GENESIS (ante)—the first book of the Pentateuch and of the Bible—of which the first words, signifying In the beginning, are used in the Hebrew as the title; and of this the Genesis, meaning origin or beginning, has been adopted iu the Latin and English versions. With this title the whole book is found to corre apond, so that it may be called an account of first things or of the beginning of things. It contains, I. The beginning of the revelation concerning God. His existence is the first fact announced after the mentioning of the beginning—" In the God." This, the earliest known written declaration concerning the being of God, was written in the midst of degraded and corrupting polytheism. II. The account of the beginning of the creation. 1. At the beginning, the distance of which in the past is not declared, the heavengand the earth were in their substance created. 2. In the narrative, brief as it is, we have recorded (see COSMOGONY) the beginning of motion, of light, of the atmosphere, of the separation of the land from the waters, of vegetable life, of the organized motions of the heavenly bodies, of animal life in the waters, in the air, and on the land, crowned with the beginning of the human race, created male and female, in the image of God, and appointed head over all creatures and all things on the earth. 3. There is also an account of the first dwelling-place provided for man, the paradise or garden of God, which, given, enjoyed, and lost, appears only in this first book, and is spoken of no more in the Bible, except as a reminiscence, until, in the last book, a promise is found that it shall be given again in the new creation to be enjoyed forever. 4. Immediately following the account of the creation of man there is the record of the first marriage, which is declared to be the model and law for all mankind. 5. And after the account of the finished creation is the record concerning the first Sabbath, a day of rest, instituted, hallowed, and blessed at the beginning, brought—as other books of Scripture remembrance at Sinai, com manded to he observed throughout the history of Israel, made glorious at the beginning of Christianity, and spread abroad among the nations as an earthly rest, emblematic of heaven. III. The account of the beginning of sin, which is the substance of all that the Scriptures teach, and the sum of all that men know, concerning the entrance of that fearful and mysterious evil into the world. 2. Following this is the record of the first nunishment inflicted which, terrible as it was, appears as the beginning of sorrows that thenceforth came on mankind in consequence of sin, concerning which the Bible has much to say until, in the last book, it promises a world which sin will never enter and in which, consequently, curse, sorrow, pain, and tears will not be known. 3. After the
account of the beginning of sin is the record of the first death, of the first crime—the murder of the second born child by the hand of the first—of the growth of depravity until all flesh had corrupted their ways, filling the earth with violence; and, long after that, of the first of the historical series of battles which, beginning after the flood, has been continued to the present hour. IV. The account of God's pkin for checking the power of evil. 1. By the deluge sweeping away transgressors in the consolidated strength of their iniquity, one family only being saved as the germ of the future race. 2. By pre venting the aggregation of the renewed race through the confounding of their speech, so that they were scattered and weakened. 3. By cutting short the duration of life on the earth. At the beginning of the book the record is that men lived for nearly a thou sand years; at the close it affirms that a man highly exalted for virtue, piety, and good ness lived only a little more than a century. Moses, the writer of Genesis, wrote also the lamentation concerning the common limit of human life, " the days of our years are threescore years and ten." At the present time in about half that term of years the chief part of a generation passes away. V. The beginning of the plan of redemption. 1. The first promise of a deliverer, "I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed andlier seed. He shall bruise thy head and thou shalt bruise his heel." The whole Bible develops this promise and records the fulfillment of it. 2. The first sacrifice, offered up after the entrance of sin, and, as other books of Scripture say, to be continued, multiplied, and completed by Christ offering up himself once for all. 3. The beginning of the history of redemption. The history, beginning with Adam, becomes conspicuous in Abraham and his descendants. constituting a chain of persons in whom the process of redemption was to be advanced, and through whom the prom ised redeemer was to appear. In the book of Genesis the descent is brought down to the tribe of Judah, and through the following books of the Old Testament it is con tinued until the New Testament records the coming of the Redeemer.