Category: Religion/Spirituality
This first chapter of our Holy Bible is written in the simplest and plainest language, and yet it contains the greatest and at the same time the most difficult themes. Therefore the Jews, as Jerome testifies, were forbidden to read it or hear it read before they were thirty ye...
I. V. 16. _Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy pain and thy conception; in pain thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he s...
13. PART I. THE TEMPTATION TO FALL.In the preceding chapter, we were taught the manner in which man was created on the sixth day; that he was created in the image and after the likeness of God, that his will was...
7. PART VI. GOD'S WORK ON THE SIXTH DAY.We have now seen created the heaven with all its hosts, the sun, the moon and the stars. We have seen the sea created, with its fishes and birds. For as the fishes swim in the w...
18. PART VI. NAME ADAM GAVE HIS WIFE. GOD REMINDS MAN OF THE FALL. THEWe have heard above that it was inflicted as a punishment upon the woman, that she should be under the power of the man. That power to which she is thus made subject is here des...
16. PART IV. THE SERPENT AND SATAN CURSED. THE FIRST PROMISE.I. V. 14. _And Jehovah God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, cursed art thou above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go...
11. PART IV. THE CREATION OF EVE.We have just seen how the church was constituted by the Word and by the establishment of a certain day, place and order of worship. For civil government (_politia_) there was as...
9. PART II. PARADISE.Here rises before us a whole sea of questions concerning paradise. In the first place, the word itself, whether it be Hebrew, Chaldean or Persian, for I do not think it is Greek...
2. PART I. GOD'S WORK ON THE FIRST DAY.A necessary and a very difficult question arises here, in that Moses speaks of the creation of the heavens and the earth, and yet does not mention the day on which nor the Word...
10. PART III. THE INTRODUCTION OF MAN INTO THE GARDEN, THE COMMAND GODAfter God had created and variously adorned the universe of heaven and earth, he next prepared the garden of Eden, which he willed to be the habitation and royal seat of man, to...
8. PART I. GOD'S REST, SANCTIFICATION OF THE SABBATH AND CREATION OFOur 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 re...
15. PART III. THE JUDGMENT GOD HELD WITH OUR FIRST PARENTS AFTER THEIRV. 8. _And they heard the voice of Jehovah God walking in the garden in the cool (breeze) of the day: and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of Jehovah God am...
22. PART IV. HOW CAIN MURDERED HIS BROTHER AND WAS REQUIRED TO GIVE ANOur translation has it, "And Cain said to Abel, his brother," adding the words, "Let us go out doors." But this is one of the inventions of the Rabbins, to whom how much credit...
23. PART V. HOW CAIN WAS PUNISHED FOR HIS MURDER.I. And if Eve heard these words spoken to Cain by his father; what do we think must have been the grief and horror of her mind! They must indeed have been beyond all description...
20. PART II. OFFERINGS IN GENERAL, OF OUR FIRST PARENTS, AND OF CAIN ANDI. Now this is the first passage of the Scripture in which mention is made of MINCHA, _or_ "an offering," from which it plainly appears that the custom of sacrificing and offeri...
21. PART III. CAIN'S CONDUCT UPON THE REJECTION OF HIS OFFERING AND HISThis and the few following clauses will give us a little grammatical trouble. But I hope we shall make our way out of the difficulty successfully. We have heard that Cain was di...
3. PART II. GOD'S WORK ON THE SECOND DAY.Moses may here seem to have forgotten himself in that he treats not at all of two most important themes: the creation and the fall of the angels, but confines his sacred narrati...
19. PART I. GENERATION, MARRIAGE, BIRTH AND EDUCATION OF CAIN AND ABEL.I. Thus have we at length waded through that mighty sea of matter, in doing which, all who have made the attempt have so greatly sweated and toiled, and this sweat we also have...
14. PART II. THE AWFUL FALL BY SINNING.V. 6. _And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit...
12. PART V. THE INSTITUTION OF MARRIAGE AND THE FAMILY.A new expression is this again, unheard before. Moses does not use the verb "to create," or "to make," as in Gen. 1:26; but the verb "to build." This has caused all commentators...
5. PART IV. GOD'S WORK ON THE FOURTH DAY.This is the work of the fourth day in which those all-beautiful creatures, the sun and the moon, together with all the stars, were created by the Word. Nor were they created as...
4. PART III. GOD'S WORK ON THE THIRD DAY.In the foregoing I observed that we do not understand the order of the works of God. Had he therefore asked us our opinion here we should have advised him to use such an order a...
6. PART V. GOD'S WORK ON THE FIFTH DAY.We see Moses retains invariably the same sacred phraseology, "And God said," etc. Hitherto he has been speaking of the superior creatures; the heaven with all its host of planet...
24. PART VI. CAIN'S CONDUCT UPON BEING PUNISHED.Here Moses seems to have fixed a cross for the grammarians and the Rabbins. For they crucify this passage in various ways. Lyra recites the opinions of some who explain this pas...
1. CHAPTER I.This first chapter of our Holy Bible is written in the simplest and plainest language, and yet it contains the greatest and at the same time the most difficult themes. Therefore...