What Does Genesis 1:4 Mean?

(4) **And God saw.**—This contemplation indicates, first, lapse of time; and next, that the judgment pronounced was the verdict of the Divine reason. **That it was good.**—As light was a necessary result of motion in the world-mass, so was it indispensable for all that was to follow, inasmuch as neither vegetable nor animal life can exist without it. But the repeated approval by the Deity of each part and portion of this material universe (comp. Psalm 104:31) also condemns all Manichæan theories, and asserts that this world is a noble home for man, and life a blessing, in spite of its solemn responsibilities. **And God divided . . . —**The first three creative days are all days of order and distribution, and have been called “the three separations.” But while on the first two days no new thing was created, but only the chaotic matter (described in Genesis 1:2) arranged, on day three there was the introduction of vegetable life. The division on the first day does not imply that darkness has a separate and independent existence, but that there were now periods of light and darkness; and thus by the end of the first day our earth must have advanced far on its way towards its present state. (See Note, Genesis 1:5.) It is, however, even more probable that the ultimate results of each creative word are summed up in the account given of it. No sooner did motion begin, than the separation of the air and water from the denser particles must have begun too. The immediate result was light; removed by a greater interval was the formation of an open space round the contracting earth-ball; still more remote was the formation of continents and oceans; but the separations must have commenced immediately that the “wind of Elohim” began to brood upon and move the chaotic mass. How far these separations had advanced before there were recurrent periods of light and darkness is outside the scope of the Divine narrative, which is not geological, but religious.