11. O Lord--The two oldest manuscripts, A, B, Vulgate,
and Syriac add, "and our God." "Our" by virtue of creation, and
especially redemption. One oldest manuscript, B, and Syriac
insert "the Holy One." But another, A, Vulgate, and
Coptic omit this, as English Version does.
glory, &c.--"the glory . . . the honour
. . . the power."
thou--emphatic in the Greek: "It is
THOU who didst create."
all things--Greek, "the all things": the universe.
for, &c.--Greek, "on account of"; "for the sake of Thy
pleasure," or "will." English Version is good Greek.
Though the context better suits, it was because of Thy will,
that "they were" (so one oldest manuscript, A, Vulgate, Syriac,
and Coptic read, instead of English Version "are":
another oldest manuscript, B, reads, "They were not, and were
created," were created out of nothing), that is, were existing,
as contrasted with their previous non-existence. With God to
will is to effect: to determine is to perform. So in
Ge 1:3,
"Let there be light, and there was light": in Hebrew an
expressive tautology, the same word and tense and letters being used
for "let there be," and "there was," marking the simultaneity and
identity of the will and the effect. D. LONGINUS
[On the Sublime, 9], a heathen, praises this description of
God's power by "the lawgiver of the Jews, no ordinary man," as one
worthy of the theme.
were created--by Thy definite act of creation at a definite
time.
JFB.
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