The second verse may describe the condition of the earth on the evening of this first day; (for in the Jewish mode of computation used by Moses, each day is reckoned from the [1]
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of ourselves as creatures of God's hand, do we at all mean that we were physically formed out of nothing. In like manner, whether bara should he paraphrased by "crested out of nothing" (as far as we can comprehend these words), or, "gave a new and distinct state of existence to a substance already existing," must depend upon the context, the circumstances, or what God has elsewhere revealed, not upon the mere force of the word. This is plain, from its use in Gen. i. 27, of the creation of man, who, as we are instructed, chap. ii. 7, was formed out of previously existing matter, the 'dust of the ground') The word bara is indeed so far stronger than asah, "made," in that bara can only be used with reference to God, whereas asah may be applied to man. The difference is exactly that which exists in English between the words by which they are rendered, “created” and “made.” But this seems to me to belong rather to our mode of conception than to the subject itself; for making, when spoken of with reference to God, is equivalent to creating.
The words accordingly, bara, created—asah, made-yatsar, formed, are used repeatedly by Isaiah, and are also employed by Amos, as equivalent to each other. Bara and asah express alike a formation of something new (de novo), something whose existence in this new state, originated in, and depends entirely upon the will of its creator or maker. Thus God speaks of Himself as the Creator “boree" of the Jewish people, e. g. Isaiah xliii. 1, 15; and a new event is spoken of under the same term as "a creation," Numb. xiv. 30, English version, "If the Lord make a new thing." in the margin, Heb. "create a creature." Again, the Psalmist uses the same word, Ps. civ. 30, when describing the renovation of the face of the earth through the successive generations of living creatures, “Thou sendest forth thy spirit, they are created; and thou renewest the face of the earth." The question is popularly treated by Beausobre, Hist. de Manicheisme, tom. iii. lib. 5, c. 4; or, in a better spirit, by Petavius Dogm. Theol. tom. iii. de opificio sex dierum, lib. 1, c. 1, § 8.
After having continually re-read and studied this account, I can come to no other result than that the words "created" and "made" are synonymous, (although the former is to us the stronger of the two), and that, because they are so constantly interchanged; as, Gen. i. ver. 21, "God created great whales:" ver. 25, "God made the beast of the earth;" ver. 26, "Let us make man" ver. 27, "So God created man." At the same time it is very probable that bara, "created," as being the stronger word, was selected to describe the first production of the, heaven and the earth.
