Reference: Nature
Hastings
The term 'nature' is not used in the OT. nor was the conception current in Hebrew thought, as God alone is seen in all, through all, and over all. The idea came from the word physis from Hellenism. Swine's flesh is commended for food as a gift of nature in 4Ma 5:7. In the NT the term is used in various senses: (1) the forces, laws, and order of the world, including man (Ro 1:26; 11:21,24; Ga 4:8); (2) the inborn sense of propriety or morality (1Co 11:14; Ro 2:14); (3) birth or physical origin (Ga 2:15; Ro 2:27); (4) the sum of characteristics of a species or person, human (Jas 3:7), or Divine (2Pe 1:4); (5) a condition acquired or inherited ('/Ephesians/2/3/type/juliasmith'>Eph 2:3, 'by nature children of wrath'). What is contrary to nature is condemned. While the term is not found or the conception made explicit in the OT, Schultz (OT Theol. ii. 74) finds in the Law 'the general rule that nothing is to be permitted contrary to the delicate sense of the inviolable proprieties of nature,' and gives a number of instances (Ex 23:19; 34:26; Le 22:28; 19:19; De 22:9-11; Le 10:9; 19:28; 21:5; 22:24; De 14:1; 23:2). The beauty and the order of the world are recognized as evidences of Divine wisdom and power (Ps 8:1; 19:1; 33:6-7; 90:2; 104; 136:6 ff., Ps 147; Pr 8:22-30; Job 38; 39); but the sum of created things is not hypostatized and personified apart from God, as in much current modern thinking. God is Creator, Preserver, and Ruler: He makes all (Isa 44:24; Am 4:13), and is in all (Ps 139). His immanence is by His Spirit (Ge 1:2). Jesus recognizes God's bounty and care in the flowers of the field and the birds of the air (Mt 6:26,28); He uses natural processes to illustrate spiritual, in salt (Mt 5:13), seed and soil (Mt 13:3-9), and leaven (Mt 13:33). The growth of the seed is also used as an illustration by Paul (1Co 15:37-38). There is in the Bible no interest in nature apart from God, and the problem of the relation of God to nature has not yet risen on the horizon of the thought of the writers.
Alfred E. Garvie.
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And the earth was desolation and emptiness, and darkness over the face of the deep: and the spirit of God moved over the face of the waters.
The sacrifice of the first fruits of thy land thou shalt bring to the house of Jehovah thy God. Thou shalt not boil a kid in his mother's milk.
The first of the first fruits of thy land thou shalt bring to the house of Jehovah thy God. Thou shalt not boil a kid in his mother's milk.
Wine and strong drink thou shalt not drink, thou and thy sons with thee, in your going in to the tent of appointment; and ye shall not die: a law forever to your generations.
My laws shall ye watch: thou shalt not let thy cattle gender with two diverse kinds: thy field thou shalt not sow with two diverse kinds; and a garment of two diverse kinds (of linen and woolen) shall not come upon thee.
And ye shall not give an incision for the soul in your flesh, and a mark of stigma ye shall not give upon you: I Jehovah.
With baldness, they shall not make baldness upon their head, and they shall not shave the extremity of their beard: and in their flesh they shall not cut incisions.
And the bruised, and the smitten, and the torn, and the cut, ye shall not bring to Jehovah, and ye shall not do in your land.
And an ox or a sheep, it and its son, thou shalt not slaughter in one day.
Ye the sons of Jehovah your God: ye shall not cut yourselves, and ye shall not put baldness between your eyes for the dead.
Thou shalt not sow thy vineyard with a diversity, lest the fulness of thy seed which thou shalt sow shall be consecrated, and the produce of the vineyard. Thou shalt not plough with an ox and ass together. read more. Thou shalt not put on any thing adulterated, wool and linen together.
The corrupted shall not come in to the gathering of Jehovah; also the tenth generation to him shall not come into the gathering of Jehovah.
To the overseer upon the stringed instrument, chanting of David. O Jehovah our Lord, how mighty thy name in all the earth! who will set thy majesty over the heavens.
To the overseer; chanting of David. The heavens recounting the glory of God, and the firmament announcing the work of his hands.
By the word of Jehovah the heavens were made, and by the spirit of his mouth all their army. He heaped up the waters of the sea as a mound: he gave the depths into storehouses.
Before the mountains were born, and the earth shall be begun, and the habitable globe, and from forever even to forever, thou art God.
Jehovah set me up the beginning of his way, before his works from ancient time. From forever I was knit together, from the beginning, from the first of the earth. read more. In no depths was I begun; in no fountains abundant in waters. Before the mountains were settled; before the hills I had a beginning: Yet he made not the earth and the fields, and the head of the clods of the habitable globe. In his preparing the heavens I was there: in his inscribing a circle upon the face of the deep: In his making firm the clouds from above: in his strengthening the fountains of the deep: In his setting his law to the sea, and the waters shall not pass by his mouth; in his making firm the foundations of the earth: And I shall be near him the builder, and I shall be a delight of day, day, smiling before him in all time
Thus said Jehovah redeeming thee, and forming thee from the belly, I am Jehovah making all; stretching forth the heavens alone; spreading out the earth from myself:
For behold, he forming the mountains and creating the wind, and announcing to man his meditation, making the morning darkness and treading upon the heights of the earth, Jehovah, God of armies his name
Ye are the salt of the earth: and if the salt be rendered insipid, with what shall it be salted? it is yet strong for nothing, except to be cast without, and to be trodden under foot of men.
Look ye upon the fowls of heaven; for they neither sow, nor reap, nor collect into stores; and your heavenly Father nourishes them. Do ye not rather differ from them
And about dress, why are ye anxious? Consider the white lilies of the field, how they grow; they are not wearied, neither do they spin:
And he spake to them many things in parables, saying, Behold, he, the sower, went forth to sow. And in his sowing some truly fell by the way, and the flying things came and swallowed them down. read more. And others fell upon rocky places where it had not much earth, and quickly it sprang forth, for it had no depth of earth. And the sun having risen, it was parched up; and for the not having a root, it was dried up. And others fell among thorns, and the thorns came up and choked them. And others fell upon good earth and gave fruit, some truly a hundred, and some sixty, and some thirty. He having ears to hear let him hear.
Another parable spake he to them; The kingdom of the heavens is like to leaven, which a woman having taken, hid in three measures of wheaten flour, till the whole was leavened.
Therefore God delivered them to the suffering of ignominy: for also their females changed the natural use into that against generation:
For when nations, not having the things of the law, by nature do the things of the law, these, not having the law, are law to themselves:
And shall not uncircumcision by nature, completing the law, judge thee, which by letter and circumcision a transgressor of the law?
For if God spared not the young shoots according to nature, how will he either spare thee
For if thou according to nature wert cut out of the wild olive tree, and against nature wert grafted into the cultivated olive tree: how much more these, according to nature, shall be grafted into their own olive tree
Does not nature itself teach you, that, if a man truly have long hair, it is a dishonour to him?
And what thou sowest, thou sowest not the body going to be, but the naked kernel, if perhaps of wheat, or some of the rest: And God gives it a body as he would, and to each of the seed its own body.
We by nature Jews, and not sinners from the nations,
But then truly, not having known God, ye were in a servile condition to them not being gods by nature.
Among whom also we then all occupied ourselves in the eager desire? of our flesh, doing the wills of the flesh and the thoughts; and were by nature children of wrath, as also the rest.
For every nature of beasts, and also of birds, of creeping things, and also of things in the sea, is tamed, and has been tamed by the nature of man:
(By which the greatest and precious promises are bestowed upon us: that by these ye might be having escaped from the corruption in the world through eager desires.)
Morish
The inherent qualities of a being manifested in the various characteristics which mark and display its existence: the aggregate of such qualities is what is termed its nature, and one class or order of being is thus distinguished from another. Men by nature are the children of wrath, Eph 2:3; whereas the Christian becomes morally partaker of the divine nature, 2Pe 1:4; of which love is the characteristic: he is made partaker of God's holiness. Heb 12:10. The work of God in the Christian which forms his nature thus finds its expression in him. The Creator can design and predicate the nature of a being before that being has an actual existence in fact; but we, as creatures, can discern the nature only from the existent being, and cannot therefore rightly speak of the nature save as characteristic of the being.
Nature is also a term descriptive of the vast system of created things around us, to each part of which the Creator has given not only its existence, but its use, its order, its increase, its decay
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Does not nature itself teach you, that, if a man truly have long hair, it is a dishonour to him?
Among whom also we then all occupied ourselves in the eager desire? of our flesh, doing the wills of the flesh and the thoughts; and were by nature children of wrath, as also the rest.
For they truly for a few days, according as it seemed to them, corrected; but he for profit, in order to partake in his holiness.
(By which the greatest and precious promises are bestowed upon us: that by these ye might be having escaped from the corruption in the world through eager desires.)
Watsons
NATURE. In Scripture the word nature expresses the orderly and usual course of things established in the world. St. Paul says, to ingraft a good olive tree into a wild olive is contrary to nature, Ro 11:24; the customary order of nature is thereby in some measure inverted. Nature is also put for natural descent: "We who are Jews by nature," by birth, "and not Gentiles," Ga 2:15. "We were by nature the children of wrath," Eph 2:3. Nature also denotes common sense, natural instinct: "Doth not even nature itself teach you, that if a man have long hair, it is a shame to him?" 1Co 11:14.
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For if thou according to nature wert cut out of the wild olive tree, and against nature wert grafted into the cultivated olive tree: how much more these, according to nature, shall be grafted into their own olive tree
Does not nature itself teach you, that, if a man truly have long hair, it is a dishonour to him?
We by nature Jews, and not sinners from the nations,
Among whom also we then all occupied ourselves in the eager desire? of our flesh, doing the wills of the flesh and the thoughts; and were by nature children of wrath, as also the rest.