The Literal Meaning of Genesis
BOOK EIGHT 37
Scripture does not say, "God made to grow from the earth another tree" or "the rest of the trees," but, Again from the earth He made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The earth had already produced on the third day every tree pleasant to the sight and good for food. For on the sixth day God had said, See, J have given you every seed-bearing plant bearing its seed over all the earth, and every fruit tree that has seed-bearing fruit.
These will be food for you.'> Can it be that first God gave one tree and now He wished to give another? I do not think so. But since the trees planted in Paradise are of the kinds which earth had already produced on the third day, it again produced them in its own time. For when Scripture says that on the third day earth produced these trees, this was done in causes in the earth, that is, earth in the hidden recesses of its being had then received the power of producing them, and by this power even now earth puts forth similar trees to be seen in their own time.
7. The words, therefore, which God spoke on the sixth day, See, I have given you every seed-bearing plant bearing its seed over all the earth and so forth, were not spoken by the sound of a voice uttered in time but by the creative power, which is God's Word. But it is only by sounds uttered in time that man can be told what God spoke without sounds measured by time. For the man formed from the slime of the earth and made a living being by the breath of God and all the members of the human race descended from him were destined to eat the fruit of these plants and trees which would spring forth over the earth from the productive power that earth had already received. God, therefore, stored away in creatures the causal reasons of the plants and trees that were to be, and, as if these plants and trees already existed, He spoke in that interior and transcendent truth which eye has not seen nor ear heard, but which the Holy Spirit certainly has revealed to the writer.