the day was made God made heaven and earth and all the greenery ofthefield
300 The Literal Meaning ofGenesis actual cosmos is to be thought of as having had simultaneously all the things that were made in it and with it when the day was made (Gen 2:4). This does not only mean the sky with the sun and the moon and the stars, the cycle of whose move ments gives the appearance of such regularity, and the earth and the deeps of the abyss, which experience, so to say, unpredictably variable movements, and which together contribute to the cosmos its lower part; it also includes those things that water and earth produced potentially in their causes, before they could evolve through intervals of time, as they are now known to us in the works on which God is continuing to work until now (Jn 5:17).
Recapitulation of the "literal meaning" of Genesis 2:4-6
46. All this being so, This is the book of the creating ofheaven and earth 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)—but not in the way in which he makes them by the work he works at until now, by means ofrain and human agriculture; that, you see, is why he added: For God had not rained upon the earth, and there was no man to till the land (Gn 2:5). No, he made them then in the way in which he created all things simulta neously, and finished them on day number six, when he presented the day he made six times with the things he made, not as a series one after another in time, but as a series to be known in due order in their causes. From these works he rested on the seventh day, and was happy also to offer his quiet rest to the aware ness andjoy of the same single day. And that is why he blessed and sanctified the day, not in any of his works but in his resting.
Thus it is that without setting up any further creature, but steering and guiding by his regulatory action all the things he made simultaneously, he continues to work without ceasing, simultaneously both resting and working, in the way the matter has already been studied and discussed. As for those works of his on which he is continuing to work right up till now, and which have to be unrolled as the times themselves unwind, Scripture makes a start at telling the story of them when it says: But a spring was coming upfrom the earth, and was watering all the face of the earth (Gn 2:6). As we have said about this spring all that we thought had to be said, let us make a fresh start at reflecting on what follows.