10 And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.

11 And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding m fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.

1 Heb. 6:7. m Luke 6:44.

11. Thus far there were mountains and valleys, seas and rivers-but there was as yet on vegetation. This was, therefore, now to be produced by the same Almighty power of God. The earth had no germinating principle of itself. All its products must now proceed from God's ordering. This producing of the vegetable tribes was prior to the calling forth of sun and moon, to show God's creatorship as being prior and superior to natural laws.

seas and oceans, and in plains trav- | evil of matter-and to show that ersed by rivers, and dotted with God's work, which has since been lakes, (see Job 28.) These irregular-polluted and despoiled by sin, was, ities of surface are necessary, as in the beginning, unequivocally good. Buffon remarks, to preserve vegetation and life on the terrestrial globe. If the land were even, and regular, and level, the sea would cover it. It is said by the Apostle Peter that the scoffers of the last days are "willingly ignorant of this one thing that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water, and in (through) the water," 2 Peter 3: 5. (See Introduction.) Job 33:8 refers to this Divine act of creation, "Who shut up the sea with doors, and said, Let the earth, etc. Jew. Bib.-The Hitherto shalt thou come, but no fur-earth shall sprout forth sprouts. The ther." See, also, Ps. 33:7; Prov. 8:29. Doubtless this change, so sudden, so universal, must have been attended with violent convulsions of nature, upheavals, etc. But of this we have here no account. A striking picture of this scene is drawn by the Psalmist in Ps. 104: 6-9," the hymn of creation." See, also, Ps. 136: 6; 24: 2; Neh. 9:6. The great rivers, lakes, seas and oceans, are but one mass of different waters running one into the other. Job 37 and 38 ch; Prov. 8:29.

10. Earth. The name which Moses, by inspiration, uses of the entire globe, (vs. 1,) is here given by God to the "dry land." ¶ Seas. This term is from a root meaning noisy agitation, as of the roaring deep, and is a general term including all waters -according to the Heb. usage. It is now declared that this work of God's creative power was GOOD. This is an important delaration as against the heathen view of the essential

term here rendered grass-is, properly, the tender blades first shooting from the earth. The margin reads tender grass; and it is often rendered "tender herb," Deut. 32: 2; Job, 38: 27, and "tender grass," 2 Sam. 23: 4; Prov. 27: 25; Job, 6:5; Ps. 23: 2, (margin.) It includes, not merely the grass, but the whole tribe of grasses just sprouting from the ground. The herb, etc., (lit.) herb seeding-seed. This covers, properly, all the vegetable world not included in grasses and trees. They were to be seed-producing, and such as are propagated by seed. But the power so to propagate was here given by God. The three terms here used answer to the three great subdivisions of the vegetable kingdom.

We should expect this order to be followed-that vegetation would clothe the earth before animals were created. If some indications are found in geological strata that animals and plants coexisted from earli

12 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: and God saw that it was good.

13 And the evening and the morning were the third day. 14¶ And God said, Let there be a lights in the firmament of the heaven, to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years.

n Deut. 4:19. Ps. 74:16; 136:7. o Ps. 74: 17; 104: 19.

est times, there is no disproof of a previous period of vegetation alone, of which no records are extant except in the Inspired history. The proof from science of the existence of plants before animals is inferential and still may be deemed satisfactory."-Dana. We further learn, in the next chapter, (ch. 2: 5,) that God made every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew-that this was not spontaneous growth, nor from natural causes, but by the Divine command, introducing natural causes.

chaia, p. 163. And thus revelation and science agree.

12, 13. And the carth brought forth (lit.) sprouts, herb seeding seed after its kind, and tree producing fruit whose seed (was) in itself (in it) after its kind; and God saw that (it was) good. And it was evening and it was morning, a third day.

OBSERVE.-The term "create" is not used in reference to vegetable life-as this is not life in the higher sense of conscious life-and so it comes in, under the head of matter. The term bara, which is used in this narrative only to introduce a new department of creation, does not, therefore, occur again, (after vs. 1,) until animal life is introduced, (vs. 21.) The analogy which the first three days' work bears to the work of the last three days, is remarkable-the last three perfecting the arrangements of the first three. On the first three days were produced the elements, and on the last three, the compound organisms. The first and fourth days' work has reference to the light-the fourth day giving us the luminaries, or light-bearers, while the first had given us the light itself and as on the fifth day we have the birds and fishes, so on the second, we had the air and waters. And as the earth and the plants are arranged on the third day, so the creeping things, and cattle, and man, on the sixth.

¶ (The) friit-trce, etc., rather fruit-tree yielding, (lit., making, or producing) fruit. The same term is used here (rendered yielding,) as is used of God "making," (verse 7. After his kind. This was to be the law, of like producing like. And this law, like every other law of nature, is derived from the creative power of God, and dependent always on His will. Whose seed. This is an explanatory clause. The law is, that the plant, or tree, should have the seed in itself-rather, in it-in the fruit, as the element of propagation; and so it should be a principle of self-propagation upon the earth by means of the seed which it has in it. And it was so. It came to pass, as God Almighty commanded. "He commanded and they were created," (Ps. 148: 5.) "By this statement we are taught that each species (kind) is permanently reproductive, variable within narrow limits, incapable of permanent intermixture with other species, and a direct product of creative power."-Dawson's Ar- 14. After the earth was thus

§ 5. FOURTH DAY'S WORK-THE LUMINARIES. Ch. 1:14-19.