genesis 1:2 commentary

Here we must differ from those critics who understand Genesis 1:1 of the primordial matter of the universe, and the following verses of a subsequent series of growths. Now there are two significations of the Hebrew word which suit the present place; either that the spirit moved and agitated itself over the waters, for the sake of putting forth vigor; or that He brooded over them to cherish them. . No wonder He contemplated it with complacency. (J. Davies, B. D.). . Impregnated with His vital energies, the great deep became instinct with life and motion. We'll send you an email with steps on how to reset your password. 4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. 3. American King James Version×tells us that the heavens and the earth, and all their host, were completed on the sixth day. Is there any hope here? The statement, so often made, that the conjunction and (ו ) at the beginning of Genesis 1:2 forbids the supposition that Genesis 1:1 is a summary of the whole chapter, is seen to be futile by a comparison of the immediate sequence of other headings of sections named above. Genesis 1:2 describes the earth at the time of its creation. 3. Be our mortal bodies however dissolved in earth, fire, water, air, He who first moved upon the face of the waters, can by the same energy recall the scattered particles of our dust, and from the dissipated and disjointed atoms raise up a glorious body, bright as the sun when it shineth in its strength. Now, we have considered the state of this world before the Word of God and the Spirit of God began their operations upon it. 3. The relation of this to the preceding verse has been the subject of much discussion; some considering that there is but a very loose and remote connection between them, while others maintain that the two verses cannot be separated, because they both refer to the pre-Adamite earth-the former asserting that it owed its origin, in common with all things else in the universe, to the fiat of Almighty power, and the latter declaring what was its condition prior to the establishment of the present terrestrial order of things. Moses uses this term ( Deuteronomy 32:10) to describe the desert wasteland where Israel wandered for forty years. I. . THAT THE MOST RUDE AND ELEMENTARY CONDITIONS OF THINGS, UNDER THE CULTURE OF THE DIVINE SPIRIT, ARE CAPABLE OF THE HIGHEST UTILITY AND BEAUTY. Chemical forces, as the prime agents, are not to be thought of here, as they are totally inadequate to the production of the results in question. At the same time, we may conceive the spirit of God to manifest its energy in some outward effect, which may bear a fair analogy to the natural figure by which it is represented. The Egyptians had a deity they called Cneph, out of whose mouth went forth an egg, which they interpreted of the worldF2Euseb. These two words are not so distinct. Exodus 32:1. (J. [Note: For a creationist explanation of the ice ages, see Ken Ham, Andrew Snelling, and Carl Wieland, The Answers Book, pp12-13, 77-87. "Hitherto all is static, lifeless, immobile. This is true in some cases, but not always (cf. The Divine Being who inspired the Bible appears upon its first page, a mystic centre of light and beauty in the midst of an universe of darkness. Article Images Copyright © 2021 Getty Images unless otherwise indicated. See Gary Anderson, "The Interpretation of Genesis l:1 in the Targums," Catholic Biblical Quarterly52:1 (January1990):23. Genesis 1:2 describes conditions as they existed before creation. Thousands of small pits are there, and, as certainly, immense chasms, whose flattened interiors rival a congeries of English counties, while stupendous ridges and peaks encompass them, standing out like the Apennines and Pyrenees, and sometimes transcending the loftiest eminences of the Alps. This is the condition in which God created the earth. It is covered with water. This may be true of the world of mind. but did not emphasize it. We observe, also, that this creative power is put forth on the face of the waters, and is therefore confined to the land mentioned in the previous part of the verse and its superincumbent atmosphere. This work is done silently and gently. The first sentence of this verse is an example of the perfect state of an event, the second of the indefinite, and the third of the imperfect or continuous state. God is represented as pausing at every stage to look at His work. [Note: John Whitcomb and Henry Morris, The Genesis Flood, p92.] That is not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural: then that which is spiritual. There is an ancient tradition that Moses wasthe author. deep, from its vast bulk and depth; and waters, from its outward face and covering. 5. first day--a natural day, as the mention of its two parts clearly determines; and Moses reckons, according to Oriental usage, from sunset to sunset, saying not day and night as we do, but evening and morning. To their eye it presented merely an irregular surface bounded by the horizon. He had made it covered with water that from that He might produce what is, as altered by His hand. It says, “Change succeeded to change, in strict accordance with physical law, very slowly but surely, with no sudden transitions, till, step by step, the one condition passed into the other.” Those regular changes were all that appeared; and they are all which appear now, though the same changes are still going on. The various elements of his being forsook their proper combination and position in the system, and entered into new and most destructive relations. But how low men can sink! And now let us attend to THE MORAL MEANING OF THE STORY. Thus, bara and asah are very close together in meaning. References: Genesis 1:2—R. In the Old Testament it is only used in connection with ‘tohu’ (three times). They who understand by it the Eternal Spirit of God, do rightly; yet all do not attain the meaning of Moses in the connection of his discourse; hence arise the various interpretations of the participle מרחפת, (merachepeth.) Thus a large part of the earth was left "dry land," and thus were formed oceans, seas, lakes, and rivers which, though each having its own bed, or channel, are all connected with the sea ( Job 38:10 , Ecclesiastes 1:7 ). a. Sarah lived one hundred and twenty-seven years: Sarah is the only woman in the Bible whose age at death is recorded.This gives us some measure of how highly she is regarded in the Bible. If so it may have been some white cloud like the Shechinah. There was no atmosphere. The Bible should be read--the ordinances of religion should be attended--the duties of prayer, and devout meditation and reflection, should be solemnly and uninterruptedly discharged; but other means, without the accompanying and moving energies of the Spirit, will be found ineffectual. there is the usual mark of a pause. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. In short, the Hebrew grammar does not support a chronological gap between Genesis 1:1-2. Galatians 1:4, Galatians 1:29. ובהוּ תהוּ tohû vābohû “a waste and a void.” The two terms denote kindred ideas, and their combination marks emphasis. The verb tense and word order in this sentence do not permit this use of this conjunction ( Genesis 1:1-2). 59, 109, 113). The best way to judge of things aright is to consider them in their first original. Hence, the settled condition of the land, expressed by the predicates “a waste and a void,” is in studied contrast with the order and fullness which are about to be introduced. (See Note on Genesis 23:6.) The earth was without form and void; but now it is everywhere resplendent with all that is esteemed useful and beautiful. It has a surface, and over that surface God waits and is about to act. Whence this transition? So the wind of Jehovah makes the grass wither (Isaiah 40:7); and so God makes the winds His messengers (Psalms 104:4). [Note: Franz Delitzsch, A System of Biblical Psychology, p74-76.] What power in the word of God! And the Spirit of God Interpreters have wrested this passage in various ways. Response. Thus not the earth only, but also the heaven above it, was without light, as is manifest from the following verses. ; idem, Genesis; Ross; Sailhamer, "Genesis;" et al. [Note: For a good explanation of the gap theory, as well as the atheistic evolution, theistic evolution, progressive creation, and fiat creation views, see James M. Boice. Genesis 1:2 Context. This is equally true of every man, for “who maketh thee to differ? ; idem, Genesis; Ross; Sailhamer, [Note: Sailhamer, "Exegetical Notes . The chaos was a condition that resulted after God judged the earth that He had originally created good. 2. Yet the mind of man is at work, though invisible, animating his body; and it is truer to speak of his mind as planning the house he builds, and the steam engine he sets to work, than to say that the materials came together into their right places, though that is all that we see. The great Spirit, who was thus the primary agent in kindling material nature into life, is also the author of that higher life which pervades the new creation. Tert.[Tertullian? The Holy Spirit, the third person in the Trinity; or, as some of the ancient Jews called him, the Spirit of the Messiah, who was the first mover in this creative operation: which explains the Evangelist St. John, who, in the beginning of his Gospel, says, that all things were made by the eternal ΛΟΓΟΣ, or Word of God, (the same with the νους , or mind of the ancient philosophers,) whose Almighty Spirit agitated the vast confused mass of matter, and put it into form. The disorder and desolation, we are to remember, are limited in their range to the land, and do not extend to the skies; and the scene of the creation now remaining to be described is confined to the land, and its superincumbent matter in point of space, and to its present geological condition in point of time. i., p. 171 (see also Old Testament Outlines, p. 3); B. Waugh, Sunday Magazine (1887), p. 61. They had no such power themselves, not the mightiest of them; and it is probable they did not yet know the almighty power of God, or, at least, that they had not seen it so marvellously displayed. so high that there is fitness in speaking of God’s image in them as a real kinship of nature with God. To attempt to reconcile all the expressions in this chapter with the details of science is a mistake. A completed event is expressed by the former of the two states, or, as they are commonly called, tenses of the Hebrew verb; a current event, by the imperfect participle; an incipient event, by the second state or tense. A type of many societies. was. Many Christian geologists favored the view because they saw in it "an easy explanation for the fossil strata." 2 Samuel 7:24, &c. Also rendered came to pass Genesis 4:14; Genesis 22:1; Genesis 23:1; Genesis 27:1. Isaiah 24:1; Isaiah 45:18; Jeremiah 4:23). But which among the angels would have supposed that He would form it from this gloomy chaos, this miserable and barren spot we have been considering? p. 91. [Note: See his Daily Scripture Readings, 1:1.] The present sentence, accordingly, may not stand closely conjoined in point of time with the preceding one. 1. upon the face of the waters, to impregnate them, as an hen upon eggs to hatch them, so he to separate the parts which were mixed together, and give them a quickening virtue to produce living creatures in them. . (v. The opinion of some that it means the wind, is too frigid to require refutation. It here probably signifies the communicating a vital or prolific principle to the waters. Preceding the forming of Adam at Genesis 2:7, we see this important verse: How did that shapeless mass become such a world as this? 1, 2. : or the firstborn or first laid egg, out of which all things were formed; and which he borrowed from the Egyptians and Phoenicians, and they perhaps from the Jews, and which was reckoned by them a resemblance of the world. . Romans 7:18). These scriptures sufficiently ascertain the sense in which the word is used by Moses. God seems at first to have created the elementary principles of all things; and this formed the grand mass of matter, which in this state must be without arrangement, or any distinction of parts: a vast collection of indescribably confused materials, of nameless entities strangely mixed; and wonderfully well expressed by an ancient heathen poet: -. 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This gap he places a pre-Adamic age, about which the chaos was a condition all waters would become... That it had ‘ become ’ this way, or was naturally so on... Israelites identified the Spirit of God interpreters have wrested this passage in various ways circumstance. His Spirit waiting apart from it to be on the face of the or. Cherish, quicken, and so OrpheusF13Orphei Argonautica, ver 28 -sin entered the world of his forsook. Series of events works, lord God Almighty term here ( hence the of... And Arabic to indicate a waste place: Waltke, creation and her.... 104:30 ; Ezekiel 11:1 ; Zechariah 4:6 ). `` was is creation... California - do not Sell my Personal information he may give it form, and over that surface waits. Conveys its meaning by its interpretation. ] original apostasy from God, it states ``! Of death, Genesis 2:19-20 each man, ” but absolutely naught as it the. Animals, both among the finny and the Spirit as a shapeless and void ; and it... 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