Yahweh God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.
Parallel Translations
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Yahweh God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.
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And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.
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Then the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.
Examined in Scripture Analysis
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Questions where the Bible appears to say two different things, with the passages on each side set together.
Cross-references (26)
Passages linked to Genesis 2:7 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, ordered by reader-vote popularity; verse text shown in World English Bible.
- Job 33:4 The Spirit of God has made me, and the breath of the Almighty gives me life.
- Ecclesiastes 12:7 and the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it.
- 1 Corinthians 15:45 So also it is written, “The first man, Adam, became a living soul.” The last Adam became a life-giving spirit.
- Isaiah 64:8 But now, Yahweh, you are our Father. We are the clay and you our potter. We all are the work of your hand.
- Acts 17:25 He isn’t served by men’s hands, as though he needed anything, seeing he himself gives to all life and breath, and all things.
- 1 Corinthians 15:47 The first man is of the earth, made of dust. The second man is the Lord from heaven.
- Job 27:3 (for the length of my life is still in me, and the spirit of God is in my nostrils);
- Genesis 3:19 You will eat bread by the sweat of your face until you return to the ground, for you were taken out of it. For you are dust, and you shall return to dust.”
- Genesis 7:22 All on the dry land, in whose nostrils was the breath of the spirit of life, died.
- Psalms 103:14 For he knows how we are made. He remembers that we are dust.
- Ecclesiastes 3:20-21 All go to one place. All are from the dust, and all turn to dust again. Who knows the spirit of man, whether it goes upward, and the spirit of the animal, whether it goes downward to the earth?”
- Zechariah 12:1 A revelation, Yahweh’s word concerning Israel. Yahweh, who stretches out the heavens, and lays the foundation of the earth, and forms the spirit of man within him says:
- Psalms 100:3 Know that Yahweh, he is God. It is he who has made us, and we are his. We are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.
- Romans 9:20 But indeed, O man, who are you to reply against God? Will the thing formed ask him who formed it, “Why did you make me like this?”
- Isaiah 2:22 Stop trusting in man, whose breath is in his nostrils; for of what account is he?
- Genesis 3:23 Therefore Yahweh God sent him out from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from which he was taken.
- Numbers 16:22 They fell on their faces, and said, “God, the God of the spirits of all flesh, shall one man sin, and will you be angry with all the congregation?”
- Proverbs 20:27 The spirit of man is Yahweh’s lamp, searching all his innermost parts.
- Hebrews 12:9 Furthermore, we had the fathers of our flesh to chasten us, and we paid them respect. Shall we not much rather be in subjection to the Father of spirits, and live?
- Job 33:6 Behold, I am toward God even as you are. I am also formed out of the clay.
- Job 4:19 How much more, those who dwell in houses of clay, whose foundation is in the dust, who are crushed before the moth!
- Psalms 139:14-15 I will give thanks to you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Your works are wonderful. My soul knows that very well. My frame wasn’t hidden from you, when I was made in secret, woven together in the depths of the earth.
- 2 Corinthians 5:1 For we know that if the earthly house of our tent is dissolved, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal, in the heavens.
- Numbers 27:16 “Let Yahweh, the God of the spirits of all flesh, appoint a man over the congregation,
- John 20:22 When he had said this, he breathed on them, and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit!
- 2 Corinthians 4:7 But we have this treasure in clay vessels, that the exceeding greatness of the power may be of God, and not from ourselves.
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John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain 7. And the Lord God formed man He now…
7. And the Lord God formed man He now explains what he had before omitted in the creation of man, that his body was taken out of the earth. He had said that he was formed after the image of God. This is incomparably the highest nobility; and, lest men should use it as an occasion of pride, their first origin is placed immediately before them; whence they may learn that this advantage was adventitious; for Moses relates that man had been, in the beginning, dust of the earth. Let foolish men now go and boast of the excellency of their nature! Concerning other animals, it had before been said, Let the earth produce every living creature; but, on the other hand, the body of Adam is formed of clay, and destitute of sense; to the end that no one should exult beyond measure in his flesh. He must be excessively stupid who does not hence learn humility. That which is afterwards added from another quarter, lays us under just so much obligation to God. Nevertheless, he, at the same time, designed to distinguish man by some mark of excellence from brute animals: for these arose out of the earth in a moment; but the peculiar dignity of man is shown in this, that he was gradually formed. For why did not God command him immediately to spring alive out of the earth, unless that, by a special privilege, he might outshine all the creatures which the earth produced?
And breathed into his nostrils Whatever the greater part of the ancients might think, I do not hesitate to subscribe to the opinion of those who explain this passage of the animal life of man; and thus I expound what they call the vital spirits by the word breath. Should any one object, that if so, no distinction would be made between man and other living creatures, since here Moses relates only what is common alike to all: I answer, though here mention is made only of the lower faculty of the soul, which imparts breath to the body, and gives it vigor and motion: this does not prevent the human soul from having its proper rank, and therefore it ought to be distinguished from others. Moses first speaks of the breath; he then adds, that a soul was given to man by which he might live, and be endued with sense and motion. Now we know that the powers of the human mind are many and various. Wherefore, there is nothing absurd in supposing that Moses here alludes only to one of them; but omits the intellectual part, of which mention has been made in the first chapter. Three gradations, indeed, are to be noted in the creation of man; that his dead body was formed out of the dust of the earth; that it was endued with a soul, whence it should receive vital motion; and that on this soul God engraved his own image, to which immortality is annexed.
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Man became a living soul I take נפש (nepesh,) for the very essence of the soul: but the epithet living suits only the present place, and does not embrace generally the powers of the soul. For Moses intended nothing more than to explain the animating of the clayey figure, whereby it came to pass that man began to live. Paul makes an antithesis between this living soul and the quickening spirit which Christ confers upon the faithful, (1 Corinthians 15:45,) for no other purpose than to teach us that the state of man was not perfected in the person of Adam; but it is a peculiar benefit conferred by Christ, that we may be renewed to a life which is celestial, whereas before the fall of Adams man’s life was only earthly, seeing it had no firm and settled constancy.
John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain Or, formed.
Or, formed.
He showeth whereof man’s body was created, to the intent that man should not glory in the excellency of his own nature.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain Gen 2:7 And the LORD God formed man [of]…
Gen 2:7 And the LORD God formed man [of] the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.
Ver. 7. Formed man of the dust.] Not of the rocks of the earth, but dust, that is soon dispersed, to note our frailty, vility, and impurity. {Lutum enim conspurcat omnia, sic et caro.} {a} But why should so glorious a soul (called here Neshamah, of affinity to Shamajim, heaven, whence it came) dwell in this corruptible and contemptible body? For answer, besides God’s will, and for order of the universe, Lombard saith, {b} that by the conjunction of the soul with the body, so far its inferior, man might learn and believe a possibility of the union of man with God in glory, notwithstanding the vast distance of nature, and excellence; the infiniteness of both in God, the finiteness of both in man.
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And breathed into his nostrils.] The greatest man is but a little air and dust tempered together. {Quidam volunt metaphoram sumptam a vitrorum formatione.} What is man, saith one, {c} but Nους και χους, soul and soil, breath and body, a pile of dust the one, a puff of wind the other, no solidity in either? Man is nothing else but the son of the earth, the nephew of nothing, {terrae filius, nihili nepos} saith Augustine; or a piece of clay neatly made up, {d} as Arian upon Epictetus hath it.
And man became a living soul.] Dicaearchus doubted of the soul, whether there was such a thing in natural events. {rerum natural} {e} He could not have doubted of it without it; as man cannot prove logic to be unnecessary, but by logic.
{a} Zuinglius.
{b} Lomb., l. ii. dis. 1.
{c} Nazian.
{d} πηλος κομφως πεφυραμενος.
{e} Tusc. Quaest.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain Into his nostrils, and by that door into the…
Into his nostrils, and by that door into the head and whole man. This is an emphatical phrase, sufficiently implying that the soul of man was of a quite differing nature and higher extraction and original than the souls of beasts, which together with their bodies are said to be brought forth by the earth, Gen 1:24.
The breath of life, Heb. of lives; either to show the continuance of this breath or soul, both in this life and in the life to come; or to note the various degrees or kinds of life which this one breath worketh in us; the life of plants, in growth and nourishment; the life of beasts, in sense and motion; and the life of a man, in reason and understanding.
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Man, who before this was but a dull lump of clay, or a comely statue,
became a living soul, i.e. a living man: the soul being oft put for the whole man, as Gen 12:5,13; 46:15,18; 1Pe 3:20, &c.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain And the Lord God formed man of the dust…
And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground,.... Not of dry dust, but, as Josephus (h) says, of red earth macerated, or mixed with water; the like notion Hesiod (i) has; or out of clay, as in Job 33:6 hence a word is made use of, translated "formed", which is used of the potter that forms his clay into what shape he pleases: the original matter of which man was made was clay; hence the clay of Prometheus (k) with the Heathens; and God is the Potter that formed him, and gave him the shape he has, see Isa 64:8, there are two "jods", it is observed, in the word, which is not usual; respecting, as Jarchi thinks, the formation of man for this world, and for the resurrection of the dead; but rather the two fold formation of body and soul, the one is expressed here, and the other in the following clause: and this, as it shows the mighty power of God in producing such a creature out of the dust of the earth, so it serves to humble the pride of man, when he considers he is of the earth, earthy, dust, and ashes, is dust, and to dust he must return.
And breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; which in that way entered into his body, and quickened it, which before was a lifeless lump of clay, though beautifully shapen: it is in the plural number, the "breath of lives" (l), including the vegetative, sensitive, and rational life of man. And this was produced not with his body, as the souls of brutes were, and was produced by the breath of God, as theirs were not; nor theirs out of the earth, as his body was: and these two different productions show the different nature of the soul and body of man, the one is material and mortal, the other immaterial and immortal:
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and man became a living soul; or a living man, not only capable of performing the functions of the animal life, of eating, drinking, walking, &c. but of thinking, reasoning, and discoursing as a rational creature.
(h) Antiqu. l. 1. c. 1. (i) Opera & dies, ver. 60. (k) Martial. l. 10. Epigram. 38. (l) Heb. "spiraculum vitarum", Pareus.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain Verse 7. God formed man of the dust] In…
Verse 7. God formed man of the dust] In the most distinct manner God shows us that man is a compound being, having a body and soul distinctly, and separately created; the body out of the dust of the earth, the soul immediately breathed from God himself. Does not this strongly mark that the soul and body are not the same thing? The body derives its origin from the earth, or as עפר aphar implies, the dust; hence because it is earthly it is decomposable and perishable. Of the soul it is said, God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; נשמת חיים nishmath chaiyim, the breath of LIVES, i.e., animal and intellectual. While this breath of God expanded the lungs and set them in play, his inspiration gave both spirit and understanding.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain Gen 2:7. The Lord God formed man — Man…
Gen 2:7. The Lord God formed man — Man being the chief of God’s works in this lower world, and being intended to be the lord of all other creatures, we have here a more full account of his creation. The word ייצר, jitzer, here rendered he formed, is not used concerning any other creature, and implies a gradual process in the work, with great accuracy and exactness. It is properly used of potters forming vessels on the wheel; and Rabbi D. Kimchi says, that, when used concerning the creation of man, it signifies the formation of his members. Of the dust of the ground — The Hebrew is, he formed man dust from the ground. We should remember that, however curiously our bodies, with their various members and senses, are wrought, we are but dust taken from the ground. He breathed into his nostrils — And thereby into his head and whole man; the breath of life — Hebrew, the soul of lives, that is, both natural and spiritual, both temporal and eternal life. It is sufficiently implied here that the soul of man is of a quite different nature and higher origin than the souls of beasts, which, together with their bodies, are said to be brought forth by the earth and waters, Gen 1:24.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain Breath of life or a soul, created out of…
Breath of life or a soul, created out of nothing, and infused into the body to give it life. (Haydock)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain Here the sacred writer supplies a few more particulars…
Here the sacred writer supplies a few more particulars about the first pair.
formed--had FORMED MAN OUT OF THE DUST OF THE GROUND. Science has proved that the substance of his flesh, sinews, and bones, consists of the very same elements as the soil which forms the crust of the earth and the limestone that lies embedded in its bowels. But from that mean material what an admirable structure has been reared in the human body (Psa 139:14).
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the breath of life--literally, of lives, not only animal but spiritual life. If the body is so admirable, how much more the soul with all its varied faculties.
breathed into his nostrils the breath of life--not that the Creator literally performed this act, but respiration being the medium and sign of life, this phrase is used to show that man's life originated in a different way from his body--being implanted directly by God (Ecc 12:7), and hence in the new creation of the soul Christ breathed on His disciples (Joh 20:22).
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain The foregoing narrative of the beginning of human history…
EXCURSUS ON PRIMEVAL MAN.
The foregoing narrative of the beginning of human history is singularly simple and free from numerous characteristics of the myths and legends of other nations, as well as from their pantheistic and polytheistic conceptions. “According to the ideas commonly prevailing among the peoples of antiquity,” says Lenormant, “man is regarded as autochthonous, or issued from the earth which bears him. Rarely, in the accounts which treat of his first appearance, do we discover a trace of the notion which supposes him to be created by the omnipotent operation of a deity, who is personal and distinct from primordial matter. The fundamental concepts of pantheism and emanatism, upon which were based the learned and proud religions of the ancient world, made it possible to leave in a state of vague uncertainty the origin and production of men. They were looked upon, in common with all things, as having sprung from the very substance of the divinity, which was confounded with the world; this coming forth had been a spontaneous action, through the development of the chain of emanations, and not the result of a free and determinate act of creative will, and there was very little anxiety shown to define, otherwise than under a symbolical and mythological form, the manner of that emanation which took place by a veritable act of spontaneous generation.” — Beginnings of History, p. 47.
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Which, now, is the more reasonable and probable hypothesis, that this biblical account of man’s origin is the true and genuine tradition of the most ancient times — of which the legends of other nations are the degenerate outgrowths, mixed with various pantheistic and polytheistic notions — or, that the ethnic myths are the source of this unique theistic record, which was compiled by some ancient sage who aimed to purge the floating traditions of their heathenish features, and to express them in consistency with the doctrine of a personal God? In other words, is this narrative a development out of pantheistic myths, or are the myths and legends a perversion of the true account of man’s origin, of which this biblical record is the most ancient historic monument?
The answer to this question will be mainly governed by the belief or non-belief in the existence of a personal God, who is concerned with man and with all things of this world. The doctrine of the Omnipotent and Omniscient Deity is the logical basis of all belief in the supernatural creation of man, and that belief is of the nature of an intuition rather than the result of any process of reason.
Accepting, therefore, as we do, the Scripture doctrine of the personal God and Father of us all, we also believe that these Scriptures contain his own revelation of the beginning of human history. Portions of the record may be regarded as symbolical or parabolic in form, from the necessity of thus accommodating the record to the capacity of man’s understanding. The anthropomorphism of these ancient narratives, far from being a ground for discrediting them, is rather a mark of their genuineness. The concept of creation must be given, if given at all, in harmony with human modes of thought and feeling. The central fact revealed is, that God produced man partly from the earth and partly from himself — his body from the dust, his soul from the divine breath. All we can comprehend is, the idea that he was formed by Him who had all power in heaven and earth. As no man can tell how Jesus made the water wine, so can no man tell how God made dust and breath into a living soul, or how he builded the man’s rib into a woman. The great fact revealed is, that “Adam was first formed, then Eve,” and “the man is not of (or from) the woman, but the woman of the man.” 1Ti_2:13; 1Co_11:8.
Accepting this great fact as matter of divine revelation, we of course reject the evolution hypothesis of a naturalistic development of man from some extinct race of pithecoids, like the gorilla or the orang-outang. We reject this hypothesis, not only because it seems in conflict with the biblical narrative, but also because its main positions do not commend themselves. In such a struggle for existence as the current doctrines of evolution assume, we would naturally suppose that the terrible gorilla, according to all known analogy, would develop into a still more ferocious animal. The struggle with a cold climate after the glacial era, and with the mighty animals of that period, would certainly seem to have produced something very diverse from the tender skin and comparatively frail mechanism which the genus homo everywhere presents to our observation. By what process of “natural selection” a ferocious orang-outang, fighting for existence, would come to lose his thick hairy hide, strong jaws, and sharp claws, is more than we can rationally conceive. But it appears, rather, that the apes are man’s contemporaries, not his predecessors. If allied at all by flesh and blood they are man’s cousins, or brothers, not his ancestors.
The Darwinian theory of evolution must fill up many wide gaps before it can be accepted as accounting for the origin of man. The distance between man and the most highly developed monkey yet discovered is immensely great. “Zoologically,” says Dawson, “apes are not varieties of the same species with man; they are not species of the same genus, nor do they belong to genera of the same family, or even to families of the same order.” Nor should we forget that the regions most favourable for apes are least favourable for human life. A great gulf lies between the low animal nature of the ape, or of any other beast, and the reasoning moral nature of man. Another gap which Darwinians have not been able to bridge is, that between any two species of animals. Great varieties of species appear, but no real transmutation of species has yet been shown. Another gap back of these is, that which separates vegetable and animal life; and even if this were covered, there would be another, still broader, between any living thing and inert matter.
The notion that man was originally a savage, and elevated himself into civilization by the pressure of his own necessities, is also destitute of any evidence that commends it to the thoughtful mind. The most ancient nations of which we have any trustworthy history were highly civilized. Witness the monuments along the Euphrates and the Nile. There is no shadow of proof that these nations raised themselves out of a previous barbarism. On the other hand, it is well known that tribes and colonies, once separated from a civilized state, have deteriorated, and become savage and barbarous. Indo-European philology enables us to trace many a rude western people to an oriental source. “Within a century or two,” writes Whedon, “a large number of Caucasians excluded by slavery from a suitable place in the social system, have, even within hailing distance of what claimed to be a high civilization, changed in color, diminished in size, and forgotten letters, mechanic arts, and religion.” But no one can point as a matter of fact to a single savage tribe which became civilized and enlightened otherwise than by coming in contact with other and higher forms of civil life. Only moral forces, connected with an elevating form of religion, have lifted savage men up to higher modes of life. Left to themselves they sink lower and lower. Geology, also, sustains the doctrine of degeneracy in types of life. According to Dawson, the laws of creation, as illustrated by the record of the rocks, are these: “First, that there has been a progress in creation from few, low, and generalized types of life to more numerous, higher, and more specialized types; and, secondly, that every type, low or high, was introduced at first in its best and highest form, and was, as a type, subject to degeneracy, and to partial or total replacement by higher types subsequently introduced. In geological times,” he adds, “the tendency seems to be ever to disintegration and decay. This we see everywhere, and find that elevation occurs only by the introduction of new species in a way which is not obvious, and which may rather imply the intervention of a cause from without.” — Story of the Earth and Man, p. 235.
Some modern writers have fallen into the habit of using the terms “stone age,” “bronze age,” and “iron age,” as if the entire human race had developed in civilization according as they had used implements of these various qualities. Rude tribes, indeed, naturally make use of stone from ignorance of the manufacture of better material. But to assume that nations, or races, or mankind generally, have passed by regular gradations from a stone age to a bronze age, and from a bronze age to an iron age, is utterly fallacious and misleading. Other circumstances than those of savagery and ignorance may oblige a people to use stone or wooden implements. Compare Jdg_5:8, and 1Sa_13:19-22. Nothing is better known than that some tribes have employed stone utensils at the same time that others have used brass and iron. In the old Chaldean tombs flint, bronze, and iron implements are found mingled together. In Xerxes’s great army were found all sorts of weapons made of wood, bone, flint, bronze, and iron. In the trenches of Alesia, where Caesar fought his last battle with the Gauls, stone, bronze, and iron weapons were mixed together in one promiscuous bed. Schliemann’s excavations on the site of ancient Troy discovered stone and bronze in the lowest relic bed, representing, as he thinks, an age anterior to the Homeric Troy. Above this was another bed in which the relics were stone and bronze; and in another, still higher and more modern, he found no traces of metal at all. But in a fourth and later bed, stone and bronze again appeared. Here, it would seem, two bronze ages preceded a stone age, and then followed another age of bronze. While, therefore, the use of stone, bronze, or iron may serve to indicate the degree of civilization to which a people has attained, it can furnish no evidence of the age of man on earth, or of his primitive condition.
From all the confusing speculations of those who, from most meagre data, rush to the conclusion that primeval man was a rude savage, self-evolved from a still more savage brute, we turn with inexpressible satisfaction to the ancient Scripture doctrine that “God created man in his own image.” He did not first involve him in savagery in order that he might evolve himself into a higher life, but he made him upright, and gave him “dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.” That first period was his golden age, and afterward he “corrupted his way” upon the earth. This biblical account of man’s primitive condition and subsequent degeneracy is confirmed by the traditions of many nations, and is entirely compatible with reason and all the well-established facts of human history. This unique account we do well to accept until it is clearly shown to be false, and something better and more rational is given us in its stead.
As to the perfection, mental capacity, and knowledge of the first man, speculation is idle, and extreme views are to be avoided. While we may well hesitate to believe, with Knapp, that at the time of his first consciousness he was as destitute of ideas as a new born child, we should also repudiate such extravagant assumptions as those of Dr. South, who says of Adam, that “he came into the world a philosopher; he could perceive the essences of things in themselves, and read forms without the comment of their respective properties; he could see consequences yet dormant in their principles, and effects yet unborn, and in the womb of their causes; his understanding could almost pierce into future contingents; his conjecture improving even to prophecy, or the certainties of prediction. Could any difficulty have been proposed, the resolution would have been as early as the proposal; it could not have had time to settle into doubt.” — Sermons, vol. i, pp. 24, 25. This is being “wise above what is written.” It is sufficient to know that man’s original estate was one which his divine Creator pronounced VERY GOOD.
In marked contrast with all the cosmogonies and traditions of other nations are the doctrines of these first two chapters of Genesis. Aside from any special significance in the names Elohim and Jehovah, we legitimately deduce from this record of creation the doctrine of an infinite God, a personal Creator, an all-sufficient First Cause, almighty, wise, good, condescending to the tenderest care for his creatures; a God of order, of law, of righteousness and holiness. He is a self-revealing Spirit and communicates instruction to his created intelligences. Here, also, is the doctrine of man created in the image of God, good, upright, in a state of perfect innocence, with unspeakable possibilities before him. He is the lord of the lower creations, but is himself under law. The woman is his fitting companion, and the marriage relation is to be regarded as sacred, and even more binding than other ties of human kinship. The spiritual nature of man is emphasized; he is a moral being, capable of acquiring great wisdom, and also capable of sin. The animate and inanimate creation, the land, the heavens, the sun and moon and stars are all God’s work. To sum all up in a word, here we read the doctrines of a lofty Theism and a rational and ennobling Anthropology.
7. Formed man — Here occurs for the first time the word יצר, to form. The production of man is here viewed not so much as a creation, but rather as a formation. Comp. note on Gen_1:1. It is viewed from the standpoint of the generation of the heavens and the land, and conceived as a process: dust… breath of life… living soul. Having passed from the narrative of creation to a narrative of generations, the sacred writer would have us think of man as not merely created by miracle, but also as brought forth into form and activity by a gradational process of creation. First, God “formed man of dust from the ground.” עפר, dust, is here grammatically the “accusative of the material,” and denotes the ground as the source of the primeval generation of man’s body. Hence mortal man is from the earth, (Psa_10:18,) and we speak of “mother earth.”
Breathed into his nostrils the breath of life — So man is not only earthborn, but heavenborn. As to his body, he is from the dust; but as to his soul he is, as the Greek poet and Paul affirm, the offspring of God. Act_17:28-29. God breathed out of himself into the body of the first man the breath of life, נשׁמת חיים, breath of lives. Some have held that the plural, lives, in this Hebrew expression, was designed to denote the twofold life of man — animal and spiritual; or perhaps the various powers and operations of the human soul. But the frequent use of the same plural form in other connexions (as tree of life, Gen_2:9; ways of life, Pro_2:19) is against such an interpretation. In Gen_7:22, we have the expression breath of the spirit of life applied to the whole living animal creation. And (the) man became a living soul — This is the third stage, and the outcome of the creative process. Man thus became a self-conscious, living creature. The expression חיה נפשׁ, soul of life, or living soul, is used also in Gen_1:20-21; Gen_1:24; Gen_1:30, of fishes, birds, and other animals. But the divine process by which man comes to be such a living creature is what we are to note. His soul-endowed nature is the result of an extraordinary divine inbreathing; an “inspiration from the Almighty.” Job_32:8; Job_33:4. Hence we incline, with Delitzsch, to regard the breath of life in this verse (and which occurs nowhere else in this section) as denoting the spirit as distinguished from the soul of man. Accordingly, while discarding the low mechanical anthropomorphic conception of God as a workman, fashioning a clod of earth with his hands, and then standing near it to breathe into it a breath from without, we nevertheless discern in this narrative a divine process in the creation of man. “It begins,” says Delitzsch, “with the constitution of the body, as the regeneration (palin-genesia) of man shall one day end with the reconstitution of the body. God first formed the human body, introducing the formative powers of entire nature into the moist earth taken from the soil of Eden, and placing them in co-operation; whereon he then breathed into this form the creative spirit, which, because it originated after the manner of breathing, may just as well be called his spirit as man’s spirit, because it is his breath made into the spirit of man. This spirit, entering into the form of the body, did not remain hidden in itself, but revealed itself, by virtue of its likeness to God, as soul, which corresponds to the doxa (glory) of the Godhead, and by means of the soul subjected to itself the corporeity, by combining within the unity of its own intrinsic vitality the energies of the bodily material, as they reciprocally act on one another in accordance with the life of nature.… For the soul, as Tertullian says, is the body of the spirit, and the flesh is the body of the soul.” — Biblical Psychology, p. 102.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain 7. formed] A different word from that used in…
7. formed] A different word from that used in Gen_1:1; Gen_1:27, “created,” or in Gen_1:26, “made.” The metaphor is that of the potter shaping and moulding the clay, LXX ἔπλασεν, Lat. formavit. As applied to the Creator, the metaphor is a favourite one; cf. Isa_45:9, Jer_18:1-5, Wis_15:7, Rom_9:20-24.
See Browning’s Rabbi Ben Ezra, “Aye, note that Potter’s wheel, That metaphor, &c.”
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man] Heb. âdâm. Man was popularly thought to be so called because taken from the adâmah, “the cultivated ground,” to which he is to return at death (Gen_3:19), and which he is to cultivate during life (Gen_3:23). It is impossible in English to give any equivalent to this play upon the names for “man” and “ground.”
In this verse and elsewhere, where the Heb. âdâm (= man) occurs with the def. article (hâ-âdâm), there is no reference to the proper name “Adam.” See note on Gen_2:16.
of the dust of the ground] These words describe the Hebrew belief concerning the physical structure of man. It was seen that after death the bodily frame was reduced, by dissolution, into dust: it was, therefore, assumed that that frame had at the first been built up by God out of dust. For other passages illustrating this belief, cf. Gen_3:19; Gen_18:27, Psa_90:3; Psa_104:29, 1Co_15:47. We find the same idea in the Babylonian myth, where man is made out of earth mingled with the blood of the God Marduk1[3], and in the Greek myth of Prometheus and Pandora.
[3] See Appendix A (Book Comments).
breathed … life] The preceding clause having explained man’s bodily structure, the present one explains the origin of his life. His life is not the product of his body, but the gift of God’s breath or spirit.
At death the breath (ruaḥ) left man’s body; hence it was assumed, that, at the first, the mystery of life had been imparted to man by the breath (ruaḥ) of God Himself. Through life, man became “a living soul,” (nephesh), and, as “a living soul,” shared his life with the animals. But man alone received his life from “the breath of God.” It is this breathing (n’shâmâh) of life (LXX πνοὴ ζωης: Lat. spiraculum vitae) which imparts to man that which is distinctive of his higher principle of being, as compared with the existence of the animals, cf. Gen_2:19. It would seem from Job_34:14-15 that one phase of Hebrew belief was (1) that at death the flesh of man turned again unto dust; (2) that God took back unto Himself His breath (ruaḥ) which He had given; (3) that the nephesh, or soul, departed into the Sheol, the region of the dead.
For the picture here given of vitality imparted to man by the breath breathed by God into man’s nostrils, cf. Job_27:3, “The spirit (or breath) of God is in my nostrils.”
We should compare the expression “breathed into” with the words in St John’s Gospel Joh_20:22. There the symbolical act of our Lord derives significance from this verse. Christ who is “the New Man,” Himself imparts the life-giving Spirit; “He breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Spirit.”
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain (7) And the Lord God formed man of the…
(7) And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground.—Literally, formed the man (adam) dust from the ground. In this section the prominent idea is not that of producing out of nothing, but of forming, that is, shaping and moulding. So in Gen_2:19 Jehovah forms the animals, and in Gen_2:8 He plants a garden. As Elohim is almighty power, so Jehovah is wisdom and skill, and His works are full of contrivance and design. As regards man’s body, Jehovah forms it dust from the ground: the adâmâh, or fruitful arable soil, so called from Adam, for whose use it was specially fitted, and by whom it was first tilled. But the main intention of the words is to point out man’s feebleness. He is made not from the rocks, nor from ores of metal, but from the light, shifting particles of the surface, blown about by every wind. Yet, frail as is man’s body, God—
. . . breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.—The life came not as the result of man’s bodily organisation, nor as derived by evolution from any other animal, but as a gift direct from God.
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And man became a living soul.—The word translated “soul” contains no idea of a spiritual existence. For in Gen_1:20, “creature that hath life,” and in Gen_1:24, “the living creature,” are literally, living soul. Really the word refers to the natural life of animals and men, maintained by breathing, or in some way extracting oxygen from the atmospheric air. And whatever superiority over other animals may be possessed by man comes from the manner in which this living breath was bestowed upon him, and not from his being “a living soul;” for that is common to all alike.
The whole of this second narrative is pre-eminently anthropomorphic. In the previous history Elohim commands, and it is done. Here He forms, and builds, and plants, and breathes into His work, and is the companion and friend of the creature He has made. It thus sets before us the love and tenderness of Jehovah, who provides for man a home, fashions for him a wife to be his partner and helpmate, rejoices in his intellect, and brings the lower world to him to see what he will call them, and even after the fall provides the poor outcasts with clothing. It is a picture fitted for the infancy of mankind, and speaking the language of primæval simplicity. But its lesson is for all times. For it proclaims the love of God to man, his special pre-eminence in the scale of being, and that Elohim, the Almighty Creator, is Jehovah-Elohim, the friend and counsellor of the creature whom He has endowed with reason and free-will.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain And the Lord God (Jehovah Elohim) formed man of…
And the Lord God (Jehovah Elohim) formed man of the dust of the ground. Literally, dust from the ground. Here, again, Bleek, Kalisch, and the theologians of their school discover contrariety between this account of man"s creation and that which has been given in the preceding chapter. In that man is represented as having been created.by the Divine word, in the Divine image, and male and female simultaneously; whereas in this his creation is exhibited as a painful process of elaboration from the clay by the hand of God, who works it like a potter (asah; LXX, plassw), and, after having first constructed man, by a subsequent operation forms woman. But the first account does not assert that Adam and Eve were created together, and gives no details of the formation of either. These are supplied by the present narrative, which, beginning with the construction of his body from the fine dust of the ground, designedly represents it as an evolution or development of the material universe, and ends by setting it before us as animated by the breath of God, reserving for later treatment the mode of Eve"s production, when the circumstances that led to it have been described. And (the Lord God) breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. Literally, the breath of lives. "The formation of man from the dust and the breathing of the breath of life must not be understood in a mechanical sense, as if God first of all constructed a human figure from the dust" (still less does it admit of the idea that man"s physical nature was evolved from the lower animals), "and then, by breathing his breath of life into the clod of earth which he had shaped into the form of a man, made it into a living being. The words are to be understood qeoprepwv. By an act of Divine omnipotence man arose from the dust; and in the same moment in which the dust, by virtue of creative omnipotence, shaped itself into a human form, it was pervaded by the Divine breath of life, and created a living being, so that we cannot say the body was earlier than the soul" (Delitzsch). And man became a living soul. Nephesh chayyah, in Gen_1:21, Gen_1:30, is employed to designate the lower animals. Describing a being animated by a yuch) or life principle, it does not necessarily imply that the basis of the life principle in man and the inferior animals is the same. The distinction between the two appears from the difference in the mode of their creations. The beasts arose at the almighty fiat completed beings, every one a nephesh chayyah. "The origin of their soul was coincident with that of their corporeality, and their life was merely the individualization of the universal life with which all matter was filled at the beginning by the Spirit of God" (Delitzsch). Man received his life from a distinct act of Divine inbreathing; certainly not an inbreathing of atmospheric air, but an inflatus from the Ruach Elohim, or Spirit of God, a communication from the whole personality of the Godhead. In effect man was thereby constituted a nephesh chayyah, like the lower animals; but in him the life principle conferred a personality which was wanting in them. Thus there is no real contradiction, scarcely even an apparent dissonance," between the two accounts of man"s creation. The second exhibits the foundation of that likeness to God and world-dominion ascribed to him in the first.
Ver. 7.
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The first man.
I MADE FROM THE DUST. This does not imply that in the composition of humanity there is nothing but particles of dust, or "molecules of matter." Simply it designs to state that the point of departure in man s creation was the soil out of which all other living creatures were produced; that, so to speak, man was constructed from beneath upwards, the Divine Artificer proceeding with his creation in the same ascending scale of activity that had been observed in the production of the rest of the universe first the material body, and then the immaterial soul; and that, so far as the former is concerned, man is wholly and solely of the earth, earthy, an assertion which the researches of chemistry and physiology abundantly confirm, the elements of organized bodies being the same as those which constitute the inorganic world, viz., carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, lime, iron, sulfur, and phosphorus. The statement is fitted to impress man with thoughts
1. Of his lowly origin. While the Scripture in general labors to imbue his mind with correct ideas of his obscure nativity, comparing him to a wind, to a vapor, to a flower, to the beasts, to a worm, the sentiment of Moses takes him lower yet for his birthplace to the dust of the ground, above which the wind blows, from which the vapors rise, on which the flowers bloom, across which the beasts roam, out of which the worm creeps.
2. Of his essential frailty. Being composed of little particles of dust, held together by what science calls "organization," but Holy Writ designates the power of God, it requires but the loosening of God"s hand, as it were, for the framework of his body, so wondrously fashioned, so delicately carved, so finely articulated, so firmly knit, to resolve itself into a heap of dust.
3. Of his final destiny. Every mundane thing returns to the place whence it proceeded. (Ecc_1:5, Ecc_1:7) The vapors climb into the sky, but descend again upon the hills, and seek the plains. The flowers bloom, but, after dispensing their fragrance, shed their leaves upon the earth. The young lions, that, as it were, are sprung from the soil, find a grave at last within their forest dens. As it is with the flowers and the beasts, so is it also with man. "All are of the dust, and all turn to dust again" (Ecc_3:18, Ecc_3:20; Job_10:9; Psa_103:14)
Lessons:
1. Humility of spirit. (Job_4:19; Psa_144:3, Psa_144:4; Isa_11:1) "Holy living" (Taylor,
2. Care for the body protecting its frailty from injury (Lev_19:28) and its materiality from mastery (Rom_12:1; 1Co_6:13; 1Th_4:4)
3. Preparation for death. (Psa_39:4 Psa_90:12)
II FASHIONED BY THE HAND OF GOD. Made from the dust, the first man neither sprung from the slime of matter, according to naturalism (oiJ aujtocqonev), nor was evolved from the to pan of pantheism, but was specifically formed by Divine creative power. This marked the first degree of man"s superiority over other living creatures. Deriving existence, equally with man, from the creative power of God, it is not said of them that they were "formed" by God. Let this remind man
1. Of the Divine origin of the body. If the physical structures of the lower organisms display such admirable proportions and striking adaptations as to evince the action of Divine intelligence, much more may a Creator"s hand be recognized in the form and symmetry, proportion and adjustment of the human body. An examination of the hand, eye, or brain, of the muscular or nervous systems, instinctively awakens the devout feelings of the Psalmist: "I will praise Thee, O Lord; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made". (Psa_139:14)
2. Of the Divine estimate of the body. Shown by the personal care and attention which God devoted to its construction, since he designed it to be the noblest of his works, the shrine of an immortal spirit, a prophecy and type of the body of his Son, in the fullness of the times to be prepared by another special act of creation (Psa_40:6; Heb_10:8) This estimate he has in many ways confirmed: by abundantly and generously sustaining it, although a partner in the spirit"s sin; (Gen_1:29 Gen_9:3) guarding its life with the strictest and severest penalties; (Gen_9:5, Gen_9:6) taking it into union with himself, in the person of his Son; (Heb_2:6) redeeming it, as well as the soul it enshrines, through his Son"s blood; (Rom_8:21, Rom_8:28) and constituting it, as well as the immaterial spirit, a partaker of resurrection glory. (1Co_15:42)
Learn
1. The true nobility of man"s descent, and the duty of walking worthy of it.
2. The high value of the body, and the consequent obligation of neither dishonoring nor abusing it.
III ANIMATED BY THE BREATH OF LIFE. The second degree of man"s superiority to the lower animals. Like them, a living soul, his life is different from theirs
1. In its nature. Theirs was a portion of that common life principle which God has been pleased to communicate to matter; his a direct afflatus from the personality of God.
2. In its impartation. Theirs was bestowed directly and immediately by the fiat of omnipotence; his conveyed into his material framework by a special Divine operation.
3. In its effect. Theirs constituted them "living souls;" his conferred on him personality. Theirs made them creatures having life; his caused him to become a spirit having life. Theirs left them wholly mortal; his transformed him into an immortal. (Ecc_3:21)
Let man consider
1. That his body is a temple of the Holy Ghost. (1Co_6:19)
2. That his spirit is the creation and the gift of God (Ecc_12:7; Isa_57:16; Zec_12:1)
3. That with both it becomes him to glorify his Divine Creator. (1Co_6:20)
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain And the Lord God formed man of the dust…
Gen_2:7
And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground
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The humility and dignity of man
The Lord God formed man, etc.
I. THEN MAN OUGHT NOT TO INDULGE A SPIRIT OF PRIDE.
II. THEN MAN OUGHT NOT TO INDULGE A SPIRIT OF HOSTILITY TO GOD. Shall we contend with our Maker, the finite with the infinite?
III. THEN MAN SHOULD REMEMBER HIS MORTALITY. Unto dust shalt thou return. (J. S. Exell, M. A.)
The dust
1. The emblem of frailty (Psa_109:14).
2. The emblem of nothingness (Gen_18:27).
3. The emblem of defilement (Isa_52:2).
4. The emblem of humiliation (Lam_3:29; Job
42:6).
5. The emblem of mourning (Jos_7:6).
6. The emblem of mortality (Ecc_3:20; Ecc_12:7). (H. Bonar.)
Mans body formed of dust
Man hath received from God not only an excellent fabric and composure of body, but, if you consider it, the very matter of which the body is composed is far more excellent than dust or earth. Take a piece of earth, a handful of dust, and compare them with the flesh of man; that flesh is earth indeed, but that flesh is far better than mere earth. This shows the power of the Creator infinitely exceeding the power of a creature. A goldsmith can make you a goodly jewel, but you must give him gold and precious stones of which to make it; he can put the matter into a better form, but he cannot make the matter better. The engraver can make a curious statue, exactly limbed and proportioned to the life, out of a rough piece, but the matter must be the same as put into his hands: if you give him marble, it will be a marble statue; he cannot mend the matter. Mans work often exceeds his matter; but mans work cannot make the matter exceed itself. If the body, then, be but clay and hath a foundation of dust, do not bestow too much cost upon the clay and the dust. In an over-cared body there ever dwells a neglected soul. We usually laugh at children, when they are making houses of clay. They whose care is overactive for the body are but children of a greater stature, and show they have as much more folly in their hearts than they. There is no child like to the old child. (J. Caryl.)
Organization of the body
God made the human body, and it is by far the most exquisite and wonderful organization which has come to us from the Divine hand. It is a study for ones whole life. If an undevout astronomer is mad, an undevout physiologist is still madder. The stomach that prepares the bodys support; the vessels that distribute the supply; the arteries that take up the food and send it round; the lungs that aerate the all-nourishing blood; that muscle engine which, without fireman or engineer, stands night and day pumping and driving a wholesome stream with vital irrigation through all the system, that unites and harmonises the whole band of organs; the brain, that dwells in the dome high above, like a true royalty; these, with their various and wonderful functions are not to be lightly spoken of, or irreverently held. (H. W. Beecher.)
Observations
I. THE SUBSTANCE OF MANS BODY IS EXCEEDING BASE AND VILE.
II. HOW BASE SOEVER THE MATTER OF MANS BODY IS, YET GOD HATH FRAMED IT INTO A CURIOUS AND EXCELLENT PIECE OF WORK.
III. THE SOUL OF MAN BY WHICH HE LIVES, COMES IMMEDIATELY FROM GOD HIMSELF.
1. Let our souls seek unto Him, who gave them, and serve Him, as we are directed (1Co_6:20).
(1) Praising Him with all that is within us (Psa_103:1).
(2) Submitting all the abilities of our souls to be guided by His Spirit, that we may be led by it and walk in it.
(3) And labouring with all our endeavours to lay hold on heavenly things, whence we had our original, forgetting the things that are here below Col_3:1).
2. Lay hold on this as a ground of special comfort; that which God hath given more immediately, He will certainly most carefully preserve and provide for, as it appears He hath done, by redeeming the soul from hell, and purging it from sin by the blood of His own Son, and adorning it with the graces of His Spirit, and reserving it hereafter to enjoy His presence, and there to be satisfied with His image.
IV. THE LIFE OF MAN CONSISTING IN THE UNION OF THE SOUL WITH THE BODY, HATH BUT A VERY WEAK FOUNDATION.
V. THE LIFE OF MAN IS ONLY BY HIS SOUL.
VI. THERE IS NONE WORTHY OF THE NAME OF A LIVING SOUL, BUT HE ONLY THAT LIVES BY A REASONABLE SOUL. (J. White.)
Humbling origin of body
This is most humbling. It was not formed of heavenly matter, as the radiant sun, or the sparkling stars, nor the most precious jewels. Gold and silver were not melted down, nor were sparkling diamonds made use of, but God formed it of the vile dust which is trodden under foot. (J. Flavel.)
Constituents of the human body
Out of the ordinary elements of the material world is that body made, and into those elements it is resolved again. With all its beauties of form and expression, with all its marvels of structure and of function, there is nothing whatever in it except some few of the elementary substances which are common in the atmosphere and the soil. The three commonest gases, oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen, with carbon, and with sulphur, are the foundation stones. In slightly different proportions, these elements constitute the primordial combination of matter which is the abode of life. In the finished structure there appear, besides, lime, potash, and a little iron, sodium, and phosphorus. These are the constituents of the human body--of these in different combinations--and, so far as we know, nothing else. (Duke of Argylls Unity of Nature. )
It is because of the composition of our body that the animals and plants around us are capable of ministering to our support, that the common air is to us the very breath of life, and that herbs and minerals in abundance have either poisoning properties or healing virtue. (Duke of Argylls Unity of Nature.)
The breath of life
Respiration
Breathing, according to the physiologists, is a genuine burning, and consumes organic substance in us, as fire does in our stoves. It takes the same oxygen from the air, combines it with the same elements, with the same evolution of heat, and gives off the same products in our breath as in smoke. Respiration is a real fire. Still, may we not find under this destructive process some beneficent spiritual law? We ought to, for it is also a most vital process. Breath of life, the Bible calls it, in a phrase I take for text; and life seems more closely connected with breath than with anything else, beginning on earth with it, ever depending on it, ever advancing with its increase. So the lesson of respiration seems to be that destruction does not destroy, that consuming does not kill, that even burning brings life. This is the lesson I wish to illustrate. But respiration is not limited to animals. It begins in a much lower and rises into a much higher field.
I. We notice it in the VEGETABLE world. For even plants, besides that taking of food for growth, take true breath to burn out their growth. We are wont to speak of Moses burning bush as a miracle unique in nature. But botanists say that every bush on earth is burning. Through its every living cell that fiery oxygen works all summer. In autumn, too, the colours come from oxidation of the chlorophyll, so that Whittier put good science in his poem when he called yon maple wood the burning bush. And in certain processes the breath and fire become active enough to show their heat. Such is the ease in sprouting seeds. Such is the ease in flowers. In the sight of chemistry, flowers are all fires; and one great genus is well named phlox--flame. There was fact enough in Hafizs fancy that roses were the flames of a burning bush; and botany adds that every blooming plant is another, whether blazing in the cardinal flower or only smoking in the gray grass blossoms. And, just as in that bush of old story, this burning does not harm. Rather, it is so helpful that the plant dies without it as surely as a man without air, and quickly, too. And not only does it not consume the life, but with still greater miracle creates new. Out of that burning seed it brings a new plant. It brings new energies, too. In each cell the fire creates force, just as in the boiler of a boat; and, as a result, the celiac of some algae lash the water like oars, the diatom moves across the field of the microscope like a propeller across the lake, and the beautiful volvox goes rolling through the water like the wheel of a steamer. And out of that warmer fire in the flower how many new creations come! One is beauty. The leaves are refined to softer petals and grow radiant with gold and purple, and proclaim to us that spiritual law that the highest beauty is reached only through the burning out of our substance. The same process brings sweetness, too--oxidizes starch to sugar, and loads the flower with honey and perfume. It even brings something like love; and the corolla becomes a real marriage bower, and stamen and pistil join in the genuine wedding, and give themselves for each other and their offspring. And so the flower is consumed only to rise again from its ashes, and extend its life to distant lands and ages.
II. But we see this law clearer in its revelation in the ANIMAL world. Here breath is more active, and grows evermore so through the rising animal scale. And this deeper breathing always means faster burning. Analysis shows, for instance, that the breath of an average healthy man consumes carbon at the rate of one hundred and seventy pounds a year--literally burns up within him every month the substance of over a bushel of charcoal. With this increasing fire comes increasing warmth. And here, too, the fire does not consume. It does, indeed, waste our substance, so that the animal, unlike the tree, soon gets his growth. Some poor-lunged creatures are said to lengthen as long as they live, like an elm; but better breathers burn up their accumulations, and men and birds keep but little body. Nor do they keep even that; but it is continually consumed--several times during our lives, the doctor says: muscles, nerves, lungs, heart, brain, bones, and all. But this consumption is always restored, and does not harm us in the least. Rather, it is just the thing that keeps us alive. If we were not thus perpetually destroyed we should get sick, and die; and the only way we can keep alive and well is by being annihilated every few years. And the curious thing to notice is that this destructive process is just the one which cannot be suspended at all. Other functions may be stopped for a season, even the nutritive ones. The really important thing is burning up. When the fire goes out, we die; but so long as it is consuming us we thrive. Such is the paradox and first principle of this mysterious thing called life. Burning saves and increases it. Increases all its energies, too. The faster this breath burns, the greater the activity. Such a breath of life is this fire in the animal world.
III. But this breath rises to a third stage in HUMAN ARTS. For man breathes more largely than with lungs; and, learning how to burn that carbon anywhere, he adds to natures slow fire within him a much faster one without. So he heats his hut and home; and, instead of having to migrate like an animal, he brings Florida to his own fireside, and makes the tropics anywhere to order. And, learning how to make this artificial breathing faster and fire fiercer, he gains new forces that far outdo those of animals. Instead of crawling through the country, like that quadruped, he makes this fire carry him and all his family and furniture further and faster. Instead of flying fifty miles for his breakfast, like a bird, he sits still like a lord and orders it, beefsteak from Texas, rolls from Dakota, an orange from Italy, and coffee from Asia. And, by this breath under a boiler, he gets them brought so easily that Mr. Atkinson says a good mechanic in Massachusetts can get his whole years meat and flour fetched from beyond the Mississippi for one days work; and Sir Lyon Playfair said this summer that a ton of freight can be carried on land a mile by two ounces of carbon, and on water two miles by a little cube of coal that would pass through a ring the size of a shilling. Nor does man stop with moving natures products, but works better by this same principle. In his manufactures and his varied arts, he learns to consume not merely a little in the form of food, like an animal, but enormously in other forms--not only acorns, but oaks; not only fruits, but whole forests; not only a few acres, but long ages of them condensed in coal; and not only coal and other organic products, but ores and rocks and the original elements themselves. Human art becomes a boundless burning, destroying about everything on earth. Yet this burning, too, only helps. It turns the forests into force, and the whole carboniferous era into energy--turns ores and everything into something better. It consumes only to create. Indeed, strictly speaking, it does not consume at all. Not an atom of carbon or anything else has ever been destroyed. Burning only sets it free from old forms to enter into life again: and nature is always waiting to start it into life, and is all the summer turning our smoke and ashes back into new trees and corn.
IV. But above these material fields we trace the same principle through a fourth phase, in SPIRITUAL LIFE. Thought is a breathing, ever inhaling fresh truth, which consumes old ideas in society, just as oxygen does old cells in the body. Indeed, those arts we have just noticed have all come from this mental breathing. How many established opinions had to be consumed to bring that ease of travel! Once, even science argued that no steamer could ever cross the Atlantic; and there was a time when everybody knew that steam could not carry anything on land, either. The first modern who suggested such a thing is said to have been shut up in the Bicetre for it as a lunatic. Afterward, the Englishman who first advocated passenger railways was called by the Quarterly Review, beneath our contempt, while the wise old Edinburgh Review said, Put him in a straitjacket. So many and so firmly established ideas have been consumed this century in this mere matter of travel. And this is only an illustration of the consumption of old theories that has been going on through the arts and sciences and philosophies and all fields. Yet here, too, it has consumed only to create, and been in still higher degree the breath of life. It has aided all those arts and sciences. It has advanced society, too--just as breathing has advanced the animal kingdom--and has brought to mankind a progress about as great as from mollusks to mammals. It has burned out social wrongs only to bring rights. What an advance history shows, from savages eating each other to modern society feeding its hungry and founding hospitals and charities of a hundred kinds! What an advance in morality, even since the praised days of our pious ancestors last century, when Parton says the best Christian in New England saw nothing wrong in buying negroes for rum and selling them for West India molasses to make rum to buy more! What a moral progress from even the boasted Bible days--when David could slay a man to steal his wife, and still be revered asmost sacred Psalmist; and Solomon, with a whole regiment of wives, could be sainted for wisdom and thought worthy to make the longest prayer in the Bible--today, when such saints would be thought hardly so fit for writing sacred poetry as for working in the penitentiary! For religion, too, has felt the effects of this spiritual breathing, and been advancing by it. Here, too, ancient ideas have been burning out to bring better; and Samuels Jehovah, ordering innocent men to be slain like mice, gave way to Isaiahs God of justice and Jesus of love. Here, too, the burning has been a very breath of life; and religion ought to have learned ere this to breathe fearlessly, and let its old forms be consumed as fast as they will. All that is really alive and worth living, in our beliefs and bodies alike, will not be harmed. Only the effete and hurtful will be burned out, and will bring new warmth and life in the process, and be replaced by better. Let religion, then, breathe away, and continue to enlarge its lungs and elevate its life. But breath brings its best lessons to private life. It rebukes our greed, and bids us burn out our gains generously. Gain is good, but must be followed by giving, as eating by breathing, if we would rise above vegetables. Indeed, our gains have to be given away, to get the good of them. Miserliness is very near to misery, as even etymology teaches. The wise preacher advocated foreign missionary contributions, since, he said, if they were of no help to the heathen, they greatly helped the Christian contributors at home; and giving does enrich the giver, whether it does anyone else or not. Beneficence is the bank that pays the best interest on deposits, and pays back in better coin than was put in; and our proverbs have well declared that the best way to keep what we get is by giving it away to some good cause. But this truth of external possessions is still truer of ourselves. They, too, must be given away in order to be kept, or even to be found at first. The life of life is when for another were living, says a poet; and another tells of one to whom love was the first waking,--The past was a sleep, and her life began. Love, whether of a person or a cause, is indeed the highest form of the breath of life. It consumes as nothing else can, wastes with self-sacrifice and sorrows, yet only to lift to larger life, to bless with new powers and higher happiness. Selfishness is as fatal to the soul as holding the breath to the body; and burning ourselves out in sacrifice for something is the only way to keep the heart warm and the soul alive. (H. M. Simmons.)
The human spirit
Upon the bodily side man stands among the animals as the noblest of them; but he has another side by which he holds communion with God and invisible things. He has a spirit as well as a body--a spirit not like that spirit of the beast which goeth downward to the earth, having but an attraction to the things of sense, and that an unreflecting attraction; the spirit of the sons of man is one which is ascending (Ecc_3:21). The spirit is in us the element of self-consciousness and freedom. By it we see our true relation to the things of sense, and are able to claim affinities above them. It is a gift from God Ecc_12:7), and unless it be unfairly tampered with, it must by its very constitution ascend, and aspire after God and what is Godlike. In it is the seat of the higher, the only true, free will, as opposed to the random animal impulses of the flesh. There lies the power of conscience, by which we are able to judge our own actions, comparing them with what we see to be the right standard, and condemning ourselves when we have allowed the true will to be mastered by the inferior appetite. Such a spirit is not, and cannot be (so far as we can understand), a product of natural evolution, but comes direct from the hand of God. Man is thus a dual being, living at one in two worlds, not two separate lives, but one life in the two. The spirit lives in the body, and acts through it and makes it its vehicle. The meeting point of spirit and body appears to lie in the soul. (Canon Mason.)
Life--its nature, discipline, and results
There are two ways in which we are accustomed to estimate the relative importance of events--one by considering what they are in themselves; and the other by considering what they are in their consequences. Viewed in either of these aspects, the event referred to in the text is by far the most important that ever occurred in our world. The creation of the heavens and the earth, with all their various appendages, is not to be compared with it. In the one case only matter was created and arranged under fixed laws; in the other mind was created, intelligent, immortal mind, made in the image of God, in dignity a little lower than the angels, commencing its fight for eternity. And then the consequences of that event, how surpassing all finite comprehension! From that moment commenced the history of the human race; from that moment began to flow the great stream of human life, which, now for six thousand years, has been deepening and surging onward, pouring itself into the ocean of eternity. That living soul, into which God first breathed the breath of life, is still alive; and so are all the countless myriads of souls which in successive generations He has brought into being; all are still alive and will live forever. What, then, is life, that mysterious principle which was enkindled within us by the Creator when we began to be, and which makes us living souls? This question, viewed in its physiological aspect, I shall not attempt to answer, as I find the ablest writers on the subject are entirely undecided in respect to it, or rather they are decided that we cannot know what life is in itself, or in its essence. We know some of the conditions on which it depends; some of the laws which govern it, and the phenomena which it exhibits; but what the vital principle, what life is, we seem not to have the means of knowing. There are various kinds of life which belong to different orders of being, and which are characterized by distinct qualities. There is vegetable life, and a portion of this belongs to the human being in common with plants and trees. There is animal life, and this we have in common with birds and beasts that live and move around us. And there is intellectual or spiritual life, and this we are wont to regard as belonging exclusively to the soul, and which makes us, in the sense of our text, living immortal souls. It is of life in this last sense that I am now to speak; not of life as simple animal existence, nor of life as a mere period of continuance on earth; but of life in the soul, viewed as the source of consciousness, thought, desires, purposes, and acts, all tending to develope and form character, and fit the subject for blessedness or woe in the future world. In this view we can know what life is, what are the means of its development, and how it may be so nurtured and trained on earth that it shall conduct us to everlasting life in heaven. I remark, then--
I. Life is INTERMINABLE; it has no end. The principle on which it depends, whatever it be, is beyond the reach of man or angel, or any other being, but God who made us living souls. The life of the body can be destroyed, for it depends on a material organization; and this may be so deranged and disturbed in its functions, that the life which depends upon it shall cease to be. But the life of the soul is independent of matter. It is not the result of any material mechanism, or of any nice adjustment of particles of matter, as of nerves and other finer portions of the body. It has its seat in the inner spirit; in that thinking, intelligent, conscious principle, which we call the soul, and which the Bible assures us, as does sound philosophy, survives the dissolution of the body and is to live forever. The vital spark is kindled; it must burn on forever. Have you ever asked what and where you shall be ten thousand years hence?
II. Life is DISCIPLINARY. By which I mean that in the present world we are subjected to various influences, adapted and designed to exercise the vital principle within us; to elicit and draw forth its powers, and thus form and fix its character for a future state of being. All the ills we endure and the blessings we enjoy; the sicknesses, disappointments, sorrows, that come upon us, together with the various blessings and privileges of our condition--all are to be regarded as disciplinary. They are the means appointed byProvidence to wake up and call into action the living principle within us; to make us, as it were, conscious of life and ever solicitous to be found in an attitude to be rightly affected by all the various influences that act upon us. Now, this view of life as disciplinary, is of the greatest practical importance. It changes the whole aspect and bearing of things around us. It sheds light upon a thousand facts and occurrences which would otherwise be entirely mysterious. It gives a new and significant view of the dealings of Providence with us in this world, and attaches a meaning and an importance to the events of every day, which they would not otherwise possess.
III. Life is PROBATIONARY. By this is meant, we are now living and acting with reference to a future state of retribution. We are not only subjected to discipline and training in this world, but results are to follow in the world to come. The life that now is, is preparatory to a life in the state beyond the grave; and the life we are to live hereafter is to receive its character and destiny from the life we are now living on the earth. Every word and every act is a seed for eternity, and daily, as our time on earth is hastening to its close, we are laying up treasures of immortal joy in heaven, or preparing for ourselves a cup of woe in the world of despair. I may add, in this connection, that life passed by us in this state of discipline and probation, acquires of necessity a fixed and permanent character. Neutrality is here impossible. As no one can destroy the vital principle which the Creator has implanted in his bosom, so no one can stop its feeling, thinking, acting.
IV. It might perhaps seem commonplace and trite to say THAT LIFE, VIEWED AS A PERIOD OF CONTINUANCE ON EARTH, IS ENCOMPASSED WITH INNUMERABLE ILLS, AND IS EXCEEDINGLY UNSATISFYING, AS WELL AS VERY SHORT AND UNCERTAIN. Yet these are facts which lose none of their importance by their triteness, and they demand to be seriously considered by us, if we would form a just estimate of life, and train it, in a right manner, for a future state of being. Why is it, that life, in the present state, is so unsatisfying, so subject to changes, disappointments, and trials: One great reason is to make us realize that this is not our home, not the place of our rest, but of our discipline and training, the place of our tarrying for a night as strangers, and then pass on to our future abode.
1. How infinitely we are indebted to our Lord Jesus Christ for marking out to us the way, and furnishing us with the means whereby our life may be rendered immortally blessed.
2. Our subject teaches us how we may make a long life even of a short one. Life, in its proper sense, is not mere existence. A stone has existence. It is not mere animation; for a tree has animation, and so has an oyster and an ox. But neither has life understanding by life, the vital principle of a living intelligent soul. Nor has such a soul life, any further than its living energies are brought out in action, and its existence is filled up with thought, and feeling, and with deeds and fruits of useful living. Life, says Fuller, is to be measured by action, not by time; a man may die old at thirty, and young at eighty; the one lives after death, the other perished before he died.
3. Our subject is fitted to show us how serious and how important to us are the daily events of life--the influences which act upon us in the various circles in which we are called to move. These are the instrumental means employed by Providence for our discipline and training; the development of our life, the formation of our character, the fixing of our state in eternity.
4. Life in respect to each of us is every day becoming more and more serious and impressive in its responsibilities and prospects. It is so, because its powers are being more fully developed, and its character more and more permanently fixed. It is so, because the period of discipline and probation is fast drawing to a close, and results are thrown forward to greet us on our entering into eternity with welcomes of joy or signals of woe. It is so, in fine, because every day we live bears us nearer and still nearer to that awful point in our history, a point unknown to us, when the great work of preparation for eternity will be ended, and we shall each one take our place among the redeemed in glory, heirs of immortal life, or with the lost in despair, children of wrath. With what serious concern, then, does it become every one of us to review our past course in life and inquire, whither it has been conducting us; for what state we have been preparing, during the time we have spent on earth. (J. Haines, D. D.)
The wondrous constitution of man
I. THAT THE CREATION OF MAN PRESENTS US WITH THE MOST COMPLEX AND MYSTERIOUS NATURE IN THE UNIVERSE OF GOD. Man is a link between the material and the spiritual--the visible and the invisible--the temporal and the eternal. His is a compound nature. And to obtain a sufficiently enlarged view of that nature, we must reduce it to its primary elements. The creation of matter we resolve into the will and power of God. That which was created could not be eternal. It is a result--an effect. On the mode of this creation we touch not. How things which are seen were not made of things which do appear--in other words, how something was produced out of nothing, we can never hope to comprehend. But matter once brought into existence, almost equally marvellous is its organization into distinct living forms. Man was formed of the dust of the ground. Through what process of refinement the different particles which compose the human body passed previous to their combination and union we know not. But this process perfected, each atom was so arranged and disposed, and placed under such laws of affinity and mutual action, as to bring out that great unity, to which we give the name of--body. Every part was contrived with the most exquisite skill, and wrought into the most curious texture. Nothing can be conceived which would surpass the workmanship and elegance of this fabric. It sets forth preeminently the Divine art--the art of God in fitting up a structure including within itself so many miracles. Of the nature of the soul we are wholly ignorant. What was the emanation which came forth from the creating Spirit, and which raised man from a mere material and sensitive existence into a spiritual, intelligent, and immortal being, it is vain to conjecture. We can speak only of the properties of mind. It is not material; but something added to matter, and so essentially spiritual as to be distinct from matter and separable. It is also essentially vital. The body lives, and so long as the soul inhabits it, it will continue to live. But it does not so live that it must always live, which is the case with mind; and of which we cannot conceive but as of a vital, living thing. It has begun to exist, and it cannot cease to exist. Yet it is not enough that man should become a living soul, and that his life should run out into immortality. To subserve the great end of his creation he must have intelligence. With the breath of life came the power of thought. Nor is this all. A being endowed with mind, and to whose thoughts there is no limit--who by a single effort can grasp the past, the present, and the future--the whole universe--and if there be any limit to the universe, more than the universe itself--could not be left without the freedom of choice. To thought we must add volition. This freedom of will rendered him capable at once of duty and of happiness. Without liberty to choose his course of action, he would have been laid under no obligation; while the filling up of imposed obligation was followed by corresponding joy and felicity. The power to choose involved the power to act. Having made his election, nothing interfered to prevent him carrying his purposes into execution. He who gave him a self-determining power, gave him at the same time dominion over every inward operation and every outward action. This vital, thinking, self-active, and self-controlling spirit, admits of no decay. Whatever may be the changes incident to matter, mind remains the same. The only method by which this vital spirit could be reduced would be by an act of annihilation. Annihilation! It enters not into the government of God. We believe in the immortality of the soul. This is but the dawn of its existence. It will survive death, and hold on its course when that of nature is ended. There is another and perhaps the most striking peculiarity to notice in the creation of man. We refer to the mysterious union of this living soul with the corporeal frame, so close and intimate, that these two thus united are absolutely necessary to make up the one compound being--Man. Neither would of itself be sufficient. The body might be perfect in every part and property, but without the vital spirit it would be an inert mass, or at the best a mere animal nature. The soul might be endowed with every possible attribute and excellence, but denied an earthly house in which to reside, it would rise to the rank and order of angelic existence. And yet close as is the union between these two there is no confounding of their nature. The body does not so absorb the spirit as by incorporation to make it part of itself. Nor is the soul so linked to the body that it cannot exist and act separately from it. Mysterious is the bond of union; but the two natures are perfectly distinct.
II. THAT THE NATURE WITH WHICH MAN WAS CREATED IS SUSCEPTIBLE OF THE HIGHEST POSSIBLE RELATIONS, ACTIVITY, AND ENJOYMENT. This nature touches on the extremes of the universe--matter and mind. We cannot go lower; and higher we cannot ascend. On the one hand, we are allied to the dust of the ground; on the other, we are united to the one uncreated and eternal Spirit When God breathed into man the breath of life, and man became a living soul, He designed that this soul should be held in contact with universal spirit. Its properties and powers eminently qualify it for such association and union. And with spiritual existences it is forever to live and act. Let us rise into those regions of light where are countless thousands of the redeemed. In what close affinity are they with the firstborn sons of God. They occupy no lower ground. They exhibit no inferior nature. Angels in all their ascending orders acknowledge them as their compeers--their equals. To them even the seraphim give place before the throne.God takes them nearer to Himself. In His presence they dwell. Of His glory they partake. With Him they commune. This perfects our idea of the souls relation; and proclaims the original design of the Eternal in the creation of man. In making him a living soul, He raised him to the highest possible relation in the universe. In taking him into closer union with Himself, He gave him the preeminence over every other species of created existence. This relation involves corresponding service. Where there is life there is motion. If the soul be essentially vital, it must be essentially active, and this activity will be in the degree of the life. In assigning to man this high relation, and endowing him with this unending activity, it is without controversy that the Creator had in view the most benevolent design. Endowed with the faculty of thought, here was a field over which he might travel with ever-rising interest, and enlarged discovery. But man was alone. There was no one to share his thoughts or partake his joys. The mighty God at once let Himself down to the necessities of His creature. In the cool of each day He appeared in the garden and communed with our first father. The thoughts and lessons which man had gathered from contemplation, he was taught and encouraged to express to his Creator, while his heart throbbed high with gratitude and love. Pure in the last recesses of his mind, and filled with the sublimest conceptions of his Maker and his God, his was no vulgar enjoyment. In the nearest attitude to the great Spirit of life, he was invited to the most intimate and familiar communion. It was no deputed representative of the Godhead with whom he enjoyed fellowship. He walked with God. His desires ran out infinitely beyond all that is created and finite. Unlimited in extent, and existing with the existence of mind itself, they must terminate on infinite fulness.
III. THAT THE LAW UNDER WHICH MAN WAS ORIGINALLY PLACED WAS ONE OF INFINITE RIGHTEOUSNESS AND GOODNESS. A state of trial is one of the conditions of all created existence. Give to the creature whatever freedom we may--let him be ever so conscious of his own subjective independence as a free agent--it was not possible that he should be ignorant of the fact that there is one Supreme Will, to which every other will must be subordinate. The moment that he lost sight of this primordial truth, he was in danger of entrenching on the Divine prerogative, and of losing both his life and his happiness. While due regard was had to the freedom of his will, yet everything within him and around him was calling up the fact of his dependence. This dependence was the condition of his being; but the law to which he was called to conform involved nothing above his capacity or power of fulfilling. It made probation easy. He might have stood, and thus maintained his original rectitude. Continual integrity was not more impossible than moral failure. As the subject of inward righteousness, he was simply called to conform to the law of his being. (R. Ferguson, LL. D.)
Man became a living soul
Mans higher nature
I. THEN MAN IS SOMETHING MORE THAN PHYSICAL ORGANIZATION. Man is not merely dust, nor merely body; he is also a living soul. His bodily organization is not the seat of thought, emotion, volition, and immortality; these are evoked by the inspiration of the Almighty. From this text we learn that the soul of man was not generated with, but that it was subsequently inbreathed by God into his body. We cannot admit the teaching of some, that the soul of man is a part of God; this is little better than blasphemy. It is only a Divine gift. The gift is priceless. It is responsible.
II. THEN MAN SHOULD CULTIVATE A MORAL CHARACTER, PURSUE EMPLOYMENTS, AND ANTICIPATE A DESTINY COMMENSURATE WITH THIS DIVINE INSPIRATION. Men gifted with immortal souls should endeavour to bring them into harmony with their Author and Giver, to make them pure as He is pure, and benevolent as He is benevolent; they should never be degraded by sin. (J. S. Exell, M. A.)
Life in man
Rowland Hill once conversed with a celebrated sculptor, who had been hewing out a block of marble to represent that great patriot, Lord Chatham. There, said the sculptor, is not that a fine form? Now, sir, said Mr. Hill, can you put life into it? else, with all its beauty, it is still but a block of marble. God put life into His creation, and man became a living soul. Christ puts new life into dead men. (Bishop Harvey Goodwin.)
The soul and its capacities
I. First, among the properties of the soul, consider ITS CAPACITY OF ENJOYMENT AND ITS CAPACITY OF SUFFERING. I could appeal on this point to the experience of everyone who has lived but a few years in this fallen world: few have done so who cannot bear inward witness of what the soul is capable of suffering. How acute is the sense of disappointed hope; how sad the anticipation of expected evil: how bitter the feeling of desire, long indulged, and still deferred, making the heart sick: how intense are the pangs of sorrow; how intolerable the agony of remorse! I will only remind you that God, who in His justice remembers mercy, seldom dispenses in this world unmixed suffering. To the wicked, even, there is commonly some hope of relief, which mitigates the sense of suffering; to the righteous there is always an alleviation. Think, then, what must be the weight of unmitigated suffering, aggravated by the assurance that it must endure forever. In proportion to the capacity of suffering in the soul is also its capacity of enjoyment. We have some knowledge of this likewise. We can conceive the joy by which the heart of Jacob was elated when his sons told him all the words of Joseph, which he had said unto them: and when he saw the waggons. We can conceive the feelings of David when he found himself seated upon the throne of Israel, and the promise made unto his children after him, and the natural satisfaction arising from greatness and prosperity was enhanced by the spiritual gratification of the consciousness of Divine favour. How intense again must have been the delight of the aged Simeon when the sight which he had been so long expecting was granted to him, and it was revealed to him that the child which his parents were now presenting in the temple was indeed the promised Saviour. But as in this preparatory world, sorrow comes attended with mitigation, so there is always some drawback to our joy. Even it the joy itself were perfect, there is fear it would be short-lived; and He that gave may see fit to take away. There will be no such diminution of the eternal enjoyment prepared for the righteous in His heavenly kingdom: nothing to disturb the happiness of those who have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.
II. Consider another capacity of the soul--ITS CAPACITY OF GOODNESS AND OF WICKEDNESS. I speak, you will observe, not of any goodness which it naturally has, but of that of which it is capable. The natural imagination of mans heart is evil, and that continually, since he fell from the innocency in which he was created. The soul, however, which was created in the image of God, and which has lost that likeness, is capable of having that image restored. It is capable of much which our reason tells us is good in itself, and which Scripture tells us is pleasing in the sight of God. How beautiful is the conduct of Abraham, as recorded in Gen_13:1-18, when the land in which they were dwelling grew too strait for himself and his nephew Lot, and it became needful that they should separate. How admirable is the affection of Moses towards the Israelites, and the disinterestedness with which he entreats God to spare them. Look at the piety of Daniel, who, though he knew the writing was issued which should condemn him before an earthly tribunal, yet, his window being opened in his chamber before Jerusalem, he kneeled upon his knees three times a day, and he prayed, and gave thanks before his God, as he did aforetime. Once more, admire the spirit of the martyr Stephen, who returned blessing for cursing, and kneeled down and cried with a loud voice, Lord, lay not this sin to their charge. The soul, then, is capable of goodness; the fruits of the Spirit may grow upon it, which are love, joy, peace, long suffering, gentleness, goodness. There is less need of proving that it is capable of wickedness; for from within, out of the heart, proceed evil thoughts, adultery, murder, fornication, theft, false witness, blasphemy; and these defile the soul; they have defiled it ever since the time that Adam transgressed the command of God, and brought sin into the world. What envy, hatred, and malice were in the heart of Cain, when he rose up against his brother Abel and slew him; or of Esau, who hated Jacob, because of the blessing wherewith his father had blessed him: And Esau said in his heart, The days of mourning for my father are at hand; then will I slay my brother Jacob. Look at the history of Pharaoh, one while entreating and repenting, and promising obedience, and then repenting of his repentance, and defying the power of God. Or take the case of Judas, daily hearing the word of righteousness--words such as never man spake, doctrines at which the people were astonished--yet not subdued, not converted, cherishing a secret sin, indulging covetousness, and appropriating to his own use what was designed for the poor.
III. Let me now proceed to remind you, in the third place, THAT BETWEEN THIS WICKEDNESS AND MISERY, AS ALSO BETWEEN GOODNESS AND HAPPINESS, GOD HAS APPOINTED AN INSEPARABLE CONNECTION. The righteous shall go into life eternal; into that world where is fulness of joy, and pleasures for evermore; and where there shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain; for the former things are passed away; but the unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone, which is the second death. We do not stop to enter into the question of what is meant by this second death: whether it speaks of actual material fire, or whether the fire be figurative, it expresses the greatest imaginable misery. But this we know, that the unrestrained wickedness of the unrenewed heart leads on to misery in the Way of natural consequence: it needs not the idea of material fire to form an addition to bodily anguish. The souls of the wicked, as well as of the good, are immortal; separated, indeed, into their respective folds, as a shepherd separates his sheep from the goats, but still continuing immortal. (Bishop Sumner.)
The soul of man
I. THE WORTH AND EXCELLENCE OF THE SOUL. Taught by--
1. Our own experience. It combines, compares, and reasons on all subjects (Psa_104:1-35 and Job_38:1-41).
2. By observation.
3. By Scripture.
(1) In the account it gives of the origin of the soul,
(2) of its redemption,
(3) its regeneration, and
(4) its everlasting portion.
II. THE WISDOM OF CARING FOR ITS SALVATION. (Alexander Shanks.)
Man's Soul
1. Its nature and property. Nephesh, to breathe or respire. Not that the breath is the soul, but it denotes the manner of its infusion, and the means of its continuation. It is spiritual in essence. The Chaldee renders it a sparkling soul, Speech only belongs to man.
2. Its descent and original. It is not a result from matter, but from the inspiration of God (Joh_3:6). Mans spirit comes from the Father of spirits.
3. Its manner of infusion into the body. By the same breath which gave it. Augustine says, It is created in the infusion, and it is infused in the creation.
4. The bond that unites the soul with the body. The breath of his nostrils. It is a mystery to see heaven and earth united in one person; dust and immortal spirit clasping each other with tender love. What a noble guest to take up residence within mean walls of flesh and blood! That union comes in with the breath of the nostrils, and so soon as that breath departs, it departs also. All the rich elixirs and condiments in the world will not avail to make it stay one minute longer after the breath departs. One puff of breath will carry away the wisest, holiest, and best soul that ever inhabited a human body (Psa_104:19; Job_17:1). (John Flavel.)
On the origin, nature, and dignity of man
It is said that above the door of the celebrated temple of Apollo at Delphi there was a Greek inscription, the whole of which consisted in a simple monosyllable of two letters signifying THOU ART, which is not only a proper, but a peculiar title of God, because He alone is being, the ever-existing One, and is derived from the Hebrew name Jehovah; but it had nothing to do with the heathen god, for I am persuaded that the evil one was there worshipped under the name of Apollo. His ambition was to be like the Most High, and therefore he assumed Gods name; but he was a murderer from the beginning, and also a thief and a robber. It is also said, that on the same temple this often repeated admonition was written, Know thyself, which, being connected with the preceding, reminded man of his frail and mortal nature. But without Divine revelation man could never have been in possession of these Divine truths. Hence we learn the wonderful condescension of God. After the Lord for His own pleasure called man into existence, He revealed Himself to him.
I. Concerning THE ORIGIN OF MAN, various and absurd opinions have been put forth by men, who presume to be wiser than the inspired writers. Some have asserted, but devoid of all reason, that men have existed from eternity, or existed by an infinite succession of beings; and others have as absurdly asserted, that the first man and woman, or several pairs, sprang into being from some spontaneous action of the earth, or chance combination of the natural elements, independent of any adequate power or designing cause. But this is opposed to the clearest deductions of reason, and involves impossibilities. Now, although men generally admit the absurdity of the notion that man has existed from eternity, and that he came into being by the spontaneous action of the earth or elements, independent of a designing cause, yet many assert that God in the beginning created a plurality of pairs, from whence arises the great difference in complexion and form which distinguishes the several races of mankind. This idea seems very plausible; but those who are most competent to pronounce an opinion on comparative anatomy have declared that the whole race of mankind has sprung from one original pair--one man and one woman, and on physiological grounds agree with the Mosaic account.
II. HIS NATURE, AND THE REASON OF HIS NAME. Formed of dust; therefore suitably called Adam or earth.
III. We shall now consider THE DIGNITY, MORAL EXCELLENCE, AND IMMORTALITY OF MAN, as be came out of the hands of God.
1. In the creation of matter, and bringing it into a harmony of spheres, the fiat of the Almighty was sufficient. He merely said, Let there be light, and light was, as a necessary consequence; but in the creation of man it was otherwise. The Holy Ones reasoned together, which indicates the dignity and moral excellence of the being about to be called into existence. That Divine consultation was significant of the God-like nature of man.
2. But one of the chief features in man, as he came out of his Creators hand (if anything can be chief where all is perfect), was, that he derived immediately from God the breath of life; for God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and he became a living, or, as some of the Hebrew paraphrasts have it, a rational, soul. His spirit partook of the immortality of its Divine author, and was destined to live forever; and therefore the tree of life was placed in the midst of the garden, the virtue of which was such, that if he partook thereof, he would live forever. (A. Jones.)
The life of living soul
1. We are, as to the outward man, mere dust of the ground. Is not this plain enough from experience? Does not the food that maintains our bodies come directly from plants, or indirectly from them, through the beasts that feed upon them? And do not those plants draw all their support from the ground?
2. We have in this living body passions and affections common with the brute creation. And too many act as if they had nothing more, as if they had only to exercise their brutal appetites, eat and drink, and tyrannize over the poor brute creation, as its merciless kings, and then like them to die. How many have passed through this world from the womb to the grave, with no higher exercise of their faculties, and with a much more brutal one of their appetites, than a dog or an elephant?
3. But we are living souls. God has given unto us reason and not instinct, free agency and not mere necessity. We are rational, and therefore accountable beings. We are servants of a heavenly Master, sons of a heavenly Father, to whom we have to render faithful service and affectionate obedience. We have a reckoning to render of the manner in which we have employed our bodies, our appetites, our faculties. (R. W.Evans, B. D.)
Excellency of She soul of man
When God Almighty bad in six days made that common dial of the world, the light; that storehouse of His justice and His mercy, the firmament; that ferry of the world, the sea; mans work house, the earth; chariots of light, the sun and moon; the airy choristers, the fowls; and mans servants, the beasts; yet had He one more excellent piece to be made, and that was man, a microcosm, even an abstract of the whole, to whom, having fashioned a body, proceeding by degrees of perfection, He lastly created a soul. And as the family of Matri was singled out of the tribe of Benjamin, and Saul out of the family of Matri, being higher than the rest by the shoulders upwards, so is the soul singled out from the other creatures, far surpassing them all in excellency, whether we consider the efficient cause of its creation, Elohim, the blessed Trinity, being then in consultation; or the material cause, a quinta essentia, noble and Divine substance, more excellent than the heavens; or the cause formal, made after the image of God Himself; or, lastly, the cause final, that it might be the temple of God and the habitation of His blessed Spirit. (J. Spencer.)
A living soul in man
About forty-five years ago a funeral was passing through the streets of Carlisle, Pennsylvania. It was the burial procession of John Hall Mason, the son of the eminent Dr. Mason, President of Dickinson College, one of the most powerful and eloquent preachers in America. The son was distinguished for his piety and talents, and his death had cast a gloom over many hearts. Many gathered to the funeral, from far and near, and especially young men. After the services at the house had been performed, and the pallbearers had taken up the bier, a great concourse obstructed the entrance, and great confusion and noise ensued. The bereaved doctor, observing the difficulty, and following closely the pall bearers, exclaimed in solemn sepulchral tones: Tread lightly, young men! tread lightly! You bear the temple of the Holy Ghost. These sentiments, as though indited by the Holy Spirit, acted like an electric shock; the crowd fell back and made the passage way clear. Through the influence of these words a most powerful revival of religion sprung up, and swept through the college, and extended over the town.
Men to set a high value upon their souls
When Praxiteles, a cunning painter, had promised unto Phryne one of the choicest pieces in his shop, she, not knowing which was the best, began to think upon some plot whereby to make him to discover his judgment which of them was the piece indeed, and suborned one of his servants to tell his master (being then in the market, selling his pictures) that his house was on fire and a great part of it burnt down to the ground. Praxiteles, hearing this, presently demanded of his servant if the Satyr and Cupid were safe, whereby Phryne, standing by, discovered which was the best picture in the shop. And shall a silly painter set so high an esteem upon a poor, base picture, the slubbered (imperfect) work of his own hands, and shall not we much more value the soul, that is of an immortal being, the most precious piece that ever God made, the perfect pattern and image of Himself. Let riches, honour, and all go, if nothing but this escape the fire, it is sufficient. (J. Spencer.)
Man has a soul
Some time ago the Rev. James Armstrong preached at Harmony, near the Wabash, when a doctor of that place, a professed Deist, called on his associates to accompany him while he attacked the Methodists, as he said. At first he asked Mr. Armstrong if he followed preaching to save souls. He answered in the affirmative. He then asked Mr. Armstrong if he ever saw a soul. No. If he ever heard a soul. No. If he ever tasted a soul, No. If he ever smelled a soul. No. If he ever felt a soul. Yes, thank God! said Mr. Armstrong. Well, said the doctor, there are four of the five senses against one that there is a soul. Mr. Armstrong then asked the gentleman if he was a doctor of medicine; and he also answered in the affirmative° He then asked the doctor if he ever saw a pain. No. If he ever heard a pain. No. If he ever tasted a pain. No. If he ever smelled a pain. No. If he ever felt a pain. Yes. Mr. Armstrong then said, There are also four senses against one to evidence that there is a pain; yet, sir, you know that there is a pain, and I know there is a soul. The doctor appeared confounded, and walked off. (Whitecross.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 formed man
formed man
"molded man" or "shaped man" or "created man"
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man ... man
"a human being ... the human" or "a person ... the person" not specifically a male
his nostrils
"his nose"
breath of life
"breath that makes things live." Here "life" refers to physical life.
a garden
This could have been an orchard of fruit trees or an area with all kinds of trees.
eastward
in the east
translationWords
Yahweh
life
Eden
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 2:7 In 1:1–2:3, creation happens at a distance, by…
2:7 In 1:1–2:3, creation happens at a distance, by divine command (“Let there be . . . and that is what happened”). In this account, the creative act is much more intimate (see also 2:8-9, 21-22). • from the dust of the ground: In Hebrew, ’adamah (“ground”) forms a wordplay with ’adam (“man”). The earth remains the definitive reference point for humans, who in death return to dust (3:17-19; 4:11; Job 4:19; 10:8-9; Isa 29:16). • breathed . . . into the man’s nostrils: God’s breath is not imparted to other animals; only humans are formed in God’s image (Gen 1:27) and enjoy dialogue with their Creator (2:16-17; 3:8-13). They alone have spiritual awareness and moral conscience (see Job 32:8).
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.