Expositions of Holy Scripture | Page 2

upon the face of all
the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed;
to you it shall be for meat. And to every beast of the earth, and to every
fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein
there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so. And
God saw every thing that He had made, and, behold, it was very good.
And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.
'Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.
And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had made; and
He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had made.
And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it; because that in it
He had rested from all His work which God created and made.'
--GENESIS i. 26-ii. 3.

We are not to look to Genesis for a scientific cosmogony, and are not to
be disturbed by physicists' criticisms on it as such. Its purpose is quite
another, and far more important; namely, to imprint deep and
ineffaceable the conviction that the one God created all things. Nor
must it be forgotten that this vision of creation was given to people
ignorant of natural science, and prone to fall back into surrounding
idolatry. The comparison of the creation narratives in Genesis with the
cuneiform tablets, with which they evidently are most closely
connected, has for its most important result the demonstration of the
infinite elevation above their monstrosities and puerilities, of this
solemn, steadfast attribution of the creative act to the one God. Here we
can only draw out in brief the main points which the narrative brings
into prominence.
1. The revelation which it gives is the truth, obscured to all other men
when it was given, that one God 'in the beginning created the heaven
and the earth.' That solemn utterance is the keynote of the whole. The
rest but expands it. It was a challenge and a denial for all the beliefs of
the nations, the truth of which Israel was the champion and missionary.
It swept the heavens and earth clear of the crowd of gods, and showed
the One enthroned above, and operative in, all things. We can scarcely
estimate the grandeur, the emancipating power, the all-uniting force, of
that utterance. It is a worn commonplace to us. It was a strange,
thrilling novelty when it was written at the head of this narrative. Then
it was in sharp opposition to beliefs that have long been dead to us; but
it is still a protest against some living errors. Physical science has not
spoken the final word when it has shown us how things came to be as
they are. There remains the deeper question, What, or who, originated
and guided the processes? And the only answer is the ancient
declaration, 'In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.'
2. The record is as emphatic and as unique in its teaching as to the
mode of creation: 'God said ... and it was so.' That lifts us above all the
poor childish myths of the nations, some of them disgusting, many of
them absurd, all of them unworthy. There was no other agency than the
putting forth of the divine will. The speech of God is but a symbol of
the flashing forth of His will. To us Christians the antique phrase
suggests a fulness of meaning not inherent in it, for we have learned to
believe that 'all things were made by Him' whose name is 'The Word of

God'; but, apart from that, the representation here is sublime. 'He spake,
and it was done'; that is the sign- manual of Deity.
3. The completeness of creation is emphasised. We note, not only the
recurrent 'and it was so,' which declares the perfect correspondence of
the result with the divine intention, but also the recurring 'God saw that
it was good.' His ideals are always realised. The divine artist never
finds that the embodiment of His thought falls short of His thought.
'What act is all its thought had been? What will but felt the fleshly
screen?
But He has no hindrances nor incompletenesses in His creative work,
and the very sabbath rest with which the narrative closes symbolises,
not His need of repose, but His perfect accomplishment of His purpose.
God ceases from His works because 'the works were finished,' and He
saw that all was very good.
4. The progressiveness of the creative process is brought into strong
relief. The work of the first four days is the preparation of the
dwelling-place for the living creatures who are