Let us attempt to explain this great but difficult text by considering —
L The Creation.
i The meaning of "In the beginning," and of "the heaven and the earth."
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ii. The idea in the word " created." iii. Other explanations of the origin of the world, iv. In what sense God continues to create.
II. The Creator.
i. What does Creation tell us about the Creator ? ii. What other works of God follow from Creation ?
1. Providence.
2. Kedemption.
iii Three things in Creation to encourage us,
I.
The Creation. i. Two Phrases.
1. '* In the beginning " does not mean here " from all eternity." There is no " beginning " in eternity. It means in the begin- ning of the existing universe as conditioned by time. The expression is used in precisely the same sense in the prologue of St. John's Gospel, the difference between the opening of Genesis and the opening of the Fourth Gospel being due to the use of the verbs. In the beginning — that is, of the things which we see and among which our human history unfolds itself — God created the universe. In the same beginning the Word was, as existing from all eternity. WTien the beginning was we are not told ; it may have been thousands or millions of years ago ; but there was a beginning. Matter is not eternal.
^ When I was a student at college, the standard book on divinity which was put into our hands was Bishop Pearson's Exposition of the Creed, in which it was laid down as quite an authoritative statement that heaven and earth were created most certainly within not more than six, or, at the farthest, seven, thousand years from the age in which we were living. Astro- nomers who have gone into this question, however, now say that the time when the moon became separated from the earth — an event which might be regarded as the commencement of the earth's history — could not be placed at any period less than fifty-seven millions of years ago. Even the historians find records of men living in a high state of civilization more than eight thousand years ago — and that state of civilization must itself have taken long centuries for its development. Similarly, the geologist,
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when he tries to read the book of Nature, finds, in the relics of the river-drift man, evidences that man had existed on this earth more than twenty thousand years.^
2. " The heaven and the earth " does not mean the chaotic mass, the rough material, so to speak, but the whole cosmos, the universe as it appears in its present order. This is the common mode of expression in Hebrew for what we call the universe. The nearest approach to this idea of "universe" is found in Jer. X. 16, where the English versions have " all things," the Hebrew being literally " the whole." Taking the first verse as complete in itself, we have here the broad general statement of creation; then follows the early dark, empty, lifeless condition, not of the whole, but of the earth ; and then the gradual preparation of the earth to be the abode of man. The history of the visible heavens and earth is bound together throughout Scripture till the final consummation, when the heavens shall be rolled together as a scroll : the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up, to make way for the new heavens and the new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.
•[j The conception which we express by the term " universe " is usually expressed in the Old Testament by this phrase, " the heaven and the earth." But there is a still more complete expression : " heaven above, earth beneath, and the water under the earth" (Ex, xx. 4), A similar phrase is found on the Assyrian Creation-tablet : " the heaven above, the earth beneath " (line 1), and " the ocean " (line 3).
ii. The Idea in Creation. It cannot be proved that the word translated " created " means etymologically to create out of nothing. It is common to all the Semitic languages, and may be connected either with a root meaning " to cut " and " fashion by cutting," the material so cut or fashioned being already in existence ; or perhaps with a root signifying " to set free," " to let go forth," " to cause to appear." It is in favour of this latter derivation that the word is never followed, like other words denoting " to form," " to fashion," and the like, by the accusative of the material out of which the thing is fashioned, (See the striking use of the word in Num. xvi. 30, " If Jehovah should create a creation.") But the word, whatever
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6 THE CREATION AND THE CREATOR
be its derivation, is never used except of a Divine act ; and it is quite certain that the writer intends to convey the impression of a creation called into existence out of nothing by the voice and will of God. " In the beginning God created." Before " the beginning" no material thing existed. God called all that is into existence. This is the sense in which the words were understood by the earliest commentators, the Hebrew poets. So in Ps. xxxiii. 9, " For he spake, and it was " (came into being) ; and Ps. cxlviii. 5, " He commanded, and they were created." So, too, in the Epistle to the Hebrews xi. 3, " By faith we understand that the worlds have been framed by the word of God, so that what is seen hath not been made out of things which do appear." The creation, then, was no operation wrought upon pre-existent matter, neither is it an emanation from a Divine substance. The Hebrew cosmogony has no tinge in it either of dualism or of pantheism. God is the eternal, self-subsistent Being; "He is before all things, and by him all things consist." Moreover, on its first page the Hebrew Scripture asserts clearly the unity of the Godhead. There are no rival deities here, each exercising an independent power, and claiming separate worship : God is one.