'And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our
likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of
the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the
cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping
thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man
in His own image: in the image of God created He him;
male and female created He them. And God blessed them:
and God 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 it was so. And
God saw every thing that He had made, and, behold, it
was very good. And the evening and the morning were the
sixth day.
'Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all
the host of them. And on the seventh day God ended His
work which He had made; and He rested on the seventh day
from all His 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 God created and made.'
--GENESIS i. 26-ii. 3.
We are not to look to Genesis for a scientific cosmogony, and are not
to be disturbed by physicists' criticisms on it as such. Its purpose is
quite another, and far more important; namely, to imprint deep and
ineffaceable the conviction that the one God created all things. Nor
must it be forgotten that this vision of creation was given to people
ignorant of natural science, and prone to fall back into surrounding
idolatry. The comparison of the creation narratives in Genesis with the
cuneiform tablets, with which they evidently are most closely
connected, has for its most important result the demonstration of the
infinite elevation above their monstrosities and puerilities, of this
solemn, steadfast attribution of the creative act to the one God. Here
we can only draw out in brief the main points which the narrative
brings into prominence.
1. The revelation which it gives is the truth, obscured to all other
men when it was given, that one God 'in the beginning created the
heaven and the earth.' That solemn utterance is the keynote of the
whole. The rest but expands it. It was a challenge and a denial for all
the beliefs of the nations, the truth of which Israel was the champion
and missionary. It swept the heavens and earth clear of the crowd of
gods, and showed the One enthroned above, and operative in, all things.
We can scarcely estimate the grandeur, the emancipating power, the
all-uniting force, of that utterance. It is a worn commonplace to us.
It was a strange, thrilling novelty when it was written at the head of
this narrative. _Then_ it was in sharp opposition to beliefs that have
long been dead to us; but it is still a protest against some living
errors. Physical science has not spoken the final word when it has
shown us how things came to be as they are. There remains the deeper
question, What, or who, originated and guided the processes? And the
only answer is the ancient declaration, 'In the beginning God created
the heaven and the earth.'
2. The record is as emphatic and as unique in its teaching as to the
mode of creation: 'God said ... and it was so.' That lifts us above all
the poor childish myths of the nations, some of them disgusting, many
of them absurd, all of them unworthy. There was no other agency than
the putting forth of the divine will. The speech of God is but a symbol
of the flashing forth of His will. To us Christians the antique phrase
suggests a fulness of meaning not inherent in it, for we have learned
to believe that 'all things were made by Him' whose name is 'The Word
of God'; but, apart from that, the representation here is sublime. 'He
spake, and it was done'; that is the sign-manual of Deity.
3. The completeness of creation is emphasised. We note, not only the
recurrent 'and it was so,' which declares the perfect correspondence of
the result with the divine intention, but also the recurring 'God saw
that it was good.' His ideals are always realised. The divine artist
never finds that the embodiment of His thought falls short of His
thought.
'What act is all its thought had been?
What will but felt the fleshly screen?
But He has no hindrances nor incompletenesses in His creative work, and
the very sabbath rest with which the narrative closes symbolises, not
His need of repose, but His perfect accomplishment of His purpose. God
ceases from His works because 'the works were finished,' and He saw
that all was very good.
4. The progressiveness of the creative process is brought into strong
relief. The work of the first four days is the preparation of the
dwelling-place for the living creatures who are afterwards created to
inhabit it. How far the details of these days' work coincide with the
order as science has made it out, we are not careful to ask here. The
primeval chaos, the separation of the waters above from the waters
beneath, the emergence of the land, the beginning of vegetation there,
the shining out of the sun as the dense mists cleared, all find
confirmation even in modern theories of evolution. But the intention of
the whole is much rather to teach that, though the simple utterance of
the divine will was the agent of creation, the manner of it was not a
sudden calling of the world, as men know it, into being, but majestic,
slow advance by stages, each of which rested on the preceding. To apply
the old distinction between justification and sanctification, creation
was a work, not an act. The Divine Workman, who is always patient,
worked slowly then as He does now. Not at a leap, but by deliberate
steps, the divine ideal attains realisation.
5. The creation of living creatures on the fourth and fifth days is so
arranged as to lead up to the creation of man as the climax. On the
fifth day sea and air are peopled, and their denizens 'blessed,' for
the equal divine love holds every living thing to its heart. On the
sixth day the earth is replenished with living creatures. Then, last of
all, comes man, the apex of creation. Obviously the purpose of the
whole is to concentrate the light on man; and it is a matter of no
importance whether the narrative is correct according to zoology, or
not. What it says is that God made all the universe, that He prepared
the earth for the delight of living creatures, that the happy birds
that soar and sing, and the dumb creatures that move through the paths
of the seas, and the beasts of the earth, are all His creating, and
that man is linked to them, being made on the same day as the latter,
and by the same word, but that between man and them all there is a
gulf, since he is made in the divine image. That image implies
personality, the consciousness of self, the power to say 'I,' as well
as purity. The transition from the work of the first four days to that
of creating living things must have had a break. No theory has been
able to bridge the chasm without admitting a divine act introducing the
new element of life, and none has been able to bridge the gulf between
the animal and human consciousness without admitting a divine act
introducing 'the image of God' into the nature common to animal and
man. Three facts as to humanity are thrown up into prominence: its
possession of the image of God, the equality and eternal
interdependence of the sexes, and the lordship over all creatures. Mark
especially the remarkable wording of verse 27: 'created He _him_ male
and female created He _them_.' So 'neither is the woman without the
man, nor the man without the woman.' Each is maimed apart from the
other. Both stand side by side, on one level before God. The germ of
the most 'advanced' doctrines of the relations of the sexes is hidden
here.