Genesis 1:31 - Exposition

And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. Literally, lo! good very! Not simply good, but good exceedingly. It is not man alone that God surveys, but the completed cosmos, with man as its crown and glory, decu, set tutamen . "It is not merely a benediction which he utters, but an expression of admiration, as we may say without any fear of the anthropomorphism— Euge, bone proclare! " ( T . Lewis). And the evening and the morning were the sixth day. It seems unnecessary to add that this clay corresponds to the Cainozoic or tertiary era of geology, the Palaeontological remains of which sufficiently attest the truth of the Divine record in asserting that animals were anterior to man in their appearance on the earth, and that man is of comparatively recent origin. The alleged evidence of prehistoric man is too fragmentary and hypothetical to be accepted as conclusive; and yet, so far as the cosmogony of the present chapter is concerned, there is nothing to prevent the belief that man is of a much more remote antiquity than 6000 years. As of the other days, so of this the Chaldean tablets preserve an interesting monument. The saventh in the creation series, of which a fragment was discovered in one of the trenches at Konyunjik, runs:—

1. When the gods in their assembly had created ….

2. Were delightful the strong monsters …

3. They caused to be living creatures …

4. Cattle of the field, beasts of the field, and creeping things of the field ….

5. They fixed for the living creatures …

6. Cattle and creeping thing of the city they fixed ….

And the god Nin-si-ku (the lord of noble face) caused to be two … in which it is not difficult to trace an account of the creation of the animal kingdom, and of the first pair of human beings.