It is also clear that the text is intended to embrace the whole system
of planets, suns, stars, and whatever else is in space. So the Psalmist
understood it: "By the word of the Lord were the heavens made, and _all_
the host of them by the breath of his mouth.[1]" Nor is there any
reasonable doubt, exegetically, that the subsequent allusion to the sun,
moon, and stars, refers (as the sense of the text itself obviously
requires) to their _appointment_ or adjustment to certain relations with
the earth, and assumes their original material production in space, to
have been already stated or understood.
"And the earth was (became) without form[2] and void, and darkness was
upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of
the waters."
I have, in another connection, already remarked on this verse, and so
shall not repeat those remarks.
[Footnote 1: Psa. xxxiii. 6, and so Psa. cii. 25; _cf_. 2 Peter iii. 5.]
[Footnote 2: Waste (R.V.).]
I will only say that the elemental strife and rushing together of
chemical elements under the stress of various forces and the presence of
enormous heat, would naturally envelop the globe in dense vapours, a
large portion of which would be watery vapour, capable of condensation
or of dispersion, under proper conditions, afterwards to be prescribed
and realized.
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