Genesis 1:9

And God said, let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place,.... Which are before called the waters under the firmament; and which were either on the surface of the earth, or in

And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so. Let the waters under the heaven ... i:e., which extended far and wide under the whole heavens.

The waters under the heaven; both the great abyss, or deep of water which is shut up in the bowels of the earth, Genesis 7:11 Psalms 24:2 Psalms 33:7 Psalms 136:6; as also the sea and rivers, all which are here said to be gathered together into one place, because of their communication and mixture one with another. Let the dry land appear; for hitherto it was covered with water, Genesis 1:2 2 Peter 3:5.

Genesis 1:9 And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry [land] appear: and it was so.Ver. 9,10. Let the waters under the heaven be gathered, &c.] The water, they say, is ten times greater than the earth, as is the air ten times greater than the water, and the fire than the air. Sure it is, that the proper place of the water is to be "above the earth". Sailors tell us that as they draw nigh to shore, when they enter into the haven, they run as it were downhill. "The waters stood above the mountain," till (at God’ s rebuke here) they "fled, and hasted away at the voice of his thunder, to the place which he had founded for them". This drew from Aristotle, in one place, a testimony of God’ s providence, which elsewhere he denies. And David, in the 104th Psalm, which one calleth his Physics, tells us that till the word of command, "Let the waters," &c., God "had covered the earth with the deep as with a garment." For as the garment, in the proper use of it, is above the body, so is the sea above the land. And such a garment, saith the divine cosmographer, would it have been to the earth, but for God’ s providence towards us, as the shirt made for the murdering of Agamemnon, where he had no issue out. But "thou hast set a bound," saith the psalmist, "that they may not pass over, that they turn not again to cover the earth". God had set the solid earth upon and above the liquid waters for our conveniency; so that men are said "to go down" (not up) "to the sea in ships". See his mercy herein, as in a mirror, and believe that God, whose work it is still to "appoint us the bounds of our habitation," will not fail to provide us a hospitium, a place to reside in, when cast out of all, as he did David, and David’ s parents, and the apostles, and the English exiles in Queen Mary’ s days, and, before them, Luther, who, being asked where he thought to be safe, answered Under Heaven, and yet before him, those persecuted Waldenses, after whom the Romish dragon cast out so much water as a flood, but the earth swallowed it; and God so provided that they could travel from Cullen in Germany to Milan in Italy, and every night lodge with hosts of their own profession. The waters of affliction are often gathered together against the godly, but, by God’ s gracious appointment, ever under the heaven, - where our conversation is, though our commoration be a while upon earth, - and unto one place, as the text here has it. The dry land will appear, and we shall come safe to shore, be sure of it. The rock of eternity, whereupon we are set, is above all billows.

(9) Let the waters be gathered together.—The verb, as Gesenius shows, refers rather to the condensation of water, which, as we have seen, was impossible till the surface of the earth was made cool by the radiation of heat into the open expanse around it. Unto one place.—The ocean bed. We must add the vast depth of the ocean to the height of the mountains before we can rightly estimate the intensity of the forces at work on the third day. Vast, too, as the surface of the ocean may appear compared with the dry land, it is evidently only just sufficient to supply the rain necessary for vegetation. Were it less, either the laws of evaporation must be altered, with painful and injurious effects, or much of the earth’s surface would be barren. Let the dry land appear.—Simple as this might appear, it yet required special provision on the part of the Creator; for otherwise the various materials of the earth would have arranged themselves in concentric strata, according to their density, and upon them the water would have reposed evenly, and above it the air. But geologists tell us that these strata have been broken up and distorted from below by volcanic agencies, while the surface has been furrowed and worn by the denuding power of water. This was the third day’s work. By the cooling of the crust of the earth the vast mass of waters, which now covers two-thirds of its surface, and which hitherto had existed only as vapour, began to condense, and pour down upon the earth as rain. Meanwhile the earth parted with its internal heat but slowly, and thus, while its crust grew stiff, there was within a mass of molten fluid. As this would be acted upon by the gravity of the sun and moon, in just the same way as the ocean is now, this inner tidal wave would rupture the thin crust above, generally in lines trending from northeast to south-west. Hence mountain ranges and deep sea beds, modified by many changes since, but all having the same final object of providing dry land for man’s abode.

9–13. The Third Day—Two Creative Acts. (1) The Separation of Sea and Earth (Genesis 1:9-10). (2) The Creation of the Vegetable World (Genesis 1:11-13) 9. Let the waters … appear] In this verse the dry land is rendered visible by the removal of the waters, that were under the Heaven, into their special place. The account reads as if the Earth had existed previously, but had been submerged in the water. It is not stated that God made the earth at this juncture; but only that He now caused it to become visible. The description of the formation of the earth, like other details of the old Hebrew cosmogony, has been omitted either for the sake of brevity, or in order to free the account from materials which were out of harmony with its general religious teaching. unto one place] According to the Hebrew conception the Earth was supposed to have a flat surface, surrounded on all sides by the ocean; while the ocean was connected by subterranean channels with vast reservoirs of water that lay under the earth and fed the springs and rivers. Cf. Psalms 24:2, “for he hath founded it (the world) upon the seas, and established it upon the floods”; Psalms 139:9, “if I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea.” In the story of the Flood we read that “all the fountains of the great deep” (Genesis 7:11 P) were broken up. Instead of “place,” the LXX reads “gathering,” συναγωγήν, the word which is reproduced in the familiar term “synagogue.” It has been suggested that this may very possibly represent the original reading; and that, at any rate, the less usual word ξִ ?χְ ?εֶ ?δ, miqveh = “gathering,” was more likely to be altered in transcription into the common word ξָ ?χεֹ ?ν, maqom = “place,” than vice versa. On the other hand, the word ξִ ?χְ ?εֶ ?δ, miqveh, occurs in the following verse (Genesis 1:10), “the gathering together of the waters” (τὰσυστέματατῶνὑδάτων), in a slightly different sense, and a copyist may have introduced the word here by accident and given rise to the LXX rendering. the dry land] That is, the surface, or crust, as it would now be called, of the earth, consisting of soil, sand, and rock. Christian tradition, until the beginning of the 19th or the end of the 18th century, was satisfied that the Hebrew narrative, attributing the origin of the earth’s crust to the work of a single day, adequately met the requirements of terrestrial phenomena, and did justice to the conception of Divine omnipotence. The rise of the science of Geology, in the last century and a half, has totally transformed educated opinion. It is recognized that the Hebrew cosmogony is devoid of scientific value (see p. 4).

- V. The Third Day 9. קוה qāvâh “turn, bind, gather, expect.” יבשׁה yabāshâh “the dry, the ground.” יבשׁ yabēsh, “be dry.” בושׁ bôsh, “be abashed.” 11.

THIRD DAY — LAND, SEAS, AND , Genesis 1:9-13.9. Let the waters… be gathered… the dry land appear — The import of these words is, that the land was partially, if not wholly, hidden by the waters; thus