Literal Commentary on Genesis 4.25–5.2

Since, then, the angels know the creature in the creature itself in such a way that, by choice and love, they prefer to that knowledge the fact that they know it in the Truth through which all things were made, having been made sharers in it, for that reason through all six days night is not named; but after evening and morning, one day; again after evening and morning, the second day; then after evening and morning, the third day; and so on to the morning of the sixth day, from which begins the seventh, of God's rest. Though they have their nights, it is days, not nights, that are recounted. For night then belongs to day, not day to night, when the lofty and holy angels refer what they know of the creature in the creature itself to the honor and love of him in whom they contemplate the eternal reasons by which it was created; and by that most harmonious contemplation they are the one day which the Lord has made, to which the church too will be joined when freed from this pilgrimage, so that we also may rejoice and be glad in it.

By the sixth repetition of this day, then, whose evening and morning can be taken according to the account given above, the whole creation was completed, and the morning came by which the sixth day was ended and from which the seventh began, which was to have no evening, because God's rest is not a creature. Creation, when it was being established through the other days, was known as made in itself otherwise than in him in whose Truth it was seen as to be made, and the somewhat faded appearance of this knowledge made the evening. So in this narrative of the establishing of things we must no longer understand “day” as the form of the work itself, “evening” as its limit, and “morning” as the beginning of another work, lest we be forced, against Scripture, to say that the creature of the seventh day was established beyond the six days, or that the seventh day itself is no creature. Rather, that day which God made is itself repeated through his works, not by a bodily circuit but by spiritual knowledge, when that blessed society of angels first contemplates in the Word of God that by which God says, “Let it be,” and so it is first made in their knowledge, when it is said, “And so it was done”; and afterward knows the thing itself as made in itself, which is signified by “evening came”; and then refers that knowledge of the thing made to the praise of that Truth where it had seen the reason of the thing to be made, which is signified by “morning came.” And so through all those days there is one day, not to be understood after the manner of these days which we see marked out and counted by the circuit of the sun, but in some other way, from which those three days too, which are mentioned before the establishing of these lights, cannot be excluded. For that manner was carried on not just to the fourth day, so that from then on we might think of these ordinary days, but to the sixth and seventh; so that the day and night between which God divided are to be taken in a far different sense from this day and night between which he said that the lights he created should divide, when he said, “And let them divide between day and night.” For he established this day when he established the sun, whose presence produces it; but that day first established had already gone through three days when these lights were created at the fourth repetition of that day.

Therefore, since we cannot experience or perceive that day, or those days numbered by its repetition, in this earthly mortality of ours, and since, if we can make some attempt to understand them, we ought not to rush into a rash judgment, as if nothing more fitting and more probable could be thought about them, let us believe that these seven days, which in place of those make up the week, by whose course and return the times are swept along, and in which one day is the circuit of the sun from rising to rising, present a kind of counterpart to those days, in such a way that we do not doubt at all that they are not like them but very unequal to them.

Nor let anyone think that what I said about spiritual light, about the day established in spiritual and angelic creation, about the contemplation it has in the Word of God and the knowledge by which creation is known in itself, and about its referring to the praise of unchangeable Truth, where the reason of the thing to be made, which was then known as made, was first seen, fits our understanding of day, evening, and morning not properly but only figuratively and allegorically. It fits otherwise, indeed, than in our familiar experience of this daily, bodily light; yet not as if here properly and there figuratively. For where the light is better and more certain, there the day too is truer. Why, then, not also a truer evening and a truer morning? For if in these days light has a certain declining toward its setting, which we call by the name of evening, and a return again toward its rising, which we call morning, why should we not speak there too of evening, when creation is looked down upon from the contemplation of the Creator, and of morning, when one rises from the knowledge of creation to the praise of the Creator? For Christ too is not called light in the same way as he is called a stone; the former is said properly, the latter certainly figuratively. Whoever, then, seeks not the view that we have been able to search out or suppose according to our small measure, but another in the enumeration of those days, which could be understood not figuratively in prophecy but properly and better in this establishing of creatures, let him seek, and with God's help find it. For it may be that I too shall perhaps find another more fitting to these words of divine Scripture. For I do not affirm this one in such a way as to maintain that no other can be found that should be preferred; as I do affirm that Holy Scripture did not wish to suggest to us God's rest as if after weariness or the trouble of care.

Someone may perhaps argue with me, saying that the angels of the highest heavens do not, in alternation, contemplate first the reasons of creatures, unchangeably, in the unchangeable Truth of the Word of God, then the creatures themselves, and thirdly refer to the praise of the Creator their knowledge of them in themselves, but that their mind can do all these at once with wonderful ease. Yet will he say, or if anyone says it, should he be heeded, that that heavenly city among the thousands of angels either does not contemplate the eternity of the Creator, or is ignorant of the changeableness of creation, or does not praise the Creator even from some lower knowledge of it? Let them be able to do all this at once, let them do all this at once; still they can and they do. So they have day and evening and morning at once.

Nor need we fear that one who is already fit to perceive those things will therefore think this cannot happen there, because it cannot happen in these days that are completed by the circuit of this sun. And this indeed cannot happen in the same parts of the earth; but who does not see, if he will pay attention, that the whole world has at once day where the sun is, night where it is not, evening where it is leaving, and morning where it is approaching? But we plainly cannot have all these at once on earth; nor should we for that reason make this earthly condition, and the temporal and spatial circuit of bodily light, equal to that spiritual homeland where there is always day in the contemplation of unchangeable Truth, always evening in the knowledge of creation in itself, always morning also from this knowledge in the praise of the Creator. For there evening comes not by the departure of the higher light but by the distinction of a lower knowledge; nor does morning come as if morning knowledge succeeded a night of ignorance, but because it lifts even the evening knowledge to the glory of the Founder. Finally, that man too, without naming night, says, “Evening and morning and noon I will tell, I will proclaim, and you will hear my voice”; here perhaps through alternations of time, yet, as I think, signifying what is done without alternations of time in the homeland for which his pilgrimage sighed.

But if that angelic society and unity of the day which God first established now does and has all these things at once, did it also have them at once then, when these things were being established? Through all six days, when the things that it pleased God to establish on each day were being established, did it not first receive them in the Word of God, so that they were first made in its knowledge, when it was said, “And so it was done”; then, when they had been made in their own proper nature, in which they exist, and had pleased God because they are good, did it not then likewise know them by another, lower knowledge, signified by the name of evening; and then, after evening came, did not morning come, when God was praised for his work, and knowledge of the next creature to be made was received from the Word of God before it was made? Then, therefore, not all at once, day and evening and morning, but one by one in the order that Scripture records.

Or was it all at once even then, since it was not according to the delays of time, as these days come about when the sun rises and sets and returns to its place to rise again, but according to the spiritual power of the angelic mind, which grasps whatever it wishes all at once with the easiest knowledge? Yet not, for that reason, without order, in which the connection of preceding and following causes appears. For knowledge cannot come about unless the things to be known come first; and these again are prior in the Word, through whom all things were made, to what they are in all the things that were made. So the human mind first experiences through the senses of the body these things that have been made, and takes knowledge of them according to the small measure of human weakness, and then seeks their causes, if in some way it can reach them, abiding primarily and unchangeably in the Word of God, and so behold his invisible things, understood through the things that were made. With what slowness and difficulty it does this, and with what delay of time, because of the corruptible body that weighs down the soul, even a soul carried away by the most fervent zeal to do this urgently and perseveringly, who does not know?

But the angelic mind, clinging with pure love to the Word of God, after it was created in that order so as to precede the rest, first saw in the Word of God the things to be made before they were made; and so they were made first in its knowledge, when God was saying that they should be made, before they were made in their own proper nature. And when they had been made it also knew them in themselves, with a lesser knowledge certainly, which was called evening. The things that were being made did indeed precede that knowledge, since whatever can be known precedes the knowing of it; for unless what is to be known first exists, it cannot be known. After this, if it had pleased itself in such a way as to delight more in itself than in its Creator, morning would not have come, that is, it would not have risen from its knowledge to the praise of the Creator. But when morning came, another thing was to be made and known, as God said, “Let it be,” so that it might likewise be made first in the knowledge of the angelic mind, and it could again be said, “And so it was done,” and then in its own nature, where, with the following evening, it would be known.

And so, even if there are no intervals of temporal delay here, yet the reason of the creature to be established preceded in the Word of God, when he said, “Let there be light,” and that light followed by which the angelic mind was formed and made in its own nature; but it did not follow elsewhere, so as to come to be. And so it was not first said, “And so it was done,” and afterward, “And God made light,” but immediately after the word of God light was made, and the created light clung to the creating Light, seeing it and itself in it, that is, the reason by which it was made. It saw itself also in itself, that is, what was made as distinct from him who made it. And so, when it had pleased God, seeing what was made, because it is good, and the light had been divided from the darkness and the light called day and the darkness night, evening also came, because this knowledge too was necessary, by which the creature, known otherwise in itself than in him, would be distinguished from the Creator. And then came morning, and another thing to be foreknown, which was to be made by the Word of God, first in the knowledge of the angelic mind, then in the nature of the firmament itself. And so God said, “Let there be a firmament,” and so it was done, in the knowledge of the spiritual creature, which foreknew it before it was made in itself. Then God made the firmament, now indeed the very nature of the firmament, whose knowledge would be lesser, as of evening. And so on to the end of all the works and up to the rest of God, which has no evening, because it was not made as a creature, so that its knowledge too could be doubled, as prior and greater in the Word of God, as by day, and later and lesser in itself, as by evening.

But if the angelic mind can grasp all at once the things that the narrative distinguishes one by one in the order of connected causes, were the things that were being made, such as the firmament itself, the gathering of the waters and the laying bare of the face of the land, the sprouting of shrubs and trees, the forming of the lights and stars, the creatures of the water and the land, also all made at once, and not rather at intervals of time according to the appointed days? Or perhaps we ought not to think of them, when they were first set up, as we now experience them according to their natural motions, but according to the wonderful and ineffable power of the Wisdom of God, which “reaches mightily from end to end and arranges all things sweetly”? For she does not reach by stages or arrive as if by steps. Therefore, as easy as her most effective movement is to her, so easily did God establish all things, since they were established through her; so that what we now see, that they are moved over intervals of time to accomplish what befits each kind, comes from those implanted reasons which God scattered as seeds, so to speak, in the instant of establishing, when “he spoke, and they were made; he commanded, and they were created.”

So it was not slowly set up that slow things should be slow, nor were the ages established with the delay with which they run by. For the times carry out those numbers which things received, not in time, when they were created. Otherwise, if we think of the natural motions of things and the familiar spans of these days we know, when these things were first made by the Word of God, there would have been need not of one day but of several, so that the things that spring from roots and clothe the earth should first germinate underground, and then, in a fixed number of days according to each one's kind, break out into the air, even if this were all done that Scripture narrates was done on the one day, the third, concerning the creation of their nature. Then, how many days would have been needed for birds to fly, if, arising from their first beginnings, they reached feathers and wings through the numbers of their nature? Or were only eggs created, when it was said on the fifth day that the waters brought forth every winged flying thing according to its kind? Or if this could rightly be said because in that fluid of the eggs there already were all the things that grow together and unfold in a certain number of days, since the numerical reasons themselves were already present, woven incorporeally into bodily things, why could the same not rightly have been said even before the eggs, when those same reasons were already coming to be in the watery element, by which birds could arise and be perfected through the temporal delays proper to each kind? For of the same Creator of whom this Scripture has narrated that he finished his works in six days, it is written elsewhere, certainly without contradiction, that he created all things at once. And so he who made all things at once also made at once these six or seven days, or rather the one day repeated six or seven times. What need was there, then, for six days to be narrated so distinctly and in order? Plainly because those who cannot see what is said, “He created all things at once,” cannot reach the point to which the narrative leads them unless it proceeds more slowly with them.

How, then, do we say that the presence of that light was repeated seven times through angelic knowledge, from evening to morning, when it was enough for it to have those three, day and evening and morning, at once and once for all? For it contemplated the whole creation at once, as it was made at once, both in the first and unchangeable reasons through which it was established, which makes the day, and knew it in its own nature, which makes the evening, and praised the Creator even from this lower knowledge, which makes the morning. Or how did morning precede, so that it might know in the Word what God was to make afterward, and then know the same thing in the evening, if nothing was made earlier and later, since all things were made at once? Rather, the things recorded through six days were made both earlier and later, and all were made at once; because both this Scripture, which narrates the works of God through the days mentioned, and that one, which says he made all things at once, are truthful. And both are one, because they were written by the inspiration of the one Spirit of truth.

But in things in which intervals of time do not show what is earlier or later, although both can be said, that is, both “at once” and “earlier and later,” yet what is said “at once” is understood more easily than what is said “earlier and later.” For example, when we look at the rising sun, it is certainly plain that our gaze could not reach it unless it passed through the whole space of air and sky that lies between us and it; and who could estimate how great that distance is? And that gaze, or ray of our eyes, would certainly not come to pass through the air that is over the sea unless it had first passed through the air that is over the land, from the place where we are to the shore of the sea, in whatever inland region we may be. Then, if beyond the sea there still lie lands on the same line of our sight, our gaze cannot pass through the air over those lands across the sea either unless it has first traversed the space of the air that stretches over the sea it meets first. Let us now suppose that beyond those lands across the sea only the Ocean remains. Can our gaze pass through the air that spreads over the Ocean unless it has first passed through all the air on this side of the Ocean, above the land? The size of the Ocean is said to be beyond comparison; but however great it is, the rays of our eyes must first pass through the air that is above it, and afterward whatever lies beyond, and only then reach the sun that we see. Does our gaze, then, not pass through all of it at once in one instant, just because we have said “first” and “afterward” so many times here? For if, with our eyes closed, we set our face toward the sun in order to see it, shall we not think, as soon as we open them, that we have found our gaze there rather than brought it there, so that our eyes do not even seem to have been opened before it reached where it was directed? And certainly this is a ray of bodily light, flashing from our eyes and touching things placed so far away with such speed that it cannot be estimated or compared. Clearly, all those vast and immense spaces are passed through at once in one instant, and it is nonetheless certain what is passed through earlier and what later.

Rightly, when the apostle wished to express the speed of our resurrection, he said that it happens “in the twinkling of an eye.” For nothing swifter can be found in the motions or strokes of bodily things. But if the gaze of fleshly eyes can do so much by its speed, what can the gaze of the mind, even human? How much more that of the angelic mind? What, then, is to be said of the speed of the supreme Wisdom of God itself, which “reaches everywhere because of its purity, and nothing defiled enters into it”? In these things, then, which were made at once, no one sees what had to be made earlier or later except in that Wisdom through which all things were made in order and at once.

That day, then, which God first made, if it is the spiritual and rational creation, that is, of the supercelestial angels and powers, was present to all the works of God in this order of presence, which is the order of knowledge, by which it both foreknew in the Word of God the things to be made and knew them made in creation, not through delays of temporal intervals, but having earlier and later in the connection of creatures, and all at once in the efficacy of the Creator. For he made the things that were to be in such a way that he did not make temporal things in time, but the times, made by him, ran their course. And so these seven days, which the light of the heavenly body unfolds and folds up again in its circuit, by a kind of shadow of signification prompt us to seek those days in which the created spiritual light could be present to all the works of God through the perfection of the number six, and thence have a morning in the seventh, the rest of God, and no evening. Thus God's resting on the seventh day does not mean that he needed that seventh day for his rest, but that in the sight of his angels he rested from all his works which he made, certainly in none but himself, who was not made; that is, that his angelic creation, which was present to know all his works in him and in themselves, as day with evening, should know nothing better, after all his very good works, than that he rests from them all in himself, needing none of them to be more blessed.

“This is the book of the creation of heaven and earth: when the day was made, God made heaven and earth and every green thing of the field before it was upon the earth, and all the grass of the field before it sprang up. For God had not rained upon the earth, and there was no man to work the earth. But a spring went up from the earth and watered the whole face of the earth.” Now indeed that view becomes firmer by which it is understood that God made one day, from which those six or seven days could be numbered by the repetition of this one; since Holy Scripture now says it more openly, in a way summing up all that it had said from the beginning to this place, and adds, “This is the book of the creation (or of the making) of heaven and earth, when the day was made.” For no one will say that heaven and earth are mentioned here in the same way as was said, before the establishing of day was made known, “In the beginning God made heaven and earth.” For if that is understood to mean that God made something without day, before he made day, I said in its place what I thought should be said about how it can be taken, closing to no one the freedom of understanding it better. But now it says, “This is the book of the creation of heaven and earth, when the day was made,” showing clearly enough, I think, that it has not mentioned heaven and earth here in the way it did “in the beginning,” before day was made, when darkness was upon the abyss, but in the way heaven and earth were made when day was made, that is, when the parts and kinds of things had already been formed and distinguished, by which the whole creation, arranged and composed, presents this appearance that is called the world.

So the heaven mentioned here is the one which God, when he had created it, called the firmament, with all that is in it, and the earth is the one which, with the abyss, held the lowest place, with all that is in it. For it continues and adds, “God made heaven and earth,” so that, by setting the name of heaven and earth both before mentioning that day was made and again after mentioning it, it does not allow us to suspect that it now named heaven and earth as it did “in the beginning,” before day was created. For it joined the words thus: “This is the book of the creation of heaven and earth, when the day was made, God made heaven and earth.” So if anyone wishes to understand what is put first, “the book of the creation of heaven and earth,” in the sense in which it was said, “In the beginning God made heaven and earth,” before he established day, on the ground that here too heaven and earth are mentioned first and afterward day is made, let him be corrected by the following words, since after the mention of the making of day the name of heaven and earth is again added.

And even the fact that “when” is put in and joined thus, “when the day was made,” would wrest from any quarrelsome person the admission that no other understanding is possible. For if it had been inserted so as to say, “This is the book of the creation of heaven and earth. The day was made. God made heaven and earth,” someone might perhaps think that “the book of the creation of heaven and earth” was so called in the sense in which it was said, “In the beginning God made heaven and earth,” before day was established, and that “the day was made” was then added, as it was narrated there afterward that God made the day; and that then it was said again at once, “God made heaven and earth,” as if now in the way these were made after day was established. But since it was inserted so as to say “when the day was made,” whether you connect this with the preceding words, so that the sentence is, “This is the book of the creation of heaven and earth, when the day was made,” or with the following words, so that the sentence is complete in this way, “When the day was made, God made heaven and earth,” it without doubt compels us to understand that it mentioned heaven and earth as they were made when day was made. Then, after it was said, “God made heaven and earth,” there is added, “and every green thing of the field,” which certainly were made on the third day. Hence it appears more clearly that it is that same one day which God made, by whose repetition the second and the third and the others up to the seventh day were made.

But since he wished the whole creation to be understood now by the name of heaven and earth, in the usual manner of the Scriptures, one may ask why he added, “and every green thing of the field.” It seems to me that he put it in order to make known more significantly which day he meant when he said, “when the day was made.” For someone might quickly think that the day meant was the day of bodily light, by whose circuit the alternation of daytime and nighttime is presented to us. But when we recall the order of the creatures established and find that every green thing of the field was created on the third day, before the sun was made, which was made on the fourth day and by whose presence this daily, familiar day is carried out, then when we hear, “When the day was made, God made heaven and earth and every green thing of the field,” we are prompted to think of that day which we try to trace by understanding, whether as bodily, in some light unknown to us, or as spiritual, in the society of angelic unity, but in any case not such as the day we know here.