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OF THE CREATION OF TREES AND PLANTS, AND THE MAKING OF SEAS AND RIVERS.
ON the third day God commanded that the waters should be gathered together into the pits and depths of the earth, and that the dry land should appear3. When the waters were gathered together into the depths of the earth, and the mountains and hills had appeared, God placed the sand as a limit for the waters of the seas4, that they might not pass over and cover the earth. And God commanded the earth to put forth herbage and grass and every green thing5; and the earth brought forth trees and herbs and plants of all kinds, complete and perfect in respect of flowers and fruit and seed, each according to its kind. Some say that before the transgression of the command, the earth brought forth neither thorns nor briars, and that even the rose had no thorns as it has now; but that after the transgression of the command, the earth put forth thorns and briars by reason of the curse which it had received. The reason why God created the trees and plants before the creation of the luminaries was that the philosophers, who discourse on natural phenomena, might not imagine that the earth brought forth herbs and trees through the power of the heat of the sun. Concerning the making of Paradise, it is not mentioned in the Pentateuch on what day it was created; but according to the opinion of those who may be relied upon, it was made on the same day in which the trees were made6: and if the Lord will, we will speak about it in its proper place.
2 Chap. x in the Oxford MS.
4 Comp. Jer. v. 22.
6 According to Rabbi Eliezer, chap. iii (Horowitz, אגרח אגרוח {Hebrew: AGhDhX AGhDhVX}, part i, Leipzig, 1881), Paradise was one of the seven things created before the world.