Homilies on the Hexaemeron 3.10–4.7

"And God saw that it was good." The things that come into being from God do not give delight to the eyes of God, nor is his approval of beautiful things the same as ours; but that is beautiful which has been completed according to the principle of the art and tends to the usefulness of its end. So he who had set before himself the clear purpose of what was being made went over the individual works and approved them, as completing the end according to his own principles of art. For a hand by itself, and an eye on its own, and each of the members of a statue lying separately, would not appear beautiful to an ordinary person; but when they are set in their proper order, the beauty of proportion, barely evident before, becomes recognizable even to the layman. The craftsman, however, knows the beauty of each even before they are put together, and praises each individually, referring his thought to their end. Such, then, is how God is now described: as a skilled praiser of the individual works; and he is about to give fitting praise also to the whole world together when it has been completed. But here let our words about the second day come to an end, so as to give the industrious hearers time to examine what they have heard, so that, if there was anything useful in it, they may hold it in memory and, by industrious meditation, as by a kind of digestion, await the distribution of what is beneficial; and to give those busy with their livelihood leisure during the interval, so that, having settled their concerns, they may come with a soul pure of cares to the evening feast of words. May God, who created great things and arranged that these small things should be spoken, give you understanding in everything of his own truth, so that from the things that are seen you may come to know the invisible one, and from the greatness and beauty of created things may take up a fitting thought of the one who created us. For "his invisible things, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood through the things that are made, both his eternal power and divinity." So in earth and in air and in heaven, in water, in night and in day, and in all things that are seen, we may receive clear reminders of our Benefactor. For we will give no occasion to sins, nor leave room for the enemy in our hearts, if by continual remembrance we have God dwelling in us; to whom be all glory and worship, now and always, and to the ages of ages. Amen.

There are some cities that feast their eyes from early dawn until evening itself on all kinds of shows put on by wonder-workers. And indeed they listen at great length to certain effeminate and corrupt songs that breed much licentiousness in souls, and never have their fill. Many call such peoples blessed, because they leave aside the business of the marketplace and the means of livelihood that come from the trades, and pass the time of life allotted to them in idleness and pleasure, not knowing that a theater abounding in licentious shows is a common and public school of lewdness for those who sit in it, and that the elaborate melodies of the flutes and the harlots' songs, settling in the souls of those who hear them, persuade all of them to nothing else than shameful conduct, as they imitate the strumming of the lyre-players or the piping of the flute-players. Some who are mad about horses even fight over horses in their dreams, unyoking chariots and changing charioteers, and in general do not leave off the day's folly even in the visions of their sleep. And shall we, whom the Lord, the great wonder-worker and craftsman, has called together to the display of his own works, grow weary of the spectacle, or shrink from hearing the words of the Spirit? Shall we not rather stand around this great and varied workshop of divine creation, and, each of us going back in thought to the earliest times, behold the ordering of the universe? Heaven set up, according to the prophetic word, like a vault; the earth, immense in size and weight, settled upon itself; the air poured out, soft and moist by nature, providing a proper and continual food to all who breathe, yielding and parting for those who move through it because of its softness, so that it is no obstacle to those who press forward, always easily giving way behind those who cut through it and flowing around them; the nature of water, both nourishing and made ready for our other needs, and its orderly gathering into its appointed places: you will see these from what has just been read to us.

"And God said, Let the water under the heaven be gathered into one gathering, and let the dry land appear. And it was so; and the water under the heaven was gathered into their gatherings, and the dry land appeared. And God called the dry land earth, and the bodies of the waters he called seas." How much trouble you gave me in the earlier discourses, demanding the reason why the earth was invisible, since every body naturally has color, and every color is perceptible to sight! And perhaps what was said did not seem sufficient to you: that "invisible" was said in relation to us, not to its nature, because of the interposition of the water that then covered the whole earth. Now listen to Scripture explaining itself: "Let the waters be gathered, and let the dry land appear." The curtains are drawn aside, so that what was until then not seen may become visible. But perhaps someone might also ask this besides. First, why does the word refer to the Creator's command what belongs to water by nature, to flow downhill? For as long as water happens to lie on level ground, it stays still, having nowhere to flow off to; but when it takes hold of some slope, as soon as the leading part rushes on, what follows takes the place of what has moved, and the next part takes the place of that; and so the leading part always slips away and the following part presses on; and the motion becomes the faster, the greater the weight of what is carried down and the deeper the place into which it flows. If, then, water is by nature like this, the command bidding it be gathered into one gathering would be superfluous. For because of its natural downward tendency it was certainly going to settle of its own accord into the lowest place of all, and not stop until its surface was leveled; for no place is so level as the surface of water. Then, he says, how were the waters commanded to run together into one gathering, when there are evidently many seas, very widely separated from one another in position? To the first of the questions we say this: you came to know the movements of water after the Master's command: that it is unstable and unsettled and is carried by nature toward slopes and hollows. But what power it had before the running given to it by this command came about, you neither saw yourself nor heard from anyone who saw. For understand that the voice of God makes nature, and that the command given then to creation provided created things with their order of succession from then on. Day and night were made once, and from then until now they succeed one another and do not cease dividing time into equal shares.

"Let the waters be gathered." The nature of the waters was commanded to run, and it never grows weary, being continually hastened on by that command. I say this with an eye to the flowing part of the waters. For some flow of themselves, like springs and rivers, while others are collected and do not flow. But my discourse now concerns waters in motion. "Let the waters be gathered into one gathering." If ever, standing by a spring that pours out abundant water, you have had the thought, who is it that drives this water out of the flanks of the earth? Who urges it forward? What are the storehouses from which it comes? What is the place toward which it hastens? How is it that these are not exhausted and those are not filled up? These things hang on that first word. From there the water received its signal to run. In every account of waters, remember the first word: "Let the waters be gathered." They had to run, so as to reach their proper place; then, having arrived in the appointed places, to stay by themselves and go no further. That is why, according to the word of Ecclesiastes, "All the torrents go to the sea, and the sea is not filled"; since both the flowing of the waters by the divine command and the sea's being enclosed within its bounds come from the first legislation: "Let the waters be gathered into one gathering." So that the water flowing in, overflowing the places that received it and always passing on and filling one place after another, should not continuously flood the whole land, it was commanded to be gathered into one gathering. That is why the sea, often raging under the winds and rising with its waves to the greatest height, as soon as it touches the shores, dissolves its rush into foam and goes back. "Will you not fear me, says the Lord, who set the sand as a boundary for the sea?" By sand, the weakest of all things, the sea, unbearable in its violence, is bridled. For what prevented the Red Sea from coming upon the whole of Egypt, which lies lower than it, and joining with the sea adjacent to Egypt, if it had not been fettered by the command of the Creator? That Egypt is lower than the Red Sea, those who wished to join the seas to each other, the Egyptian and the Indian, in which the Red Sea lies, have convinced us by experience. That is why they gave up the attempt: both Sesostris the Egyptian, who first began it, and Darius the Mede, who later wished to complete it. I have said this so that we may understand the power of the command "Let the waters be gathered into one gathering": that is, let no other gathering come to be apart from this one, but let what is gathered remain in the first collection.

Next, by saying that the waters should be gathered into one gathering, he showed you that the waters were many, divided among many places. For the hollows of the mountains, broken open by deep ravines, held collections of water; and besides, many level plains, falling in no way short of the greatest seas in size, and countless glens, and valleys hollowed out in shapes of every kind, all filled with water at that time, were emptied by the divine command, as the water from every side was driven together into one gathering. And let no one say: if there was water over the earth, then certainly all the hollows that now receive the sea were already full; where, then, were the collections of the waters to be made, if the hollows had been taken up beforehand? To this we will say that the receptacles too were made at the same time, when the water had to be separated off into one body. For the sea outside Gadeira did not yet exist, nor that great ocean, not to be ventured by sailors, which embraces the island of Britain and the western Iberians; but then, when the wide space had been created by the command of God, the masses of the waters were brought together into it. As for the objection that our account of the world's making is contrary to experience (for, they say, not all the water appears to have run together into one gathering), there is much one could say, and all of it obvious at once; but perhaps it is even ridiculous to contend with such people. Surely they ought not to bring forward to us marsh waters and the collections formed by rains, and think they refute our account by means of these? But he named the greatest and most complete confluence of the waters "one gathering." For wells too are man-made gatherings of water, as the moisture sown in the earth flows into the hollowed-out part of the ground. So the name "gathering" does not indicate just any collections of water, but the outstanding and greatest one, in which the whole element is displayed together. For as fire is broken up into small portions for our use here and is also poured out all together in the ether, and air is divided into small portions and yet all together encompasses the region around the earth, so also with water: even if there are some small, separate bodies of it, there is still one gathering that separates the whole element from the rest. For the lakes in the northern parts, and those around the region of Greece, occupying Macedonia and the land of the Bithynians and that of the Palestinians, are clearly gatherings; but the discourse now concerns the greatest of all, equal in extent to the earth. That they hold a great quantity of water no one will deny; but no one would reasonably call them seas, not even if some of them very much resemble the great sea in their saltiness and earthiness, like the Asphalt Lake in Judea and the Serbonian Lake, which stretches along the Arabian desert between Egypt and Palestine. For these are lakes, but the sea is one, as those who have traveled around the earth report. Even if some think that the Hyrcanian and the Caspian are enclosed by themselves, yet if one is to pay any attention to the geographies of those who have investigated these things, they are connected with each other and all open together into the greatest sea; as they also say that the Red Sea joins the sea beyond Gadeira. How then, he says, did God call the bodies of the waters seas? Because the waters ran together into one gathering, but the bodies of water, that is, the gulfs cut off separately by the surrounding land, the Lord called seas: a northern sea, a southern sea, an eastern sea, and a western one besides. And the seas have names of their own: the Euxine Pontus, the Propontis, the Hellespont, the Aegean and the Ionian, the Sardinian sea, the Sicilian, and the Tyrrhenian besides. And there are countless names of seas, which it would take long now, and would be in very poor taste, to enumerate precisely. That is why God named the bodies of the waters seas. But the sequence of the argument has carried us off to this; let us return to where we began.

"And God said, Let the waters be gathered into one gathering, and let the dry land appear." He did not say, "and let the earth appear," so as not to show it again unformed, muddy and mixed with water, not yet having received its proper form and power. At the same time, so that we might not ascribe to the sun the cause of the earth's drying, the Creator made the dryness of the earth older than the sun's coming into being. And notice in the sense of what is written that not only did the surplus water run off the earth, but also whatever had been mixed with it in its depth withdrew, obeying the inexorable command of the Master. "And it was so." This addition is enough to show that the Creator's voice came to fulfillment. In many copies there is added, "And the water under the heaven was gathered into its gatherings, and the dry land appeared"; which some of the other translators have not given, and which the usage of the Hebrews does not appear to have. And truly, after the testimony "It was so," the retelling of the same things again is superfluous. So in the accurate copies these words are marked with an obelus; and the obelus is the sign of rejection. "And God called the dry land earth, and the bodies of the waters he called seas." Why was it said earlier, "Let the waters be gathered into one gathering, and let the dry land appear," and not the earth; and here again, "the dry land appeared," and "God called the dry land earth"? Because dryness is the property, the mark, as it were, that characterizes the nature of the subject, while "earth" is a bare name of the thing. For as rationality is the property of man, while the word "man" signifies the living being to which the property belongs, so too dryness is the property of earth, peculiar to it. That, then, to which dryness properly belongs has been named earth, just as that to which neighing properly belongs has been named horse. And this holds not only for earth: each of the other elements too has a peculiar quality allotted to it, by which it is distinguished from the rest and each is recognized for what it is. Water has coldness as its own quality, air moisture, fire heat. But these are contemplated by reason in the manner described, as the first elements of composite things; those already set in a body and falling under the senses have their qualities paired. And none of the things that are seen and perceived is absolutely single, or simple and pure; but earth is dry and cold, water moist and cold, air hot and moist, fire hot and dry. For it is through the paired quality that the power arises for each to be mixed with each: each is blended with its neighboring element through the quality they share, and through its fellowship with what is next to it is joined to its opposite. For example, earth, being dry and cold, is united with water by the kinship of coldness, and through water it is united with air; since water, set between the two, takes hold of each of the qualities of its neighbors as if with two hands, of the coldness of earth and the moisture of air. Again, air by its own mediation becomes the reconciler of the warring natures of water and fire, being joined to water by moisture and to fire by heat. And fire, being hot and dry by nature, is bound to air by heat, and by dryness comes back again into fellowship with earth. And so there is a circle and a harmonious dance, all of them agreeing and keeping rank with one another; whence the name "elements" has properly been applied to them. I have said this in setting out the reason why God called the dry land earth, and did not call the earth dry. For dryness is not one of the things that came to the earth later, but one of the things that from the beginning complete its being. And what provides the cause of a thing's being is prior in nature to what comes afterward, and more honored. So it was fitting that the marks by which the earth is known were taken from what was there first and older.

"And God saw that it was good." The word does not indicate precisely this, that some delightful sight of the sea appeared to God. For the Maker does not see the beauties of creation with eyes, but contemplates what comes to be by his unspeakable wisdom. A pleasant sight indeed is the sea growing white when a clear calm holds it; pleasant too when, its surface ruffled by gentle breezes, it presents a purple or dark-blue color to those who look on it, when it does not beat violently on the neighboring land but greets it, as it were, with peaceful embraces. Yet we must not think that Scripture said that the sea appeared good and pleasant to God in this way; there the good is judged by the principle of creation. First, because the water of the sea is the source of all the moisture around the earth: it is distributed through hidden passages, as the spongy and cavernous parts of the mainland show, under which the sea runs through channels; when it is shut up in winding passages that do not lead straight upward, it is driven by the wind that moves it and is carried outward, bursting through the surface, and becomes drinkable, its bitterness cured by the filtering. And when on its passage it has taken on a hotter quality from metals, by the same cause that moves it it often becomes boiling and fiery; which may be observed in many places on the islands and in many places on the coasts. Even inland some places near river waters, to compare small things with great, undergo similar things. For what purpose have I said this? Because the whole earth is undermined with passages, the water returning underground through hidden pathways from the sources of the sea.

The sea, then, is good in God's sight also because of the underground course of moisture in the depth; good too because, being the receptacle of rivers, it receives into itself the streams from every side and stays within its own bounds; good too because it is a kind of beginning and source of the waters in the air: warmed by the ray of the sun, it gives off the fine part of the water as vapor; this is drawn up into the upper region, and then, cooled because it has risen higher than the rays reflected from the ground, while the shade of the cloud at the same time increases the cold, it becomes rain and fattens the earth. And no one will doubt this at all who thinks of cauldrons heated from below, which, though full of liquid, are often left empty, all that was being boiled having been dispersed into vapor. One may also see sea water itself being boiled by sailors, who catch the vapors in sponges and so moderately relieve their need in emergencies. The sea is good in God's sight in other ways too: because it girds the islands round about, giving them by itself both adornment and safety; and then because it joins together the mainlands that lie farthest apart, providing unhindered intercourse to those who sail; through this it grants knowledge of things unknown, becomes for merchants the agent of wealth, and easily supplies the needs of life, giving those who have abundance an outlet for their surplus and granting the needy the making-up of what they lack. But how can I see with precision the whole beauty of the sea, as it appeared to the eye of the one who made it? And if the sea is good and praiseworthy to God, how is not the assembly of such a church far more beautiful, in which a mingled sound, like a wave borne against the shore, of men and women and children, is sent forth in our prayers to God? And a deep calm keeps it unshaken, since the spirits of wickedness have not been able to trouble it with heretical words. May you, then, be worthy of the Lord's approval, preserving this good order in the most seemly way, in Christ Jesus our Lord …