Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

Chap. i. 1. " In the beginning God created the heaven and the earthr — Heaven and earth have not existed from all eternity, but had a beginning; nor did they arise by emanation from an absolute substance, but were created by God. This sentence, which stands at the head of the records of revelation, is not a mere heading, nor a summary of the history of the creation, but a declaration of the primeval act of God, by which the universe was called into being. That this verse is not a heading merely, is evident from the fact that the following account of the course of the creation commences with \ (and)^ which connects the different acts of creation with the fact expressed in ver. 1, as the primar)^ foundation upon which they rest. ri''5^K'i2 (in the beginning) is used absolutely, like eV apxfl in John i. 1, and n^K^'SiD 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 p^n ^^^\; 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. ^^^^^?. 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 (jod created the heaven and the earth, not only precludes the idea of the eternity of the world a parte antey but shows that the creation of the heaven and the earth was the actual beginning of all things. The verb ^^'^2, 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 pen^aded 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 beginning. 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^ koX fyala to the undivided mass (jjLopcj)'^ fjila), 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 \\^, non-existence, and /^n, nothingness (Isa. xl. 17, 23, xlix. 4). The coming earth was at first waste and desolate, a formless, lifeless mass, rudis indigestaque moles, vkri afjLop^o<; (Wisdom xi. 17) or %ao9. — " And darkness was upon the face of the deep" Dinn^ 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 (JEwald, 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^vacros, LXX.), and this deep was wrapped in darkness. But it was in process of formation, for the Spirit of God moved upon the waters. rpi"> (breath) denotes wind and spirit, like irvevfia from irveot), Ruach JElohim is not a breath of wind caused by God {TheodoreU 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, ^im 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 nnMl 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 freely 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 " lightSj^ 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 tlie first thing called forth, and separated from the dark chaos by the creative mandate, " Let there be,'^ — 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 was good" for " God saw that the light was good," according to a frequently recurring antiptosis (cf. ch. 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 Hght, 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 day." "inx {one), like eh and unus, is used at the commencement of a numerical series for the ordinal joWmus (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 tlie origination of light, but was formed after the creation of the light by the first interchange of evening and morning. The first evening was not the gloom, which possibly preceded the full burst of light as it came forth from the primary darkness, and intervened between the darkness and full, broad daylight. It was not till after the light had been created, and the separation of the light from the darkness had taken place, that evening came, and after the evening the morning; and this coming of evening (lit. the obscure) and morning (the breaking) formed one, or the first day. It follows from this, that the days of creation are not reckoned from evening to evening, but from morning to morning. The first day does not fully terminate till the light returns after the darkness of night; it is not till the break of the new morning that the first interchange of light and darkness is completed, and a rj/jLepovv/crtov 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 "^nx uvb; 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 M^i y^V M''1 "ip3, nor the expression -ip2 my, evening-morning (= day), in Dan. viii. 14, corresponds to the Greek vv^Orj/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 the custom of regulating seasons by the changes of the moon. But if the days of creation are regulated by the recurring interchange of light and darkness, they must be regarded not as periods of time of incalculable duration, of years or thousands of years, but as simple earthly days. It is true the morning and evening of the first three days were not produced by the rising and setting of the sun, since the sun was not yet created; but the constantly recurring interchange of light and darkness, which produced day and night upon the earth, cannot for a moment be understood as denoting that the light called forth from the darkness of chaos returned to that darkness again, and thus periodically burst forth and disappeared. The only way in which w^e 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 (?^"n3p) in the midst of the waters, and divided them into upper and lower waters^ V^i?'^, from ViP'J 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 itseK 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 impossible to foresee.

idea that the heavens were regarded as a solid mass, a atSj^peov, or '^aXKeov or ttoXv^oXkov, such as Greek poets describe. The V^P'J (rendered Veste by Luther, after the Grepewjia of the LXX. and JiT^mamentum of the Vulgate) is called heaven in ver. 8, i.e. the vault of heaven, which stretches out above the earth. The waters under the firmament are the waters upon the globe itself^; those above are not ethereal waters^ 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 nothing could 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 representat^Ionp^vhenever 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 vault which 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 (nc^3»n, 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 x«i tllev 6 0goV ort Kot'Kov (and God saw that it was good), and transfer the words " and it was 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 ^ar^A, and " the gathering of the waters,^ i.e. the place into which the waters were collected, He called Sea. D^ts^, 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 whicli 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 {^^)y seed yielding herb (^^V), and fruit-bearing fruit-trees Ql^ TV.)*^ These three classes embrace all the productions of the vegetable kingdom. fc<^., lit. the young, tender green, which shoots up after rain and covers the meadows and downs (2 Sara, xxiii. 4; Job xxxviii. 27; Joel ii. 22; Ps. xxiii. 2), is a generic name for all grasses and cryptogamous plants. Sb'y, with the epithet ^! r"]tPj yielding or forming seed, is used as a generic term for all herbaceous plants, corn, vegetables, and other plants by which seed-pods are formed. nD Y)3: 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, p.?? ^^ (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 ^iH^? 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. Sytyp (after its kind), from T'O species, which is not only repeated in ver. 12 in its old form inj''pi' in the case of the fruit-tree, but is also ap^ pended to the herb. It indicates that the herbs and trees sprang out of the earth according to their kinds, and received, together with power to bear seed and fruit, the capacity to propagate and multiply their own kind. In the case of the grass there is no reference either to different kinds, or to the production of seed, inasmuch as in the young green grass neither the one nor the other is apparent to the eye. ^loreover, we must not picture the work of creation as consisting of the production of the first tender germs which w^ere 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 ordinaiy 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 graduall}^ 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)j the singular of the predicate before the plural of the subject, in ver. 14, v. 23, ix. 29, etc., vid, Gesenius, Heb. Gr. § 147. niixpj 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 th§ difference, which had existed ever since the creation of light, between the night and the day.

(2) Tliey were to he (or serve: vni 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 (DnyiD, from "ir 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 smalV 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 light of the sun produces the daylight, and the weaker light of the moon illumines the night, as to the influence which their light exerts by day and night upon all nature, both organic and inorganic — an influence generally admitted, but by no means fully understood. In this respect the sun and moon are the two great hghts, the stars small bodies of light; the former exerting great, the latter but little, influence upon the earth and its inhabitants.

This truth, which arises from the relative magnitude of the heavenly bodies, or rather their apparent size as seen from the earth, is not affected by the fact that from the standpoint of natural science many of the stars far surpass both sun and moon in magnitude. Nor does the fact, that in our account, which was written for inhabitants of the earth and for religious purposes, it is only the utility of the sun, moon, and stars to the inhabitants of the earth that is mentioned, preclude the possibility of each by itself, and all combined, fulfilling other purposes in the universe of God. And not only is our record silent, but God Himself made no direct revelation to man on this subject; because astronomy and physical science, generally, neither lead to godliness, nor promise peace and salvation to the soul. Belief in the truth of this account as a divine revelation could only be shaken, if the facts which science has discovered as indisputably true, with regard to the number, size, and movements of the heavenly bodies, were irreconcilable with the biblical account of the creation. But neither the innumerable host nor the immeasurable size of many of the heavenly bodies, nor the almost infinite distance of the fixed stars from our earth and the solar system, warrants any such assumption. Who can set bounds to the divine omnipotence, and determine what and how much it can create in a moment? The objection, that the creation of the innumerable and immeasurably great and distant heavenly bodies in one day, is so disproportioned to the creation of this one little globe in six days, as to be irreconcilable with our notions of divine omnipotence and wisdom, does not affect the Bible, but shows that the account of the creation has been misunderstood. We are not taught here that on one day, viz. the fourth, God created all the heavenly bodies out of nothing, and in a perfect condition; on the contrary, w^e are told that in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth, and on the fourth day that He made the sun, the moon, and the stars (planets, comets, and fixed stars) in the firmament, to be lights for the earth. According to these distinct words, the primary material, not only of the earth, but also of the heaven and the heavenly bodies, was created in the beginning. If, therefore, the heavenly bodies were first made or created on the fourth day, as lights for the earth, in the firmament of heaven; the words can have no other meaning than that their creation was completed on the fourth day, just as the creative formation of our globe was finished on the third; that the creation of the heavenly bodies therefore proceeded side by side, and probably by similar stages, with that of the earth, so that the heaven with its stars was completed on the fourth day. Is this representation of the work of creation, which follows in the simplest way from the word of God, at variance with correct ideas of the omnipotence and wisdom of God 1 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^

^ 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 birds fly above the earth in the face (the front, i.e. the side turned towards the earth) of the firmament^ ^^^'^\ and ^^)T^ are imperative. EarHer translators, on the contrary, have rendered the latter as a relative clause, after the ireruva ireTOixeva 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 Y^'^ 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. Yl}^.^ from H^? 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 c^pp^ anima viva, living soul, animated beings {vid. ii. 7), is in a[)position to p^, " 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 'Hanninim^^ — lit. the long-stretched, from |3n, to stretch, — whales, crocodiles, and other sea-monsters; and " all moving living beings with which the waters swarm after their kind, and all {every) winged fowl after its kind.^^ That the water animals and birds of every kind were created on the same day, and before the land animals, cannot be explained on the ground assigned by early writers, that there is a similarity between the air and the water, and a consequent correspondence between the two classes of animals. For in the light of natural history the birds are at all events quite 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, tliat 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 tcf 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. •^^'Ir^j cattle, from onn, muturriy 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. K^p"3 {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 ^p'J^'J. Yl^. ^^^.C (the old form of the construct state, for p.^'J ^!'!')) the beast of the earth, i,e, the freely roving wild animals.— " After its hind:^^ this refers to all three classes of living creatures, each of which had its peculiar species; consequently in ver. 2b, 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 linage, after our liheness^^ which proclaims at the very outset the distinction and pre-eminence of man above all the other creatures of the earth. The plural " We^^ was regarded by the fathers and earlier theologians almost unanimously as indicative of the Trinity: modern commentators, on the contrary, regard it either as pluralis majestatis; or as an address by God to Himself, the subject and object being identical; or as communicative, an address to the spirits or angels who stand around the Deity and constitute His council. The last is Philos explanation: huaXe- ^erai o twv oXcov Trarrjp ral^ eavrov Svvdfieacv (SL'm/i6^9= 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 carrj^ing out the work alone. Moreover, this view is irreconcilable with the words " in our image, after our likeness;" since man was created in the image of God alone (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 reverentice 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 trinitarian view, viz. that the potencies concentrated in the absolute Divine Being are something more than powers and attributes of God; that they are hi/postases, 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 elKwv (imago) and 6^jloIw(tl^ (similiiudo), 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 DP^ and n^D'i, than between 3 and 3. D^V, from by:, lit. a shadow, hence sketch, outline, differs no more from niDl, 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 ho 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

^ " The breath of God became the soul of man; the soul of man therefore is nothing but the breath of God. The rest of the world exists through the word of God; man through His own peculiar breath. This breath is the seal and pledge of our relation to God, of our godlike dignity; whereas the breath breathed into the animals is nothing but the common breath, the life-wind of nature, which is moving everywhere, and only appears in the animal fixed and bound into a certain independence and individuality, so that the animal soul is nothing but a nature-soul individualized into certain, though still material spirituality." — Ziegler.

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 (Coh iii. 10; Eph. iv. 24). — " And they (DlNj a generic term for men) shall have dominion over the fish,^ etc. There is somethinfj strikin rr 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 n^n has fallen out; so that the reading should be, " and over all the wild beasts of the earthy* as the Syriac has it. But as the identity of " every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth** (Y^^^) ^^'^^1^ "every thing that creepeth upon the ground** {t\^'^^t\) 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., Onk.), the Syriac rendering must be dismissed as nothing more than a conjecture, and the ^lasoretic 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*D"in"i'D) that moveth upon the earth," just as in ver. 28, " every living thing ^^p^^ 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 be omitted from the divine decree. — Yer. 27. In the account of the accomplishment of the divine purpose the words swell into a jubilant song, so that we meet here for the first time with a parallelismus memhrorum, the creation of man being celebrated in three parallel clauses. The distinction drawn between iriK (in the image of God created He hiui) and DHN (as man and woman created lie them) must not be overlooked. The word Dnx, which indicates that God created tlie 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 " eveiy seed-bearing herb on the face of all the earth, and every tree on which there are fruits containing seed" consequently of the productions of both field and tree, in other words, of corn and fruit; the animals are to eat of " every green herb," i.e. of vegetables or green plants, and grass.

From this it follows, that, according to the creative will of God, men were not to slaughter animals for food, nor were animals to prey upon one another; consequently, that the fact which now prevails universally in nature and the order of the world, the violent and often painful destruction of life, is not a primary law of nature, nor a divine institution founded in the creation itself, but entered the world along with death at the fall of man, and became a necessity of nature through the curse of sin. It was not till after the flood, that men received authority from God to employ the flesh of animals as well as the green herb as food (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 w^orld 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 deatli 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 kiH 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 (Kom. 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 orf^anism of the existinjr 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 DV ''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 themr NJ^ 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, Le, 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 the announcement in vers. 2, 3, that on the seventh day God ended the work which He had made, by ceasing to create, and blessing the day and sanctifying it. The completion or finishing ("^^P) of the work of creation on the seventh day (not on tlie sixth, as the LXX., Sam,j and Syr. erroneously render it) can only be understood by regarding the clauses vers. 2b and 3, which are connected with ^3"t^ by ^ 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 r\2'y 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^^) in Ex. XX. 11, and being refreshed (^*?3^.) 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 " {Zieglery 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 (nibj;^ faciendo: cf. Ewald^ § 280c?) 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 Kn"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 KardTrauat^;) points forward; and to this rest, this divine aa/3^aTLafi6<i (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 habet occasum, quia sanctijicasti eum ad permansionem sempitemam. But true as it is that the Sabbath of God has no evening, and that the cray8/3aTicr/xo9, to which the creature is to attain at the end of his course, will be bounded bv 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 which 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 t/ay, on which God rested from His work, the world also, with all its inhabitants, attained to the sacred rest of God; that the KardiravaL^ and aa/3/3aTLa/jL6<; 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); (h) 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 everv other passage, in which the formula " these (and these) are the tholedoth'^ occurs (viz. ten times in Genesis; also in Num. iii. 1, Ruth iv. 18, 1 Chron. i. 29), it is used as a heading, and that in this passage the true meaning of T\Th\r\ precludes the possibility of its being an appendix to what precedes, fully decides the question. The word nn^in, which is only used in the plural, and never occurs except in the construct state or with suffixes, is a IlipJiil noun from ^vin, 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 hegotten, 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 tholedoth 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 "l^pin would be completely relinquished, and the " tholedoth of the heavens and the earth" be recjarded as indicatins^ 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. DKi^nn 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 lure, must also refer to a time when the heavens and the earth were akeady 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. Dt^ian 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. 5 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 proof 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. 1 the Psalmist advances from the general name El and FAohim 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.

'I'he two names may be distinguished thus: Elohim^ the plural of 'T'vN, which is only used in the loftier style of poetry, is an infinitive noun from ^^^ to fear, and signifies awe, fear, then the object of fear, the highest Being to be feared, like ^HQ, which is used interchangeably with it in chap. xxxi. 42, 53, and XiiD in Ps. Ixxvi. 12 (cf. Isa. viii. 12, 13). The plural is not used for the abstract, in the sense of divinity, but to express the notion of God in the fulness and multiplicity of the divine powers. It is employed both in a numerical, and also in an intensive sense, so that Elohim is apphed to the (many) gods of the heathen as well as to the one true God, in whom the highest and absolute fulness of the divine essence is contained. In this intensive sense Elohim depicts the one true God as the infinitely great and exalted One, who created the heavens and the earth, and who preserves and governs every creature. According to its derivation, however, it is object rather than subject, so that in the plural form the concrete unity of the personal God falls back behind the wealth of the divine potencies which His being contains. In this sense, indeed, both in Genesis and the later, poetical, books, Elohim is used without the article, as a proper name for the true God, even in the mouth of heathen (1 Sam. iv. 7); but in other places, and here and there in Genesis, it occurs as an appellative with the article, by which prominence is given to the absoluteness or personality of God (chap. v. 22, vi. 9, etc.). — The name Jehovah, on the other hand, was originally a proper name, and according to the explanation given by God Himself to Moses (Ex. iii. 14, 1 5), was formed from the imperfect of the verb mn = n-n. God calls Himself rv^r\^ ik^k n^nx, then more briefly n^HNJ, and then again, by changing the first person into the third, ^"l^^ From the derivation of this name from the imperfect, it follows that it was either pronounced njn^ or n}n*, and had come down from the pre-Mosaic age; for the form i^^} ^^^^ been forced out of the spoken language by i^'^J^ even in Moses' time. The Masoretic pointing njn^ belongs to a time when the Jews had long been afraid to utter this name at all, and substituted ^j'^^j the vowels of which therefore were placed as Keri, the word to be read, under the Kethih nin^, unless mn^ stood in apposition to ^J"i&^, in which case the word was read D^'x'?? and pointed nin) (a pure monstrosity).^ This custom, which sprang from a misintei'pretation of Lev. xxiv. 16, appears to have originated shortly after the captivity. Even in the canonical writings of this age the name Jehovah was less and less employed, and in the Apocrypha and the Septuagint version o KvpLo<; (the Lord) is invariably substituted, a custom in which the New Testament writers follow the LXX. (vid. Oehler). — If we seek for the meaning of mn% the expression,Tnx "iK^K iTn«, in Ex. iii. 14, is neither to be rendered ecrofiai o? ea-ofiai (Aq., Theodt.), " I shall be that I shall be " (Luther), nor " I shall be that which I will or am to be" (M. Baumgarten). Nor does it mean, " He who will be because He is Himself, the God of the future" (^Hofmajin). For in names formed from the third person imperfect, the imperfect is not a future, but an aorist. Accorditig to the fundamental signification of the imperfect, names so formed point out a person as distinguished by a frequently or constantly manifested quality, in other words, they express a distinctive characteristic (vid, Ewald, § 136; chap. xxv. 26, xxvii. 36, also xvi. 11 and xxi. 6). The Vulgate gives it correctly: ego sum qui sum, ^'1 am who I am." " The repetition of the verb in the same form, and connected only by the relative, signifies that the being or act of the subject expressed in the verb is de-

^ For a fuller discussion of the meaning and pronunciation of the name Jehovah vid. Hengstenberg^ Dissertations on the Pentateuch i. p. 213 sqq.; Oehler in Herzog's Cyclopaedia; and Holemann in his Bibelstudien. The last, in common with Stier and others, decides in favour of the Masoretic pointing nin^ as giving the original pronunciation, chiefly on the ground of Rev. i. 4 and 6, 8; but the theological expansion o uu Kctl 6 ^v k»1 6 spxo/^suog cannot be regarded as a philological proof of the formation of niH'' by the fusion of rnn, nin, ^n^ into one word.

termined only by the subject itself" (Hofmann). The verb HNl signifies " to be, to happen, to become; " but as neither happening nor becoming is applicable to God, the unchangeable, since the pantheistic idea of a becoming God is altogether foreign to the Scriptures, we must retain the meaning "^o be;^^ not forgetting, however, that as the Divine Being is not a resting, or, so to speak, a dead being, but is essentially living, displaying itself as living, working upon creation, and moving in the world, the formation of nin^ from the imperfect precludes the idea of abstract existence, and points out the Divine Being as moving, pervading history, and manifesting Himself in the world. So far then as the words n^n^ iu^t< nMK are condensed into a proper name in nin'', and God, therefore, " is He who is," inasmuch as in His being, as historically manifested, He is the self-determining one, the name Jehovah, which we have retained as being naturalized in the ecclesiastical phraseology, though we are quite in ignorance of its correct pronunciation, " includes both the absolute independence of God in His historical movements," and " the absolute constancy of God, or the fact that in everything, in both words and deeds. He is essentially in harmony with Himself, remaining always consistent" (Oehler), The " 1 am who am,** therefore, is the absolute /, the absolute personality, moving with unlimited freedom; and in distinction from Elohim (the Being to be feared). He is the personal God in His historical manifestation, in which the fulness of the Divine Being unfolds itself to the world. This movement of the personal God in history, however, has reference to the realization of the great purpose of the creation, viz. the salvation of man. Jehovah therefore is the God of the history of salvation. This is not shown in the etymology of the name, but in its historical expansion. It was as Jehovah that God manifested Himself to Abram (xv. 7), when He made the covenant with him; and as this name was neither derived from an attribute of God, nor from a divine manifestation, we must trace its origin to a revelation from God, and seek it in the declaration to Abram, " I am Jehovah." Just as Jehovah here revealed Himself to Abram as the God who led him out of Ur of the Chaldees, to give him the land of Canaan for a possession, and thereby described Himself as the author of all the promises which Abram rocmved at his call, and which were renewed to him and to his descendants, Isaac and Jacob; so did He reveal Himself to Moses (Ex. iii.) as the God of his fathers, to fulfil His promise to their seed, the people of Israel. Through these revelations Jehovah became a proper name for the God, who was working out the salvation of fallen humanity; and in this sense, not only is it used proleptically at the call of Abram (chap, xii.), but transferred to the primeval times, and applied to all the manifestations and acts of God which had for their object the rescue of the human race from its fall, as well as to the special plan inaugurated in the call of Abram. The preparation commenced in paradise. To show this, Moses has introduced the name Jehovah into the history in the present chapter, and has indicated the identity of Jehovah with Elohim, not only by the constant association of the two names, but also by the fact that in the heading (ver. 46) he speaks of the creation described in chap. i. as the work of Jehovah Elohim.

The account in vers. 5-25 is not a second, complete and independent histoiy of the creation, nor does it contain mere appendices to the account in chap. i.; but it describes the commencement of the history of the human race. This commencement includes not only a complete account of the creation of the first human pair, but a description of the place which God prepared for their abode, the latter being of the highest importance in relation to the self-determination of man, with its momentous consequences to both earth and heaven. Even in the history of the creation man takes precedence of all other creatures, as being created in the image of God and appointed lord of all the earth, though he is simply mentioned there as the last and highest link in the creation. To this our present account is attached, describing with greater minuteness the position of man in the creation, and explaining the circumstances which exerted the greatest influence upon his subsequent career. These circumstances were — the formation of man from the dust of the earth and the divine breath of life; the tree of knowledge in paradise; the formation of the woman, and the relation of the woman to the man. Of these three elements, the first forms the substratum to the other two. Hence the more exact account of the creation of Adam is subordinated to, and inserted in, the description of paradise (ver. 7). In vers. 5 and 6, witli wliich the narrative commences, there is an evident allusion to paradise: ^' And as yet there was (arose, grew) no shnib of the field upon the earth, and no herb of the field sprouted; for Jehovah El had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was no man to till the ground; and a mist arose from, the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground^ njn in parallelism with HDV means to become, to arise, to proceed. Although the growth of the shrubs and sprouting of the herbs are represented here as dependent upon the rain and the cultivation of the earth by man, we must not understand the words as meaning that there was neither shrub nor herb before the rain and dew, or before the creation of man, and so draw the conclusion that the creation of the plants occurred either after or contemporaneously with the creation of man, in direct contradiction to chap. i. 11, 12. The creation of the plants is not alluded to here at all, but simply the planting of the garden in Eden. The growing of the shrubs and sprouting of the herbs is different from the creation or first production of the vegetable kingdom, and relates to the growing and sprouting of the plants and germs which were called into existence by the creation, the natural development of the plants as it had steadily proceeded ever since the creation. This was dependent upon rain and human culture; their creation was not. Moreover, the shrub and herb of the field do not embrace the whole of the vegetable productions of the earth. It is not a fact that " the field is used iu the second section in the same sense as the earth in the first." nnb^ is not " the widespread plain of the earth, the broad expanse of land," but a field of arable land, soil fit for cultivation, which forms only a part of the "earth" or "ground." Even the "beast of the field" in ver. 19 and iii. 1 is not synonymous with the " beast of the earth" in chap. i. 24, 25, but is a more restricted term, denoting only such animals as live upon the field and are supported by its produce, whereas the " beast of the earth" denotes all wild beasts as distinguished from tame cattle and reptiles. In the same way, the " shrub of the field" consists of such shrubs and tree-like productions of the cultivated land as man raises for the sake of their fruit, and the "herb of the field," all seed-producing plants, both corn and vegetables, which serve as food for man and beast. — The mist pfc<, vapour, which falls as rain. Job xxxvi. 27) is correctly regarded by Delitzsch as the creative beginning of the rain (T'ptpn) itself, from which we may infer, therefore, that it rained before the flood.

Ver. 7. *^ Then Jehovah God formed man from dust of the ground.'" "12V is the accusative of the material employed {Ewald and Gesenius). The Vav consec. imperf. in vers. 7, 8, 9, does not indicate the order of time, or of thought; so that the meaning is not that God planted the garden in Eden after He had created Adam, nor that He caused the trees to grow after He had planted the garden and placed the man there. The latter is opposed to ver. 15; the former is utterly improbable. The process of man's creation is described minutely here, because it serves to explain his relation to God and to the surrounding world. He was formed from dust (not de limo terrce, from a clod of the earth, for "icy is not a solid mass, but the finest part of the material of the earth), and into his nostril a breath of life was breathed, by which he became an animated being. Hence the nature of man consists of a material substance and an immaterial principle of life. " The breath of life^^ i.e. breath producing life, does not denote the spirit by which man is dis tinguished from the animals, or the soul of man from that of the beasts, but only the life-breath {yid. 1 Kings xvii. 17). It is true, •^^K': generally signifies the human soul, but in chap. vii. 22 D^'n nn'noc^: is used of men and animals both; and should any one explain this, on the ground that the allusion is chiefly to men, and the animals are connected per zeugma^ or should he press the ruach attached, and deduce from this the use of neshamah in relation to men and animals, there are several passages in which neshamah is synonymous with ruach {e.g, Isa. xlii. 5; Job xxxii. 8, xxxiii. 4), or D^^n nn applied to animals (chap. vi. 17, vii. 15), or again neshamah used as equivalent to nephesh (e.g. Josh. x. 40, cf. vers. 28, 30, 32). For neshamah, the breathing, ttvot], is " the ruach in action'* (Auberlen). Beside this, the man formed from the dust became, through the breathing of the " breath of life,'* a n>n tJ^p:, an animated, and as such a living being; an expression which is also applied to fishes, birds, and land animals (i. 20, 21, 24, 30), and there is no proof of pre-eminence on the part of man. As njn C'e:, ^^i^ fwo-a, does not refer to the soul merely, ])ut to tlie whole man as an animated beinij, so HDC': does not denote the spirit of man as distinguished from body and soul. On the relation of the soul to the spirit of man nothing can be gathered from this passage; the \vords, correctly interpreted, neither show that the soul is an emanation, an exhalation of the human spirit, nor that the soul was created before the sj)irit and merely received its life from the latter. The formation of man from dust and the breathing of the breath of life we must not understand in a mechanical sense, as if God first of all constructed a human figure from dust, and then, by breathing His breath of life into the clod of earth which he had shaped into the form of a man, made it into a living being. The words are to be understood Oeo7rp€ircj<;. By an act of divine omnipotence man arose from the dust; and in the same moment in which the dust, by virtue of creative omnipotence, shaped itself into a human form, it was pervaded by the divine breath of life, and created a living being, so that we cannot say the body was earlier than the soul. The dust of the earth is merely the earthly substratum, which was formed by the breath of life from God into an animated, living, self-existent being. When it is said, " God breathed into his nostril the breath of life," it is evident that this description merely gives prominence to the peculiar sign of life, viz. breathing; since it is obvious, that what God breathed into man could not be the air which man breathes; for it is not that which breathes, but simply that which is breathed. Consequently, breathing into the nostril can only mean, that " God, through His own breath, produced and combined with the bodily form that principle of life, which was the origin of all human life, and which constantly manifests its existence in the breath inhaled and exhaled through the nose" (Delitzsch, Psychol, p. 62). Breathing, however, is common both to man and beast; so that this cannot be the sensuous analogon of the supersensuous spiritual life, but simply the principle of the physical life of the soul. Nevertheless the vital principle in man is different from that in the animal, and the human soul from the soul of the beast. This difference is indicated by the way in which man received the breath of life from God, and so became a living soul. " The beasts arose at the creative word of God, and no communication of the spirit is mentioned even in cli. ii. 19; tho origin of their soul was coincident with that of their corporeality, and their life was merely the individualization of the universal life, with which all matter was filled in the beginning by the Spirit of God. On the other hand, the human spirit is not a mere individualization of the divine breath which breathed upon the material of the world, or of the universal spirit of nature; nor is his body merely a production of the earth when stimulated by the creative word of God. The earth does not bring forth his body, but God Himself puts His hand to the work and forms him; nor does the life already imparted to the world by the Spirit of God individualize itself in him, but God breathes directly into the nostrils of the. one man, in the whole fulness of His personality, the breath of life, that in a manner corresponding to the personality of God he may become a living soul'* (^Delitzsch). This was the foundation of the pre-eminence of man, of his likeness to God and his immortality; for by this he was formed into a personal being, whose immaterial part was not merely soul, but a soul breathed entirely by God, since spirit and soul were created together through the inspiration of God. As the spiritual nature of man is described simply by the act of breathing, which is discernible by the senses, so the name which God gives him (chap. v. 2) is founded upon the earthly side of his being: Adam, from noiK (adamah), earth, the earthly element, like homo from humus, or from x^f^^y XP'^iai, xP'fxaOev, to guard him from self-exaltation, not from the red colour of his body, since this is not a distinctive characteristic of man, but common to him and to many other creatures. The name man (Meiisch), on the other hand, from the Sanskrit mdnuscha, manuschja, from man to think, man as = mens, expresses the spiritual inwardness of our nature.

Yer. 8. The abode, which God prepared for the first man, was a ''garden in Eden^^ also called "the garden of Eden" (ver. 15, chap. iii. 23, 24; Joel ii. 3), or Eden (Isa. li. 3; Ezek. xxviii. 13, xxxi. 9). Eden (HV, i.e, delight) is the proper name of a particular district, the situation of which is described in vers. 10 sqq.; but it must not be confounded with the Eden of Assyria (2 Kings xix. 12, etc.) and Coelesyria (Amos i. 5), which is written with double segliol. The garden {lit. a place hedged round) was to the east, Le, in the eastern portion, and is generally called Paradise from the Septuagint version, in which the word is ren-

(lered TrapaZeiao^, This word, according to Spiegel, was derived from the Zendic paij-i-daSza, a hedging round, and passed into the Hebrew in the form Di")Q (Cant. iv. 13; Eccl. ii. 5; Neh. ii. 8), a park, probably through the commercial relations which Solomon established with distant countries. In the garden itself God caused all kinds of trees to grow out of the earth; and among them were two, which were called " the tree of life" and ^' the tree of knowledge of good and evil,** on account of their peculiar significance in relation to man (see ver. 16 and chap. iii. 22). rijnn, an infinitive, as Jer. xxii. 16 shows, has the article here because the phrase y"i1 31D njn is regarded as one word, and in Jeremiah from the nature of the predicate. — Ver. 10. "And there was a river going out of Eden, to water the garden; and from thence it divided itself and became four heads /' i.e. the stream took its rise in Eden, flowed through the garden to water it, and on leaving the garden was divided into four heads or beginnings of rivers, that is, into four arms or separate streams. For this meaning of D"'K^K'i see Ezek. xvi. 25, Lam. ii. 19. Of the four rivers whose names are given to show the geographical situation of paradise, the last two are unquestionably Tigris and Euphrates. Hiddekel occurs in Dan. x. 4 as the Hebrew name for Tigris; in the inscriptions of Darius it is called Tigro, (or the arrow, according to Strabo, Pliny, and Curtius\ from the Zendic tighra, pointed, sharp, from which probably the meaning stormy (rapidus Tigris, Hor. Carm. 4, 14, 46) was derived. It flows before (^^"'i?), in front of, Assyria, not to the east of x^LSsyria; for the province of Assyria, which must be intended here, was on the eastern side of the Tigris: moreover, neither the meaning, " to the east of," nor the identity of riDHp and DIpD has been, or can be, established from chap. iv. 16, 1 Sam. xiii. 5, or Ezek. xxxix. 11, which are the only other passages in which the word occurs, as Ewald himself acknowledges. F\ath, which was not more minutely described because it was so generally known, is the Euphrates; in old Persian, Ufrdta, according to Delitzsch, or the good and fertile stream; Ufrdtu, according to Spiegler, or the well -progressing stream. According to the present condition of the soil, the sources of the Euphrates and Tigris are not so closely connected that they could be regarded as the commencements of a common stream which has ceased to exist. The main sources of the Tigris, it is true, are only 2000 paces from the Euphrates, but they are to the north of Diarbekr, in a range of mountains which is skirted on three sides by the upper course of the Euphrates, and separates them from this river. We must also look in the same country, the highlands of Armenia, for the other two rivers, if the description of paradise actually rests upon an ancient tradition, and is to be regarded as something more than a mythical invention of the fancy. The name Pldshon sounds like the Phasis of the ancients, with which Belaud supposed it to be identical; and Chavilah like Colchis, the well-known gold country of the ancients. But the ^dac<; 6 KoX;)^o9 (Herod. 4, 37, 45) takes its rise in the Caucasus, and not in Armenia. A more probable conjecture, therefore, points to the Cyrus of the ancients, which rises in Armenia, flows northwards to a point not far from the eastern border of Colchis, and then turns eastward in Iberia, from which it flows in a south-easterly direction to the Caspian Sea. Tiie expression, " which compasseth the whole land of Chavilah,^* would apply very well to the course of this river from the eastern border of Colchis; for 33D does not necessarily signify to surround, but to pass through with different turns, or to skirt in a semicircular form, and Chavilah may have been larger than modem Colchis. It is not a valid objection to this explanation, that in every other place Chavilah is a district of Southern Arabia. The identity of this Chavilah with the Chavilah of the Joktanites (chap. x. 29, xxv. 18; 1 Sam. xv. 7) or of the Cushites (chap. X. 7; 1 Cliron. i. 9) is disproved not only by the article used here, which distinguishes it from the other, but also by the description of it as land where gold, bdolach, and the shohamstone are found; a description neither requisite nor suitable in the case of the Arabian Chavilah, since these productions are not to be met with there. This characteristic evidently shows that the Chavilah mentioned here was entirely distinct from the other, and a land altogether unknown to the Israelites. — What we are to understand by npinn is uncertain. There is no certain ground for the meaning "pearZs," given in Saad. and the later Rabbins, and adopted by Bochart and others. The rendering fiSiWa or BSeWLov, bdellium, a vegetable gum, of which Dioscorus says, ol Be fjudBeXKov ol Be fioXyov KaXovai, and Pliny, " alii brochon appellant, alii malacham, alii maldacon^^ is favoured by the similarity in the name; but, on the other side, there is the fact that Pliny describes this gum as mgrum and hadroholorij and Dioscorus as inroTreKiov (blackish), which does not agree with Num. xi. 7, where the appearance of the white grains of the manna is compared to that of hdolach. — The stone shoham, according to most of the early versions, is probably the beri/lj which is most likely the stone intended by tiie LXX. (o \l6o<; 6 7rpdaLvo<;y the leek-green stone), as Pliny, when speaking of beryls, describes those as probatissimi, qui viriditatem puri maris imitantur; but according to others it is the onya^ or sardonyx (vid. Ges. s. V,)} The Gihon (from n^3 to break forth) is the Araxes, which rises in the neighbourhood of the Euphrates, flows from west to east, joins the Cyrus, and falls with it into the Caspian Sea. The name corresponds to the Arabic Jaihun, a name given by the Arabians and Persians to several large rivers. The land of Cush cannot, of course, be the later Cush, or Ethiopia, but must be connected with the Asiatic Koaaaia, which reached to the Caucasus, and to which the Jews (of Shirwan) still give this name. But even though these four streams do not now spring from one source, but on the contrary their sources are separated by mountain ranges, this fact does not prove that the narrative before us is a myth. Along with or since the disappearance of paradise, that part of the earth may have undergone such changes that the precise locality can no longer be determined with certainty.^

^ The two productions furnish no proof that the Phishon is to be sought for in India. The assertion that the name hdolach is Indian, is quite unfounded, for it cannot be proved that maddlaka in Sanscrit is a vegetable gum; nor has this been proved of maddra^ which is possibly related to it (cf. Lassen's indische Althk. 1, 290 note). Moreover, Pliny speaks of Bactnana as the land *' in qua Bdellium est nominatissimum," although he adds, " nascitur et in Arabia Indiaque^ et Media ac Bahylone;" and Isidorus says of the Bdella which comes from India, '' Sordida est et nigra et majori gleba^^^ which, again, does not agree with Num. xi. 7. — The shoham-stone also is not necessarily associated with India; for although Pliny says of the beryls, ^■''India eos gignit^ raro alibi repertos^^^ he also observes, " in nostra orbe aliquando circa Pontum inveniri putantur."

2 That the continents of our globe have undergone great changes since the creation of the human race, is a truth sustained by the facts of natural history and the earliest national traditions, and admitted by the most celebrated naturalists. (See the collection of proofs made by Keerl.) These changes must not be all attributed to the flood; many may have occurred before and many after, like the catastrophe in which the Dead Sea origin-

Vers. 15-17. After the preparation of the garden in Eden God placed the man there, to dress it and to keep it. ^'^^'^^] not merely expresses removal thither, but the fact that the man was placed there to lead a life of repose, not indeed in inactivity, but in fulfilment of the course assigned him, which was very different from the trouble and restlessness of the weary toil into which he was plunged by sin. In paradise he was to dress (colere) the garden; for the earth was meant to be tended and cultivated by man, so that without human culture, plants and even the different varieties of com degenerate and grow wild. Cultivation therefore preserved (iDK^ to keep) the divine plantation, not merely from injury on the part of any evil power, either penetrating into, or already existing in the creation, but also from running wild through natural degeneracy. As nature was created for man, it was his vocation not only to ennoble it by his work, to make it subservient to himself, but also to raise it into the sphere of the spirit and further its glorification. This applied not merely to the soil beyond the limits of paradise, but to the garden itself, which, although the most perfect portion of the terrestrial creation, was nevertheless susceptible of development, and which was allotted to man, in order that by his care and culture he might make it into a transparent mirror of the glory of the Creator. — Here too the man was ta commence his own spiritual development. To this end God had planted two trees in the midst of the garden of Eden; the one to train his spirit through the exercise of obedience to the word of God, the other to transform his earthly nature into the spiritual essence of eternal life. These trees received their names from their relation to man, that is to say, from the effect which the eating of their fruit was destined to produce upon human life and its development. The fruit of the tree of life conferred the power of eternal, immortal life; and the tree of knowledge was planted, to lead men to the knowledge of good and evil. The knowledge of good and evil was no mere experience of good and ill, but a moral element in that spiritual development, through ated, without being recorded in history as this has been. Still less must we interpret chap. xi. 1 (compared with x. 25), as Fabri and Keerl have done, as indicating a complete revolution of the globe, or a geogonic process, by which the continents of the old world were divided, and assumed their present physiognomy.

which the man created in the image of God was to attain to the filling out of that nature, which had already been planned in the likeness of God. For not to know what good and evil are, is a sign of either the immaturity of infancy (Deut. i. 39), or the imbecility of age (2 Sam. xix. 35); whereas the power to distinguish good and evil is commended as the gift of a king (1 Kings iii. 9) and the wisdom of angels (2 Sam. xiv. 17), and in the highest sense is ascribed to God Himself (chap. iii. 5, 22). Why then did God prohibit man from eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, with the threat that, as soon as he ate thereof, he would surely die? (The inf. abs. before the finite verb intensifies the latter: vid. Ewald, § 312a). Are we to regard the tree as poisonous, and suppose that some fatal property resided in the fruit? A supposition which so completely ignores the ethical nature of sin is neither warranted by the antithesis, nor by v/hat is said in chap. iii. 22 of the tree of life, nor by the fact that the eating of the forbidden fruit was actually the cause of death. Even in the case of the tree of life, the power is not to be sought in the physical character of the fruit. No earthly fruit possesses the power to give immortality to the life which it helps to sustain. Life is not rooted in man's corporeal nature; it was in his spiritual nature that it had its origin, and from this it derives its stability and permanence also. It may, indeed, be brought to an end through the destruction of the body; but it cannot be exalted to perpetual duration, ix, to immortality, through its preservation and sustenance. And this applies quite as much to the original nature of man, as to man after the fall. A body formed from earthly materials could not be essentially immortal: it would of necessity either be turned to earth, and fall into dust again, or be transformed by the spirit into the immortality of the soul. The power which transforms corporeality into immortality is spiritual in its nature, and could only be imparted to the earthly tree or its fruit through the word of God, through a special operation of the Spirit of God, an operation which we can only picture to ourselves as sacramental in its character, rendering earthly elements the receptacles and vehicles of celestial powers. God had given such a sacramental nature and significance to the two trees in the midst of the garden, that their fruit could and would produce supersensual, mental, and spiritual effects upon the nature of the first human pair. The tree of life was to impart the power of transformation into eternal life. The tree of knowledge was to lead man to the knowledge of good and evil; and, according to the divine intention, this was to be attained through his not eating of its fruit. This end was to be accomplished, not only by his discerning in the limit imposed by the prohibition the difference between that which accorded with the will of God and that which opposed it, but also by his coming eventually, through obedience to the prohibition, to recognise the fact that all that is opposed to the will of God is an evil to be avoided, and, through voluntaiy resistance to such evil, to the full development of the freedom of choice originally imparted to him into the actual freedom of a deliberate and self-conscious choice of good. By obedience to the divine will he would have attained to a godlike knowledge of good and evil, i.e. to one in accordance with his own likeness to God. He would have detected the evil in the approaching tempter; but instead of yielding to it, he would have resisted it, and thus have made good his own property acquired with consciousness and of his own free-will, and in this way by proper self-determination would gradually have advanced to the possession of the truest liberty. But as he failed to keep this divinely appointed way, and ate the forbidden fruit in opposition to the command of God, the power imparted by God to the fruit was manifested in a different way. He learned the difference between good and evil from his own guilty experience, and by receiving the evil into his own soul, fell a victim to the threatened death. Thus through his own fault the tree, which should have helped him to attain true freedom, brought nothing but the sham liberty of sin, and with it death, and that without any demoniacal power of destruction being conjured into the tree itself, or any fatal poison being hidden in its fruit.