coming upfrom the earth, and was watering all theface ofthe earth (Gn 2:6)?
Book V 285 why it was by the power of his word that God made these things, without rain and without human labor. Even now, after all, he is the one that makes them, but now by means of rain and of human hands—though neither the one who plants is anything, nor the one who waters, but the one who gives the growth, God ( 1 Cor 3:7).
On the spring which watered the whole earth
19. So what is the meaning then of what he adds next: But a spring was coming upfrom the earth, and was watering all theface of the earth (Gn 2:6)? That spring, surely, flowing as abundantly as the Nile does for Egypt, could easily serve the whole earth for rain. So why is it put to us as something remark able that God made those growing things before it had rained, when the spring watering the earth could give quite as much assistance as rain? Or if not quite so much, then perhaps only smaller plants would start growing, but still some, for all that.
Or is scripture here again talking, as its habit is, in a weak and simple style to the weak and simple, and yet all the same suggesting something more profound for those to grasp who have the capacity? We have seen, after all, how by mentioning that day,just a few moments ago, he signified that one day was made by God, and that it was when the day was made that God then made heaven and earth, so that we should ponder as best we could God making all things simulta neously at once, even though the count of six days earlier on seemed to show intervals of time between his works. Thus, when he had said that with heaven and earth God made all the greenery of the field before it was upon the earth, and all the hay of the field before it had sprung up, he added, for God had not yet rained upon the earth, and there was as yet no man to till the land; as though to say that God did not make those things in the same way as he makes such things now, when it rains and men work. These things, after all, now happen over periods of time, ofwhich there were none then, when he made all things simulta neously in the moment from which times too began.
7, 20. So as for what follows, then: But a spring was coming upfrom the earth, and was watering all theface of the earth (Gn 2:6); from here on, in my judg ment, we are being informed what things were being made over intervals of time, after that first establishment of creatures in which all things were made simultaneously. And he was quite right to begin from that element from which all species, whether of animals or grasses or trees, take their rise, to run through their time-governed measures and numbers, as allotted to their particular natures. All the primordial seeds, I mean to say, from which every kind of flesh or fruit is born, are moist and grow and develop out of moisture. But they have within them the most efficacious numbers, which bring along with them potenti