Studies on the book of Genesis

Front matter

Gass B 5 1 23 5

Book JE?L_

Copyright N°

Chapter I

VR. I. CREATION AND ITS AUTHOR.

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

This sublime announcement teaches us that the universe was not ab eterno, but a creation, whose author is God — the God of the Bible, Jehovah: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." It is understood, of course, that this was originally a creation out of nothing, as is taught us in Heb. 11: 3: "The things that are seen were not made of things which do appear"; but it is not true, as is frequently asserted, that the word create of itself signifies to make out of nothing; although the Hebrew verb bara, in Kal (which is here employed), is used exclusively of the works of God, as distinguished from those of men. In verses 21 and 27 of this very chapter, the same word is used in regard to the creation of animals and of man, who were not made out of nothing.

The epoch of the creation was "the beginning." It is an error, which we often hear repeated, to affirm that according to the Bible, this world of ours is about 6,000 years old. According to the common chronology, such was the epoch of the creation of the first man; but it is the emphatic declaration of Holy Scripture that God created the heavens and the earth (which in this place means, of course, the making out of nothing t>-9 material of which the heavens and the earth were subsequently formed) "in the beginning." The epoch indicated by Moses bears a notable resemblance to, or, better said, a complete correspondence with that indicated by John in his Gospel, as the remotest point of time to which it is possible to carry back the creative work of the second person of the Trinity: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him, and without him was not anything made, that was made." John 1: 1 — 3. This undoubtedly means to say that yonder, in the depths of eternity, before time began, the Word existed, the second person of the Trinity, with God, and as God; and that he was the Agent by whose means God created the heavens and the earth and all that in them is, as is plainly asserted in Col. 1: 16, 17: "For by him were all things created that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers; all things were created by him and for him; and he is before all things, and by him all things consist." For this reason, the Biblical phrases "before the world was," and "before the foundation of the world," without any doubt (for nobody disputes it) mean to say, from eternity; before there was man or angel, earth or heavens.

According to Moses, then, the earth, that is to say, the substance of the earth, is of very ancient date, and in general terms and a wide sense it may be affirmed that the heavens and the earth have one and the same date; be it one million years away, or be it a thousand millions, it is all one. In the beginning of things, when God began the work of creating, "he created the heavens and the earth." "The beginning" is elegantly determined in Prov. 8: 22, 23, where the divine Wisdom, who personifies the second person of the Trinity, Author and Architect of all created things, says:

"Jehovah possessed me in the beginning of his way, before his works of old,

I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, before the earth was."

Modern science is hard to please if this does not leave it completely satisfied in reference to the time necessary for the slowest and most lengthened transformations through which this world of ours has passed.

In the text, vr. 1 forms a separate paragraph; and according to the interpretation of the best accredited expositors, an abyss of unknown duration mediates between the first verse and second; during which absolutely nothing is affirmed here with regard to the heavens and the earth,

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1: 2 — 5. THE FIEST DAY. LIGHT.

2 And the earth was waste and void ; and darkness was upon the face of the deep ; and the Spirit of God moved upon* the face of the waters.

3 And God said, Let there be light; and there was light.

4 And God saw the light, that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness.

5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day.

*Or, was brooding upon.

Fixing our attention now upon the earth alone — for the text leaves the heavens entirely aside — the book of Genesis affirms that at the beginning of this epoch, which Moses calls "the first day" the condition of the earth was a complete chaos ("without form and void," or "waste and empty"), in which the constituents of air, earth, fire, water, and all the elements and potentialities, chemical and mechanical, which they contain, were in an embryonic condition, mingled in unspeakable confusion; which with admirable propriety is called the "abyss" ("the deep"), wrapped in impenetrable darkness; and over this formless, watery mass the Spirit of God "brooded," as a; bird sits upon its eggs, brooding upon them, to bring forth its young. Thus according to the figurative expression of the sacred text, the Holy Spirit, third person of the Trinity, and immediate Author of life in all its forms, fecundated the chaotic mass of the earth, in order to produce this beautiful "earth which God has given to the children of men." Ps. 115: 16. How many ages this process of incubation may have lasted, let science say, if it be able; for the Bible affirms nothing about it, one way or the other; but the visible result was that light entered slowly, to interrupt the eternal reign of darkness.

[Note 1. — On Chaos — the original condition of the earth. It is the opinion of the greater part of scientific men, that originally the earth, with all the planets that revolve around our sun, were a part of it; at a time, almost infinitely remote ("in the beginning," as says vr. 1), when this existed in the form of an extremely subtile matter which filled all the compass of the planetary spaces. This, according as it went on condensing by the attraction of gravitation, continued to increase in temperature — the indispensable effect of the compression of matter — until it became a heated and luminous but extremely rarefied body, which turned then, just as it does now, upon its own axis. The effect of this rapid, gyratory movement of so immense and so light a mass, was that the different planets separated themselves successively from the mother sun, as it went on condensing and heating, forming themselves gyratory heated globes of the same material, and of much greater size than at present. These bodies, in condensing more and more were first converted into globes of fire, and later, on losing part of their heat (thrown off into the cold abysses of space), there formed on their surfaces a solid crust, which inclosed those fires under enormous pressure. The earthy crust of our globe, very thin at first, continued to thicken more and more; and this being an admirable non-conductor of heat, mitigated more and more the ardors of those internal fires.

Such appears to have been the condition of things in our earth at the point indicated as the "first day." Owing to the heat, not even water could exist in its present form; and everything was kept in ebullition and incessant movement, by the action of the internal fires; while only a thin crust of solid matter separated between the fires within and "the waters" of vr. 2 without.

It will help the reader to understand this, if he will bear in mind that in the opinion of most scientific men, the earthy crust of this our globe at the present time does not exceed forty or fifty miles in thickness; which, in virtue of its action as an admirable non-conductor, reduces the heat on the surface and allows the existence of those forms of matter that we know, and of organic life, both vegetable and animal. The planet Jupiter, the largest of our system, has at present the temperature of boiling water; and although much older than our earth, it has not yet arrived at such a reduced temperature as that the forms of vegetable and animal life which we know would be able to bear it. The planet Saturn, though of greater age than Jupiter, is believed to be still in a state of chaos.

The elevated temperature of the first day kept "the waters" of vr. 2 in such a state of ebullition as filled the dense and watery atmosphere (if such it may be called) with clouds so formidable and of such thickness, as that the light of a thousand suns could not possibly have penetrated them. The gradual reduction of these heats, the condensation of those aqueous vapors, and the gradual purification of the embryonic atmosphere, at last would give this result, that the light of the sun (the source of light then, the same as now, to the earth), could gradually penetrate and illumine that scene of universal desolation. The work of the first day was this; and the mere declaration of what was chaos, will be sufficient to

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accredit the statement that the entrance of light was veryslow, and the -first day very long. There are other theories regarding chaos and the light of the first day, but this, I believe, is the most generally accepted, and the most comprehensible. I do not give it for established fact, but only to clear up as best I can the meaning of the sacred text.]

"And God said: Let there be light, and there was light." Accustomed as we are from childhood to believe that this was done in less time than it takes us to speak the words, there are many who find it very difficult to accept the idea that the work was slow. Poetically the Psalmist has said: "He spake, and it was done; he commanded, and it stood forth." Ps. 33: 9; or as the Modern Spanish Version has it (the italics are found in the text) :

"He said: Be! and it was; he commanded and the universe stood forth." But the work was no less divine for being slow; as I believe the reader will see before he ends the chapter. The version which some prefer, "Let light be, and light was," is not correct; because as "God is light" himself, and "dwelleth in light inaccessible," it is clear that Moses is not speaking of the creation of light, but of the advent of light in this terrestrial scene of impenetrable darkness — caused probably by the gradual thinning of that envelope of extremely dense vapors which covered our earth in its embryonic condition.

Even in its condition of chaos, the shapeless mass of the earth revolved daily on its axis, then just as now; and to this is due the fact that ever since light entered, there have been co-ordinate and ceaseless alternations of day and night. "And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night." The light of those days, nevertheless, would be like the light of a densely cloudy day; and neither sun, nor moon, nor stars would appear anywhere. To the eye of a supposed spectator it would be as though they did not exist.

The inadequate and inadmissible translation of the last part of verse 5, which is repeated as the close of the work of each of the six days, "and the evening and the morning were the first day" "the second," etc., has given occasion for the unfounded idea that the six days of the creation were composed each of several hours of darkness followed by others of light; but the correct translation, as given in the Revised Version, (and in the Modern Spanish Version), "and there was evening and there was morning, one day," or "the first day," etc., teaches us that during those days, however long or short they be considered, there was an uninterrupted succession of night and day, such as the daily rotation of the earth upon its axis would necessarily produce. Moses ordained (Lev. 23: 32), and it is the use and custom of the Jews until this day, that their feast days should he reckoned from evening to evening; and this is perhaps the reason why the evening here precedes the morning.

[Note 2. — On the Days of Creation. It will be convenient for us to stop at this point, in order to consider the question of the duration of those Six Days of Creation; and as we have disproved the old misleading opinion that the Bible teaches that they were composed precisely of two parts, one of darkness and the other of light, it will not be difficult to demonstrate that, just as the Last Day, the Day of Judgment, will be a very long period of time, so the six days of creation were periods of vast duration, in each of which God executed slowly a certain part of the work of preparing the earth to be the habitation of man, and the scene of human redemption. The very slowness of this preparatory work will help us duly to appreciate the immense and eternal destinies which, according to the Bible, still await this world of ours; the redemption of which brought down the Son of God from heaven, in order to rescue "the world," which God had made for himself, from the power and dominion of Satan, and to make it the future habitation of the just. John 3: 16, 17; 1 John 4: 14; Rom. 8: 19-23; Matt. 25: 34. These long and successive periods of preparation teach us also to await with earnest desire, but without impatience, the Second Advent of our Lord, and the inauguration of the "New Heavens and New Earth wherein dwelleth righteousness," for which, says Peter, "we — Christians — according to his promise are waiting." 2 Pet. 3: 13. Let us note then:

1st. That it is totally foreign to Hebrew thought and usage to say that one day and one night, taken together, constitute a day of 24 hours; and in fact the Bible says no such thing, as has been shown.

2nd. The work of creation, which in ch. 1st, is apportioned among six days, is said in ch. 2:4 to have been effected in one: — "in the day when Jehovah God made earth and heaven." It is undeniable, then, that the sacred writer himself makes use of the word "day" to signify a time, epoch, or period; as if he wished to furnish us the key to his use of the word in the previous chapter.

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3rd. It is the common use of the Bible to employ the word "day" to express a period of undetermined extension. In the prophets of the Old Testament it is their almost unvarying use of the word.

4th. "The Last Day," "the Day of the Lord," "the Day of Judgment," is undoubtedly a period of immense duration. See what Jesus himself says about "the last day" in John 6: 39, 40, 44, 54; 12: 48; [Matt. 12: 36, 31, 42; Luke 10: 12-14; and Paul: 1 Cor. 4: 3-5, and Jude vr. 6.] Besides this, "the last day" is also the epoch of the "new creation" — "the regeneration" (see Matt. 19: 28; Rev. 21: 5; Acts 3: 21, 22; Rom. 8: 19-23), and of the installation of that "new heavens and new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness." In correspondence, then, with "the last day" it is but natural that the first six days, the days of creation, be likewise regarded as long periods.

5th. The words of the fourth commandment, in which the obligation to work six days and rest on the seventh, carry as the reason annexed thereto the example of God in his six days' work of creation, are not opposed to this view of the case; because His days are "as a thousand years" compared with ours; as Peter says with special reference to "the day of judgment* and perdition of ungodly men." 2 Pet. 3:7, 8.

6th. In a word, no man can believe, or in fact does believe, that "God made the heavens and the earth and all that in them is," in six days of 24 hours, and that Gabriel and Satan and all the hosts of heaven and hell are no more than six natural days — one hundred and forty-four hours — older than Adam.

The most ingenious theory, if not the most probable, with regard to the days of creation, as Moses speaks of them, is that of the eminent scientist Hugh Miller, who supposed that God caused the scene of creation to pass before the mind of Moses, under the form of six distinct panoramas, which glided slowly before him, the one dissolving into the other; the different days being determined by the periods of darkness which interposed between them severally; and that Moses described (as later was the usage of the prophets in visions of God) what he saw before him. So then the writer related only what was visible; and what was going on beneath the surface of the waters, in its invisible depths, goes without record, until in the fifth day the

*The great Robert Hall says that "the day thus designated signifies a portion of duration set apart for this purpose; for which [according to our present ideas] one might suppose an eternity would scarcely he too great, when we consider the immensity of the subject, and the multitude of the persons concerned." Hall's Works, Vol. IV., Sermon 40. — Tr.

great sea monsters and other aquatic animals became visible on the surface of the waters.]

1: 6 — 8. THE SECOND DAY. THE EXPANSE. HEAVENS.

6 And God said, Let there be a firmament* in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.

7 And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament : and it was so.

8 And God called the firmament Heaven. And there was evening and theje was morning, a second day.

*Heb. expanse.

It is much to be regretted that our Bibles, with the exception of the Modern Spanish Version, have appropriated from the Latin Vulgate the word "firmament" (instead of "expanse," given in the note), founded on the ancient and erroneous notions of astronomy which were current in Europe until the middle of the 17th century. Moses says nothing about "firmament"; and the word which he uses, which signifies "expanse," does not even suggest the idea of solidity and firmness. Compare its use in Ezek. 1: 22; 10: 1, where it represents an aerial platform or "float" a species of chariot, borne by the cherubim, and on which they carried the God of Israel, seated above it, on his throne.

It is to be observed that the work of the first three days of creation was very simple and extremely slow. The result of what was done on the first day was light. "Whatever may have been the operations which were going on in the depth of that dark abyss of waters, under the fecundating influence of the "Spirit of God, who brooded upon the surface of the waters," the inspired record fixes attention only on what became visible, when "God said that the light should shine out of darkness" (2 Cor. 4:6); and considering the chaotic condition of the earth, that was work enough for the first day, although it may have occupied many thousands of years. The work of the second day was also simple and slow, but grand — the expansion of what we call the "terrestrial heavens," which we now know do not reach more than fifty or sixty miles above our heads. God made the atmosphere to serve as a vehicle to bear upwards the aqueous vapors of which the clouds are formed, and separate them thus from that form of the same substance which we call "water"; dividing in this^ way between "the waters which are below the expanse from the waters which are above the expanse": which expanse God called Heavens. These terrestrial heavens should be carefully distinguished from the "heavens" which God created "in the

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beginning," and from the heavens of the stars and other astral bodies which became visible on the fourth day. To an observer, standing on the surface of the earth, the atmospheric or terrestrial heavens appear to be identical with the heaven of the stars; but Moses, without being an astronomer, distinguishes carefully between the two, when he says the heavens of vr. 8 are that apparent expanse above the seas, where float the clouds that discharge their waters upon the earth. To say that Moses believed that there were oceans of waters up yonder in the regions of ether, which at the Deluge fell to inundate the earth, is an indication of much ignorance, of much thoughtlessness, or of much malice.

Such then, was the work of the second day; and with it the earth made another stride forward; and it was a great stride.

What was then seen, at the end of the second day, was waters and waters: the waters which floated in the air in the form of clouds and dense mists, which allowed the light to pass, but excluded the sight of the sun which emitted it; and here below condensed and black waters, an ocean without limits and without a shore, which enwrapped the earth completely around. Beneath this universal ocean, as we know by the discoveries of modern science, primitive forms of life, of low organization, were being created, both vegetable and animal; beginning in the form of elementary seaweed and of simple, minute shells; but as they were not visible, nothing is said of them. The fossil remains of these shells are found in the rocks that form the foundations of continents, or which by volcanic upheavals have been elevated in the form of hills, mountains and Cordilleras. Many enormous masses of such rock are composed in their totality of these marine shells.

1: 9 — 13. THE THIRD DAY. SEAS. EARTH. VEGETATION.

9 And God said, let the waters under the heavens be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear : and it was so.

10 And God called the dry land Earth ; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas : and God saw that it was good.

11 And God said, Let the Earth put forth grass, herbs yielding seed, and fruit-trees bearing fruit after their kind, wherein is the seed thereof, upon the earth : and it was so.

12 And the earth brought forth grass, herbs yielding seed after their kind, and trees bearing fruit, wherein is the seed thereof, after their kind ; and God saw that it was good.

13 And there was evening and there was morning, a third day.

A globe of water below, and above an opaque heaven, likewise charged with water, — such we may suppose was the aspect which the earth presented at the beginning of the third day. Moses was no scientist, but the scientific man of today, who deserves the name, cannot less than admire the accuracy with which the Bible presents step by step, the same order of creation which human science has been able to gather up from "the testimony of the rocks," at the close of the 19th century of the Christian Era. Moses was neither a philosopher nor a scientist, nor was there a human observer when these things happened, to give an account of them; how then, except by divine revelation, was he to know of them, and to speak of them with such sublime simplicity, brevity and precision, not as theories, but as facts which admitted of neither doubt nor dispute, 1500 years before Christ, and which human science had scarcely begun to trace 1800 years after Christ? Let the reader compare with the first chapter of Genesis the ideas of the sages of antiquity, including the most illustrious of the Greeks, Aristotle and Plato, relative to the earth which they inhabited, and confess that here we see the hand of God. And let the honest sceptic consider whether this is a beginning worthy of that divine revelation which God has made of his will for our salvation.

The work of the third day was undoubtedly effected by what we call volcanic upheavals. As the huge bulk of the earth, at one time an incandescent mass, gradually cooled down, by the continual radiation of its heat into the interplanetary spaces, a thin but constantly thickening crust of solid matter would gradually form on its surface, and this in turn become gradually covered with a universal ocean of waters, condensed from the aqueous vapors, in which form they first existed. At the same time, our globe, contracting more and more in size, under the double action of the reduction of its heat and the law of gravitation, that thin but gradually thickening crust of solid matter beneath this universal ocean would necessarily break into -folds, not in confused masses, but necessarily, as such breaks always do, in some general order; and in their successive upheavals from beneath the waters, under the directing hand and providence of God, would form the systems of hills, and mountains and great Cordilleras of the world; while the corresponding depressions of other parts of the earthy crust would form the vast abysses of the ocean; which in the time of its universal dominion was not so deep as at present. To this, as we understand it, refer the following words: "And God said, Let the waters which are under the heavens be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear. . . . And God called the dry land Earth, and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas." Vrs. 9-10. No scientist of today can tell it with so much grandeur, or with greater precision! Such was the work of the f6rmer part of the third day; and in this case, as in the former ones, it was of slow operation, and prolonged through many ages — a slow operation which still continues to change in some degree the topography and configuration of lands and seas.

As the mountain chains and continents were thus being slowly elevated, or sometimes rapidly, out of the depths of this universal ocean, God continued to stock them with grass, plants, and trees, each "according to its kind," and which "yielded seed, each according to its kind." It is probable that in those illimitable ages of the past, God created the different families of the vegetable world, and later, those of the animal world, not in great forests and in immense herds, but as at last he did the human family, one by one, as individuals, or pairs, leaving them to propagate, and thus to fill the earth. In all the miracles of the Bible we observe this economy of divine power; and it is in keeping with God's other works and in agreement with the conclusions of human science, that every family of plants and animals, which are identical in their characteristic features, had also the same origin. And the law of identical reproduction, which Moses lays down with regard to plants here, and in vrs. 24, 25 repeats with regard to the animal creation, appears categorically to exclude the theory of Evolution, which would subvert the doctrine of an original creation of plants and animals by the wisdom and power of God, and establish in its stead the atheistic or pantheistic view that the world, as it exists today, has developed itself, by means of an evolution of the lower forms of vegetable and animal life into others more complex and perfect. This the sacred text seems to contradict completely; and all human experience and observation condemn it no less, showing that each family or race reproduces itself "after its kind." All the world recognizes and practices evolution within the limits of each particular family (or genus), and an intelligent selection, in accordance with the laws of reproduction, is the way in which florists, horticulturalists and cattle breeders improve the different species; but all human observation goes to prove that the reproduction of every family "according to its kind" is the utmost that nature is capable of; and the natural variations from this rule are always from good to had, and never from lad to good.

The deterioration, the degradation of species, is the law of our world, and not the opposite.

[Note 3. — On Moses and the Scientists. Moses did not propose to write a natural history of the creation, but a narrative which should serve as a preface to the history of human redemption; and he shows us how God made the world, "the footstool for his feet," as a habitation for that human race which he made for himself, and which after it became lost by its horrible apostasy, he has proposed to redeem anew for himself. It is therefore only losing time to occupy ourselves with the endeavor to harmonize the brief and sublime words of the Bible in reference to the work of creation in its six days, with some one or other of the different systems, confessedly imperfect and incomplete, and often contradictory, which the geologists are elaborating, with more or less skill, from the study of the earth itself. It is a vain endeavor to try to extract from the writings of Moses what he himself never thought of putting into them. It is enough to know that the conformity of the first chapter of Genesis with the real and certain discoveries of science is notable in the highest degree, and does not admit of any reasonable explanation whatever, aside from that which the Scripture itself affirms, viz., that Moses and the other prophets of the ancient time did not write according to the promptings of their own will, but "holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost." 2 Peter 1: 21.]