About the text: Like many today, Augustine of Hippo (354–430) sought to understand the meaning and significance of the seven days of creation. Were they seven twenty-four-hour periods? Or were they seven periods of thousands or millions of years? In his quest to understand Revelation, Augustine wrote several commentaries on the opening chapters of Genesis, some of which remain incomplete. One of his complete commentaries is a work written against the Manichaeans—a heretical sect originating in Persia that taught that matter is evil and created by an evil spirit who rivals the good God. Having been taken in by their arguments in his youth, Augustine was just the man to rebut their positions. In the passage presented here, Augustine presents an allegorical reading of the seven days, wherein they signify the seven ages of the world and the seven stages of human life.
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35. But why this rest is attributed to the seventh day, I think it is necessary to consider more carefully. For I see that throughout the whole text of the divine Scriptures, six certain laborious ages are distinguished with their certain limits, so that rest may be expected on the seventh, and that these same six ages have a resemblance to those six days, in which those things were made which the Scripture mentions that God made. For the beginnings of the human race, in which it began to enjoy that light, are well compared to the first day on which God made light. This age is to be regarded as the infancy of the entire world itself, which we must think of as one man in proportion to his greatness, because every man, when he is first born and comes out into the light, acts as an infant in his first age. This extends from Adam to Noah for ten generations. As it were, the evening of this day becomes a flood, because our infancy is also destroyed as a flood of forgetfulness.
36. And the morning begins from the times of Noah, the second age as childhood, and this age extends to Abraham for another ten generations. And it is well compared to the second day on which the firmament was made between water and water, because the ark in which Noah and his people were, was a firmament between the lower waters on which it sailed and the upper waters with which it was rained upon. This age is not destroyed by the flood, because our childhood is not erased from memory by oblivion. For we remember that we were children, but we do not remember infancy. The evening of this is the confusion of tongues among those who were building the tower, and it is made morning by Abraham. But neither did this second age produce the people of God, because childhood is not fit to produce either.
37. Morning, then, is made from Abraham and a third age similar to adolescence follows. And it is well compared to the third day on which the earth was separated from the waters: for from all nations, whose unstable error and vain doctrines of idols are blown about by the shifting winds, as the name “sea” well signifies, so from this vanity of the nations and the waves of this world the people of God were separated through Abraham as dry land, that is, thirsting for the heavenly rain of divine commandments, whereby the people, worshipping one God as from watered land, could bring forth the useful fruits of the holy scriptures and prophets. For this age could now beget a people for God, because even the third age, that is, adolescence, can now have children. And therefore it was said to Abraham: I have made you the father of many nations, and I will multiply you exceedingly, and I will make you into nations, and kings shall come out of you. And I will establish my covenant between me and you and between your seed after you throughout their generations, for an everlasting covenant, that I may be a God to you and to your seed after you; and I will give to you and to your seed after you the land in which you dwell, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession, and I will be their God. This age extends from Abraham to David for fourteen generations. Its evening is in the sins of the people who ignored the divine commandments until the wickedness of the wicked king Saul.
38. And from there comes the morning, the kingdom of David. This age is like youth; and truly youth reigns among all ages and is the firm ornament of all ages, and therefore it is well compared to the fourth day on which the stars of heaven were made in the firmament of heaven. For what more clearly signifies the splendor of the kingdom than the excellence of the sun? And the people obedient to the kingdom are shown by the brightness of the moon as the synagogue itself, and the stars as its princes, and all things as if founded in the firmament on the stability of the kingdom. Its evening is as it were in the sins of the kings, by whom that nation deserved to be captured and enslaved.
39. And comes the morning, the exile to Babylon, when in that captivity the people were gently placed in a foreign leisure. And this age is extended until the coming of our Lord, that is, the fifth age, the decline from youth to old age, not yet old age, but no longer youth, because it is the age of the elder whom the Greeks call “presbyter”; for an old man among them is not called “presbyter,” but “geron.” And truly thus was that age inclined and broken from the strength of the kingdom in the Jewish people, just as a man becomes an elder from youth. And it is well compared to that fifth day on which the animals in the waters and the birds of the air were made, after those men began to live among the nations as if in the sea and to have an uncertain and unstable place like flying birds. But clearly there were also great whales there, that is, those great men who were more able to dominate the waves of the world than to serve in that captivity: for they were not depraved by any terror to the worship of idols. Where indeed it is to be observed that God blessed those animals, saying: Increase and multiply and fill the waters of the sea, and let the birds multiply on the earth, because truly the Jewish nation, since it was scattered among the nations, has greatly multiplied. The evening of this day, that is, of this age, is like the multiplication of sins among the Jewish people, because they have been so blinded that they could not even recognize the Lord Jesus Christ.
40. But in the morning it is made from the preaching of the gospel by our Lord Jesus Christ, and the fifth day is ended, the sixth begins, in which the old age of the old man appears. For in this age that carnal kingdom is greatly worn out, when both the temple was cast down and those sacrifices ceased; and now that nation, as far as the powers of its kingdom are concerned, is as it were drawing to its end. In that age, however, as in the old age of the old man, a new man is born who already lives spiritually. For on the sixth day it was said: Let the earth bring forth a living soul. For on the fifth day it was said: Let the waters bring forth not a living soul, but creeping creatures of living souls, since bodies are creeping things, and that people still served the law by bodily circumcision and sacrifices as in the sea of the Gentiles. But he speaks of that living soul, by which eternal life is already beginning to be desired. Therefore the serpents and the beasts which the earth brings forth signify the nations which will now firmly believe in the gospel. Of which it is said in the little vessel which was shown to Peter in the Acts of the Apostles: Kill and eat; and when he called it unclean, it was answered to him: What God has cleansed, you do not call unclean. Then man is made in the image and likeness of God, just as in that sixth age our Lord is born in the flesh, of whom it was said by the prophet: And he is man, and who will know him? And as in that day there were male and female, so in that age were Christ and the Church. And man is placed in that day above cattle and serpents and the birds of the air, just as in that age Christ rules the souls obedient to him, who came to his Church partly from the Gentiles, partly from the people of the Jews, that men might be tamed and tamed by him, whether given over to carnal lust like cattle or obscured by dark curiosity like serpents or lifted up in pride like birds. And just as in that day man and the animals that are with him are fed with seed-bearing herbs and fruit-bearing trees and green herbs, so in this age the spiritual man, whoever is a good minister of Christ and imitates him as well as he can, is spiritually fed with the people themselves on the food of the Holy Scriptures and the divine law, partly to conceive the fruitfulness of reasons and discourses as with seed-bearing herbs, partly for the benefit of the morals of human conversation as with fruit-bearing trees, partly for the vigor of faith and hope of charity in eternal life as with green herbs, that is, vigorous, which cannot wither in any heat of tribulation. But the spiritual man is so fed with these foods that he understands many things, but the carnal man, that is, the little one in Christ, is like the flock of God, that he believes many things that he cannot yet understand; yet they all have the same food.
41. But would that the evening of this age would not find us, if indeed it has not yet begun! For it is that of which the Lord says: Do you think that the Son of Man will come and find faith on the earth? After that evening there will be morning, when the Lord Himself will come in glory; then those who were told: Be perfect as your Father who is in heaven will rest with Christ from all their works. For such do very good works. For after such works there is to be hoped for rest on the seventh day which has no evening. Therefore it cannot be said in words in any way how God made and created heaven and earth and every creature which He created, but this exposition indicates by the order of the days as if it were a history of things that have been done, so as to observe the prediction of things to come most closely.
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*Text translated from Augustine, De Genesi contra Manichaeos, ed. Dorothea Weber, Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, vol 91 (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1998), 104-111.
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