Genesis Chapter 1 verse 16 Holy Bible

Pulpit Commentary

Pulpit CommentaryVerse 16. - And God made two great lights. Perhaps no part of the material universe more irresistibly demands a supreme Intelligence as its only proper origin and cause. "Elegantissima haecce solis, planetarum et cometarum compages non nisi consilio et domino entis intelligentis et potentis oriri potuit" (Newton, 'Principia,' lib. 3. sub fin. Ed. of Le Seur and Jacquier, vol. 2. p. 199). The greater light to rule (literally, to make like; hence to judge; then to rule. Mashal; cf. βασιλεύω ( Γεσενινσ<ΒΤΤ·Ξομμενταρψ Ωορδ>) the day, and the lesser light to rule the night. The greater light is obviously the sun, which is sometimes denominated chammah, "the warm" (Psalm 19:7; Isaiah 30:26); sometimes there, "the glistering" (Job 9:7); but usually shemesh, "the minister (Deuteronomy 4:19; Deuteronomy 33:14). Here it is described by its bulk or magnitude, which is larger than that of the moon, the second of the two luminaries, which is also spoken of as great relatively to the stars, which, though in reality immensely exceeding it in size, yet appear like little bails of light (kokhavim) bestudding the blue canopy of night, and are so depicted - the Biblical narrative being geocentric and phenomenal, not heliocentric or scientific. How the work of this day was effected does not fall within the writer's scope to declare, the precise object of revelation being to teach not astronomy, or any other merely human gnosis, but religion. Accepting, however, the guidance of physical astronomy, we may imagine that the cosmical light of day one, which had up to this point continued either encompassing our globe like a luminous atmosphere, or existing at a distance from it, but in the plane of the earth's orbit, was now, if in the first of these positions, gradually broken up, doubtless through the shrinking of the earth's mass and the consequent lessening of its power Of attraction, and slowly drawn off towards, and finally concentrated, as a photosphere round the sun, which was thereby constituted chief luminary or "light-holder" the system, the moon and planets becoming, as a necessary consequence, "light-holders" in the secondary sense of "light-reflectors." It is interesting to note that some such explanation as this appears to have suggested itself to Willet, who wrote before the birth of Newton, and at a time when solar physics and spectrum analysis were things of the remote future. It m not unlike, says he, "but that this light (of the first day), after the creation of the celestial bodies, might be drawn upward and have his reflection upon the beame of the sunne and of other starres" And again, "Whereas the light created the first day is called or, but the starres (meaning the heavenly bodies) are called meoroth, as of the light, hence it may appear that these lightsome (i.e. luminous) bodies were made the receptacles of that light thou created, which was now increased and united to these lights" ('Hexapla,' vers. 3, 14, London, 1632); an explanation which, though certainly hypothetical, must be regarded as much more in accordance with the requirements of the sacred text than that which discovers in the making of the lights only a further dissipation of terrestrial mists so as to admit not the light-bringing beams of the celestial bodies alone, but the forms of those shining orbs themselves ('Speaker's Commentary'). He made the stars also. Though the stars are introduced solely because of their relation to the earth as dispensers of light, and no account is taken of their constitution as suns and planets, it is admissible to entertain the opinion that, in their case, as in that of the chief luminary of our tellurian heavens, the process of "sun" making reached its culmination on the fourth day. Perhaps the chief reason for their parenthetical introduction in this place was to guard against the notion that there were any luminaries which were not the work of Elohim, and in particular to prevent the Hebrews, for whom the work was written, from yielding to the heathen practices of star-gazing and star-worship. "The superstition of reading the destiny of man in the stars never took root among the Israelites; astrology is excluded by the first principle of Mosaism - the belief in one all-ruling God, who is subject to no necessity, no fate, no other will. Jeremiah warns the Hebrews not to be afraid of the 'signs of heaven,' before which the heathen tremble in vain terror (Jeremiah 10:2); and Isaiah speaks with taunting irony against the astrologers, star-gazers, and monthly prognosticators, in whose counsel it is folly and wickedness to rely (Isaiah 47:13). But the Israelites had not moral strength enough to resist the example of star-worship in general; they could not keep aloof from an aberration which formed the very focus of the principal Eastern religions; they yielded to that tempting influence, and ignominious incense rose profusely in honor of the sun and the hosts of heaven - Jeremiah 19:13; Ezekiel 8:16; Zephaniah 1:5; Wisd. 13:2" (Kalisch).

Ellicott's Commentary

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(16) He made the stars also.--The Hebrew is, God made two great lights . . . to rule the night; and also the stars. Though the word "also" carries back "the stars" to the verb "made," yet its repetition in our version makes it seem as if the meaning was that God now created the stars; whereas the real sense is that the stars were to rule the night equally with the moon. But besides this, there was no place where the stars--by which the planets are chiefly meant--could be so well mentioned as here. Two of them, Venus and Mercury, were formed somewhere between the first and the fourth day; and absolutely it was not till this day that our solar system, consisting of a central sun and the planets, with their attendant satellites, was complete. To introduce the idea of the fixed stars is unreasonable, for it is the planets which, by becoming in their turns morning and evening stars, rule the night; though the fixed stars indicate the seasons of the year. The true meaning, then, is that at the end of the fourth day the distribution of land and water, the state of the atmosphere, the alternation of day and night, of seasons and years, and the astronomical relations of the sun, moon, and planets (with the stars) to the earth were all settled and fixed, much as they are at present. And to this geology bears witness. Existing causes amply suffice to account for all changes that have taken place on our globe since the day when animal life first appeared upon the earth.