The Pulpit Commentaries
Genesis 1:9-13
EXPOSITION
Day three. The distribution of land and water and the production of vegetation on this day engaged the formative energy of the word of Elohim. And God said, Let the waters under heaven be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear. To explain the second part of this phenomenon as a consequence of the first, the disclosure of the solid ground by the retirement of the waters from its surface, and not rather vice versa, is to reverse the ordinary processes of nature. Modern analogy suggests that the breaking up of the hitherto universal ocean into seas, lakes, and rivers was effected by the upheaval of the land through the action of subterranean fires, or the subsidence of the earth's crust in consequence of the cooling and shrinking of the interior mass. Psalms 104:7 hints at electric agency in connection with the elevation of the mountains and the sinking of the ocean beds. "At thy rebuke they (the waters) fled: at the voice of thy thunder they hasted away (were scattered). The mountains rose, the valleys sank (ἀναβαίνουσιν ὄρη καὶ καταβαίνουσι πεδία—LXX.; ascendunt montes, et descendunt campi—Jerome) to the place which thou hadst established for them" (Perowne). The gathering of the waters into one place implies no more than that they were, kern this day forward, to be collected into one vast body, and restrained within bounds in a place by themselves, so as to admit of the exposure of the earth's soil. The "place founded for them" was, of course, the depths and hollows in the earth's crust, into which they were immediately withdrawn, not through direct supernatural agency, but by their own natural gravitation. The configuration of the dry land is not described; but there is reason to believe that the original distribution of land and water was the same, or nearly the same, as it is at present. Physical geographers have observed that the coast lines of the great continents and the mountain ranges generally run from north-east to south-west, and that these lines are in reality parts of great circles, tangent to the polar circle, and at right angles to a line drawn from the sun's center to the moon's, when these bodies are either in conjunction or in opposition. These circles, it has further been remarked, are "the lines on which the thin crust of a cooling globe would be most likely to be ruptured by its internal tidal wave." Hence, though considerably modified by the mighty revolutions through which at successive periods the earth has passed, "these, with certain subordinate lines of fracture, have determined the forms of continents from the beginning". And it was so. Though the separation of the dry land from the waters and the distribution of both were effected by Divine agency, nothing in the Mosaic narrative obliges us to think that these works were instantaneously completed. "There is truly no difficulty in supposing that the formation of the hills kept on through the succeeding creative days" (Lange). "Generally the works of the single creative days consist only in laying foundations; the birth process that is introduced in each extends its efficacy be, yond it" (Delitzsch). "Not how long, but how many times, God created is the thing intended to be set forth" by the creative days (Hoffman). Scripture habitually represents the world in an aspect at once natural and supernatural, speaking of it as natura and creatura, φυìσις and κτιμσις; and although the latter is the view exhibited with greatest prominence, indeed exclusively, in the Mosaic cosmogony, vet the frowner is not thereby denied, Not immediateness, but certainty of execution, is implied in the "it was so" appended to the creative fiat.
And God called the dry land Earth. In opposition to the firmament, which was named" the heights" (shamayim), the dry land was styled "the fiats," "Aretz" (cf. Sansc; dhara; Pehlev; arta; Latin, terra; Gothic, airtha; Scottish, yird; English, earth; rid. Gesenius). Originally applied to the dry ground as distinguished from the seas, as soon as it was understood that the solid earth was continuous beneath the water masses, by an easy extension of meaning it came to signify the whole surface of the globe. And the gathering together of the waters called he Seas. Yamim, from yom, to boil or foam, is applied in Scripture to any large collection of water (cf. Genesis 14:3; Numbers 34:11; Deuteronomy 4:49; Joel 2:20). "The plural form seas shows that the one place consists of several basins" (Murphy). And God saw that it was good. The waters having been permanently withdrawn to the place founded for them by the upheaval of the great mountain ranges, and the elevation of the continental areas, the work thus accomplished is sealed by the Divine approval. The separation of the land and water was good, as a decided advance towards the completion of the cosmos, as the proper termination of the work commenced upon the previous day, as the production of two elements in themselves beautiful, and in separation useful as abodes of life, with which they were in due course to be replenished. "To our view," says Dawson, "that primeval dry land would scarcely have seemed good. It was a world of bare, rocky peaks and verdureless valleys—here active volcanoes, with their heaps of scoriae, and scarcely cooled lava currents—there vast mud-fiats, recently upheaved from the bottom of the waters—nowhere even a blade of grass or a clinging lichen. Yet it was good in the view of its Maker, who could see it in relation to the uses for which he had made it, and as a fit preparatory step to the new wonders he was soon to introduce. "Besides," the first dry land may have presented crags, and peaks, and ravines, and volcanic cones in a more marvelous and perfect manner than any succeeding continents, even as the dry and barren moon now, in this respect, far surpasses the earth".
And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so. Three terms are employed to describe the vegetation here summoned into existence. Kalisch regards the first as a generic term, including the second and the third; but they are better understood as distinct classes:—
(1) grass, deshe, first sprouts of the earth, tender herb, in which the seed is not noticed, as not being obvious to the eye; "tenera herha sine semine saltem conspicuo" (Rosenmüller); probably the various kinds of grasses that supply food for the lower animals (cf. Psalms 23:2);
(2) "the herb (eseb) yielding seed," the more mature herbage, in which the seed is the most striking characteristic; the larger description of plants and vegetables (of. Genesis 9:3); and
(3) "the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon (or above) the earth." The first clause describes its specific nature—"fruit-bearing;" the second, its peculiar characteristic—enclosing the seed in its fruit; the third, its external appearance—rising above the ground. "This division is simple and natural. It proceeds upon two concurrent marks, the structure and the seed. In the first the green blade is prominent; in the second, the stalk; in the third, the woody texture. In the first the seed is not conspicuous; in the second it is conspicuous; in the third it is enclosed in a fruit which is conspicuous" (Murphy). The phrase "after his kind, appended to the second and third, seems to indicate that the different species of plants were already fixed. The modern dogma of the origin of species by development would thus be declared to be un-biblical, as it has not yet been proved to be scientific. The utmost that can be claimed as established is that "species," qua species, have the power of variation along the line of certain characteristics belonging to themselves, but not that any absolutely new species has ever been developed with power indefinitely to multiply its kind.
And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind. It is noticeable that the vegetation of the third day sprang from the soil in the same natural manner in which all subsequent vegetation has done, viz; by growth, which seems to resolve the well-known problem of whether the tree was before the seed, or the seed before the tree, in favor of the latter alternative, although in the order of nature the parent is always before the offspring. In all probability the seed forms were in the soil from the first, only waiting to be vitalized by the Ruach Elohim—The Spirit of God; or they may have been then created. Certainly they were not evolved from the dead matter of the dry land. Scripture, no more than science, is acquainted with Abiogenesis. Believing that "if it were given to her to- look beyond the abyss of geologically recorded time, she might "witness the evolution of living protoplasm from not living matter," science yet honestly affirms "that she sees no reason for believing that the feat (of vitalizing dead matter) has been performed yet"; and Scripture is emphatic that, if it is protoplasm which makes organized beings, the power which manufactures protoplasm is the Ruach Elohim, acting in obedience to the Divine Logos. The time when the earth put forth its verdure, viz; towards the close of the third day, after light, air, earth, and water had been prepared and so adjusted as to minister to the life of plants, was a signal proof of the wisdom of the Creator and of the naturalness of his working.
And the evening and the morning were the third day. For exposition vid. Genesis 1:5. Has modern geological research any trace of this third day's vegetation? The late Hugh Miller identified the long-continued epoch of profuse vegetation, since then unparalleled in rapidity and luxuriance, which deposited the coal-measures of the carboniferous system, with the latter half of this Mosaic day. Dana, Dawson, and others, rejecting this conclusion of the eminent geologist on the ground that the underlying Devonian, Silurian, and Cambrian systems yield abundant fossiliferous remains of aquatic life, infer that the third day's vegetation is to be sought for among the "unresolved schists" of the Azoic period. The metamorphic rocks, it is true, have not as yet yielded any absolutely certain traces of vegetable life; and. indeed, it is an open question, among geologists whether any of the earliest formed metamorphic rocks now remain; but still it is susceptible of almost perfect demonstration that plants preceded animals upon the earth.
1. Among the hypozoic strata of this early period limestone rocks and graphite have been discovered, both of these being of organic origin.
2. In the process of cooling the earth must have been fitted for vegetable life a long time before animals could have existed.
3. As the luxuriant vegetation of the coal period prepared the way for the subsequent introduction of animal life by ridding the atmosphere of carbonic acid, so by the presence of plants must the ocean have been fitted to be the abode of aquatic life.
4. Vegetation, being directly, or mediately, the food of animals, must have had a previous existence. On these grounds Professor Dana concludes that the latter part of the Azoic age of geology corresponds with the latter half of the third creative day. In the Creation Series of Chaldean tablets are two fragments, which George Smith conjectures have a reference to the first part of the third day's work. The one is—
1. When the foundation of the ground of rock (thou didst make)
2. The foundation of the ground thou didst call …
3. Thou didst beautify the heaven …
4. To the face of the heaven …
5. Thou didst give …
The other, which is much more mutilated and obscure, describes the god Sat (or Assur) as saying—
7. Above the sea which is the sea of …
8. In front of the esara (firmament) which I have made.
9. Below the place I strengthen it
10. Let there be made also e-lu (earth?) for the dwelling of [man?]
HOMILETICS
Sea, land, and vegetation, contrasted and compared.
I. CONTRASTED, in respect of—
1. Their constitutions;—sea being matter liquid and mobile, land matter solid and dry, vegetation matter organized and living. All God's creatures have their own peculiar natures and characteristic structures. Each one's nature is that which makes it what it is. A change of constitutional characteristics would be equivalent to an alteration of being. The nature and structure of each are assigned it by God. Whence may be gathered—
(1) that if all creatures are not the same, it is because God has so willed it;
(2) that God has so willed it, for this among other reasons, that he delights in variety;
(3) that no separate creature can be other than its individual nature will allow;
(4) that to wish to be different from what God has made us is to be guilty of a foolish as well as sinful discontent; and
(5) that a creature's highest function is to act in accordance with its God-assigned nature.
2. Their situations; which were all different, yet all adapted to their respective natures and uses, and all wisely appointed. The waters were gathered into the earth's hollows, the lands raised above the ocean's surface, the plants spread upon the ground. It is the nature of water to seek the lowest levels; and, collected into ocean, lake, and riverbeds, it is of infinitely greater value than it would have been had it continued to overspread the globe. Similarly, Submerged beneath the waters, neither could the land have been arrayed in verdure, or made a habitation for the beasts, much less a home for man; nor could the plant, have grown without a dry soil to root in, while their beauty would have been concealed and their utility destroyed. And then each one has the place assigned it by God, out of which it cannot move, and against which it need not fret. The place founded for the waters has received them, and God has set a bound to them that they cannot pass. The dry land still maintains its elevation above the sea; and, as if in obedience to the Divine Creator's will, the waves are continually building up terraces and raised beaches in compensation for those they are taking down, Nor does it seem possible to shake off the vegetation from the soil. Scarcely has a square inch of ground been recovered from the waters, than it begins to deck itself in green. Let us learn here
(1) that every creature of God, man included, has its own place; which is
(2) best suited to its nature, functions, and roses on the earth; and
(3) assigned it by God. Also,
(4) that to vacate that place would be to run counter to God's ordinance and to God's wisdom, as well as to its own nature and usefulness; and
(5) that it becomes every one to abide in that sphere of life in which he has been placed by God contentedly, cheerfully and diligently seeking to glorify his Creator. Their operations; which are as diversified as are their natures and places. The sea moves, the land rests, the plant grows. The sea fertilizes and beautifies the soil, the soil sustains and nourishes the plant, the plant decorates the land and gives food to man and beast. The sea fills the clouds, the clouds fill the rivers and the streams, the rivers and the streams slake the thirst of the valleys, the valleys, yield their substance to the corn and the wine and the oil, and these again deliver up their treasures to their master—man. The sea divides the land into continents, which, in turn, are broken up into countries by rivers; and thus nationalities are formed, and peace promoted by division. As the great highway of the nations, too, the sea helps to diffuse abroad the blessings of civilization, and to teach men their interdependence. So, likewise, the land has its specific functions in the economy of nature, being assigned to support, sustain, enrich, instruct, and comfort man. And different from both are the uses of the plants. All which is fitted to suggest wisdom.
(1) That each separate creature has its own separate work to do, for which it has been fitted with appropriate powers—a lesson of diligence.
(2) That there are many different ways of serving God in this world—a lesson of charity.
(3) That God does not wish all his creatures either to be or to serve alike-a lesson of contentment.
(4) That the best way to serve God is to be ourselves and use the powers we possess, without condescending to imitate our neighbors-a lesson of individuality.
(5) That though each separate creature has its own nature, place, and power, yet each is subservient to the other, and all to the whole-a lesson of co-operation.
II. COMPARED, in respect of—
1. Their natures, as being God's creatures. Land, sea, and vegetation all owe their existence to his Almighty fiat, and all equally proclaim themselves to be his handiwork. Hence they are all God's property—the earth with its fullness, the sea with its treasures, the plants with their virtues. Consequently man should
(1) reverently worship him who made the sea and formed the dry land, and caused the grass to grow;
(2) thankfully receive those highly serviceable creatures at God's hand; and,
(3) remembering whose they are and that himself is but a steward, faithfully employ them for their Creator's glory.
2. Their characters, as being obedient to the Divine word. "Gathered be the seas," said the word, and the seas were gathered. "Let the dry land appear," and it appeared. "Let the grass grow." And the grass grew. Let the land, sea, and plants be our teachers. Obedience the first duty of a creature. Nothing can compensate for its want (1 Samuel 15:22). And this obedience must be prompt, complete, and continual, like that of sea, land, and vegetation.
3. Their varieties. The seas were divided into oceans, lakes, rivers; the land into mountains, hills, and valleys the plants into grasses, herbs, and trees. God loves diversity in unity. As in a great house there are vessels of small quantity and vessels of large quantity (Isaiah 22:24), so in the world are the creatures divided into more important and less. In society men are distributed into ranks and classes according to their greatness and ability; in the Church there are "babes" and there are "perfect men" in Christ; there are those possessed of many talents and much grace, and those whose endowments and acquirements are of smaller dimensions.
4. Their qualities, as being all good in their Creator's estimation. The highest excellence of a creature is to be approved by its Maker, rot simply commended by its fellow-creature; to be good in the judgment of God, and not merely in the sight of men.