"numbered off is enumeravit, which usually means simply to count up, to tote up. But for
292 The Literal Meaning of Genesis
Rational minds, for their part, once purified by his grace, are able to attain to that sort of vision, which nothing can surpass in excellence or bliss.
What sort of life all things are in God
15, 33. But even if we accept this reading as saying What was made, in him was life, the statement still remains that that which was made through him is to be understood as being life in him; life in which he saw all things when he made them, and indeed "as he saw them, so he made them," not seeing them outside himself, but in himself he so "numbered off'21 all the things which he made. Nor is his vision different from the Father's, but they are one and the same,just as the two are one substance. ln the book ofJob also, you see, Wisdom herself, through whom all things were made, is thus presented: Wisdom though, he says, where was shefound? Or what is the place of knowledge? Mortals do not know her way, nor will she befound among men (Jb 28 : 1 21 3). And a little further on: We have heard, he says, of her glory; the Lord has commended her way and he himselfknows herplace. For he perceives everything that is under heaven, and knows all the things in the earth which he has made; when he made the balances of the winds, the measures of the water, as he saw them so he numbered them off (Jb 28:23-25).
This and similar evidence proves that all these were in the knowledge of the maker before they were made, and of course were better there, where they were truer, where they are eternal and unchangeable. All this should be enough for anyone to know, or at least to believe unshakably, that God made all these things; and I do not imagine anyone could be so witless as to suppose that God made anything he did not know. Accordingly, if he knew them before he made them, it follows that before they were made they were known "with him" in such a way as to be eternally and unchangeably alive and to be life, while once made they existed in the way all creatures do, each according to its kind.
God is nearer to us than are many of the things he made
16, 34. So then, that eternal and unchangeable nature, which God is, has it in itselfto be, as Moses was told: lam wholam(Ex 3:14); thus the manner in which it is differs totally from that in which these things are that have been made. Only that, you see, really and truly and primordially is, which always is in the same
21. He is alluding in advance to the text from Job he is about to quote. The verb rendered "numbered off is enumeravit, which usually means simply to count up, to tote up. But for Augustine it is clearly associated with those "numbers" which are almost the equivalent of his "seminal ideas/formulae"; so one has to keep "number" as a verb in the English also. See above, 5,14, and note 8 there.