Genesis 2:4 These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created… A new section of creation history now begins, and the fourth verse is the title or heading: "The following are the details of what took place when God created heaven and earth." The fifth is intended to state that all that was done was entirely God's doing, without the help of second causes, without the refreshment of rain, without the aid of man, There had been no power in action hitherto but God's alone. His hand, directly and alone, had done all that was done, in making plants and herbs to grow. The soil was not of itself productive; no previous seed existed; there was no former growth to spring up again. All was the finger of God. He is the sole Creator. Second causes, as they are called, are His creations: they owe their being, their influence to Him. The operations of nature, as men speak, are but the actings of the invisible God. God is in everything. Not as the Pantheist would have it, a part of everything, so that nature is God; but a personal Being, in everything, yet distinct from everything; filling, quickening, guiding creation in all its parts, yet no more the same with it than the pilot is with the vessel he steers, or the painter with the canvas on which he flings all the hues of earth and heaven. Let us beware of this subtle delusion of the evil one, the confounding of the creature with the Creator; of God, "the King eternal, immortal, and invisible," with the hills, and plains, and forests, and flowers which He has made. To deify nature seems one of the special errors of the last days. And no wonder; for if nature be deified, then man is deified too. Man becomes God, and nature is the throne on which he sits. Let us not lose sight of God in nature. Let not that which is the manifestation of His glory be turned by us into an obscuration of Himself. Let us look straight to the living God. Not nature, but God; not providence, but God; not the law, but the Lawgiver; not the voice, but the Speaker; not the instrument and its wide melodies, but the Master who formed the lyre, and whose hands are drawing the music out of its wondrous chords! (H. Bonar, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens, |
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