it is such an inference as cannot be resisted without doing violence to the fundamental laws of human belief. For as every material existence is, from the very constitution of our minds, conceived of as an effect, the production of some adequate cause, it necessarily supposes a previous state of non-existence or nothing, from which it passed into being. But it does not appear that the original word here employed (3) was designed to convey precisely this idea, or that there is any word in any language which does. The leading import of the present term is twofold :-(1.) The production or effectuation of something new, rare, and wonderful; the bringing something to pass in a striking and marvellous manner, as Num. 16. 30, 'But if the Lord make a new thing (Heb. 7 create a creation or a creature), and the earth swallow them up,' &c. Jer. 31. 22, 'For the Lord hath created a new thing (Heb.) in the earth, A woman shall compass a man,' (2.) The act of renovating, re-modelling, or reconstituting something already in existence. In this sense it is used almost exclusively in the Scriptures in reference to the effects of the divine influence in the moral or spiritual creation, i. e. regeneration and sanctification. Thus, Ps. 51. 10, Create (x) in me a clean heart, O God,' explained by the parallel clause, 'Renew a right spirit within me.' Is. 65. 17, 'Behold, I create (1) new heavens and a new earth,' i. e. I re-create the heavens and the earth; I establish a new order of things; I effect a stupendous revolution moral and political. The corresponding Gr. term (rw) with its derivatives, is unequivocally used in the same sense, as Eph. 2. 10, We are his workmanship, created (XTLOOEYTES) in Christ Jesus.' 2 Cor. 5. 17, 'If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature (καινη κτίσις). In all these cases the act implied by the word is exerted upon a pre-existing substance, and cannot therefore strictly signify to create out of nothing. And as in no other instance throughout the sacred writings, if this passage be excepted, has the word necessarily or naturally this signification, we perceive no sufficient ground for so interpreting it here; for the usus loquendi, or prevailing usage, is the only sure guide in determining the import of words. Allowing then that the materials, the primordial elements, of the heavens and the earth, were brought into existence at an indefinitely prior period, the term 'create' may be understood as expressing the action of the Almighty Agent upon tho rude chaotic mass, in moulding and arranging it into its present comely order and grand and beautiful forms. This view of the writer's language is undoubtedly more consistent with ascertained geological facts, than any other, and it is certainly desirable to harmonize, as far as possible, the truths of revelation with those of natural science. -T The heaven. Heb. shamayim. The root of the original word, which is lost in Hebrew, is supposed to be preserved in the Arabic Shamaa, to be high, lofty, sublime. As to its true import in this place, we cannot doubt that we are bound to be governed by the sense assigned to it by the sacred writer himself, in v. 8, where we are expressly told, that God 'called the firmament, heaven,' as he did 'the dry land, earth.' The 'heaven' and the 'earth,' therefore, which were now created, we take to be precisely the same heaven and earth which are subsequently described, v. 6-10, and that these are necessarily confined to our planet and its surrounding atmosphere, we shall endeavor to show in our notes on those verses. This view of the subject, if we mistake not, effectually precludes the idea that by heaven and earth in the first verse, is meant the matter of which they were composed, and which, it is supposed, is here said to be first brought into existence out of nothing. Such an hypothesis, we think, will be found to introduce inex tricable confusion into the narrative. See governed solely by the exigency of the 2. Without form and void. Heb. 2 tohu varohu. Chal.' Desert and empty.' Gr.' Invisible and incomposed,' i. e. chaotic. The original words, though rendered adjectively, are real substantives, employed in several cases where the object of the writer is to express in significant terms the idea of dreariness and desolation, particularly as the effect of divine judgments in lay-out form and void,' therefore, are not to ing waste a country or city. See to be considered as strictly epithets of the this purpose, Jer. 4. 23. Ps. 107. 40. In earth as such, but as descriptive of that Is. 34. 11, they are rendered confusion chaotic state which preceded the 'earth,' ^) and emptiness. They are in fact the very and which ceased simultaneously with" words which a Hebrew writer would the developement of the earth out of it. naturally use to express the wreck and Thus we may say of a statue, 'This ruins of a former world, if such an one statue was a block of marble,' but it were supposed to have existed. In the can never be properly said, 'This stapresent connection they refer wholly to tue is a block of marble,' because the the surface of the earth, and imply a two states of the material are opposite desolate, dreary, hideous waste, with- to each other, and the one ceases when out order or beauty, inhabitant or fur- the other begins. The state of the globe niture. This verse is probably to be therefore designated by the terms 'withconsidered as descriptive of the state out form and void,' continued till the and appearance of the globe antecedent second day, and to that part of the to the commencement of the six days' third, in which the dry land liberated work, so that in the order of sense, it is from the dominion of the water, obtain→ in reality prior to the first. As there is ed the name 'earth,' v. 9, 10. As to no distinction of past, perfect, and plu- the condition or history of our planet, perfect tenses in Hebrew, we are to be during the ages that may have interven ed prior to this period, no information is [ginal ruahh is the proper term for given, because it did not fall within the breath or wind, whence some commenscope of the objects of a divine revela- tators take it to mean a 'wind of God,' tion. 'The Bible instructs us that man, i. e. a mighty wind, which was now and other living things, have been plac-made to agitate the chaotic mass. This, ed but a few years upon the earth; and however, is less likely, as it does not the physical monuments of the world appear that the atmosphere was now bear witness to the same truth. If the created, nor is the idea compatible with astronomer tells us of myriads of worlds the kind of motion indicated by the epinot spoken of in the sacred records, the thet that follows. Others therefore with geologist in like manner proves (not by more probability interpret it of the diarguments from analogy, but by the vine agency, efficiency, or energy, the incontrovertible evidence of physical undoubted sense of the phrase in numephenomena), that there were former rous other instances, as particularly conditions of our planet, separated from Job 26. 13, 'By his spirit he hath gareach other by vast intervals of time, nished the heavens; his hand has formduring which man and the other crea-ed the crooked serpent.' Ps. 33. 6, 'By tures of his own date, had not been the word of the Lord were the heavens called into being. Periods such as these made; and all the host of them by the belong not, therefore, to the moral his-breath of his mouth (1).' Ps. tory of our race, and come neither within the letter nor the spirit of revelation. Between the first creation of the earth, and that day in which it pleased God to place man upon it, who shall dare to define the interval? On this question Scripture is silent, but that silence destroys not the meaning of those physical monuments of his power that God has put before our eyes, giving us at the same time faculties whereby we may interpret them, and comprehend their meaning.' Sedgwick. Darkness. The mere privation of light, and therefore not an object of creation.¶ The deep. Heb. tehom. That is, the vast mass of waters circumfused around the globe, with which it was originally 'covered as with a garment,' Ps. 104. 6, and which were not yet 'laid up in store-houses,' i. e., distributed into seas, oceans, lakes, and subterraneous receptacles. Ps. 33. 7. The original word is generally rendered in the Gr. version by aßvoros abyss, a term occasionally used in reference to deep subterranean caverns and recesses in the earth, in which the presence of water is not implied. But that sense is evidently inadmissible here.- -Spirit of God. Heb. 7. The ori 104. 30, Thou sendest forth thy spirit, (7) they are created; and thou rewhich cases the predominant idea is newest the face of the earth;' in all that of power. That the phrase is here to be understood in allusion to a personal distinction in the Godhead, cannot, we think, be positively affirmed.TMoved upon the face of the waters. Heb. was moving, or rather was hovering. The original implies a gentle waving or fluttering motion, like that of a bird over its young. Thus, Deut. 32. 11, 'As an eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth () over her young, spreadeth abroad her wings,' &c. Whatever may have been the nature or effect of the operation described in these words, it appears to have been put forth upon the terrestrial mass in its chaotic state previous to the creative work of the six days. For this reason this clause ought not to be separated by a period from the preceding, as is the case in some editions of the English Bible, since the whole verse really forms a continuous and closely connected narrative. 3. And God said. That is, willed; efficaciously purposed; decreed within himself-a very frequent sense of the nary shone forth in unclouded lustre, so by a renewed operation of divine power upon the benighted soul, 'God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, shineth in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God, in the face of Jesus Christ.' 6 word 'say' in the Scriptures. It is not to be supposed that there was any vocal utterance. Indeed, throughout the narrative the phrase, 'he said,' is simply equivalent to 'he willed.' 'God's speaking is his willing, and his willing is his doing.' Bp. Hall. -T Let there be light. The sacred writer having in v. 2, described the condition of the globe in its pre-existing chaotic state, now enters upon the details of that stupendous process by which the whole was reduced into order, and converted into the grand fabric of the heavens and the earth as they now appear. The first step was giving visibility to light, an element emanating, as we shall shortly see, from the sun, and diffused in the regions of space around the exterior surface of the globe, but not at this time penetrating the dense mass of aqueous and aerial fluids by which it was surrounded. To this the Psalmist alludes, Ps. 104. 2, 'Who coverest (thyself) with light as with a garment,' where, from a misconception of the writer's scope, our translators have inserted 'thyself,' instead of 'the earth,' the proper term; as it will be evident upon inspection, that the Psalmist's drift is to recite the successive gradations in the work of creation, and from thence to derive matter of praise to the Great Architect. So also in the moral creation, there is first a' true light which lighteneth every man that cometh into the world,' but as the light of the sun did not at first pierce through the superficial gloom that covered the globe, so the spiritual light shineth in dark-militate with this supposition we shall ness, and the darkness comprehendeth it not,' i. e. admitteth it not; but as on the fourth day every interposing medium to the light of the natural sun was removed, and that bright lumi 4. That it was good. Good, as answering the end for which it was made, and good in the sense of pleasant, grateful, refreshing. Thus Eccles. 11. 7, Truly the light is sweet, and a pleasant (Heb. good) thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun.'- -T Divided the light from the darkness. Heb. 'separated between the light and between the darkness.' This must mean something more than 'distinguished' between light and darkness, as this was effectually done by the bare creation of light, an element in its own nature directly opposite to, and therefore perfectly distinguished from, darkness. The 'division' of the light from the darkness here spoken of is undoubtedly the 'succession' of the one to the other, arising from the revolution of the earth round its axis,-a strong confirmation of the opinion that the sun had already been brought into being. As to the expedient fancied by some commentators of a temporary luminary, 'an auroralike meteor,' to perform the office of the sun for the three first days and nights, we see not why Omnipotence should have resorted to it when the production of the sun itself was equally easy; and that the letter of the record does not endeavor to show in the note on v. 14. It may here be remarked, that the interpretation which has sometimes been given to the word 'light,' as implying a subtle, ethereal, all-pervading fluid, 5 And God called the light f Day, and the darkness he called f Ps. 74. 16. & 104. 20. which produces light from being excited by appropriate agents, and of which philosophers have imagined the sun to be the great exciting instrument, receives no countenance from the predominant usage of the word in the sacred writers. The notion of a light which does not actually shine is entirely foreign to the simplicity of the primeval tongue; and though we neither affirm nor deny the theory as a matter of science, we are confident that such an interpretation is doing great violence to the meaning of words; nor would it probably ever have found a place in the explication of the Mosaic cosmogony, had it not been for the purpose of solving the supposed difficulty in the historian's statement that light was created on the first day, and yet the sun not till the fourth. This difficulty we trust will appear on a subsequent page to be altogether imaginary, and consequently the proposed key to it entirely useless. 5. And God called the light Day. This phrase is somewhat remarkable in this place. As there were now no human beings to make use of language, and as God himself could stand in no need of articulate words to express either his will or his works, it is not at once obvious in what way the clause is to be understood. For the most part, by God's 'calling' any thing by a particular name is meant rather a declaration of the nature, character, or qualities of the thing named, than the mere bestowment of an appellation by which it should be ordinarily known. In the present case, therefore, it is probably to be understood that there was something in the import of the word yom, day which rendered it a peculiarly appropriate term by which to express the diurnal continuance of light, and one that he would have to be employed by men or this purpose when they should be Night: and the evening and the morning were the first day. created, and should begin to express their thoughts by language.. Yet a great degree of uncertainty rests upon the etymology of the word. The supposition of Gesenius is perhaps as probable as any other, viz. that it comes by a slight softening of the guttural from (, ) to be warm, hot, to glow with heat; analogous to which is the Arabic yahina, to glow with anger. This in reference to the sultry climate of the East, would seem to be a very suitable designation of the day as distinguished from the night. In either case it cannot be doubted, that there was in some way a peculiar intrinsic adaptedness in the terms appropriated to day and night, to point out the distinguishing nature of each, as otherwise it is not easy to see why the original words 7 or, light, and hoshek, darkness should not have answered the purpose equally well. And so in regard to the names 'heaven' and 'earth' bestowed on the firmament and the dry land. What may be the bearing of these passages on the question touching the primitive language of the human race, would be a very interesting subject of inquiry, but one into which it falls not within the compass of our present plan to enter.¶ And the evening and the morning were the first day. Heb. 'And there was evening and there was morning, one day ( yom ahad).' The evening is probably mentioned first because the darkness preceded the light. On the ground of this recorded order of things in the sacred narrative, the Jews commenced their day of twentyfour hours from the evening. Lev. 23. 32.-The remark of Josephus on this clause is worthy of note. He observes, 'This was indeed the first day; but Moses said it was one day; the cause of which I am able to give even now; but because I have promised to give |