Genesis 02

Updated
2001-05-26; 14:31:29utc

But the best is still to come. We will see in ch.2:2,3 that God instituted the Sabbath, the day of rest and enjoyment. Part of chapter 2 is a recapitulation of the first chapter. Moses goes over some of the details and explains what happens. There is no reason to believe that we are dealing with a different source here than in chapter one. There is no repetition. Some parts of the picture are enlarged.

Vs.1 starts out by saying: "Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array." The KJV and RSV say"and all the host of them." The reference is probably to the whole universe with all its constellations.

Then comes the seventh day. This seventh day, the Sabbath, runs as a scarlet thread throughout the whole Bible. The fall into sin changes the character of the Sabbath completely. From a day of rest and what we would now call "recreation," (a remarkable word in this context) it becomes a forced remembrance of what could have been. We find countless references to the Sabbath in the Pentateuch. Trespassing the Sabbath was punishable by death. In Numbers we read the story of a man who gathered wood on the Sabbath and was put to death on account of his deed.[ 1 ]Jesus ran into trouble with the authorities about the Sabbath. It was probably the main cause for His death.

In the epistle to the Hebrews the writer brings out the spiritual significance of the Sabbath for us New Testament Christians. He comes to the following conclusion: "There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; For anyone who enters God's rest also rests from his own work, just as God did from his."[ 2 ]The realization and full enjoyment of our salvation in Jesus Christ runs parallel with God's experience of rest and enjoyment after He finished the work of creation. The creation of planet earth reflects the new creation in Jesus Christ. There is a subtle danger that we do not enjoy what we possess. In the book of Ecclesiastes Solomon says: "I know that there is nothing better for men than to be happy and do good while they live. That everyone may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all his toil; this is the gift of God."[ 3 ]

In creating the Sabbath God gives us an example as to how to experience the joy of living. Joy is a divine characteristic, a part of the image He has shared with us. There is a lot of emphasis throughout the Bible on joy as an integral element of the life of a child of God. The devil has come up with all kinds of surrogates to substitute for the real thing. This has warped our conception of the function of joy in our lives. There is no real joy outside God.

The following quotations are just a few examples of the role joy should play in the life of a Christian:

- Nehemiah said, "Go and enjoy choice food and sweet drinks, and send some to those who have nothing prepared. This day is sacred to our Lord. Do not grieve, for the joy of the LORD is your strength."[ 4 ]

- David said: "But let all who take refuge in you be glad; let them ever sing for joy. Spread your protection over them, that those who love your name may rejoice in you."[ 5 ]

- Jesus said in John's Gospel: "I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete."[ 6 ]

- And: "Until now you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask and you will receive, and your joy will be complete."[ 7 ]

- And again: "I am coming to you now, but I say these things while I am still in the world, so that they may have the full measure of my joy within them.[ 8 ]

In Matthews Gospel Jesus declares himself "Lord of the Sabbath." "For the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath."And in Mark we read: "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath."[ 9 ]

Sin has completely distorted our perception of this point. This all has a special application to the joy of our salvation, of which the Sabbath is a picture. We enter into God's rest, which means that we enjoy our salvation. The expression originates with David, who says in the Psalms: "Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me."[ 10 ]His fall into sin had taken the joy out of it.

Many people are saved by the grace of God and go through life without rejoicing in it. That is why Paul admonished his disciples in Philippi: "Finally, my brothers, rejoice in the Lord! It is no trouble for me to write the same things to you again, and it is a safeguard for you. Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!"[ 11 ] We should all keep the Sabbath!

There is a lot more to say about this. Obviously the Old Testament command in Exodus, "Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates. For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy," does not apply in the New Testament. All the commandments of the Ten Commandments are repeated in the New Testament, with the exception of this one.

It seems to me that chapter 2:1-4 actually is the end of the first chapter. Beginning with vs.5 Moses zooms in for some close-ups. The first one is about the condition of the earth. This must be a flash-back of the third day, in chapter 1:11-13. There we read that God did command the earth to bring forth vegetation: plants and trees. The importance of vs. 5 seems to be that it had not rained and that man had not yet made his appearance.

There is a theory in connection with the flood that rain was an unknown factor up to that time. The atmosphere may have been much heavier, creating high humidity and equal temperatures over the whole earth and there may have been vast underground water reservoirs. Ch. 7:10-12 seems to indicate such a situation: "And after the seven days the floodwaters came on the earth. In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, on the seventeenth day of the second month; on that day all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened. And rain fell on the earth forty days and forty nights."

The second absence mentioned is that of man. Here the Scripture goes back to ch. 1:26,27. The obvious intent is to lead into the story of vs. 7 of how man was created, which was not recorded in detail in the previous chapter.

Scientists have been puzzled by the striking similarity between mans' anatomy and that of animals, especially certain species. It is mainly out of this similarity that the theory of evolution was born. The answer that both were made by the same God, leaves too many questions unanswered. After all God made the trees too and the analogy is completely absent there.

If we compare ch. 1:24 with ch. 2:7, we see that the basic material for the creation of land animals and man is the same. Ch. 1:24 says "And God said, 'Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: livestock, creatures that move along the ground, and wild animals, each according to its kind.' And it was so." But in vs. 7 we read: "The LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being."

In my opinion this leaves open the possibility that God would have used one of the existing animals and added to him His own Spirit, thus making him a man created in His image. The phrase 'and the man became a living being' seems to indicate more than that there was a dead body lying on the earth, and that it came to life after God had breathed into his nostrils. The Hebrew seems to indicate spiritual life not just physical. As we mentioned before, such a creation would not be the result of a process of evolution. The way our text puts it there was no slow seeping of God's Spirit into man resulting in a growing awareness of self. This is a revolution similar to the resurrection from the dead of our Lord Jesus Christ. This hypothesis would explain the absence of the "missing link," for which the evolutionists are still searching. So maybe man does have an ape in his ancestry. Who knows!? I am inclined to think that some scientists do!

From what we read in vs. 18-23 we understand that God created a male human being and that the female was taken out of the man. This could be an indication of the probability of the above hypothesis. There would be a definite chain of events, if God would have taken an existing animal to make a male human being and then make a female out of the male. It seems to me that if God did use an existing animal to create Adam, this would in no way diminish his intrinsic value, in the same way that Eve's creation out of Adam makes her no less than her husband. Most of this will remain a mystery to all of us till we receive the answers above.

In verse 8-14 we are given a description of mans' future home. It sounds as if in the wealth and riches of the whole of the planet God had created, He chose a special spot for man to live. Moses indicates the location as being "in the East, in Eden." The only thing this tells us is that Moses was West of it. We do not know when Moses worked on the material for the book we know as Genesis. It could be that he had started on it before his encounter with YHWY at the burning bush in Exodus.[ 12 ]He could have been in Midian, or maybe even in Egypt. There is no record that he would ever have been East of the place which is the traditional site of paradise. Of the four rivers mentioned (Pishon, Gihon, Tigris and Euphrates), only the last two are still existing and called by the same name. But these four were not the rivers that flowed through Paradise itself. We probably make a mistake if we place Paradise somewhere between the Tigris and the Euphrates. It is more likely that the actual site was more to the North, toward what we now call Turkey. This would mean that Noah's ark, which landed on mount Ararat, according to ch. 8:4 ("And on the seventeenth day of the seventh month the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat") had not drifted too far from the cradle of man. The name of the original river that flowed through Paradise is not mentioned. But the praise of the first of the headwaters is song in the verses 11,12."The name of the first is the Pishon; it winds through the entire land of Havilah, where there is gold. ("The gold of that land is good; aromatic resin and onyx are also there.)" The flood must have changed the face of the earth considerably. And it is quite possible that the original Paradise mountain disappeared when the waters of the deep reservoirs burst open. There is an almost mythological suggestion that the gold and aromatic resin that could still be found in the land of Havilah in Moses' days, originated from Paradise. The suggestion is, that if what is left of it is still so good, how good must the whole garden have been!

In vs.15-17 we see how God places man in the garden and gives to him the use of all the trees. In ch. 1:29 we saw already that all the seed bearing plants, that is all sorts of grain, was included in man's diet also. The intent of the mention of the trees is obviously to focus on the two main trees in Paradise: "theTree of Life " and "the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil ." The NIV places both trees in the middle of the garden. The KJV and RSV seem to give a more prominent place to the "tree of life." ("The Tree of Life also in the midst of the garden, and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil .") This slight shade of difference may be an important distinction. "The midst of the garden" could not be determined by calculating the distance between the boundaries; there was no fence. So the center must have been the most prominent place because of its beauty or because everything else seemed to lead towards it. And there was "the Tree of Life ." I think it is important to state this because later Eve will tell the serpent that "the tree of knowledge of good and evil" was in the center of the garden. (Ch. 3:3). This slight shift in position seems to be a shift in emphasis. As if "the tree of knowledge" all of a sudden had gained more prominence than "the Tree of Life ."

At this point nothing further is said about "the Tree of Life." God commands man not to eat from "the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil ," but he is allowed to eat freely from all the other trees, including "the Tree of Life ." It is only after man has sinned that "the tree of life" is out of bounds for him. In ch. 3:22 we read: "And the LORD God said, 'The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the Tree of Life and eat, and live forever.' "From this last verse we learn that something of eternal consequence would have happened to man would he have eaten from "the Tree of Life " first. There is no indication that God gave any instruction regarding this tree. But we may suppose that Adam and Eve both knew the name of the tree and so they could have asked themselves the question what the tree stood for. We know that eating from "the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil " separated man from God eternally and death entered to reign. Eating from "the Tree of Life " would most likely have had to opposite effect. It would have bonded man to God in a relationship of eternal love and life would have reigned eternally. In as much as eating from "the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil " was a matter of choice, so eating of "the tree of life" would have been a definite choice also. God meant man to enter into a special relationship with Him by choice. And for reasons we cannot determine now, man never made that choice while he had the opportunity.

The question could be asked if these two trees were real trees or whether they were only symbols that stood for spiritual truths. I believe they were real trees and that they were loaded with real fruit that could be eaten. Since man is a unity of the spiritual and physical, our spiritual choices are always expressed in physical acts. What mattered in the act of eating was not the eating but the choice. Adam and Eve chose not to eat from 'the tree of life,' just as they chose to disregard God's command and eat from 'the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil .' Humanly speaking God must have waited with bated breath to see what man would do. He wanted him to come and choose to love his Creator and surrender to Him.

Love is always based upon choice. We cannot be commanded to love. Love that is forced upon us is not love. In spite of the ideal conditions in which Adam and Eve lived and the open communication they had with God, they never told Him that they loved Him. From our perspective this is hard to understand. Again, humanly speaking, it must have been hard for God to understand also. It is true that in Deuteronomy we find the commandment: "Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength,"[ 13 ] but this was because sin had taken away man's liberty to choose. In our present condition it is a command that cannot be obeyed unless the Holy Spirit creates this love in us. We find, however, that on a human level love is a matter of choice. This must have been the original intent when God created man in His image and likeness. For man who has been redeemed by Jesus Christ, his love is the answer to the love of God for him. As John: "We love because he first loved us."[ 14 ]

In vs.17 God warns man against the consequences of eating of "the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil." The NIV sounds rather weak when it says"But you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil." Both the KJV and the RSV are stronger in saying "But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it"(KJV), and "But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat" (RSV). Death was, of course, an unknown entity for man at that point. But he must have had some premonition of what it would be to die.

Here again something is lost in the NIV's rendering "for when you eat of it you will surely die." Both KJV and RSV say: "for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die" (KJV); "for in the day that you eat of it you shall die" (RSV). It was the very day they ate that death entered, although physically they remained alive for years.

Vs.18-23 paints the picture of the first romance in the Bible. We read already in 1:27 that God created man as male and female. This meant, first of all, that initially man was a combination of male and female. It does not state specifically that God created Eve on the sixth day. But we may presume that Eve came upon the scene before the Sabbath. So vs.18 and following are a flash-back of the sixth day. The creation of Eve was no afterthought. When we read in vs.18 "The LORD God said, 'It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him,' " it is not as if God had overlooked this detail of His creation.

The beauty of these verses is in the way God goes about making Adam aware of his need and putting in him the desire to have a companion. It was God's idea that Adam should have Eve. But the idea came to Adam was as if it was his own. I wonder how long it took Adam to catch on. It often takes us a long time before we realize that our good desires come from God.

For the first time in the story of creation we read that God says: "It is not good." Six times we read in chapter 1 that God pronounced something good. (vs. 4,10,12,18,21,25). But here God calls Adam's loneliness "not good." This does not mean, of course, that at this point sin had crept in already. The "not good" indicates that Adam's awareness had not come to full maturity yet.

The ultimate purpose was not that Adam would have a wife. He was alone because he had not yet come into a full and perfect fellowship with His Creator. God wanted Him to get married in order to develop a taste for this fellowship on the human level so that he would want to progress into the perfect fellowship with God, of which the human relationship would be a shadow. At the end of this section we read: "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh." (vs.24). Paul quotes this same verse in Ephesians: "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. This is a profound mystery; but I am talking about Christ and the church."[ 15 ]The ultimate purpose of the experience of human fellowship, especially within the bonds of marriage, is to know God, to love Him and to be united to Him.

Another aspect of the "it is not good" is that Adam had not developed the desire for this kind of fellowship yet. And from the rest of the story we know that he never came to this point. God created Adam with the seed of perfect fellowship in him, which was to grow to full maturity. "No good" in this instance, means "not fully matured." God meant Adam to grow so that he would come to the place where his desires were the same as God's desires. The way this is to be developed is through a learning process of intelligent discovery.

Vs.19 shows us the first school in the Bible. God lets Adam attend a seminar where he is confronted with the world in which he lives and where he begins to learn where he is and who he is and where he studies how to relate to fellow creatures.

The first thing he discovers is that he is not alone. He is surrounded by creatures who were born the same day he was. He also learns that he is superior to the other creatures and that he has authority over them. He becomes their leader and gives them names. This giving of names includes more than sticking a label of identification on each of the creatures, but it probably means that they are assigned a place and a task in God's creation by Adam. It is hard to imagine what this first organization of the animal world included, but it is obvious that Adam occupied the most important place in this.

It is in the understanding of the similarity between himself and the animals that surrounded him that he realizes that they have something he does not possess. They consist of pairs but he is alone. That is where the desire to have a female companion awakens in him. He must have recognized the difference between male and female among the animals and identified himself as a male. So the question arose "where is my female?"

He will have asked this question of God. And God answered the first prayer that was ever sent up by man to Him. This first prayer ever uttered by man teaches us a lot about the principle of prayer. Prayer starts by God. It was God who said: "It is not good for the man to be alone" (2:18). Through the leading of the Holy Spirit man became aware of the fact "It is not good for me to be alone," and He asks God for a helpmate. So through prayer man becomes what God intends him to be.

We will find this underlying principle in every prayer made according to the will of God. Here, it is the basis of the first great miracle in the creation of human relationships both with fellow man and God. In the life of each individual this principle is repeated again and again. At some point in the life of a young man or woman, the thought comes that he or she is alone. This thought is of divine origin. Sin has altered the situation considerably in that not every individual will turn this growing awareness into a prayer. So in many cases relationships will not develop according to the will of God.

Sin has also created a situation where marriage will sometimes be superseded by the needs of the kingdom of heaven. Jesus says: "For some are eunuchs because they were born that way; others were made that way by men; and others have renounced marriage because of the kingdom of heaven. The one who can accept this should accept it."[ 16 ] But this is the exception, not the rule. If we are exceptional people, we should know this. But in most cases people will get married simply because they fall in love or they recognize the urge of the body without understanding why they feel this way. Only the praying Christian knows what he is doing when he marries and he can understand why he does it. Marriage where God is left out is not marriage in the real sense of the word. The shipwrecks we see all around us testify to this.

Vs.21 and 22 picture for us the first operation on a human body. God Himself is the surgeon. It is an unusual act in many respects. Although there is great similarity between operations performed by human surgeons on human bodies, nothing like this has ever happened since. First, man is put under anesthesia. This probably means that Adam had a capacity for pain even in his sinless body. Then part of the body is removed: one rib. We cannot say that God cloned Adam because the human being that is built out of this rib is not an exact copy of Adam. As a matter of fact she is different and in many respects she is his opposite. Calvin supposed that since man and women have an equal number of ribs, originally Adam must have possessed one more than men do at present. Not being a medically trained person, I cannot say anything authoritative about this. At an earlier age I had heard that men have one more rib than women, but that turned out to be a folkloric tradition. What God does with Adam is unique. There is no indication that when God created animals, that are in many respects akin to man, he created the male ones first and then produced females out of them. In the account in ch. 1:24,25 we read that God ordered the earth to produce animals and in the preceding verse the order is given to the fish and the birds to be fruitful. All this makes us believe that God created them in different sexes so they were able to reproduce immediately. But in Adam's case God includes Eve in him at his creation then separates her from her husband and orders them to become "one flesh" again.

The obvious intent is that God wants Adam to be aware of what is going on and how different his relationship with Eve is in comparison with that of two animals of different sexes. Everything seems to point in the direction of a willing, conscious relationship in which both parties understand the mystery and are able to enjoy it. When God introduces Adam to his wife, he recognizes her immediately, not only as being of the same species as he is, but as part of himself. Parents have a similar experience when they see their child being born. They say to themselves: "This is part of me," and that creates a bond that is unparalleled in all other human relationships. We still do not fully understand who we are, and we have only scratched the surface of the mystery of the marriage bond. But we learn that this is part of what it means to be created in the image and likeness of God. "Male and female created He them!"

Adam had spent the day giving names and designated places for animals. When he sees Eve, he realizes that his work is not finished yet. The Hebrew word for "man" is Ish and Adam calls Eve ishshah which literally means "she-man." So Adam is the 'he-man' and Eve becomes the "she-man." Since the naming of animals included a designation, we may presume that the giving of the name "ishshah" implied a certain task also. Unfortunately things went wrong before we had a chance to find out what it was.

Vs.24"For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh," is quoted four times in Scripture. In Matthew: "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh"[ 17 ]In Mark: "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, And the two will become one flesh.' So they are no longer two, but one." [ 18 ]Paul says: "Do you not know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in body? For it is said, 'The two will become one flesh.' "[ 19 ]And in Ephesians we read: "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh."[ 20 ]With the exception of what the Apostle Paul writes to the Corinthians, all references are positives affirmation of the bond of marriage.

From the quote in First Corinthians, we understand that sexual intercourse plays a decisive part in this unity. This does not mean, of course, that the unity of marriage is mainly physical. The physical part is an expression of the totality of unity. Paul's argument is that prostitution involves more than a "one night stand," but that a man, who goes to a prostitute pollutes himself with the whole world she represents.

The quote in vs. 24 could hardly have been pronounced by Adam himself. It would have been impossible for him at this point to see himself as the parent of a child that would leave him and Eve to marry another human being. The words are obviously an interjection by Moses to trace the riches of the heritage of human marriage. Here is where it all began.

Vs.25 is probably a similar interjection. Adam and Eve knew no shame, because shame is the fruit of sin and sin had not entered their lives yet. These words were written by someone who was fully dressed and who had lost the sense of innocence his parents possessed. Even in our present condition shame between husband and wife is overcome by love. And so we could interpret the words of this verse as an indication that Adam and Eve loved each other.

Here ends our study on creation and the beginning of the human race. Here also end the era of innocence, beauty and Paradise.

[ 1 ] Num.15:32-36

[ 2 ] Hebr.4:9,10

[ 3 ] Eccl.3:13

[ 4 ] Neh. 8:10

[ 5 ] Psalms 5:11

[ 6 ] John 15:11

[ 7 ] John 16:24

[ 8 ] John 17:13

[ 9 ] Mark 2:27

[ 10 ] Ps. 51:12

[ 11 ] Phil.3:1; 4:4

[ 12 ] See Ex.3

[ 13 ] Deut. 6:5

[ 14 ] I John 4:19

[ 15 ] Eph. 5:31,32

[ 16 ] Matt.19:12

[ 17 ] Matt 19:5

[ 18 ] Mark 10:7,8

[ 19 ] I Cor. 6:16

[ 20 ] Eph 5:31