The Six Days’ Work

And the first thing they taught us, all with one voice, is that God made everything out of what does not exist. Nothing existed alongside God. He is his own place; he needs nothing; he was there before the ages. And he wanted to make a human being, so that by that being he might be known — and so, for him, he prepared the world in advance. For whatever came into being is also in need of something, while what never came into being needs nothing at all. [a]

So God, having his own Word held within him, in his own heart, begot him — uttering him out along with his own wisdom before anything else existed. This Word he had as his helper in the things that were made by him, and through him he made everything. He is called Beginning, because he rules and is lord over everything that was crafted through him. And so, being Spirit of God and Beginning and Wisdom and the Power of the Most High, he came down into the prophets and spoke through them about the making of the world and about all the rest. For the prophets did not exist when the world was coming into being; God’s wisdom, which was in him, did — and his holy Word, who was always there beside him.

That is why he speaks like this through Solomon the prophet: “When he prepared the heaven, I was there with him; and when he made the foundations of the earth strong, I was beside him, fitting things together.”

And Moses, who lived many years before Solomon — or rather the Word of God through him, as through an instrument — says, “In the beginning God made the heaven and the earth.” He named the beginning first, and the making, and only then did he bring God in; for it is not right to name God idly and for nothing. The divine wisdom knew in advance that some people would talk nonsense and would hand out the name of gods to a crowd of things that do not exist. So, to let the God who really is be understood from his works, and to show that God made the heaven and the earth and everything in them by his Word, he said, “In the beginning God made the heaven and the earth.” Then, having spoken of their making, he shows us: “But the earth was invisible and unformed, and darkness was over the deep, and the Spirit of God was being carried along above the water.” This is what the sacred writing teaches at the very start: that the matter out of which God made and crafted the world had itself in some way come into being, produced by God.

The beginning of the making is light, since it is light that shows what is being set in order. That is why it says: “Let light come to be.” And there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good — plainly it was made good for man. And God separated between the light and the darkness. And God called the light day, and the darkness he called night. And there was evening and there was morning: day one. [h]

And God said, “Let there be a dome in the middle of the water, and let it separate water from water.” And it was so. And God made the dome, and separated between the water that was under the dome and the water that was above the dome. And God called the dome heaven. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning: a second day.

And God said, “Let the water under heaven be gathered into one gathering, and let the dry land appear.” And it was so. And the water was gathered into its gatherings, and the dry land appeared. And God called the dry land earth, and the masses of the waters he called seas. And God saw that it was good. And God said, “Let the earth put out green growth: a plant of grass sowing seed according to its kind and according to its likeness, and a fruit-bearing tree making fruit whose seed is in it, after its likeness.” And it was so. And the earth brought out green growth — a plant of grass sowing seed according to its kind, and a fruit-bearing tree making fruit whose seed was in it, according to its kind, upon the earth. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning: a third day.

And God said, “Let there be lights in the dome of heaven, to give light on the earth and to separate between the day and the night; and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and for years; and let them be for light in the dome of heaven, to shine upon the earth.” And it was so. And God made the two great lights — the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night — and the stars. And God set them in the dome of heaven to shine upon the earth, and to rule the day and the night, and to separate between the light and the darkness. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning: a fourth day.

And God said, “Let the waters bring out crawling creatures that have life, and birds flying over the earth across the dome of heaven.” And it was so. And God made the great sea creatures and every living creature among the crawling things, which the waters brought out according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that they were good. And God blessed them, saying, “Increase and multiply, and fill the waters of the sea, and let the birds multiply on the earth.” And there was evening and there was morning: a fifth day.

And God said, “Let the earth bring out living creatures according to their kind: four-footed animals, and crawling things, and wild animals of the earth according to their kind.” And it was so. And God made the wild animals of the earth according to their kind, and the livestock according to their kind, and all the crawling things of the earth. And God saw that it was good. And God said, “Let us make man according to our image and likeness, and let them rule the fish of the sea and the birds of heaven and the livestock and all the earth and all the crawling things that crawl on the earth.” And God made man; according to God’s image he made him; male and female he made them. And God blessed them, saying, “Increase and multiply, and fill the earth, and master it; and rule the fish of the sea and the birds of heaven and all the livestock and all the earth and all the crawling things that crawl on the earth.” And God said, “Look — I have given you every seed-bearing plant that sows seed, which is on the face of all the earth, and every tree that has in it the fruit of sowable seed. It will be food for you, and for all the wild animals of the earth and for all the birds of heaven and for every crawling thing that crawls on the earth which has the breath of life in it — every green plant for food.” And it was so. And God saw everything he had made, and look: it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning: a sixth day.

And heaven and earth were completed, and all their array. And on the sixth day God completed his works that he had made, and he rested on the seventh day from all his works that he had made. And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all his works that God had begun to make.

Of the six days’ work no one alive can give a worthy account, or set out the whole of its ordering — not if he had ten thousand mouths and ten thousand tongues; not even if he lived ten thousand years, staying on in this life, could he manage to say anything worthy of it, because of the surpassing greatness and the riches of God’s wisdom in the six days’ work written out above. Plenty of writers have imitated it and set out to give an account of these things. They took their starting points from here — for the creation of the world, say, or the nature of man — and still they did not produce so much as a chance spark worth calling truth. What the philosophers and writers and poets say looks trustworthy because it is dressed up in fine phrasing; but their argument turns out to be foolish and empty, because there is such a mass of their nonsense, and not a stray grain of truth is found in it. Even if something true does seem to have been said by them, it is mixed with error. A deadly drug stirred into honey or wine or anything else makes the whole mixture harmful and useless; and in the same way all their talk turns out to be wasted effort — worse, an injury to the people who trust it. [n]

Then there is the seventh day. Everyone names it, but most know nothing about it: what among the Hebrews is called the sabbath is translated into Greek as “the seventh” — hebdomas — a name used among every race of people, though they do not know why they call it that. And as for the poet Hesiod, who says that Erebus came out of Chaos, and Earth, and Desire, who lords it over the gods (as he counts them) and over people: his statement is shown to be empty and cold, and a stranger to all truth. God ought not to be overcome by pleasure, when even people who keep themselves in check stay away from every shameful pleasure and evil craving.

And Hesiod’s starting from the earthly things down below, and telling the making of created things that way, shows his notion to be human and lowly and altogether feeble, as far as God is concerned. A man, being down below, starts building from the ground, and cannot make the roof in due order unless he has first laid the foundation. But God’s power is shown precisely in this: that first of all he makes what comes to be out of what does not exist, and makes it as he pleases. “For the things that are impossible for people are possible for God.” That is why the prophet said that the making of heaven happened first, taking the place of a roof: “In the beginning God made the heaven” — that is, that heaven came to be through the Beginning, as we showed earlier. By “earth” he means, in effect, the ground and the foundation; by “the deep,” the mass of the waters; and he speaks of “darkness” because the heaven God had made covered over the waters and the earth like a lid. [q]

And by “the Spirit carried above the water” he means what God gave to bring creation to life, as he gave a soul to man — blending the fine with the fine, since the Spirit is fine and the water is fine — so that the Spirit would feed the water, and the water, together with the Spirit, working its way everywhere, would feed creation. The Spirit, being one, and taking the place of light, stood between the water and the heaven, so that the darkness would in no way have anything in common with the heaven, which was nearer to God — this before God said, “Let there be light.” So the heaven, being like a vaulted roof, held in the matter, which was like a clod of earth. Another prophet, Isaiah by name, has said about heaven: “This is the God who made the heaven like a vault, and stretched it out like a tent to live in.”

So God’s arrangement — that is, his Word — shining like a lamp in a closed room, lit up everything under heaven, having made it apart from the world. And the light God called day, and the darkness night; for a man would not have known to call light “day,” or darkness “night,” nor to name any of the rest either, if he had not received the naming from the God who made the things themselves. Now in the first setting-out of the account, and of the world’s coming to be, the holy writing spoke not about this dome we see, but about another heaven, one invisible to us; it is after that heaven that this visible one of ours has been called “dome.” Onto it half the water was taken up, to serve humankind for rains and showers and dews. The other half of the water was left on the earth for rivers and springs and seas. Then, while the water still held the earth in — the hollow places above all — God, through his Word, made the water gather into one gathering, and made the dry land visible, which before that had been invisible. And so the earth, now visible, was still unformed. God therefore formed it and set it in order with every kind of green growth and seed and plant.

Now look at the variety in all this, the different kinds of beauty, the sheer number of them — and see how the resurrection is displayed through them, as a sample of the resurrection of all people that is going to happen. Who, when he thinks about it, will not be amazed that a fig tree comes out of a fig’s tiny pip, or that from the other smallest seeds enormous trees grow? We say that the world is like the sea. If the sea did not have the rivers and springs flowing into it and supplying it with food, it would long since have been burned dry by its own saltness. So too the world: if it had not had God’s law and the prophets running and welling up with sweetness and compassion and righteousness and the teaching of God’s holy commands, it would have given out long ago, because of the wickedness and sin that fill it. [v]

And just as in the sea there are islands that can be lived on, well watered and fruitful, with anchorages and harbors where those caught in a storm can take refuge — so God has given to the world, wave-tossed and storm-beaten by its sins, gatherings, which are called holy churches. In them, as in island harbors with good anchorage, the teachings of the truth are to be found; and to them run for shelter the people who want to be saved, who have become lovers of the truth and want to escape God’s anger and judgment. And just as, on the other hand, there are other islands — rocky, waterless, barren, full of wild beasts, uninhabitable — that exist only to harm sailors and the storm-tossed, islands where ships are torn open and the men who put in there are destroyed: so there are teachings of error, by which I mean those of the sects, which destroy the people who come to them. They are not steered by the word of truth. Pirates, once they have filled their ships, run them onto the places just described in order to wreck them; and the same thing happens to those who wander from the truth — they are destroyed by their error.

On the fourth day the lights were made. God, who knows things beforehand, knew the nonsense the empty-headed philosophers would talk — that what grows on the earth comes from the heavenly bodies, so that God can be set aside. So, to make the truth plain, the plants and the seeds came into being before the heavenly bodies; for what comes later cannot make what came before it. And these things hold a sample and a pattern of a great mystery. For the sun is a pattern of God, and the moon of man. As the sun far surpasses the moon in power and glory, so far does God surpass humankind. And as the sun stays always full, never growing less, so God stays always complete, being full of all power and understanding and wisdom and deathlessness and every good thing. But the moon wanes month by month and in effect dies, being a pattern of man; then it is born again and grows, as a sample of the resurrection that is to come. [y]

In the same way, the three days that came before the lights are patterns of the triad: of God, and of his Word, and of his Wisdom. And the fourth is a pattern of man, who needs light — so that you have God, Word, Wisdom, man. That is also why the lights were made on the fourth day. The placing of the stars, too, holds the ordering and the ranks of the righteous and the devout, of those who keep God’s law and commands. The stars that stand out and shine brightly stand for the prophets, and that is why they stay unswerving, never moving from one place to another. Those that hold a second rank of brightness are patterns of the people of the righteous. And those that shift and run from place to place — the ones also called planets — are themselves a pattern of the people who move away from God, abandoning his law and his ordinances.

On the fifth day the living creatures that come out of the waters were made, and through them, here too, the many-sided wisdom of God is displayed; for who could count their numbers and the endless variety of their breeding? What is more, the creatures that came out of the waters were blessed by God, so that this too might be a sample of the fact that people were going to receive repentance and forgiveness of sins through water and the washing of rebirth — all who come to the truth and are born again and receive blessing from God. But the monsters of the deep and the flesh-eating birds are a likeness of the greedy and the lawbreakers. Water creatures and birds are all of one nature, and yet some of them stay within nature and do no wrong to those weaker than themselves; they keep God’s law and eat from the seeds of the earth. Others of them break God’s law by eating flesh, and wrong those weaker than themselves. It is the same with people. The righteous, who guard God’s law, bite no one and wrong no one, but live devoutly and rightly; while robbers and murderers and the godless are like the monsters of the deep and the wild beasts and the flesh-eating birds, for in effect they swallow down those weaker than themselves. So the breed of water creatures and crawling things, though it shares in God’s blessing, has gained nothing especially its own. [ac]