The Douay-Rheims with the Glossa Ordinaria

¹So the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the furniture of them.

v.1

VERS. 1.-- « Therefore the heavens and the earth were finished, » etc. In no way can it be told how God made heaven and earth. But this exposition, by the order of the days, sets forth as it were a history of things done, yet above all it attends to the foretelling of things to come, etc., *as far as* which the Lord showed to lie hidden to good purpose. « Therefore the heavens were finished, and the earth, and all the furniture of them. » * Allegorically.* After those works of, as it were, six days, works very good, let man hope for perpetual rest, and let him understand what it is, » and God rested on the seventh day from his works: » because he himself also works these good things in us, who commands that we should work. And he is rightly said to rest: because after all these works he will furnish us with rest, in the way that the master of a household builds a house, when he commands his servants to do it; and afterwards to rest from his works, when, the building finished, he bids them rest. Each one of us has in his works and in an upright life these six days, as it were, marked off, after which he ought to hope for quiet: on the first day the light of faith, when first he believes things visible, for which faith the Lord vouchsafed to appear visibly. On the second day there was made as it were a firmament of discipline, which distinguishes between carnal and spiritual works, as the firmament between the lower waters and the higher. On the third day, on which he prepares and raises up his mind to bring forth the fruits of good works, the stain and the waves of carnal temptations being set apart, he has his mind dry, as it were, from the disturbances of the sea, so that he can now say: « With the mind I serve the law of God, » etc.

²And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made: and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had done.

v.2–3

VERS. 2, 3.-- « And God finished, » etc. Another version: « God completed on the sixth day the works which he made, » which brings no question with it, because the things that were done in it are manifest, etc., *as far as* for Solomon did some work when he dedicated the temple. In the Hebrew it stands « on the seventh day. » We shall therefore press the Jews hard, who glory in the leisure of the sabbath, because already then, in the beginning, the sabbath was loosed, while God works on the sabbath, completing his works on it. « And God finished, » etc. It is asked whether, etc., *as far as* according to him they would not be made perfect. « And God rested, etc. Not as though wearied by working, but he rested from the whole work, because he ceased to make a new creature. For to rest is said to be to cease, as in Apocalypse IV: « They had no rest, saying: Holy, holy, holy, » that is, they did not cease to say it. More deeply too he will be understood to have rested from his whole work, etc., *as far as* but he gave rest in himself to rational creatures. « And God rested, » etc. God did not labour in working, who made by a word alone, saying: « Let it be made. » Nor does a man labour by saying, « Let it be made. » But perhaps he is said to have laboured in thinking what should be made. From which care, things being finished, he is said to have rested. But to be wise in this fashion is to be witless. That God rested, therefore, is that he furnished rest in himself to the rational creature; that is, that we may be borne by desire thither, where we may rest, that is, may seek nothing further. For as he is said to make what we make by his working in us, and to know when we know, so to rest, when by his gift we rest. It is no wonder if, foretelling in this manner the day on which Christ was to rest in the sepulchre, he said: « On the seventh day he rested, » being thereafter about to work the orders of the ages. But it can be understood that God rested from making the kinds of creature, etc., *as far as* and does not cease to govern. But God was neither wearied by creating nor refreshed by ceasing: rather through his Scripture he exhorts us to the desire of rest, by saying that he sanctified the day on which he rested. For he is not read to have sanctified the other days of his work, as though with him rest avails more than working. It is also a vice of the soul so to delight in its own works, etc., *as far as* by that rest from which he never withdrew. But if he were said to have rested from things to be made, etc., *as far as* but by him we are blessed. But in himself God has always rested: yet in the days in which the completing of things is recounted, he rested on the seventh only, which follows the perfection of things; for he rests from things perfected, who has no need of things perfected that he may be more blessed. His works we see to be good: but his rest we shall see after our good works. To signify which, he commanded one day of the sabbath to be observed: which in the time of grace has been taken away, in which he keeps a perpetual sabbath who works all good things in hope of what is to come, and does not glory in his good works as though he had not received them. With him there is to his rest neither morning nor evening, because it is neither opened by a beginning nor closed by an end. But in works perfected it has a morning, and not an evening; because the perfected creature begins to be turned to the quiet of the Creator, but that quiet has no end of its perfection, and so the rest of God is begun not for God himself, but for the perfection of things, and it has a morning in that which is perfected by him: but in its own kind it is ended as by an evening, which in God has no evening, because nothing will be more perfect than perfection itself. But in those days, etc., *as far as* which are recorded as created before the luminaries. It is asked how it is said on the seventh, etc., *as far as* except that which was created first and called day. But how could the light go round, etc., *as far as* and the rest. But it is easier that we confess ourselves ignorant, etc., *as far as* and it will be false that he completed all his works on the sixth day. But since bodily light, etc., *as far as* and that by which the creature is known in itself is rightly called evening. But because the angels so know the creature in itself, etc., *as far as* Therefore on the seventh day no evening came on. Nor let anyone think, etc., *as far as* and more truly morning? That first day, therefore, etc., *as far as* and for this it deserved to be sanctified. * Allegorically.* Whence it is said in Exod. XX: « Remember that thou keep holy the sabbath day. » But this blessing and sanctification signifies a greater blessing and sanctification, etc., *as far as* Therefore this day is not written to have an evening.

³And he blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.

⁴These are the generations of the heaven and the earth, when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the heaven and the earth:

v.4

VERS. 4.-- « These are the generations. » He touches those who say that the world always was without a beginning, or who think that it was made by God, but out of matter which he did not make, but which is coeternal with him. « In the day that he made, » etc. He puts the day for the whole time in which the primordial creature was formed, etc., *as far as* without rain and human labour. « These are the generations of the heaven, » etc. There are numbered six days in which the whole of the age from beginning to end, etc., *as far as* if he had not sinned. « Before it should spring up in the earth. » That is, before he sinned, that is, before he made himself subject to earthly desires. Whence there follows: « For God had not rained upon the earth, » that is, he had not yet, by prophetic or evangelical clouds, the shower of the word being sent forth, made the soul to live, and « there was no man to till the earth, » because after sin man began to labour on the earth, he had need of those clouds, whence the shrub, that is the soul, grew green. The fountain of life watered it, that is, the flood of truth, speaking in his understanding, so that it needed no rain from the clouds before he sinned. This was the state of man before sin. Another version has: « This is the book of the creation of heaven and earth, » etc., *as far as* it nourishes the great with truth, the little ones with affability. In the first founding of the world, etc., *as far as* seed from the herb.

⁵And every plant of the field before it sprung up in the earth, and every herb of the ground before it grew: for the Lord God had not rained upon the earth; and there was not a man to till the earth.

⁶But a spring rose out of the earth, watering all the surface of the earth.

⁷And the Lord God formed man of the slime of the earth: and breathed into his face the breath of life, and man became a living soul.

v.7

VERS. 7.-- « He formed, » etc. *Mystically.* A broader narrative concerning man is unfolded figuratively, etc., *as far as* that he neither despise what he is, nor claim what he is not. « The Lord God therefore formed man, » etc. First out of the slime of the earth was formed an animal body, etc., *as far as* for it has the necessity of dying. The first robe is either justice, from which he fell: or, if it signifies bodily immortality, this he lost, since by sinning he could not attain to it. So then Adam had an animal body, not only before paradise, but in paradise as well (although in the inner man he was spiritual), which he lost by sinning, and deserved the death of the body — he who by not sinning would have deserved the change into a spiritual body. « He formed, » etc. It must be seen whether it be a recapitulation, so that it is told how man was made, whom we read to have been made on the sixth day. Or whether then, when he made all things together, he made man also among them, so that with the accession of time he should be made in this manner too, in which he leads his life in this visible form? just as the hay, made before it sprang up, with time coming on and with the watering of the fountain, sprang up, so as to be upon the earth.

⁸And the Lord God had planted a paradise of pleasure from the beginning: wherein he placed man whom he had formed.

v.8

VERS. 8.-- « And he had planted, » etc. From that beginning he planted paradise, etc., *as far as* and because he was about to speak specially of the tree of life and of the knowledge of good and evil. « The Lord planted a paradise in Eden toward the East, » etc. There are three general opinions concerning paradise. One is of those who will have it understood only bodily, another of those who will have it only spiritually, but a third of those who take paradise in both ways. I confess that the third pleases me: so that the man made of slime, which is the human body, is understood to be placed in a bodily paradise. Adam, although he signifies something else, because he is the figure of him that was to come, is taken in his own nature as a man. « And the Lord planted a paradise in Eden. » That is, in delights. Then he recapitulates this, to show how God planted paradise. « And God sent forth out of the earth every tree, » etc. For already then the earth had brought forth every tree, namely on the third day. But since out of these kinds the trees were established in paradise, he brought forth openly, and in its own time, what the earth had already brought forth causally on the third day. Certain codices have: « Eden toward the Rising. » From which we can conjecture that paradise is set in the East. But wherever it be, we know that it is earthly, and, with the Ocean set between and mountains standing over against it, most remote from our world, set on a height, reaching as far as the lunar circle; whence the waters of the flood by no means came thither. « In which he placed him. » If anyone thinks that souls stripped of the body are contained in bodily places, etc., *as far as* by one cake of which God freed a man from hunger for forty days.

⁹And the Lord God brought forth of the ground all manner of trees, fair to behold, and pleasant to eat of: the tree of life also in the midst of paradise: and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

v.9

VERS. 9.-- « And the Lord brought forth the tree of life also. » Of wisdom it is said: « It is a tree of life to them that lay hold on her. » But there is an eternal Jerusalem in the heavens, etc., *as far as* which narrated things done in their own times. « The tree of life also, » etc. In the one there was for man a sign of the obedience which he owed: in the other a sacrament of eternal life, which by obeying he would merit. It was called the tree of life, because it received from God that whoever ate of it, his body should be strengthened with a stable soundness, nor should it slip by any infirmity or age into the worse or into decline. *Historically.* The tree of life had naturally this power, that whoever ate of its fruit should be clothed with perpetual solidity, to be wearied by no infirmity, or anxiety, or weariness of old age, or feebleness. « And the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. » It was bodily like the other trees, and not harmful as food, etc., *as far as* which followed the transgression. « The tree of the knowledge of good and evil. » The mean of the soul and its ordered integrity is signified, in that it was planted in the midst of paradise, and called of the knowledge of good and evil: because the soul, which ought to be stretched out toward God, if, God being forsaken, it be turned to itself, and will enjoy its own power without God, then, punishment following, learns by experience what lies between the good which it forsook and the evil into which it fell: and this will be for it to have tasted of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

¹⁰And a river went out of the place of pleasure to water paradise, which from thence is divided into four heads.

v.10–11

VERS. 10, 11, 12, 13, 14.-- « And a river went out. » To water paradise, etc., *as far as* and, emerging a little after, to hold their accustomed course. Another version: « A fountain went out of Eden, which watereth paradise, » etc. These rivers to the nations, etc., *as far as* namely trees fair and fruitful. *Mystically.* The river going out of paradise is the affluence of eternal gladness, etc., *as far as* by bearing adversities. *Morally.* By four rivers going out of paradise the earth is watered. Prudence, temperance, fortitude, justice hold together the solid building of our reason: because by these four virtues the whole structure of good work rises up. Four rivers water paradise, because while the heart is flooded with these four virtues, it is tempered from every heat of carnal desires. « Evilath. » A region of India which after the flood was possessed by Evila, the son of Jectan, the son of Heber, the patriarch of the Hebrews. Evilath is interpreted *bringing to birth,* because one who speaks the truth is more in travail than he brings forth. Pliny says that the regions of India abound in veins of gold beyond all others. « Bdellium. » According to Pliny it is an aromatic tree of the size of an olive, whose gum is clear, bitter to the taste, of a good smell, but more fragrant with an infusion of wine. « Onyx. » It is a precious stone, so called because it has a whiteness mixed in it after the likeness of a human nail, because a nail is called in Greek ὄνυξ. The ancient version has « carbuncle and prase. » The carbuncle is of a fiery colour, and is said to light up the darkness of night. The prase is green, whence it took its name in Greek from the leek, which is called πράσον.

¹¹The name of the one is Phison: that is it which compasseth all the land of Hevilath, where gold groweth.

¹²And the gold of that land is very good: there is found bdellium, and the onyx stone.

¹³And the name of the second river is Gehon: the same is it that compasseth all the land of Ethiopia.

¹⁴And the name of the third river is Tigris: the same passeth along by the Assyrians. And the fourth river is Euphrates.

¹⁵And the Lord God took man, and put him into the paradise of pleasure, to dress it, and to keep it.

v.15

VERS. 15.-- « The Lord God therefore took, » etc. He has already said that man was placed in paradise. Now he recapitulates to what end he was placed there, « that he might dress it, » etc. For it is not credible that God condemned him to labour before sin, etc., *as far as* whence Eccli. X: « for the beginning of man's pride is to fall away from God. » « The Lord God therefore took the man, » etc. It must be weighed that good things cannot profit, if the evils that creep in are not guarded against, etc., *as far as* but by growing proud under them they sink beneath them. « And the Lord God took, » etc. For « pleasure » the Hebrew has « Eden. » The Seventy themselves, therefore, have rendered it now « Eden, » now « pleasure. » But Symmachus, who « had before translated it a flowering paradise, here put « pleasantness, » or « delights. » « And he put him, » etc. *Mystically.* From that which is added, « And that he should keep it, it is hinted what kind of work it was: because in the tranquillity of the blessed life, where death is not, all work is to keep what thou holdest. For a precept was given, that they should take of every tree of paradise, but not of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil: that is, that they should not so enjoy it as to violate the integrity of their nature by usurping what was forbidden.

¹⁶And he commanded him, saying: Of every tree of paradise thou shalt eat:

v.16

VERS. 16.-- « And he enjoineth him, » etc. He was forbidden from the tree, etc., *as far as* what lies between the good of obedience and the evil of disobedience. It is asked whether to the man alone, or to the woman also, etc., *as far as* « let them ask their husbands at home. » Some say: If he willed to clothe us with immortality, what need was there of a precept, on account of which we were to sin and then to feel the severe stings of his judgment? I answer: Since he is kind and gentle, and willed to lay claim to the human race for an incorruptible and immortal condition: lest they should set that benefit down to their own or proper power, he acted in this manner, he willed that they should render him thanks, and for them he also appointed the present life as a wrestling-school and, as it were, a schooling for the life to come. Then, bringing in death on account of sin, he willed that we should acknowledge our infirmity, and that thereafter we ourselves should the more desire the gift to come. « And he commanded him, saying: Of every, etc. If it be asked how he spoke these things, it cannot properly be comprehended by us. For it is certain that he speaks either through his own substance, etc., *as far as* but through a creature subject to himself. It is asked: how could they speak, or understand one speaking, who had not learned by growing up among speakers, or by teaching? But God had made them such as could speak, and could learn from others if there were any. Of Christ it is said, Isa. VII: « Before the child knows good or evil, he shall despise wickedness, that he may choose the good. » How does he either despise or choose what he does not know? etc., *as far as* what he ought not to have lost.

¹⁷But of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat. For in what day soever thou shalt eat of it, thou shalt die the death.

¹⁸And the Lord God said: It is not good for man to be alone: let us make him a help like unto himself.

¹⁹And the Lord God having formed out of the ground all the beasts of the earth, and all the fowls of the air, brought them to Adam to see what he would call them: for whatsoever Adam called any living creature the same is its name.

²⁰And Adam called all the beasts by their names, and all the fowls of the air, and all the cattle of the field: but for Adam there was not found a helper like himself.

v.20

VERS. 20.-- « And he called, » etc. *Mystically.* Signifying the Gentiles who should be saved in the Church through Christ, and should receive the name of Christ, which before they did not have; whence, Isa. LXV: « I will call my servants by another name. » « But for Adam there was not found, » etc. It must be seen how the forming of the woman was made, which is mystically called a building, etc., *as far as* that we may understand that through that ecstasy Adam said these things by God's gift. « But for Adam there was not found a helper. » No faithful just man can be made equal to Christ. Psalm XLIV: « For he is beautiful in form above the sons of men. » For no one could deliver the human race but himself. Whence Apocalypse V: « No one was found worthy to open the book and to loose the seals thereof, » etc. « But for Adam there was not found, » etc. The woman was made for the help of the man, etc., *as far as* and to subjugate to the dominion of reason, grace cooperating.

²¹Then the Lord God cast a deep sleep upon Adam: and when he was fast asleep, he took one of his ribs, and filled up flesh for it.

v.21

VERS. 21.-- « The Lord therefore cast, » etc. * Mystically.* These things cannot be seen with bodily eyes. But the further a man withdraws from things visible to the secrets of understanding, as it were by falling asleep, the better and more sincerely he sees, etc., *as far as* and to be referred to the Church. Those who think that the soul is from a soul, etc., *as far as* which had been said of the man. If it be asked whence Christ received his soul, I would rather hear men better and more learned; etc., *as far as* to whom what answer might be made has not yet occurred to me. « The Lord therefore cast a deep sleep, » etc. We do not attain the summit of contemplation, if we do not cease from the oppression of outward care: nor do we look upon our own selves, so as to know that there is in us one thing rational which rules, another animal which is ruled, unless, betaking ourselves to the secret of silence, we are lulled asleep from outward disturbance. Which Adam well figured in his sleeping, from whose side the woman presently came forth. For he who is caught up to the understanding of inward things closes his eyes to visible things, and then understands that there is in himself one thing which ought to rule, as a man; another which should be ruled, as a woman.

²²And the Lord God built the rib which he took from Adam into a woman: and brought her to Adam.

²³And Adam said: This now is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called woman, because she was taken out of man.

²⁴Wherefore a man shall leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they shall be two in one flesh.

²⁵And they were both naked: to wit, Adam and his wife: and were not ashamed.

v.25

VERS. 25.-- « And they were both naked. » If anything is said in the words of God or of any prophet whatever which seems absurd to the letter and therefore to have been said figuratively, yet it is not to be doubted that it was said for the sake of its signification. But the bodies of the two human beings in paradise were naked, and they were not ashamed, because they had felt no law in their members warring against the law of the mind, which followed upon disobedience. They thought nothing was to be veiled, because they had felt nothing was to be restrained. Deservedly is there shame chiefly of lust, etc., *as far as* and it rendered them confounded. That they were naked was not a matter of ignominy, but of honour: that they were not ashamed of their nakedness was not a matter of folly, but of security. For what? did it receive this from its maker, that the workmanship of God is shameful and to be blushed at? Or is it nature, and not rather conscience, that makes confusion of this kind? It is indeed as it were turned into nature, this torment of confusion: nevertheless its origin sprouted not from the primeval condition, but from a later fault. For we blush at our nakedness for this reason, that we are conscious to ourselves how great an infirmity, nay how great a rebellion of our own flesh against us, we carry about. But then the conscience of the heart was sound, since no concupiscence of the eyes solicited it; seeing that the concupiscence of the flesh is the punishment of sin, by which the pride of the mind that went before is punished. God, says the Scripture, made man upright. But the uprightness of man lies in this, that the spirit should preside over and command the flesh, as the superior over the inferior: for the rational spirit of man was set midway between God and his own flesh, that it might obey God and command the flesh. And because that former man disturbed and broke this order, by casting away the precept of God: the spirit, which was superior, was made subject to the lowest flesh, so that by a just punishment he should lie beneath the inferior, who scorned rightly to be beneath the superior. Hence that confusion of the face, breaking out from the secrets of conscience to public eyes, and driving a penal ignominy to go beneath the wretched solaces of coverings. This infirmity, I say, or rebellion of the flesh, was not yet: rightly therefore was each of them naked and they were not ashamed, because they had nothing at which to blush. That security of nakedness being lost, we groan, in that we are despoiled of glory and honour and wrapped about with rags. For so clothed we truly walk naked, even if — which is impossible — we should be clothed as the lilies of the field are clothed. For not even Solomon in all his glory was clothed as one of these. If, I say, we could be clothed as these are clothed, even so are we despoiled and naked. Whence we look for the Saviour, our Lord Jesus Christ, who will reform the body of our lowliness, made like to the body of his brightness. For when the just shall shine as the sun in the kingdom of their Father, shall they be covered with tunics and cloaks? By no means, but to the glory of their maker, whatever vessels of mercy they shall have been, they will lie open to one another with mutual sights of glory, shining without, and joyful within; whole in body, and glad in mind; blessed, I say, in body and soul alike. « And they were both naked, » etc. That they were naked and were ashamed, etc., *as far as* because in consent the conscience is held guilty.

Genesis 2

Before the first verse