little ones is not entirely characteristic of him. 1 think. But underlying it is his assumption,
192 The Literal Meaning ofGenesis and the fleshly-minded members of the Church respectively that are signified, the psalmist would have been showing that the heavens refer to the serene under standing of the truth, where he says, who made the heavens in understanding (Ps
136:5), while earth refers to the simple faith of the little ones, a faith not built unreliably on fables and misguided speculations,4 but most firmly on the teaching of the prophets and the proclamation of the gospel, and given solidity through baptism. Andthat is why he went on to add, whofounded the earth on the water.
Or else, ifsomeone obliges you to take the verse literally, it can be applied not unreasonably to the heights of the earth, whether on continents or islands, which soar up above the waters, or to the roofs of those caverns which overhang the waters with rock-like solidity. Accordingly, nobody may understand the literal sense of the words, "who founded the earth on the water" in such a way as to conclude that the weight of the waters was placed under the weight of the earth to support it as if that were the natural order of things.
Air by nature, being lighter than earth, lies above it
2, 5. Air, however, lies naturally above water (though it also spreads over the dry land because of its wider spaciousness); and this is proved by the fact that no bottle can be filled with water when pushed into it mouth downwards—a clear indication that air by its nature seeks the higher or upper place. The bottle, you see, seems to be empty, but is proved to be full of air when it is pushed mouth downwards into the water. Because the air can find no way of popping out through the uppermost part, and its nature will not allow it to go downwards under the water trying to rush in, it keeps the water at bay by its own filling pres ence, and refuses it entry.
When, though, the bottle is so put into the water that it does not have its mouth downwards, but is put in sideways, the water comes in at the lower edge while the air goes out by the upper one. Again, if the mouth of the bottle is open to the sky, when you pour in water the air goes out upwards by the parts where you are not pouring in and room is made underneath for the water to come in. But if the bottle is pushed down with greater force, so that water flows in suddenly from the side or from the top and covers the mouth of the bottle completely on every side, the air bursts through the water as it struggles upwards, to make room for the water at the bottom. And it is the air bursting through like this that makes
4. See 1 Tm 1 :4; 4:7. His implicit identification here of the "carnal," the fleshly-minded, with the little ones is not entirely characteristic of him. 1 think. But underlying it is his assumption, almost certainly justitiec", that the uneducated are likely to be literal-minded in their understanding of what ihey read or hear.
Book II 193 bottles sob or gurgle, while the air escapes bit by bit, unable to do so all at once because the bottle's mouth is too narrow.
Thus if air is forced to get up on top of water, it thrusts aside even converging flows, when the water being driven in starts bubbling under the impetus of the air leaping out,5 and lets it escape with exploding bubbles as it hurries to its own proper place and makes room for the water falling down to the bottom. But should you try to force it out of the bottle under the water, wanting it to give way so that the bottle can be filled when pushed mouth downwards right to the bottom, the bottle will be sooner covered with water on every side than a single tiny drop will gain entrance to it from the bottom.
Fire likewise lighter than air, and so lying above it
3, 6. Now that fire, as it leaps up to the heights, wishes to soar above even the nature of the very air we breathe, is something, surely, that everybody can perceive. l mean to say, if you hold a burning torch head downwards, its crown of flames will struggle up to the upper parts. But because the fire is then straight away extinguished by the dominant pressure of the air all round and above it, and so being defeated by the excessive quantity of air is straightaway changed and converted into the same thing, it is unable to last out and leap up beyond the atmosphere's highest altitude.
And so the sky or heaven above the air is said to be pure fire, from which, so they suppose, the constellations and the great lamps are made, through the nature of that fiery light being squeezed and molded, that is to say, into those forms and shapes and patterns which we now observe in the sky. Now just as both air and water give way to the weight of particles of earth, so that they drop down to the earth, in the same manner air gives way to the weight of water, so that it drops down either to earth or to water. From this they want it to be understood that it is necessary in the same manner for air too, if anyone could release a particle of it in those loftiest regions of the sky, to fall by its own weight, until it reaches the airy regions underneath. From all this they conclude that much less is it possible for there to be any place for water above that fiery heaven, since air, though much lighter than water, cannot remain there either.
Reading exilientis with two manuscripts, thus qualifying the air. Both Maurists and the CSEL text read exilientes, making this word refer to the water (plural in the Latin). But the water is not getting out of the bottle, it is being pushed in. 1 suspect some copyists would have written this less likely variant thanks to an unconscious memory of Jn 4: 14 or 7:37—of the sense of those passages, that is to say, not of the actual words.