slight expansion 1 give it, echoing a phrase from the well-known hymn to Our Lady, "Hail
266 The Literal Meaning of Genesis to itself, and to take greater pleasure in itselfthan in the one it is made blessed by sharing in, it would swell with pride and fall, as the devil did—about whom we must talk in his proper place, when a discussion of the serpent leading the man astray will be required of us.
Why night is not mentioned again during each of the six days
25. 42. So then, the angels know the creature in itself in such a way that by free and love-inspired choice41 they prefer to that knowledge their knowing the crea ture in the truth through which all things were made, in which they have been given a share. And that is why night is not mentioned throughout all the six days; but we have "after evening and morning one day," likewise "after evening and morning the second day," next "after evening and morning the third day," and so on right up to the morning of the sixth day in which the seventh day of God's rest begins. The days do include their nights, but still it is the days not the nights that we are told about. For then it is, you see, that night belongs to day, not day to night, when the sublime and holy angels refer their knowledge of the creature in itself to the honor and love of him in whom they contemplate the eternal ideas according to which things were created, and in that wonderfully harmonious contemplation are themselves the one day which the Lord has made; to this may the Church be joined once it has been delivered from "its sojourn in this vale of tears,"42 so that we too may exult and be merry in it (Ps 1 18:24).
Repeated explanation of what the repetition of the one day made by God really means
26. 43. So then, by the sixth repetition of this day, the evening and morning of which can be understood on the lines set out above, the whole created universe was completed and finished, and there was made the morning on which the sixth day would end, and from which the seventh would begin which was not going to have an evening, because God's rest is not a part of creation. When this was being fashioned in the course of the other days, in itself as already made it was known differently from the way it was known in him in whose Truth it was seen as due to be made; and it was this knowledge of it in itself, like the sight of things drained of color, that made the evening.
And so in this account of the creation of things the day is not to be understood as the form of the actual work, nor the evening as its termination and the morning
41 . A more telling expression in the Latin: electione ac dilectione. 42. The Latin just has "from this sojourn," ex hac peregrinatione; but this, 1 think, requires the slight expansion 1 give it, echoing a phrase from the well-known hymn to Our Lady, "Hail Queen of heav'n. the ocean star," to mean anything to English readers.
Book IV 267 as the start of another work, or we would be compelled to say against scripture either that the seventh day was fashioned as a creature outside the six days, or else that the seventh day was not itself something created. Instead, that "day which God has made" is itself repeated through his works, not in a bodily circular motion but in spiritual knowledge, when that blessed company ofangels before anything else contemplates in the Word of God that about which God says Let it be made; and in consequence this is first made in their own angelic knowledge when the text says, And thus it was made, and only after that do they know the actual thing made in itself, which is signified by the making of evening. They then refer this knowledge of the thing made to the praise of that Truth where they had seen the idea of making it, and this is signified by the making of morning.
And thus throughout all those days there is just the one day, which is not to be understood after the manner of these days that we see measured and counted by the circuit of the sun, but in a different kind ofmode which has to allow for those three days that were mentioned before the fashioning of these lamps in the sky. This mode, you see, does not just operate as far as the fourth day, so that from then on we should be thinking of these usual ones, but right up to the sixth and seventh. Hence the night and day, between which two God divided (Gn 1 :4), are to be taken in quite a different sense from this night and day, between which he said that the lamps he created were to divide, when he said, And let them divide between day and night (Gn 1 : 14). That, you see, was when he established this kind ofday, when he fashioned the sun, which brings on this day by its presence, while that day which was fashioned originally had already gone through three days when these lamps were created on that day's fourth repetition.
The ordinary days of the week are quite unlike the seven days of Genesis
27, 44. Now clearly, in this earth-bound condition ofours we mortals can have no experiential perception of that day, or those days which were named and numbered by the repetition of it; and if we are able to struggle towards some understanding of them, we certainly ought not to rush into the assertion of any ill-considered theory about them, as if none more apt or likely could be mooted. So for the sake of argument, let us suppose that these seven days, which in their stead constitute the week that whirls times and seasons along by its constant recurrence, in which one day is the whole circuit of the sun from sunrise to sunrise—that these seven represent those first seven in some fashion, though we must be in no doubt that they are not at all like them, but very, very dissimilar.