C oin raent a, r y

on the
Old Testament
IN TEN VOLUMES
by

C. F KEIL and F DELITZSCH

VOLUME I

The Pentateuch
Three Volumes in One

WILLIAM B. EERDMANS PUBLISHING COMPANY

Grand Rapids, Michigan
COMMENTARY ON THE OLD TESTAMENT
by C. F. Keil and F. Delitzsch
Translated from the German

Volumes translated by James Martin

THE PENTATEUCH
JOSHUA, JUDGES, RUTH
THE BOOKS OF SAMUEL
THE BOOKS OF THE KINGS
THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH
THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL
THE TWELVE MINOR PROPHETS

Volumes translated by Andrew Harper

THE BOOKS OF THE CHRONICLES

Volumes translated by Sophia Taylor

THE BOOKS OF EZRA, NEHEMIAH, ESTHER

Volumes translated by Francis Bolton

THE BOOK OF JOB
THE PSALMS

Volumes translated by M. G. East on

PROVERBS OF SOLOMON
THE SONG OF SONG AND ECCLESIASTES
THE BOOK OF DANIEL

Volumes translated by David Patrick

THE PROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH, VOL. I

Volumes translated by James Kennedy

THE PROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH, VOL. II

ISBN 0-8028-8035-5

Reprinted, November 1986

48 THE FIRST BOOK OF MOSES.

after God created it. From this it is evident that the void and
formless state of the earth was not uncreated, or without be-
ginning. At the same time it is obvious from the creative acts
which follow heaven and earth, as God
(vers. 3-18), that the
created them in the beginning, were not the well-ordered uni-
verse, but the world in its elementary form just as Euripides ;

applies the expression ovpavo^ koX fyala to the undivided mass

(jjLopcj)'^ fjila), which was afterwards formed into heaven and
earth.

Vers. 2-5. The First Day. —Though treating of the crea-

tion of the heaven and the earth, the writer, both here and in
what follows, describes with minuteness the original condition
and progressive formation of the earth alone, and says nothing
more respecting the heaven than is actually requisite in order to
show its connection with the earth. He is writing for inhabitants
of the earth, and for religious ends not to gratify curiosity, ;

but to strengthen faith in God, the Creator of the universe.

What is said in ver. 2 of the chaotic condition of the earth, is
equally applicable to the heaven, " for the heaven proceeds from
the same chaos as the earth." — " And the earth was (not became)
waste and void.'^ The alliterative nouns tohu vabohu, the ety-
mology of which is lost, signify waste and empty (barren), but
not laying waste and desolating. Whenever they are used
together in other places (Isa. xxxiv. 11 ; Jer. iv. 23), they are
taken from this passage ; but tohu alone is frequently employed
as synonymous with \\^, non-existence, and /^n, nothingness
(Isa. xl. 17, 23, xlix. 4). The coming earth was at first waste
and desolate, a formless, lifeless mass, rudis indigestaque moles,
vkri afjLop^o<; (Wisdom xi. 17) or %ao9. — " And darkness was
upon face of the deep"
the Dinn^ from D^n, to roar, to rage,
denotes the raging waters, the roaring waves (Ps. xlii. 7) or
flood (Ex. XV. 5 ; Deut. viii. 7) and hence the depths of the
;

sea (Job xxviii. 14, xxxviii. 16), and even the abyss of the
earth (Ps. Ixxi. 20). As an old traditional word, it is construed
like a proper name without an article (JEwald, Gramm.). The
chaotic mass in which the earth and the firmament were still
undistinguished, unformed, and as it were unborn, was a heav-
ing deep, an abyss of waters {a^vacros, LXX.), and this deep
was wrapped in darkness. But it was in process of formation,
 CHAP. I. 2-6. 49

for the Spirit of God moved upon the waters. rpi"> (breath) de-
notes wind and spirit, like irvevfia from irveot), Ruach JElohim is

not a breath of wind caused by God {TheodoreU etc.), for the verb
does not suit this meaning, but the creative Spirit of God, the
principle of all life which worked upon
(Ps. xxxiii. 6, civ. 30),
the formless, lifeless mass, separating, quickening, and preparing
the living forms, which were called into being by the creative
words that followed, ^im in the Piel is applied to the hovering
and brooding of a bird over its young, to warm them, and develop
their vital powers (Deut. xxxii. 11). In such a way as this the
Spirit of God moved upon the deep, which had received at its
creation the germs of all life, to fill them with vital energy by
His breath of life. The three statements in our verse are
parallel the substantive and participial construction of the second
;

and third clauses rests upon the nnMl of the first. All three
describe the condition of the earth immediately after the creation
of the universe. This suffices to prove that the theosophic specu-
lation of those who " make a gap between the first two verses,
and fill it with a wild horde of evil spirits and their demoniacal
works, an arbitrary interpolation" (^Ziegler). Yer. 3. The
is —
word of God then went forth to the primary material of the
world, now filled with creative powers of vitality, to call into
being, out of the germs of organization and life which it con-
tained, and by His wisdom, those crea-
in the order pre-ordained
tures of the world, which proclaim, as they live and move, the
glory of their Creator (Ps. viii.). The work of creation commences
with the words, " and God said,^^ The words which God speaks
are existing things. " He speaks, and it is done He commands, ;

and it stands fast." These words are deeds of the essential Word,
the X0709, by which " all things were made." Speaking is the
revelation of thought ; the creation, the realization of the thoughts
of God, a freely accomplished act of the absolute Spirit, and not
an emanation of creatures from the divine essence. The first
thing created by the divine Word was " light,* the elementary
light, or light-material, in distinction from the " lightSj^ or light-
bearers, bodies of light, as the sun, moon, and stars, created
on the fourth day, are called. It is now a generally accepted
truth of natural science, that the light does not spring from the
sun and stars, but that the sun itself is a dark body, and the
light proceeds from an atmosphere which surrounds it. Light
50 THE FIRST BOOK OF MOSES.

was thing called forth, and separated from the dark

tlie first

chaos by the creative mandate, " Let there be,'^ the first radiation —
of the life breathed into it by the Spirit of God, inasmuch as it

is the fundamental condition of all organic life in the world, and

without light and the warmth which flows from it no plant or

animal could thrive. The

expression in ver. 4, " God saw the
light that it was good" for " God saw that the light was good,"
according to a frequently recurring antiptosis (cf. ch. vi. 2, xii.

14, xiii. 10), is not an anthropomorphism at variance with enlight-

ened thoughts of God ; for man's seeing has its type in God's,
and God's seeing is not a mere expression of the delight of the
eye or of pleasure in His work, but is of the deepest significance
to every created thing, being the seal of the perfection which
God has impressed upon it, and by which its continuance before
God and through God is determined. The creation of light,
however, was no annihilation of darkness, no transformation
of the dark material of the world into pure Hght, but a separa-
tion of the light from the primary matter, a separation which
established and determined that interchange of light and dark-
ness, which produces the distinction between day and night.
Hence it is said in ver. 5, " God called the light Day, and the
darkness Night ;'^ for, as Augustine observes, " all light is not
day, nor all darkness night but light and darkness alternating
;

in a regular order constitute day and night." None but super-

ficial thinkers can take offence at the idea of created things

receiving names from God. The name of a thing is the expres-

sion of its nature. If the name be given by man, it fixes in a word
the impression which it makes upon the human mind but when ;

given by God, it expresses the reality, what the thing is in God's

creation, and the place assigned it there by the side of other
things. — " Thus evening was and morning was one day." "inx
{one), like eh and unus, is used at the commencement of a
numerical series for the ordinal joWmus (cf. ch. ii. 11, iv. 19, viii.
5, 15). Like the numbers of the days which follow, it is without
the article, to show that the different days arose from the con-
stant recurrence of evening and morning. It is not till the sixth
and last day that the article is employed (ver. 31), to indicate
the termination of the work of creation upon that day. It is to
be observed, that the days of creation are bounded by the coming
of evening and morning. The first day did not consist of the
 CHAr. I. 2 6. .51

primeval darkness and tlie origination of light, but was formed

after the creation of the light by the first interchange of even-
ing and morning. The first evening was not the gloom, which
possibly preceded the full burst of light as from it came forth
the primary darkness, and intervened between the darkness
and full, broad daylight. It was not till after the light had been
created, and the separation of the light from the darkness had
taken place, that evening came, and after the evening the morn-
ing; and this coming of evening (lit. the obscure) and morning
(the breaking) formed one, or the first day. It follows from
this, that the days of creation are not reckoned from evening to
evening, but from morning to morning. The first day does not
fully terminate till the light returns after the darkness of night;
it is not till the break of the new morning that the first inter-

change of light and darkness is completed, and a rj/jLepovv/crtov

has passed. The rendering, " out of evening and morning there
came one day," is at variance with grammar, as well as with the
actual fact. With grammar, because such a thought would
require "^nx uvb ; and with fact, because the time from evening
to morning does not constitute a day, but the close of a day.
The first day commenced at the moment when God caused the
light to break forth from the darkness but this light did not ;

become a day, until the evening had come, and the darkness
which set in with the evening had given place the next morn-
ing to the break of day. Again, neither the words M^i y^V M''1
"ip3, nor the expression my, evening-morning (= day), in
-ip2
Dan. viii. 14, corresponds to the Greek vv^Orj/jbepoi/, for morn-
ing is not equivalent to day, nor evening to night. The reckon-
ing of days from evening to evening in the Mosaic law (Lev.
xxiii. and by many ancient tribes (the pre-Mohammedan
32),
Arabs, the Athenians, Gauls, and Germans), arose not from the
days of creation, but from the custom of regulating seasons by
the changes of the moon. But if the days of creation are regu-
lated by the recurring interchange of light and darkness, they
must be regarded not as periods of time of incalculable dura-
tion, of years or thousands of years, but as simple earthly days.
It is true the morning and evening of the first three days were
not produced by the rising and setting of the sun, since the sun
was not yet created but the constantly recurring interchange
;

of light and darkness, which produced day and night upon the
52 THE FIRST BOOK OF MOSES.

earth, cannot for a moment be understood as denoting that the

light called forth from the darkness of chaos returned to that
darkness again, and thus periodically burst forth and disap-
peared. The only way in which w^e can represent it to our-
selves, is by supposing that the light called forth by the creative
mandate, " Let there be," was separated from the dark mass of
the earth, and concentrated outside or above the globe, so that
the interchange of light and darkness took place as soon as the
dark chaotic mass began to rotate, and to assume in the process
of creation the form of a spherical body. The time occupied in
the first rotations of the earth upon its axis cannot, indeed, be
measured by our hour-glass but even if they were slower at
;

first, and did not attain their present velocity till the completion

of our solar system, this would make no essential difference

between the first three days and the last three, which were regu-
lated by the rising and setting of the sun.^

Vers. 6-8. The Second Day. — When the light had been
separated from the darkness, and day and night had been
created, there followed upon a second fiat of the Creator, the
division of the chaotic mass of waters through the formation of
the firmament, which was placed as a wall of separation (?^"n3p)
in the midst of the waters, and divided them into upper and
lower waters^ V^i?'^, from ViP'J to stretch, spread out, then beat or
tread out, means expansum, the spreading out of the air, which
surrounds the earth as an atmosphere. According to optical
appearance, it is described as a carpet spread out above the
earth (Ps. civ. 2), a curtain (Isa. xl. 22), a transparent work of
sapphire (Ex. xxiv. 10), or a molten looking-glass (Job xxxvii.
18) ; but there is nothing in these poetical similes to warrant the

^ Exegesis must insist upon and not allow itseK to alter the plain
this,

sense of the words of the Bible, from irrelevant and untimely regard to the
so-called certain inductions of natural science. Irrelevant we call such
considerations, as make interpretation dependent upon natural science,
because the creation lies outside the limits of empirical and speculative re-
search, and, as an act of the omnipotent God, belongs rather to the sphere of
miracles and mysteries, which can only be received by faith (Heb. xi. 3) ;

and untimely, because natural science has supplied no certain conclusions

as to the origin of the earth, and geology especially, even at the present
time, is in a chaotic state of fermentation, the issue of which it is impos-
sible to foresee.
 ;

CHAP. I. 6-8 53

idea that the heavens were regarded as a solid mass, a atSj^peov,

or '^aXKeov or ttoXv^oXkov, such as Greek poets describe. The
V^P'J (rendered Veste by Luther, after the Grepewjia of the LXX.
and JiT^mamentum of the Vulgate) is called heaven in ver. 8, i.e.
the vault of heaven, which stretches out above the earth. The
waters under the firmament are the waters upon the globe itself^;
those above are not ethereal waters^ beyond the limits of the

^ There is no proof of the existence of such " ethereal waters" to be found

in such passages as Rev. iv. 6, xv. 2, xxii. 1 ; for what the holy seer there
beholds before the throne as " a sea of glass like unto crystal mingled with
fire," and " a river of living water, clear as crystal," flowing from the throne

of God into the streets of the heavenly Jerusalem, are wide as the poles from
any fluid or material substance from which the stars were made upon the
fourth day. Of such a fluid the Scriptures know quite as little, as of the nebu-
lar theory of La Place, which, notwithstanding the bright spots in Mars and
the inferior density of Jupiter, Saturn, and other planets, is still enveloped
in a mist which no astronomy will ever disperse. If the waters above the fir-
mament were the elementary matter of which the stars were made, the waters
beneath must be the elementary matter of which the earth was formed for ;

the waters were one and the same before the creation of the firmament.
But the earth was not formed from the waters beneath on the contrary, ;

these waters were merely spread upon the earth and then gathered together
into one place, and this place is called Sea. The earth, which appeared as
dry land after the accumulation of the waters in the sea, was created in the
beginning along with the heavens but until the separation of land and
;

water on the third day, it was so completely enveloped in water, that nothing
could be seen but " the deep," or " the waters" (ver. 2). If, therefore, in
the course of the work of creation, the heaven with its stars, and the earth
with its vegetation and living creatures, came forth from this deep, or, to
speak more correctly, if they appeared as well-ordered, and in a certain
sense as finished worlds it would be a complete misunderstanding of the
;

account of the creation to suppose it to teach, that the water formed the
elementary matter, out of which the heaven and the earth were made with
all their hosts. been the meaning of the writer, he would have
Had this
mentioned water as the first creation, and not the heaven and the earth.
How irreconcilable the idea of the waters above the firmament being
ethereal waters is with the biblical representation of the opening of the
windows of heaven when it rains, is evident from the way in which Keerl,
the latest supporter of this theory, sets aside this difficulty, viz. by the bold
assertion, that the mass of water which came through the windows of
heaven at the flood was different from the rain which falls from the clouds
in direct opposition to the text of the Scriptures, which speaks of it not
merely as rain (vii. 12), but as the water of the clouds. Vid. ch. ix. 12 sqq.,
where it is said that when God brings a cloud over the earth. He will set

the rainbow in the cloud, as a sign that the water (of the clouds collected
above the earth) shall not become a flood to destroy the earth again.
 THE FIRST BOOK OF MOSES.

terrestrial atmosphere, but the waters which float in the at-

mosphere, and are separated by from those upon the earth,
it

the waters which accumulate in clouds, and then bursting these

their bottles, pour down as rain upon the earth. / For, accord-
ing to the Old Testament representat^Ionp^vhenever it rains
heavily, the doors or windows of heaven are opened (ch. vii.
11, 12; Ps. Ixxviii. 23, cf. 2 Kings vii. 2, 19 Isa. xxiv. 18). ;

It is in (or with) the upper waters that God layeth the beams
of His chambers, from which He watereth the hills (Ps. civ. 3,
13), and the clouds are His tabernacle (Job xxxvi. 29). If,

therefore, according to this conception, looking from an earthly

point of view, the mass of water which flows upon the earth in
showers of rain is shut up in heaven (cf. viii. 2), it is evident that
it must be regarded as above the vault which spans the earth, or,

according to the words of Ps. cxlviii. 4, " above the heavens." ^

Vers. 9-13. The Third Day. — The work of this day was
twofold, yet closely connected. At first the waters beneath the
heavens, i.e. those upon the surface of the
were gathered
earth,
together, so that the dry (nc^3»n, the solid ground) appeared.
In what way the gathering of the earthly waters in the sea and
the appearance of the dry land were effected, whether by the
sinking or deepening of places in the body of the globe, into
which the water was drawn off, or by the elevation of the solid
ground, the record does not inform us, since it never describes
the process by which effects are produced. It is probable, how-
ever, that the separation was caused both by depression and
elevation. With the dry land the mountains naturally arose as
the headlands of the mainland. But of this we have no physi-
cal explanations, either in the account before us, or in the
poetical description of the creation in Ps. civ. Even if we
render Ps. civ. 8, " the mountains arise, and they (the waters)
^ In ver. 8 the LXX. interpolate x«i tllev 6 0goV ort Kot'Kov (and God
saw that it was good), and transfer the words " and it was so" from the
end of ver. 7 to the close of ver. 6. Two apparent improvements, but in
reality two arbitrary changes. The transposition is copied from vers. 9,
15, 24 and in making the interpolation, the author of the gloss has not
;

observed that the division of the waters was not complete till the separa-
tion of the dry land from the water had taken place, and therefore the
proper place for the expression of approval is at the close of the work of
the third day.
 ;

CHAP. I. 9-13. 55

descend into the valleys, to the place which Thou (Jehovah)

hast founded for them," we have no proof, in this poetical ac-
count, of the elevation-theory of geology, since the psalmist is

not speaking as a naturalist, but as a sacred poet describing the

creation on the basis of Gen. i. " The dry'^ God called ^ar^A,
and " the gathering of the waters,^ i.e. the place into which the
waters were collected, He called Sea. an intensive rather
D^ts^,

than a numerical plural, is the great ocean, which surrounds the

mainland on all sides, so that the earth appears to be founded
upon Earth and sea are the two constituents
seas (Ps. xxiv. 2).
of the globe, by the separation of which its formation was com-
pleted. The " seas " include the rivers which flow into the
ocean, and the lakes which are as it were "detached fragments"
of the ocean, though they are not specially mentioned here. By
the divine act of naming the two constituents of the globe, and
the divine approval whicli follows, this work is stamped with
permanency and the second act of the third day, the clothing
;

of the earth with vegetation, is immediately connected with it.

At the command of God ^^ the earth brought forth green
{^^)y
seed yielding herb (^^V), and fruit-bearing fruit-trees Ql^ TV.)*^
These three classes embrace all the productions of the vegetable
kingdom. fc<^., lit. the young, tender green, which shoots up
after rain and covers the meadows and downs (2 Sara, xxiii. 4
Job xxxviii. 27 Joel ii. 22 Ps. xxiii. 2), is a generic name for
; ;

all grasses and cryptogamous plants. Sb'y, with the epithet

^! r"]tPj yielding or forming seed, is used as a generic term for

all herbaceous plants, corn, vegetables, and other plants by which
seed-pods are formed. nD Y)3
: not only fruit-trees, but all trees

and shrubs, bearing which there is a seed according to

fruit in
its kind, i.e. fruit with kernels, p.?? ^^ (upon the earth) is not
to be joined to " fruit-tree," as though indicating the superior
size of the trees which bear seed above the earth, in distinction
from vegetables which propagate their species upon or in the
ground for even the latter bear their seed above the earth. It
;

is appended to ^iH^? as a more minute explanation the earth :

is to bring forth grass, herb, and trees, upon or above the

ground, as an ornament or covering for it. Sytyp (after its

kind), from T'O species, which is not only repeated in ver. 12 in

its old form inj''pi' in the case of the fruit-tree, but is also ap^

pended to the herb. It indicates that the herbs and trees sprang
56 THE FIRST BOOK OF MOSES.

out of the earth according to their kinds, and received, together

with power to bear seed and fruit, the capacity to propagate
and multiply their own kind. In the case of the grass there is
no reference either to different kinds, or to the production of
seed, inasmuch as in the young green grass neither the one nor
the other is apparent to the eye. ^loreover, we must not picture
the work of creation as consisting of the production of the first
tender germs which w^ere gradually developed into herbs, shrubs,
and trees on the contrary, we must regard it as one element in
;

the miracle of creation itself, that at the word of God not only
tender grasses, but herbs, shrubs, and trees, sprang out of the
earth, each ripe for the formation of blossom and the bearing
of seed and fruit, without the necessity of waiting for years
before the vegetation created was ready to blossom and bear
fruit. Even if the earth was employed as a medium in the
creation of the plants, since it was God who caused it to bring
them forth, they were not the product of the powers of nature,
generatio cequivoca in the ordinaiy sense of the word, but a work
of divine omnipotence, by which the trees came into existence
before their seed, and their fruit was produced in full develop-
ment, without expanding graduall}^ under the influence of sun-
shine and rain.

Vers. 14—19. The Fourth Day. — After the earth had

been clothed with vegetation, and fitted to be the abode of
living beings, there were created on the fourth day the sun,
moon, and stars, heavenly bodies in which the elementary light
was concentrated, in order that its influence upon the earthly
globe might be sufficiently modified and regulated for living
beings to exist and thrive beneath its rays, in the water, in the
air,and upon the dry land. At the creative word of God the
bodies of light came into existence in the firmament, as lamps.
On ^n)j the singular of the predicate before the plural of the
subject, in ver. 14, v. 23, ix. 29, etc., vid, Gesenius, Heb. Gr.
§ 147. niixpj bodies of light, light-bearers, then lamps. These
bodies of light received a threefold appointment : (1) They were
" to divide between the day and the night" or, according to ver.
18, between the light and the darkness, in other words, to regu-
late from that time forward th§ difference, which had existed
ever since the creation of light, between the night and the day.