For thy Almighty hand, that made the world of matter without form, wanted not means to send among them a multitude of bears, or fierce lions,
All Commentaries on Wisdom of Solomon 11:17 Go To Wisdom of Solomon 11
Augustine of Hippo
AD 430
We can ask ourselves if the Scripture calls "heaven and earth" all the things already distinguished and arranged in their order. Or if, by the term "heaven and earth," it means the matter itself of the universe, originally unformed, which by the ineffable command of God was differentiated and arranged in the formed and magnificent natures that we now admire. Although we in fact read in Scripture, "You who made the world, drawing it from formless matter," we nevertheless cannot say that the matter itself (of whatever kind it may be) was not made by him from whom we declare and profess by faith that all things come. Consequently, we also call "world" the ordered arrangement of all the formed and distinct things, whatever they may be, while on the contrary, we call "heaven and earth" the matter itself, as if the latter were the primordial germ of the heaven and the earth. So "heaven and earth," something confused and mixed, is capable of receiving forms from God the creator.
