drop of water; and others so great that they seem to require almost a
whole sea to float in.
GILL, "And God created great whales,.... Which the Targums of Jonathan and
Jarchi interpret of the Leviathan and its mate, concerning which the Jews have many
fabulous things: large fishes are undoubtedly meant, and the whale being of the largest
sort, the word is so rendered. Aelianus, from various writers, relates many things of the
extraordinary size of whales; of one in the Indian sea five times bigger than the largest
elephant, one of its ribs being twenty cubits (r); from Theocles, of one that was larger
than a galley with three oars (s); and from Onesicritus and Orthagoras, of one that was
half a furlong in length (t); and Pliny (u) speaks of one sort called the "balaena", and of
one of them in the Indian sea, that took up four aces of land, and so Solinus (w); and
from Juba, he relates there were whales that were six hundred feet in length, and three
hundred sixty in breadth (x) but whales in common are but about fifty, seventy, eighty,
or at most one hundred feet. Some interpret these of crocodiles, see Eze_29:3 some of
which are twenty, some thirty, and some have been said to be an hundred feet long (y)
The word is sometimes used of dragons, and, if it has this sense here, must be meant of
dragons in the sea, or sea serpents, leviathan the piercing serpent, and leviathan the
crooked serpent, Isa_27:1 so the Jews (z); and such as the bishop of Bergen (a) speaks of
as in the northern seas of a hundred fathom long, or six hundred English feet; and who
also gives an account of a sea monster of an enormous and incredible size, that
sometimes appears like an island at a great distance, called "Kraken" (b); now because
creatures of such a prodigious size were formed out of the waters, which seemed so very
unfit to produce them; therefore the same word is here made use of, as is in the creation
of the heaven and the earth out of nothing, Gen_1:1 because this production, though not
out of nothing, yet was an extraordinary instance of almighty power,

285. And every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth
abundantly after their kind; that is, every living creature that swims in the waters of
the great sea, or in rivers, whose kinds are many, and their numbers not to be reckoned;
see Gill on Gen_1:20.
and every winged fowl after his kind; every fowl, and the various sorts of them that
fly in the air; these were all created by God, or produced out of the water and out of the
earth by his wonderful power:
and God saw that it was good; or foresaw that those creatures he made in the
waters and in the air would serve to display the glory of his perfections, and be very
useful and beneficial to man, he designed to create. (Some of the creatures described by
the ancients must refer to animals that are now extinct. Some of these may have been
very large dinasours. Ed.)
CALVI , "21.And God created A question here arises out of the word created. For
we have before contended, that because the world was created, it was made out of
nothing; but now Moses says that things formed from other matter were created.
They who truly and properly assert that the fishes were created because the waters
were in no way sufficient or suitable for their production, only resort to a
subterfuge: for, in the meantime, the fact would remain that the material of which
they were made existed before; which, in strict propriety, the word created does not
admit. I therefore do not restrict the creation here spoken of to the work of the fifth
day, but rather suppose it to refer to that shapeless and confused mass, which was as
the fountain of the whole world. (76) God then, it is said, created whales (balaenas)
and other fishes, not that the beginning of their creation is to be reckoned from the
moment in which they receive their form; but because they are comprehended in the
universal matter which was made out of nothing. So that, with respect to species,
form only was then added to them; but creation is nevertheless a term truly used
respecting both the whole and the parts. The word commonly rendered whales
(cetos vel cete) might in my judgment be not improperly translated thynnus or
tunny fish, as corresponding with the Hebrew word thaninim. (77)
When he says that “the waters brought forth,” (78) he proceeds to commend the
efficacy of the word, which the waters hear so promptly, that, though lifeless in
themselves, they suddenly teem with a living offspring, yet the language of Moses
expresses more; namely, that fishes innumerable are daily produced from the
waters, because that word of God, by which he once commanded it, is continually in
force.
COKE, "Genesis 1:21. Created great whales— The word ‫התנינם‬ hathaninim, which
we render great whales, signifies "any kind of large aquatic or amphibious
animals;" under which, whales, crocodiles, and the like, may properly be classed.
The sacred writer intends only to inform us by that expression of the creation of
that class of aquatic or amphibious creatures which are of the more enormous size.
REFLECTIO S.—The greatest, as well as the least, owe to God their breath and

286. being; and the whale, which unwieldly rolls along the ocean, costs him no more than
the worm which twinkles in the drop before the microscope: each endued with
powers so exactly suited to his state, and so exquisitely fashioned, that he who looks
without wonder and adoration must be blind indeed.
ELLICOTT, "(21) God created great whales.—Whales, strictly speaking, are
mammals, and belong to the creation of the sixth day. But tannin, the word used
here, means any long creature, and is used of serpents in Exodus 7:9-10 (where,
however, it may mean a crocodile), and in Deuteronomy 32:33; of the crocodile in
Psalms 74:13, Isaiah 51:9, Ezekiel 29:3; and of sea monsters generally in Job 7:12. It
thus appropriately marks the great Saurian age. The use, too, of the verb bârâ, “he
created,” is no argument against its meaning to produce out of nothing, because it
belongs not to these monsters, which may have been “evolved,” but to the whole
verse, which describes the introduction of animal life; and this is one of the special
creative acts which physical science acknowledges to be outside its domain.
After their kind.—This suggests the belief that the various genera and species of
birds, fishes, and insects were from the beginning distinct, and will continue so, even
if there be some amount of free play in the improvement and development of
existing species.
22 God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and
increase in number and fill the water in the seas,
and let the birds increase on the earth.”
BAR ES, "Gen_1:22
Blessed them. - We are brought into a new sphere of creation on this day, and we
meet with a new act of the Almighty. To bless is to wish, and, in the case of God, to will
some good to the object of the blessing. The blessing here pronounced upon the fish and
the fowl is that of abundant increase.
Bear. - This refers to the propagation of the species.
Multiply. - This notifies the abundance of the offspring.
Fill the waters. - Let them be fully stocked.
In the seas. - The “sea” of Scripture includes the lake, and, by parity of reason, the
rivers, which are the feeders of both. This blessing seems to indicate that, whereas in the
case of some plants many individuals of the same species were simultaneously created,
so as to produce a universal covering of verdure for the land and an abundant supply of

287. aliment for the animals about to be created - in regard to these animals a single pair
only, at all events of the larger kinds, was at first called into being, from which, by the
potent blessing of the Creator, was propagated the multitude by which the waters and
the air were peopled.
CLARKE, "Let fowl multiply in the earth - It is truly astonishing with what care,
wisdom, and minute skill God has formed the different genera and species of birds,
whether intended to live chiefly on land or in water. The structure of a single feather
affords a world of wonders; and as God made the fowls that they might fly in the
firmament of heaven, Gen_1:20, so he has adapted the form of their bodies, and the
structure and disposition of their plumage, for that very purpose. The head and neck in
flying are drawn principally within the breast-bone, so that the whole under part
exhibits the appearance of a ship’s hull. The wings are made use of as sails, or rather
oars, and the tail as a helm or rudder. By means of these the creature is not only able to
preserve the center of gravity, but also to go with vast speed through the air, either
straight forward, circularly, or in any kind of angle, upwards or downwards. In these also
God has shown his skill and his power in the great and in the little - in the vast ostrich
and cassowary, and In the beautiful humming-bird, which in plumage excels the
splendor of the peacock, and in size is almost on a level with the bee.
GILL, "And God blessed them,.... With a power to procreate their kind, and
continue their species, as it is interpreted in the next clause,
saying, be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas: and these
creatures do multiply exceedingly, and vast quantities there are of them in the mighty
waters, though the consumption of some sorts of them is very great. Our English word
"fish" is derived from the Hebrew word ‫,פוש‬ "fush", which signifies to multiply and
increase:
and let fowl multiply in the earth; as they did, and continue to do to this day.
CALVI , "22.And God blessed them What is the force of this benediction he soon
declares. For God does not, after the manner of men, pray that we may be blessed;
but, by the bare intimation of his purpose, effects what men seek by earnest
entreaty. He therefore blesses his creatures when he commands them to increase
and grow; that is, he infuses into them fecundity by his word. But it seems futile for
God to address fishes and reptiles. I answer, this mode of speaking was no other
than that which might be easily understood. For the experiment itself teaches, that
the force of the word which was addressed to the fishes was not transient, but
rather, being infused into their nature, has taken root, and constantly bears fruit.
BE SO , "Genesis 1:22. God blessed them — Behold the cause of the continuance
in existence, and of the fruitfulness and multiplication, of the sundry kinds of
creatures! It is owing to this word only that, though thousands of years have rolled
away since their creation, not one species of them, amid so many, has been lost.

288. Hence the inclination in every creature to propagate its species, and hence the
wonderful and tender care they take of their young, till they are able to provide for
themselves! So that, notwithstanding the daily great consumption of the creatures
for the food of man, there is still such a succession of them, that the innumerable
multitudes consumed for our use are not even missed. How wonderful that Being
who is the author of this fertility and plenteousness!
23 And there was evening, and there was
morning—the fifth day.
GILL, "And the evening and the morning were the fifth day. The sun now in
the firmament, where it was fixed the day before, having gone round the earth, or the
earth about that, in the space of twenty four hours; and according to Capellus this was
the twenty second of April; or, as others, the fifth of September; and according to Bishop
Usher the twenty seventh of October.
ELLICOTT, "(23) The fifth day.—Upon the work of the first four days geology is
virtually silent, and the theories respecting the physical formation of the world
belong to other sciences. But as regards the fifth day, its testimony is ample. In the
lowest strata of rocks, such as the Cambrian and Silurian, we find marine animals,
mollusca, and trilobites; higher up in the Devonian rocks we find fish; in the
Carbonaceous period we find reptiles; and above these, in the Permian, those
mighty saurians, described in our version as great whales. Traces of birds, even in
these higher strata, if existent at all, are rare, but indubitably occur in the Triassic
series. We thus learn that this fifth day covers a vast space of time, and, in
accordance with what has been urged before as regards vegetation, it is probable
that the introduction of the various genera and species was gradual. God does
nothing in haste, and our conceptions of His marvellous working are made more
clear and worthy of His greatness by the evidence which geology affords.

289. 24 And God said, “Let the land produce living
creatures according to their kinds: the livestock,
the creatures that move along the ground, and the
wild animals, each according to its kind.” And it
was so.
BAR ES, " - VIII. The Sixth Day
24. ‫בהמה‬ be
hēmâh, “cattle; dumb, tame beasts.”
‫רמשׂ‬ remeś, “creeping (small or low) animals.”
‫חוּה‬ chayâh, “living thing; animal.”
‫חוּת־חארץ‬ chayatô-chā'ārets, “wild beast.”
26. ‫אדם‬ 'ādām, “man, mankind;” “be red.” A collective noun, having no plural number,
and therefore denoting either an individual of the kind, or the kind or race itself. It is
connected in etymology with ‫אדמה‬ 'ădāmâh, “the red soil,” from which the human body
was formed Gen_2:7. It therefore marks the earthly aspect of man.
‫צלם‬ tselem, “shade, image,” in visible outline.
‫דמוּת‬ de
mût, “likeness,” in any quality.
‫רדה‬ rādâh “tread, rule.”
This day corresponds with the third. In both the land is the sphere of operation. In
both are performed two acts of creative power. In the third the land was clothed with
vegetation: in the sixth it is peopled with the animal kingdom. First, the lower animals
are called into being, and then, to crown all, man.
Gen_1:24, Gen_1:25
This branch of the animal world is divided into three parts. “Living breathing thing” is
the general head under which all these are comprised. “Cattle” denotes the animals that
dwell with man, especially those that bear burdens. The same term in the original, when
there is no contrast, when in the plural number or with the specification of “the land,”
the “field,” is used of wild beasts. “Creeping things” evidently denote the smaller
animals, from which the cattle are distinguished as the large. The quality of creeping is,
however, applied sometimes to denote the motion of the lower animals with the body in
a prostrate posture, in opposition to the erect posture of man Psa_104:20. The “beast of
the land” or the field signifies the wild rapacious animal that lives apart from man. The
word ‫חוּה‬ chayâh, “beast or animal,” is the general term employed in these verses for the

290. whole animal kind. It signifies wild animal with certainty only when it is accompanied by
the qualifying term “land” or “field,” or the epithet “evil” ‫רעה‬ rā‛âh. From this division it
appears that animals that prey on others were included in this latest creation. This is an
extension of that law by which the organic living substances of the vegetable kingdom
form the sustenance of the animal species. The execution of the divine mandate is then
recorded, and the result inspected and approved.
CLARKE, "Let the earth bring forth the living creature, etc. - ‫חיה‬ ‫נפש‬ nephesh
chaiyah; a general term to express all creatures endued with animal life, in any of its
infinitely varied gradations, from the half-reasoning elephant down to the stupid potto,
or lower still, to the polype, which seems equally to share the vegetable and animal life.
The word ‫חיתו‬ chaitho, in the latter part of the verse, seems to signify all wild animals, as
lions, tigers, etc., and especially such as are carnivorous, or live on flesh, in
contradistinction from domestic animals, such as are graminivorous, or live on grass
and other vegetables, and are capable of being tamed, and applied to domestic purposes.
See the note on Gen_1:29. These latter are probably meant by ‫בהמה‬ behemah in the text,
which we translate cattle, such as horses, kine, sheep, dogs, etc. Creeping thing, ‫רמש‬
remes, all the different genera of serpents, worms, and such animals as have no feet. In
beasts also God has shown his wondrous skill and power; in the vast elephant, or still
more colossal mammoth or mastodon, the whole race of which appears to be extinct, a
few skeletons only remaining. This animal, an astonishing effect of God’s power, he
seems to have produced merely to show what he could do, and after suffering a few of
them to propagate, he extinguished the race by a merciful providence, that they might
not destroy both man and beast. The mammoth appears to have been a carnivorous
animal, as the structure of the teeth proves, and of an immense size; from a considerable
part of a skeleton which I have seen, it is computed that the animal to which it belonged
must have been nearly twenty-five feet high, and sixty in length! The bones of one toe are
entire; the toe upwards of three feet in length. But this skeleton might have belonged to
the megalonyx, a kind of sloth, or bradypus, hitherto unknown. Few elephants have ever
been found to exceed eleven feet in height. How wondrous are the works of God! But his
skill and power are not less seen in the beautiful chevrotin, or tragulus, a creature of the
antelope kind, the smallest of all bifid or cloven-footed animals, whose delicate limbs are
scarcely so large as an ordinary goose quill; and also in the shrew mouse, perhaps the
smallest of the many-toed quadrupeds. In the reptile kind we see also the same skill and
power, not only in the immense snake called boa constrictor, the mortal foe and
conqueror of the royal tiger, but also in the cobra de manille, a venomous serpent, only a
little larger than a common sewing needle.
GILL, "And God said, let the earth bring forth the living creature after his
kind,.... All sorts of living creatures that live and move upon the earth; not that the earth
was endued with a power to produce these creatures of itself, without the interposition
of God: for though it might be impregnated with a quickening virtue by the Spirit of God,
which moved on it whilst a fluid, and had been prepared and disposed for such a
production by the heat of the body of light created on the first day, and of the sun on the
fourth; yet no doubt it was by the power of God accompanying his word, that these
creatures were produced of the earth, and formed into their several shapes. The
Heathens had some traditionary notion of this affair: according to the Egyptians, whose

291. sentiments Diodorus Siculus (c) seems to give us, the process was thus carried on; the
earth being stiffened by the rays of the sun, and the moist matter being made fruitful by
the genial heat, at night received nourishment by the mist which fell from the ambient
air; and in the day was consolidated by the heat of the sun, till at length the enclosed
foetus having arrived to a perfect increase, and the membranes burnt and burst,
creatures of all kinds appeared; of whom those that had got a greater degree of heat went
upwards, and became flying fowl; those that were endued with an earthly concretion
were reckoned in the class or order of reptiles, and other terrestrial animals; and those
that chiefly partook of a moist or watery nature, ran to the place of a like kind, and were
called swimmers or fish. This is the account they give; and somewhat like is that which
Archelaus, the master of Socrates, delivers as his notion, that animals were produced out
of slime, through the heat of the earth liquefying the slime like milk for food (d): and
Zeno the Stoic says (e), the grosser part of the watery matter of the world made the
earth, the thinner part the air, and that still more subtilized, the fire; and then out of the
mixture of these proceeded plants and animals, and all the other kinds; but all this they
seem to suppose to be done by the mere efforts of nature; whereas Moses here most truly
ascribes their production to the all powerful Word of God:
cattle, and creeping things, and beast of the earth after his kind; the living
creatures produced out of the earth are distinguished into three sorts; "cattle", which
seem to design tame cattle, and such as are for the use of man, either for carriage, food,
or clothing, as horses, asses, camels, oxen, sheep, &c. and "creeping" things, which are
different from the creeping things in the sea before mentioned, are such as either have
no feet, and go upon their bellies, or are very short, and seem to do so, whether greater
or lesser, as serpents, worms, ants, &c,
and the beast of the earth seems to design wild beasts, such as lions, bears, wolves,
&c,
and it was so; such creatures were immediately produced.
HE RY, "We have here the first part of the sixth day's work. The sea was, the day
before, replenished with its fish, and the air with its fowl; and this day were made the
beasts of the earth, the cattle, and the creeping things that pertain to the earth. Here, as
before, 1. The Lord gave the word; he said, Let the earth bring forth, not as if the earth
had any such prolific virtue as to produce these animals, or as if God resigned his
creating power to it; but, “Let these creatures now come into being upon the earth, and
out of it, in their respective kinds, conformable to the ideas of them in the divine
counsels concerning their creation.” 2. He also did the work; he made them all after their
kind, not only of divers shapes, but of divers natures, manners, food, and fashions -
some to be tame about the house, others to be wild in the fields - some living upon grass
and herbs, others upon flesh - some harmless, and others ravenous - some bold, and
others timorous - some for man's service, and not his sustenance, as the horse - others
for his sustenance, and not his service, as the sheep - others for both, as the ox - and
some for neither, as the wild beasts. In all this appears the manifold wisdom of the
Creator.
JAMISO , "Gen_1:24-31. Sixth Day.
beasts of the earth — (2) wild animals, whose ravenous natures were then kept in

292. check, and (3) all the various forms of
creeping things — from the huge reptiles to the insignificant caterpillars.
CALVI , "24.Let the earth bring forth He descends to the sixth day, on which the
animals were created, and then man. ‘Let the earth,’ he says, ‘bring forth living
creatures.’ But whence has a dead element life? Therefore, there is in this respect a
miracle as great as if God had begun to create out of nothing those things which he
commanded to proceed from the earth. And he does not take his material from the
earth, because he needed it, but that he might the better combine the separate parts
of the world with the universe itself. Yet it may be inquired, why He does not here
also add his benediction? I answer, that what Moses before expressed on a similar
occasion is here also to be understood, although he does not repeat it word for word.
I say, moreover, it is sufficient for the purpose of signifying the same thing, (79) that
Moses declares animals were created ‘according to their species:’ for this
distribution carried with it something stable. It may even hence be inferred, that the
offspring of animals was included. For to what purpose do distinct species exist,
unless that individuals, by their several kinds, may be multiplied? (80)
Cattle (81) Some of the Hebrews thus distinguish between “cattle” and “beasts of
the earth,” that the cattle feed on herbage, but that the beasts of the earth are they
which eat flesh. But the Lord, a little while after, assigns herbs to both as their
common food; and it may be observed, that in several parts of Scripture these two
words are used indiscriminately. Indeed, I do not doubt that Moses, after he had
named Behemoth, (cattle,) added the other, for the sake of fuller explanation. By
‘reptiles,’ (82) in this place, understand those which are of an earthly nature.
ELLICOTT, "(24) Let the earth bring forth.— either this, nor the corresponding
phrase in Genesis 1:20, necessarily imply spontaneous generation, though such is its
literal meaning. It need mean no more than that land animals, produced on the dry
ground, were now to follow upon those produced in the waters. However produced,
we believe that the sole active power was the creative will of God, but of His modus
operandi we know nothing.
On this sixth creative day there are four words of power. By the first, the higher
animals are summoned into being; by the second, man; the third provides for the
continuance and increase of the beings which God had created; the fourth assigns
the vegetable world both to man and animals as food.
The creation of man is thus made a distinct act; for though created on the sixth day,
because he is a land animal, yet it is in the latter part of the day, and after a pause of
contemplation and counsel. The reason for this, we venture to affirm, is that in
man’s creation we have a far greater advance in the work of the Almighty than at
any previous stage. For up to this time all has been law, and the highest point
reached was instinct; we have now freedom, reason, intellect, speech. The
evolutionist may give us many an interesting theory about the upgrowth of man’s
physical nature, but the introduction of this moral and mental freedom places as

293. wide a chasm in his way as the first introduction of vegetable, and then of animal
life.
The living creature, or rather, the creature that lives by breathing, is divided into
three classes. The first is “behêmâh,” cattle: literally, the dumb brute, but especially
used of the larger ruminants, which were soon domesticated, and became man’s
speechless servants. ext comes the “creeping thing,” or rather, moving thing, from
a verb translated moveth in Genesis 1:21. It probably signifies the whole multitude
of small animals, and not reptiles particularly. For strictly the word refers rather to
their number than to their means of locomotion, and means a swarm. The third
class is the “beast of the earth,” the wild animals that roam over a large extent of
country, including the carnivora. But as a vegetable diet is expressly assigned in
Genesis 1:30 to the “beast of the earth,” while the evidence of the rocks proves that
even on the fifth day the saurians fed upon fish and upon one another, the record
seems to point out a closer relation between man and the graminivora than with
these fierce denizens of the forest. The narrative of the flood proves conclusively
that there were no carnivora in the ark; and immediately afterwards beasts that kill
men were ordered to be destroyed (Genesis 9:5-6). It is plain that from the first these
beasts lay outside the covenant. But as early as the fourth century, Titus, Bishop of
Bostra, in his treatise against the Manichees, showed, on other than geological
grounds, that the carnivora existed before the fall, and that there was nothing
inconsistent with God’s wisdom or love in their feeding upon other animals. In spite
of their presence, all was good. The evidence of geology proves that in the age when
the carnivora were most abundant, the graminivora were represented by species of
enormous size, and that they flourished in multitudes far surpassing anything that
exists in the present day.
COFFMA , "THE SIXTH DAY
"And God said, Let the earth bring forth living creatures after their kind, cattle,
and creeping things, and beasts of the earth after their kind: and it was so. And God
made the beasts of the earth after their kind, and the cattle after their kind, and
everything that creepeth upon the ground after its kind: and God saw that it was
good."
The parallelism between the last three and the first three days of the creation
continues to be visible in the fact that God began the cycle of life by the creation of
the vegetable world on Day 3, and here upon Day 4 that cycle is completed in the
creation of the larger animals and of mankind (Genesis 1:26-31).
The recurring mention of "after their kind" forbids the notion that various species
upon the earth from themselves produced other species. It is still true that if one
desires to raise a long-handled gourd, he must plant the seed from a long-handled
gourd, and there is no other way to get it. The fidelity of each species to this God-
ordained law is constant.
The sheer supernaturalism of this entire narrative is its principal characteristic. The

294. teeming myriads of earth's creatures, including man, are all here as a result of the
creative and active will of the eternal God Himself. This account does not allow any
thought of so-called "spontaneous" or "naturally developed" life. God alone is
revealed here as the Source of life as well as the Source of all material things.
LA GE, "Genesis 1:24-25. Sixth Creative Day. First half.—The creation of the
land-animals stands in parallelism with the creation of the firm land on the third
day. On the third day, remarks Delitzsch, ‫ֶר‬‫מ‬‫ֹא‬ ‫ַיּ‬‫ו‬ (and he said) is repeated only twice,
but on the sixth day four times. “Truly is this day thereby denoted as the crown of
the others (the crown of all is the sabbath). The sixth day’s work has its eye on man.
In advancing nearness to him are the animals created.” The general creation of ‫ֶשׁ‬‫פ‬ֶ‫נ‬
‫ָה‬‫יּ‬ַ‫ה‬ (soul of life, or living soul) divides itself here, 1. into cattle (‫ָה‬‫מ‬ֵ‫ה‬ְ‫בּ‬ from ‫ַם‬‫ה‬ָ‫ב‬), the
tame land-animals (not utterly dull or stupid; for the horse is less dull than the
sloth) to whom in their intercourse with men speech appears wanting; 2. into the
reptile that crawls upon the soil (whether it be the footless or the thousand-footed)
and the other animals that move about upon the earth as the birds fly about in the
heaven; 3. beasts of the earth, or the wild beasts that roam everywhere through the
earth.—Let the earth bring forth: That Isaiah, in the formative material of the
earth, in the awakened life of the earth, the creative word of God brings forth the
land-animals. According to the older opinions (see Knobel) it was the greater power
of the sun that woke up this new animal life; according to Ebrard it was the volcanic
revolutions of the earth. Delitzsch disputes this, p119. We must distinguish,
however, between a volcanic commotion of the earth’s crust and its partial
eruptions. At all events, the land-animals presuppose a warm birth-place. And yet
the Vulcanism, or volcanic power, must have been already active at a far earlier
period, on the third day at least, and as long as the water was not water (proper)
must the creative power of fire have been in the water itself.
PETT, "Verse 24-25
‘And God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures, according to their kinds,
cattle and creeping things and beasts of the earth according to their kinds”, and it
was so. And God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds, and cattle
according to their kinds, and everything that creeps upon the earth according to its
kind. And God saw that it was good.’
We note here that God is not said to ‘create’ these living creatures. Thus their
created life must in some way be derived from the previously mentioned living
creatures (Genesis 1:21). This shows a continuity of a process which began with the
latter.
Again it is stressed that God planned a diversity of creatures, each according to its
kind. Diversity in creation is not blind chance, but results from the purpose of God.
ote that His plan included both animals that would later be domesticated, and
what we would call ‘wild animals’. Man’s good is clearly in mind.
The creation includes ‘everything that creeps’, including the tiny scavengers that
clean up the world. All have their place in God’s creation.

295. ow we come to the moment that it was all leading up to, the creation of man in
God’s image. Everything that has gone before was subordinate to this. It is for man
that the world has been made.
K&D 24-31, "The Sixth Day. - Sea and air are filled with living creatures; and the
word of God now goes forth to the earth, to produce living beings after their kind. These
are divided into three classes. ‫ה‬ ָ‫מ‬ ֵ‫ה‬ ְ , cattle, from ‫,בהם‬ mutum, brutum esse, generally
denotes the larger domesticated quadrupeds (e.g., Gen_47:18; Exo_13:12, etc.), but
occasionally the larger land animals as a whole. ‫שׂ‬ ֶ‫מ‬ ֶ‫ר‬ (the creeping) embraces the smaller
land animals, which move either without feet, or with feet that are scarcely perceptible,
viz., reptiles, insects, and worms. In Gen_1:25 they are distinguished from the race of
water reptiles by the term ‫ה‬ ָ‫מ‬ ָ‫ד‬ ֲ‫א‬ ָ‫ה‬ ‫ץ‬ ֶ‫ר‬ ֶ‫א‬ ‫ּו‬‫ת‬ְ‫י‬ ַ‫ח‬ (the old form of the construct state, for ‫ץ‬ ֶ‫ר‬ፎ ָ‫ה‬
‫ת‬ַ ַ‫,)ח‬ the beast of the earth, i.e., the freely roving wild animals.
“After its kind:” this refers to all three classes of living creatures, each of which had its
peculiar species; consequently in Gen_1:25, where the word of God is fulfilled, it is
repeated with every class. This act of creation, too, like all that precede it, is shown by
the divine word “good” to be in accordance with the will of God. But the blessing
pronounced is omitted, the author hastening to the account of the creation of man, in
which the work of creation culminated. The creation of man does not take place through
a word addressed by God to the earth, but as the result of the divine decree, “We will
make man in Our image, after our likeness,” which proclaims at the very outset the
distinction and pre-eminence of man above all the other creatures of the earth. The
plural “We” was regarded by the fathers and earlier theologians almost unanimously as
indicative of the Trinity: modern commentators, on the contrary, regard it either as
pluralis majestatis; or as an address by God to Himself, the subject and object being
identical; or as communicative, an address to the spirits or angels who stand around the
Deity and constitute His council. The last is Philo's explanation: διαλέγεται ᆇ τራν οʇ˳λων
πατᆱρ ταሏς ᅛαυτο˳υ δυνάεσιν (δυνάµεις = angels). But although such passages as 1Ki_22:19.,
Psa_89:8, and Dan 10, show that God, as King and Judge of the world, is surrounded by
heavenly hosts, who stand around His throne and execute His commands, the last
interpretation founders upon this rock: either it assumes without sufficient scriptural
authority, and in fact in opposition to such distinct passages as Gen_2:7, Gen_2:22; Isa_
40:13 seq., Gen_44:24, that the spirits took part in the creation of man; or it reduces the
plural to an empty phrase, inasmuch as God is made to summon the angels to cooperate
in the creation of man, and then, instead of employing them, is represented as carrying
out the work alone. Moreover, this view is irreconcilable with the words “in our image,
after our likeness;” since man was created in the image of God alone (Gen_1:27; Gen_
5:1), and not in the image of either the angels, or God and the angels. A likeness to the
angels cannot be inferred from Heb_2:7, or from Luk_20:36. Just as little ground is
there for regarding the plural here and in other passages (Gen_3:22; Gen_11:7; Isa_6:8;
Isa_41:22) as reflective, an appeal to self; since the singular is employed in such cases as
these, even where God Himself is preparing for any particular work (cf. Gen_2:18; Psa_
12:5; Isa_33:10). No other explanation is left, therefore, than to regard it as pluralis
majestatis, - an interpretation which comprehends in its deepest and most intensive
form (God speaking of Himself and with Himself in the plural number, not reverentiae
causa, but with reference to the fullness of the divine powers and essences which He
possesses) the truth that lies at the foundation of the trinitarian view, viz., that the

296. potencies concentrated in the absolute Divine Being are something more than powers
and attributes of God; that they are hypostases, which in the further course of the
revelation of God in His kingdom appeared with more and more distinctness as persons
of the Divine Being. On the words “in our image, after our likeness” modern
commentators have correctly observed, that there is no foundation for the distinction
drawn by the Greek, and after them by many of the Latin Fathers, between εᅶκών
(imago) and ᆇµοίωσις (similitudo), the former of which they supposed to represent the
physical aspect of the likeness to God, the latter the ethical; but that, on the contrary, the
older Lutheran theologians were correct in stating that the two words are synonymous,
and are merely combined to add intensity to the thought: “an image which is like Us”
(Luther); since it is no more possible to discover a sharp or well-defined distinction in
the ordinary use of the words between ‫ם‬ ֶ‫ל‬ ֶ‫צ‬ and ‫מוּת‬ ְ , than between ְ and ְⅴ. ‫ם‬ ֶ‫ל‬ ֶ‫,צ‬ from ‫ל‬ ֵ‫,צ‬
lit., a shadow, hence sketch, outline, differs no more from ‫מוּת‬ ְ , likeness, portrait, copy,
than the German words Umriss or Abriss (outline or sketch) from Bild or Abbild
(likeness, copy). ְ and ְⅴ are also equally interchangeable, as we may see from a
comparison of this verse with Gen_5:1 and Gen_5:3. (Compare also Lev_6:4 with Lev_
27:12, and for the use of ְ to denote a norm, or sample, Exo_25:40; Exo_30:32, Exo_
30:37, etc.) There is more difficulty in deciding in what the likeness to God consisted.
Certainly not in the bodily form, the upright position, or commanding aspect of the man,
since God has no bodily form, and the man's body was formed from the dust of the
ground; nor in the dominion of man over nature, for this is unquestionably ascribed to
man simply as the consequence or effluence of his likeness to God. Man is the image of
God by virtue of his spiritual nature. of the breath of God by which the being, formed
from the dust of the earth, became a living soul.
(Note: “The breath of God became the soul of man; the soul of man therefore is
nothing but the breath of God. The rest of the world exists through the word of God;
man through His own peculiar breath. This breath is the seal and pledge of our
relation to God, of our godlike dignity; whereas the breath breathed into the animals
is nothing but the common breath, the life-wind of nature, which is moving
everywhere, and only appears in the animal fixed and bound into a certain
independence and individuality, so that the animal soul is nothing but a nature-soul
individualized into certain, though still material spirituality.” - Ziegler.)
The image of God consists, therefore, in the spiritual personality of man, though not
merely in unity of self-consciousness and self-determination, or in the fact that man was
created a consciously free Ego; for personality is merely the basis and form of the divine
likeness, not its real essence. This consists rather in the fact, that the man endowed with
free self-conscious personality possesses, in his spiritual as well as corporeal nature, a
creaturely copy of the holiness and blessedness of the divine life. This concrete essence
of the divine likeness was shattered by sin; and it is only through Christ, the brightness
of the glory of God and the expression of His essence (Heb_1:3), that our nature is
transformed into the image of God again (Col_3:10; Eph_4:24).
“And they (‫ם‬ ָ‫ד‬ፎ, a generic term for men) shall have dominion over the fish,” etc. There
is something striking in the introduction of the expression “and over all the earth,” after
the different races of animals have been mentioned, especially as the list of races appears
to be proceeded with afterwards. If this appearance were actually the fact, it would be
impossible to escape the conclusion that the text is faulty, and that ‫ת‬ַ ַ‫ח‬ has fallen out; so

297. that the reading should be, “and over all the wild beasts of the earth,” as the Syriac has
it. But as the identity of “every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth” (‫)הארץ‬ with
“every thing that creepeth upon the ground” (‫)האדמה‬ in Gen_1:25 is not absolutely
certain; on the contrary, the change in expression indicates a difference of meaning; and
as the Masoretic text is supported by the oldest critical authorities (lxx, Sam., Onk.), the
Syriac rendering must be dismissed as nothing more than a conjecture, and the
Masoretic text be understood in the following manner. The author passes on from the
cattle to the entire earth, and embraces all the animal creation in the expression, “every
moving thing (‫)כל־הרמשׂ‬ that moveth upon the earth,” just as in Gen_1:28, “every living
thing ‫ת‬ ֶ‫שׂ‬ ֶ‫ּמ‬‫ר‬ ָ‫ה‬ upon the earth.” According to this, God determined to give to the man about
to be created in His likeness the supremacy, not only over the animal world, but over the
earth itself; and this agrees with the blessing in Gen_1:28, where the newly created man
is exhorted to replenish the earth and subdue it; whereas, according to the conjecture of
the Syriac, the subjugation of the earth by man would be omitted from the divine decree.
- Gen_1:27. In the account of the accomplishment of the divine purpose the words swell
into a jubilant song, so that we meet here for the first time with a parallelismus
membrorum, the creation of man being celebrated in three parallel clauses. The
distinction drawn between ‫ּו‬‫ת‬ּ‫א‬ (in the image of God created He him) and ‫ם‬ ָ‫ּת‬‫א‬ (as man
and woman created He them) must not be overlooked. The word ‫ם‬ ָ‫ּת‬‫א‬, which indicates
that God created the man and woman as two human beings, completely overthrows the
idea that man was at first androgynous (cf. Gen_2:18.). By the blessing in Gen_1:28,
God not only confers upon man the power to multiply and fill the earth, as upon the
beasts in Gen_1:22, but also gives him dominion over the earth and every beast. In
conclusion, the food of both man and beast is pointed out in Gen_1:29, Gen_1:30,
exclusively from the vegetable kingdom. Man is to eat of “every seed-bearing herb on the
face of all the earth, and every tree on which there are fruits containing seed,”
consequently of the productions of both field and tree, in other words, of corn and fruit;
the animals are to eat of “every green herb,” i.e., of vegetables or green plants, and grass.
From this it follows, that, according to the creative will of God, men were not to
slaughter animals for food, nor were animals to prey upon one another; consequently,
that the fact which now prevails universally in nature and the order of the world, the
violent and often painful destruction of life, is not a primary law of nature, nor a divine
institution founded in the creation itself, but entered the world along with death at the
fall of man, and became a necessity of nature through the curse of sin. It was not till after
the flood, that men received authority from God to employ the flesh of animals as well as
the green herb as food (Gen_9:3); and the fact that, according to the biblical view, no
carnivorous animals existed at the first, may be inferred from the prophetic
announcements in Isa_11:6-8; Isa_65:25, where the cessation of sin and the complete
transformation of the world into the kingdom of God are described as being
accompanied by the cessation of slaughter and the eating of flesh, even in the case of the
animal kingdom. With this the legends of the heathen world respecting the golden age of
the past, and its return at the end of time, also correspond (cf. Gesenius on Isa_11:6-8).
It is true that objections have been raised by natural historians to this testimony of
Scripture, but without scientific ground. For although at the present time man is fitted
by his teeth and alimentary canal for the combination of vegetable and animal food; and
although the law of mutual destruction so thoroughly pervades the whole animal
kingdom, that not only is the life of one sustained by the death of another, but “as the
graminivorous animals check the overgrowth of the vegetable kingdom, so the excessive

298. increase of the former is restricted by the beasts of prey, and of these again by the
destructive implements of man;” and although, again, not only beasts of prey, but
evident symptoms of disease are met with among the fossil remains of the aboriginal
animals: all these facts furnish no proof that the human and animal races were originally
constituted for death and destruction, or that disease and slaughter are older than the
fall. For, to reply to the last objection first, geology has offered no conclusive evidence of
its doctrine, that the fossil remains of beasts of prey and bones with marks of disease
belong to a pre-Adamite period, but has merely inferred it from the hypothesis already
mentioned of successive periods of creation. Again, as even in the present order of
nature the excessive increase of the vegetable kingdom is restrained, not merely by the
graminivorous animals, but also by the death of the plants themselves through the
exhaustion of their vital powers; so the wisdom of the Creator could easily have set
bounds to the excessive increase of the animal world, without requiring the help of
huntsmen and beasts of prey, since many animals even now lose their lives by natural
means, without being slain by men or eaten by beasts of prey. The teaching of Scripture,
that death entered the world through sin, merely proves that the human race was
created for eternal life, but by no means necessitates the assumption that the animals
were also created for endless existence. As the earth produced them at the creative word
of God, the different individuals and generations would also have passed away and
returned to the bosom of the earth, without violent destruction by the claws of animals
or the hand of man, as soon as they had fulfilled the purpose of their existence. The
decay of animals is a law of nature established in the creation itself, and not a
consequence of sin, or an effect of the death brought into the world by the sin of man. At
the same time, it was so far involved in the effects of the fall, that the natural decay of the
different animals was changed into a painful death or violent end. Although in the
animal kingdom, as it at present exists, many varieties are so organized that they live
exclusively upon the flesh of other animals, which they kill and devour; this by no means
necessitates the conclusion, that the carnivorous beasts of prey were created after the
fall, or the assumption that they were originally intended to feed upon flesh, and
organized accordingly. If, in consequence of the curse pronounced upon the earth after
the sin of man, who was appointed head and lord of nature, the whole creation was
subjected to vanity and the bondage of corruption (Rom_8:20.); this subjection might
have been accompanied by a change in the organization of the animals, though natural
science, which is based upon the observation and combination of things empirically
discovered, could neither demonstrate the fact nor explain the process. And if natural
science cannot boast that in any one of its many branches it has discovered all the
phenomena connected with the animal and human organism of the existing world, how
could it pretend to determine or limit the changes through which this organism may
have passed in the course of thousands of years?
The creation of man and his installation as ruler on the earth brought the creation of
all earthly beings to a close (Gen_1:31). God saw His work, and behold it was all very
good; i.e., everything perfect in its kind, so that every creature might reach the goal
appointed by the Creator, and accomplish the purpose of its existence. By the application
of the term “good” to everything that God made, and the repetition of the word with the
emphasis “very” at the close of the whole creation, the existence of anything evil in the
creation of God is absolutely denied, and the hypothesis entirely refuted, that the six
days' work merely subdued and fettered an ungodly, evil principle, which had already
forced its way into it. The sixth day, as being the last, is distinguished above all the rest
by the article - ‫י‬ ִ ִ ַ‫ה‬ ‫יוֹם‬ “a day, the sixth” (Gesenius, §111, 2a).

299. BI 24-25, "God made the beast of the earth
The animal creation
I. THAT THE ANIMAL WORLD WAS CREATED BY GOD.
1. We should regard the animal world with due appreciation. Man has too low an
estimate of the animal world. We imagine that a tree has as much claim to our
attention and regard as a horse. The latter has a spirit; is possessed of life; it is a
nobler embodiment of Divine power; it is a nearer approach to the fulfilment of
creation.
2. We should treat the animal world with humane consideration. Surely, we ought
not to abuse anything on which God has bestowed a high degree of creative care,
especially when it is intended for our welfare.
II. THAT THE ANIMAL WORLD WAS DESIGNED BY GOD FOR THE SERVICE OF
MAN.
1. Useful for business. How much of the business of man is carried on by the aid of
animals. They afford nearly the only method of transit by road and street. The
commercial enterprise of our villages and towns would receive a serious check if the
services of the animal creation were removed.
2. Needful for food. Each answers a distinct purpose toward the life of man; from
them we get our varied articles of food, and also of clothing. These animals were
intended to be the food of man, to impart strength to his body, and energy to his life.
To kill them is no sacrilege. Their death is their highest ministry, and we ought to
receive it as such; not for the purpose of gluttony, but of health. Thus is our food the
gift of God.
III. THAT THE ANIMAL WORLD WAS AN ADVANCE IN THE PURPOSE OF
CREATION. The chaos had been removed, and from it order and light had been evoked.
The seas and the dry land had been made to appear. The sun, moon, and stars had been
sent on their light-giving mission. The first touch of life had become visible in the
occupants of the waters and the atmosphere, and now it breaks into larger expanse in
the existence of the animal creation, awaiting only its final completion in the being of
man.
IV. THAT THE ANIMAL WORLD WAS ENDOWED WITH THE POWER OF GROWTH
AND CONTINUANCE, AND WAS GOOD IN THE SIGHT OF GOD.
1. The growth and continuance of the animal world was insured. Each animal was to
produce its own kind, so that it should not become extinct; neither could one species
pass into another by the operation of any physical law.
2. The animal world was good in the sight of God. It was free from pain. The
stronger did not oppress, and kill the weaker. The instinct of each animal was in
harmony with the general good of the rest. But animals have shared the fate of man,
the shadow of sin rests upon them; hence their confusion and disorder, their pain,
and the many problems they present to the moral philosopher. (J. S. Exell, M. A.)
The animals of the earth as fore runners of man
1. The first signs and pictures of human life.

300. 2. Its most intimate assistants.
3. Its first conditions. (J. P. Lange, D. D.)
Reflections on the domestic animals
In domestic animals we recognize a very marked token of the paternal kindness of the
Creator. Their value and importance to man cannot well be estimated. How much do
they add to his strength in toil, to his ease and speed in travelling, and to his sustenance
and gratification in food. Even the dog proffers to us a serious and profitable lesson.
“Man,” said the poet Burns, “is the god of the dog. He knows no other, he can
understand no other. And see how he worships him. With what reverence he crouches at
his feet, with what love he fawns upon him, with what dependence he looks up to him,
and with what cheerful alacrity he obeys him! His whole soul is wrapped up in his god;
all the powers and faculties of his nature are devoted to his service, and these powers
and faculties are ennobled by the intercourse. Divines tell us that it ought to be just so
with the Christian; but does not the dog often put the Christian to shame?” The ox, also,
is to us a living parable. As he slowly wends his way from the field of toil, at noon, or
evening, toward home, how affecting the remonstrance his moving figure is made to
utter—“The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master’s crib; but Israel doth not
know, My people do not consider.” And when he bows his submissive neck to receive the
yoke and go forth to his labour again, how gracious the invitation symbolized by the
willing act—“Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me; for I am meek and lowly in heart,
and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For My yoke is easy, and My burden is light.” The
sheep, likewise, is a sacred emblem. Were this animal to repeat all the various truths
committed by the Spirit to its symbolism, it would preach to us a new lesson with every
change of situation in which we beheld it—following after the shepherd—enclosed in the
fold—scattered on the mountain—lying down in green pastures—straying among
wolves—borne on the shepherd’s shoulder—bound before the shearer—separating from
the goats—in these various circumstances, sheep read to us the most solemn and
important truths of the gospel of the Son of God. And the lamb—this is the central
symbol of the Christian system. This innocent and gentle creature is preeminently the
type of Him who was holy, harmless, and undefiled, the Lamb of God that was slain to
take away the sins of the world, in whose blood the redeemed of heaven have washed
their robes and made them white. The horse also is a chosen figure of inspiration. In the
Book of Revelation—that wonderful portion of the sacred volume—the King of kings, and
Lord of lords, is represented as riding on a white horse; and the armies of heaven as
following Him upon white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean, to witness His
victory over all the enemies of truth and righteousness, and to participate in the final
triumphs of His grace. Such is the deeply interesting event, such the glorious
consummation, of which the horse stands forever a symbol and a remembrancer before
his rider. How wise the arrangement that has thus embodied Divine truth in living
forms, that ever move before our view. How kind and gracious in God our Father thus to
constitute” sheep and oxen” to be unto us as priests and prophets, holding forth the
Word of life, and, though they see not the vision themselves, symbolizing the glorious
things of Christ and of heaven, to inspire us with the comfort of the most blessed hope.
(H. W. Morris, D. D.)
Beasts, or wild animals

301. The term beast in the history of this day, as has already been stated, is employed to
designate wild animals, in contradistinction from the tame, included under the word
cattle. Although these are not designed so immediately or so eminently for the service of
man as domestic animals, yet many, if not most of them, contribute in one way or
another to his welfare—some as game for his sustenance, some by their hides and fur for
his clothing, and all as subjects of interesting and profitable study. It is stated in the
Holy Scriptures concerning the various branches of the human family, that “God before
appointed the bounds of their respective habitations”; this is equally true of the different
tribes of animals, Wise design and kind adaptation stand forth conspicuously in the
arrangement which has assigned to them their several localities. The hairless elephant,
rhinoceros, and tapir are obviously made for the heat and luxuriance of the Torrid Zone;
and it is there they are found. The camel and the dromedary have been fashioned and
constituted with specific adaptations for the parched and sandy deserts of the tropics;
and here, accordingly, they have been located. Advancing to the more temperate regions,
we still find all creatures, both domestic and wild, admirably fitted to occupy the zone
given to them for their inheritance. And as we proceed northward, we discover given to
the various animals hardihood of constitution, together with warmth of covering,
increasing with the increasing rigour of the climate, till we pass within the Arctic circle,
and reach the polar bears. Voyagers in those latitudes tell us that these animals disport
in the regions of ice, and revel in an intensity of cold, which, to man with every
contrivance of art for protection, is almost past endurance, and produces in him diseases
which shortly terminate his existence—that they sit for hours like statues upon icebergs,
where, if we were to take up our position for one half hour, we should become statues
indeed, and be frozen into the lasting rigidity of death—that they slide in frolic down
slopes of snows, which if we were to touch with our bare hand, would instantly, like fire,
destroy its vitality. Who that contemplates these shaggy creatures of the pole, so
constituted as to find a congenial home amid eternal ice and snow, and to take their
frolicsome pastime amid the bleak and dismal horrors of an arctic night, but must
confess that every creature, by Divine appointment and adaptation, is suited for its
place, and that every place is fitted for its given occupants? (H. W. Morris, D. D.)
25 God made the wild animals according to their
kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and
all the creatures that move along the ground
according to their kinds. And God saw that it was
good.

302. CLARKE, "And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, etc. - Every
thing both in the animal and vegetable world was made so according to its kind, both in
genus and species, as to produce its own kind through endless generations. Thus the
several races of animals and plants have been kept distinct from the foundation of the
world to the present day. This is a proof that all future generations of plants and animals
have been seminally included in those which God formed in the beginning.
GILL, "And God made the beast of the earth after his kind,.... The wild beasts,
and the several sorts of them; beginning the account with the last mentioned, as is
frequent in the Hebrew language, and so he made all the rest:
and cattle after their kind, and everything that creepeth upon the earth
after his kind; tame creatures, and all the reptiles of the earth: this most clearly shows
and proves that the above creatures were not produced by the mere force of nature, or
the powers the earth were possessed of, however the matter of it might be disposed and
prepared, but by the omnipotent hand of God:
and God saw that it was good; that every creature he had made would some way or
other be for his glory, and for the benefit of man. Picherellus thinks that all this belongs
to the work of the fifth day, not the sixth; because as the vegetables, herbs, and trees
were produced on the same day, the third day; so animals, whether in the waters, air, or
earth, were made on one and the same day; and that it was proper a separate day should
be allotted for the formation of rational creatures, Adam and Eve, and that it might
appear that the same blessing was not conferred on brutes as on reasonable beings; and
therefore the words with which Gen_1:24 begins should be rendered, "but after God had
said, let the earth", &c. that is, after God had ordered this, and it was done, then "the
evening and the morning were the fifth day"; which is what rhetoricians call an
"hysteron proteron".
26 Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our
image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over
the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over
the livestock and all the wild animals,[a] and over

303. all the creatures that move along the ground.”
BAR ES, "Gen_1:26, Gen_1:27
Here we evidently enter upon a higher scale of being. This is indicated by the counsel
or common resolve to create, which is now for the first time introduced into the
narrative. When the Creator says, “Let us make man,” he calls attention to the work as
one of pre-eminent importance. At the same time he sets it before himself as a thing
undertaken with deliberate purpose. Moreover, in the former mandates of creation his
words had regard to the thing itself that was summoned into being; as, “Let there be
light;” or to some preexistent object that was physically connected with the new
creature; as, “Let the land bring forth grass.” But now the language of the fiat of creation
ascends to the Creator himself: Let us make man. This intimates that the new being in its
higher nature is associated not so much with any part of creation as with the Eternal
Uncreated himself.
The plural form of the sentence raises the question, With whom took he counsel on
this occasion? Was it with himself, and does he here simply use the plural of majesty?
Such was not the usual style of monarchs in the ancient East. Pharaoh says, “I have
dreamed a dream” Gen_41:15. Nebuchadnezzar, “I have dreamed” Dan_2:3. Darius the
Mede, “I make a decree” Dan_6:26. Cyrus, “The Lord God of heaven hath given me all
the kingdoms of the earth” Ezr_1:2. Darius, “I make a decree” Ezr_5:8. We have no
ground, therefore, for transferring it to the style of the heavenly King. Was it with certain
other intelligent beings in existence before man that he took counsel? This supposition
cannot be admitted; because the expression “let us make” is an invitation to create,
which is an incommunicable attribute of the Eternal One, and because the phrases, “our
image, our likeness,” when transferred into the third person of narrative, become “his
image, the image of God,” and thus limit the pronouns to God himself. Does the
plurality, then, point to a plurality of attributes in the divine nature? This cannot be,
because a plurality of qualities exists in everything, without at all leading to the
application of the plural number to the individual, and because such a plurality does not
warrant the expression, “let us make.” Only a plurality of persons can justify the phrase.
Hence, we are forced to conclude that the plural pronoun indicates a plurality of persons
or hypostases in the Divine Being.
Gen_1:26
Man. - Man is a new species, essentially different from all other kinds on earth. “In
our image, after our likeness.” He is to be allied to heaven as no other creature on earth
is. He is to be related to the Eternal Being himself. This relation, however, is to be not in
matter, but in form; not in essence, but in semblance. This precludes all pantheistic
notions of the origin of man. “Image” is a word taken from sensible things, and denotes
likeness in outward form, while the material may be different. “Likeness” is a more
general term, indicating resemblance in any quality, external or internal. It is here
explanatory of image, and seems to show that this term is to be taken in a figurative
sense, to denote not a material but a spiritual conformity to God. The Eternal Being is
essentially self-manifesting. The appearance he presents to an eye suited to contemplate
him is his image. The union of attributes which constitute his spiritual nature is his

304. character or likeness.
We gather from the present chapter that God is a spirit Gen_1:2, that he thinks,
speaks, wills, and acts (Gen_1:3-4, etc.). Here, then, are the great points of conformity to
God in man, namely, reason, speech, will, and power. By reason we apprehend concrete
things in perception and consciousness, and cognize abstract truth, both metaphysical
and moral. By speech we make certain easy and sensible acts of our own the signs of the
various objects of our contemplative faculties to ourselves and others. By will we choose,
determine, and resolve upon what is to be done. By power we act, either in giving
expression to our concepts in words, or effect to our determinations in deeds. In the
reason is evolved the distinction of good and evil Gen_1:4, Gen_1:31, which is in itself
the approval of the former and the disapproval of the latter. In the will is unfolded that
freedom of action which chooses the good and refuses the evil. In the spiritual being that
exercises reason and will resides the power to act, which presupposes both these
faculties - the reason as informing the will, and the will as directing the power. This is
that form of God in which he has created man, and condescends to communicate with
him.
And let them rule. - The relation of man to the creature is now stated. It is that of
sovereignty. Those capacities of right thinking, right willing, and right acting, or of
knowledge, holiness, and righteousness, in which man resembles God, qualify him for
dominion, and constitute him lord of all creatures that are destitute of intellectual and
moral endowments. Hence, wherever man enters he makes his sway to be felt. He
contemplates the objects around him, marks their qualities and relations, conceives and
resolves upon the end to be attained, and endeavors to make all things within his reach
work together for its accomplishment. This is to rule on a limited scale. The field of his
dominion is “the fish of the sea, the fowl of the skies, the cattle, the whole land, and
everything that creepeth on the land.” The order here is from the lowest to the highest.
The fish, the fowl, are beneath the domestic cattle. These again are of less importance
than the land, which man tills and renders fruitful in all that can gratify his appetite or
his taste. The last and greatest victory of all is over the wild animals, which are included
under the class of creepers that are prone in their posture, and move in a creeping
attitude over the land. The primeval and prominent objects of human sway are here
brought forward after the manner of Scripture. But there is not an object within the ken
of man which he does not aim at making subservient to his purposes. He has made the
sea his highway to the ends of the earth, the stars his pilots on the pathless ocean, the
sun his bleacher and painter, the bowels of the earth the treasury from which he draws
his precious and useful metals and much of his fuel, the steam his motive power, and the
lightning his messenger. These are proofs of the evergrowing sway of man.
CLARKE, "And God said, Let us make man - It is evident that God intends to
impress the mind of man with a sense of something extraordinary in the formation of his
body and soul, when he introduces the account of his creation thus; Let Us make man.
The word ‫אדם‬ Adam, which we translate man, is intended to designate the species of
animal, as ‫חיתו‬ chaitho, marks the wild beasts that live in general a solitary life; ‫בהמה‬
behemah, domestic or gregarious animals; and ‫רמש‬ remes, all kinds of reptiles, from the
largest snake to the microscopic eel. Though the same kind of organization may be found
in man as appears in the lower animals, yet there is a variety and complication in the
parts, a delicacy of structure, a nice arrangement, a judicious adaptation of the different
members to their great offices and functions, a dignity of mien, and a perfection of the

305. whole, which are sought for in vain in all other creatures. See Gen_3:22.
In our image, after our likeness - What is said above refers only to the body of
man, what is here said refers to his soul. This was made in the image and likeness of
God. Now, as the Divine Being is infinite, he is neither limited by parts, nor definable by
passions; therefore he can have no corporeal image after which he made the body of
man. The image and likeness must necessarily be intellectual; his mind, his soul, must
have been formed after the nature and perfections of his God. The human mind is still
endowed with most extraordinary capacities; it was more so when issuing out of the
hands of its Creator. God was now producing a spirit, and a spirit, too, formed after the
perfections of his own nature. God is the fountain whence this spirit issued, hence the
stream must resemble the spring which produced it. God is holy, just, wise, good, and
perfect; so must the soul be that sprang from him: there could be in it nothing impure,
unjust, ignorant, evil, low, base, mean, or vile. It was created after the image of God; and
that image, St. Paul tells us, consisted in righteousness, true holiness, and knowledge,
Eph_4:24 Col_3:10. Hence man was wise in his mind, holy in his heart, and righteous in
his actions. Were even the word of God silent on this subject, we could not infer less
from the lights held out to us by reason and common sense. The text tells us he was the
work of Elohim, the Divine Plurality, marked here more distinctly by the plural
pronouns Us and Our; and to show that he was the masterpiece of God’s creation, all the
persons in the Godhead are represented as united in counsel and effort to produce this
astonishing creature.
Gregory Nyssen has very properly observed that the superiority of man to all other
parts of creation is seen in this, that all other creatures are represented as the effect of
God’s word, but man is represented as the work of God, according to plan and
consideration: Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. See his Works, vol. i., p.
52, c. 3.
And let them have dominion - Hence we see that the dominion was not the image.
God created man capable of governing the world, and when fitted for the office, he fixed
him in it. We see God’s tender care and parental solicitude for the comfort and well-
being of this masterpiece of his workmanship, in creating the world previously to the
creation of man. He prepared every thing for his subsistence, convenience, and pleasure,
before he brought him into being; so that, comparing little with great things, the house
was built, furnished, and amply stored, by the time the destined tenant was ready to
occupy it.
It has been supposed by some that God speaks here to the angels, when he says, Let us
make man; but to make this a likely interpretation these persons must prove, 1. That
angels were then created. 2. That angels could assist in a work of creation. 3. That angels
were themselves made in the image and likeness of God. If they were not, it could not be
said, in Our image, and it does not appear from any part in the sacred writings that any
creature but man was made in the image of God. See Clarke’s note on Psa_8:5.
GILL, "And God said, let us make man in our image, after our likeness,....
These words are directed not to the earth, out of which man was made, as consulting
with it, and to be assisting in the formation of man, as Moses Gerundensis, and other
Jewish writers (f), which is wretchedly stupid; nor to the angels, as the Targum of
Jonathan, Jarchi, and others, who are not of God's privy council, nor were concerned in
any part of the creation, and much less in the more noble part of it: nor are the words
spoken after the manner of kings, as Saadiah, using the plural number as expressive of
honour and majesty; since such a way of speaking did not obtain very early, not even till
the close of the Old Testament: but they are spoken by God the Father to the Son and

306. Holy Ghost, who were each of them concerned in the creation of all things, and
particularly of man: hence we read of divine Creators and Makers in the plural number,
Job_35:10 and Philo the Jew acknowledges that these words declare a plurality, and are
expressive of others, being co-workers with God in creation (g): and man being the
principal part of the creation, and for the sake of whom the world, and all things in it
were made, and which being finished, he is introduced into it as into an house ready
prepared and furnished for him; a consultation is held among the divine Persons about
the formation of him; not because of any difficulty attending it, but as expressive of his
honour and dignity; it being proposed he should be made not in the likeness of any of
the creatures already made, but as near as could be in the likeness and image of God.
The Jews sometimes say, that Adam and Eve were created in the likeness of the holy
blessed God, and his Shechinah (h); and they also speak (i) of Adam Kadmon the ancient
Adam, as the cause of causes, of whom it is said, "I was as one brought up with him (or
an artificer with him), Pro_8:30 and to this ancient Adam he said, "let us make man in
our image, after our likeness": and again, "let us make man"; to whom did he say this?
the cause of causes said to "`jod', he, `vau', he"; that is, to Jehovah, which is in the midst
of the ten numerations. What are the ten numerations? "`aleph', he, `jod', he", that is,
‫,אהיה‬ "I am that I am, Exo_3:14 and he that says let us make, is Jehovah; I am the first,
and I am the last, and beside me there is no God: and three jods ‫ייי‬ testify concerning
him, that there is none above him, nor any below him, but he is in the middle:
and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the
air; that is, to catch them, and eat them; though in the after grant of food to man, no
mention as yet is made of any other meat than the herbs and fruits of the earth; yet what
can this dominion over fish and fowl signify, unless it be a power to feed upon them? It
may be observed, that the plural number is used, "let them", which shows that the name
"man" is general in the preceding clause, and includes male and female, as we find by the
following verse man was created:
and over the cattle, and over all the earth; over the tame creatures, either for food,
or clothing, or carriage, or for all of them, some of them for one thing, and some for
another; and over all the wild beasts of the earth, which seem to be meant by the phrase,
"over all the earth"; that is, over all the beasts of the earth, as appears by comparing it
with Gen_1:24 so as to keep them in awe, and keep them off from doing them any
damage:
and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth; to make use of it
as should seem convenient for them.
HE RY 26-28, "We have here the second part of the sixth day's work, the creation of
man, which we are, in a special manner, concerned to take notice of, that we may know
ourselves. Observe,
I. That man was made last of all the creatures, that it might not be suspected that he
had been, any way, a helper to God in the creation of the world: that question must be
for ever humbling and mortifying to him, Where wast thou, or any of thy kind, when I
laid the foundations of the earth? Job_38:4. Yet it was both an honour and a favour to
him that he was made last: an honour, for the method of the creation was to advance
from that which was less perfect to that which was more so; and a favour, for it was not
fit he should be lodged in the palace designed for him till it was completely fitted up and

307. furnished for his reception. Man, as soon as he was made, had the whole visible creation
before him, both to contemplate and to take the comfort of. Man was made the same day
that the beasts were, because his body was made of the same earth with theirs; and,
while he is in the body, he inhabits the same earth with them. God forbid that by
indulging the body and the desires of it we should make ourselves like the beasts that
perish!
II. That man's creation was a more signal and immediate act of divine wisdom and
power than that of the other creatures. The narrative of it is introduced with something
of solemnity, and a manifest distinction from the rest. Hitherto, it had been said, “Let
there be light,” and “Let there be a firmament,” and “Let the earth, or waters, bring
forth” such a thing; but now the word of command is turned into a word of consultation,
“Let us make man, for whose sake the rest of the creatures were made: this is a work we
must take into our own hands.” In the former he speaks as one having authority, in this
as one having affection; for his delights were with the sons of men, Pro_8:31. It should
seem as if this were the work which he longed to be at; as if he had said, “Having at last
settled the preliminaries, let us now apply ourselves to the business, Let us make man.”
Man was to be a creature different from all that had been hitherto made. Flesh and
spirit, heaven and earth, must be put together in him, and he must be allied to both
worlds. And therefore God himself not only undertakes to make him, but is pleased so to
express himself as if he called a council to consider of the making of him: Let us make
man. The three persons of the Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, consult about it and
concur in it, because man, when he was made, was to be dedicated and devoted to
Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Into that great name we are, with good reason, baptized, for
to that great name we owe our being. Let him rule man who said, Let us make man.
III. That man was made in God's image and after his likeness, two words to express
the same thing and making each other the more expressive; image and likeness denote
the likest image, the nearest resemblance of any of the visible creatures. Man was not
made in the likeness of any creature that went before him, but in the likeness of his
Creator; yet still between God and man there is an infinite distance. Christ only is the
express image of God's person, as the Son of his Father, having the same nature. It is
only some of God's honour that is put upon man, who is God's image only as the shadow
in the glass, or the king's impress upon the coin. God's image upon man consists in these
three things: - 1. In his nature and constitution, not those of his body (for God has not a
body), but those of his soul. This honour indeed God has put upon the body of man, that
the Word was made flesh, the Son of God was clothed with a body like ours and will
shortly clothe ours with a glory like that of his. And this we may safely say, That he by
whom God made the worlds, not only the great world, but man the little world, formed
the human body, at the first, according to the platform he designed for himself in the
fulness of time. But it is the soul, the great soul, of man, that does especially bear God's
image. The soul is a spirit, an intelligent immortal spirit, an influencing active spirit,
herein resembling God, the Father of Spirits, and the soul of the world. The spirit of man
is the candle of the Lord. The soul of man, considered in its three noble faculties,
understanding, will, and active power, is perhaps the brightest clearest looking-glass in
nature, wherein to see God. 2. In his place and authority: Let us make man in our
image, and let him have dominion. As he has the government of the inferior creatures,
he is, as it were, God's representative, or viceroy, upon earth; they are not capable of
fearing and serving God, therefore God has appointed them to fear and serve man. Yet
his government of himself by the freedom of his will has in it more of God's image than
his government of the creatures. 3. In his purity and rectitude. God's image upon man
consists in knowledge, righteousness, and true holiness, Eph_4:24; Col_3:10. He was

308. upright, Ecc_7:29. He had an habitual conformity of all his natural powers to the whole
will of God. His understanding saw divine things clearly and truly, and there were no
errors nor mistakes in his knowledge. His will complied readily and universally with the
will of God, without reluctancy or resistance. His affections were all regular, and he had
no inordinate appetites or passions. His thoughts were easily brought and fixed to the
best subjects, and there was no vanity nor ungovernableness in them. All the inferior
powers were subject to the dictates and directions of the superior, without any mutiny or
rebellion. Thus holy, thus happy, were our first parents, in having the image of God upon
them. And this honour, put upon man at first, is a good reason why we should not speak
ill one of another (Jam_3:9), nor do ill one to another (Gen_9:6), and a good reason why
we should not debase ourselves to the service of sin, and why we should devote ourselves
to God's service. But how art thou fallen, O son of the morning! How is this image of God
upon man defaced! How small are the remains of it, and how great the ruins of it! The
Lord renew it upon our souls by his sanctifying grace!
IV. That man was made male and female, and blessed with the blessing of fruitfulness
and increase. God said, Let us make man, and immediately it follows, So God created
man; he performed what he resolved. With us saying and doing are two things; but they
are not so with God. He created him male and female, Adam and Eve - Adam first, out of
earth, and Eve out of his side, ch. 2. It should seem that of the rest of the creatures God
made many couples, but of man did not he make one? (Mal_2:15), though he had the
residue of the Spirit, whence Christ gathers an argument against divorce, Mat_19:4,
Mat_19:5. Our first father, Adam, was confined to one wife; and, if he had put her away,
there was no other for him to marry, which plainly intimated that the bond of marriage
was not to be dissolved at pleasure. Angels were not made male and female, for they
were not to propagate their kind (Luk_20:34-36); but man was made so, that the nature
might be propagated and the race continued. Fires and candles, the luminaries of this
lower world, because they waste, and go out, have a power to light more; but it is not so
with the lights of heaven: stars do not kindle stars. God made but one male and one
female, that all the nations of men might know themselves to be made of one blood,
descendants from one common stock, and might thereby be induced to love one another.
God, having made them capable of transmitting the nature they had received, said to
them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth. Here he gave them, 1. A large
inheritance: Replenish the earth; it is this that is bestowed upon the children of men.
They were made to dwell upon the face of all the earth, Act_17:26. This is the place in
which God has set man to be the servant of his providence in the government of the
inferior creatures, and, as it were, the intelligence of this orb; to be the receiver of God's
bounty, which other creatures live upon, but do not know it; to be likewise the collector
of his praises in this lower world, and to pay them into the exchequer above (Psa_
145:10); and, lastly, to be a probationer for a better state. 2. A numerous lasting family,
to enjoy this inheritance, pronouncing a blessing upon them, in virtue of which their
posterity should extend to the utmost corners of the earth and continue to the utmost
period of time. Fruitfulness and increase depend upon the blessing of God: Obed-edom
had eight sons, for God blessed him, 1Ch_26:5. It is owing to this blessing, which God
commanded at first, that the race of mankind is still in being, and that as one generation
passeth away another cometh.
V. That God gave to man, when he had made him, a dominion over the inferior
creatures, over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air. Though man provides for
neither, he has power over both, much more over every living thing that moveth upon
the earth, which are more under his care and within his reach. God designed hereby to
put an honour upon man, that he might find himself the more strongly obliged to bring

309. honour to his Maker. This dominion is very much diminished and lost by the fall; yet
God's providence continues so much of it to the children of men as is necessary to the
safety and support of their lives, and God's grace has given to the saints a new and better
title to the creature than that which was forfeited by sin; for all is ours if we are Christ's,
1Co_3:22.
JAMISO , "The last stage in the progress of creation being now reached - God said,
Let us make man — words which show the peculiar importance of the work to be
done, the formation of a creature, who was to be God’s representative, clothed with
authority and rule as visible head and monarch of the world.
In our image, after our likeness — This was a peculiar distinction, the value
attached to which appears in the words being twice mentioned. And in what did this
image of God consist? Not in the erect form or features of man, not in his intellect, for
the devil and his angels are, in this respect, far superior; not in his immortality, for he
has not, like God, a past as well as a future eternity of being; but in the moral
dispositions of his soul, commonly called original righteousness (Ecc_7:29). As the new
creation is only a restoration of this image, the history of the one throws light on the
other; and we are informed that it is renewed after the image of God in knowledge,
righteousness, and true holiness (Col_3:10; Eph_4:24).
CALVI , "26.Let us make man (83) Although the tense here used is the future, all
must acknowledge that this is the language of one apparently deliberating. Hitherto
God has been introduced simply as commanding; now, when he approaches the
most excellent of all his works, he enters into consultation. God certainly might here
command by his bare word what he wished to be done: but he chose to give this
tribute to the excellency of man, that he would, in a manner, enter into con