Vulgate: Caelum caeli Domino; see also Dt 10: 14. He has made the same allusion earlier on, in
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What can evening and morning, night and day, befor spiritual light?
17, 32. But if it was a spiritual light that was made when God said Let light be made (Gn 1:3), it is not that true light, co-eternal with the Father, that is to be understood, through which all things were made, and which enlightens every human being,18 but that about which it could be said: Before all things there was created wisdom (Sir 1 :4). When that eternal and unchangeable Wisdom, you see, which was begotten, not made, transfers itself into spiritual and rational creatures, as it does into holy souls, so that being thus enlightened they can them selves become sources of light, there is produced in them a kind of infection of shining, glowing intelligence; and this can be taken as made light, made when God said, Let light be made, provided there was already a spiritual creation, which was signified by the word "heaven," where it is written, ln the beginning God made heaven and earth. This was not a corporeal heaven but the incorpo real heaven of the corporeal heaven,19 set that is above every kind ofbody, not by degrees of space, but by the sublimity of its nature. How they could be made simultaneously, however, both what was being enlightened and its actual enlightenment, while being given different times in the narrative, we were explaining a short while ago when dealing with the basic material of things.
33. But on what terms are we to understand the night succeeding this kind of light, so that evening might be made? From what sort of darkness, for that matter, could this sort of light be divided, where scripture says: And God divided between the light and the darkness (Gn 1 :4)? There were not any sinners and fools already, were there, falling away from the light of truth, between whom and those abiding in the same light God could divide, as between the light and the dark, and by calling the light day and the darkness night could show that he is not the operative cause of sins, but is still in control of them by the appropriate distribution of rewards and punishments? Or is "day" here the name for the whole oftime, and is the roll of all the ages included in this word, and is that why it is not called the first day, but one day?And there was made evening, you see, it says, and there was made morning, one day (Gn 1 :5). So ifwe take it like this, the making of evening would seem to signify the sin of rational creatures, while the making of morning would mean their restoration.
34. But this is an interpretation on the lines of prophetic allegory, which is not what we have undertaken in this work. We undertook, you see, to talk here about the scriptures according to their proper meaning of what actually happened, not according to their riddling, enigmatic reference to future events. So then, with
18. SeeJn 1:3.9. 19. He is here echoing the biblical expression "the heaven of heaven" as in Ps 1 15:16, in the Latin Vulgate: Caelum caeli Domino; see also Dt 10: 14. He has made the same allusion earlier on, in 1X, 15. 17.