482 Archaia, 



whole six days did any rain appear. A mist from the earth 

 watered the whole face of the ground. What the prophet saw, 

 and what he evidently describes in the creation of the expanse, 

 is the vapour which hung over the waters rising up and dis- 

 persing itself into seemingly the clear sky. The statement of 

 our author that in verse twenty the words " firmament of heaven" 

 are two names of two things, the one the earth's atmosphere, 

 the other the higher expanse in which the stars shine, is, we 

 think not tenable, because : — 1st. God called the firmament 

 " heaven" ; firmament and heaven in the verses following these 

 words ought, therefore, to be regarded as strictly synonymous ; 

 2nd. Rekiah hashamayim (firmament of heaven) are in what 

 is termed the status constructus, or in the relation of one substan- 

 tive governing another in the genitive. A similar expression 

 would be the " height of the house," or the " length of the cord." 

 In the first of the sentences "height" and "house" are not two 

 separate things, but the one is limited by the other, and both are 

 together one and the same thing. There is therefore no ground as 

 we conceive to interpret the word " heaven" in any other sense than 

 that of the optical expanse between the earth and the blue sky 

 which is in fact the fountain of the waters that are above the 

 earth. And for reasons which we shall note in relation to the 

 word " earth," we hold that " the heavens" of the first verse means 

 the same thing as " the heavens" of the eighth. 



2. Earth (aretz). As regards this word we perfectly agree with 

 the statement of " Archaia" in page 46, namely ; " That in the tenth 

 verse of Genesis there occurs a definition, as precise as that 

 of any lexicon — " and God called the dry land earth." From these 

 words our author thinks it a fair consequence u to assume that the 

 earth, afterwards spoken of, is the dry land." If the word 

 " afterwards" is here designed to cover the use of the term every- 

 where, and chronologically, after the time at which it was given to 

 the dry land we would then consider the above application of the 

 definition a perfectly correct one. But if " afterwards" is intended 

 to limit the use of the term earth in the sense defined to the 

 places in which it subsequently occurs in the text, thus leaving 

 the word open to receive another meaning in those places in 

 which it is previously used, we cannot then agree to the restriction. 

 This last use is evidently the intention of our author, for, in page 6, 

 he puts another meaning upon the word earth than the definition of 

 verse tenth. He there makes the earth of the first verse to include 



