The man was thus to be made conscious of his lordship over the animal tribes.
2. In token of his relations to them, respectively, he was to give them their respective names.
3. His knowledge of animal nature, (in which he had been created), is at once to be developed, under the special teaching of God.
4. His organs of speech are to be put in exercise.
5. His knowledge of language (Divinely imparted), is to be developed in the use of terms for naming the several classes--under the Divine instruction and guidance.
6. It would seem, from the connection, that the man was to be made sensible of his social need as he should see the animals passing before him in pairs. (M. W. Jacobus.)
Language a Divine gift
The man was created in knowledge, after the Divine image, and thus was endowed with powers of perception and discrimination, by which he could know the habits, characters, and uses of the several species, both of animals and of fowls, yet not without Divine teaching in the matter, and in the use of terms. The names which he gave them were appointed to be their names by which they should be known--and they were, doubtless, significant--as was the name of Eve, (Gen_2:23), Gen_3:20. Language itself could not so early have been a human invention, but a revelation. (M. W. Jacobus.)
Observations
I. GOD’S MERCIES ARE, OR SHOULD BE, PRECIOUS UNTO US WHEN WE CAN NEITHER BE WITHOUT THEM, NOR HAVE THEM FROM ANY OTHER BUT FROM HIMSELF. That the necessity of creating a woman to be Adam’s helper might be the more clearly discovered unto him, He brings before him the creatures, that out of his own judgment himself might conclude how unit any of them were to be his companions or helpers.
II. WE MUST KNOW THE UNSERVICEABLENESS OF OTHER THINGS, THAT WE MAY KNOW AND APPROVE THE PROFITABLENESS OF THAT WHICH IS TRULY GOOD.
III. GOD CAN ORDER AND DISPOSE OF THE CREATURES TO DO WHAT, AND TO BE WHERE HE APPOINTS THEM.
IV. MAN MAY LAWFULLY USE THAT POWER OVER THE CREATURES WHICH GOD HIMSELF HATH PUT INTO HIS HAND.
V. GOD IS PLEASED TO HONOUR MEN SO FAR AS TO EMPLOY THEM IN MANY THINGS WHICH OF RIGHT BELONG UNTO AND MIGHT BE DONE BY HIMSELF ALONE.
1. To encourage men to His service in honouring them so far as to make them His fellow workers.
2. To unite men the more in love, one to another.
3. To increase their reward hereafter, by the faithful employment of their talents for the advantage of their Master from whom they received them, Mat_25:21; Mat_25:23. (J. White, M. A.)
Intuition
God now proceeds to show man the exact point where the void lay. Adam had been made to feel that void, but God’s object is to place him in circumstances such as shall lead him step by step to the seat of the unsatisfied longing within. Accordingly, God brings before him all the creatures which He had made, that Adam, in his choice, may have the whole range of creation. Adam surveys them all. He sees by instinctive wisdom the nature and properties of each, so that he can affix names to all in turn. His knowledge is large and full; it has come direct from God, just as his own being had come. It is not discovery, it is not learning, it is not experience, it is not memory, it is intuition. By intuition he knew what the wisest king in after ages only knew by searching. (H. Bonar, D. D.)
The first act of man’s sovereignty over the animals
Man was certainly the superior master of nature. This is evident from the next feature which our text mentions. God brought the animals which He had created to man, to “see what he would call them”; and the names chosen by man were to remain to them forever. This is the first act by which man exercised his sovereignty; and although his intellect was not yet roused, he was sufficiently endowed for that task; for he had been capable of understanding the Divine command and of representing to himself death. In the first cosmogony, God Himself fixed the names of the objects which He had called into existence; He determined the appellations of day and night, of heaven, and sea, and dry land. Here He cedes this right to man, whom He has ordained “to have dominion over all the earth.” The name was, according to Hebrew and Eastern writers in general, an integral part of the object itself; it was not deemed indifferent; it was no conventional sign; it was an essential attribute. When God revealed Himself to Moses in the burning bush, the latter hastened to inquire under what name He wished to be announced to the Israelites. When a crisis in the life of an individual was imminent, or had been successfully overcome, his name was changed into another one expressive of that event. Kings, at their elevation to the throne, assumed another name. To “know the name of God” was identical with knowing His internal nature, and even with piously walking in His precepts. The right, therefore, of determining the names includes authority and dominion; but man did not perform this act of his own accord; he did not yet feel his exalted rank; but God, by inviting him to perform it, made him governor over the works of His hands, and placed all under his feet Psa_8:7). It has been frequently observed, that our text explains the origin of language, and attributes its invention solely to man. Language is, indeed, a spontaneous emanation of the human mind; it is implanted in its nature; in furnishing man, besides his external organization, with reason and imagination, God bestowed upon him the principal elements for communication by speech; it is as natural a function of his intellect as reflection; intelligent speech is one of the chief characteristics of man; hence the ancient Greek poets call men simply the “speech-gifted”; the germ was bestowed by God; man had to do no more than to cultivate it. But our author does not enter upon this abstruse question at all; it is of no practical importance for religious truth; it must have appeared superfluous to one who knows God as the Creator and Framer of all, as the Bestower of every gift, as Him who “has made man’s mouth, and who maketh dumb” Exo_4:11). Pythagoras, and other ancient philosophers, justly considered the invention of names for objects an act of the highest human wisdom; and the Chinese ascribed it to their first and most honoured sovereign Fo-hi, who performed this task so well, that “by naming the things their very nature was made known.” (M. M. Kalisch, Ph. D.)
The origin of language
Was it an invention? So some have taught. Was it the issue of a convention? So some have taught. Was it an imitation of the sounds of nature? So some have taught. Was it a direct gift from heaven? So some have taught. Most erudite men have pondered the problem; and yet all speculation here is quite afloat. And so we fall back on the childlike, pictorial language of time’s most hoary archive: “Jehovah God formed out of the soil every beast of the field and every fowl of the heavens: and He brought them to the man to see what he would call them: and whatever the man should call every living being, that should be the name thereof; and the man gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the heavens, and to every beast of the field.” It was man’s first recorded act. Observe: it was an act of perception, discrimination, description. The animals were arrayed before him; and animals suggest all the phenomena of life. And the vision of moving life stirred up within him the latent capacity of speech. In brief, it was the origin of humanity’s vocabulary. As such, it is a profoundly philosophical account. For nouns, i.e., names, are the rudiments of language, the very A B C’s of speech. Such is the theory of the genesis of language according to Moses. Can your Max Mullers and Wedgwoods and Whitneys give a more philosophical theory? (G. D.Boardman.)
Two-fold use of language
This indicates to us a two-fold use of language. First, it serves to register things and events in the apprehension and the memory. Man has a singular power of conferring with himself. This he carries on by means of language in some form or other. He bears some resemblance to his Maker even in the complexity of his spiritual nature. He is at once speaker and hearer, and yet at the same time he is consciously one. Secondly, it is a medium of intelligent communication between spirits, who cannot read one another’s thoughts by immediate intuition. The first of these uses seems to have preceded the second in the case of Adam, who was the former of the first language. The reflecting reader can tell what varied powers of reason are involved in the use of language, and to what an extent the mind of man was developed, when he proceeded to name the several classes of birds and beasts. He was evidently fitted for the highest enjoyments of social intercourse. (Prof. J. G. Murphy.)
