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A. C. 4004.

* Or, a mist which went up from, &c.

Heb. dust of

the ground.

GENESIS II. Ver. 4. TO THE END.

4¶ 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,

5 And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground.

6 But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground.

7 And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the o Ecclus. xvii. ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

1. 1 Cor. xv.

47.

p 1 Cor. xv. 45.

qEcclus. xxiv. 25.

8 And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed.

9 And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

10 And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads. 11 The name of the first is Pison: that is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold;

12 And the gold of that land is good: there is bdellium and the onyx stone.

13 And the name of the second river is Gihon: the Heb. Cush. same is it that compasseth the whole land of Ethiopia.

Or, castward to Assyria.

|| Or, Adam.

* Heb. eating

14 And the name of the third river is Hiddekel: that is it which goeth §toward the east of Assyria. And the fourth river is Euphrates.

15 And the LORD God took || the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.

16 And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of

thou shall eat every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat :

17 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it for in the day that thou eatest + Heb. dying thereof † thou shalt surely die.

thou shalt die.

18 ¶ And the LORD God said, It is not good that the Heb. as be- man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him. 19 And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought

fore him.

The history of the creation is recapitulated. Moses describes the work of creation through its several stages, as the phenomena would have successively presented themselves to a spectator, had a spectator been in existence.-Horsley's Bib. Crit. vol. i. p. 2.

them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and A.C. 4004. whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the or, the man. name thereof.

*

20 And Adam + gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl + Heb. called. of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him.

21 And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof;

22 And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man. 23 And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.

24 Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh. 25 And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.

CHAPTER II.

Institution of the Sabbath, and Fall of Man.

GENESIS II. VER. 1-4.

1 THUS the heavens and the earth were finished, and

all the host of them.

ed.

Heb. build

g 1 Cor. xi. 8. Matt. xix. 5. r x.

Mark X 7. Ephes. v. 31.

11. xxxi. 17.

2 And on the seventh day God ended his work which, Exod. xx. he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.

3 And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God § created and made.

GENESIS III.

1 Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of

↑ As Adam and Eve were created on the sixth day, the history of their creation necessarily precedes the account of the institution of the Sabbath. Lightfoot inserts the institution of the Sabbath after the Fall; but we have no proof, from the history, on what day the Fall took place. There is a tradition, that our first parents were in Paradise forty days.

* The history of the Fall, and the account of the garden of Eden, which precedes it, must be taken literally: there is no proof or appearance of allegory; and that they were always so understood, is sufficiently evident from the remains of the traditions of ancient nations. The proofs are too numerous even to be hinted at here; but the curious reader may compare the authorities in Faber's Origin of Pagan Idolatry, with Dean Allix' Reflections on the books of Moses, particularly chapters x-xviii.; in which the Dean shews, that Moses related nothing but what was generally known.

Deut. v. 14.

Heb. iv. 4.

Heb. created to make.

A.C. 4001. the field which the LORD God had made. And he said unto the woman, * Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of because, &c. every tree of the garden?

* Heb. yea

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2 And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden:

3 But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.

4 And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not. surely die:

5 For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.

6 And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was † pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and also unto her husband with her; and he

did eat.

gave

7 And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves to

Or, things to gether, and made themselves aprons.

gird about.

8 And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking Heb. wind. in the garden in the § cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God amongst the trees of the garden.

9 And the LORD God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou?

10 And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.

11 And he said, Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat?

12 And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.

13 And the LORD God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.

14 And the LORD God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life:

15 And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed9; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.

• From the moment of the announcement of this promise, the bright and morning star of prophecy, mankind lived in constant, and sometimes in daily,

16 Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy A. C. 4004. sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be * to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.

17 And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life;

*Or, subject

to thy husband.

34.

1 Cor. xiv.

to bud.

18 Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; Heb. cause and thou shalt eat the herb of the field;

19 In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.

vah.

20 And Adam called his wife's name Eve; because Heb. Chashe was the mother of all living.

21 Unto Adam also and to his wife did the LORD God 10 make coats of skins, and clothed them.

22 And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever:

gar

23 Therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the den of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken. 24 So 11 he drove out the man; and he placed at the east

expectation of the Messiah. Their attention was now directed to their future Deliverer; and we shall see their expectations continually renewed, by the long train of prophecies and institutions, till the aged Simeon desired to depart when be beheld the promised salvation.

10 We live in Messiah's world. The divine personage who is here called the Lord God, and who spoke to Adam in the garden, was the angel Jehovah, who afterwards appeared to the patriarchs, led the Israelites through the wilderness, tabernacled among men in the form of a man, is still the head of his Church, and will again appear to the world. Three things were necessary to be known by man, even in a state of purity; and they appear to have been revealed to him by the angel Jehovah. These were, the right choice of food; the rite of marriage; and the use of language. The angel Jehovah had been the guide and protector of man before his fall, and he afterwards becomes his Mediator and Judge. The angel Jehovah commences a new dispensation, which, when it has passed through its three forms, Patriarchal, Levitical, and Christian, will be terminated by reviving and perfecting the primeval happiness of mankind, in that future Paradise, of which the garden of Eden was but an emblem.-Vide Barrington's Essay on the Dispensations; Burnet's Sermons at Boyle's Lecture, vol. ii.; Law's Theory of Religion, 4th edit. p. 50. and Lowman's Essay on the Shechinah.

" Our first parents were now banished from Paradise, and clothed in skins. At this time, sacrifices were appointed to be offered. The Deity was pleased to ordain, that "without shedding of blood, is no remission of sins." God there

A. C. 4004. of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.

er.

4003.

Heb. Hebel.

CHAPTER III.

History of Adam and his Descendants, till the Deluge.
GENESIS IV. VER. 1-17.

1 AND Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from the LORD 12. 2 And she again bare his brother * Abel. And Abel was + Heb. a feed a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground. 3 And in process of time it came to pass, that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the LORD. Heb. sheep 4 And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his § flock a Heb. xi. 4. and of the fat thereof. And the LORD had 13 a Abel and to his offering:

↑ Heb. at the end of days.

or goats.

Il Or, have the excellency.

respect unto

5 But unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect. And Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell.

6 And the LORD said unto Cain, Why art thou wroth? and why is thy countenance fallen?

7 If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and *Or, subject if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door. And * unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him.

unto thee.

3875.

8 And Cain talked with Abel his brother; and it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up b Wisd. x. 3. against Abel his brother, and slew him.

Matth. xxiii.

35. 1 John iii,

12. Jude, 11.

fore commanded, that the blood of animals should be offered mystically, as an acknowledgment of the sins of man. Not that the blood of bulls and of goats "could take away sin;" but that the sacrificer, by offering his bleeding victim, in compliance with the divine ordinance, confessed thereby, that, through sin, he was himself deserving of destruction, and unable of himself to propitiate the Deity. By thus shedding the blood of an innocent victim, he declared his faith and dependence on a better and more perfect atonement. And, as there can be no imaginable connection between the death of a lamb and the forgiveness of the crime of a man, it is not possible that this plan of worship could have originated in the mind of man.-Vide the authorities on this subject, collected in Abp. Magee's work on the Atonement; in Faber's chapter on the Origin and Purport of Sacrificial Rites, Orig. of Pag. Idol. b. 2. c. viii.; and in Outram de Sacrificiis. Mr. Davison's arguments do not convince me, that the opinion which I have here given, is erroneous. See his work on Primitive Sacrifice.

12 In this passage we see the first tokens of the anxious desire of the human race to behold the promised Messiah. The meaning of the exclamation, in the opinion of many divines, is, "I have obtained the man, even Jehovah himself.”

13 God had respect to the offering of Abel, because, by it, he declared his faith in the atonement. He rejected that of Cain, because, as the first deist, he refused to believe in the promised Messiah.-Vide Dr. Hales, Abp. Magee, Kennicott's Dissertation, Bp. Sherlock and Bp. Patrick on the History of Cain and Abel.

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