4b) makes it not quite impossible to answer in the
affirmative. At any rate it is not the case here that the command
of the Creator sets things in motion at the first so that they
develop themselves to separate species out of the universal chaos;
Jehovah Himself puts His hand to the work, and this supposes that
the world in its main features was already in existence. He plants
and waters the garden, He forms man and breathes life into his
nostrils, He builds the woman out of the man's rib, having made
a previous attempt, which was unsuccessful, to provide him with
company; the beasts are living witnesses of the failure of His
experiments. In other respects, too, He proceeds like a man.
In the evening when it grows cool He goes to walk in the garden,
and when there discovers by chance the transgression which has
taken place, and holds an investigation in which He makes not
the least use of His omniscience. And when He says:
"Behold, the man is become like one of us to know good and evil:
and now lest he stretch forth his hand, and take of the tree of
life, and eat and live for ever,"
that is not said in irony, any more than when He expresses
Himself on the occasion of the building of Babel;
"Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language,
and this is only the beginning of their doings, and now nothing
will be too difficult for them that they have imagined to do;
go to, let us go down and confound their language.
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