For example: after
the creative command in verses 7, 9, 11, 15, and 24, is declared, it is
followed by the words of fulfilment--"and it was so;" and in verse 11,
when God has said "Let the earth bring forth grass, &c.", in the next
verse it is positively recorded that the earth _did_ bring forth grass,
&c.
I of course admit all this, but it is in no way opposed to my
suggestion.
The _commencement_ of the _result_ probably, if not necessarily,
followed immediately on the issue of the finished command, viz., the
promulgation of the forms to be obtained and the processes to be
followed. The _whole_ result did not become accomplished then and there,
in the time mentioned, or exactly in the order mentioned: we know that
for a fact. Take, for example, the case of _vegetation_. Here the
author, in terms at once precise and universally intelligible, speaks of
"vegetation[1]" (grass of the A.V.), "herb yielding seed," and "trees
yielding fruit," thereby exhaustively enumerating the members of the
vegetable kingdom.
[Footnote 1: Nothing more is meant by the Hebrew "_deshe_." The true
"grasses" (_graminea_),--cereals, bamboos, &c., are certainly not
intended, for these are all conspicuously flowering plants, "herbs
yielding seed," and therefore coming under the second plainly defined
group. But the general term "sproutage" or "vegetation" is just adapted
to signify the mass of cryptogamic plant-life, the mosses, lichens,
algae, and then ferns, &c.
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