the First Week after Epiphany
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J.B. Rotherham Emphasized Bible
Genesis 1:17
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And God set them in the firmament of the heauen, to shine vpon the earth,
And God set them in the firmament of the heavens to give light upon the earth,
God set them in the expanse of sky to give light to the eretz,
God put these lights in the sky to shine on the earth.
And God set them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth,
And God set them in the firmament of heaven to give light upon the earth,
And God put them in the arch of heaven, to give light on the earth;
Then God put these lights in the sky to shine on the earth,
God put them in the dome of the sky to give light to the earth,
And God set them in the expanse of the heavens, to give light on the earth,
And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth,
And God set them in the firmament of the heauen, to giue light vpon the earth:
And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth,
God placed them in the expanse of the heavens to provide light upon the earth,
And God placed them in the firmament of the heaven, so as to shine upon the earth,
And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth,
God set these lights in the expanse of the sky to shine upon the earth,
And God placed them in the vaulted dome of heaven to give light on the earth
And God set them in the expanse of the heavens, to give light on the earth,
God put all these in the sky to shine on the earth,
God placed the lights in the expanse of the sky to shine on the earth,
God set them in the firmament of the heavens to give light on the earth,
God set these lights in the sky to light the earth,
God put them in the open space of the heavens to give light on the earth,
And he set them in the firmament of heaven to shine upon the earth.
And God set them in the firmament of the heavens to give light upon the earth,
He placed the lights in the sky to shine on the earth,
and God made sterris; and settide tho in the firmament of heuene, that tho schulden schyne on erthe,
and God giveth them in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth,
God set them in the expanse of sky to give light to the earth,
And God set them in the firmament of heaven to give light on the earth,
And God set them in the firmament of the heaven, to give light upon the earth.
And God set them in the firmament of the heauen, to shyne vpon the earth,
God placed them in the expanse of the sky to provide light on the earth,
And God set them in the firmament of heauen, yt they might shyne vpo earth,
God placed them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth,
God set them in the dome of the sky to give light upon the earth,
God placed them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth,
And God placed them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth,
Contextual Overview
Bible Verse Review
from Treasury of Scripure Knowledge
Genesis 9:13, Job 38:12, Psalms 8:1, Psalms 8:3, Acts 13:47
Reciprocal: Psalms 19:2 - night unto Isaiah 45:7 - form
Cross-References
My bow, have I set in the cloud, - and it shall be for a sign of a covenant, betwixt me and the earth;
Since thy days began hast thou commanded the morning? or caused the dawn to know its place;
When I view thy heavens, the work, of thy fingers, moon and stars, which thou hast established,
For so hath the Lord commanded us - I have set thee for a light of nations, that thou mayest be for salvation unto the end of the earth.
Gill's Notes on the Bible
And God set them in the firmament of the heaven,.... He not only ordered that there they should be, and made them that there they might be, but he placed them there with his own hands; and they are placed, particularly the sun, at such a particular distance as to be beneficial and not hurtful: had it been set nearer to the earth, its heat would have been intolerable; and had it been further off it would have been of no use; in the one case we should have been scorched with its heat, and in the other been frozen up for the want of it. The various expressions used seem to be designed on purpose to guard against and expose the vanity of the worship of the sun and moon; which being visible, and of such great influence and usefulness to the earth, were the first the Heathens paid adoration to, and was as early as the times of Job, Job 31:26 and yet these were but creatures made by God, his servants and agents under him, and therefore to worship them was to serve the creature besides the Creator.
To give light upon the earth; this is repeated from Genesis 1:15 to show the end for which they were made, and set up, and the use they were to be of to the earth; being hung up like so many lamps or chandeliers, to contain and send forth light unto the earth, to the inhabitants of it, that they may see to walk and work by, and do all the business of life, as well as be warmed and comforted thereby, and the earth made fertile to bring forth its precious fruits for the use of creatures in it: and it is marvellous that such light should be emitted from the sun, when it is at such a vast distance from the earth, and should reach it in so short a space. A modern astronomer m observes, that a bullet discharged from a cannon would be near twenty five years, before it could finish its journey from the sun to the earth: and yet the rays of light reach the earth in seven minutes and a half, and are said to pass ten millions of miles in a minute.
m Huygen. Cosmotheoros. l. 2. p. 125.
Barnes' Notes on the Bible
- VI. The Fourth Day
14. מאור mā'ôr, “a light, a luminary, a center of radiant light.”
מועה mô‛ēd, “set time, season.”
Words beginning with a formative מ musually signify that in which the simple quality resides or is realized. Hence, they often denote place.
17. נתן nāthan “give, hold out, show, stretch, hold out.” Latin: tendo, teneo; τείνω teinō.
The darkness has been removed from the face of the deep, its waters have been distributed in due proportions above and below the expanse; the lower waters have retired and given place to the emerging land, and the wasteness of the land thus exposed to view has begun to be adorned with the living forms of a new vegetation. It only remains to remove the “void” by peopling this now fair and fertile world with the animal kingdom. For this purpose the Great Designer begins a new cycle of supernatural operations.
Genesis 1:14, Genesis 1:15
Lights. - The work of the fourth day has much in common with that of the first day, which, indeed it continues and completes. Both deal with light, and with dividing between light and darkness, or day and night. “Let there be.” They agree also in choosing the word “be,” to express the nature of the operation which is here performed. But the fourth day advances on the first day. It brings into view the luminaries, the light radiators, the source, while the first only indicated the stream. It contemplates the far expanse, while the first regards only the near.
For signs and for seasons, and for days and years. - While the first day refers only to the day and its twofold division, the fourth refers to signs, seasons, days, and years. These lights are for “signs.” They are to serve as the great natural chronometer of man, having its three units, - the day, the month, and the year - and marking the divisions of time, not only for agricultural and social purposes, but also for meeting out the eras of human history and the cycles of natural science. They are signs of place as well as of time - topometers, if we may use the term. By them the mariner has learned to mark the latitude and longitude of his ship, and the astronomer to determine with any assignable degree of precision the place as well as the time of the planetary orbs of heaven. The “seasons” are the natural seasons of the year, and the set times for civil and sacred purposes which man has attached to special days and years in the revolution of time.
Since the word “day” is a key to the explanation of the first day’s work, so is the word “year” to the interpretation of that of the fourth. Since the cause of the distinction of day and night is the diurnal rotation of the earth on its axis in conjunction with a fixed source of light, which streamed in on the scene of creation as soon as the natural hinderance was removed, so the vicissitudes of the year are owing, along with these two conditions, to the annual revolution of the earth in its orbit round the sun, together with the obliquity of the ecliptic. To the phenomena so occasioned are to be added incidental variations arising from the revolution of the moon round the earth, and the small modifications caused by the various other bodies of the solar system. All these celestial phenomena come out from the artless simplicity of the sacred narrative as observable facts on the fourth day of that new creation. From the beginning of the solar system the earth must, from the nature of things, have revolved around the sun. But whether the rate of velocity was ever changed, or the obliquity of the ecliptic was now commenced or altered, we do not learn from this record.
Genesis 1:15
To shine upon the earth. - The first day spreads the shaded gleam of light over the face of the deep. The fourth day unfolds to the eye the lamps of heaven, hanging in the expanse of the skies, and assigns to them the office of “shining upon the earth.” A threefold function is thus attributed to the celestial orbs - to divide day from night, to define time and place, and to shine on the earth. The word of command is here very full, running over two verses, with the exception of the little clause, “and it was so,” stating the result.
Genesis 1:16-19
This result is fully particularized in the next three verses. This word, “made,” corresponds to the word “be” in the command, and indicates the disposition and adjustment to a special purpose of things previously existing.
Genesis 1:16
The two great lights. - The well-known ones, great in relation to the stars, as seen from the earth.
The great light, - in comparison with the little light. The stars, from man’s point of view, are insignificant, except in regard to number Genesis 15:5.
Genesis 1:17
God gave them. - The absolute giving of the heavenly bodies in their places was performed at the time of their actual creation. The relative giving here spoken of is what would appear to an earthly spectator, when the intervening veil of clouds would be dissolved by the divine agency, and the celestial luminaries would stand forth in all their dazzling splendor.
Genesis 1:18
To rule. - From their lofty eminence they regulate the duration and the business of each period. The whole is inspected and approved as before.
Now let it be remembered that the heavens were created at the absolute beginning of things recorded in the first verse, and that they included all other things except the earth. Hence, according to this document, the sun, moon, and stars were in existence simultaneously with our planet. This gives simplicity and order to the whole narrative. Light comes before us on the first and on the fourth day. Now, as two distinct causes of a common effect would be unphilosophical and unnecessary, we must hold the one cause to have been in existence on these two days. But we have seen that the one cause of the day and of the year is a fixed source of radiating light in the sky, combined with the diurnal and annual motions of the earth. Thus, the recorded preexistence of the celestial orbs is consonant with the presumptions of reason. The making or reconstitution of the atmosphere admits their light so far that the alternations of day and night can be discerned. The making of the lights of heaven, or the display of them in a serene sky by the withdrawal of that opaque canopy of clouds that still enveloped the dome above, is then the work of the fourth day.
All is now plain and intelligible. The heavenly bodies become the lights of the earth, and the distinguishers not only of day and night, but of seasons and years, of times and places. They shed forth their unveiled glories and salutary potencies on the budding, waiting land. How the higher grade of transparency in the aerial region was effected, we cannot tell; and, therefore, we are not prepared to explain why it is accomplished on the fourth day, and not sooner. But from its very position in time, we are led to conclude that the constitution of the expanse, the elevation of a portion of the waters of the deep in the form of vapor, the collection of the sub-aerial water into seas, and the creation of plants out of the reeking soil, must all have had an essential part, both in retarding until the fourth day, and in then bringing about the dispersion of the clouds and the clearing of the atmosphere. Whatever remained of hinderance to the outshining of the sun, moon, and stars on the land in all their native splendor, was on this day removed by the word of divine power.
Now is the approximate cause of day and night made palpable to the observation. Now are the heavenly bodies made to be signs of time and place to the intelligent spectator on the earth, to regulate seasons, days, months, and years, and to be the luminaries of the world. Now, manifestly, the greater light rules the day, as the lesser does the night. The Creator has withdrawn the curtain, and set forth the hitherto undistinguishable brilliants of space for the illumination of the land and the regulation of the changes which diversify its surface. This bright display, even if it could have been effected on the first day with due regard to the forces of nature already in operation, was unnecessary to the unseeing and unmoving world of vegetation, while it was plainly requisite for the seeing, choosing, and moving world of animated nature which was about to be called into existence on the following days.
The terms employed for the objects here brought forward - “lights, the great light, the little light, the stars;” for the mode of their manifestation, “be, make, give;” and for the offices they discharge, “divide, rule, shine, be for signs, seasons, days, years” - exemplify the admirable simplicity of Scripture, and the exact adaptation of its style to the unsophisticated mind of primeval man. We have no longer, indeed, the naming of the various objects, as on the former days; probably because it would no longer be an important source of information for the elucidation of the narrative. But we have more than an equivalent for this in variety of phrase. The several words have been already noticed: it only remains to make some general remarks.
(1) The sacred writer notes only obvious results, such as come before the eye of the observer, and leaves the secondary causes, their modes of operation, and their less obtrusive effects, to scientific inquiry. The progress of observation is from the foreground to the background of nature, from the physical to the metaphysical, and from the objective to the subjective. Among the senses, too, the eye is the most prominent observer in the scenes of the six days. Hence, the “lights,” they “shine,” they are for “signs” and “days,” which are in the first instance objects of vision. They are “given,” held or shown forth in the heavens. Even “rule” has probably the primitive meaning to be over. Starting thus with the visible and the tangible, the Scripture in its successive communications advance with us to the inferential, the intuitive, the moral, the spiritual, the divine.
(2) The sacred writer also touches merely the heads of things in these scenes of creation, without condescending to minute particulars or intending to be exhaustive. Hence, many actual incidents and intricacies of these days are left to the well-regulated imagination and sober judgment of the reader. To instance such omissions, the moon is as much of her time above the horizon during the day as during the night. But she is not then the conspicuous object in the scene, or the full-orbed reflector of the solar beams, as she is during the night. Here the better part is used to mark the whole. The tidal influence of the great lights, in which the moon plays the chief part, is also unnoticed. Hence, we are to expect very many phenomena to be altogether omitted, though interesting and important in themselves, because they do not come within the present scope of the narrative.
(3) The point from which the writer views the scene is never to be forgotten, if we would understand these ancient records. He stands on earth. He uses his eyes as the organ of observation. He knows nothing of the visual angle, of visible as distinguishable from tangible magnitude, of relative in comparison with absolute motion on the grand scale: he speaks the simple language of the eye. Hence, his earth is the meet counterpart of the heavens. His sun and moon are great, and all the stars are a very little thing. Light comes to be, to him, when it reaches the eye. The luminaries are held forth in the heavens, when the mist between them and the eye is dissolved.
(4) Yet, though not trained to scientific thought or speech, this author has the eye of reason open as well as that of sense. It is not with him the science of the tangible, but the philosophy of the intuitive, that reduces things to their proper dimensions. He traces not the secondary cause, but ascends at one glance to the great first cause, the manifest act and audible behest of the Eternal Spirit. This imparts a sacred dignity to his style, and a transcendent grandeur to his conceptions. In the presence of the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, all things terrestrial and celestial are reduced to a common level. Man in intelligent relation with God comes forth as the chief figure on the scene of terrestrial creation. The narrative takes its commanding position as the history of the ways of God with man. The commonest primary facts of ordinary observation, when recorded in this book, assume a supreme interest as the monuments of eternal wisdom and the heralds of the finest and broadest generalizations of a consecrated science. The very words are instinct with a germinant philosophy, and prove themselves adequate to the expression of the loftiest speculations of the eloquent mind.
