From what toil did God rest? For the creatures that came to be on the first day came to be by implication, except for the light, which came through his word.^[1] And the rest of the works that came to be afterward came to be through his word. What toil is there for us when we speak one word? So what toil could there have been for God to speak one word a day? Moses, who divided the sea by his word and his rod, did not tire. Joshua, son of Nun, who restrained the luminaries by his word, did not tire. So what toil could there have been for God when he created the sea and the luminaries by his word? It was not because he rested on that day that God, who does not weary, blessed and sanctified the seventh day. Nor was it because he was to give it to that people, who did not understand that since they were freed from their servitude, they were to give rest to their servants and maidservants. He gave it to them so that, even if they had to be put under requirement, they would rest. It was given to them in order to depict by a temporal rest, which he gave to a temporal people, the mystery of the true rest, which will be given to the eternal people in the eternal world.

God says to the Jews: I will not abide your new moons and your sabbaths.^[1] You see what he means: The present sabbaths are not acceptable to me, but that sabbath which I have made, in which, after giving rest to all things, I will make the beginning of the eighth day, that is, the beginning of another world. Therefore, we also celebrate with joy the eighth day on which Jesus also rose from the dead after his rest, was made manifest and ascended into heaven.

You see, in saying at this point that God rested from his works, Scripture teaches us that he ceased creating and bringing from nonbeing into being on the seventh day, whereas Christ, in saying that my father is at work up until now and I am at work,^[1] reveals his unceasing care for us: he calls work the maintenance of created things, bestowal of permanence on them and governance of them through all time. If this wasn’t so, after all, how would everything have subsisted, without the guiding hand above directing all visible things and the human race as well?

Under the law the people were ordered to work for six days and to rest on the seventh . . . because the Lord completed the creation of the world in six days and desisted from his work on the seventh. Mystically speaking, we are counseled by all this that those who in life devote themselves to good works for the Lord’s sake are in the future led by the Lord to sabbath, that is, to eternal rest.

He created heaven and earth at the time when the months began, from which time it is fitting that the world took its rise. Then there was the mild temperature of spring, a season suitable for all things. Consequently the year too has the stamp of a world coming to birth. . . . In order to show that the creation of the world took place in the spring, Scripture says: This month shall be to you the beginning of months, it is for you the first in the months of the year,^[1] calling the first month the springtime. It was fitting that the beginning of the year be the beginning of generation.

Heaven, too, will be the fulfillment of that sabbath rest foretold in the command: Be still and see that I am God.^[1] This, indeed, will be that ultimate sabbath that has no evening and that the Lord foreshadowed in the account of his creation: And God rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. And he blessed the seventh day and sanctified it: because in it he had rested from all his work that God created and made. And we ourselves will be a seventh day when we shall be filled with his blessing and remade by his sanctification. In the stillness of that rest we shall see that he is the God whose divinity we desired for ourselves when we listened to the seducer’s words, You shall be as gods,^[2] and so fell away from him, the true God who would have given us a divinity by participation that could never be gained by desertion. For where did the doing without God end but in the undoing of man through the anger of God? Only when we are remade by God and perfected by a greater grace shall we have the eternal stillness of that rest in which we shall see that he is God.

Just as the trees, the vegetation, the animals, the birds and even humankind were old, so also were they young. They were old according to the appearance of their limbs and their substances, yet they were young because of the hour and moment of their creation. Likewise, the moon was both old and young. It was young, for it was but a moment old, but was also old, for it was full as it is on the fifteenth day.

For [the pagan Celsus] knows nothing of the day of the Sabbath and rest of God that follows the completion of the world’s creation, and that lasts for the duration of the world, and in which all those who have done all their work in their six days will keep the festival with God.

God produced that entire mass for the adornment of his majesty in six days; on the seventh he consecrated it . . . with a blessing.

I mean, when it said heaven and earth, it included everything together in those words, both things on earth and things in heaven. So just as in its account of created things it doesn’t mention them all one by one but gives a summary of related items and makes no further attempt to describe them to us, so too it called the whole book the book about the origins of heaven and earth, even though it contains many other things, evidently leaving us to work out from the reference to these two that all visible things are of necessity contained in this book, both those in heaven and those on earth.

The earth in compliance with the Lord’s word and direction produced plants and was stirred into pangs of fertility without depending on the sun for assistance (how could it, after all, the sun not yet being created?), nor on the moisture from showers, nor on human labor (human beings, after all, not having been brought forth).

Understand, O hearer, that although the days of creation were finished and God had blessed the sabbath day, which was sanctified, and he had completed his account, Moses still returned to tell the story of the beginning of creation even after the days of creation had been finished. These are the generations of the heavens and the earth, that is, this is the account of the fashioning of heaven and earth on the day when the Lord made heaven and earth, for as yet no plant of the field was in the earth and no herb of the field had yet sprung up. Even if these things were not actually created on the first day—for they had been made on the third day—still Moses did not rashly introduce, on the first day, the report of those things that were created on the third day. For Moses said, No plant of the field was yet in the earth and no herb of the field had yet sprung up—for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, but a mist went up from the earth and watered the whole face of the ground. Because everything that has been born and will be born from the earth will be through the conjunction of water and earth, Moses undertook to show that no plant or vegetation had been created along with the earth, because the rain had not yet come down. But after the great mist rose up from the great abyss and watered the whole face of earth and after the waters had been gathered together on the third day, then the earth brought forth all the vegetation.

Why after mentioning heaven and earth does this passage add vegetation of the field and food while remaining silent about so many other things that are in heaven and earth or even the sea, unless it wants vegetation of the field to be understood as an invisible created thing such as the soul? For field is often used figuratively in Scripture to represent the world. . . . Further on it adds before they were upon the earth, which means before the soul sinned. For once the soul was soiled with earthly desires, it was as if the soul was born on the earth, or its essence derived from the earth.

Now God also makes the vegetation of the field, but by raining upon the earth; that is, he makes souls become green again by his word. But he waters them from the clouds, that is, from the writings of the prophets and apostles.

Christ is that spring of which the prophet says, It irrigates and waters the whole earth. But Christ irrigates the whole universe, both visible and invisible; with the spring of life he waters the substance of everything that exists. Yet insofar as he is life, he is Christ; insofar as he waters, he is the Holy Spirit; insofar as he is the power of vitality, he is Father and God; but the whole is one God.

The gentle face of the earth, that is, the dignity of the earth, may be correctly viewed as the mother of the Lord, the Virgin Mary, who was watered by the Holy Spirit, who is signified in the Gospel by the term water.^[1]

First of all, the fact that God formed man from the mud of the earth usually raises a question about the sort of mud it was or the kind of material the term mud signifies. Those enemies of the Old Book [the Manichaeans], looking at everything in a carnal manner and therefore always being in error, bitingly find fault with this point as well, namely, that God formed man from the mud of the earth. For they say, Why did God make man from mud? Did he lack a better and heavenly material from which he could make man, that he formed him fragile and mortal from this earthly corruption? To begin with, they do not understand how many meanings either earth or water has in the Scriptures, for mud is a mixture of earth and water. Also we say that the human body began to waste away and to be fragile and mortal after sin. But the Manicheans abhor in our body only the mortality that we merited as punishment. But even if God made man from the mud of this earth, still what is there that is strange or difficult for God in making the human body such that it would not be subject to corruption if, in obedience to God’s commandment, he had not willed to sin? For we say that the beauty of heaven was made from nothing or from formless matter, because we believe that the Maker is almighty. Why is it strange that the almighty Maker could make the body from some sort of mud of the earth so that before sin it afflicted man with no trouble or need and wasted away from no corruption?

The soul is the breath of God, a substance of heaven mixed with the lowest earth, a light entombed in a cave, yet wholly divine and unquenchable. . . . He spoke, and taking some of the newly minted earth his immortal hands made an image into which he imparted some of his own life. He sent his spirit, a beam from the invisible divinity.

It was pleasing to God’s love of humanity to make this thing created out of earth a participant of the rational nature of the soul, through which this living creature was manifest as excellent and perfect. And he breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, that is, the inbreathing communicated to the one created out of earth the power of life, and thus the nature of the soul was formed. Therefore Moses added And man became a living soul; that which was created out of dust, having received the inbreathing, the breath of life, became a living soul. What does a living soul mean? An active soul, which has the members of the body as the implements of its activities, submissive to its will.

The soul has its origin in the breath of God and did not come from matter. We base that statement on the clear assertion of divine revelation, which declares that God breathed the breath of life into the face of man, and man became a living soul.

Scripture says, And he breathed into him the breath of life, and man became a living soul. If up to this point there was only the body, we should understand that the soul was at this point joined to the body. Perhaps the soul had been already made but was still as if in the mouth of God, that is, in his truth and wisdom. But it did not depart from there as if separated by places, when it was breathed forth. For God is not contained by place but is present everywhere.

Therefore the soul is not blood, because blood is of the flesh; nor is the soul a harmony, because harmony of this sort is also of the flesh; neither is the soul air, because blown breath is one thing and the soul something else. The soul is not fire, nor is the soul actuality, but the soul is living, for Adam became a living soul, since the soul rules and gives life to the body, which is without life or feeling.

God made the inner person; he molded the outer. Molding is suitable for clay, but making is [fitting] for an image. So on the one hand, he molded flesh, but on the other, he made the soul.

God took of the dust of the earth and fashioned man. In this world I have discovered the two affirmations that man is nothing and that man is great. If you consider nature alone, he is nothing and has no value; but if you regard the honor with which he has been treated, man is something great.

Others, on the contrary, marking the order of the making of man as stated by Moses, say that the soul is second to the body in order of time, since God first took dust from the earth and formed man, and then animated the being thus formed by his breath. By this argument they prove that the flesh is more noble than the soul, that which was previously formed [more noble] than that which was afterward infused into it. . . . Nor again are we in our doctrine to begin by making up man like a clay figure and to say that the soul came into being for the sake of this, for surely in that case the intellectual nature would be shown to be less precious than the clay figure. But as man is one, the being consisting of soul and body, we are to suppose that the beginning of his existence is one, common to both aspects, so that he should not be found to be antecedent and posterior to himself, as if the bodily element were first in point of time and the other were a later addition.

And he breathed into his nostrils, that is to say, he placed in man some share of his own grace, in order that he might recognize likeness through likeness. Nevertheless, being in such great honor because he was created in the image of the Creator, he is honored above the heavens, above the sun, above the choirs of stars. For which of the heavenly bodies was said to be an image of the most high God?^[1]

Above, the text says that God created; here it says how God created. If the verse had simply said that God created, you could have believed that he created [humanity] as he did for the beasts, for the wild animals, for the plants for the grass. This is why, to avoid your placing him in the class of wild animals, the divine word has made known the particular art which God has used for you: God took of the dust of the earth.

Thus when you hear that God breathed into his face the breath of life, understand that just as he brought forth the bodiless powers, so also he was pleased that the body of man, created out of dust, should have a rational soul which could make use of the bodily members.

We ought to understand this passage so that we do not take the words he breathed into him the breath of life, and man became a living soul to mean that a part, as it were, of the nature of God was turned into the soul of man. . . . The nature of God is not mutable, does not err and is not corrupted by the stains of vices and sins. . . . Scripture clearly says that the soul was made by the almighty God and that it is therefore not a part of God or the nature of God.

Thus you read the word of God, spoken to Jeremiah: Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you.^[1] If God forms us in the womb, he also breathes on us as he did in the beginning: And God formed man and breathed into him the breath of life. Nor could God have known man in the womb unless he were a whole man.

After his resurrection, when he first appeared to his disciples, he said to them, Receive the Holy Spirit. About this giving, then, it was said, The Spirit had not yet been given because Jesus had not yet been glorified. And he breathed upon their face.^[1] The One who first gave life to man by breathing and raised him up from the mire and by breathing gave a soul to his members is the same One who breathed upon their face that they might rise up from the slime and renounce filthy works.

When we hear Moses’ writings describe how God took dust from the earth with his hands in order to make man, we try to understand what such language might mean. It means this: the whole of God^[1] had a special interest in the creation of the human nature. The great prophet proclaims this very thing, since everything else in creation was made by spoken command. Man, however, was made by God’s hands. . . . Just like an embryo is planted in the mother’s womb and develops from the material which has surrounded it from the beginning, so also God wanted to take the material for the human body from the earth. Thus, clay became flesh and blood, and skin, and nerves, and veins, and arteries, and the brain, and bone marrow and supporting bones, and so on.

From the earth he formed his body and by his own inbreathing gave him a rational and understanding soul, which we say is the divine image. . . . The body and the soul were formed at the same time—not one before and the other afterward, as the ravings of Origen would have it.

And how could creation take place in time, seeing time was born along with things that exist? . . . So that we may be taught that the world was originated [in this way], and not suppose that God made it in time, prophecy adds: “This is the book of the generation: also of the things in them, when they were created in the day that God made heaven and earth.” For the expression “when they were created” intimates an indefinite and dateless production. But the expression “in the day that God made,” that is, in and by which God made “all things,” and “without which not even one thing was made,” points out the activity exerted by the Son.

And since [the pagan Celsus] makes the statements about the “days of creation” ground of accusation, as if he understood them clearly and correctly, some of which elapsed before the creation of light and heaven, the sun and moon and stars, and some after, we shall only make this observation, that Moses must have forgotten that he had said a little before “that in six days the creation of the world had been finished” and that in consequence of his forgetfulness he adds to these words the following: “This is the book of the creation of man in the day when God made the heaven and the earth” [Gn 2:4].

Eden is the land of paradise, and God had already planted it on the third day. Moses explains this by saying, The Lord caused every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food to sprout forth from the earth. And to show that he was talking about paradise, he added, And the tree of life was in the midst of paradise, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

In the Scriptures some things are related in such a way that they seem to be following the order of time or occurring in chronological succession, when actually the narrative, without mentioning it, refers to previous events that had been left unmentioned. Unless we understand this distinction, we shall fall into error. For example, we find in Genesis: And the Lord God planted a paradise of pleasure in the east; and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground the Lord God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. This last mentioned event would seem to have occurred after God had made man and placed him in paradise. After both of these facts have been mentioned briefly (that is, that God planted a paradise and there placed man whom he had formed), the narrative turns back by means of recapitulation and relates what had been planted and that God brought forth out of the ground all manner of trees fair to behold and pleasant to eat of.

And when, dearly beloved, you hear that God planted a garden in Eden in the east, take the word planted in a sense appropriate to God—namely, that he commanded this happen—and about the next phrase, believe that a garden came into being in the place that Scripture indicated.

The church, expressing the image of paradise, encloses fruitful trees within its walls. From these whatever does not make good fruit is cut off and cast into the fire.

If paradise, then, is of such a nature that Paul alone, or one like Paul, could scarcely see it while alive and still was unable to remember whether he saw it in the body or out of the body, and moreover heard words that he was forbidden to reveal—if this be true, how will it be possible for us to declare the position of paradise which we have not been able to see and, even if we had succeeded in seeing it, we would be forbidden to share with others? And again, since Paul shrank from exalting himself by reason of the sublimity of the revelation, how much more ought we to strive not to be too anxious to disclose that which leads to danger by its very revelation! The subject of paradise should not, therefore, be treated lightly.

For this reason we all look to the east in our prayers, but few know that this is because we are seeking the ancient fatherland, which God planted in Eden, toward the east.

Indeed, there is a deep meaning in the passage of Scripture that tells how God in the beginning planted a tree of knowledge and a tree of life in the midst of paradise, to show that life is attained through knowledge. It was because the first men did not use this knowledge with clean hearts that they were stripped of it by the deceit of the serpent. For there cannot be life without knowledge any more than there can be sound knowledge without genuine life. So the two trees were planted close together.

Now if wisdom is the tree of life, Wisdom itself indeed is Christ.^[1] You understand now that the man who is blessed and holy is compared to this tree—that is, he is compared to Wisdom. Consequently, you see too that the just man, that blessed man who has not followed the counsel of the wicked—who has not done that but has done this—is like the tree that is planted near running water.^[2] He is, in other words, like Christ, inasmuch as he raised us up together and seated us together in heaven.^[3] You see then that we shall reign together with Christ in heaven. You see too that because this tree has been planted in the garden of Eden, we have all been planted there together with him.

Christ is brought up to the tree and nailed to it—yet by the tree of life he restores us. Yes, he saves even a thief crucified with him; he wraps all the visible world in darkness.

For who that has understanding will suppose that the first, and second, and third day, and the evening and the morning, existed without a sun, and moon, and stars? And that the first day was also without a sky? And who is so foolish as to suppose that God, after the manner of a husbandman, planted a paradise in Eden, towards the east, and placed in it a tree of life, visible and palpable, so that one tasting of the fruit by the bodily teeth obtained life? And again, that one was a partaker of good and evil by eating the fruit? And if God is said to walk in the paradise in the evening, and Adam to hide himself under a tree, I do not suppose that anyone doubts that these things figuratively indicate certain mysteries, the history having taken place in appearance, and not literally.