Commentaries on the Old Testament: Genesis to Second Samuel

the surface of the earth. And darkness, Saint Basilius Basil of Caesarea affirms, is the absence of light. And if it were an actually existing substance, as Theodorus says, how can those who are in darkness see those who are in the light and not be hindered by it, as by the rest of the black substances when they intervene? “And the spirit of God was brooding upon the face of the waters.” That is, the great Basilius understood it to be the Holy Spirit who in the beginning instilled life into the waters, as at the end he will instil it into the dust. “Thou sendest thy Spirit, and they are created.” But Mar Ephraim Ephrem the Syrian (understood it to be) the air; and he rests his opinion upon the fact, that the context here is concerned with the created things and not with the persons of the Deity. (1:3) “And God said, Let there be light.” That is, those things which were prior to the light [such as “the heaven itself and the earth itself”] God created without speech, that the angels might not fall into unbelief by hearing the command and not seeing its fulfilment, since light did not yet exist to show the things created. As for the light, however, when they saw that he spake and it was, [they] believed that it constituted a suggestive analogy for those things also which were before the light. And that light is an accident and not a substance is known from this, that every substance naturally tends in one direction, but light in all directions at once. (4) “And God saw the light, that it was beautiful.” That is, as he knew beforehand that it would be, so it was. “And God divided between the light and the darkness,” i.e., between the time of light, daytime, and the time of darkness, night. (5) “And there was evening and there was morning, day one.” That is, when the day had served its hours and had become evening, and when the night, again, had served its hours and had become morning, there was completed “day one,” to affirm the priority of the daytime; otherwise from evening to morning is one night, but not an entire day—day and night—would have been completed. (As for) the lunar months, however, Hebrews and Syrians and Saracens begin (them) at night because in the evening the new moon is visible, but not because of priority of existence. Now that first darkness was not night, because, after light was created and was called day, God called the darkness night. And Saint Jacob says that simultaneously the created things, all of them, were created, and that with regard to the differentiation of times and the organization of essential natures, to every day its own creative activity is assigned.