cut a hand;" that is, either make a finger-post, or, according to others, grave a place; "at the head of the way to the city cut it;" that is, at the head of the road to Jerusalem, where it leaves that leading to Rabbath Ammon. We notice that here, as in some other cases, the Piel conjugation retains the original physical sense, which in the other conjugations is wholly lost. Compare Roediger's Gesen. Heb. Gram. § 51. 2.

We come now to Kal and its passive Niphal. Here we find no trace of the original physical idea. In every case the word is used of bringing into being by Divine power. This definition consists of two parts: first, bringing into being. We do not say that it always means bringing substance into being from nothing. That which is created may be a miraculous event, as in Num. 16: 30, " If the Lord create a creation;" but in all cases something is produced that did not exist before.

But this does not constitute creation. So far as the outward form is concerned, man can produce many new things. When the potter moulds clay into a vessel, he produces a new form of matter. But he exerts no immediate and independent power upon matter. He works through its laws, not above and beyond them; and when his vessel is completed, there is nothing whatever new, except only another arrangement of old materials, through old powers and properties. Not so when our Saviour changed water into wine, and called Lazarus from the grave; or when God made plants and animals; or when he now regenerates men. Here is the bringing into material nature and the created spiritual world, of a power without both, above both, and the author of both. This is what we mean by Divine power; that is, power which is in its quality creative; for it is the quality of the power exercised, and not its mere product in time, to which we must have regard. When God destroyed

1 In rendering the above passages the ancient versions vary greatly. In Joshua, the Targum of Jonathan has prepare; the Syriac, choose; the Arabic, in v. 15, clear, in v. 18, choose; the Seventy, clear; the Vulgate, cut down. In Ezek. 23: 47, the Syriac has smite; all the rest, pierce. In Ezek. 21: 19 (Heb. 21: 24) the renderings are still more various.

Korah and his company, he is said to have created a creation; that is, created a new thing. That any new substance was produced in nature, we have no reason to believe. But there was the exertion upon nature of a power wholly without and above nature; the very power that produced nature; and this made it an act of creation, in the proper sense of the word. Our proofs that this is the proper meaning of 7 and its passive, are few and simple.

, to

2, this

First, it cannot be by accident that these forms of the verb, so abundantly used, are never once applied to human operations. The only explanation is, that they express the exercise of an incommunicable Divine prerogative. This cannot lie in any separating, rearranging, and fashioning of old materials. Such a fashioning may often be the result of creative power, but it is not itself creation. This word always carries the idea of a divine energy above nature. It is worthy of special notice that while such words as make, and, to form, are often used instead of latter is never once used in their stead. The reason of this is obvious. Divine power covers the whole field of human operations. Sin only excepted, there is no sphere of action peculiar to man, and needing its terms of merely human application. But human power does not cover the whole field. of Divine operations. God has his own incommunicable sphere of activity, and, to the expression of this, the Hebrew forms under consideration are consecrated. In this respect, the Hebrew is higher and more sacred not only than the words and, but also than our modern word create, which we apply to human operations also.

Secondly, the idea above given is appropriate to all the cases where and its passive & are used, which is not true of any other definition, as will now be shown. To avoid misapprehension, however, we wish here to remark that the Hebrew's conception of creation, as of all God's works, is preeminently phenomenal. We agree with Prof. Lewis that he takes the effects, which offer themselves to his senses, and

1 For Moses certainly did not represent this as an earthquake produced by natural causes.

ascribes them directly to God as their author, without raising any scientific questions respecting them. And this is philosophically correct. For let us take Prof. Lewis's formula :

in which P represents the phenomenon that offers itself directly to the senses; p1, p2, etc., the series of second causes lying back of it, to X, the immediate creative act of God; and, to take a particular case, let P be the going back of the Red Sea by a strong east wind. It mattered not, to the Hebrew, whether God created this wind directly, or whether his miraculous act lay back of the wind, one, two, three, or more stages. Of such a hidden series of second causes (if it actually existed) he could know nothing. In simply referring the wind to God's power, his faith was truth, and not delusion. With this explanation, we affirm that the idea of the word under consideration is always that of bringing into being by Divine power.

We give the following synoptical view of the passages in It is used,

occurs נִבְרָא or בָּרָא which

I. Of the original creation: 1. of the world generally, or parts of it: Gen. 1: 1. 1: 21. 2: 3. 2: 4. Ps. 89: 13 (Eng. version, 89: 12). 148: 5. Isa. 40: 26. 40: 28. 42: 5. 45: 18 (bis). Amos 4: 13. Here we would also place Isa. 45: 7 (bis); making fourteen times in all. 2. Of rational man: Gen. 1: 27 (ter). 5: 1. 5: 2 (bis). 6: 7. Deut. 4:32. Isa. 45:12. Eccl. 12: 1. Mal. 2: 10. Here also we may conveniently place Ps. 89: 48 (Eng. version, 89: 47); twelve times.

II. Of a subsequent creation: 1. Of the successive generations of men: Ps. 102:19 (Eng. version, 102:18); and of animal beings, Ps. 104: 30. 2. Of nations under the figure of individuals: Ezek. 21: 35 (Eng. version, 21: 30). 28:13. 28:15; three times, in Ezekiel only. 3. Of particular men, as the instruments of God's purposes: Isa. 54:16 (bis). 4. Of miraculous events: Ex. 34: 10. Num. 16: 30. Jer. 31: 22.

5. Of events foretold in prophecy: Isa. 48: 7.

III. Of creation in a moral sense: 1. Of a clean heart and

holy affections and actions: Ps. 51: 12 (Eng. version, 51: 10). Isa. 45: 8. 57: 19. 2. Of Israel as God's covenant people, or of a member of Israel: Isa. 43:1. 43:7. 43:15. 3. Of a new and glorious order of things for Israel and in Israel: Isa. 4: 5. 41: 20. 65: 17. 65: 18 (bis).

An examination of the above passages (half of which relate to the original creation) will show that in every instance the idea is that of bringing into being by Divine power. Whether that which is created is new matter, or something else that is new, must be determined by the context. We add a few remarks on particular passages.

Very noticeable is Gen. 2:3: "Which God created to make” ( ). It represents the making as a product of creating, and clearly distinguishes between the two ideas.

The passage Isa. 45: 7: "I form the light, and create darkness; I make peace, and create evil," represents God as the absolute author and controller of nature and of providence. It belongs, therefore, partly at least, to the head of "original

creation."

Of the passages under II. 1, we simply remark that the Hebrew always conceives of life, whether animal or rational, as the product of God's creative power, without occupying himself with any theory respecting the traduction of souls by natural generation. Such is preeminently the representation in Ps. 104: 30: "Thou sendest forth thy Spirit; they are created." Here we have the same life-giving Spirit that originally created the various races of living beings.

Gesenius's definition of : here, and in the passages of Ezekiel," to be born," is wholly unwarranted. In Scripture, a birth always implies the creation of a living soul.'

Peculiar to Isaiah is the application of the word to Israel as God's people in a special sense, and constituted such by the exercise of his Divine power and sovereignty; and to the renovation of heaven and earth for Israel. Though this usage

1 "According to the doctrine of Scripture, all life, not only that which is intellectual and spiritual, but that which is physical also, is from God, the fountain of life."-Hengstenberg on Ps. 104: 30.

is in a sense figurative, it still retains the essential idea of something produced by the exercise of that incommunicable power by which God called the world into being. In not a single one of all the above cases is "the fashioning, constructing, forming, or making of something which already exists to be formed, fashioned, etc.," according to Prof. Lewis's definition of the word.

We bring this discussion to a close by repeating the words of the Psalmist, Ps. 148: 5, " He commanded and they were created." Bringing into being by an act of the Divine will - this is creation.

The relation of the first verse to the subsequent narrative, will be given in connection with the interpretation of the second verse.

V. 2. And the earth was empty and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep and the Spirit of God was hovering upon the face of the waters.

2

Empty and void (). The word is of pretty frequent occurrence. It always denotes nothingness or vanity, generally in a moral sense, but sometimes, as here, in a physical. In the latter case, the idea is always that of emptiness: "He stretcheth the north upon emptiness (b); he hangeth the earth upon nothing." "And he causeth them to wander in emptiness (), where there is no way." The idea of formlessness, though implied, is not directly expressed. The other word occurs in but two other passages, where, as here, it is joined with. One of these (Jer. 4: 23) being copied from the present, gives us no new light respecting its meaning. From the other passage (Isa. 34: 11—“ He shall stretch out upon it the line of emptiness and the plummet of nothingness"), we infer that it is of similar signification, and is added for the sake of intensity, the two words in the original making a complete rhyme.

The deep (in) must be the abyss of waters that covered the whole earth. The word is of very frequent occurrence in the Hebrew Scriptures, and never has any other signification.

1 Job 26: 7.

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2 Job 12: 24. Ps. 107: 40.