Lange Commentary - Genesis 1:1 - 1:31

Online Resource Library

Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | Download

Lange Commentary - Genesis 1:1 - 1:31


(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)

This Chapter Verse Commentaries:

The Genesis of the World and of the Primitive Time of the Human Race, as the Genesis of the Primitive Religion until the Development of Heathendom, and of its Antithesis in the Germinating Patriarchalism. Genesis 1-11

——————

FIRST PART

THE GENESIS OF THE WORLD, OF THE ANTITHESIS OF HEAVEN AND EARTH, AND OF THE PRIMITIVE MEN. Ch. 1 and 2

FIRST SECTION

The Heaven, the Earth, and Man. The Creation and the World in an Upward series of Physical and Generic Development. Universalistic.

Gen_1:1 to Gen_2:3

A.—The Antithesis of Heaven and Earth, the Symbol of all Religion

1In the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth.

B.—The Three First Creative Days. The Great Divisions (by means of Light, Heat, and Chemical Affinity), or the Three Living Contrasts: Light and Darkness (or the Dark Spherical Material); the Ætherial Waters (or the Vapor-Form) and the Earthly Waters (or the Fluid Precipitate); the Water Proper and the Land. The nearest Limit of these Divisions: the Vegetable World as a Symbolic of Commencing Life analogous to the Result of the Three Last Creative Days in the Appearing of Man.

2And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved [hovered, brooded] upon the face of the waters. 3And God said: Let there be light, and there was light. 4And God saw the light [the beauty of the light] that it was good [ èåֹá , good and fair; as the Greek καλὸν, fair and good]; and God divided the light from the darkness [made a division between the luminous and the dark element]. 5And God called the light Day and the darkness he called Night [source of day, source of night]. And the evening and the morning were the first day [i.e., by this division is measured one divine day, or day of God—one day here is for first day]. 6And God said: Let there be a firmament [extension, expansion] in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. 7And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament; and it was so. 8And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day. 9And God said: Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear; and it was so. 10And God called the dry land Earth, and the gathering together [combining] of the waters [as water proper] called he Seas; and God saw that it was good [second pause of contemplation]. 11And God said: Let the earth bring forth grass [grow grass], the herb yielding seed, and the fruit-tree yielding fruit after its kind, whose seed is in itself upon the earth; and it was so. 12And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit whose seed was in itself after his kind. And God saw that it was good [third pause of contemplation]. 13 And the evening and the morning were the third day.

C.—The Three Last Creative Days. The Three Great Combinings: 1. The Heavenly Luminaries and the Earth generally; 2. the Heavenly Luminaries and Water and Air; 3. the Heavenly Luminaries and the Earth-Soil as a Pre-Conditioning of Individual Formations. Or the Three Parallelisms of the Three First Creative Days.

1st day, The Light; 4th day, The Luminaries; 2d day, The Waters under and above the Firmament; 5th day, The Fishes in the Seas and the Birds of the Heavens; 3d day, The Liberated Earth-Soil, and the Plants upon it; 6th day, The Land-Animals, and over them Man. 14And God said: Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven, to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and for years. 15And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven, to give light upon the earth. And it was so. 16And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night; he made the stars also. 17And God set them in the firmament of the heaven, to give light upon the earth; 18And to rule over the day, and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good [fourth pause of contemplation]. 19And the evening and the morning were the fourth day. 20And God said: Let the waters bring forth abundantly [Lange: Let the waters swarm] the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly [Lange and English marg. rendering: Let fowl fly] above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. 21And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind. And God saw that it was good [fifth pause of contemplation]. 22And God blessed them, saying: Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas; and let fowl multiply in the earth. 23And the evening and the morning were the fifth day. 24And God said: Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind. And it was so. 25And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind. And God saw that it was good [sixth pause of contemplation].

D.—The Limit, Aim, of all the Creative Days (especially of the three last), the Antitype of the Vegetable Creation at the End of the Third Day: which Antitype is Man, the Likeness of God, and the Sabbath, in which God rests from His Work.

26And God said: Let us make man in our image after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowls of the air, and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. 27So God created man in his own image; in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. 28And God blessed them, and God said unto them. Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. 29And God said: Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree in the which is the fruitof a tree yielding seed; to you shall it be for meat; 30And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat. And it was so. 31And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good [seventh pause of contemplation] And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

Gen_2:1-2 Thus the heavens and the earth were finished and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. 3And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it; because that in it he had rested [had begun to rest] from all his work which [he as] God created and made [Lange: um es zu machen; English marg.: created to make].

EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL

1. See on the Introduction to Genesis, and under the head of Literature, the catalogue of cosmological works that belong here. Compare, especially, the Literature Catalogue given by Knobel and Delitzsch.

2. The passages of Scripture that have a special connection: Job; Psalms 8, 19, 104; Proverbs 8; Isaiah 40; Joh_1:1; Col_1:16; Heb_1:2; Heb_11:3; Rev_21:1

3. This account of the world’s creation evidently forms an ascending line, a series of generations whose highest point and utmost limit is reached in man. The six days’ works arrange themselves in orderly contrast; and in correspondence to this are the sections as they have been distinguished by us: a. The creation of heaven and earth in general, and which may also be regarded as the first constituting of the symbolical opposition of the two; b. the three first creative days, or the three great divisions which constitute the great elementary oppositions or polarities of the world, and which are the conditioning of all creature-life: 1. The element of light and the dark shadow-casting masses, or the concrete darkness, and which we must not confound with the evening and the morning; 2. the gaseous form of the æther, especially of the atmosphere, and the fluid form of the earth-sphere; 3. the opposition between the water and the firm land. In respect to this it must be observed that the waters, of Gen_1:2, are a different thing from the waters of Gen_1:6; Gen_1:9, since it still encloses the light and the matter of the earth. Moreover, “the waters” of Gen_1:6 is not yet properly water; since it encloses still the earth material. The first mention of elementary water in the proper sense, is at Gen_1:9. c. The three last creative days, wherein the above parallel is to be observed; d. the limit or aim of creation—man—the sabbath of God.

4. Gen_1:1-2, the ground-laying for the creation of the heaven and the earth. Considered cosmologically and geologically.—In the beginning.— The construction maintained by Bunsen and others (Raschi, Ewald, Aben Ezra) is as follows: In the beginning when God created heaven and earth, and when the earth was waste and desolate, and darkness was over the primeval flood, and the breath of God moved upon the waters, then God said, Let there be light, and there was light. This construction is, in the first place, opposed throughout to the language of Genesis, as in its brief yet grand declarations it proceeds from one concluded sentence to another. Secondly, it contradicts the context, in which the creation of light is a significant, yet still an isolated, moment. If we were to follow Bunsen, it would be the introduction of the Persian light-religion rather than the religion of the Old Testament. And, finally, in the third place, it obliterates that distinguishing ground-idea of the theocratic monotheism with which, in the very start, the word of revelation confronts all pagan dualism,—in other words, the truth, that in regard to the manner of creation, God is the sole causality of heaven and earth in an absolute sense. The view of Aben Ezra that áְּøֵàùִׁéú is ever in the construct state, and that it means here, “in the beginning of the creation of the heavens and the earth,” etc., is contradicted by the occurrence of the word in the absolute state, Deu_33:21.— áְּøֵàùִׁéú (from øֹàù = øֵàùׁ ). The substantive without the article. It is true, this cannot be rendered in the beginning, taken absolutely, so that the beginning should have a significance, or an existence for itself. It would be, moreover, a tautology to say in the beginning of things when God created them, etc., that is, when there was the beginning of things; or else we must take bereshith mystically: in principio, that is, in filio, as Basil, Ambrose, and others (see Leop. Schmid, Explanation of the Holy Scriptures, p. 4), which is not allowable, although it is true that the New Testament doctrine advances at once to the determination that God created all things through the Son (Joh_1:3; Joh_1:11; Heb_1:2; comp. Psa_33:6). It is not easy to take the word adverbially: originally, or in the first place (Knobel); for the immediately following enumeration of the creative days shows that the author would have time begin with the creation of the world. According to Delitzsch the author does not mean “to express the doctrinal proposition that the world had its beginning in time, and is not eternal, but only that the creation of the heavens and the earth was the beginning of all history.” This interpretation seems arbitrary. Bereshith relates especially to time, or to the old, the first time (Isa_46:10; Job_42:12). It may be further said that áְּ can mean with or through. It is, therefore, the most obvious way to interpret it: in a beginning, and that, too, the first, or the beginning of time, God created the heavens and the earth (with the time the space; the latter denoted through the antitheses of heaven and earth). From that first beginning must be distinguished the six new beginnings of the six days’ works; for the creating goes on through the six days. In a beginning of time, therefore, that lies back of the six days’ works, must that first foundation-plan of the world have been made, along with the creation of the heaven and the earth in their opposition. The first verse is therefore not a superscription for the representation that follows, but the completed ouranology despatched in one general declaration, although the cosmical generation, which is described Gen_1:3 and Gen_1:14, is again denoted along with it. That the sun, moon, and stars are perfected for the earth on the fourth day, is an indication that God’s creating still goes on in the heavens, even as the creating of the periods of development in the earth, after its first condition as waste and desolate, when it went forth from the hand of God as a spherical form without any distinct inward configuration.— áָּøָà , in Piel to cut, hew, form; but in Kal it is usually employed of divine productions new, or not previously existing in the “sphere of nature or history (Exo_34:10; Num_16:30, and frequently in the Prophets), or of spirit (Psa_51:12, and the frequent κτίζειν in the N. T.); but never denoting human productions, and never used with the accusative of the material.” Delitzsch. And thus the conception of creating is akin to that of the miraculous, in so far that the former would mean a creating in respect to initial form, the latter in respect to novelty of production. (On the kindred expressions in the Zendavesta, see Delitzsch.) It is to be noted how áָּøָà differs from òָùָׂä and éִöֶø (Gen_2:2 and Gen_1:7). That in this creating there is not meant, at all, any demiurgical forming out of pre-existing material, appears from the fact that the kind of material, as something then or just created, is strongly signified in the first condition of the earth, Gen_1:2, and in the creation of light. This shows itself, in like manner, in the general unconditioned declaration that God is the creative author, or original, of heaven and earth.—Elohim, see the Divine Names in the Introduction.— äַùָׁîַéִí . According to the Arabic it would denote the antithesis of the High (or the height) to the Lower—that is, the earth. The plural form is significant, denoting the abundance and the variety of the upper spaces. This appears still more in the expression, the heaven of heavens (Deu_10:14, and Psa_68:34).

5. Gen_1:2-5. Preparation of the geologico-cosmological description of the days’ works. First Creative Day.— úֹּäåּ åָáֹäåּ . The earth was. This is spoken of its unarranged original or fundamental state, or of heaven and earth in general. Thohu Vabohu, alliteratives and at the same time rhymes, or like sounding; similar alliteratives occurring thus in all the Pentateuch as signs of very old and popular forms of expression (Gen_4:12; Exo_23:1; Exo_23:5; Num_5:18; Deu_2:15). We find them also in Isaiah and elsewhere as characteristic features of a poetical, artistic, keen, and soaring spirit. They are at the same time pictorial and significant of the earth’s condition. For, according to Hupfeld and Delitzsch, úֹäåּ passes over from the primitive sense of roaring to that of desolateness and confusion. The last becomes the common sense, or that which characterizes the natural waste (Deu_32:10) as a positive desolation, as, for example, of a city (Isa_34:11). It is through the conception of voidness, nothingness, that Thohu and Bohu are connected. Delitzsch regards the latter word as related to áäí , which means to be brutal. Both seem doubtful, but the more usual reference to áää in the sense of void or emptiness is to be preferred. We have aimed at giving the rhyming or similarity of the sounds in our translation (German: öden-wüst and wüsten-öd). The desert is waste, that is, a confused mass without order; the waste is desert, that is, void, without distinction of object. The first word denotes rather the lack of form, the second the lack of content in the earliest condition of the earth. It might, therefore, be translated form-less, matter-less. “Rudis indigestaque moles, in a word, a chaos,” says Delitzsch. It would be odd if in this the biblical view should so cleanly coincide with the mythological. Chaos denotes the void space (as in a similar manner the old Northern Ginnun-gagap, gaping of yawnings, the gaping abyss, which also implies present existing material), and in the next place the rude unorganized mass of the world-material. There is, however, already here the world-form, heaven and earth, and along with this a universal heaven-and-earth-form is presupposed. It is not said that in the beginning the condition of the heavens was thohu and bohu,—at least of the heavens of the earth-world, as Delitzsch maintains; at all events, the earth goes neither out of chaos, nor out of “the same chaos” as the heavens. It is clean against the text to say that the chaos, as something that is primarily the earth, embraces, at the same time, the heaven that exists with and for the earth. For it is very clear that the language relates to the original condition of the earth, although the genesis of the earth may serve, by way of analogy, for the genesis of the universe. åְçùֶׁê , the first condition of the earth was úְäåֹí (from äåí , to roar, be in commotion), wave, storm-flood, ocean, abyss. The first state of the earth was itself the Thehom, and over this roaring-flood lay the darkness spread abroad. It is wholly anticipatory when we say that “this undulating mass of waters was not the earth itself in the condition of thohu and bohu, but that it enclosed it; for on the third day the firm land ( àָøֶõ ) goes forth from the waters.” Delitzsch. Further on, Psa_104:6 is cited to show that, originally, water proper surrounded the firm earth-kernel, and Job_38:8, according to which the sea breaks forth out of the mother’s womb (the earth)—poetical representations that are true enough, if one does not take them according to the letter; in which case they are in direct contradiction to each other. The waters, of Gen_1:2, is quite another thing than the water proper of the third creative day; it is the fluid (or gaseous) form of the earth itself in its first condition. 2Pe_3:5 is not opposed to this; for as the water takes form, the earth breaks out of the water, just as the water comes forth from the earth in consequence of the creative division. The darkness is just the absence of the phenomenal, or the absence of light (for the vision view) in the condition of the earth itself,—in other words, night.— åְøåּçַ , But the spirit of God hovered over (Ang., moved upon). The breath of man, the wind of the earth, and the spirit, especially the spirit of God, are symbolical analogies. The breath is the life-unity and life-motion of the physical creature, the wind is the unity and life-motion of the earth, the spirit is the unity and life-motion of the life proper to which it belongs; the spirit of God is the unity and life-motion of the creative divine activity. It is not a wind of God to which the language here primarily relates (Theodoret, Saadia, Herder, and others), but the spirit of God truly (wherefore the word øçó , Delitzsch; comp. Psa_33:6). From this place onward, and throughout the whole Scripture, the spirit of God is the single formative principle evermore presenting itself with personal attributes in all the divine creative constitutions, whether of the earth, of nature, of the theocracy, of the Tabernacle, of the church, of the new life, or of the new man. The Grecian analogue is that of Eros (or Love) in its reciprocal action with the Chaos, and to this purpose have the later Targums explained it: the spirit of love. It was îְøַçֶôֶú (hovering) over the waters. The conception of brooding cannot be obtained out of Deu_32:11 (Delitzsch), for the eagle does not brood over the living young, but wakes them, draws them out (educates), makes them lively. The mythological world-egg of the Persians has no place here. Should we adopt any view of this formative energy of the spirit of God (which may have worked upon the unorganized mass through the medium of a great wind of God) it would consist in this, that by its inflowing it differentiated this mass, that is, conformably to its being, called out points of unity, and divisions which fashioned the mass to multiplicity in the contrasts that follow. It separated the heterogenous, and bound together the homogenous, and so prepared the way for the dividing the light from the darkness. It cannot be said, however, that “all the co-energizing powers in the formation of the world were the emanations or determinations of this spirit of God.” For we must distinguish the creative words with áָøָà from éָöַø , or the forming by the spirit of God. The object, however, of this forming is not the primitive matter, but the flowing earth-sphere. Just as little can one say that the six days’ works have their beginning in Gen_1:3; for the result of the first day is not the light merely, but also the darkness (see Isa_45:7). Concerning the theosophic interpretation of thohu vabohu as a world in ruins which had come from God’s judgment on the Fall of the Angels (see Gen_1:3).

Gen_1:3. Let there be light.—Here begin the geologico-cosmical creative periods. This new beginning, therefore, must be distinguished from that first creation of the heavens and the earth which is to be regarded as having no creative beginning before it. Henceforth the treatment is that of a sacred geology, yet regarded in its biblical sense as geologico-cosmological. Hence, in Gen_1:3, the creation of the light-heaven; Gen_1:8, the creation of the air-heaven; Gen_1:14, the creation of the star-heaven; Gen_1:26, the creation of the heavenly core of the earth itself.And God said.—“Ten times is this word, åַéּàֹîֶø , repeated in the history of the seven days.” The omnipotence of the creative word, Psa_33:9 : He spake and it was done, he commanded and it stood (Rom_4:17). The creative-word in its deeper significance: Psa_33:6; Isa_40:26; Joh_1:1-3; Heb_1:2; Heb_11:3; Col_1:16. The light, the first distinct creative formation, and, therefore, the formation-principle, or the pre-conditioning for all further formations. Of this formative dividing power of light, physical science teaches us. It is now tolerably well understood, that the light is not conditioned by perfected luminous bodies, but, on the contrary, that light bodies are conditioned by a preceding luminous element. Thus there is set aside the objection taken by Celsus, by the Manichæans, and by rationalism generally, namely, the supposed inversion of order in having first the light and afterwards the luminous body. And yet the light without any substratum is just as little conceivable as the darkness. The question arises, how the author conceived the going forth of the light, whether out of the dark bosom of the earth-flood, or out of the dark bosom of the forming heaven? As the view of the heavenly lights (light bodies) Gen_1:14, is geocentric, so may the same view prevail here of the heaven-light itself. By this is meant that in the fact of the first illumination of the earth the author presents the fact of the birth of light generally in the world, without declaring thereby that the date of the genesis of the earth’s light is also the date of the genesis of light universally. But we may well take the birth of light in the earth (or the earth becoming light) as the analogue whereon is presented the birth of light in the heaven, just as in the creation of man there is symbolized the creation of the spirit-world collectively. We let alone here the question whether the light is an emanation (an outflowing) of a luminous element, or an undulation from a luminous body; only it may be remarked that sound goes on all sides, and may, therefore, be supposed to undulate in sonorous waves, whilst the ray of light, on the other hand, goes directly, for which reason the application to it of such an undulation of sonorous waves would seem unsuitable. The idea of an ætherial vibration may make a medium between emanation and undulation. Without doubt, however, the meaning here is not merely a light-appearing which goes forth out of the heaven-ground, and breaks through the dark vapor of the earth, or from heavenly clouds of light (such as the primary form of the creation may have appeared to be), but an immediate lighting up of the luminous element in the earth itself, something like what the Polar night gives rise to in the northern aurora; enough that it is said of the contrast presented between the illuminating and the shade-producing element. The light goes, however, in the first place, out of the dark world-forms (not the mere world material) after that the spirit of God, as formative principle, has energized in them. The spirit of God is the spiritual light that goes out from God; therefore its working goes before the creation of the outer light; and therefore, too, it is that this light is the symbol, and its operation similar to the operation, of the spirit—that is, the formation and the revelation of beauty.—And there was light.—The famed sublimity of this expression as given by Longinus (in a somewhat doubtful text) and others, is predicated on the pure simplicity and confidence with which it sets forth the omnipotence of the creative word.—And God saw the light that it was good.—The first beauty is the light itself. For the Hebrew èåֹá denotes the beautiful along with the good, even as the Greek καλὸν denotes the good along with the beautiful. The sense: that it was good, does not seem easy; and therefore Tertullian (and more lately Neumann) have accepted the quia of the Itala. On the other hand, Delitzsch remarks: “The conclusion is that to God each single work of creation appears good.” The conclusion lies, perhaps, in the pause of solemn contemplation, out of which, at the end, goes forth the perfect sabbath. It is because the religious human soul recognizes the fair and the good in the event of the appearing, that there is therein reflected to it the fountain of this spiritual ethical satisfaction, namely the contemplation of God Himself. Still the contemplation of God does not regard the object as though captivated by it because it is fair, but it rejoices therein that it is fair; or we may say that, in a certain manner, it is the very efficacy of this contemplation that it becomes fair.—And God divided between the light and the darkness.—Although it is farther said that God named the light day and the darkness night, still it must not be supposed that here there is meant only the interchange between day and night as the ordaining of the points of division between both, namely morning and evening. Although light and darkness, day and night, are called after their appearing, yet are they still, all the more, very day and night, in other words, the very causalities themselves. The light denotes all that is simply illuminating in its efficacy, all the luminous element; the darkness denotes all that is untransparent, dark, shadow-casting; both together denote the polarity of the created world, as it exists between the light-formations and the night-formations—the constitution of the day and night. “One sees,” says Delitzsch, “how false is the current and purely privative conception of darkness; as when, for example, a mediæval interpreter (Maxima Bibl. Lugd. vi. p. 868) says: sicut silentium nihil est, sed ubi vox non est silentium dicitur, sic tenebrœ nihil sunt, sed ubi lux non est tenebrœ dicuntur.” It is true, there must be presupposed for the daylight an illuminating source or fountain of light, and so for the darkness a shadow-casting causality (Jas_1:16); but it would be quite wrong to say that light and darkness are two principles (according to the course of the earlier theosophists: Jacob Böhm, and a later school: Baumgarten and others). If it is farther said that the darkness has not the witness èåֹá (good), it may be replied that it certainly has it mediately, Gen_1:31. It is indeed said still earlier: “We do not read that the tohu and bohu, that the tehom with the darkness lying over it originated in the divine call into being (fiat), therefore they had their origin in some other way.” This is a very unwarranted conclusion; so also, then, must the heavens have originated in some other way. The heaven, however, has its origin in the word of the Lord (Psalms 33), and so also the night and the darkness (Isa_45:7) as well as the abyss (Psa_104:8). It is, therefore, a hard inconsequence when Delitzsch, following the mythological views, regards the thohu wabhohu as the chaos enclosing even the heaven in its birth (p. 93), and still farther regards it theosophically as the ruined habitation of condemned demons. In the historical derivation of the last opinion (p. 105) Delitzsch appears to have confounded two distinct views: the scholastic, that God had formed the human world for the purpose of filling up the void that arose in heaven after the fall of the angels, and the theosophic, that the terrestrial region of the world was, in the earlier time, the abode of Lucifer and his companions, which afterwards, through their guilt, became a thohu vabhohu out of which God laid the foundation of a new world. In this view the thohu vabhohu is “the glowing material mass into which the power of God’s wrath had melted the original world after it had become corrupted by the fall of the spirits (pp. 105 and 114 below),—or it was the rudis indigestaque moles into which God had compressed and precipitated that spiritual but now ungodly world condemned to the flames in consequence of its materializing, and this for the purpose of making it the substratum of a new creation which had its beginning in the fact that God had placed the chaos of this old fire-invaded world wholly under water.” One might well ask: shall the fire-brand itself (the old burnt-up earth) be the chaos, or the divine reaction through the quenching in water? Was the fire-brand the work of the demons, or did it come through God’s judgment and counteraction? All such resolutions of the difficulty are in a state of mutual confusion. And this is no wonder, for a certain theosophic hankering after dualism with its two principles can only veil itself in dark and fantastic phrases. In opposition to these gnosticising representations of matter, the demands of a pure monotheism require of us an acquiescence in the idea that matter too is good, because it is from God,—in so far, indeed, as we can speak of pure matter in general terms. The more particular fountain of this view—after certain older preludes and popular representations (Delitzsch, p. 106) derived from Gnostic traditions—is Jacob Böhm (Myst. Magn. p. 67) and the Gnostic teachers that arose after him, Friedrich von Meyer, Baumgarten (Genesis), and others. With peculiar zeal hath Kurtz also taken part in these theosophic phantasies, as also in those other of the miscegenations or sexual confusions between the angels of heaven and the daughters of earth (Genesis 6). The grounds presented by Delitzsch, in opposition to his earlier contrary view (as given in the first two editions of his Commentary), are the following: 1. In the interpretation aforesaid one would, to be sure, expect åַúְּäִé instead of åְäָéְúָä , but the conscious connection need not lie precisely in the consciousness of the writer; he relates simply a matter of fact. And yet he must have been more enlightened in respect to the nature of things than our scientific man. A blind narration of facts would here be as inconsistent as a pure indication of a theosophic sense in thohu vabhohu. 2. Thohu has, indeed, a predominating privative character; it arises, however (Isa_34:11; Isa_24:10; Jer_4:23), from a positive destruction. But how natural was it to apply the pictorial thohu vabhohu to such a condition. What more purely privative than the word nothing? and yet we say it of positive states of destruction. According to Delitzsch, in the methods of its construction (world-brand, quenching-water) must Plutonism and Neptunism have reached their deepest grounding. The grounds that follow are in no respects better (p. 104). What have rendered the hypothesis suspicious from its beginning hitherto are its apocryphal or popular origin (Delitzsch, p. 105), its Gnostic coloring, and its affinity to that other scholastic phantasma that God had created men to fill up the vacuum in the fallen angel-world. It must, however, become very evident that the representation of an “overcoming of the darkness,” in the physical sense in which it here presents itself, is utterly foreign to the holy text; it is like the mingling of conceptions, namely of a physical and an ethical darkness. The representation, then, of Gen_1:2 will be clearly a picturing of the primitive condition of the earth, as it became in consequence of the first general creation, Gen_1:1. Besides, this hypothesis obliterates that line which everywhere else appears between the angelic and human regions and natures. Finally, Gen_1:2, as a representation of the flowing, form-receptive condition of the earth-mass gives the bases for all farther ascending formations. Add to this that, in such case, the region of Lucifer would have been visited by the fire-judgment earlier than Lucifer himself—a representation which runs counter to the usual order of things—not to say, that, on such a supposition, Lucifer himself should have been rightly banished from the whole extent of the earth-region. Or, can it be that God has built the new house of humanity upon the foul beams of a demoniac power? But it is not worth our while to dwell more fully upon a representation which is so characterized by its own sharp contradictions.—And there was evening and there was morning.—Here, in the first place, we must not suppose that the evening and the morning were merely the sequence of the preceding darkness and of the light that followed it, notwithstanding that the first evening and morning so fittingly append themselves to such a contrast. Still less are we to think of the usual evening and morning, since the earth had not yet been astronomically arranged. Evening and morning denote rather the interval of a creative day, and this is evidently after the Hebrew mode of reckoning; the day is reckoned from sunset. The morning that follows stands for the second half of the day proper. In the same manner was the day reckoned by the Arabians, the Athenians (νυχθήμιρον), the Germans, and the Gauls. It is against the text for Delitzsch to put as the ground here the Babylonish reckoning of the day, namely from the dawning of the morning. The earlier theological representation, that by the creative periods were to be understood the usual astronomical days, is now only held by individuals (Baumgarten, Calwer Handbuch, Keil’s Genesis). It is opposed to this, in the first place, that the creative days are already numbered before the determination of the astronomical relation of the earth to the sun, although on other grounds must we hold that the days from the fourth onward were not astronomical; there are in the way, secondly, the idea of the first day whose evening had its beginning in that dark thohu vabhohu which had no evening before it, as well as the idea of the seventh day, the day of God’s rest, which is not defined by an evening and a morning, but runs on through the ordained course of the world; there is, thirdly, the idea of the day of God as it is given to us in the 90th Psalm, which is traditionally ascribed to Moses (Gen_1:4). That this time-determination of a thousand years does not denote an exactly measured chronological period, but still a period defined by essential marks of time, appears from the converse of Psalms 90. in 2Pe_3:8 (a thousand years as one day, and one day as a thousand years), and also from the thousand years of the judgment-time as the transition period from the present state of the world to that which lies beyond (Revelation 20). This comprehensive significance has the divine day (God’s day) or the judgment-day pre-eminently in the Old Testament (Isa_2:12; Joe_1:15; Eze_13:5). Delitzsch, who also holds that the creative days are periods, reckons, as another argument, that in Gen_2:4 the six days are denoted as one day. Add to this the very usual mode of speech, according to which, day in the Old Testament often denotes a longer duration of time, for example, in the formula even to this day. We are not, however, to conceive of the evening and morning of the single creative days as merely symbolic intervals of the day of God. According to the analogy of the first day, the evening is the time of a peculiar chaotic fermentation of things, whilst the morning is the time of that new, fair, solemn world-building that corresponds to it. With each evening there is also indicated a new birth-travail of things, a new earth-revolution which elevates the old formation that went before it—a seeming darkening, a seeming sunset or going down of the world; and so later with this same appearance came on the flood; and so, too, in ZaGen Gen_14:7, the day of the commencing judgment is, with the highest significance, denoted an evening. No less significant is it in the eschatological words of our Lord: and the sun shall withdraw its light, Mat_24:29. With each morning, on the contrary, there is a new, a higher, a fairer, and a richer state of the world. In this way do the evening and morning in the creative periods have the highest significance for an agreement of the sacred geology with the results of the scientific geology. The meaning would seem to be incorrectly taken by Delitzsch when he says: “With each effort of the divine creating is it morning, with each remission it is evening” (p. 106). The most peculiar work of God, we may rather say, would appear to be each of those stormy revolutions, in which the spirit of God hovers like an eagle over the chaotic fermentations; in the creative mornings, on the contrary, come in the holy rests when God surveys the new work and sees how good it Isa. (Comp. Von Rougemont, History of the Earth, p. 7: “Evening: a dark return of chaos.” Doubtless the designation lacks propriety in all respects, and yet it may lead to the right.)

[Note on the Relation of the First Verse of Genesis 1. to the Rest of the .—Among all the interpretations of Genesis 1., the most difficult as well as the most unsatisfactory is that which regards the first verse as referring to a period indefinitely remote, and all that follows as comprised in six solar days. It is barely hinted at by some of the patristic writers, but has become a favorite with certain modern commentators, as furnishing them with a method of keeping the ordinary days, and yet avoiding the geological difficulty, or seeming to avoid it, by throwing all its signs of the earth’s antiquity into this chasm that intervenes between the first and second verses. The objections to it may be thus stated:

(1) Besides the peculiar difficulties that attend any view of ordinary solar days, such as a morning and evening without a sun, or the language of succession, of growth, and of a seeming nature, without any consistent corresponding reality, there is another and greater incongruity in connecting this with a former and very different state of things, or mode of proceeding, with which, after all, it has no real connection either in the realm of nature or of divine providence.

(2) It is a building of this world on the ruins of a former, without any natural or moral reasons therefor. The states preceding, as understood by this hypothesis, were in no sense preparatory. The catastrophe which makes way for it seems entirely arbitrary, and in no sense resembles the pauses described in Genesis, each one of which is in the upward order, and anticipatory of the work that follows.

(3) It is evidently brought in as a possible escape from the difficulties of geology, and would never have been seriously maintained had it not been for them.

(4) It has to make the heavens of the first verse a different heavens from that of the eighth, without any exegetical warrant therefor. This is a rationalizing interpretation, carrying with it a conception of our modern astronomy, and almost wholly unknown to the Scriptures, which everywhere speaks of the heavens and the earth therein mentioned as one system. It is the heavens of our earth, built upon it as described in Gen_1:6; Gen_1:8; Psalms 104; 1Sa_2:8, etc., and always taken in connection with it; not a far-off astronomical heavens, though the rudiments of such an idea come afterwards into the Hebrew. Thus in predictions, whether of destruction or of renovation, the heavens and the earth go together. “I create new heavens and a new earth,” Isa_66:22; Psa_102:27, and other passages. The language is exactly parallel to that of Gen_1:1, and yet we cannot suppose that there is included here the astronomical heaven of stars and planets, at least according to the conceptions of our modern astronomy. It is a renewal of the earth, in some way, together with those celestial or sky phenomena that are in connection with it, as parts, in fact, of the tellurian system. It is the same language, the same mode of conceiving, as late down in Scripture as the 2d Epistle of Peter Gen_3:5-7—the “earth and heavens” that were of old before the flood are put in contrast with “the earth and heavens that are now,” and which are to be changed for “a new earth and heavens” “according to the promise (Gen_1:13) to which we look.” It is the same language that occurs repeatedly in the Revelations (Gen_21:1), and which, whatever we may think of its prophetic meaning, shows the fixedness of the conception down to the latest times of the scriptural canon.

(5) It violates the principles of a rational and grammatical exegesis, in making a separation between the first and second verses, of which there is no trace or reason in the language itself. If used in the same way in narrating historical events, in any other part of the Bible, no one would have thought of the verb áָּøָà , in the first, and äָéְúָä , in the second verse, otherwise than as cotemporaneous or, in direct continuation at least, with no chasm of time between them long or short. It would have been interpreted like the precisely similar sentence, Job_1:1 : “There was a man in the land of Uz, and the man was, etc., äָéָä àִéùׁ áְàֶøֶõÎòåּõ åְäָéָä äָàִéùׁ . Who would think of separating the second äָéָä here from the first, or sundering the evident continuity? If it be said that the context in Job controls, and the very nature of the subject, so should it also in Genesis, unless we make a new context after our own imaginations, especially as there are clear ways in Hebrew of expressing such a parting of the terms, had it been designed to do so.

Besides this, it is opposed to the usual force of the conjunction å . Taken even as a mere copulative, it would not allow of such a sharp and remote severance. But å is much more than this in Hebrew. It is seldom without a time sense, or an inferential sense, showing a connection, not only of mere event, but also of reason and causality. So here it shows the reason for the use of áָּøָà in the preceding verse. “In the beginning God created,” formed, fashioned, the earth; for it was formless and void, or when it was formless and void, etc. Let one take Noldius’ Concordance of the Hebrew Particles, and see how often (in the great majority of cases, we may say) the conjunction wau has this close-joining inferential sense. It is much more usual than its bare copulative force, but even this is out of harmony with the hypothesis of severance as commonly presented. See also Introd. to Genesis 1. pp. 129, 130.—T. L.]

6. Gen_1:6-8. Second Creative Day.—Let there be a firmament.—Rakia (from øָ÷ַò , to stretch, spread out, beat out) an extension or expansion, rendered in the LXX and by others, στερέυμα, and in the Vulgate firmamentum,—names which are more material than øָ÷ִéòַ . Knobel: “The heaven was to the Hebrews a material substance (Exo_24:10), a fixed vault established upon the waters that surrounded the circle of the earth (Pro_8:27), firm as a molten mirror (Job_37:18), and borne up by the highest hills, which are therefore called the pillars and foundations of the heaven (2Sa_22:8; Job_26:11); openings or doors are ascribed to it (Gen_7:11; Gen_28:17; Psa_78:23). There are the same representations elsewhere.” But we must not forget that Hebrew modes of expression for objects that have a religious bearing, do ever contain a symbolical element which disdains the literal pressure. Therefore the stars which in Gen_1:17 are fixed in the heaven, can nevertheless, according to Isa_40:26, set themselves in motion as a host of God; and hence it is that the one heaven expands itself into a heaven of heavens. And thus the heavens bends down to the earth (Psa_18:10); or is spread out like tapestry (Psa_104:2), or its beams are waters (Gen_1:3), whilst the same heaven again is called the footstool of God.—In the midst of the waters.—We must beware here of thinking of a mass of elementary water; quite as little could a fluid mass which is yet identified with the light be elementary, and just as little can it be a flood, or collection of water, which consists of the three factors air, earth, and water. At this point then is completed the second division. The true standpoint of contemplation would seem to be the view, that in the azure welkin of the sky the clouds appear to give out their evaporation, and to withdraw themselves behind the blue expanse like a supercelestial gathering of water (Psa_104:3; Psa_104:13). It follows from this, however, that the visible clouds and the rain may be assigned to the lower collection of waters, and that there is meant here the gaseous water as it forms a unity with the air, and so makes an ethereal atmosphere (not “the water-masses that hover over the air-strata of the atmosphere”). Delitzsch here mistakes the symbolical element. “It must be admitted,” he says, “that in this the Old Testament is chargeable with a defect, for a physical connection between the descending rain-waters and the heavenly waters, which is also indicated in the New Testament (Rev_4:6) cannot be maintained.” Indeed, it is with the actual physical connection between the invisible collection of water (the gas-formed) and the visible, that the contrast is established; it is the polaric tension which even the phenomenological extension brings to view. But why should the Septuagint correct the text here with the addition, Gen_1:8 : And God saw, whilst the Hebrew text has it not? Had the prophetic author some anticipation that the blue vault of heaven was merely an appearance, whilst the savans of the Septuagint had no such anticipation, and, therefore, proceeded to doctor the passage? There may, indeed, be an exaggeration of this conception of the upper waters, since Philoponus and the other church fathers understand by the same the ether that is beyond the earth’s atmosphere; nevertheless, their view would seem to be more correct than that which refers the expression to a proper cloud-formed atmospheric water.—And God named the firmament heaven, ùָׁîָéִí . See Gen_1:1. Delitzsch: Here is meant the heaven of the earth-world; Gen_1:1, on the contrary, refers to the heaven and the heaven of heavens. But if the firmament is “the immeasurable far-reaching height,” there is a failure, or falling short, in the limiting of the conception. A main point appears to be, that the rakia is presented to view as the symbolic dividing of the super-earthly heaven, a phenomenal appearance of that house of God to which all who pray to God look up. For the later cosmological interpretations of the upper waters, see Delitzsch, p. 108.

7. Gen_1:9-13. Third Creative Day.

Gen_1:9. Let the waters be gathered together.—The bringing the earth into form and the creation of the vegetable world.—That the physical dividing of the earth-mass and of the water-mass is here presented, is clear. There would appear, however, to be signified a preceding chemical separation of both elements, which had withdrawn themselves from the inner or under core of the earth. The expression é÷ָּååּ äַîַּéִí denotes properly not merely an outward assembling, but an intensive close combining (see Gesenius, ÷ָåָä ). Upon the formation of the water proper, as it is now introduced, is conditioned the firm underlying of the earth. The completing of this division, however, has for its consequence that flowing together of the water into its peculiar place, with which immediately the self-forming earth-soil now comes into visibility. It is thereby implied that the elevations and depressions of the earth’s surface—the hills and vales, the highlands and the ocean-depths—are here formed, just as it is so precisely set forth, Psa_104:6-8 (with which compare Pro_8:24). And so, too, the creation of the hills is here only indicated, or rather presented, as a consequence of the creation of the sea (see Psa_90:2; Deu_33:15; Hab_3:3). Thus much is clear: as long as the water and the earth-mass are not divided, there can be no mention of any origination of the hills. With the sea-life, however, must begin also the earth-life, that is, the working of the inner earth-fire that causes the up-heavings. It is a wrong apprehension of the waters of Gen_1:2 and Gen_1:6, when one takes the story of cretion as favoring a one-sided Neptunism (Wagner). The volcanic action of the earth in the formation of the earth, is not expressed, indeed, but it is throughout freely implied; it would appear to be indicated, Psa_104:8. There is truly no difficulty in supposing that the formation of the hills kept on through the succeeding creative days. In respect to this, Delitzsch expresses himself better than Hofmann: “Generally,” says he, “the works of the single creative days consist only in laying foundations; the birth-process that is introduced in each, extends its efficacy beyond it, and, in this sense we say with Hofmann (i. p. 278): ‘Not how long, but how many times, God created is the thing intended to be set forth.’ ” Much more have we to distinguish between the distinct creative acts and the creative evolutions. Even after the creative division of the first day the evolving of light may still go on, and the same thought holds good of the efficacy of the succeeding acts of each of the other days. The act itself means the introduction of a new principle out of the word of God, which, as such, has the form of an epoch-creating event.

Gen_1:10. And God named the dry earth land, that is, earth-soil in the narrower sense, and, therefore, it is that àֶøֶõ has no article.—And the water named he sea.—Properly seas, “or rather ocean; for it is more intensive than a numerical plural, and is therefore (as in Psa_46:4) construed in the singular.” Delitzsch. On the other hand, Knobel would make prominent the singleness of the seas in the rendering Weltmeer, or world-sea, main sea, or ocean.—And God saw.—Now has the earth-formation come into visibility, though only in its first outlines, or, according to the idea of the naturalist, as an insular appearing of the land-region as it unfolds itself to view.—Let the earth bring forth (sprout, germinate).—It is agreeable to the nature of the earth as well as of the plant that both are together as soon as possible. The earth has an inclination to germinate, the plant to appear. In truth, its origination is a new creative act. In the proper place is this creation narrated; for the plant denotes the transformation of the elementary materials, earth, air, water, which are now present in organic life through the inward working of the light. It forms the preconditioning, as the sign or prognostic, of the awaiting animal creation. And though it has need of the light too in some measure, it does not yet want the sunshine in its first subordinate kinds. The question now arises, whether we must distinguish three kinds of plants: ãֶּùֶׁà , tender green; òֵùֶׁá , herbs and shrubs, vegetables and grain (or the smaller growths generally), and òֵõ ëְּøִé , fruit-tree, according to the view of Knobel, embracing all trees inasmuch as they all bear seed. Delitzsch, as well as Knobel, assumes this threefold division. Farther on, however, we see that the more general kinds precede (lights, water-swarmings), in order that they may become more or less specific. And here ãֶּùֶׁà may present the universal conception of all vegetable life in its first germination (although including along with it the more particular kinds of cryptogamic and the grasses), whilst in this way the contrast between the herbaceous plants and the trees becomes more prominent (Umbreit, Ewald). Thence, too, it appears that the sign of seed-formation, of propagation, and of particular specification, is ascribed to all plants. Closer observations in respect to single particulars may be found in Knobel. We must protest against the exposition of Delitzsch: “Its origination follows in that way which is unavoidable to a creative beginning, and which is to it essentially what is called a generatio equivoca; that is, it does this in measure as the earth, through the word of the divine power, receives strength to generate the vegetable germ.” The sentence contains a contradiction in so far as the question still relates to the divine word of power; but this divine word of power creates not merely a strength, or force, in general; each new and distinct creative word introduces a new and distinct principle into the already existing sphere of nature—a principle which hitherto had not been present in it. Along with the various species and seeds, along with the determinate propagation of plants, each after its kind, there clearly and distinctly comes in that conception of nature which is already announced in the great contrasts. The words: upon the earth, òַìÎäָàָøְõ (Gen_1:11), are interpreted by Knobel of the high growth of the trees (over the earth) in contrast with the plants which cleave closer to the ground, and which are regarded by Delitzsch as a present clothing of the earth. With respect to Gen_1:20, we may assume that Knobel is right. In the contemplation of the young world, this majestic rising above the earth in the case of the tall trees, as in that of the birds, has a peculiar excitement for the imagination. With the plants there appears the first thing that is distinctly symbolic of life as well as of their individual beauty.

8. Gen_1:14-19. Fourth Creative Day. Beginning of the second triad.—The preconditions of the now expectant animal and human life, are the lights of heaven, the stars, or heavenly bodies, partly as physical quickening powers, and partly as signs of the division of time for the human culture-world. It is theirs, in the first place, to make the distinction between day and night, between light and darkness, and to rule over the day and night—to make that great contrast upon which the human developments, as well as the animal nature-life, are essentially conditioned, such as sleep, waking, generation, diversities in the animal world—animals of the day and animals of the night, etc. It agrees well with the text, that again, whilst it makes a more special mention of the ordinance of the heavenly bodies, it gives the chief prominence to their spiritual or humane appointment: let them be for signs and for festivals, and for days, and for years. The question arises here, whether these appointments are to be taken as four (Luther, Calvin, Delitzsch, Knobel); or that three are meant: namely, for signs of times, for days, and for years (Rosenmüller, Eichhorn, De Wette, Baumgarten); or only two: for signs, for times, including in the latter both days and years (Schumann, Maurer). For the first view, indeed, there speaks the simple series of the appointments, but there is, too, the consideration that the spiritual (or ecclesiastical) appointments of the heavenly bodies are not exhausted in the chronological. The sign àåֹú has oftentimes in the Old Testament a religious significance. Thus the rainbow is established for the sign ( àåֹú ) of the covenant between Jehovah and Noah, together with his sons (Gen_9:12). Later, Abraham receives in the starry heaven a sign of the divine promise. But when it is said (Jer_10:2