Page:Keil and Delitzsch,Biblical commentary the old testament the pentateuch, trad James Martin, volume 1, 1885.djvu/44

with all these mythical inventions, the biblical account shines out in the clear light of truth, and proves itself by its contents to be an integral part of the revealed history, of which it is accepted as the pedestal throughout the whole of the sacred Scriptures. This is not the case with the Old Testament only; but in the New Testament also it is accepted and taught by Christ and the apostles as the basis of the divine revelation. The select only a few from the many passages of the Old and New Testaments, in which God is referred to as the Creator of the heavens and the earth, and the almighty operations of the living God in the world are based upon the fact of its creation: In Exo 20:9-11; Exo 31:12-17, the command to keep the Sabbath is founded upon the fact that God rested on the seventh day, when the work of creation was complete; and in Psa 8:1-9 and 104, the creation is depicted as a work of divine omnipotence in close adherence to the narrative before us. From the creation of man, as described in Gen 1:27 and Gen 2:24, Christ demonstrates the indissoluble character of marriage as a divine ordinance (Mat 19:4-6); Peter speaks of the earth as standing out of the water and in the water by the word of God (2Pe 3:5); and the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, “starting from Gen 2:2, describes it as the motive principle of all history, that the Sabbath of God is to become the Sabbath of the creature” ( Delitzsch).
The biblical account of the creation can also vindicate its claim to be true and actual history, in the presence of the doctrines of philosophy and the established results of natural science. So long, indeed, as philosophy undertakes to construct the universe from general ideas, it will be utterly unable to comprehend the creation; but ideas will never explain the existence