And this interpretation is supported by the authority of our best Commentators. Perrerius formally discusses the point, and maintains that God may truly be said to have made the Heavens and the Earth in Six Days, although the Heavens and the Earth, as far as regards their substantial matter, had been created before the First Day: for it was only within the Six Days that they were adorned and completed and perfected. Tostatus is not less explicit. In this passage, he says, the word _made_ is very properly employed; for the Heavens and the Earth which are here referred to, and the other things that are included under this general designation, were all _made from matter already existing_, but this matter itself was not _made_, it was _created_. Petavius also adopts this view in his remarks upon the fourth verse of the second chapter of Genesis.[117] We may add that this mode of explaining the passage receives no small support from the Hebrew text. When it is said, in the first chapter of Genesis, that “In the beginning God _created_ the Heavens and the Earth,” the word used by the Sacred writer is ‏ברא (_Bara_), which strictly means to create out of nothing; whereas, in describing the operations of the Six Days, he commonly uses the word עשה (_Hasah_), which means to _form_ and _fashion_, or to produce something out of pre-existing materials.[118] Now, in the text of Exodus we find the word עשה (_Hasah_), to _fashion_ or _produce_, and not the word ברא (_Bara_), to _create_. We do not want to insist very rigorously upon this distinction between the two words ברא (_Bara_) and עשה (_Hasah_), nor would we deny that they are sometimes interchanged as regards their meaning. We think they are related to one another pretty nearly as the corresponding words to _create_ and to _make_ in English, and we know that the distinction between these two words is not always strictly observed. Thus, we sometimes say that God _made_ the world, meaning that he brought it forth from nothing, and we speak of the _creation_ of peers; and Shakspeare says:-- “Now is the time of help; your eye in Scotland Would _create_ soldiers, make our women fight To doff their dire distresses.”--_Macbeth_, Act iv., Sc. iii. Nevertheless, when we compare two such passages as these:--“In the beginning God _created_ the Heavens and the Earth,” and “In Six Days the Lord _made_ the Heavens and the Earth and the sea, and all that in them is,” we think the studied contrast of expression is a fair ground for supposing that, while the one refers to the Divine decree by which matter was first brought into existence out of nothing, the other may be understood of those subsequent operations by which it received its present form and shape.