the creature added to his creation. But O! good God! What have we here also lost by sin! How happy was that state of man in which the generating of offspring was attended with the highest reverence of God, with the highest wisdom and with the purest knowledge of God! But the flesh is now so swallowed up with the leprosy of lust that the body in the commerce of generation becomes actually brute-like, and can by no means generate in the knowledge and worship of God!
The progress of generation does indeed remain with human nature, but it is lowered and weakened beyond description; and it is so absorbed in lust that it differs little from the generation of the beast. To all this are added the perils of gestation and parturition, the difficulty of rearing children when born, and an infinity of other evils; all which tend to impress us with the awfulness and magnitude of original sin. The blessing of God on generation therefore which still remains with human nature is a humbled and an accursed blessing, if you compare it with that original blessing; and yet it is the blessing of God, instituted of God himself, which he still preserves. Wherefore let us acknowledge with gratitude and praise this blessing of God which still remains, though thus deformed by sin. Let us feel and confess that this inevitable leprosy of our flesh, which is all mere disobedience to the will of God is the punishment of sin, righteously inflicted of God. Let us wait however in hope for the death of this leprous flesh, that we may be delivered from all this filthiness and be restored to a perfection and glory, even far exceeding the original creation of Adam!
V. 28b. And have dominion over the fish of the sea, etc.
What use there was of beasts-of-burden, of fishes and of many other animals in the primitive state of creation and of innocency, is impossible for us clearly to determine, sunk as we are in ignorance of God and of his creatures. What we now see is that we feed on various kinds of flesh, on pulse, etc. Unless therefore these same things were in the same use then, we know not why they should have been created, but because we neither have nor see any other use for all these creatures now. But Adam seems to have had no use, as we have now, for those creatures, in addition to all that food which he had in abundance from all the trees around him and from their fruits, which were far nobler and richer than any we now possess or know. Nor could he need raiment or money, who had all things under his immediate dominion and power. Nor did he need to regard any avarice or expectation in his posterity. Adam and Eve therefore being thus amply provided with food, needed only to use these creatures to excite their admiration and wonder of God, and to create in them that holiness of pleasure, which we never can know in this state of the corruption of our nature. But all things are quite the contrary now. For at the present time, all the creatures together scarcely suffice for the nourishment and gratification of man. And the case has been just the same in all ages. Wherefore what this "dominion" of Adam "over the fish of the sea" was, we cannot now conceive by any stretch of our thought.
V. 29. And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb yielding seed, etc.
Here behold what anxious care God took of the man whom he had created. He first created the earth or his dwelling-place in which he was to live. He then ordained other things he judged to be necessary for his life and subsistence. And when at length he had created man, for whom he had made all these glorious preparations, he blesses him with the gift and power of generation. And now he gives him food, that nothing might be wanting for him to live most easily and most happily. But my belief is that if Adam had continued in his original state of innocency, children from their very birth would have rushed forth to the enjoyment of those pleasures which the primitive creation furnished in infinite abundance. But it is perhaps vain in us to attempt to enumerate these utterly innumerable blessings, which are all irretrievably lost to us in our present state of life, and of which we cannot with all our thought form the least conception.
V. 30. And every green herb, etc.
Moses here seems to make a difference between "seeds" and the "green herb." Perhaps it is because the herb is the food of beasts, and the seeds were designed to serve as food for man. For my belief is that without doubt the seeds we now use for food were far more excellent in paradise than they are at present. I have no doubt also that Adam would have refused to taste those various kinds of flesh, than which we have no food which we deem more sweet and delicious, in comparison with the sweetness of the fruits of those trees, which grew naturally in paradise, from the eating of which there did not proceed that leprous fatness, which is the consequence of such food now, but a healthfulness and beauty of body and a wholesome temperature of all its humors.
Now all varieties of flesh do not satisfy man, nor all kinds of pulse nor all kinds of grain. We continually endanger the health of our bodies by a surfeit of food. I say nothing now of those worse than beast-like sins, which are daily committed among us by an excessive use of meat and drink. All this is evidently the curse of God, which has followed upon original sin and has continued until now. And I believe also that venomous and noxious beasts and reptiles first came out of the earth as accursed for the sin of man.
But here a question may arise, how we are to reconcile the apparent discrepancy that all the trees in the field are given to Adam to enjoy, and yet that afterwards a signal part of the earth, which the Scriptures call paradise, is assigned to him to till? Another question may be, whether the whole original earth may be called paradise? etc., etc. But these things we will leave to our meditations upon the second chapter.
III. V. 31. And God saw everything that he had made, and behold it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning the sixth day.
After God had thus finished all his works, he here speaks after the manner of one fatigued, as if he had said, "Behold I have now prepared all things for man with all perfectness. I have prepared for him the heaven as his canopy and the earth as his floor. His possessions and his wealth are the animals with all the productions of the earth, the sea and the air. The seeds, the roots and the herbs of the garden are his food. Moreover I have made man the lord of all these things. And he possesses the knowledge of me his God, and the use of all the animals which I have created, all of which he can use as he will with the greatest security, righteousness and wisdom. Nothing is wanting. All things are created in the greatest abundance for the sustaining of animal life. Now therefore I will rest! I will enjoy a Sabbath!"
But these things are almost wholly lost by sin, and we are at this day like a carcass as it were of the first created man Adam; and we retain but a shadow of the dominion which he possessed. Shall we not say then that he has lost all things, who out of an immortal is become a mortal, and out of a righteous man, a sinner? Out of one accepted of God and grateful to God, cast off and condemned of God? For now man is a sinner and mortal. If therefore these things do not, under divine teaching, stir us up to the hope and expectation of a better day and a better life to come, there is nothing that can stir us up to such hope and expectation. Let these comments suffice for an explanation of this first chapter of the book of Genesis. In the following chapter Moses teaches us the nature of the work of this sixth day; how man was created.
Chapter II.
Part I. God's Rest, Sanctification of the Sabbath and Creation of Adam
I. V. 1. And the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.
Our Latin rendering of the text before us is "and all the adornment of them." In the original Hebrew the expression is ZEBAAM, the "host" or "army" of them. The prophets have retained this same form of speaking and of calling the stars and the planets, "the host or army of heaven," as Jer. 19:13, where the Jews are represented as having adored "all the host of heaven." And God says by the prophet Zephaniah, "I will cut off them that worship the host of heaven upon the housetops." In the same manner also Stephen testifies concerning the children of Israel in the wilderness that God "gave them up to worship the host of heaven," Acts 7:42.
The prophets borrowed these forms of speech from