Creation then in verse 1 is the great primary fact of revelation. It is all the stronger, because the Hebrew text has no article, any more than the Greek in John 1:11In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. (John 1:1). It is therefore undefined. Compare Proverbs 8:2323I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was. (Proverbs 8:23). From the context, however, it is plain that the fourth Gospel rises beyond the first book of Moses; for it goes back to divine and eternal being (not ἐγένετο but ῆν), and not merely divine origination, which in fact appears later (in John 1:33All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. (John 1:3)), and this in a form all-embracing and exclusive. “All things were made (came into being) through Him, and without Him was not anything made which hath been made.”
“ In the beginning” is not a known fixed point of time, but indefinite according to the subject matter; it here intimates that “Of old,” or “In former duration” (expressly undefined), God created the universe, Undoubtedly there is no disclosure of the immense eons of which geologists speak so freely; but the language of verse 1 leaves the door open for all that can be proved by research, or even for the longest demand of the most extravagant Uniformitarian.
But the words do affirm a “beginning” of the universe, and by God's word, as in both Old and New Testament. (See, Psalm 33:64, and Hebrews 11:33Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear. (Hebrews 11:3)). This was everything to accomplish His design, and His design was to create the heavens and the earth, where there had been nothing. Whatever Atheists or Pantheists feign science at length” confesses there was a “beginning;” so that “created” stands here in its proper and fullest sense, as, the context requires:
“There was a beginning, says geology; to Man; and farther back, to mammals, to birds, and, to reptiles, to fishes and all the lower animals, and to plants; a beginning to life: a beginning, it says also, to mountain ranges and valleys, to lands and seas, to rocks. Hence science takes another step back, and admits or claims a beginning to the earth, a beginning to all planets and suns, and a beginning to the universe. Science and the record in Genesis are thus one. This is not reconciliation; it is accordance.” So writes Dr. J. D. Dana, the eminent American Professor, in the Old and New Testament Student of July 1890.
The record declares that God created not a “formless earth,” but “the heavens” (where at no time do we hear of disorder) “and the earth.” But even as to “the earth,” which was to be a scene of change, we are expressly told by an authority no less inspired, and therefore of equal authority with Moses, that such disorder was not the original state. “For thus saith the Lord that created the heavens; He is God; that formed the earth and made it; He established it, He created it not a waste, He formed it to be inhabited” (Isaiah 45:1818For thus saith the Lord that created the heavens; God himself that formed the earth and made it; he hath established it, he created it not in vain, he formed it to be inhabited: I am the Lord; and there is none else. (Isaiah 45:18)). The Revised V. is purposely cited, as confessedly the most correct reflection of the prophet. Here is therefore the surest warrant to separate verse 2 from verse 1 (save of course that it is a subsequent fact), severed, it may be, by a succession of geologic ages, and characterized by a catastrophe, at least as far as regards the earth. Indeed it would be strange to hear of an ordered heavens along with a “formless earth” as the first-fruits of God's creative activity. But we are not told of any such anomaly. The universe, fresh from God's will and power, consisted of “the heavens and the earth.” Silence is kept as to its condition then and up to the cataclysm of verse 2; and most suitably, unless God's purpose in the Bible were altogether different from that moral end which pervades it from first to last. What had the history of those preliminary physical changes to do with His people and their relations to Himself? But it ought not to be doubted that each state which God made was a system perfect for its aim. Yet it was not materials only, but heaven and earth.
And the earth was [or became] waste and empty, and darkness [was] upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God [was] brooding upon the face of the waters” (ver. 2).
The well-known and flexible particle of connection in the Hebrew text introduces the verse. Its meaning, usually and simply copulative, is often modified, as almost all words in every language must he, by contextual considerations. Hence the learned Dathe, in 1781, renders it here “posthaec vero,” expressly to distinguish the state of thing in ver. 2 from that referred to in ver. 1, and sends us to such instances as Numbers 5:2323And the priest shall write these curses in a book, and he shall blot them out with the bitter water: (Numbers 5:23); Deuteronomy 1:1919And when we departed from Horeb, we went through all that great and terrible wilderness, which ye saw by the way of the mountain of the Amorites, as the Lord our God commanded us; and we came to Kadesh-barnea. (Deuteronomy 1:19). Now there is no doubt that the Hebrew conjunction admits of an interval as often as facts demand it; but there is no need of departing from its primary force, “clad” (though our conjunction is not so pliant); or it may readily have a somewhat adversative force as we see in the 70. The true determination lies in what follows. For the usage of the past verb when thus employed is to express a state subsequent to and not connected with what goes before, but previous to what follows. Hebrew idiom does not use that verb simply as a copula, as may be seen twice in this verse, and almost everywhere; or it puts the verb before the noun. The right conclusion therefore is that Moses was led to indicate the desolation into which the earth was thrown at some epoch not made known, after creation, but prior to the “days” in which it was made the habitation for Adam and the race.
With this agrees the occurrence of the remarkable phraseology “waste and empty” elsewhere. There are but two other occasions—Isa. 33:1111Ye shall conceive chaff, ye shall bring forth stubble: your breath, as fire, shall devour you. (Isaiah 33:11), “the line of confusion [or waste] and the stones of emptiness;” and Jeremiah 4:2323I beheld the earth, and, lo, it was without form, and void; and the heavens, and they had no light. (Jeremiah 4:23), “I beheld the earth; and lo! it was waste and emptiness.” In both it is a desolation inflicted, not the primary condition. So it is in Genesis 1:22And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. (Genesis 1:2). It is the more to be noted, as in Jeremiah it is said of the heavens at this time that “they had no light.” Thus is confirmed, by each of the other occurrences, the conviction that our text describes a state which befell the earth, possibly long after its original creation as in the verse before. It is to this interval that the successive ages of geology apply. There are undeniable facts, full of interest, and implying creation made existent and extinguished. One's confidence in the hypotheses reared on all this may be otiose or enthusiastic; but the exact meaning of Moses' words in this verse leaves all the room that could be desired for those vast processes which may be gathered from the observed phenomena of the earth's crust. There is nothing, in scripture to exclude a succession of creatures rising to higher organization from lower, as the rule with a striking exception here and there, from the Eozoon in the Laurentian rocks of Canada to the Mammalia which most nearly resembles those of the earth as it is. But all the brilliant ingenuity of Sir C. Lyell, with others of kindred view, fails to explain or evade the proofs of change at this very period, immense as it may have been, incomparably vaster and more, rapid than since man appeared. No doubt the deluge had the deepest moral significance, and is thus unique, because the human race, save those in the ark, was then swept away. But physically its traces were superficial compared with those far more ancient convulsions so apparent, except to those who worship Time and —Uniformitarianism.
“We simply assert” (says the cautious Sir R. I. Murchison),” on the countless evidences of fracture, dislocation, metamorphism, and inversion of the strata, and also that of vast and clean-swept denudations, that these agencies were from time to time infinitely more energetic than in existing nature—in other words, that the metamorphisms and oscillations of the terrestrial crust, including the uprise of sea-bottoms, and the sweeping out of debris, were paroxysmal in comparison with the movements of our own era. We further maintain that no amount of time (of which no true geologist was ever parsimonious when recording the history of bygone accumulations of sediment, or of the different animals they contain) will enable us to account for the signs of many great breaks and convulsions which are visible in every mountain-chain, and which the miner encounters in all underground workings.... The case therefore stands thus. The shelly and pebbly terraces, which exist, are signs of sudden elevation at different periods; whilst the theory of modern gradual elevation and depression is still wanting in any valid proof that such operations have taken place except within very limited areas. Much longer and more persistent observations must indeed be made before any definite conclusion can be reached respecting the rate of gradual elevation or depression which has been going on in the last thousand years, though we may confidently assert that such changes in the relation of land to water in the historical period have been infinitesimally small when compared with the many antecedent geological operations” (Siluria, 490-1, fifth ed., 1872).
On the one hand the facts point to changes in earth and sea, and these repeatedly varied too with fresh water; rocks igneous and stratified and metamorphosed, and (during the periods thus implied, and with a corresponding environment of temperature and constitution) to organized natures, vegetable and animal, from lower orders to high, short of man and those animals which accompany his appearance on the earth; whole groups of these organisms in vast abundance coming to an end, and others quite distinct succeeding and extinguished in their turn. Would it not be a harsh supposition that God, in the fossils of the rocks, made a mere appearance of what once lived? that these petrified creatures never had animate existence here below? On the other hand, the principle and the fact of creation we see not more plainly revealed in verse 1 than of disruption in verse 2; and both before the actual preparation of the earth for Adam as described in the six days.
As the creation, announced in a few words of noble simplicity, is the first and most momentous of God's productive interventions, so the catastrophe here briefly described seems to be the last and greatest disturbance of the globe, the twenty-seventh or sub-Appenine stage, if we are to accept the elaborate conclusions of M. Alcide D'Orbigny (Paleontologie Strat. Tome ii. 800-824), a most competent naturalist, when the Alps and Chilian Andes received their actual elevation, of itself, though with many other changes of enormous consequence, quite sufficient to account for universal confusion, with destruction of life on the earth, the deep supervening everywhere, and utter darkness pervading all. However vast, this state may have been for but a little while. The animals imbedded ages before in the rocks had eyes; presumably therefore light then prevailed. Indeed some of the earliest organic remains had vision with the most striking adaptation to their circumstances, as the Trilobites of the Silurian and other beds, with their compound structure, each eye in one computed to have 6000 facets (Owen's Pal. 48, 49, 2nd ed.) The language of verse 2 is perfectly consistent with this, when compared with verse 1, and in fact naturally supposes the darkness to be the effect of the disorder. To confound the two verses is as contrary to the only sound interpretation of the record, as it is to the facts which science undertakes to arrange and expound. Nor can anything be more certain than the manner in which scripture steers clear of all error and consistently with all that is irrefragably ascertained, whilst never quitting its own spiritual ground to occupy the reader with physics. To reduce these gigantic operations of the geologic ages, in destruction and reconstruction with new living genera and species, to the slow course of nature and providence in the Adamic earth, the fashionable craze of the modern school, is “making a world after a pattern of our own,” quite as really as uninformed prejudice used to do. It was absurd to deny that the petrifactions of the strata were once real animals and plants, and to attribute them to a plastic force in the earth or to the influence of the heavens; but so it is to overlook the evidence of extremely violent and rapid convulsions before man was made, closing one geological period and inaugurating another with its flora and fauna successively suited to it in the wisdom and power and goodness of God.
Neither verse 1 nor verse 2 is a summary of the Adamic earth, which only begins to be got ready from verse 3. There are, accordingly, three states with the most marked distinction: original creation of the universe; the earth passed into a state of waste and emptiness; and the renovation of the earth, &c. for man its new inhabitant and ruler. Science is dumb, because wholly ignorant, how each of these three events, stupendous even the least of them, came to pass; it can only speak, often hesitatingly, about the effects of each, and, with least boldness, about creation in the genuine sense, though some, I cheerfully acknowledge, with outspoken and ungrudging cordiality. How different and surpassing the language of scripture, which has revealed all these things to babes, if they are hid from or dubious to the wise and the prudent! From the Bible they are or ought to be known on infallible authority, and this in the first written words God gave to man, when Rome and Athens had not emerged from barbarism if they existed as such at all.
Our verse 2 then brings to view a confused state of the earth, as different from the order of primary creation as from the earth of Adam and his sons, in regard to which state the Spirit of God is said to have been “brooding upon the face of the waters.” By His Spirit the heavens are beautified; and as to creatures generally it is written, “Thou sendest forth Thy Spirit, they are created, and Thou renewest the face of the ground.” Here it was to be for man's earth. This is the link of transition. All was to be by God's word. Wisdom rejoices in the “habitable” earth, and has delights with the sons of men. A mighty wind might rage over the abyss. The Spirit of God, not the wind, could be said with propriety to “brood.” What new wonders were at hand!