The Pulpit Commentary — Genesis — Section 98

EXPOSITIO~. Ver. 0.-Day t!iree. 'l'ho distribution of beginning" (Dawson, '0. W.,' p. 131; cf. land and water and the production of vegeta- 'Green's Geology,' p. 512). And it was so. tion on this day onga~ed the formative eneTgy Though the separation of the dry lam! from ol' the word of Eloh1m. And God said, Let the waters and the distribution of both the waters under heaven be gathered to- were effected by Divine agency, nothing in gether into one place, and let the dry land the Mosaic narrative obliges us to think appear. To explain tho second part of this that these works were instantaneously com- phenomenon us a consequence of the first, pleted. "There is truly no difficulty in the disclosure of the solid ground by the supposing tliat the formation of the hilh retirement of the waters from its surface, kept on through the succeedillg creative and not rather vice versa, is to reverse the days" (Lange). "Generally the works of ordinary processes of nature. Modern analogy the single creative days consist only in lay• suggests that the breaking up of the hitherto ing foundations; the birth process that i~ universal ocean into seas, lakes, and rivers introduced in each extends its efficacy be- was effected by the upheaval of the land yond it" (Delitzsch). "Not how lo1VJ, but through the action of subterranean fires, or how many times, God created is the thing the subsidence of the earth's crust in con- intended to be set forth" by the creati.e sequence of tho cooling and shrinking of the days (Hoffman). Scripture habitually repre• interior mass. Ps. civ. 7 hints at electric sents the world in an aspect at once natural agency in connection with the elevation of and supernatural, speaking of it as natura the mountains and the sinking of the ocean and c,·eatura, ,;,vcr,, and n,.,.,, (cf. ::Harten- beds. " .At thy rebuke they ( the waters) sen's 'Dogma.ties,' § 63) ; and although the /led : at the voice of thy thunder they hasted latter is the view exhibited with greatest pro- away (were scattered). The mountains rose, minence, indeed exclusively, in the Mosaic the valleys sank (lwa/3aivouc11v op11 1<ai Ka Ta• cosmogony, yet the fonner is not thereby /3aivoucr, ,,..8,a-LXX. ; ascendunt montcs, denied. Not immediateness, but certainty et descendunt campi-Jerome) to the place of execution, is implied in the "it was so" which thou hadst established for them" appended to the creative fiat. (Perowne). The gathering of the waters Ver. 10.-A.nd God called the dry land Into one place implies no more than that Earth. In opposition to the firmament, they were, from this day forward, to be col- which was named" the hei&hts" (shamayi1n), lected into one vast body, and restrained the dry land was styled "tne flats," ".A.rctz" within bounds in a place by themselves, so (cf. Sause., dhara; Pehlev., arta; La tin, as to admit of the exposure of the earth's terra; Gothic, airtha; Scottish, 11ird; soil. The " place founded for them " was, of English, earth; vid. Gesenius ). Originally course, tho depths and hollows in the earth's applied to the dry ground as di.stinguishe,l crust, into which they were immediately from the seas, as soon as it was understoo,l withdmwn, not through direct supernatural that the solid earth was continuous beneath agency, but by their own natural gravitation. the water masses, by an easy extension of The configuration of the dry land is not de- meaning it came to signify the whole sur- scribed ; but there is reason to believe that face of the globe. And the gathering to- the original distribution of land and water gether of the waters called he Seas. was the same, 01· nearly the same, ns it is at Yaniim, from yom, to boil or foam, is ap- present. Physical geographers have observed plied in Scripture to any large collection of the.t the coast lines of the great continents we.ter (ef. Gen. xiv. 3; Nwu. xx.xiv. 11 ; nnd the mountain ranges genero.lly run from Deut. iv. 49 ; Joel ii. 20). "The plural north-eost to south-west, ond that these form seas shows that the one place consists Jines are in reality parts of great circles, of ~everal basins" {Murphy). And God saw tangent to the polar circle, ond at right that it was good. The waters having been angles to a line drawn from tho sun's centre perma,uently withdrawn to the place founded to tho moon's, when these bodie~ aro either for them by the upheuval of the great moun- in conjunction or in opposition. These tain ranges, and the elevation of the conti- circles, it hns further been remarked, a1·0 nental areas, the work thus accomplished is "the lines on which the thin crust of B sealed by the Divine approval. The separa- cooling globe would be most likely to be tion of the htnd and wator was good, as a de- rupturecl by its intemnl tido.l wave." Hence, ciued advance towards the completion of tho though considerahly mo,lified by tho mighty cosmos, as the proper termination of the I.--ork revolutions thro.tgh which at successive commenced upon tho previous day, ns tho periods the earth !ins posse,!, "these, with production of two elements in themselves certain subordinate lines of frndurc, haw beautiful, and in separation nsd"t,l as abo,ks determined the fonns of coutinout~ l'1oui tho of life, with 11"hich they ,r,-rc in ,lne conn;u UEK lsSl8, l)  Hl THE BOOK OF GENESIS. [en. 1. 9-19.