and the earth? How could his work have been so imperfect?
"And darkness was upon the face of the deep."
This is the primeval night referred to in all the legends; the long age of darkness upon the earth.
"And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters."
The word for spirit, in Hebrew, as in Latin, originally meant wind; and this passage might be rendered, "a mighty wind swept the face of the waters." This wind represents, I take it, the great cyclones of the Drift Age.
Verse 3. "And God said, Let there be light: and there was light."
The sun and moon had not yet appeared, but the dense mass of clouds, pouring their waters upon the earth, had gradually, as Job expresses it, "wearied" themselves,--they had grown thin; and the light began to appear, at least sufficiently to mark the distinction between day and night.
Verse 4. "And God saw the light: that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness."
Verse 5. "And God called the light day, and the darkness be called night. And the evening and the morning were the first day."
That is to say, in subdividing the phenomena of this dark period, when there was neither moon nor sun to mark the time, mankind drew the first line of subdivision, very naturally, at that point of time, (it may have been weeks, or months, or years,) when first the distinction between night and day became faintly discernible, and men could again begin to count time.