The Origin of the World According to Revelation and Science

by Sir John William Dawson

The elevation of the dry land is more frequently referred to in Scripture than any other cosmological fact; and while all have been misapprehended, the statements on this subject have been even more unjustly dealt with than others. In the text, the word "earth" (aretz [78] ) is, by divine sanction, narrowed in meaning to the dry land; but while some expositors are quite willing to restrict it to this, or even a more limited sense, in the first and second verses of this chapter, almost the only verses in the Bible where the terms of the narrative make such a restriction inadmissible, they are equally ready to understand it as meaning the whole globe in places where the explanatory clause in the verse now under consideration teaches us that we should understand the land only, as distinguished from the sea. I may quote some of these passages, and note the views they give; always bearing in mind that, after the intimation here given, we must understand the term "earth" as applying only to the continents or dry land, unless where the context otherwise fixes the meaning. We may first turn to Psalm civ.:

"Thou laidst the foundations of the earth,
That it should never be removed;
Thou coveredst it with the deep as with a garment;
The waters stood above the mountains;
At thy rebuke they fled;
At the sound of thy thunder they hasted away;
Mountains ascended, valleys descended
To the place thou hast appointed for them:
Thou hast appointed them bounds that they may not pass,
That they return not again to cover the earth."

The position of these verses in this "the hymn of creation" leaves no doubt that they refer to the events we are now considering. I have given above the literal reading of the line that refers to the elevation of mountains and subsidence of valleys; admitting, however, that the grammatical construction gives an air of probability to the rendering in our version, "they go up by the mountains, they go down by the valleys," which, on the other hand, is rendered very improbable by the sense. In whichever sense we understand this line, the picture presented to us by the Psalmist includes the elevation of the mountains and continents, the subsidence of the waters into their depressed basins, and the firm establishment of the dry land on its rocky foundations, the whole accompanied by a feature not noticed in Genesis—the voice of God's thunder—or, in other words, electrical and volcanic explosions. The following quotations refer to the same subject:

"Before the mountains were settled,
Before the hills was I (the Wisdom of God) brought forth;
While as yet he had not made the earth,
Nor the plains, nor the higher parts of the habitable world.
When he gave the sea his decree
That the waters should not pass his limits,
When he determined the foundations of the earth."
—Proverbs viii., 25.

"Thou hast established the earth, and it endureth,
According to thy decrees they continue this day,
For all are thy servants."
—Psalm cxix., 90.

"Who shaketh the earth out of its place,
And its pillars tremble."
—Job ix., 6.

"Where wast thou when I founded the earth?
Declare, if thou hast knowledge.
Who hath fixed the proportion thereof, if thou knowest?
Who stretched the line upon it?
Upon what are its foundations settled?
Or who laid its corner-stone,
When the morning stars sang together,
And all the sons of God shouted for joy?
Who shut up the sea with doors
In its bursting forth as from the womb?
When I made the cloud its garment,
And swathed it in thick darkness,
I measured out for it my limit,
And fixed its bars and doors;
And said, Thus far shalt thou come, but no farther,
And here shall thy proud waves be stayed."
—Job xxxviii., 4.

In these passages the foundation of the earth at first, as well as the shaking of its pillars by the earthquake, are connected with what we usually call natural law—the decree of the Almighty—the unchanging arrangements of an unchangeable Creator, whose "hands formed the dry land." [79] This is the ultimate cause not only of the elevation of the land, but of all other natural things and processes. The naturalist does not require to be informed that the details, in so far as they are referred to in the above passages, are perfectly in accordance with what we know of the nature and support of continental masses. Geological observation and mathematical calculation have in our day combined their powers to give clear views of the manner in which the fractured strata of the earth are wedged and arched together, and supported by internal igneous masses upheaved from beneath, and subsequently cooled and hardened. A general view of these facts which we have learned from scientific inquiry, the Hebrews gleaned with nearly as much precision from the short account of the elevation of the land in Genesis, and from the later comments of their inspired poets. From the same source our own great poet, Milton, learned these cosmical facts, before the rise of geology, and expressed them in unexceptionable terms:

"The mountains huge appear
Emergent, and their broad bare backs upheave
Into the clouds, their tops ascend the sky.
So high as heaved the tumid hills, so low
Down sunk a hollow bottom, broad and deep,
Capacious bed of waters."

In further illustration of the opinions of the Scripture writers respecting the nature of the earth, and the disturbances to which it is liable, I quote the following passages. The first is from the magnificent description of Jehovah descending to succor his people amid the terrors of the earthquake, the volcano, and the thunder-storm, in Psalm xviii.: