Chapter 2
(I had hoped that my reading time would be shorter once I got back to the OT. But so far, that hasn't happened.)
The seventh day declared as holy, because God rested that day.
2024 - He rested. He let things run themselves that day? No. He didn't rest from being God, he rested from creation, from making new things that had never existed before.
Then we seem to go backwards in time, and focus on particular aspects of creation. The framework of it all has been described. Now we will see some more detail within that larger whole. Vs 4 introduces this by referring to the "generations" of the heavens and the earth. This implies progression. It implies passing time. Generations of heaven and earth. No plant or animal life is mentioned in this introduction. Then, interestingly, the creation of man is what is described next.
2024 - Vss 1-4 might describe the beginning of agriculture. There were no "shrubs of the field" or "plant of the field". Why? Because these have to be tended. They are not wild. They require care, and there was no man to care for them. Man does that. Man tended the plants - worked at farming - from his creation onward. Once man was around, Eden, with agricultural plants, was placed. Doesn't say new plants were created for Eden but that God planted that place as a GARDEN. It had trees and plants planted by God as food for the man and the woman.
Vvs 5, 6 are mysterious to me. Nothing was growing "springing up" because there was no rain, yet the ground did get some water. Man is created before it ever began to rain. The mist that was coming up was watering the whole face of the ground...yet all vegetation was concentrated in Eden? Not sure I'm on the right track there. Hmm....There is a note that says "field" in vs 5 could mean open land. Perhaps all the trees and animals on land were confined to a fairly restricted geologic area. It didn't say they "filled" the land at all. Doesn't say that plants did either. Is very specific that birds did not fill. So maybe there was the garden of Eden, and nothing outside it but that original dirt from which water had been concentrated. Within that one area, there was food and room for all, but as they multiplied, the garden needed to be expanded, and this didn't happen by itself. Man was created to aid in that expansion, to sow and to reap and provide more habitat for the expanding population of men and animals. Remember, Adam and Eve were also told to multiply. This fits with the next verses.
(2024 - The above paragraph is answered now by the 2024 paragraph above it.)
7 And the LORD God formed man [of] the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. [Gen 2:7 KJV]. God did this for us. He breathed His own breath into our lungs, and ignited the human soul. We were in his image. Nothing else could jump start us, except the breath of life straight from God. It cannot be started from a lightning-gathering contraption on top of Castle Frankenstein in Transylvania.
2021 - Man is created first (before woman). God "plants" a garden in Eden, in the east, and puts man there in that garden. This was a special area, created/designed/decorated/landscaped by God as the place for man. Eden was not just a random place. It was God's created perfection for man. A river flowed from the garden. It flowed "out of" Eden to water the garden. So...Eden proper was one thing, and a garden flowed from Eden into this garden that was on the east side of Eden, and this river then broke up and went down to Cush, Havilah, which is somewhere east of Egypt, where Saudi Arabia is today. And remember that topography may have been very different pre-flood. Saudi may not have been desert at all. With all that oil there...But I also think that Ophir and Havilah are associated geographically. I found this map, but it shows Havilah well south of Cush, and even further south - not east - of Egypt:
God specifically puts man in the "garden of Eden", not Eden itself, to work the land in the garden. Man's first job is to cultivate God's garden. One rule. One plant is off limits. Back in vs 9 we were told this tree was in the garden itself. Note that Adam had a job before the fall. Work is something men are meant to do. We are to be busy. This too separates us from the animals.
2025 - These verses: 16 And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, "You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, 17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die." [Gen 2:16-17 ESV]. It is very clear from this that Eve was not yet created when this order was given. The order was given to Adam. It would have been up to him to tell his wife what needed to be done. In a way, Adam was the mediator between God and Eve. He failed in this regard when sin came, because he joined her in it rather than atoning for her in some way. He decided that it was best to join her than to separate himself from her and remain faithful to God's command. Stated this way, we see the real magnitude of Adam's sin, we see why it is Adam that is considered responsible for sin. He chose between God and Eve. Later, we learn that a man is to leave his father and mother...so we see that Adam's choice was grounded in...or was the precedent for...the kind of self-sacrificing love God wants there to be between a man and woman. They shall become one flesh. How does one choose to go against one's own flesh? Adam was in a terrible spot, and surely Satan understood the difficulty Adam would be in.
God decides man needs a helper. Vs 19 says that all the living things - that breath - were formed out of the dirt. So God created dirt, and then "formed" every thing else from the dirt he'd created. So all that lives and breathes is created from what was created. The sea creatures though...I still don't get them. They don't breath though, not like land creatures. Adam names birds and land animals. But he does not name sea creatures and fish. These are kept separate, because they are not the same. Man needs some help. I don't know if the word implies companionship or "labor". If all the animals were named here, and each was being inspected to determine if it would be suitable as a helper, then no animal was "enough" to help man with all that he needed. The skills just were not there. So something new, custom made, was required.
2021 - Have animal been told to multiply? Not that I can see. He told sea creatures and birds to do so. But I don't see where he has told animals to do so up to this point. He told man to multiply back in 1:28. Perhaps there was to be a static condition for animals and man and woman? Things could have stayed just like they were, but for the fall.
Woman is not like the beasts. They are made of what was made. Woman was made of what was made of what was made. Other created breathing things were created male and female. Man was not. So the female of the human species has a different substance than all other females. Perhaps this is the origin of the mystery that the two become one flesh. Because they have their origin in one flesh, not in dirt. Not sure why intimacy invokes this mysterious relationship, but I think the origin of it is here.
Note vs 25. They were naked and unashamed. Had they yet been told to multiply? I know we saw it in Chapter 1, but in this more detailed account, we have not yet seen it.