Others, (loriving from o. hiphil future, take it uphenvecl and tl:c wnlcrs g.:~hercd into the ne denoting "ho who cnusos to be, tho Ful- subsiding valley,1. Nothing would moro ftller," and find in this nn explanation of naturally follow that event than the steam in" Exod. vi. 8 (Exoll). Mny not nll these ideas up of vapours to float in the aerial sea. I~ be more or less involved in the fulnesa of the fact, the rnpidity with which evaporation Di vino nnme I As distinguished from Elohim, would be carried on would very speedily Deus omnipotem, the mighty One, Jehovah leave the newly-f?nned land hard and dry, is the nbsolnte, self-existent One, who mani- baked and caked mto a crust, till the atmo- fests himself to man, and, in particular, en- sphere, becoming overcharged with a'lueous ters into distinct covenant engagements for vapour, returned it in the shape of rain. To his redemption, which he in due time fulfils. talk of insuperable c:,ifficulty and manifest In the present section the names o.re con- dissonance whern everything is clear, natural, joined partly to identify Jehovah with Elo- and harmonious is to speak at random, and him, and partly because the subject of which betrays an anxiety to create con tr::ulictions it treats is the history of man. rather than to solve them. Yer. 5.-And every plant of the field Ver. 7.-And the Lord God (.Jcho,ah Elo- before it was (literally, not yet) in the earth, him) formed man of the dust of the ground. and every herb of the field before it grew Literally, dust from the ground. He,·e (literallr, had not yet sprouted). Following again, Bleek, Kalisch, and the thcoJoc,ians of the LXX., the Euglish Version suggests an their school discover contrariety bcttr~en this intention on the writer's part to emphasise account of man's creation and that which has the fact that the vegetation of the globe- been given in the preceding chapter. In here comprehended under the general te11ns, that man is represented as having been crc,itcd shiah, sltrub, and eseb, herb - was not a by the Divine word, in the Divine image, natural production, but, equally with the and male and female simultaneously; whereas i,-eat earth and heavens, was the creation of in this his creation is exhibited as a painful Jehovah Elohim-a rendering which has the process of elaboration from the clay by the sanction of Tayler Lewis; whereas the m-iter's hand of God, who works it like a. potter object clearly is to depict the appearance of the (asah; LXX., 1r>.ciaa10), and, after having earth at the time when the man-ward deve- first constructed man, by a subsequent opera- lopment of tho heavens and the earth began. tion forms woman. But the first account Then not a single plant was in the ground, does not assert that Adam and Eve were not a green blade was visible. The land, created together, and gins no details of the newly spnmg from the waters, was one de- formation of either. These are supplied by solate region of bleak, bare lava-hills and the present narrative, which, beginning with extensive mud-flats. Up to that point the the construction of his body from the fine absence of vegetation is o.ccounted for by the dust of the ground, designedly represents it circumstance that the presently existing at- as an evolution or de,elopment of the ma- mospheric conditions of the globe had not terial universe, and ends by setting it bcforo then been established, for the Lord God had us as animated by the breath of God, reserv- not caused it to rain upon the earth, and ing for later treatment the mode of Eve's the ordinary agricultural operations on which production, when the circumstances that led its production was afterwards to depend had to it have been described. And (the Lonl not then been begun, and there was not a God) breathed into his nostrils the breath man to till the ground. of life. Literally, the breath of !ins. "The Ver. 6.-But there went up a mist· from formation of mnn from the dust and the the earth, and watered the whole face of the breathing of the breath of life must not ground. 'The dry land having been sepnmted be understood in 11 mechanical sense, as if from tho wo.ters, and the atmospheric occ:nn God first of nil constructed a human figure uplifted above them both, vaporous exhala- from the dust" (still less docs it admit of tions began to ascend to the o.erial regions, the idea that man's physical nature was and to return ago.in in the shape of rain upon evolved from the lower animals), "and the ground. Jehovah thus caused it to rain then, hy breathing his breath of life into upon the ground, nnd so prepared it for the the clod of earth which be had shaped into vegetation which, in obedience to the A!- the form of n man, macle it into a li,·i..ng mighty fint, sprung up nt the close of the being. The words nro to be understood third day, o.lthough tlte writer docs not 9w1rp,1rw,. Ily an net of Divine omnipotence mention its appenrnnco, but leaves it to bo man arose from the dust ; and in the snme inferred from the preceding section. 'l'hat moment in which the dust, by ,;rtue of soon after its emergence from the waters the crcntfre omnipotence, shaped itself into a land should be "dry, sterile, nnd snndy" human form, it was P<'rvadecl by the Divine will not be thought remarkable if we re- breath of life, and created a living being, so member the highly igneous condition of our that we cannot say the body was earlier t h,rn i,lnn~t at the time when the dry larnl wns the soul" (Dolitzsch). And man became 11 42 THE BOOK OF GENESIS. (':11. II. 4-7.
living soul. Nephcsh cltayyah, in eh, i. Man rcccind his life from n distinct act or 21, 30, is employed to designote the lower Dinne inbroathing ; ccrtninly not an in• animals. Describing a boing animated by a breathing of atmospheric air, but nn inflatus ,/,vx•i or life principle, it does not necessarily from the Runch Elohim, or Spirit of God, a imply thnt the basis of the life principle in comnrnuicatiou from the whole pe1·sonality man nnd the inferior animals is the samo. of the Godhead. In effect man was thoroby The distinction between the two appears from constituted n -nepheslt cha'!fYah, like the the difference in the mode of their creations. lower animals ; but in him the life principle 'l'he beasts arose at tho o.lmighty fiat com- --,onferred R personality which was wnntmg pleted beings, eYery one a ru1i~esh cha'!fYah. in them. Thus there is no real contradiction, '' The origin of their soul wns coincident with scnrcely even an 'apparent dissonance," be- that of their corporeality, and their life was tween tho t,vo ~ cco£mts of man's crea~ion. merely the indiYiduo.lisatiou of the uniYersal The second exhibits the foundation of thnt life ":ith ,..-hich nll ma.ttcr wns filled at the likeness to God nnd world-dominiou nscribc,l beginning by the Spirit of God" (Delitzsch). to him in the first.