beginning Godmade heaven and earth (Gn 1 : 1 ) as a kind of formability , if I may
284 The Literal Meaning ofGenesis
16. So this then is the book of the creating of heaven and earth, because in the beginning Godmade heaven and earth (Gn 1 : 1 ) as a kind of formability , if I may so express it,12 of material which was subsequently to be formed by his word, and which preceded its own formation, not in time but in origin, because assur edly when it was to be formed, the day was first made: When the day was made God made heaven and earth and all the greenery ofthefield before it was upon the earth, and all the hay ofthefield before it sprang up (Gn 2:4-5)—the point we have been discussing, though something clearer and more in harmony with the text, you may well think, could have been observed and stated, or may be so in the future.
Whether the verse "God had not rained" etc. supports the view of simultaneous creation
6, 17. As for what comes next: For God had not rained upon the earth, and there was no man to till the land (Gn 2:5), it is difficult to work out where it fits in and what it is suggesting to us. ls it as ifthe reason God made the hay of the field before it sprang up was that he had not yet rained upon the earth, since if he had made the hay after the rain, it would seem that its springing up was due more to the rain than to its being made by him? So what, then? Is what springs up after rain made by any other agent than by the same God?
Why, though, was there no man to till the land? Had God not already made the man on the sixth day, and on the seventh rested from all his works? Or is he reminding us by way of recapitulation that when God made all the greenery of the field and all the hay, he had not yet rained upon the earth and there was as yet no man, seeing that he made these things on the third day, man only on the sixth?
But when God made all the greenery and all the hay of the field before it sprang up on the earth, not only was there no man to till the land, but there was not even any hay either on the earth, which he says, of course, was made before it sprang up. Or is the reason God made these things on the third day precisely that there was no man as yet to make them by cultivating the earth? As if, forsooth, there were not so many trees and so many kinds of grasses that are born of the earth without any human cultivation!
1 8. Or is the reason that each statement is made, both that he had not yet rained upon the earth, and that there was as yet no man to till the land, something like this? Where there is no human cultivation, you see, these things do grow as a result of rain; but there are some things that even rain will not make to grow without the aid of human labor. That is why now both kinds of assistance are needed for all species of plants to grow; but then each kind was lacking. That is
12. A word undoubtedly of Augustine's own coining.