Genesis 1:9-13

The Third Day Two Creative Acts. (1) The Separation of Sea and Earth (Genesis 1:9). (2) The Creation of the Vegetable World (Genesis 1:11)

9. Let the waters … appear In this verse the dry land is rendered visible by the removal of the waters, that were under the Heaven, into their special place. The account reads as if the Earth had existed previously, but had been submerged in the water. It is not stated that God made the earth at this juncture; but only that He now caused it to become visible. The description of the formation of the earth, like other details of the old Hebrew cosmogony, has been omitted either for the sake of brevity, or in order to free the account from materials which were out of harmony with its general religious teaching.

unto one place According to the Hebrew conception the Earth was supposed to have a flat surface, surrounded on all sides by the ocean; while the ocean was connected by subterranean channels with vast reservoirs of water that lay under the earth and fed the springs and rivers. Cf. Psalms 24:2, "for he hath founded it (the world) upon the seas, and established it upon the floods"; Psalms 139:9, "if I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea." In the story of the Flood we read that "all the fountains of the great deep" (Genesis 7:11 P) were broken up.

Instead of "place," the LXX reads "gathering," συναγωγήν, the word which is reproduced in the familiar term "synagogue." It has been suggested that this may very possibly represent the original reading; and that, at any rate, the less usual word מִקְוֶה, miqveh= "gathering," was more likely to be altered in transcription into the common word מָקוֹם, maqom= "place," than vice versa. On the other hand, the word מִקְוֶה, miqveh, occurs in the following verse (Genesis 1:10), "the gathering togetherof the waters" (τὰ συστέματα τῶν ὑδάτων), in a slightly different sense, and a copyist may have introduced the word here by accident and given rise to the LXX rendering.

the dry land That is, the surface, or crust, as it would now be called, of the earth, consisting of soil, sand, and rock. Christian tradition, until the beginning of the 19th or the end of the 18th century, was satisfied that the Hebrew narrative, attributing the origin of the earth's crust to the work of a single day, adequately met the requirements of terrestrial phenomena, and did justice to the conception of Divine omnipotence. The rise of the science of Geology, in the last century and a half, has totally transformed educated opinion. It is recognized that the Hebrew cosmogony is devoid of scientific value (see p. 4). Geologists are agreed that the cooling process, by which the surface of the glowing and molten body of our planet came to be sufficiently solidified to support the weight of vast seas, must have extended over long ages to be reckoned by millions and millions of years. The subsequent geological ages, Palaeozoic, Mesozoic, Cainozoic, and Quaternary, which account for the gradual formation of the rocks as we know them, have been demonstrated to have covered a similarly stupendous length of time. The thicknesses of the successive geological strata furnish the means of estimating the relative durations of the periods. The infinite tracts of time and space, which modern science has in an increasing degree revealed to be in relation to one supreme and all embracing harmony, testify to the omnipotence of the Divine Will and Wisdom even more impressively than did the brief and intermittent acts of Creative Power, which in the legends of the ancient world accounted for the origin of earth and sea and stars.

The LXX adds at the end of the verse, "And the water that was under the heaven was gathered together into their gatherings (συναγωγὰς αὐτῶν), and the dry land appeared," which looks like a gloss. But αὐτῶν implies a Heb. original (i.e. the plural form הַמַּיִם, "the waters," not the sing. τὸ ὕδωρ).