to shine. Question: whether this was only said about the fixed stars, or also about
1 36 Unfinished Literal Commentary on Genesis signify the making of things quite different from each other, and yet ofthings not to be made on another day, because they are fixed to the earth and continuous with it by their roots?
But one can also ask why God did not impose names on these things. Or was this left out because the great number of them hardly allowed for it? This ques tion, though, is best left for consideration later on, when we observe other things that God did not call by their names, as he did with light and heaven and earth and sea. And there was made evening and there was made morning, a third day (Gn
1:13).
Genesis 1:14-15: Problem about heavenly bodies being "for days"
12, 36. And God said: Let lamps be made in the solid structure ofheaven, in order to shine upon the earth and to divide between day and night, and to befor signs andfor times andfor days andforyears, and to befor brilliance in the solid structure ofheaven, in order to shine upon the earth (Gn 1 : 1 41 5). On the fourth day the lamps were made, about which it says, and let them befor days. So what about the three days that have passed without lamps? Or why will these lamps be "for days," if even without them there can have been days? Or is it because the march of time and its intervals can be more obviously distinguished by human beings in the motions of these lamps or luminaries?
Or is this counting of days and nights of value for distinguishing between that nature which was not made and those which have been made, so that morning was mentioned on account of the specific beauty of the things that were made, and evening on account of their deficiencies? Since as far as the one by whom they were made is concerned they are beautiful and shapely, whereas taken in themselves they can be defective, because they have been made from nothing; and insofar as they are not defective, this is no thanks to the stuff they are made of, which is from nothing, but thanks to him who supremely is, and who makes them to be in their proper kind and order.47
More questions about the lampsfixed in thefirmament
37. And God said: Let lamps be made in the solid structure ofheaven, in order to shine. Question: whether this was only said about the fixed stars, or also about the wandering ones? But the two lamps, the greater and the lesser, are counted
47. This paragraph seems entirely out of place here. 1t would have made better sense in 6, 28 above, where he discusses the morning and evening of the first day; or in 8, 43 below, where we come to the evening and morning of this fourth day. Did Augustine perhaps get the notes mixed up, from which he was dictating the work (the notes would have been on wax tablets), or was his amanuensis responsible for the confusion? Confusion, surely, there has been.