(2) “And the Earth was waste and empty; 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 the evening was, and the morning was, the first day.”
Now it appears to us that the great event with which this narrative begins, the creation of the Heavens and the Earth, is not represented as a part of the work that was accomplished within the Six Days. It is not said that on the first day God created the Heavens and the Earth, but in the beginning. Besides, the Sacred writer, uniformly throughout the chapter, employs one and the same peculiar phrase to introduce the work of each successive day. In describing the operations of God on the second day, he begins: “And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters:” on the third day, “And God said, Let the waters that are under the Heavens be gathered together into one place:” on the fourth, “And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the Heavens to divide the day from the night:” on the fifth, “And God said, Let the waters bring forth the creeping thing having life:” on the sixth, “And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after its kind.” Hence, when we meet this same phrase for the first time in the third verse, “And God said, Let there be light,” we may reasonably suppose that the work of the first day began with the decree which is set forth in these words. If so it plainly follows that we may allow the existence of created matter before that particular epoch of time which, in the language of Moses, is styled the First Day: for, before the creation of light, the Heavens and the Earth were already in existence, and the Earth was waste and empty, and darkness was upon the face of the deep, and the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
An objection is sometimes raised from the words of God in the promulgation of the third commandment:—“Six days shalt thou labor and do all thy work. But the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God; thou shalt do no work on it.... For in six days the Lord made the Heavens and the Earth and the sea, and all that is in them, and resteth the seventh day.”[116] It is argued that the creation of the Heavens and the Earth is here set forth as a part of the work accomplished within the Six Days; which is directly against our opinion. This difficulty would be simply insurmountable, if it could be proved that the text refers to that first act of creation by which the Heavens and the Earth were brought into existence out of nothing. We think, however, that the phrase may fairly be understood to mean, in six days the Lord fashioned the Heavens and the Earth; that is to say, gave to them that form and shape and outward character which they now possess. In this sense the words would apply, not to the first act of creation out of nothing, but rather to that subsequent series of operations by which the Earth was fitted up and furnished for the use of man.
And this interpretation is supported by the authority of our best Commentators. Perrerius formally discusses the point, and maintains that God may truly be said to have made the Heavens and the Earth in Six Days, although the Heavens and the Earth, as far as regards their substantial matter, had been created before the First Day: for it was only within the Six Days that they were adorned and completed and perfected. Tostatus is not less explicit. In this passage, he says, the word made is very properly employed; for the Heavens and the Earth which are here referred to, and the other things that are included under this general designation, were all made from matter already existing, but this matter itself was not made, it was created. Petavius also adopts this view in his remarks upon the fourth verse of the second chapter of Genesis.[117]
We may add that this mode of explaining the passage receives no small support from the Hebrew text. When it is said, in the first chapter of Genesis, that “In the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth,” the word used by the Sacred writer is ברא (Bara), which strictly means to create out of nothing; whereas, in describing the operations of the Six Days, he commonly uses the word עשה (Hasah), which means to form and fashion, or to produce something out of pre-existing materials.[118] Now, in the text of Exodus we find the word עשה (Hasah), to fashion or produce, and not the word ברא (Bara), to create. We do not want to insist very rigorously upon this distinction between the two words ברא (Bara) and עשה (Hasah)), nor would we deny that they are sometimes interchanged as regards their meaning. We think they are related to one another pretty nearly as the corresponding words to create and to make in English, and we know that the distinction between these two words is not always strictly observed. Thus, we sometimes say that God made the world, meaning that he brought it forth from nothing, and we speak of the creation of peers; and Shakspeare says:—
“Now is the time of help; your eye in Scotland
Would create soldiers, make our women fight
To doff their dire distresses.”—Macbeth, Act iv., Sc. iii.
Nevertheless, when we compare two such passages as these:—“In the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth,” and “In Six Days the Lord made the Heavens and the Earth and the sea, and all that in them is,” we think the studied contrast of expression is a fair ground for supposing that, while the one refers to the Divine decree by which matter was first brought into existence out of nothing, the other may be understood of those subsequent operations by which it received its present form and shape.