Scarce yielding thee the tribute of a sigh.
Oh what is Life? We live a few short hours.
Eternal joy or pain hang on a breath;
We pass from earth, as fade the summer flowers,
Wither and die away—and this is Death!
Cora
WAS THE WORLD MADE OUT OF NOTHING?
The idea of creation may be symbolically represented under a variety of images: under that of the evolution of numbers from an original unity; that of the eradiation of light from an original light; or that of an expression of syllables and tones, answered for aught we know to the contrary, by an echo. The Hebrews seem to have preferred this last symbol. “In the beginning God created (Heb. BARA, brought forth) the heavens and the earth.” In the verb bara, the meaning create and cry are identified: for this reason, it is eminently adapted to denote a creation capable of being symbolically represented by a vocal utterance.
“The primary sense of create and cry”—says Noah Webster, and we are careful to adduce in this place the testimony of a man whom no one will suppose to have been led astray by ontological speculations—“is the same, to throw, to drive out, to bring forth, precisely as in the Shemitic BARA.” The Hebrew text may indeed be correctly but inadequately rendered: “In the beginning God bore (or bare, preserving in the English word the radical letters of the original BARA) the heavens and the earth.” For the same lexicographer says in another place, “The verb to bear, I suppose to be radically the same as the Shemitic BARA, to produce: the primary sense is, to throw out, to bring forth, to thrust, to drive along.”