now proceeds to describe man more particularly, repeating first of all what he had said concerning his creation in the first chapter. And though the recapitulations may seem superfluous, yet as the divine historian wishes to maintain a continuation of his history, with all due convenience and order, the repetition is by no means useless.
V. 4, 5a. These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that Jehovah God made earth and heaven. And no plant of the field was yet in the earth, and no herb of the field had yet sprung up.
"In the day" is here to be taken for an indefinite time, as if Moses had said, At that time the state of all things was most beautiful; but now I must describe a condition of things far different. We need not here inquire however in a superstitious manner, why Moses chose to use these rustic forms of expression concerning "the plants of the field" and "herbs of the field." For his object now is to describe the creation of man in its more circumstantial particulars.
V. 5b, 6. For Jehovah God had not caused it to rain upon the earth: and there was not a man to till the ground; but there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground.
There was not as yet any rain, Moses says, to water the earth; but a certain mist went up and watered the whole face of the earth, to cause it to bring forth more abundantly afterwards. Now these things belong properly to the third day.
III. V. 7. And Jehovah God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.
Moses here returns to the work of the sixth day and shows whence this cultivator of the earth came; namely, that God formed him out of the ground, as the potter forms in his hand the vessel out of clay. Hence Moses does not represent Jehovah God as saying in this case as in that of all the other creatures, "Let the earth bring forth man;" but "Let Us make man." He describes God as thus speaking in this case in order that he might set forth the excellency of the human race, and that he might make manifest that peculiar counsel to which God had recourse in creating or making man. However after his creation man grew and multiplied as all the other animals and beasts of the earth multiply. For the seed of all animals coagulates in the womb and is formed in the same manner in them all. In this case of generation there is no difference between the foetus formed in the cow and that formed in the woman. But with reference to their first creation Moses testifies that there was the greatest possible difference. For he shows in this divine record that the human nature was created by a peculiarity of divine counsel and wisdom, and formed by the very finger of God.
This difference, which God made in the original creation of man and of cattle, likewise manifests forth the immortality of the soul, of which we spoke above. And though all the other works of God are full of wonder and admiration and truly magnificent, yet that man is the most excellent and glorious creature of all is evident from the fact that God in creating him had recourse to deep counsel and to a mode entirely different from that which he adopted in creating all the other creatures. For God does not leave it to the earth, to form or bring forth man, as it brought forth beasts and trees. But God forms man himself, "in the image" of himself, as a participator of the divine nature and as one designed to enjoy the rest of God. Hence Adam before he is formed by Jehovah, is a mere lifeless lump of earth, lying on the ground. God takes that lump of earth into his hand and forms out of it a most beautiful creature, a partaker of immortality.
Now if Aristotle were to hear these things he would burst out into a loud laugh and would say, that the whole matter was a fable; a very pleasant one indeed but a very absurd one; that man, who was a lump of earth as to his original, is so formed by divine wisdom to be capable of immortality. For those ancient philosophers, as Socrates and others, who taught the immortality of the soul, were laughed at and almost cast out by all their fellows. But is it not the very extremity of folly for reason to take this great offense, when it beholds the generation of man to this very day full of greatest wonder! For who would not judge it an absurdity to suppose that man, who is designed to live eternally, should be born from one single drop as it were of seed from the loins of the father? There is even a greater apparent absurdity in this than in Moses saying, that man was formed from a lump of earth by the finger of God. But by all this folly reason plainly shows that she understands nothing of God, who, by the efficacy of a single thought, thus makes out of a lump of earth not only the seed of man, but man himself; and makes also, as Moses afterwards says, the woman out of a single rib of the man. This then is the origin of man!
Man therefore having been thus created, male and female, from their blood under the divine blessing is generated the whole human race. And although this generation is common to man and beasts, that similarity by no means detracts from the glory of our original formation; that we are vessels of God, fashioned by his own hand; that he is our potter and we his clay; as Isaiah speaks in his 64th chapter. Nor does this solemn state of things pertain to our original only, but pervades our whole life, and even unto death and in the tomb we are still the clay of this Potter!
From this same creation of man also we may learn, what the real power of free will is, of which our adversaries boast so much. We have indeed in a certain sense a free will, in those things which are put under us. For we are by the command of God appointed lords of the fishes of the sea, of the fowls of heaven and of the beasts of the field. These we kill when we please. We enjoy the food, and other blessings they supply. But in the things pertaining unto God, which are above us and not put under us, man has no free-will at all. But he is in reality as clay in the hand of the potter. He is placed under the mere power of God, passively and not actively. In this our real position we choose nothing, we do nothing. On the contrary we are chosen, we are prepared, we are regenerated; we receive only; as the prophet Isaiah saith, "Thou art our potter; we are thy clay," Is. 64:8.
But here a lawful and holy inquiry of a new description may be made. As Moses speaks of the creation of man here in a new phraseology, "And Jehovah God formed man of the dust of the ground;" and as he did not use the same form of expression above, when the other living creatures were created, so he here mentions a further distinction in man which is not said of any other animate creature: "And God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life." This Moses does not say in reference to any of the beasts, though all beasts, as well as man, have the breath of life in their nostrils. We may here therefore sacredly inquire first, why it is that Moses is here led to speak thus. And secondly, why it is recorded in this place concerning man only, that God "breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul," when all animals throughout the whole Scripture are called "living creatures." The divine expressions recorded by Moses above are, "Let the earth bring forth every living creature after his kind." But here the phraseology is altogether changed, "And man became a living soul."
These were the things that, doubtless, moved the patriarchs, the holy fathers and prophets of old, to examine diligently passages of this description in order to discover what these singular forms of speech might signify, being assured that the sacred historian intended by them something peculiar and great and especially worthy of knowledge.
For if you look at the mere animal life of which Moses is here speaking, there is no difference between the man and the ass. For the animal life in both stands in need of meat and drink. It needs sleep and rest. The bodies of both grow and are fattened alike by meat and drink. And from the want of meat and drink both waste and perish alike. In both the stomach receives the food and transmits it when digested to the belly, which generates the blood, by which all the members are refreshed and restored. When we consider these things in themselves, I say, there is no difference between the man and the beast. But Moses in this place so exalts the life of man that he says of him alone of all animals, that he "became a living soul;" not a living creature or a living thing like all the beasts of the earth, but in a more exalted sense "a living soul;" and that, because he was created "in the image of God," which image there can be no doubt whatever, shone with a peculiar brightness in the countenances of Adam and Eve, while yet in their state of innocence. Hence it is that even after the sin and fall, the heathen
