Genesis 2:4-25 • Specifics about the creation of man and woman

• Today's passage is a longer one so I'm going to break it up into chunks...

Gen 2:4-25 → 4This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made earth and heaven.

• Some think this section is a time period subsequent to the 6 days of creation. I'm not of that mindset. I believe that the core of this passage is just details about the sixth day that give us more insight into all that was happening specifically with mankind.

5Now no shrub of the field was yet in the earth, and no plant of the field had yet sprouted, for the LORD God had not sent rain upon the earth, and there was no man to cultivate the ground. 6But a mist used to rise from the earth and water the whole surface of the ground.

• We had talked about the greenhouse effect when we looked at Day 2, and that rain is never mentioned until the flood later in Genesis. There are several different ideas as to what is meant it talks about there being "no shrub" and "no plant".

1 → this is just a rehashing of the time pre-Day 3, where there were no plants. We will see other flash-backs in this passage.

2 → this is just telling us that while plants were already created, none of them have had the chance to replicate themselves yet.

3 → this is narrowing down the focus, to the plants that eventually will be grown specifically to be harvested by men, raised farm-style, rather than just from what is growing naturally.

4 → this passage is referring specifically to the plants that will be in the Garden of Eden.

• So there are several different ideas as to what this specifically refers to, but I tend to lean toward option 1, as it seems to me to be the option that requires the least amount of work to defend.

7Then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.

• So we discover a little bit more in the details at this point about the creation of man. Specifically, that when God "spoke" man into existence, He didn't create man from nothing, but rather, molded him from something else that God had already made. Dirt! I can just see God shaping a man from clay, molding, twisting, and even trimming until the shape He desired was finished. Then God performed CPR on the man, breathing into him life. How intimate a picture of God giving us life. He wasn't just "out there somewhere" commanding us to get up and get to work, but rather crafted us with His own hands, and then breathed His own breath into us.

8The LORD God planted a garden toward the east, in Eden; and there He placed the man whom He had formed. 9Out of the ground the LORD God caused to grow every tree that is pleasing to the sight and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

• Details about our initial home. The garden of Eden. A forest filled with beautiful ("pleasing to the sight") and life preserving ("good for food") trees. With two extra-special trees thrown in for good measure - the "tree of life" and the "tree of the knowledge of good and evil". More on these trees in a bit.

10Now a river flowed out of Eden to water the garden; and from there it divided and became four rivers. 11The name of the first is Pishon; it flows around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold. 12The gold of that land is good; the bdellium and the onyx stone are there. 13The name of the second river is Gihon; it flows around the whole land of Cush. 14The name of the third river is Tigris; it flows east of Assyria. And the fourth river is the Euphrates.

• Location of the garden of Eden... the text lists 4 rivers that flow OUT of the garden. Two of them are unknown to us today, Pishon and Gihon. The text shows them to be in Havilah and Cush respectively, both names known to us, but it's not clear that the places we know with those names are the ones in question. Havilah, as we would know today, would have probably been is southern Arabia, while Cush we would know as an area of Egypt, but neither of those places would fit with the sources of the other two rivers, Tigris and Euphrates, both of which we know the exact locations of to this day. Of course, this would have been pre-flood, so who knows what the land actually looked like at that time. Both of these rivers currently have their source in the country of Turkey. As Mt. Ararat is also in Turkey (where Noah's ark settled after the flood), it seems likely that this is where the garden of Eden would have been also. But it's exact location is not important to us today.

15Then the LORD God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it. 16The LORD God commanded the man, saying, “From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; 17but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.”

• So God puts man into the garden and gave him a job. "Cultivate it and keep it". The garden wasn't just a live-in food pantry. Man was charged by God with the upkeep of the place. It was a farm!

• The one caveat - "from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat,...". No ifs, ands, or buts. Keep your hands OFF of that tree. Or more specifically, don't eat of it. He's not told to not touch it, but in my mind it would have been probably best to stay as far away from that tree as possible.

• Man is also told "for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die." Now put yourself in man's shoes for a minute. He's not even a day old yet and now he's got to deal with the concept of death. How in the world would he even know what that was? We've got to assume from several things in today's passage that he was created with some innate knowledge and understanding because he doesn't have to go through the prolonged learning curve that our babies experience today, but still, not having seen what death looks like, how would he be able to understand this consequence? Somehow, I think that God would have had to explain to him more specifically what that meant. We are only told enough to know he was given the warning. By the time this text was written down, mankind already had a full understanding about death.

• Ironically, at this time there is no restriction to the "tree of life". A restriction for that tree WILL be set after the fall of man.

18Then the LORD God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make him a helper suitable for him.” 19Out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the sky, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called a living creature, that was its name. 20The man gave names to all the cattle, and to the birds of the sky, and to every beast of the field, but for Adam there was not found a helper suitable for him.

• The first time that God says something is "not good" is when He sees man being alone. In order for "Adam" to understand this, God brought some of each of the animals and birds to him to name, the assumption being that God was bringing to Adam a pair of each so that he could understand that he was alone. This would be the previously created birds from day 5 and the previously created animals from earlier on day 6.

• A special note on the animals and birds - God molded them also "out of the ground".

• OBTW, this is also the first mention of the name "Adam", but the interesting thing is that "Adam" and "man" to this point are all from the same Hebrew word, "adam".

21So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then He took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh at that place. 22The LORD God fashioned into a woman the rib which He had taken from the man, and brought her to the man. 23The man said,

“This is now bone of my bones,

And flesh of my flesh;

She shall be called Woman,

Because she was taken out of Man.”

• So Adam isn't 24 hours old yet, and God does yet another medical procedure on him to take out one of his ribs. God then turns that rib into a woman. Whereas the man was created from something else that God had created (dirt), God then again creates something, the woman, out of something else He had created, the man!

• Adam's declaration of his understanding of what had happened is clear. God had created a "helper" for him. The context of this word doesn't indicate that she was to be his servant, but rather his partner. She wasn't designed to work for him, but rather, with him.

• The Hebrew word for "woman" is ishshah, but the word for "man" at the end of verse 23 is ish. A sort of play on words in Hebrew.

24For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh. 25And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.

• So we see in these last 2 verses that the pattern moving forward is that a man will be joined to his wife, male and female, and will be considered as one complete unit by themselves. And, at least in their pre-sin state, were unashamed at being naked in front of each other.

• Thinking about this example, of the partnership, of the interconnectedness, of the two individuals, different but complimentary, sets a high standard for married relationships for us. Honest, open, nothing hidden from each other. Connected eternally in a bond of oneness, a part of each other. Never complete without each other. Let us strive to think of our spouses as a necessary, rather, an indispensable component of our lives.

Photo → 9/17/2024 • Whitney Portal, Lone Pine, CA