[2] Isa. 57:15; 1 Sam. 15:29, margin; Jer. 10:10, margin; Micah 5:2, margin; 1 Tim. 6:16; 1:17; Ps. 90:2.
[3] Dr. Adam Clarke, in his Commentary on Gen. 1:1, uses the following language: “Created] Caused that to exist which previously to this moment, had no being. The rabbins, who are legitimate judges in a case of verbal criticism on their own language, are unanimous in asserting that the word bara, expresses the commencement of the existence of a thing: or its egression from nonentity to entity.... These words should be translated: ‘God in the beginning created the substance of the heavens and the substance of the earth; i. e., the prima materia, or first elements, out of which the heavens and the earth were successively formed.’”
Purchase’s Pilgrimage, b. i. chap, ii., speaks thus of the creation: “Nothing but nothing had the Lord Almighty, whereof, wherewith, whereby, to build this city” [that is the world].
Dr. Gill says: “These are said to be created, that is, to be made out of nothing; for what pre-existent matter to this chaos [of verse 2] could there be out of which they could be formed?”
“Creation must be the work of God, for none but an almighty power could produce something out of nothing.” Commentary on Gen. 1:1.
John Calvin, in his Commentary on this chapter, thus expounds the creative act: “His meaning is, that the world was made out of nothing. Hence the folly or those is refuted who imagine that unformed matter existed from eternity.”
The work of creation is thus defined in 2 Maccabees 7:28: “Look upon the heaven and the earth, and all that is therein, and consider that God made them of things that were not; and so was mankind made likewise.”
That this creative act marked the commencement of the first day instead of preceding it by almost infinite ages is thus stated in 2 Esdras 6:38: “And I said, O Lord, thou spakest from the beginning of the creation, even the first day, and saidst thus: Let heaven and earth be made; and thy word was a perfect work.”
Wycliffe’s translation, the earliest of the English versions, renders Gen. 1:1, thus: “In the first, made God of naught heaven and earth.”
[4] Heb. 11:3; Gen. 1.