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After both the man and the woman were created, God blessed them, and said unto them, be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth and God said, behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is 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 now the evening and the morning were the sixth day," The sixth day was now completed, and the seventh day began, on which God having finished the creation,

or made proficiency in disguising, with their fables and mythology, the plain narrations they found of the origin of things. See Euseb. Præp. Evang. lib. 1. c. 10. Connect. of Sac. and Proph. Hist. vol. i. b. viii.

1 Gen. i. 28, 29, 30.

m Ver. 31. This was the ancient way of computing the natural day it began from the morning, proceeded to the evening, and continued until the next morning, finished the preceding, and began the ensuing day. Thus the evening and the morning were the day. Gen. i, 5, 8, 13, 19, 23, 31: And in this way of computing, the Jews continued to their latest times. For thus we are told of the end of the Sabbath, Matt. xxviii. 1. The Sabbath was ending, as it began to dawn towards the first day of the week: the end of the night which had closed the Sabbath was the end of the computed day, The day following began with the morning sun.

rested from all the 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 he had created and made:" these are the generations of the hearens, and of the earth, when they were created.

Moses here ends his summary or general account of the creation and here, I think, they who divided our bible into chapters and verses should have ended the first chapter of Genesis; and the second chapter should have begun with these words: In the day that the Lord made the earth and the heavens, &c.

The second chapter of Genesis being, as I have hinted, a resumption of the argument treated in the first, in order to set forth more explicitly some particulars which the first chapter had only mentioned in general, begins thus: In the day that, i. e. when the Lord made the earth and the heavens, and every plant of the field, before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew, for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth; and there was not a man to till the

" Gen. ii. 2, 3.

e Ver. 4.

P Eo die, i. e. quando-Dies tempus in genere passim dicitur. Cleric. in Loc.

We begin this sentence with the particle for: the Hebrew text having the particle [ci], we put in for to answer it: but ci should be here rendered nempe, quidem, indeed, not for: the sentence not being, for the Lord God had not caused it to rain; but, rather, the Lord God had indeed not caused it

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ground; nor did a mist go up from the earth and water the whole face of the ground: but the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul. And the Lord God had' planted a garden east

We render this paragraph, but there went up a mist from the earth, in the affirmative; whereas the sense of the place shews us, that Moses intended to assert, that God made all things before any natural powers were in activity to be the cause of their production: the Hebrew particle [ve] is here used, and joins similar, i. e. negative sentences; there was no man to till the ground, nor mist went up from the earth. The Arabic version has observed the true meaning of the place, rendering it, nec exhalatio ascendebat, &c.

We say planted, in the perfect tense; but the Hebrew perfect tense is often used in the sense of a præterpluperfect, to speak of things done in a time past. This the Syriac version seems rightly to observe in a passage like this in the 19th verse of this chapter. We say, the Lord God formed out of the ground every beast-, as if God then made them, whereas the beasts were made some time before: the Syriac version is rendered, and the Lord God had formed. And thus we should render the place before us: and the Lord God had planted a garden--for the garden was undoubtedly planted on the third day of the creation, when God caused all the plants and trees to spring out of the earth, Gen. i. 11, 12, 13. Vide Diodor. Sic. Hist. lib. 1. p. 5. The Greeks had sentiments of this kind from Egypt: for thus Euripides,

Ως ερανός τε γαῖά τ ην μόρφη μια

Ἐπεὶ δ ̓ ἐχωρίσθησαν ἀλλήλων δίχα,

ward in Eden, and there he put the man whom he had formed.

In this manner Moses proceeds to reconsider the creation of man; first observing, that of itself, or by any powers of its own, the earth had produced nothing. It was an ancient opinion, and very early in Egypt, where Moses had his birth and education, that the earth originally, of itself, brought forth its fruits, plants, trees, and all kinds of living creatures, and men. Some' have thought that the natural fertility of the ground for

Τίκλεσι πάντα κανέδωκαν εἰς φάΘ',

Τὰ δένδρα, πληνὰ, θῆρας, ὃς θ' άλμη τρίφοι,

Γίνω τε θνητῶν

In Menalippe. v. 14.

The Roman poet seems to have been in doubt between two opinions in this matter; rather inclining to introduce an opifex rerum into all the produce of the whole creation; but not ab solutely determining against the opinion of all things arising from their natural seeds in the earth, as soon as the earth was aptly disposed to give rise to them.

"Vix ita limitibus discreverat omnia certis,
Cum quæ pressa diu massâ latuere sub ipsâ
Sidera cœperunt toto effervescere cœlo:
Neu regio foret ulla suis animalibus orba,
Astra tenent cœleste solum, formæque deorum,
Cesserunt nitidis habitanda piscibus undæ ;
Terra feras cepit, volucres agitabilis aer:
Natus homo est, sive hunc divino semine fecit.
Ille opifex rerum, mundi melioris origo;
Sive recens Tellus seductaque nuper ab alto
Æthere cognati retinebat semina cœli."

Ovid. Metamorph.

these purposes was put in action, either by the rain which fell from heaven, or by some moisture exhaled from the earth, fertilized by the sun, and falling down in a mist, spread abroad over the face of the ground." But Moses, contrary to all the imaginations of this philosophy, affirms, that by the word of God only all things were made; that there was not a plant, which God did not create before it was in the earth; nor an herb, which he had not made before it grew; and that God had made them all, before either rain or dew had watered the earth; or the earth had had any tillage from the hand of man; for that all the produce of the world had its beginning before there was any man to till the ground: but that other things being thus set in order, God last of all made man. He had, as I have observed, before told us, that God made man; and that he made two persons, the male and the female." He now proceeds more distinctly to relate, of what materials God made them both; when, and how they were created; where he placed them, and what command and directions he gave them, as soon as he gave them being.

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And, 1. God made the man of the dust of the ground, breathed into him the breath of life, and caused him to become a living soul. 2. He put him into the garden

Thus perhaps they thought who would have sung with Pindar, "Agró év dwp Olymp. Odę 1. or thought with Thales, aquam esse initium rerum, Cicero Lib. de Nat.

Deor. i. c. 10.

w Gen. i. 27.

* Gen. ii. 7.

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