Genesis — Chapter 1

IN THE BEGINNING. — Lapide gives nine literal interpretations of \"in principio.\" First (mystic, per Augustine, Ambrose, Basil, Hom. 1 Hexam.): \"In the beginning\" means \"In the Son,\" since the Apostle teaches that all things were created through the Son as the Idea and Wisdom of the Father (Col. 1:16). Yet Lapide notes this exposition is mystical and symbolic, not the primary literal sense. Second and better literally (same Fathers, Lateran Council, cap. Firmiter): \"in the beginning\" means at the first moment of time and the world, when the world's duration — that is, time itself — began simultaneously with the world. Though the time of the first moment differed from our time (which is measured by the movement of the primum mobile, sun, and heavens, none of which yet existed), there was nonetheless a duration of corporeal things, analogous to our time. Augustine: \"After creation, movements began to run through times. Hence before creation, times are sought in vain, as if they could be found before times themselves.\" Third and most simply: \"in the beginning,\" that is, before all things, so that God created nothing before heaven and earth. Thus John 1:1: \"In the beginning was the Word\" = \"Before all things, from eternity, was the Word.\" Both the second and third senses are genuine literal senses: from the second, it is clear the world is not eternal (against Plato, Aristotle); from the third, that angels were created simultaneously with the material world (Lateran Council). Further interpretations: Fourth (Tertullian, Contra Hermogenem): \"in principatu\" — in royal power. Fifth (Aquila): \"in capite\" — summarily, all things created together in outline. Sixth (Ambrose, Basil): \"in momento\" — in an instant, without any interval of time. Seventh (Ambrose, Procopius, Bede): as the principal and most excellent things. Eighth (Basil, Procopius): as the foundations and bases of the universe. Ninth (Junilius): denoting God's eternity and omnipotence.

THE EARTH WAS VOID AND EMPTY. — In Hebrew: tohu vavohu, that is, desolation and void. The earth was empty of men and cattle (Jonathan Chaldaeus), empty also of plants, animals, seeds, grass, light, beauty, rivers, fountains, mountains, valleys, fields, hills, metals and minerals, towards which the earth has a natural inclination. Hence Wisd. 11: God \"created the world of a formless matter.\" The LXX render: \"the earth was invisible and unordered\"; Aquila: \"vanity and nothingness\"; Symmachus: \"idle and undigested\"; Theodotion: \"void and nothingness\"; Onkelos: \"desolate and empty.\" The earth was like a chaos — as Ovid describes (Metamorph. I, 7): \"One face nature wore, / Which Chaos men have named: a rude unformed mass.\" Why did God not ornament heaven and earth immediately when creating them on Day 1? Ambrose (Hexam. I, 7): so we might learn that nature proceeds from imperfect to perfect. Second: so that we learn all things depend on God for both their beginning and their completion. Third: lest, if all appeared perfect from the start, men mistake them for uncreated (Ambrose). Fourth: to teach us to imitate the divine order in our own work and progress (Ambrose).

AND GOD SAID. — God \"said\" not with the voice of a mouth but with the voice of the mind — not a rational word but an essential Word, common to all three Persons. \"Said\" therefore means: in His mind He conceived, willed, decreed, commanded efficaciously, and by that very command produced and brought forth. The power of the divine will is the act of creation (Athanasius, Serm. 3 Contra Arianos). Yet \"said\" is appropriated to the Son, for the Son is properly and notionally the Word, to Whom are attributed wisdom, art, and idea; as to the Father is attributed power, and to the Holy Spirit goodness. God \"said\" this after the creation of heaven, earth, and the abyss, but within the same first day of the world.

AND GOD SAW THAT THE LIGHT WAS GOOD. — \"He saw\" means He made us see and know (Jerome, Ep. 15). Better and more plainly: Moses here introduces God after the manner of an artist who, having completed his work, contemplates it and sees it is beautiful and elegant — a device of Moses to teach us (against the Manichees) that nothing evil was produced by God, but all things good. Augustine (Sententiis, n. 141): \"Three things above all needed to be made known to us concerning the creation: who made it, through what He made it, and why. God said: Let there be light. And there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good. No author is more excellent than God; no art more efficacious than the Word of God; no cause better than that a good thing be created by the Good.\"

AND HE CALLED THE LIGHT DAY, AND THE DARKNESS NIGHT. — \"Called\" is metonymy; the sign is put for the thing signified: God brought it about that the light, for all the time it illuminates the hemisphere, constitutes Day; and the darkness, Night; so that men might call this light \"Day\" and the darkness \"Night\" (Augustine, De Gen. contra Manich. I, 9–10).

LET THERE BE A FIRMAMENT IN THE MIDST OF THE WATERS, AND LET IT DIVIDE THE WATERS FROM THE WATERS. — Hebrew rakia (from raka = to spread, extend, and by extension to firm and solidify a fluid or rarefied substance — as molten metal spread out is condensed and hardened). The firmament is therefore a wall in the midst of the waters, between the upper and lower waters. Four interpretations of what the firmament is: First (Origen): \"upper waters\" = angels; \"lower waters\" = demons — this is Origenistic fantasy. Second (Bonaventure, Lyranus, Abulensis, Cajetan, Catharinus): upper waters = the crystalline heaven. Third (Rupert, Pererius, Gregory of Valencia, Augustine, De Gen. ad litt. II, 4): firmament = middle region of the air, dividing the clouds above from rivers and fountains below. Fourth and Lapide's conclusion: the firmament is the starry sky and all the celestial spheres adjacent to it, both above and below, up to the Empyrean. From the primordial abyss of waters: the more refined and noble portion above the heavens remained as water; the portion condensed and solidified became the heavens; the denser portion below the firmament was divided into seas and rivers. Above all the heavens, immediately below the Empyrean, therefore, there exist real and natural waters — and this is the common opinion of Philo, Josephus, Basil, Ambrose, Procopius, Theodoret, Chrysostom, Rupert, Gennadius, Severianus, Hilary, Bede, Justin, Augustine, Onkelos, and many others.

AND GOD MADE THE FIRMAMENT, AND DIVIDED THE WATERS THAT WERE UNDER THE FIRMAMENT, FROM THOSE THAT WERE ABOVE THE FIRMAMENT. — The word \"made\" (fecit) signifies not a mere disposition of pre-existing matter but a new production. [Lapide argues at length that \"fiat\" (let there be) and \"fecit\" (made) consistently indicate creation or production in Moses, not mere rearrangement.] Why does Moses not say here, as in other days, \"and God saw that it was good\"? Most probably because Moses groups the three works of separation — light from darkness (Day 1), upper from lower waters (Day 2), waters from land (Day 3) — and records the single final judgment \"and God saw that it was good\" only at verse 10, after all three. Morally: as union and harmony are a great good in the republic and in the congregation, so division and discord are a great evil.

LET THE WATERS THAT ARE UNDER THE HEAVEN BE GATHERED TOGETHER INTO ONE PLACE, AND LET THE DRY LAND APPEAR. — Earth and water form a single globe (against those who thought the sea higher than the land): this is the common opinion of mathematicians, Molina, Pererius, Cajetan, Jerome, Chrysostom, Damascene. Proof: (1) the shadow cast in a lunar eclipse shows one globe, not two; (2) every drop of water and every part of earth descend to the same centre by the same straight line; (3) islands protrude above the water, confirming earth is not lower than sea; (4) Scripture: \"He hath founded it (the earth) upon the seas\" (Ps. 23:2); \"He that established the earth above the waters\" (Ps. 135:6). The third day is the day when God first caused mountains to rise and valleys to sink, shaping the face of the earth, so that mountains might contain the seas and rivers as walls, and distilling their rains might render the fields fertile.

LET THE EARTH BRING FORTH GREEN HERB, AND SUCH AS MAY SEED, AND FRUIT TREES YIELDING FRUIT AFTER THEIR KIND. — God did not create these ex nihilo but produced them from the potency of the already-created matter of the earth — just as He continues to do by the ordinary course of nature. Thus the \"days\" represent not only distinct works but a progressive ordering: first the matter is created (Day 1 broadly), then it is divided and arranged (Days 2–3), then filled with forms (Days 4–6). The production of vegetation before the sun (Day 4) shows that the primary cause of generation is God, not the sun, which is only the instrument.

LET THERE BE LIGHTS IN THE FIRMAMENT OF HEAVEN TO DIVIDE THE DAY AND THE NIGHT. — The two great lights are the sun and moon. Note: vegetation was produced on Day 3 before the sun was created on Day 4, demonstrating that God, not the sun, is the proper cause of life and growth. The sun, moon, and stars were made from the same primordial luminous mass created on Day 1, now divided, augmented, and formed into fiery globes. \"And let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and for years\": the heavenly bodies are the instruments of natural causation and the measurers of time — but they are signs of divine providence, not autonomous causes. Lapide rejects astrological determinism: the stars incline but do not compel.

LET THE WATERS BRING FORTH THE CREEPING CREATURE HAVING LIFE, AND THE FOWL THAT MAY FLY OVER THE EARTH. — On Day 5. God produced fish and birds from the waters, not ex nihilo but from the potency of water. Fish and birds share the same kind of beginning because both \"swim\" — fish in water, birds in air. The waters are commanded to produce them, to show that God uses secondary causes, conferring upon created matter a certain productive power; yet He alone is the true efficient cause. \"Increase and multiply\": the first blessing of God upon living creatures. This blessing is a real conferral of fecundity, not merely a permission.

LET THE EARTH BRING FORTH THE LIVING SOUL IN ITS KIND, CATTLE AND CREEPING THINGS, AND BEASTS OF THE EARTH. — On Day 6, first the land animals. These also are produced from earth as the created matter, God imparting to them their various forms. Note the ascending order: plants (no sensation), fish and birds (sensation and locomotion in their elements), land animals (sensation and locomotion on solid ground) — all ordered towards the crown of creation, man.

AND GOD SAID: LET US MAKE MAN. — The plural \"let Us make\" (Faciamus) is of supreme importance. First, the Hebrew Fathers and the Rabbinic tradition explain it as a form of royal majesty or divine deliberation — but this is insufficient. Second and truly: it expresses the plurality of Persons in the one God, addressed by God the Father to the Son and Holy Spirit (Augustine, De Gen. ad litt. III, 19; Basil, Hexam. 9; Ambrose, De Parad. 12; Jerome; Chrysostom, Hom. 8 in Gen.; Rupert; Lyranus; Aquinas, I, Q. 93). The creation of man alone merited this divine deliberation — because man is the crown and end of creation, the one creature made ad imaginem Dei. Note: this \"Let Us make\" is directed to no angel (as some Jews claim) for angels cannot create; but it is the eternal conversation of the Trinity.

AND GOD CREATED MAN TO HIS OWN IMAGE; TO THE IMAGE OF GOD HE CREATED HIM: MALE AND FEMALE HE CREATED THEM. — The repetition \"to His own image; to the image of God\" emphasizes the uniqueness of this creation: man participates in the divine nature in a way no other visible creature does. \"Male and female He created them\" — both sexes bear the image of God equally in the soul and rational faculty, though in different modes. The immediate creation of both is affirmed against those who said Eve was created from an already-existing woman, or was produced later by a purely natural process; for both are directly created by God.

AND GOD BLESSED THEM AND SAID: INCREASE AND MULTIPLY, AND FILL THE EARTH, AND SUBDUE IT. — The first blessing of mankind. \"Increase and multiply\": this divine blessing is a real conferral, not a mere permission — it ordains marriage and the generation of children as a holy thing. \"Subdue the earth\": man's dominion over creation is not tyranny but stewardship — he rules the creatures as a rational and just lord who renders all creation to the glory of God. This verse is the foundation of Christian anthropology: man as lord of visible creation, accountable to God.

AND GOD SAW ALL THE THINGS HE HAD MADE, AND THEY WERE VERY GOOD. — \"Very good\" (valde bona) — not merely good as on previous days, but \"very good\" because the work is now complete: all parts are ordered to each other and to the whole, and the whole is ordered to man, and man to God. Against Manichaean dualism: every created thing is good, for it proceeds from the one good God. Evil is not a substance but the privation of a due good (Augustine, Enchiridion; Thomas Aquinas, I, Q. 48). Tropologically: we should contemplate creatures three ways — (1) from themselves they are nothing, tending to nothing; (2) from the gift of the Creator they are good, beautiful, and stable; (3) God uses them as instruments of punishment and reward. \"Every creature cries to us three things: Receive, render, flee — receive the benefit, render what is due, flee the punishment.\"