Commentary on Genesis (Complete Edition). Martin Luther
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soon been broken in pieces or melted. In the same manner the sun, by his rapid motion, would melt in one day even if formed of the hardest material, were it not for the Word of God by which it was created. For motion is of itself very creative of heat. Hence Aristotle asserts that the lead of the arrow is sometimes melted by the velocity of its motion.
These facts of nature therefore are miracles of God, in which the omnipotence of his Word is clearly discerned, exhibiting the wonder that the heaven, though softer and more subtile than water, and performing continuously the most rapid revolution, and that too with so vast a variety of bodies and their motions, should have existed and revolved so many thousands of years uninjured and unweakened! It was this that caused Job to say, "that the heavens were molten, as it were, of brass," Job 37:18; that they are by nature the softest of substances. How great the subtility of the air is in which we live, we ourselves know perfectly well; for it is not only not tangible, but not discernible. And the heaven, or ether, is still more subtile and thinner than the air or atmosphere. For its blue or sea-color or water-color appearance is not a proof of its density, but rather of its distance and its thinness; to which its rarified state, if you compare the thicker substances of the clouds, the latter will appear in comparison, like the smoke of wet wood when first ignited. It is to this extreme subtility, yet unaltered durability, that Job alludes as above mentioned. So philosophers have among them this celebrated maxim, "That which is humid is limited by no boundary of its own."
Wherefore the heaven which cannot consist by any boundary of its own, being aqueous, consists by the Word of God; as it is taught in the present divine record of Moses, "Let there be a firmament!" Gen. 1:6. Hence philosophers who were more diligent in their inquiries formed their conclusion, and that by no means a light one for nature to form, that all things were ruled and governed, not by chance nor at random, but by a divine providence; seeing that the motions of the heavens and of the superior bodies are so certain and so peculiar to themselves. Who indeed could possibly say that all these things proceeded by chance, or by their own mere undirected nature, when even the workmanship of men proceeds not from chance, but from skillful art and certain design, such as pillars formed round, triangular, hexagonal, etc.?
All these things therefore are the works of the divine Majesty! By him the sun holds his course so accurately and with so fixed a law, that he deviates not a hair's breadth from his all-certain path in any one part of heaven. This course he holds in the most subtile ether, supported by no substances or bodies whatsoever, but is borne along as a leaf in the air. Though this comparison is neither strictly correct nor appropriate, because the motion of a leaf is irregular and uncertain; but the course of the sun is ever certain, and that too in an ether far more subtile than this atmosphere in which we move and live.
This marvelous extension of the original rule and dense nebulosity or cloud or mist is here called by Moses "a firmament," in which the sun with all the planets have their motion round the earth, in that most subtile material. But who is it that gives such firmness to this most volatile and fluctuating substance? Most certainly it is not nature that gives it, which in far less important things than these can exert no such power. It follows therefore that it is the work of him, who "in the beginning" said unto the heavens and unto this volatile substance, "Let there be a firmament," or "Be thou a firmament," and who establishes and preserves all these things by his omnipotent power, put forth through his Word. This Word makes the air with all its thinness and lightness to be harder and firmer than adamant, and to preserve its own boundary; and this Word could on the contrary make adamant to be softer than water, in order that from such works as these we might know what kind of a God our God is; namely, the God omnipotent, who made out of the rude mass of unformed heavens the present all-beauteous, all-glorious heaven; and who did all these things according to his will as well as according to his power.
But I have said that with the Hebrews the "firmament" derives its name from a verb in their language signifying "to extend." It is to this signification of the Hebrew verb that David beautifully alludes, in his similitude of military hide-coverings and tents which he uses in Ps. 104:2, when he says of God "Who stretcheth out the heavens like a curtain." For as the rolled-up hide-covering of the military tent is unrolled and then stretched out as a canopy to the stakes which are fixed in the earth, so Thou, O God, says David, unrolledst as it were and stretchedst out the first formed, but as yet unformed, rude heaven, into the present glorious "firmament," where Thou sittest invisibly as on a sphere over the whole creation, in the midst of all things and yet out of and above all things.
It is a circumstance naturally exciting our particular wonder that Moses evidently makes three distinct parts or divisions of this portion of the creation. He describes "a firmament in the midst of the waters," which "divides the waters from the waters." For myself I am inclined to think that the firmament here mentioned is the highest body of all; and that the waters, not those "above" the firmament, but those which hang and fly about "under" the firmament, are the clouds, which we behold with our natural eyes; so that by the waters which are "divided from the waters," we may understand the clouds which are divided from our waters which are in the earth. Moses however speaks in the plainest possible terms, both of waters "above" and of waters "under" the firmament. Wherefore I here hold my own mind and judgment in captivity and bow to the Word, although I cannot comprehend it.
But a question here arises, what those waters are and how those bodies of water which are "above" the firmament are distinguished from those which are "under" the firmament. The division and distinction here made by philosophers is well known. They make the elements to be four; and they distinguish and place them according to their qualities. They assign the lowest place to the earth; a second place to the water; a third to the air; and the last and highest place to the fire. Other philosophers add to these four elements ether as a fifth essence. After this division and number of the elements, there are numerated seven spheres or orbs of the planets, and an eighth sphere of the fixed stars. And on these subjects it is agreed among all philosophers that there are four spheres of generating and corruptible principles; and also eight others of non-generating and incorruptible principles.
And Aristotle disputes concerning the nature of the heaven; that it is not composed of the elements, but has its own peculiar nature, because if it were composed of the elements it would be corruptible, in that these substances would mingle together and mutually produce and suffer corruption. Therefore he will not attribute to heaven and the heavenly bodies the primary qualities, primas qualitates, that is, the attributes of the elements, and says that they are simply creatures possessing a co-eternal light, and qualities and attributes peculiarly their own, and created with them.
Now these things, although they are not certain, yet since they contain principles of a most beautiful theory, gathered from a course of reasoning approaching the truth, are useful for instruction, and it would be barbarous if one should determine to neglect or despise them, since in some respects they harmonize with experience. For we experience it to be the truth that fire by its very nature travels beyond itself, as is seen in the phenomena of the lightning and the fiery meteors in the air. By these principles, learned from experience, they are led to give fire the highest place, next to it the air, after it water comes third, and last the earth in the lowest place, since in weight it surpasses all the others.
These things have their place and use as rudiments or primary principles, which if any one contend that they are not universally true, yet they are true in general and serve to the end that we may learn and hand down to others the true theories. For though fire can be struck from flint, yet it cannot therefore be denied that in the highest regions there is fire. Therefore theology gives these theorists this rule, which philosophy does not know sufficiently, that although God ordained and created all these things by his Word, yet he is not therefore bound to these rules so that he can not change them according to his good pleasure. For we see that neither grammar nor the other sciences are so perfectly set forth in rules that there are no exceptions; thus the laws of public and secular affairs step in and temper all things with reason. How much more can this be done in divine things, so that, although we indeed experience that the four elements are ordained and disposed by God, yet they can, contrary to this order, also have and maintain fire in the middle of the ocean, just as we saw that it was hidden in flint.
Likewise the mathematicians have concluded that there were a definite number of spheres, not that it is necessary to be so, but