Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

]HE first book of Moses, wliicli has the superscription JT'tyxli in the original, Teve(n<i Kocr/xov in the Cod. Alex, of the LXX., and is called liber creationis by the Rabbins, has received the name of Genesis from its entire contents. Commencing witli the creation of ' tlie heaven and the earth, and concluding with the death of the patriarchs Jacob and Joseph, this book supplies us with infer- * mation with regard not only to the first beginnings and earlier stages of the world and of the human race, but also to those of the divine institutions which laid the foundation for the kingdom of God. Genesis commences with the creation of the world, because the heavens and the earth form the appointed sphere, so far as time and space are concerned, for the kingdom of God; because God, according to His eternal counsel, appointed the world to be the scene both for the revelation of His invisible essence, and also for the operations of His eternal love within and among His creatures; and because in the beginning He created the world to be and to become the kino;dom of God. The creation of ihe heaven and the earth, therefore, receives as its centre, paradise; and in paradise, man, created in the image of God, is the head and crown of all created beings. The history of the world and of the kingdom of God begins with him. His fall from God brought death and corruption into the whole creation (Gen. iii. 17 sqq.; Eom. viii. 19 sqq.); his redemption from the fall will be completed in and with the glorification of the heavens and the earth (Isa. Ixv. 17, Ixvi. 22; 2 Pet. iii. 13; Rev, xxi. 1). By sin, men have departed and separated themselves from God; but God, in His infinite mercy, has not cut Himself off from men, His creatures. Not only did He announce redemption along with punishment immediately after the fall, but from that time forward He continued to reveal Himself to them, that He might draw them back to Himself, and lead them from the path of destruction to the way of salvation. And through these operations of God upon the world in theophanies, or revelations by word and deed, the historical development of the human race became a history of the plan of salvation. The book of Genesis narrates that history in broad, deep, comprehensive sketches, from its first beginning to the time of the patriarchs, whom God chose from among the nations of the earth to be the bearers of salvation for the entire world. This long space of 2300 years (from Adam to the flood, 1656; to the entrance of Abram into Canaan, 365; to Joseph's death, 285; in all, 2306 years) is divisible into two periods. The first period embraces the development of the human race from its first creation and fall to its dispersion over the earth, and the division of the one race into many nations, with different languages (chap. ii. 4-xi. 26); and is divided by the flood into two distinct ages, which we may call the primeval age and the preparatory age. All that is related of the primeval age, from Adam to Noah, is the history of the fall; the mode of life, and longevity of the two families w-hich descended from the two sons of Adam; and the universal spread of sinful corruption in consequence of the intermarriage of these two families, who differed so essentiall}'- in their relation to God (chap. ii. 4-vi. 8). The primeval history closes with the flood, in which the old world perished (chap. vi. 9-viii. 19). Of the preparatory age, from Noah to Terah the father of Abraham, we have an account of the covenant which God made with Noah, and of Noah's blessing and curse; the genealogies of the families and tribes which descended from his three sons; an account of the confusion of tongues, and the dispersion of the people; and the genealogical table from Shem to Terah (chap. viii. 20-xi. 26). — The second period consists of the patriarchal era. From this we have an elaborate description of the lives of the three patriarchs of Israel, the family chosen to be the people of God, from the call of Abraham to the death of Joseph (chap. xi. 27-1.). Thus the history of humanity is gathered up into the history of the one famil}', which received the promise, that God would multiply it into a great people, or rather into a multitude of peoples, would make it a blessing to all the families of the earth, and would give it the land of Canaan for an everlasting possession.

This general survey will suffice to bring out the design of the book of Genesis, viz., to relate the early history of the Old Testament kingdom of God. By a simple and unvarnished description of the development of the world under the guidance and discipline of God, it shows how God, as the preserver and governor of the world, dealt with the human race which lie had created in His own image, and how, notwithstanding their fall and through the misery which ensued. He prepared the way for the fulfilment of His original design, and the establishment of the kingdom which should, bring salvation to the world. Whilst by virtue of the blessing bestowed in their creation, the human race was increasing from a single pair to families and nations, and peopling the earth; God stemmed the evil, which sin had introduced, by words and deeds, by the announcement of His will in commandments, promises, and threats, and by the infliction of punishments and judgments upon the despisers of His mercy. Side by side \vith the law of expansion from the unity of a family to the plurality of nations, there was carried on from the very first a law of separation between the ungodly and those that feared God, for the purpose of preparing and preserving a holy seed for the rescue and salvation of the whole human race. This double law is the organic principle which lies at the root of all the separations, connections, and dispositions which constitute the history of the book of Genesis. In accordance with the law of reproduction, which prevails in the preservation and increase of the human race, the genealogies show the historical bounds within which the persons and events that marked the various epochs are confined; whilst the law of selection determines the arrangement and subdivision of such historical materials as are employed.

So far as the plan of the book is concerned, the historical contents are divided into ten groups, with the uniform heading, " These are the generations^^ (witli the exception of chap. v. 1 1

" This is the book of the generations "); the account of the creation forming the substratum of the whole. These groups consist of the Tholedoth: 1. of the heavens and the earth (chap, ii. 4-iv. 26); 2. of Adam (v. 1-vi. 8); 3. of Noah (vi. 9-ix. 29); 4. of Noah's sons (x. 1-xi. 9); 5. of Shem (xi. 10-26); 6. of Terah (xi. 27-xxv. 11); 7. of Ishmael (xxv. 12-18); 8. of Isaac (xxv. 19-xxxv. 29); 9. of Esau (xxxvi.); and 10. of Jacob (xxxvii.-L). There are five groups in the first period, and five in the second. Although, therefore, the two periods differ considerably with regard to their scope and contents, in their historical importance to the book of Genesis they are upon a par; and the number ten stamps upon the entire book, or ratlier upon the early history of Israel recorded in the book, the character of completeness. This arrangement flowed quite naturally from the contents and purport of the book. The two periods, of which the early history of the kingdom of God in Israel consists, evidently constitute two great divisions, so far as their internal character is concerned. All that is related of the first period, from Adam to Terah, is obviously connected, no doubt, with the establishment of the kingdom of God in Israel, but only in a remote degree. The account of paradise exhibits the primary relation of man to God and his position in the world. In the fall, the necessity is shown for the interposition of God to rescue the fallen. In the promise which followed the curse of transgression, the first glimpse of redemption is seen. The division of the descendants of Adam into a God-fearing and an ungodly race exhibits the relation of the whole human race to God. The flood prefigures the judgment of God upon the ungodly; and the preservation and blessing of Noah, the protection of the godly from destruction. And lastly, in the genealogy and division of the different nations on the one hand, and the genealogical table of Shem on the other, the selection of one nation is anticipated to be the recipient and custodian of the divine revelation. The special preparations for the training of this nation commence with the call of Abraham, and consist of the care bestowed upon Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and their posterity, and of the promises which they received. The leading events in the first period, and the prominent individuals in the second, also furnished, in a simple and natural way, the requisite points of view for grouping the historical materials of each under a fivefold division. The proof of this will be found in the exposition. Within the different groups themselves the arrangement adopted is this: the materials are arranged and distributed accoi'ding to the law of divine selection; the families which branched off from the main line are noticed first of all; and when they have been removed from the general scope of the history, the course, of the main line is more elaborately described, and the history itself is carried forward. According to this plan, which is strictly adhered to, the history of Cain and his family precedes that of Seth and his posterity; the genealogy of Japhet and Plam stands before that of Shem; the history of Ishmael and Esau, before that of Isaac and Jacob; and the death of Terah, before the call and migration of Abraham to Canaan. In this regularity of composition, according to a settled plan, the book of Genesis may clearly be seen to be the careful production of one single author, who looked at the historical development of the human race in the light of divine revelation, and thus exhibited it as a complete and well arranged introduction to the histoiy of the Old Testament kingdom of God.

The account of the creation, its commencement, progress, and completion, bears the mai'ks, both in form and substance, of a historical document in which it is intended that we should accept as actual truth, not only the assertion that God created the heavens, and the earth, and all that lives and moves in the world, but also the description of the creation itself in all its several stages. If we look merely at the form of this document, its place at the beginning of the book of Genesis is sufficient to warrant the expectation that it will give us history, and not fiction, or human speculation. As the development of the human family has been from the first a historical fact, and as man really occupies that place in the world which this record assigns him, the creation of man, as well as that of the earth on which, and the heaven for which, lie is to hve, must also be a work of God, i.e. a fact of objective truth and reality. The grand simplicity of the account is in perfect harmony with the fact. " The whole narrative is sober, definite, clear-, and concrete. The historical events described contain a rich treasuiy of speculative thoughts and poetical glory; but they themselves are free from the influence of human invention and human philosophizing" {Delitzsch). This is also true of the arrangement of the whole. The work of creation does not fall, as Herder and others maintain, into two triads of days, with the work of the second answering to that of the first. For although the creation of the light on the first day seems to correspond to that of the light-bearing stars on the fourth, there is no reality in the parallelism which some discover between the second and third days on the one hand, and the third and fourth on the other. On the second day the firmament or atmosphere is formed; on the fifth, the fish and fowl. On the third, after the sea and land are separated, the plants are formed; on the sixth, the animals of the dry land and man. Now, if the creation of the fowls which fill the air answers to that of the firmament, the formation of the fish as the inhabitants of the waters ought to be assigned to the sixth day, and not to the fifth, as being parallel to the creation of the seas. The creation of the fish and fowl on the same day is an evident proof that a parallelism between the first three days of creation and the last three is not intended, and does not exist. Moreover, if the division of the work of creation into so many days had been the result of human reflection; the creation of man, who was appointed lord of the earth, would certainly not have been assigned to the same day as that of the beasts and reptiles, but would have been kept distinct from the creation of the beasts, and allotted to the seventh day, in which the creation was completed, — a meaning which Richers and Keerl have actually tried to force upon the text of the Bible. In the different acts of creation we perceive indeed an evident progress from the general to the particular, from the lower to the higher orders of creatures, or ratjier*a steady advance towards more and more concrete forms. But on the fourth day this progress is interrupted in a way which we cannot explain. In the transition from the creation of the plants to that of sun, moon, and stars, it is impossible to discover either a " well- arranged and constant progress," or " a genetic advance," since the stars are not intermediate links between plants and animals, and, in fact, have no place at all in the scale of earthly creatures. — If we pass on to the contents of our account of the creation, they differ as widely from all other cosmogonies as truth from fiction. Those of heathen nations are either hylozoistical, deducing the origin of life and living beings from some primeval matter; or pantheistical, regarding the whole world as emanating from a common divine substance; or mythological, tracing both gods and men to a chaos or world-egg. They do not even rise to the notion of a creation, much less to the knowledge of an almighty God, as the Creator of all things.^ Even in the Etruscan and Persian myths, which correspond so remarkably to the biblical account that they must have been derived from it, the successive acts of creation are arranged according to the suggestions of human probability and adaptation.^ In contrast

^ According to Berosus and Syncelliis, the Chaldean myth represents the " All" as consisting of darkness and -water, filled with monstrous creatures, and ruled by a woman, Markaya, or 'OfiopuKot (? Ocean). Bel divided the darkness, and cut the woman into two halves, of which he formed the heaven and the earth; he then cut off his own head, and from the drops of blood men were formed. — According to the Phoenician myth of Sanclmniathon, the beginning of the All was a movement of dark air, and a dark, turbid chaos. By the union of the spirit with the All, M&it, i.e. slime, was formed, from which every seed of creation and the universe was developed; and the heavens were made in the form of an egg, from which the sun and moon, the stars and constellations, sprang. By the heating of the earth and sea there arose winds, clouds and rain, lightning and thunder, the roaring of which wakened up sensitive beings, so that living creatures of both sexes moved in the waters and upon the earth. In another passage Sanchuuiathon represents KoA7r/« (probably n''3 b\p, the moaning of the wind) and his wife Bxxv (bohti) as producing AtuD and 'rparoyovoi;, two mortal men, from whom sprang Tho; and Tn/sci, the inhabitants of Phoenicia.— It is well known from Hesiocfs theog'ony how the Grecian myth represents the gods as coming into existence at the same time as the world. The numerous inventions of the Indians, again, all agree in this, that they picture the origin of the Avorld as an emanation from the absolute, through Brahma's thinking, or through the contemplation of a primeval being called Tad (it). — Buddhism also acknowledges no God as creator of the world, teaches no creation, but simply describes the origin of the world and the beings that inhabit it as the necessary consequence of former acts performed by these beings themselves.

2 According to the Etruscan saga, which Suidas quotes from a historian, who was a " Trxp avrolg (the Tyrrhenians) sfi-n-sipos tiuiip (therefore with all these mythical inventions, the biblical account shines out in the clear light of truth, and proves itself by its contents to be an integi'al part of the revealed history, of which it is accepted as the pedestal throughout the whole of the sacred Scriptures. This is not the case with the Old Testament only; but in the New Testament also it is accepted and taught by Christ and the apostles as the basis of the divine revelation. To select only a few from the many passages of the Old and New Testaments, in which God is referred to as the Creator of the heavens and the earth, and the almighty operations of the living God in the world are based upon the fact of its creation: in Ex. xx. 9-11, xxxi. 12—17, the command to keep the Sabbath is founded upon the fact that God rested on the seventh day, when the work of creation was complete; and in Ps. viii. and civ., the creation is depicted as a work of divine omnipotence in close adherence to the narrative before us. From the creation of man, as described in Gen. i. 27 and ii. 24, Christ demonstrates the indissoluble character of marriage as a divine ordinance (Matt. xix. 4-6); Peter speaks of the earth as standing out of the water and in the water by the word of God (2 Pet. iii. 5); and the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, "starting from Gen. ii. 2, describes it as the motive principle of all history, that the Sabbath of God is to become the Sabbath of the creature*' (Delitzsch).

The biblical account of the creation can also vindicate its claim to be true and actual history, in the presence of the doctrines of philosophy and the established results of natural science. So long, indeed, as philosophy undertakes to construct the universe from general ideas, it will be utterly unable to comprehend the creation; but ideas will never explain the existnot a native)," God created the world in six periods of one thousand years each: in the first, the heavens and the earth; in the second, the firmament; in the third, the sea and other waters of the earth; in the fourth, sun, moon, and stars; in the fifth, the beasts of the air, the water, and the laud; in the sixth, men. The world will last twelve thousand years, the human race six thousand. — According to the saga of the Zend in Avesta, the supreme Being Ormuzd created the visible world by his word in six periods or thousands of years: (1) the heaven, with the stars; (2) the water on the earth, with the clouds; (3) the earth, with the mountain Alborj and the other mountains; (4) the trees; (5) the beasts, which sprang from the primeval beast; (6) men, the first of whom was Kajomorts. Every one of these separate creations is celebrated by a festival. I'he world will last twelve thousand vears.

cnce of things. Creation is an act of the personal God, not a process of nature, the development of which can be traced to the laws of birth and decay that prevail in the created world. But the work of God, as described in the history of creation, is in perfect harmony with the correct notions of divine omnipotence, wisdom, and goodness. The assertion, so frequently made, that the course of the creation takes its form from the Hebrew week, which was already in existence, and the idea of God's resting on the seventh day, from the institution of the Hebrew Sabbath, is entirely without foundation. There is no allusion in Gen. ii. 2, 3 to the Sabbath of the Israelites; and the week of seven days is older than the Sabbath of the Jewish covenant. Natural research, again, will never explain the origin of the universe, or even of the earth; for the creation lies beyond the limits of the territory within its reach. By all modest naturalists, therefore, it is assumed that the origin of matter, or of the original material of the world, was duo to an act of divine creation. But there is no firm ground for the conclusion which they draw, on the basis of this assumption, with regard to the formation or development of the world from its first chaotic condition into a fit abode for man. All the theories which have been adopted, from Descartes to the present day, are not the simple and well-established inductions of natural science founded upon careful observation, but combinations of partial discoveries empirically made, with speculative ideas of very questionable worth. The periods of creation, which modem geology maintains with such confidence, that not a few theologians have accepted them as undoubted and sought to bring them into harmony with the scriptural account of the creation, if not to deduce them from the Bible itself, are inferences partly from the successive strata which compose the crust of the earth, and partly from the various fossil remains of plants and animals to be found in those strata. The former are regarded as proofs of successive formation; and from the difference between the plants and animals found in a fossil state and those in existence now, the, conclusion is drawn, that their creation must have preceded the.present formation, which either accompanied or was closed by the advent of man. But it is not difficult to see that the former [of these conclusions could only be regarded as fully established, [if the process by which the different strata were formed were clearly and fully known, or if the different formations were always found lying in the same order, and could be readily distinguished from one another. But with regard to the origin of the different species of rock, geologists, as is well known, are divided into two contending schools: the Neptunists, who attribute all the mountain formations to deposit in water; and the Plutonists, who trace all the non-fossiliferous rocks to the action of heat. According to the Neptunists, the crystalline rocks are the earliest or primary formations; according to the Plutonists, the granite burst through the transition and stratified rocks, and were driven up from within the earth, so that they are of later date. But neither theory is sufficient to account in this mechanical way for all the phenomena connected with the relative position of the rocks; consequently, a third theory, which supposes the rocks to be the result of chemical processes, is steadily gaining ground. Now if the rocks, both crystalline and stratified, were formed, not in any mechanical way, but by chemical processes, in which, besides fire and water, electricity, galvanism, magnetism, and possibly other forces at present unknown to physical science were at work; the different formations may have been produced contemporaneously and laid one upon another. Till natural science has advanced beyond mere opinion and conjecture, with regard to the mode in which the rocks were formed and their positions determined; there can be no ground for assuming that conclusions dravni from the successive order of the various strata, with regard to the periods of their formation, must of necessity be true. This is the more apparent, when we consider, on the one hand, that even the principal formations (the primary, transitional, stratified, and tertiary), not to mention the subdivisions of which each of these is composed, do not always occur in the order laid doM'n in the system, but in not a few instances the order is reversed, crystalline primary rocks lying upon transitional, stratified, and tertiary formations (granite, syenite, gneiss, etc., above both Jura-limestone and chalk); and, on the other hand, that not only do the different leading formations and their various subdivisions frequently shade off into one another so imperceptibly, that no boundary line can be drawn between them and the species distinguished by oryctognosis are not sharply and clearly defined in nature, but that, instead of surrounding the entire globe, they are all met with in certain localities only, whilst whole series of intermediate links are frequently missing, the tertiary formations especially being universally admitted to be only partial. — Tlif second of these conclusions also stands or falls with the assumptions on which they are founded, viz. with the three propositions: (1) that each of the fossillferous formations contains an order of plants and animals peculiar to itself; (2) that these are so totally different from the existing plants and animals, that the latter could not have sprung from them; (3) that no fossil remains of man exist of the same antiquity as the fossil remains of animals. Not one of these can be regarded as an established truth, or as the unanimously accepted result of geognosis. The assertion so often made as an established fact, that the transition rocks contain none but fossils of the lower orders of plants and animals, that mammalia are first met with in the Trias, Jura, and chalk formations, and warm-blooded animals in the tertiary rocks, has not been confirmed by continued geognostic researches, but is more and more regarded as untenable. Even the frequently expressed opinion, that in the different forms of plants and animals of the successive rocks there is a gradual and to a certain extent progressive development of the animal and vegetable world, has not commanded universal acceptance. Numerous instances are known, in which the remains of one and the same species occur not only in two, but in several successive formations, and there are some types that occur in nearly all. And the widely spread notion, that the fossil types are altogether different from the existing families of plants and animals, is one of the unscientific exaggerations of actual facts. All the fossil plants and animals can be arranged in the orders and classes of the existing flora and fauna.. Even with regard to the genera there is no essential difference, although many of the existing types are far inferior in size to the forms of the old world. It is only the species that can be shown to differ, either entirely or in the vast majority of cases, from species in existence now. But even if all the species differed, which can by I no means be proved, this would be no valid evidence that the existing plants and animals had not sprung from those that have passed away, so long as natural science is unable to obtain any clear insight into the origin and formation of species, and the question as to the extinction of a species or its transition into another has met ynth. no satisfactory solution. Lastly, even now the occurrence of fossil human bones among those of animals that perished at least before the historic age, can no longer be disputed, although Central Asia, the cradle of the human race, has not yet been thoroughly explored by palaeontologists. — If then the premises from which the geological periods have been deduced are of such a nature that not one of them is firmly established, the different theories as to the formation of the earth also rest upon two questionable assumptions, viz. (1) that the immediate working of God in the creation was restricted to the production of the chaotic matter, and that the formation of this primary matter into a world peopled by innumerable organisms and living beings proceeded according to the laws of nature, which have been discovered by science as in force in the existing world; and (2) that all the changes, which the world and its inhabitants have undergone since the creation was finished, may be measured by the standard of changes observed in modern times, and still occurring from time to time. But the Bible actually mentions two events of the primeval age, whose effect upon the form of the earth and the animal and vegetable world no natural science can explain. We refer to the curse pronounced upon the earth in consequence of the fall of the progenitors of our race, by which even the animal world was made subject to (f}6opa (Gen. iii. 17, and Rom. viii. 20); and the flood, by which the earth was submerged even to the tops of the highest mountains, and all the living beings on the dry land perished, with the exception of those preserved by Noah in the ark. Hence, even if geological doctrines do contradict the account of the creation contained in Genesis, they cannot shake the credibility of the Scriptures.

But if the biblical account of the creation has full claim to be regarded as historical truth, the question arises, whence it was obtained. The opinion that the Israelites drew it from the cosmogony of this or the other ancient people, and altered it according to their own religious ideas, will need no further refutation, after what we have said respecting the cosmogonies of other nations. Whence then did Israel obtain a pure knowledge of God, such as we cannot find in any heathen nation, or in tlie most celebrated of the wise men of antiquity, if not from divine revelation? This is the source from which the biblical account of the creation springs. God revealed it to men, — not first to Moses or Abraham, but undoubtedly to the first men, since without this revelation they could not have understood either their relation to God or their true position in the world. The account contained in Genesis does not lie, as Hofmann says, " within that sphere which was open to man through his historical nature, so that it may be regarded as the utterance of the knowledge possessed by the first man cf things which preceded his own existence, and which he might possess, without needing any special revelation, if only the present condition of the world lay clear and transparent before him." By simple intuition the first man might discern what nature had effected, viz. the existing condition of the world, and possibly also its causality, but not the fact that it was created in six days, or the successive acts of creation, and the sanctification of the seventh day. Our record contains not merely religious truth transformed into history, but the true and actual history of a work of God, which preceded the existence of man, and to which he owes his existence. Of this work he could only have obtained his knowledge through divine revelation, by the direct instruction of God. Nor could he have obtained it by means of a vision. The seven days' works are not so many " prophetico-historical tableaux," which were spread before the mental eye of the seer, whether of the historian or the first man. The account before us does not contain the slightest marks of a vision, is no picture of creation, in which every line betrays the pencil of a painter rather than the pen of a historian, but is obviously a historical narrative, which we could no more transform into a vision than the account of paradise or of the fall. As God revealed Himself to the first man not in visions, but by coming to him in a visible form, teaching him His will, and then after his fall announcing the punishment (ii. 16, 17, iii. 9 sqq.); as He talked with Moses "face to face, as a man with his friend," " mouth to mouth," not in vision or dream: so does the written account of the Old Testament revelation commence, not with visions, but with actual history. The manner in which God instructed the first men with reference to the creation must be judged according to the intercourse carried on by Him, as Creator and Father, with these His creatures and children. What God revealed to them upon this subject, they transmitted to their children and descendants, together with everything of significance and worth that they had experienced and discovered for themselves. This tradition was kept in faithful remembrance by the family of the godly; and even in the confusion of tongues it was not changed in its substance, but simply transferred into the new form of the language spoken by the Semitic tribes, and thus handed down from generation to generation along with the knowledge and worship of the true God, until it became through Abraham the spiritual inheritance of the chosen race. Nothing certain can be decided as to the period when it was committed to writing; probably some time before Moses, who inserted it as a written record in the Thorah of Israel.

Chap. i. 1. "7n the beginning God created the heaven and the earthy — 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 univ^erse 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 1 (and), which connects the different acts of creation with the fact expressed in ver. 1, as the primary foundation upon which they rest. n^K'Sna (in the beginning) is used absolutely, like iv apxf] in John i. 1, and ^''?'^'?.'? in Isa. xlvi. 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 ver. 2 to commence with pxn \nril; 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. rT'Ci'XT 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 ^"13, indeed, to judge from its use in Josh. xvii. 15, 18, where it occurs in the Piel (to hew out), means literally " to cut, or hew," 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 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 (ver. 27, ch. V. 1, 2), and of everything new that God creates, whether in the kingdom of nature (Num. xvi. 30) or of that of grace (Ex. xxxiv. 10; Ps. li, 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. ch. xiv. 19, 22; Ex. xxxi. 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. xxi. 1, 2; 1 Cor. xv. 35 sqq.). 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 bejg-inninfj. At the same time it is obvious from the creative acts which follow (vers. 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 ovpavo<; koI '■^ala to the undivided mass (fMop<pr] fita), which was afterwards formed into heaven and earth.

Vers. 2-5. The First Day. — Though treating of the creation of the heaven and the earth, the writer, both here and in what follows, describes with minuteness the original condition and progressive formation of the earth alone, and says nothing more respecting the heaven than is actually requisite in order to show its connection with the earth. He is writing for inhabitants of the earth, and for religious ends; not to gratify curiosity, but to strengthen faith in God, the Creator of the universe. What is said in ver. 2 of the chaotic condition of the earth, is equally applicable to the heaven, " for the heaven proceeds from the same chaos as the earth." — " And the earth was (not became) waste and void.'' The alliterative nouns tohu vabohu, the etymology of which is lost, signify waste and empty (barren), but not laying waste and desolating. Whenever they are used together in other places (Isa. xxxiv. 11; Jer. iv. 23), they are taken from this passage; but tohu alone is frequently employed as synonymous with r^5, non-existence, and mH^ nothingness (Isa. xl. 17, 23, xlix. 4). The coming earth was at first waste and desolate, a formless, lifeless mass, rudis indigestaque moles, vXt] aiMopt^a (Wisdom xi. 17) or %ao9. — " And darkness was upon the face of the deep" Dinri, from D^n, to roar, to rage, denotes the raging waters, the roaring waves (Ps. xlii. 7) or flood (Ex. XV. 5; Deut. viii. 7); and hence the depths of the sea (Job xxviii. 14, xxxviii. 16), and even the abyss of the earth (Ps. Ixxi. 20). As an old traditional word, it is construed like a proper name without an article {Ewald, Gramm.). The chaotic mass in which the earth and the firmament were still undistinguished, unformed, and as it were unborn, was a heaving deep, an abyss of waters {a^vaao^, LXX.), and this deep was wrapped in darkness. But it was in process of formation, for the Spirit of God moved upon the waters. n^"i (breath) denotes wind and spirit, like irvevfia from irvios. JRuach Eloliim is not a breath of wind caused by God {Theodoret, etc.), for the verb does not suit this meaning, but the creative Spirit of God, the principle of all life (Ps. xxxiii. 6, civ. 30), which worked upon the formless, lifeless mass, separating, quickening, and preparing the living forms, which were called into being by the creative words that followed. f\m in the Piel is applied to the hovering and brooding of a bird over its young, to warm them, and develop their vital powers (Deut. xxxii. 11). In such a way as this the Spirit of God moved upon the deep, which had received at its creation the germs of all life, to fill them with vital energy by His breath of life. The three statements in our verse are parallel; the substantive and participial construction of the second and third clauses rests upon the nnMI of the first. All three describe the condition of the earth immediately after the creation of the universe. This suffices to prove that the theosophic speculation of those who " make a gap between the first two verses, and fill it with a wild horde of evil spirits and their demoniacal works, is an arbitrary interpolation" (^Ziegler). — ^Yer. 3. The word of God then went forth to the primary material of the world, now filled with creative powers of vitality, to call into being, out of the germs of organization and life which it contained, and in the order pre-ordained by His wisdom, those creatures of the world, which proclaim, as they live and move, the glory of their Creator (Ps.viii.). The work of creation commences with the words, " and God said^ The words which God speaks are existing things. " He speaks, and it is done; He commands, and it stands fast." These words are deeds of the essential Word, the X0709, by which " all things were made." Speaking is the revelation of thought; the creation, the realization of the thoughts of God, a fi'eely accomplished act of the absolute Spirit, and not an emanation of creatures from the divine essence. The first thing created by the divine Word was " light" the elementary light, or light-material, in distinction from the " lights," or lightbearers, bodies of light, as the sun, moon, and stars, created on the fourth day, are called. It is now a generally accepted truth of natural science, that the light does not spring from the sun and stars, but that the sun itself is a dark body, and the light proceeds from an atmosphere which surrounds it. Light was the first thing called forth, and separated from the dark chaos by the creative mandate, " Let there hej'' — the first radiation of the life breathed into it by the Spirit of God, inasmuch as it is the fundamental condition of all organic life in the world, and without light and the warmth which flows from it no plant or animal could thrive. The expression in ver. 4, " God saw the light that it icas good,'' for " God saw that the light was good," according to a frequently recurring antiptosis (cf. cli. vi. 2, xii. 14, xiii. 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. Hence it is said in ver. 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 dayP *inx {one), like et? and unus, is used at the commencement of a numerical series for the ordinal ^n'mus (cf. ch. ii. 11, iv. 19, viii. 5, 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 (ver. 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 tlie 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 rjfiepovvKriov 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 "ins Div; 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 ^^''1 niy ^^''1 *ip2, nor the expression npn ny, evening-morning (= day), in Dan. viii. 14, corresponds to the Greek vv^dij/jbepoi', for morning is not equivalent to day, nor evening to night. The reckoning of days from evening to evening in the Mosaic law (Lev. xxiii. 32), and by many ancient tribes (the pre-Mohammedan Arabs, the Athenians, Gauls, and Germans), arose not from the days of creation, but from tl^e 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.^

Vers. 6-8. 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 (''^'^20) in the midst of the waters, and divided them into upper and lower waters. y"'i?"i, from yipi to stretch, spread out, then beat or tread 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 (Ps. civ. 2), a curtain (Isa. xl. 22), a transparent work of sapphire (Ex. xxiv. 10), or a molten looking-glass (Job xxxvii. 18); but there is nothing in these poetical similes to warrant the

^ 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. xi. 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 impos sible to foresee.

idea that the heavens were regarded as a solid mass, a aihrjpeov, or ^(aXKeov or ttoXv^oXkov, such as Greek poets describe. The V''\?1 (rendered Veste by Luther, after the o-repecofjba of the LXX. and firmamentum of the Vulgate) is called heaven in ver. 8, i.e. the vault of heaven, w^hich stretches out above the earth. The waters under the firmament are the w^aters upon the globe itself; those above are not ethereal waters^ beyond the limits of the

^ There is no proof of the existence of such " ethereal waters" to be found in such passages as Rev. iv. 6, xv. 2, xxii. 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 nothingcould be seen but " the deep," or " the waters" (ver. 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 (vii. 12), but as the water of the clouds. Vid. ch. ix. 12 sqq., 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.

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 (ch. vii. 11, 12; Ps. Ixxviii. 23, cf. 2 Kings vii. 2, 19; Isa. xxiv. 18). It is in (or with) the upper waters that God layeth the beams of His chambers, from which He watereth the hills (Ps. civ. 3, 13), and the clouds are His tabernacle (Job xxxvi. 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. viii. 2), it is evident that it must be regarded as above the vaidt whicli spans the earth, or, according to the words of Ps. cxlviii. 4, "above the heavens."^

Vers. 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 ("i^^!'?, 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 Ps. civ. Even if we render Ps. civ. 8, " the mountains arise, and they (the waters)

^ In ver. 8 the LXX. interpolate kxI tlliv 6 Qsog or/ x«XoV (and God saw that it was good), and transfer the words " and it Avas so" from the end of ver. 7 to the close of ver. 6. Two apparent improvements, but in reality two arbitrary changes. The transposition is copied from vers. 9, 15, 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.

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. i. " The dry" God called Earth, and " the gathering of the waters" i.e. the place into which the waters were collected. He called Sea. ^""^1, 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 (Ps. xxiv. 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 (i*^.), seed yielding herb (p^^t), and fruit-hearing fruit-trees (p^ TV.J^^ These three classes embrace all the productions of the vegetable kingdom. XKH, Ut. the young, tender green, which shoots up after rain and covers the meadows and downs (2 Sam. xxiii. 4; Job xxxviii. 27; Joel ii. 22; Ps. xxiii. 2), is a generic name for all grasses and cryptogamous plants. ^pV, with the epithet J^.! V^lt^j yielding or forming seed, is used as a generic term for all herbaceous plants, coni, vegetables, and other plants by which seed-pods are formed, na yv '• 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, pxri?y (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 i<Enn, 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. i3''0p (after its kind), from Tp species, which is not only repeated in ver. 12 in its old form ^nyp? 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 mukiply 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 M'hich 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 cequivoca 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.

Vers. 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 '•n), the singular of the predicate before the plural of the subject, in ver. 14, v. 23, ix. 29, etc., vid. Gesenius, Heb. Gr. § 147. nniKD, 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" or, according to ver. 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, between the night and the day.

(2) Jliey loere to he (or serve: 'i''n] after an imperative has the force of a command), — (a) for signs (sc. for the earth), partly as portents of extraordinary events (Matt. ii. 2; Luke xxi. 25) and divine judgments (Joel ii. 30; Jer. x. 2; Matt. xxiv. 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 (Q''"'yi», from IV 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. viii. 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 (chap. v. 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 hght of the sun produces the dayhght, and the weaker hght 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. Behef 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 set bounds to the divine omnipotence, and determine what and how much it can create in a moment 1 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 begin- iiing 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 ver. 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.^

1 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 miscon-

Vers. 20-23. The Fifth Day. — " God said: Let the waters swarm with swarms, with living beings, and let hirds fly above the earth in the face (the front, i.e. the side turned towards the earth) of the flrmamentr ''^^t'. and ^^yVi\ are imperative. Earlier translators, on the contrary, have rendered the latter as a relative clause, after the irereiva irerofieva of the LXX., " and with birds that fly;" thus making the birds to spring out of the water, in opposition to chap. ii. 19. Even with regard to the element out of which the water animals were created the text is silent; for the assertion that ptJ' is to be understood " with a causative colouring" is erroneous, and is not sustained by Ex. viii. 3 or Ps. cv. 30. The construction with the accusative is common to all verbs of multitude, p.^, from 'pj}^, 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." n^n {i'Sij anima viva, living soul, animated beings (yid. ii. 7), is in apposition to pK^, " 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 (ver. 21) the great "tanninim," — lit. the long-stretched, from JW, to stretch, — whales, crocodiles, and other sea-monsters; and " all moving living beings with which the waters swarm after their kind, and all (every) loinged 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 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 ception 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.

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. — (Ver. 22). As animated beings, the water animals and fowls are endowed, through the divine blessing, with the power to he fruitful and multiply. The word of blessing was the actual communication of the capacity to propagate and increase in numbers.

Vers. 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. nion3j cattle, from ona, mutum, hrutum esse, generally denotes the larger domesticated quadrupeds (e.g. chap, xlvii. 18; Ex. xiii. 12, etc.), but occasionally the larger land animals as a whole. '^^1 {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 ver. 25 they are distinguished from the race of water reptiles by the term •^?'^^7- H'?- ^'^^ ^^^^ old form of the construct state, for ^.^"7 ^'^ST), 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 ver. 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,'^ whicli proclaims at the veiy 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: BiaXijerai 6 TOiv oXcov iraTrjp Toi'i eavrov hvvdfiecnv (8i'i/ayu.ei9= angels). But although such passages as 1 Kings xxii. 19 sqq., Ps. Ixxxix. 8, and Dan. x., 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 chap. ii. 7, 22, Isa. xl. 13 seq., xliv. 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 imasre of God alone (ver. 27, chap. v. 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. ii. 7, or from Luke xx. 36. Just as little ground is there for regarding the plural here and in other passages (iii. 22, xi. 7; Isa. vi. 8, xli. 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. ii. 18; Ps. xii. 5; Isa. xxxiii. 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 reverenticB causa, but with reference to the fulness of the divine powers and essences which He possesses) the truth that lies at the foundation of the ti'initarian view, viz. that the 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, betwen cIkcov {imago) and ofiolaxn'i (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 D?)f and niO'^, than between 3 and 3. Q)?y, from?■», lit. a shadow, hence sketch, outline, differs no more from Tfi'Ol^ likeness, portrait, copy, than the German words Umriss or Abriss (outline or sketch) from Bild or Ahhild (likeness, copy). 3 and 3 are also equally interchangeable, as we may see from a comparison of this verse with chap. v. 1 and 3. (Compare also Lev. vi. 4 with Lev. xxvii. 12, and for the use of 3 to denote a norm, or sample, Ex. xxv. 40, xxx. 32, 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.^ 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

I' " 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 stiE material spirituality." — Ziegler.

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. i. 3), that our nature is transformed into the image of God again (Col. iii. 10; Eph. iv. 24). — " And they (□"IK, a generic term for men) shall have dominion over thejish,^' 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 ri>n has fallen out; so 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" (Y^i^n) with " every thing that creepeth upon the ground" (nionxn) in ver. 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., Onh), 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 (b^nn-^3) that moveth upon the earth,'* just as in ver. 28, " every living thing nb'pin 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 ver. 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 bo omitted from the divine decree. — ^Ver. 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 witli a parallelismus memhrorum, the creation of man being celebrated in three parallel clauses. The distinction drawn between ink (in the image of God created He hirri) and D^l^< (as man and woman created He them) must not be overlooked. The word CiriX, which indicates that God created the man and woman as two human beings, completely overthrows the idea that man was at first androgynous (cf. chap. ii. 18 sqq.). By the blessing in ver. 28, God not only confers upon man the power to multiply and fill the earth, as upon the beasts in ver. 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 vers. 29, 30, exclusively from the vegetable kingdom. Man is to eat of " every seed-hearing 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 (ix. 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. xi. 6-8, Ixv. 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. xi. 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 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 (pp. 41, 42) 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. viii. 20 sqq.); 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 (ver. 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 — Wn Di^ « a day, the sixth" (Gesenius, § 111, 2a).

Chap. ii. 1-3. The Sabbath of Creation. — " Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them." X^^* here denotes the totality of the beings that fill the heaven and the earth: in other places (see especially Neh. ix. 6) it is applied to the host of heaven, i.e. the stars (Deut. iv. 19, xvii. 3), and according to a still later representation, to the angels also (1 Kings xxii. 19; Isa. xxiv. 21; Neh. ix. 6; Ps. cxlviii. 2). These words of ver. 1 introduce the completion of the work of creation, and give a greater definiteness to tlie announcement in vers. 2, 3, that on the seventh day God ended the Avork which He had made, by ceasing to create, and blessing the day and sanctifying it. The completion or finishing (i^|?) of the work of creation on the seventh day (not on the sixth, as the LXX., Sam., and Sr/r. erroneously render it) can only be understood by regarding the clauses vers. 2b and 3, which are connected with ^aii by 1 consec. as containing the actual completion, i.e. by supposing the completion to consist, negatively in the cessation of the work of creation, and positively in the blessing and sanctifying of the seventh day. The cessation itself formed part of the completion of the work (for this meaning of 02*^ vid. chap, vm. 22, Job xxxii. 1, etc.). As a human artificer completes his work just when he has brought it up to his ideal and ceases to work upon it, so in an infinitely higher sense, God completed the creation of the world with all its inhabitants by ceasing to produce anything new, and entering into the rest of His allsufficient eternal Being, from which He had come forth, as it were, at and in the creation of a world distinct from His own essence. Hence ceasing to create is called resting (n^3) in Ex. XX. 11, and being refreshed (^SJI) in Ex. xxxi. 17. The rest into which God entered after the creation was complete, had its own reality " in the reality of the work of creation, in contrast with which the preservation of the world, when once created, had the appearance of rest, though really a continuous creation" (Ziegler, p. 27). This rest of the Creator was indeed " the consequence of His self-satisfaction in the now united and harmonious, though manifold whole;" but this self-satisfaction of God in His creation, which we call His pleasure in His work, was also a spiritual power, which streamed forth as a blessing upon the creation itself, bringing it into the blessedness of the rest of God and filling it with His peace. This constitutes the positive element in the completion which God gave to the work of creation, by blessing and sanctifying the seventh day, because on it He found rest from the work which He by making (nW}/? faciendo: cf. Eimld, § 280^) had created. The divine act of blessing was a real communication of powers of salvation, grace, and peace; and sanctifying was not merely declaring holy, but " communicating the attribute of holy," " placing in a living relation to God, the Holy One, raising to a participation in the pure clear light of the holiness of God." On ^"ip^ see Ex. xix. 6. The blessing and sanctifying of the seventh day had regard, no doubt, to the Sabbath, which Israel as the people of God was afterwards to keep; but we are not to suppose that the theocratic Sabbath was instituted here, or that the institution of that Sabbath was transferred to the history of the creation. On the contrary, the Sabbath of the Israelites had a deeper meaning, founded in the nature and development of the created world, not for Israel only, but for all mankind, or rather for the whole creation. As the whole earthly creation is subject to the changes of time and the law of temporal motion and development; so all creatures not only stand in need of definite recurring periods of rest, for the sake of recruiting their strength and gaining new power for further development, but they also look forward to a time when all restlessness shall give place to the blessed rest of the perfect consummation. To this rest the resting of God (17 AcaraTrafcri?) points forward; and to this rest, this divine o-a/S/Sario-yLto? (Heb. iv. 9), shall the whole world, especially man, the head of the earthly creation, eventually come. For this God ended His work by blessing and sanctifying the day when the whole creation was complete. In connection with Heb. iv., some of the fathers have called attention to the fact, that the account of the seventh day is not summed up, like the others, with the formula " evening was and morning was;" thus, e.g., Augustine writes at the close of his confessions: dies septimus sine vespera est nee hahet occasum, quia sanctijicasii eum ad permansionem sempiternam. But true as it is that the Sabbath of God has no evening, and that the aa^^ariafiof;, to which the creature is to attain at the end of his course, will be bounded by no evening, but last for ever; we must not, without further ground, introduce this true and profound idea into the seventh creation-day. We could only be warranted in adopting such an interpretation, and understanding by the concluding day of the work of creation a period of endless duration, on the supposition that the six preceding days were so many periods in the world's history, which embraced the time from the beginning of the creation to the final completion of its development. But as the six creation-days, according to the words of the text, were earthly days of ordinary duration, we must understand the seventh in the same way; and that all the more, because in every passage, in whicli it is mentioned as the foundation of the theocratic Sabbath, it is regarded as an ordinary day (Ex. xx. 11, xxxi. 17). We must conclude, therefore, that on the seventh day, on which God rested from His work, the world also, with all its inhabitants, attained to the sacred rest of God; that the KaTd'irav(Tt<; and (Ta^^aTto-fjb6<i of God were made a rest and sabbatic festival for His creatures, especially for man; and that this day of rest of the new created world, which the forefathers of our race observed in paradise, as long as they continued in a state of innocence and lived in blessed peace with their God and Creator, was the beginning and type of the rest to which the creation, after it had fallen from fellowship with God through the sin of man, received a promise that it should once more be restored through redemption, at its final consummation.

The historical account of the world, which commences at the completion of the work of creation, is introduced as the " History of the heavens and the earth^^ and treats in three sections, (a) of the original condition of man in paradise (chap. ii. 5- 25); (6) of the fall (chap. iii.); (c) of the division of the human race into two widely different families, so far as concerns their relation to God (chap. iv.). — The words, " these are the tholedoth of the heavens and the earth when they were created" form the heading to what follows. This would never have been disputed, had not preconceived opinions as to the composition of Genesis obscured the vision of commentators. The fact that in every other passage, in which the formula " these (and these) are the tholedoth" occurs (viz. ten times in Genesis; also in Num. iii. 1, Euth iv. 18, 1 Chron. i. 29), it is used as a heading, and that in this passage the true meaning of nnhn precludes the possibility of its being an appendix to what precedes, fully decides the question. The word mni'in, which is only used in the plural, and never occurs except in the construct state or with suffixes, is a Hiphil noun from 'v7\Ti^ and signifies literally the generation or posterity of any one, then the development of these generations or of his descendants; in other words, the history of those who are begotten, or the account of what happened to them and what they performed. In no instance whatever is it the history of the birth or origin of the person named in the genitive, but always the account of his family and life. According to this use of the word, we cannot understand by the iholedoth of the heavens and the earth the account of the origin of the universe, since according to the biblical view the different things which make up the heavens and the earth can neither be regarded as generations or products of cosmogonic and geogonic evolutions, nor be classed together as the posterity of the heavens and the earth. All the creatures in the heavens and on earth were made by God, and called into being by His word, notwithstanding the fact that He caused some of them to come forth from the earth. Again, as the completion of the heavens and the earth with all their host has already been described in chap. ii. 1-3, we cannot understand by " the heavens and the earth," in ver. 4, the primary material of the universe in its elementary condition (in which case the literal meaning of T?in would be completely relinquished, and the " tholedoth of the heavens and the earth" be regarded as indicating this chaotic beginning as the first stage in a series of productions), but the universe itself after the completion of the creation, at the commencement of the historical development which is subsequently described. This places its resemblance to the other sections, commencing with " these are the generations," beyond dispute. Just as the tholedoth of Noah, for example, do not mention his birth, but contain his history and the birth of his sons; so the tholedoth of the heavens and the earth do not describe the origin of the universe, but what happened to the heavens and the earth after their creation. DKnana does not preclude this, though we cannot render it '' after they were created." For even if it were grammatically allowable to resolve the participle into a pluperfect, the parallel expressions in chap. v. 1, 2, would prevent our doing so. As " the day of their creation " mentioned there, is not a day after the creation of Adam, but the day on which he was created; the same words, when occurring litre, must also refer to a time when the heavens and the earth were ah-eadj created: and just as in chap. v. 1 the creation of the universe forms the starting-point to the account of the development of the human race through the generations of Adam, and is recapitulated for that reason; so here the creation of the universe is mentioned as the starting-point to the account of its historical development, because this account looks back to particular points in the creation itself, and describes them more minutely as the preliminaries to the subsequent course of the world. DN"i3n is explained by the clause, " in the day that Jehovah God created the earth and the heavens^ Although this clause is closely related to what follows, the simplicity of the account prevents our regarding it as the protasis of a period, the apodosis of which does not follow till ver. 5 or even ver. 7. The former is grammatically impossible, because in ver. 0 the noun stands first, and not the verb, as we should expect in such a case (cf. iii. 5). The latter is grammatically tenable indeed, since vers. 5, 6, might be introduced into the main sentence as conditional clauses; but it is not probable, inasmuch as we should then have a parenthesis of most unnatural length. The clause must therefore be regarded as forming part of the heading. There are two points here that are worthy of notice: first, the unusual combination, "earth and heaven," which only occurs in Ps. cxlviii. 13, and shows that the earth is the scene of the history about to commence, which was of such momentous importance to the whole world; and secondly, the introduction of the name Jehovah in connection with Elohim. That the hypothesis, which traces the interchange in the two names in Genesis to different documents, does not suffice to explain the occurrence of Jehovah Elohim in chap. ii. 4-iii. 24, even the supporters of this hypothesis cannot possibly deny. Not only is God called Elohim alone in the middle of this section, viz. in the address to the serpent, a clear pi'oof that the interchange of the names has reference to their different significations; but the use of the double name, which occurs here twenty times though rarely met with elsewhere, is always significant. In the Pentateuch we only find it in Ex. ix. 30; in the other books of the Old Testament, in 2 Sam. vii. 22, 25; 1 Chron. xvii. 16, 17; 2 Chron. vi. 41, 42; Ps. Ixxxiv. 8, 11; and Ps. 1. 1, where the order is reversed; and in every instance it is used with peculiar emphasis, to give prominence to the fact that Jehovah is truly Elohim, whilst in Ps. \. 1 the Psalmist advances from the general name El and JElohim to Jehovah, as the personal name of the God of Israel. In this section the combination Jehovah Elohim is expressive of the fact, that Jehovah is God, or one with Elohim. Hence Elohim is placed after Jehovah. For the constant use of the double name is not intended to teach that Elohim who created the world was Jehovah, but that Jehovah, who visited man in paradise, who punished him for the transgression of His command, but gave him a promise of victory over the tempter, was Elohim, the same God, who created the heavens and the earth.