The Literal Meaning of Genesis
CHAPTER 2
How God spoke when He said, "It is not good that the man should be alone. Let Us make for him a helper like himself."
3. Let us see now how we must understand the words of God when He said, [t is not good that the man should be alone. Let Us make for him a helper like himself.' Did God speak this in words and syllables uttered in time? Or perhaps the writer is referring to the reason-principle which was primordially in the Word of God determining the nature of woman, the reason-principle to which Scripture also referred previously in the words, And God said, "Let there be this or that," when all things were created in the beginning. Or perhaps God said this in the mind of the man himself, as He sometimes speaks to His servants interiorly. Such a servant of God was the one who said in one of the Psalms, J will hear what the Lord God will speak in me.® Again, it is possible that a revelation about this matter was made interiorly to the man by an angel through a resemblance of the sounds of human speech, although Scripture has not said whether this might have occurred in sleep or in ecstasy (for it is in such states that this kind of revelation is usually made). Or could it have been in some other way, like the revelations made to the prophets, regarding which one of them said, And the angel who spoke to me said in me?? Again, a real voice might have resounded through a corporeal creature, as happened when the voice came from a cloud,
This is My Son.'°
We cannot know for certain which one of all these possible explanations is the true one. But there are two things about which we should have no doubt: on the one hand, God said the words we are considering, and, on the other, if He spoke using a material voice or a resemblance of a material voice resounding in time, He did not speak by His own substance but by some creature subject to His power, as I have explained in the preceding book.!!
4. God has been seen also in later days by holy men, now with His head as white as wool, now with the lower part of His body like brass,!? and in different ways on different occasions.