them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. 27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God 28 created he him; male and female created he them. And 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. 29 And 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 fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it 30 shall be for meat. And 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 31 for meat and it was so. And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day. CHAP. II. I. Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and of emphasis; "it is specially intended to express that the Divine image which man bears is really one corresponding to the original pattern" (Oehler, O. T. Theol. i. 211). This image of God which distinguished man from all other animals would seem to consist "in those faculties and principles of nature whereby he is capable of moral agency." (The subject is treated in all its bearings by Dr. Laidlaw, Cun. Lec.) A note of exultation is heard in the rhythmical clauses of ver. 27, which enounce the great creative work. The last clause means that one pair was created; we should also gather from it, had we no other information, that man and woman were created simultaneously. In addition to the blessing pronounced on the other animals (ver. 22), man receives dominion over... the earth, which is not the equivalent of his being made in the image of God, but its result. The lower animals are not as yet given to man for food. His food is provided (ver. 29) from the vegetable world, and this apparently without labour on man's part (cp. Virgil, Georg. i. 125; Tibullus, I. iii. 35; Ovid, Fasti, iv. 395; and Plato, Laws, p. 782. "In those days men are said to have lived a sort of Orphic life, having the use of all lifeless things, but abstaining from all living things"). A Brahmin is said to have crushed with a stone the microscope that first showed him living things among the vegetables of his daily food. The lower animals themselves (ver. 30) are dealt with as if they were all graminivorous. The painlessness, and bloodlessness, and peace of the ideal world (Isa. xi. 6-9) is viewed as an essential of the primitive world as it came from the hand of God. Only on such a peaceful condition can God pronounce His (ver. 31) "very good." SEVENTH DAY-GOD RESTS AND SANCTIFIES THE SEVENTH DAY.-The work of creation, this particular form of Divine activity, ceased. Everything had now been brought into being; the heavens and the earth and all the host 2 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 3 from all his work which he had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it; because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made. of them; these latter words referring to both heaven and earth (as more fully described in Neh. ix. 6), though commonly used rather of the contents of heaven, the stars, Isa. xl. 26; the angels, Ps. ciii. 21, and Luke ii. 13. Here it refers not to the angels, but to the sun, moon, stars, everything which has been mentioned as created in heaven and on earth. God rested on the seventh day, i.e., from creating; His activity was continued to uphold and govern (cp. John v. 17). The writer says nothing of a rest continued beyond the seventh day. He views the seventh day as interposed between the creative work and the activity which is manifested throughout succeeding history (cp. Dillmann). Augustine says (Conf. xiii. 51) "the seventh day hath no evening, nor hath it setting, because Thou hast sanctified it to an everlasting continuance;" Delitzsch and Hugh Miller endorse this, and add that it is not said of this day "the evening and the morning were the seventh day," apparently forgetting that it is not the evening of the seventh day, but of the eighth, which would bring the seventh day to a close. The real reason why the usual formula is not here inserted, is that already (vers. 2, 3) the day has been again and again specified as the seventh. [Traces of a division of time into weeks and of a weekly day of rest are found in Accadian, Babylonian, and Assyrian records. Prof. Sayce (Trans. of Bibl. Arch. Soc. iii.) cites the following: "The moon a rest, on the seventh day, the fourteenth day, the twenty-first day, the twenty-eighth day, causes. And from the "Babylonian Saint's Calendar" he quotes a similar passage. Mr. Fox Talbot (ib. vol. iv.) cites a passage from one of the Creation Tablets, in which the following words occur : On the seventh day He appointed a holy day, and to cease from all business He commanded;" but this translation is disputed by Mr. Boscawen in the Academy, p. 344, 1877. The late Mr. George Smith (Assyrian Disc. p. 12) writes: "In the year 1869, I discovered, among other things, a curious religious calendar of the Assyrians, in which every month is divided into four weeks, and the seventh days, or Sabbaths, are marked out as days on which no work should be undertaken." For further information see Tomkins' Studies, pp. 16-18; Proctor's articles in Contemp. Rev. for March 1875, and June 1879.] REMARKS.-I. The six days seem to fall into two sets of three, which correspond to one another, thus: Ist Day, Light. 2d Day, Air and Waters. 3d Day, Land. 4th Day, Luminaries. 5th Day, Animals of Air and Water. 6th Day, Land Animals. 2. The points taught in this narrative are-Ist, that all things originate from God; 2d, that the Creator is a free, intelligent personal Being; 3d, that things were created not all at once, but in a regular order; 4th, that man, made in God's image, was the crown and guiding object of this order. (Other points are well handled in Warington's very thoughtful little volume on The Week of Creation.) 3. Information regarding other cosmogonies will be found in the work just cited, and also in Kalisch's Comment. I. Show the relation subsisting between this account of Creation and that which seems to have been current in Babylon. 2. Show in what respects this account excels the other ancient cosmogonies you know. 3. What does Delitzsch mean by calling the 8th Psalm "a lyric echo" of this account of man's creation? 4. Find passages in Scripture in which the fact that man was made in God's image is made the ground of prohibition of murder and slander. CHAPTER II. 4-25.-SECOND ACCOUNT OF THE CREATION. 4 THESE are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made 5 the earth and the heavens, and every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew : for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, 6 and there was not a man to till the ground. But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the 7 ground. And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the 4. These are the generations, or, the following is the history. This is the formula with which the larger sections of Genesis are regularly introduced, cp. v. I, vi. 9, etc. It occurs eleven times, and always refers to what follows. It will be observed that each section begins with a reference to, or slight recapitulation of, the preceding narrative. The Lord God; in Hebrew, Jehovah [Yahveh] Elohim. Elohim is the generic term for Deity, and is regularly represented in our version by the word God. Jehovah is the personal, incommunicable name of the one living and true God who entered into covenant with Israel, and is regularly, and somewhat unfortunately, represented in our version by Lord. The use of the title Lord God characterises the second and third chapters of Genesis, and is apparently intended to indicate that the Creator and the God of Israel are one and the same. 5. Translate, No plant of the field was yet in the earth, and no herb of the field had yet grown, for the Lord God, etc. The barrenness of the earth is referred to two causes-the absence of rain, and of a man to till the ground. The supply of these deficiencies is related in vers. 6 and 7. 6. But there went up; the translators supposed that this mist had existed during the rainless period, and therefore inserted "but." Both the grammar and the sense require its omission. The mist now went up and watered the ground clouds appeared, and showers fell, and the earth was fertilized. 7 relates the supply of the second want, a man to till the ground. The creation of man is presented in the simplest possible form. A figure of clay is first moulded, and then life is communicated to it by the breathing of God, [Cp. the legend of Prometheus; and Horace, Carm. I. xvi. 13; the Man ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and 8 man became a living soul. And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom 9 he had formed. And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the 10 tree of knowledge of good and evil. And a river went out of dans say that the Great Spirit made two figures of clay, dried them, and breathed into them, and called the one "first man," and the other "companion." Other similar traditions are given by Lenormant in the first chapter of his Origines. The Chinese believe that man was made of yellow clay. The Egyptians believed that man was made of clay on a potter's wheel, cp. Isa. lxiv. 8. To find here anticipations of modern science, which shows that the human body is composed of some of the elements which form the earth's soil, is to put a fool's cap on the reconciliation of Scripture and Science.] And man became a living soul, or, as it is translated in the nineteenth verse, a living creature. No intimation is given in these words of any endowment but that which sets man on a level with the other creatures; it is physical life, such as they have, which is communicated to him. But the statement that he derives this by the immediate agency of God (the Lord God breathed into his nostrils) hints that his life was in some way more directly derived from God than that of the other animals was. [Those who are acquainted with Mr. Wallace's theory of natural selection as applied to man will remark the coincidence. The manner in which believing evolutionists conceive of man's creation may be understood from these words of Mr. J. J. Murphy: "The question, what point in the development either of the individual or of the race is that where the spiritual nature has come in, cannot be answered; but it is not an important one to answer. It is, however, in accordance with all the analogies of creation, if the Creative Power, which at the beginning created matter, and afterwards gave it life, finally, when the action of that life had developed the bodily frame, and the instinctive mental power of man, completed the work by breathing into man a breath of higher and spiritual life."] PLANTING OF THE GARDEN.-8-14. The Lord God planted a garden, a park planted with trees; such as usually surrounded royal residences. These parks were called in old Persian pairi-daêza, which Xenophon transliterates into apádios, the word which the LXX. here use. It was situated eastward, i.e. from the point of view of the narrator, in Eden, a place no longer recognisable, but called Eden from its pleasantness. [The Vulgate erroneously translates garden in Eden by Paradisum voluptatis. The word seems cognate with Heden, the abode of rest, where Zoroaster is said to have been born.] This garden was planted with trees, and among them were two extraordinary trees-the tree of life, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Man's body, being "of the earth, earthy," was subject to the waste and decay to which all matter is liable. He required food to sustain his life. He would have died had this food been withheld. In this, primitive man resembled ourselves; but he had a capacity for immortality of a kind which has apparently been lost. In Augustine's language he was not among those higher natures whose attribute it is "non posse mori," but only among those to whom it is Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, II and became into four heads. The name of the first is Pison : that is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where 12 there is gold; and the gold of that land is good: there is 13 bdellium and the onyx stone. And the name of the second river is Gihon: the same is it that compasseth the whole land 14 of Ethiopia. And the name of the third river is Hiddekel: that is it which goeth toward the east of Assyria. And the given "posse non mori." In this tree of life provision was made for turning the possibility of not dying into actuality. According to chap. iii. 22, this tree imparted immortality. But as it was not the quality of the actual fruit growing on a tree which could open man's eyes and give him wider moral experience, but rather his entire relation to the prohibited tree; so in the case of the tree of life, it was not the perishable fruit actually growing on a tree which could give man immortality (a mere heathenish fancy), but only man's abiding in fellowship with God and his becoming mature as God's child. When man disobeyed, he was shut out from the garden; that is, he was banished from that nearness to God in which life was freely communicated to him. The tree was the symbol of immortality, and obedience was the condition of its enjoyment. The tree of knowledge is explained below, in ver. 17. The fertility of the garden was maintained by a river which flowed from Eden through the garden to water it; and after leaving the garden it was parted and became into four heads, or main streams. These are named and carefully described as if in the writer's day they could be identified; and the third and fourth are still easily identified, being the well-known Tigris and Euphrates. [Wright considers the word Hiddekel to be the Hebrew transliteration (somewhat corrupted) of the Persian hu-tigra. Tigra is understood by Rawlinson to mean rapid (cp. Horace, Od. iv. 14, 46, "rapidus Tigris "). Von Bohlen quotes Eustathius, who says that the Tigris was so called from its being swift as an arrow. The Persian word for arrow is radically the same. The Tigris is still called Digila in Aramæan.] Regarding the other rivers great difference of opinion prevails. The first river is described as compassing the whole land of Havilah, a land which would seem to have been the boundary eastwards of the territory of the sons of Ishmael (Gen. xxv. 18); but this is generally supposed to have been another Havilah, and Rawlinson tells us that "the learned generally" identify the country named in the text here with "the Arabian tract known as Khawlan, in the N. W. portion of the Yemen." The land is further identified by three products, gold (which appears to have been found in Arabia in ancient times. See Ophir and Sheba in Smith's Dic.), bdellium, and the onyx stone. Bdellium is the translation of the Hebrew word Bedolach, which most probably signifies a gum that exudes from trees. The onyx is considered to be a correct translation (see Smith's Dic., s.v.), but Lenormant prefers lapis lazuli. second river, Gihon, is described (ver. 13) as compassing the whole land of Cush. The difficulty in this case arises from the scriptural use of this name for two different territories, one in Africa, the other in Asia. Asiatic Cush is referred to in Gen. x. 8-11; Isa. xliii. 3, xlv. 14; Ezek. xxxviii. 5; in which passages the district lying to the N.E. of the Persian Gulf would seem to be meant. This still leaves the identity of these rivers The The |