opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped: Then shall the lame man leap as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing: for in the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams in the desert. And the parched ground shall become a pool, and the thirsty land springs of water: in the habitation of dragons, where each lay, shall be grass, with reeds and rushes." (Isa. xxxv. 5-7.) "Shall I not visit them for these things? saith the Lord: shall not my soul be avenged on such a nation as this? For the mountains will I take up a weeping and wailing, and for the habitations of the wilderness a lamentation, because they are burnt up, so that none can pass through them; neither can men hear the voice of the cattle; both the fowl of the heavens and the beast are fled; they are gone. And I will make Jerusalem heaps, and a den of dragons; and I will make the cities of Judah desolate, without an inhabitant." (Jer. ix. 11.) "Therefore I will wail and howl; I will go stripped and naked: I will make a wailing like the dragons, and mourning as the owls. For her wound is incurable; for it is come. unto Judah: he is come unto the gate of my people, even to Jerusalem." (Mic. i. 8, 9.) "I went mourning without the sun; I stood up, and I cried in the congregation. I am a brother to dragons, and a companion to owls. My skin is black upon me, and my bones are burnt with heat." (Job xxx. 28-30.) In addition to these various acceptations of the word tanninim, there is another class of passages in which it is evidently employed in a figurative sense by the inspired writers of the Bible. As, for example-" Son of man, set thy face against Pharaoh king of Egypt, and prophesy against him, and against all Egypt: Speak, and say, Thus saith the Lord God, Behold, I am against thee, Pharaoh king of Egypt, the great dragon that lieth in the midst of his rivers, which hath said, My river is mine own, and I have made it for myself. But I will put hooks in thy jaws, and I will cause the fish of thy rivers to stick unto thy scales; and I will bring thee up out of the midst of thy rivers, and all the fish of thy rivers shall stick unto thy scales. And I will leave thee thrown into the wilderness, thee and all the fish of thy rivers: thou shalt fall upon the open fields; thou shalt not be brought together, nor gathered: I have given thee for meat to the beasts of the field, and to the fowls of the heaven." (Ezek. xxix. 2-5.) "For God is my King of old, working salvation in the midst of the earth. Thou didst divide the sea by thy strength: thou brakest the heads of the dragons in the waters. Thou brakest the heads of leviathan in pieces, and gavest him to be meat to the people inhabiting the wilderness. Thou didst cleave the fountain and the flood: thou driedst up mighty rivers." (Ps. lxxiv. 12-15.) "In that day the Lord, with his sore, and great, and strong sword, shall punish leviathan the piercing serpent, even leviathan that crooked serpent; and he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea.” (Isa. xxvii. 1.) Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the Lord; awake, as in the ancient days, in the generations of old. Art thou not it that hath cut Rahab, and wounded the dragon?" (Isa. li. 9.) "Nebuchadrezzar the king of Babylon hath devoured me, he hath crushed me, he hath made me an empty vessel, he hath swallowed me up like a dragon, he hath filled his belly with my delicates, he hath cast me out." (Jer. xli. 34.) Thus the expression is used (1) for "sea-monsters," (2) for serpents, (3) for wild beasts or birds characteristic of desolate places, and (4) it is used figuratively to represent the enemies of the Lord, and especially Pharaoh, as head and representative of the Egyptian power, and Nebuchadrezzar, the head and representative of the Chaldean monarchy. The term is thus a general one, signifying any monstrous creature, whether of the land or of the water, and is to be set down with the one or the other, according as the context indicates. A glance at Genesis i. 21, will show that it is there associated with the water— the ocean. "God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas;" and as corroborative of the view given above in regard to the creation of birds, it is added, "and let fowl multiply on the earth"-fishes and the water are spoken of together, birds are linked up with the firmament and the earth : "And let the fowl be multiplied on the earth.' Forthwith the sounds and seas, each creek and bay, With fry innumerable swarm, and shoals Of fish that with their fins and shining scales, Glide under the green wave, in sculls that oft Bank the mid sea: part single, or with mate, Of coral stray; or sporting with quick glance, But why limit the word to any of the Cetacea or whale kind? May the amphibious forms of crocodilian life not be represented here? The answer to both questions is, They were created, not on the fifth, but on the sixth day of creation. "And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind and it was so. And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good. And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image: in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every thing that moveth upon the earth." (Gen. i. 24-28.) The account of the sixth day's work is rightly divided into two parts by our translators. Verses 24, 25 describe the creation of land animals; verses 26-28 the creation of man, and of the blessing addressed to him by the Creator. My notices of the work of this day will follow this division. I. The Creation of Land Animals.-The work is again prefaced by a general statement-"Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind." And a subdivision of the "living creatures" follows— cattle, creeping thing, and beast of the earth." The last expression may be held to include every form of life not embraced in the other two. Thus we have all other animals, except 3. CREEPING THINGS = reptiles proper, frogs, &c., and all land invertebrates. Those who are of opinion that the term day in Genesis i. is to be looked upon as meaning a protracted period, and who believe that the narrative of Moses contains a summary of the geological ages, hold that the creatures of the sixth day harmonize with the life which had a place on the earth during the Tertiary periods. Remarks already made on the distinctive and limited character of the work of the fifth day, go to exclude the creation of reptiles from that day, and bring it into the sixth. This is opposed to such a scheme of harmony between the two as is attempted. Moreover, it does not seem to have occurred to such theorists, that this scheme demands, if it has any weight, that a majority of the forms of life characteristic of the Tertiaries should be in existence still. The animals of the sixth day were contemporaneous with man. But with very few exceptions, and these consisting mainly of the lowest types of life, the generic forms of the Tertiary group of strata have for ever passed away. But everywhere around him man sees plants and animals after their kinds, which were ushered into being only when man was set at their head. We may now look back on the great works of the creative days, and admire the manifold wisdom and goodness of the Creator. Especially may we adore Him in connection with the preparation of an inhabited world for man. The creatures which surrounded Adam in paradise are continued till the present day. Individuals have not ceased to perish, but species, with few exceptions, remain, and the preservation throughout the great generations which have been on the earth and have passed away, of those types of life which stocked the earth when man was created, bears witness to the sovereign power of him who made them : "Thou hidest thy face, they are troubled; And return to their dust. Thou sendest forth thy spirit, they are created; And thou renewest the face of the earth. The glory of the Lord shall endure for ever: The Lord shall rejoice in his works."—(Ps. civ. 29–31.) I have referred above to the remarkable way in which, what may be called the "zoology of the first chapter of Genesis" fits into the most scientific system of classification. The subjoined scheme in a tabulated form will show this. It is given, however, in the full view of the fact that we are not to look for systems of science in the scriptures: Fifth Day. Sixth Day. Fifth Day. Sixth Day. [1. Protozoa = = = = I. INVERTEBRATA. Gen. i. 21. . Gen. i. 21. Gen. i. 21. lowest forms of life, sponges, &c., Do. (of the land) insects, worms, &c., II. VERTEBRATA. 1. Pisces = Gen. i. 21. . Gen. i. 25. Gen. i. 21. Gen. i. 21. 4. Mammalia mammals (of the land), Gen. i. 25. Fifth Day. 3. Aves = birds, Fifth Day. 4. Mammalia= mammals (of the sea), It will be seen from this table that, with one exception, all the creatures of the fifth day are inhabitants of the WATER, while those of the sixth day belong to the LAND. The exception on the fifth day is the class BIRDS. Regarding them as flying in the AIR, we can see evidences of order, of plan, in this arrangement. First, the Water is stocked; second, the Air above the water; and then the Land. This, indeed, is the order which, looking at the work of the previous days, might almost have been counted on. Thus the following parallelism has been obtained Order is thus seen at every point, in a narrative which has been too often held to be in direct antagonism to what, on grounds of pure science, we are entitled to consider evidences of divine method in the works of nature around us. II. The Creation of Man.-Verses 26 and 27 are specially devoted to an account of man's creation. The whole earth had been clad in verdure and luxuriant vegetation. Herb and tree after their kind stood forth in the sunlight to the praise of their Maker. The waters had been stocked with teeming life, and "full of the riches of the Lord" was "The great and wide sea, Wherein are things creeping innumerable, Both small and great beasts."-(Ps. civ. 25.) As for the earth, Jehovah's ministry of blessing was to it the same before the transaction recorded in verses 26 and 27 occurred, as it was when the sweet psalmist of Israel sung "He sendeth the springs into the valleys, Which run among the hills. They give drink to every beast of the field; The wild asses quench their thirst. By them the fowls of heaven have their habitation, Which sing among the branches. He watereth the hills from his chambers; The earth is satisfied with the fruit of thy works. He causeth the grass to grow for the cattle."-(Ps. civ.) |