Literal Commentary on Genesis 4.12–4.24

It can also be understood that God rested from establishing kinds of creature, because he no longer established any new kinds, but thereafter, until now and beyond, works the governing of those same kinds which were then set up; not that his power ceased, even on that seventh day, from governing heaven and earth and all the things he had established, otherwise they would at once have fallen apart. For the power of the Creator, and the might of the Almighty who holds all things together, is the cause of every creature's subsisting. If this might ever ceased from ruling the things that were created, their form too would at the same time cease, and all nature would collapse. For it is not as with a builder of houses, who, when he has built, goes away, and though he stops and goes away his work stands; the world could not stand even for the twinkling of an eye if God withdrew his rule from it.

Accordingly, what the Lord says, “My Father is working until now,” shows a certain continuation of his work, by which he holds together and governs the whole creation. It could be understood otherwise if he said, “And he is working now,” where we would not have to take it as a continuation of work; but it compels another understanding when he says “until now,” that is, from the time when he worked in establishing all things. And from what is written of his Wisdom, “She reaches mightily from end to end and arranges all things sweetly,” of which it is also written that her movement is more agile and swifter than all movements, it is clear enough to those who look rightly that she supplies this incomparable and ineffable movement of hers, and, if it can be understood, a stable movement, to the things that are sweetly arranged; and that if it were withdrawn, if she ceased from this working, they would at once perish. And what the apostle says when he preached God to the Athenians, “In him we live and move and are,” if it is thought through clearly, as far as the human mind can, supports this view by which we believe and say that God works unceasingly in the things he has created. For we are not in him as his substance, in the way it is said that he “has life in himself”; but since we are something other than he, we are in him for no other reason than that he works this, and this is his work by which he holds all things together and by which his Wisdom reaches mightily from end to end and arranges all things sweetly; and through this arrangement “in him we live and move and are.” From this it is gathered that if he withdraws this work of his from things, we shall neither live nor move nor be. It is clear, then, that God has not ceased for even one day from the work of ruling what he created, lest they immediately lose their natural motions, by which they are moved and quickened so that they are natures at all and remain, each according to its kind, in what they are, and lest they cease altogether to be anything, if that movement of the Wisdom of God by which she arranges all things sweetly were withdrawn from them. Therefore we take it that God rested from all his works which he made in such a way that he no longer established any new nature, not that he ceased to hold together and govern what he had established. Hence both are true: that on the seventh day God rested, and that he is working until now.

His works, indeed, we see to be good; his rest we shall see after our good works. To signify it, he commanded the Hebrew people to keep one day; and they kept it so carnally that, seeing our Lord and Savior working on that day, they accused him, and so he answered them most rightly concerning the work of the Father, with whom he himself worked equally, not only in governing the whole creation but also in our very salvation. Now, in the time of grace revealed, that keeping of the Sabbath, which was figured by the leisure of one day, has been removed from the observance of the faithful. For in this grace he keeps a perpetual Sabbath who, in the hope of future rest, works whatever good he works, and does not boast in his good works as though he had a good that he had not received. For thus, receiving and understanding the sacrament of baptism as a kind of Sabbath day, that is, of the Lord's resting in the tomb, he rests from his former works, so that, walking now in newness of life, he recognizes that God works in him, God who at once works and rests, both providing fitting government to creation and having eternal tranquillity in himself.

Finally, he was neither wearied when he created nor refreshed when he ceased, but he wished, through his Scripture, to stir us to the desire of rest by making known to us that he sanctified that day on which he rested from all his works. For nowhere in all the six days in which all things were created do we read that he sanctified anything. Nor before those six days, where it is written, “In the beginning God made heaven and earth,” is “and he sanctified” added; but he willed to sanctify this day on which he rested from all his works which he made, as if even with him, who labors not at all in his work, rest counted for more than working. Among men the Gospel makes this known to us, where our Savior says that Mary had the better part, because, sitting at his feet, she rested in his word, than Martha, though she was busy about many things in the service with which she ministered to him and was doing a good work. But how this is in God, or how it is to be understood, is hard to say, even if one can reach some little way by thought toward why God sanctified the day of his rest, when he sanctified no day of his work, not even the sixth, on which he made man and perfected all things. And first, what is God's resting itself? Whose human mind's gaze can attain it? Yet if it were not so, this Scripture would not state it at all. I will say what I think, stating first these two indubitable points: that God did not delight in some temporal rest as if after labor or after a desired end of his task; and that these writings, rightly preeminent with such great authority, did not say vainly or falsely that God rested on the seventh day from all his works which he made and for that reason sanctified that day.

Surely, then, since it is a fault and weakness of the soul to delight in its works in such a way that it rests in them rather than resting from them in itself (for without doubt there is something better in it, by which they were made, than the things that were made), God is made known to us through this Scripture, which says that he rested from all his works which he made, as not having delighted in any work of his as though he needed to make it, or as though he would be less had he not made it, or more blessed once he had made it. For whatever is from him is from him in such a way that it owes him what it is; but he owes to nothing that is from him his being blessed. So he set himself above the things he made, in loving, sanctifying not the day on which he began to make them, nor that on which he perfected them, lest his joy seem to have been increased by their being made or by their having been made, but that on which he rested from them in himself. He himself, indeed, was never without this rest, but he showed it to us through the seventh day. By this he also signified that his rest is attained only by the perfect, since to make it known he assigned no day except the one that followed the perfection of all things. For he who is always at rest rested for us then, when he showed that he had rested.

This also is to be noted: that God's rest, by which he is blessed in himself, had to be made known to us so that we might understand how he is said also to rest in us; which is said only when he grants rest in himself to us too. God's rest, then, for those who understand rightly, is that by which he needs no one's good; and so it is sure for us also in him, because we too are made blessed by the good which he is, not he by the good which we are. For we too are some good from him who made all things very good, among which he made us also. Moreover, there is no other good thing besides himself that he did not make; and therefore he needs no good other than himself, since he does not need the good he made. This is his rest from all his works which he made. But in what praiseworthy sense would he not need goods if he had made none? For even so he could be said to need no goods, not by resting in himself from things made, but by making nothing at all. But if he could not make good things, there would be no power; and if he could and did not, there would be great envy. Since, then, he is almighty and good, he made all things very good; and since he is perfectly blessed in himself as the good, he rested in himself from all the things he made, that is, with the rest from which he never departed. But if it were said that he rested from things to be made, it would be understood only that he had not made them; and unless it were said that he rested from things made, it would be less clearly set forth that he does not need the things he made.

On what day, then, ought this to have been set forth if not on the seventh? Anyone understands this who recalls the perfection of the number six, of which we spoke above, fittingly applied to the perfection of creation. For if creation was to be perfected in the number six, as it was perfected, and God's rest was to be set forth to us, by which it would be shown that he is not made blessed even by creatures that are perfect, then without doubt the day to be sanctified in this setting forth was the one that follows the sixth, so that we might be raised to long for this rest, that we too may rest in him.

For it is not a godly likeness if we wish to be like God in such a way that we too rest from our works in ourselves, as he rested in himself from his works. We ought to rest in some unchangeable good, which for us is he who made us. This, then, will be our highest rest, not at all proud and truly godly: that, as he rested from all his works, because not his works but he himself is to himself the good by which he is blessed, so we too may hope to rest from all works, not only ours but even his, in none but him; and that we may desire this after our good works, which we recognize in us to be his rather than ours; so that thus too he rests after his good works, when, after the good works which we have done having been justified by him, he grants us rest in himself. For it is a great thing for us to have come into being from him, but it will be greater to have rested in him; just as he is blessed not because he made these things, but because, not needing even the things made, he rested in himself rather than in them. Hence he sanctified the day not of work but of rest, because he made known that he is blessed not by making these things but by not needing the things he made.

What, then, is so lowly and easy to say, and what so sublime and difficult to think, as God resting from all his works which he made? And resting where, if not in himself, since he is blessed only in himself? When, if not always? But in the days in which the completion of the things he established is narrated, and the order of God's rest is distinguished from them, when, if not on the seventh day, which follows their perfection? For he rests from things made perfect who does not need even things made perfect in order to be more blessed.

And with him, indeed, his rest has neither morning nor evening, because it neither opens with a beginning nor closes with an end; but for his perfected works it has a morning and has no evening. For perfected creation has a certain beginning of its turning toward the rest of its Creator, but that rest has no end, as a limit of its perfection, as the things that were made have. And so God's rest begins not for God himself but for the perfection of the things established by him, so that what is perfected by him begins to rest in him and has a morning in this (for in its own kind it is bounded as by an evening); but in God it can no longer have an evening, because there will be nothing more perfect than that perfection.

In those days in which all things were being created we took evening as the limit of the creature established, and morning as the beginning of another to be established. And so the evening of the fifth day is the limit of the creature established on the fifth day, and the morning which came after that evening is the beginning of the creature to be established on the sixth day; and when it was established, an evening came as its limit. And because nothing else remained to be established, after that evening morning came in such a way that it was not the beginning of another creature to be established but the beginning of the rest of the whole creation in the rest of the Creator. For heaven and earth and all that is in them, that is, the whole of spiritual and bodily creation, do not abide in themselves but in him of whom it is said, “For in him we live and move and are”; because, although each part can be in the whole of which it is a part, the whole itself is only in him by whom it was established. And so it is not absurd to understand that, when the sixth day was completed, morning came after its evening, not to signify the beginning of another creature to be established, as in the other days, but to signify the beginning of the abiding and resting of the whole that was established in the rest of him who established it. This rest has for God neither beginning nor end, but for creation it has a beginning but no end. And so the seventh day began for that creation with a morning but is ended by no evening.

For if in the other days evening and morning signify alternations of times such as now pass through these daily spans, I do not see what would have prevented the seventh day too from being closed by an evening, and its night by a morning, so that it would likewise be said, “And there was evening, and there was morning, the seventh day,” since it too is one of the days, all seven, by whose repetition months and years and ages are completed; so that the morning placed after the evening of the seventh would be the beginning of the eighth day, of which nothing further needed to be said, because it is the same as the first, to which there is a return, from which the series of the week begins again. Hence it is more probable that these seven days, with the names and number of those days, succeeding one another in turn, run through temporal spans, but that those first six days unfolded in a form unknown and unfamiliar to us in the very establishing of things, in which evening and morning, like light and darkness themselves, that is, day and night, did not provide the alternation that these days provide through the circuit of the sun. This we are certainly compelled to admit of those three days which were mentioned and numbered before the lights were established.

And so, whatever evening and morning were in them, we must by no means suppose that God's rest took its beginning from that morning which came after the evening of the sixth day, lest with rash vanity we suspect that some temporal good befell that eternity and unchangeableness. Rather, that rest of God, by which he rests in himself and is blessed in the good which he is to himself, has neither beginning nor end for him; but for completed creation that same rest of God has a beginning. For the perfection of each thing is established, according to the measure of its kind, not so much in the universe of which it is a part as in him from whom it is and in whom the universe itself is, so that it may rest, that is, keep the order of its own weight. And so the whole of creation, which was completed in six days, has one thing in its own nature and another in the order by which it is in God, not as God is, yet in such a way that it has no rest of its own stability except in the rest of him who desires nothing besides himself, on attaining which he might rest. And so, while he remains in himself, he turns back to himself whatever is from him, so that every creature has in itself the limit of its nature, by which it is not what he is, but in him the place of rest, by which it keeps what it is. I know that I have not said “place” properly; for it is properly said of spaces occupied by bodies. But since bodies themselves do not remain in a place except the one they reach as by the desire of their weight, so that, having found it, they rest, the word is not unfittingly transferred from bodily to spiritual things, so that one says “place,” though the thing itself is very different.

I think, then, that the beginning of creation in the rest of the Creator is signified by that morning which came after the evening of the sixth day; for it could not rest in him unless it were perfect. Accordingly, when all things were completed on the sixth day and evening came, there came also a morning, in which completed creation would begin to rest in him by whom it was made. In that beginning it found him resting in himself, where it too could rest, the more stably and firmly as it needed him, not he it, for its rest. But since whatever the whole creation will be through any of its changes, it will certainly not be nothing, the whole creation will always remain in its Creator; and therefore after that morning there was no evening. We have said this about why the seventh day, on which God rested from all his works, had a morning after the evening of the sixth, but had no evening.

There is another way in which this matter can, I think, be understood more properly and better, though it is somewhat more difficult to explain: that God's rest on the seventh day had a morning without an evening, that is, a beginning without an end, not only for creation but also for himself. For if it were said only, “God rested on the seventh day,” and “from all his works which he made” were not added, we would seek the beginning of this rest in vain. For God does not begin to rest, whose rest is everlasting, without beginning and without end. But since he rested from all his works which he made by not needing them, it is understood that God's rest indeed neither began nor ended, but his rest from all his works which he made began from the time when he perfected them. For he could not have rested by not needing his works before there existed the works which he would not have needed even when they were perfected. And since he never needed them at all, and this blessedness by which he does not need them will not be perfected as if by making progress, no evening was added to the seventh day.

But it can plainly be asked, and it prompts a question worth considering, how God is to be understood to have rested in himself from all his works which he made, when it is written, “And God rested on the seventh day.” For it is not said “in himself” but “on the seventh day.” What, then, is the seventh day? Is it some creature, or only a span of time? But even a span of time was created together with temporal creation, and so it too is without doubt a creature. For there are not, nor could there have been, nor will there be, any times of which God is not the Creator. And so, if this seventh day is time, who created it, if not the Creator of all times? But with what creatures, or in what creatures, those six days were created, the preceding words of Holy Scripture indicate. Therefore, among these seven days whose form is known to us, which indeed pass away in reality but in some way hand on their names to the others that follow, so that they are named after those six days, we know when the first of those days were created; but when God created the seventh day, which is called by the name of Sabbath, we do not see. For on that day he made nothing; rather, on that same seventh day he rested from the things he had made in six days. How, then, did he rest on a day which he did not create? Or how did he create it immediately after the six days, when he finished all that he created on the sixth day and created nothing on the seventh day, but rather rested on it from all that he had created? Or did God create only one day, so that by its repetition the many that are called days would pass and run by, and there was no need for him to create a seventh day, since the seventh repetition of the day he had created made it? For the light, of which it is written, “And God said, Let there be light, and there was light,” he separated from the darkness, and called it day, and called the darkness night. Then, therefore, God made the day, whose repetition Scripture calls the second day, then the third, and so on to the sixth, on which God finished his works; and from then on the seventh repetition of that day first created received the name of the seventh day, on which God rested. And so the seventh day is no creature except that same one returning seven times, which was established when God called the light day and the darkness night.

So we slip back again into the question from which we seemed to have come out in the first book, and ask again how light could circle round to produce the alternation of day and night, not only before the lights of heaven were made, but before heaven itself, which was called the firmament, was made, and finally before there was any form of earth or sea that would allow a circuit of light, with night following where it had passed. Compelled by the difficulty of this question, we ventured to bring our discussion to something like this conclusion: that the light which was first made is the forming of spiritual creation, and the night the matter, still to be formed in the remaining works of things, which had been set up when in the beginning God made heaven and earth, before he made day by his word. But now, prompted by the consideration of the seventh day, it is easier for us to admit that we do not know what is remote from our senses, namely how that light which was called day carried out the alternations of day and night, whether by its circuit or by contraction and emission, if it is bodily; or, if it is spiritual, how it was present to all the creatures to be established and made day by its presence, night by its absence, evening by the beginning of its absence, morning by the beginning of its presence; than for us to try, in a plain matter, against the words of divine Scripture, by saying that the seventh day is something other than the seventh repetition of that day which God made. Otherwise either God did not create the seventh day, or he created something after those six days, namely the seventh day itself; and what is written will be false, that on the sixth day he finished all his works and on the seventh rested from all his works. Since this certainly cannot be false, it remains that the presence of that light which God made day was repeated through all his works, as often as “day” is named, and on the seventh day itself, on which he rested from his works.

But since we do not find by what circuit, or by what advance and retreat, bodily light could have produced the alternations of day and night before heaven was made, which is called the firmament, in which the lights were also made, we must not leave this question without putting forward some view of ours. It is this: if that light which was first created is not bodily but spiritual, then, just as it was made after darkness, where it is understood to have been turned from a certain formlessness of its own toward the Creator and formed, so too morning comes after evening, when, after knowing its own nature, by which it is not what God is, it turns back to praise the light which God himself is, by contemplation of whom it is formed. And since the other creatures that are made below it are not made without its knowledge, the same day is surely repeated everywhere, so that by its repetition there are as many days as there are distinct kinds of created things, to be bounded by the perfection of the number six. Thus the evening of the first day would be also its knowledge of itself, that it is not what God is; and the morning after this evening, by which one day is concluded and the second begun, would be its turning by which it refers what it was created to be to the praise of the Creator, and receives from the Word of God the knowledge of the creature that is made after it, that is, the firmament. This is made first in its knowledge, when it is said, “And so it was done,” then in the nature of the firmament itself, which is established when, after “and so it was done” has been said, there is added, “And God made the firmament.” Then comes the evening of that light, when it knows the firmament itself, not in the Word of God as before, but in its own nature; and since this knowledge is lesser, it is rightly signified by the name of evening. After this comes the morning by which the second day is concluded and the third begins. In this morning there is likewise the turning of this light, that is, of this day, to praise God for having worked the firmament, and to receive from his Word the knowledge of the creature to be established after the firmament. And so, when God says, “Let the water that is under heaven be gathered into one gathering, and let the dry land appear,” that light knows it in the Word of God by which it is said; and so there follows, “And so it was done,” that is, in its knowledge from the Word of God. Then, when “and the water was gathered” and so on is added, after “and so it was done” had already been said, the creature itself is made in its own kind; and when, having been made in its own kind, it is known by that light which had already known in the Word of God that it was to be made, evening comes for the third time; and thence in this way the rest follow, up to the morning after the evening of the sixth day.

For there is a great difference between the knowledge of each thing in the Word of God and the knowledge of it in its own nature, so that the former rightly belongs to day, the latter to evening. For in comparison with that light which is seen in the Word of God, all knowledge by which we know any creature in itself may not unjustly be called night; and this in turn differs so much from the error or ignorance of those who do not know even the creature itself that in comparison with it it may not unfittingly be called day. In the same way the very life of the faithful, which is led in this flesh and in this world, is not unreasonably called light and day in comparison with an unbelieving and ungodly life, as the apostle says, “For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord,” and, “Let us therefore cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light, so that we may walk honorably as in the day.” Yet unless this day were in turn itself night in comparison with that day on which, made equal to the angels, we shall see God as he is, we would not need here the lamp of prophecy. Hence the apostle Peter says, “We have the more sure prophetic word, to which you do well to attend as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.”

Therefore, since the holy angels, to whom we shall be made equal after the resurrection if we hold to the end to the way which Christ became for us, always see the face of God and enjoy his Word, the only-begotten Son, as he is equal to the Father, and since wisdom was created first of all in them, they without doubt knew the whole creation, in which they themselves were established first, first in the very Word of God, in whom are the eternal reasons of all things, even of those made in time, as in him through whom all things were made; and then in the creature itself, which they thus knew, as if looking down below and referring it to the praise of him in whose unchangeable truth they see first the reasons according to which it was made. There, then, it is as by day; hence their most harmonious unity, by sharing in the same truth, is the day that was first created. Here, however, it is as by evening. But at once morning comes (which can be observed in all six days), because angelic knowledge does not remain in what has been created without at once referring it to the praise and love of him in whom it is known, not as made but as to be made; and by standing in this truth it is day. For if the angelic nature turned even toward itself and delighted in itself more than in him by sharing in whom it is blessed, it would swell with pride and fall, like the devil. Of him we must speak in his place, when the discussion owed to the serpent, the seducer of man, will require it.