As Moses however was writing to a new and uninformed people his object was to write those things only which were useful and necessary to be known. The nature of angels therefore and other kindred subjects which were not necessary to be known he passed by. Wherefore nothing on the whole of this obscure subject, beyond what Moses has plainly recorded, ought to be expected from me. The more especially so, as the New Testament itself treats very sparingly of this deep theme. It says nothing more concerning the angels than that they were condemned and that they are still held as it were in prison and in chains until the judgment of the last day. Let it suffice us therefore to know that there are good angels and bad angels, but that God created them all alike good. Whence it follows of necessity, that the evil angels fell and stood not in the truth. But how they fell and stood not in the truth is unknown. It is nevertheless probable that they fell by pride; because they despised the Word or Son of God, and wished to exalt themselves before him. This is all I have to say. Now let us return to Moses. II. We have heard that the work of the First Day was the rude unformed "heavens and earth," both of which God illumined with a certain impure and imperfect light. We now come to the work of the second day, where we shall see in what manner God produced out of this original rough undigested mist or nebulosity, which he called "heavens," that glorious and beauteous "heaven" which now is, and as it now is; if you except the stars and the greater luminaries. The Hebrews very appropriately derive the term SCHAMAIM the name of the heavens from the word MAIM, which signifies "waters." For the letter SCHIN is often used in composition for a relative, so that SCHAMAIM signifies "watery," or "that which has a watery nature." This indeed appears so from the color of the "heavens." And experience teaches that the air is humid by nature. Philosophers also say that if there were no sun the air would be a perpetual humidity. But they assert that the air is both humid and warm, but that it is humid from its own nature, because the heaven was made out of waters, and that therefore it is, that it rains and contains a fructifying moisture; but because the light and heat of the sun are added to it, the humid nature of the air is so tempered that it is also warm. This thick and rude mass of mist or nebulosity, created out of nothing on the first day, God grasps by his Word and commands it to extend itself into the form and with the motion of a sphere. For in the Hebrew the word RAKIA signifies "a something extended;" from the verb RAKA, which means "to unfold or expand." And the heaven was formed by an extension of that original rude body of mist, just as the bladder of a hog is extended into a circular form when it is inflated. I use thus a rustic similitude that the sacred matter may be the more plainly understood.