ioned from the earth all the beasts of the field, and from the waters all the flying
Book IX 311
2. Should you be bothered, though, because he did not say, "God still fash ioned from the earth all the beasts of the field, and from the waters all the flying things of heaven"; but as though he had fashioned each kind from the earth, And God stillfashioned, it goes,from the earth all the beasts ofthefield and all the flying things of heaven; try and see that it can be understood in two ways.
According to the first way, it kept quiet about what he fashioned the flying things of heaven from, because even though it is not mentioned, it could occur to the reader that God is not to be taken as fashioning each kind from the earth, but only the beasts of the field, and that even with scripture keeping quiet on the point, we should understand what it was he fashioned the flying things of heaven from, being people who know that in the first establishment of causal formulae they were produced out of the waters. Or else, according to the second way, the word "earth" is used in a general sense to include the waters, as it is in that psalm, where once the praises of heavenly beings is concluded, the psalmist turns to the earth, and says: Praise the Lordfrom the earth, dragons and all abysses, etc. (Ps
148:7), and does not go on to say, "Praise the Lord from the waters." Where, in any case, are all the abysses, which praise the Lord from the earth all the same? Where too the reptiles and winged fowl, which nonetheless praise the Lord from the earth? It is according to this general meaning of "earth," which we also have where it says about the whole universe: God, who made heaven and earth (Ps
1 24:8), that whatever was created either from the earth or from the waters is truly to be understood as having been created from the earth.
Various ways in which God could have spoken
2. 3. Now at last, then, let us see how we are to take it that God said, // is not goodfor the man to be alone; let us make him a help suited to him (Gn 2: 18); whether God said this with words and syllables uttered in time, or whether the actual idea or formula was being recalled, which was originally in the Word of God, that the woman should be so made,2 the kind of idea which scripture was also alluding to and taking up every time it said "And God said, Let this or that be made," when all things were being established to begin with. Or did God say this perhaps in the mind of the man himself, just as he speaks to some of his servants in his servants themselves? Such a servant was the one who said in the psalm: / will hear what the Lord God will speak in me (Ps 85:8). Or was an actual voice
2. The words he has just quoted introduce the making of the animals, not immediately of the woman, who only comes in when Adam has named all the animals, and "no helper like him" was found among them. The slight change of word in his text is significant; in the verse here quoted God says, "Let us make him a help," an impersonal noun, udjuiorium; but then in 5,20 the personal noun, adjutor, helper is used.