2. And God said, Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it divide between the waters and the waters, (6) or, as Castellio renders it, [God commanded] that a Liquid should exist between the waters, to disjoin water from water. By this Liquid is denoted the air, which is stretched out between the water of the earth, or, between the globe, then aqueous but afterwards terrestrial, and that ethereal fluid which also is called water. This is more fully explained by the words that follow, especially in verse 20 of Schmidius' version compared with Castellio's.

And God made the expanse, and distinguished between the waters which were under the expanse and the waters which were above the expanse, (7) or, according to Castellio, He made the Liquid that should divide the water which was underneath the Liquid from, that which was above it. No words were as yet in use to designate with distinctness ether, air, and water; therefore they were named from their fluidity, that is to say, were called Waters, Liquids, Expanses, etc.; wherefore, on account of the lack of words a single expression was used throughout this whole verse.

When this was done, God called the expanse, or this Liquid, Heaven. (8) All that is above us is called Heaven, and what is below, or under our feet, Earth. Heaven, properly speaking, is the region where live spirits, angels, and the souls of the blessed; and this, in whatsoever place it be, even near to the earth, in the atmosphere, in whose interior or purer parts the heavenly life is lived. Things superior are also interior, and things inferior are also exterior. Wherefore, as to our minds, we are inhabitants of heaven, even though as to our body we are inhabitants of earth. And from the evening and the morning came the second day, or, the second space of time — the space within which the aerial atmosphere was made. Here, as also above in verse 5, this space is called a day; for with God, who spake these words by Moses, a thousand years, that is, an exceeding great space of time, is only as a single day [Psalm 90:4]. In order, however, that it may come to our understanding, this entire period is described as Evening and Morning.

13. No earthly plant having yet arisen upon the earth, nor any herb (since Jova God had not sent rain upon the earth, neither was there a man to till the ground), there went up a mist front the earth which watered its whole soil. (5, 6)

In the beginning of creation, after a crust had been superinduced upon the earth, there must necessarily have been a continual mist which watered the surface of the earth; for the earth, like a great body, was intersected not only with watery veins but also with streams, so that the newborn atmosphere itself was ever humid by reason of the vapors — a condition which was necessarily requisite for the rising up of herbs, shrubs, and trees. From these words it may also be clear that the production of terrestrial things, as, in the present case, the production of herbs and plants, was not an immediate process but mediate; that is to say, it was effected by means of a mist or humidity in place of rain, which latter could not as yet have been gathered into clouds or have existed as such. That at this time the earth was encompassed by a kind of vapory bath as it were, to the production of which perpetual spring conspired, has been shown elsewhere. ¹

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