2. The word remes, "creeping things" in our version, as we have already shown, is a very general term, referring to the power of motion possessed by animals, especially on the surface of the ground. It here in all probability refers to the additional types of terrestrial reptiles, and other creatures lower than the mammals, introduced in this period.
3. The compound term (hay'th-eretz) which I have ventured to render "carnivora," is literally animal of the land; but though thus general in its meaning, it is here evidently intended to denote a particular tribe of animals inhabiting the land, and not included in the scope of the two words already noticed. In other parts of Scripture this term is used in the sense of a "wild beast." In a few places, like the other terms already noticed, it is used of all kinds of animals, but that above stated is its general meaning, and perfectly accords with the requirements of the passage.
The creation of the sixth day therefore includes—1st, the herbivorous mammalia; 2d, a variety of terrestrial reptilia, and other lower forms not included in the work of the previous day; 3d, the carnivorous mammalia. It will be observed that the order in the two verses is different. In verse 24th it is herbivora, "creeping things," and carnivora. In verse 25th it is carnivora, herbivora, and "creeping things." One of these may, as in the account of the fifth day, indicate the order of time in the creation, and the other the order of rank in the animals made, or there may have been two divisions of the work, in the earlier of which herbivorous animals took the lead, and in the later those that are carnivorous. In either case we may infer that the herbivora predominated in the earlier creations of the period.
It is almost unnecessary to say this period corresponds with the Tertiary or Cainozoic era of geologists. The coincidences are very marked and striking. As already stated, though in the later secondary period there were great facilities for the preservation of mammals in the strata then being deposited, only a few small species of the humblest order have been found; and the occurrence of the higher orders of this class is to some extent precluded by the fact that the place in nature now occupied by the mammals was then provided for by the vast development of the reptile tribes. At the very beginning of the tertiary period all this was changed; most of the gigantic reptiles had disappeared, and terrestrial mammals of large size and high organization had taken their place. Perhaps no geological change is more striking and remarkable than the sudden disappearance of the reptilian fauna at the close of the mesozoic, and the equally abrupt appearance of numerous species of large mammals, and this not in one region only, but over both the great continents, and not only where a sudden break occurs in the series of formations, but also where, as in Western America, they pass gradually into each other. During the whole tertiary period this predominance of the mammalia continued; and as the mesozoic was the period of giant reptiles, so the tertiary was that of great mammals. It is a singular and perhaps not accidental coincidence that so many of the early tertiary mammals known to us are large herbivora, such as would be included in the Hebrew word bhemah; and that in the book of Job the hippopotamus is called behemoth, the plural form being apparently used to denote that this animal is the chief of the creatures known under the general term bhemah, while geology informs us that the prevailing order of mammals in the older tertiary period was that of the ungulates, and that many of the extinct creatures of this group are very closely allied to the hippopotamus. Behemoth thus figures in the book of Job, not only as at the time a marked illustration of creative power, but to our farther knowledge also as a singular remnant of an extinct gigantic race. It is at least curious that while in the fifth day great reptiles like those of the secondary rocks form the burden of the work, in the sixth we have a term which so directly reminds us of those gigantic pachyderms which figure so largely in the tertiary period. Large carnivora also occur in the tertiary formations, and there are some forms of reptile life, as, for example, the serpents, which first appear in the tertiary.
I may refer to any popular text-book of geology in evidence of the exact conformity of this to the progress of mammalian life, as we now know it in detail from the study of the successive tertiary deposits. The following short summary from Dana, though written several years ago, still expresses the main features of the case:
"The quadrupeds did not all come forth together. Large and powerful herbivorous species first take possession of the earth, with only a few small carnivora. These pass away. Other herbivora with a larger proportion of carnivora next appear. These also are exterminated; and so with others. Then the carnivora appear in vast numbers and power, and the herbivora also abound. Moreover these races attain a magnitude and number far surpassing all that now exist, as much so indeed, on all the continents, North and South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia, as the old mastodon, twenty feet long and nine feet high, exceeds the modern buffalo. Such, according to geology, was the age of mammals, when the brute species existed in their greatest magnificence, and brutal ferocity had free play; when the dens of bears and hyenas, prowling tigers and lions far larger than any now existing, covered Britain and Europe. Mammoths and mastodons wandered over the plains of North America, huge sloth-like Megatheria passed their sluggish lives on the pampas of South America, and elephantine marsupials strolled about Australia.
"As the mammalian age draws to a close, the ancient carnivora and herbivora of that era all pass away, excepting, it is believed, a few that are useful to man. New creations of smaller size peopled the groves; the vegetation received accessions to its foliage, fruit-trees and flowers, and the seas brighter forms of water life. This we know from comparisons with the fossils of the preceding mammalian age. There was at this time no chaotic upturning, but only the opening of creation to its fullest expansion; and so in Genesis no new day is begun, it is still the sixth day."
The creation of man is prefaced by expressions implying deliberation and care. It is not said, "Let the earth bring forth" man, but let us form or fashion man. This marks the relative importance of the human species, and the heavenly origin of its nobler immaterial part. Man is also said to have been "created," implying that in his constitution there was something new and not included in previous parts of the work, even in its material. Man was created, as the Hebrew literally reads, the shadow and similitude of God—the greatest of the visible manifestations of Deity in the lower world—the reflected image of his Maker, and, under the Supreme Lawgiver, the delegated ruler of the earth. Now for the first time was the earth tenanted by a being capable of comprehending the purposes and plans of Jehovah, of regarding his works with intelligent admiration, and of shadowing forth the excellences of his moral nature. For countless ages the earth had been inhabited by creatures wonderful in their structures and instincts, and mutely testifying, as their buried remains still do, to the Creator's glory; but limited within a narrow range of animal propensities, and having no power of raising a thought or aspiration toward the Being who made them. Now, however, man enters on the scene, and the sons of God, who had shouted for joy when the first land emerged from the bosom of the deep, saw the wondrous spectacle of a spiritual nature analogous to their own, united to a corporeal frame constructed on the same general type with the higher of those irrational creatures whose presence on earth they had so long witnessed.
Man was to rule over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and the bhemah or herbivorous animals. The carnivorous creatures are not mentioned, and possibly were not included in man's dominion. We shall find an explanation of this farther on. The nature of man's dominion we are left to infer. In his state of innocence it must have been a mild and gentle sway, interfering in no respect wilts the free exercise of the powers of enjoyment bestowed on animals by the Creator, a rule akin to that which a merciful man exercises over a domesticated animal, and which some animals are capable of repaying with a warm and devoted affection. Now, however, man's rule has become a tyranny. "The whole creation groans" because of it. He desolates the face of nature wherever he appears, unsettling the nice balance of natural agencies, and introducing remediless confusion and suffering among the lower creatures, even when in the might of his boasted civilization he professes to renovate and improve the face of nature. He retains enough of the image of his Maker to enable him to a great extent to assert his dominion, and to aspire after a restoration of his original paradise, but he has lost so much that the power which he retains is necessarily abused to selfish ends.
Man, like the other creatures, was destined to be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth. We are also informed in chapter second that he was placed in a "garden," a chosen spot in the alluvial plains of Western Asia, belonging to the later geological formations, and thus prepared by the whole series of prior geological changes, replenished with all things useful to him, and containing nothing hurtful, at least in so far as the animal creation was concerned. These facts, taken in connection, lead to grave questions. How is the happy and innocent state of man consistent with the contemporaneous existence of carnivorous and predaceous animals, which, as both Scripture and geology state, were created in abundance in the sixth day? How, when confined to a limited region, could he increase and multiply and replenish the earth? These questions, which have caused no little perplexity, are easily solved when brought into the light of our modern knowledge of nature. 1. Every large region of the earth is inhabited by a group of animals differing in the proportions of identical species, and in the presence of distinct species, from the groups inhabiting other districts. There is also sufficient reason to conclude that all animals and plants have spread from certain local centres of creation, in which certain groups of species have been produced and allowed to extend themselves, until they met and became intermingled with species extending from other centres. Now the district of Asia, in the vicinity of the Euphrates and Tigris, to which the Scripture assigns the origin of the human race, is the centre to which we can with the greatest probability trace several of the species of animals and plants most useful to man, and it lies near the confines of warmer and colder regions of distribution in the Old World, and also near the boundary of the Asiatic and European regions. At the period under consideration it may have been peopled with a group of animals specially suited to association with the progenitors of mankind. 2. To remove all zoological difficulties from the position of primeval man in his state of innocence, we have but to suppose, in accordance with all the probabilities of the case, that man was created along with a group of creatures adapted to contribute to his happiness, and having no tendency to injure or annoy; and that it is the formation of these creatures—the group of his own centre of creation—that is especially noticed in Genesis ii., 19, et seq., where God is represented as forming them out of the ground and exhibiting them to Adam; a passage otherwise superfluous, and indeed tending to confuse the meaning of the document. 3. The difficulty attending the early extension of the human race is at once obviated by the geological doctrine of the extinction of species. We know that in past geological periods large and important groups of species have become extinct, and have been replaced by new groups extending from new centres; and we know that this process has removed, in early geological periods, many creatures that would have been highly injurious to human interests had they remained. Now the group of species created with man being the latest introduced, we may infer, on geological grounds, that it would have extended itself within the spheres of older zoological and botanical districts, and would have replaced their species, which, in the ordinary operation of natural laws, may have been verging toward extinction. Thus not only man, but the Eden in which he dwelt, with all its animals and plants, would have gradually encroached on the surrounding wilderness, until man's happy and peaceful reign had replaced that of the ferocious beasts that preceded him in dominion, and had extended at least over all the temperate region of the earth. 4. The cursing of the ground for man's sake, on his fall from innocence, would thus consist in the permission given to the predaceous animals and the thorns and the briers of other centres of creation to invade his Eden; or, in his own expulsion, to contend with the animals and plants which were intended to have given way and become extinct before him. Thus the fall of man would produce an arrestment in the progress of the earth in that last great revolution which would have converted it into an Eden; and the anomalies of its present state consist, according to Scripture, in a mixture of the conditions of the tertiary with those of the human period. 5. Though there is good ground for believing that man was to have been exempted from the general law of mortality, we can not infer that any such exemption would have been enjoyed by his companion animals; we only know that he himself would have been free from all annoyance and injury and decay from external causes. We may also conclude that, while Eden was sufficient for his habitation, the remainder of the earth would continue, just as in the earlier tertiary periods, under the dominion of the predaceous mammals, reptiles, and birds. 6. The above views enable us on the one hand to avoid the difficulties that attend the admission of predaceous animals into Eden, and on the other the still more formidable difficulties that attend the attempt to exclude them altogether from the Adamic world. They also illustrate the geological fact that many animals, contemporaneous with man, extend far back into the Tertiary period. These are creatures not belonging to the Edenic centre of creation, but introduced in an earlier part of the sixth day, and now permitted to exist along with man in his fallen state. I have stated these supposed conditions of the Adamic creation briefly, and with as little illustration as possible, that they may connectedly strike the mind of the reader. Each of these statements is in harmony with the Scriptural narrative on the one hand, and with geology on the other; and, taken together, they afford an intelligible history of the introduction of man. If a geologist were to state, à priori, the conditions proper to the creation of any important species, he could only say—the preparation or selection of some region of the earth for it, and its production along with a group of plants and animals suited to it. These are precisely the conditions implied in the Scriptural account of the creation of Adam. [99] The difficulties of the subject have arisen from supposing, contrary to the narrative itself, that the conditions necessary for Eden must in the first instance have extended over the whole earth, and that the creatures with which man is in his present dispersion brought into contact must necessarily have been his companions there. One would think that many persons derive their idea of the first man in Eden from nursery picture-books; for the Bible gives no countenance to the idea that all the animals in the world were in Eden. On the contrary, it asserts that a selection was made both in the case of animals and plants, and that this Edenic assemblage of creatures constituted man's associates in his state of primeval innocence.