Note
In Genesis 2:4, we see the word ‘account’ (Hebrew: toledot) for the first time. The word does not mean ‘account’ in the sense of a biography. A reader would be disappointed, for example, if he or she went looking for the story of Jacob under the heading ‘This is the account of Jacob’ (Genesis 37:2). For what follows is the story of Joseph, Judah and his brothers. Older versions used the word ‘generations’ to translate toledot. That is, the heading indicates the important line or lines of descendants of the person mentioned. It really refers to the ‘offspring’ or ‘children’ of the mentioned person; a narrow and selective account of his descendants. This line of descendants are important for the story of the book. The author of Genesis wants the reader to follow the story of a particular line of creatures produced from the heavens and earth – humans, the children of the universe!
Discussion Starter
Some Atheists, such as Peter Singer and Richard Dawkins, call the attitude that humans are special and distinct from the animal world, with special rights to rule over animals, ‘speciesism’ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speciesism). For them, it is like ‘racism’ or ‘sexism’, and a bad thing. What arguments can you give from your observations of the world against this view? What arguments can you give from Genesis 1 and 2 that human rule over the created order is God’s plan for it?
1. How would you describe relationship between Genesis 1:1-2:4 and Genesis 2:5-25?
Note
‘The first (chapter) presents a general description of the creative situation as a whole, the second (chapter) discusses one specific aspect of it (R K Harrison, Introduction to the Old Testament, 554). ‘In chapter 1 man is the pinnacle of the pyramid, in chapter 2 the centre of the circle’ (G Von Rad, Genesis A Commentary, 77, citing Benno Jacob). Chapter 2 focusses on events the events of Day 6, giving additional information. However, some say that Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 contradict each other. Consider:
(1) In Genesis 2:4, God’s covenant name Yahweh is used for the first time. Previously only the word for ‘God’ was used. However, this may point to the fact that Chapter 2 focuses on Yahweh’s relationship with humans. The covenant name of God is introduced where the relationship between God and humanity is spelt out in more detail.
(2) Genesis 1:11 says vegetation came from the earth before humans were created, on Day 3, whereas Genesis 2:4-5 says there were no ‘shrub’ or ‘plant’ ‘of the field’ because there was no rain and no humans to cultivate them. The solution may well lie in 2:4-5 mentioning a more limited type of vegetation related specifically to man. Some suggest the ‘shrubs of the field’ are plants requiring rain to germinate (perhaps the thorns and thistles of 3:18), and ‘plants of the field’ are grain crops, which in 3:18 the man will eat by the sweat of his brow. The mention of ‘fields’ (v5) and humans ‘working the ground’ (v5) suggests Genesis 2:5ff is speaking of the realm of human agriculture, and not the propagation of other seed-bearing plants in the wild, the topic of 1:11-13. A further solution may lie in Genesis 2:5ff referring to a more specific and restricted geographic location – ie the Garden of Eden, and not the world in general.
(3) Some say that Genesis 2:19-20 implies that God made man before God made the animals; whereas in Genesis 1:24-28 has God making man after God made the animals. However, Genesis 2:19-20 does not say God made man first. It merely states that Yahweh God formed them also out of the ground. The reference to the animals being formed from the ground shows their unity of origin with the man: both are formed from the ground (2:7, 19). Thus the question of whether animals can be helpers is introduced. Moreover, the animals mentioned in 2:19-20 seem to be the domestic animals – ‘beasts of the field’ and ‘livestock’ (and birds of the air, which are also relevant to agriculture) – whereas those mentioned in 1:24-25 are more extensive, including ‘wild animals’. It is possible that 2:19-20 refers to a separate and second creation of animals, but this is not necessary.
(4) The creation of male and female are mentioned together in 1:26-28, whereas in 2:21-25 the creation of the woman is a distinct act. This is not a great problem. What is described accurately but without detail in chapter 1 in the context of the creation of the heaven and earth is given in more detail in chapter 2 in the context of mankind in the garden. Chapter 1 pans out to allow the reader to appreciate the whole created order, with humanity as ruler. Chapter 2 focuses on humans in the garden. Nevertheless, even 1:26-27 is consistent with the pattern of ‘man first, then woman completing humanity’ (eg, in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them).
(5) Genesis 2:4-6 as it is translated suggests there has been no rain before the creation of the man. In that case, precipitation (whether globally or locally) only occurred following the creation of man. The source of the water was ‘streams’ (NIV, translating Hebrew ed) which came up from the earth. This would refer to springs or ‘streams’ of subterranean water. It then watered the ground from below and became the streams mentioned in verse 10. However, it is also possible that the word translated ‘stream’ may refer to vapour or fog (cf NIV mg ‘mist’), which leads to precipitation of a different type. The word ed is only used elsewhere in Job 36:27. An extension of this is the view that the statements in Genesis 2:4-6 may well be limited to the garden location and to seasonal variations in rainfall, rather than an absolute statement affecting the whole globe in an absolute sense up until that time. Eretz might mean ‘land’ here, and the lack of rain may refer to the dry season where there is no rain and thus no growth. If so, then God has not yet sent rain to the immediate eretz in the seasonal patterns that he has established in 1:14. If so, this isn’t necessarily a statement of what happened on the whole globe as eretz, but only in that particular land of Eden and only in relation to the season in which YHWH made man. One OT scholar says: ‘The weather pattern makes the ground quite dry and brown by the end of the summer and the coming of the rains brings about plant growth. The only way to overcome this natural pattern is for man to work the ground, by irrigation in this case. Thus our author points us to a particular time of year, when the rains had not yet come, and hence the plants had not yet begun to grow (and there was no man who could artificially water the ground); but a mist – or rain cloud – was just rising. At this time of year, in some place called “the land,” God formed the man.’: C John Collins, Genesis 1-4: A Linguistic, Literary, and Theological Commentary (Phillipsburg: Presbyterian & Reformed, 2006), 126-7
Read Genesis 2:4-25.
‘Man is a foreign imposition on the environment! He doesn’t add anything to it, but only takes away from it. Discuss, in the light of 2:5, 15.
What is the significance of man being formed from the dust of the ground? (verse 6)
Note
Genesis 2:5,7 literally reads ‘there was no adam to work the adamah ... Yahweh God formed the adam from the dust of the adamah’
4. What is the significance of God breathing into the formed man the breath of life? (verse 6)
Scour verses 4 to 17 to find how the garden which Yahweh provided for his people is described.
What is the relationship between the man and the garden in verses 4-17?
Thus far in Genesis, God’s ordering of creation is only described as ‘good’. Where is the break in that pattern?
What does the man’s naming of the animals say about their relationship? (verses 19-20)
What does the way Eve is created tell us about the relationship between the man and the woman? (verses 20-23; compare 1 Corinthians 11:7-12; 1 Timothy 2:12-13)
10. What is the significance of the man naming the woman? (verse 23)
In verses 21-25, how are the two (the man and woman) one flesh by virtue of their creation?
In what way/s do they become one flesh? (see 1:28; 2:24-25; 4:1,25; 5:1-3; Malachi 2:15; Matthew 19:4-9; Mark 10:1-12; 1 Corinthians 6:16-20; 11:7-12; Ephesians 5:22-33)
‘The sin of eating of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was really sex between the man and the woman.’ Do you agree with this statement? Why or why not?
From what we have read from the first two chapters of Genesis, can you respond from a Christian and biblical perspective to the following statements.
If I were God, I would have made it a holiday 24/7. Why do I have to work for a living?
Mate, I just don’t get women! They are from a different planet! They are completely different. Men are from Mars, women are from Venus.
Men and women are basically the same, except for the ‘plumbing’.
All this ‘wife submit to her husband’ stuff is very 50’s. They are created equal after all. What biblical reason could there possibly be for a husband to be the head of his family?
But it’s just sex. It doesn’t actually do anything. It doesn’t have to mean anything, if the parties agree it’s just a one-night stand.
But Steve and Alan love each other. Why can’t they express it in marriage, just like heterosexual couples?
What’s the big deal? It’s just a divorce. Happens every day.
Why are you condemning my relationship as unbiblical? The bible says it’s not good to be alone.
I don’t see why bestiality should still be a crime if homosexuality isn’t. Who am I to say what is right or wrong for people to do. They aren’t being cruel.
Why can’t we bring back nudity? It was there in the Garden of Eden!
What is man? what is woman? A bundle of cells? 90% water, or whatever it is, throw in a bit of carbon here and calcium there, and there you have it. Are we just a particular combination of elements that can be found in a chemistry lab. Is that what being human boils down to? The sum total of our chemical composition.
Are we simply upright apes, a mere accident of slime plus time, as the atheistic evolutionist might think of us. We were simply the fittest animal that survived the random conditions that obtained in the world for the last 200,000 years, and that’s why there are 6.8 million of us today. Were humans the toughest kids in the playground? We might not be the biggest, nor the fastest, nor the strongest. But we had the biggest brain, so we lived, and our competitors died
Richard Dawkins says this:
‘In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get luck, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference …. DNA neither knows nor cares. DNA just is. And we dance to its music.’[1]
In 1995, when Richard Dawkins asked himself, 'what is a human?’, this is what he said:
'“What is a human? What is a human self, a human individual? That's more difficult. It's not a question I can answer - it's not a question any scientist can answer at present, though I think they will. I believe it will turn out that what a human is some manifestation of brain stuff and its workings.'
And when his interviewer put to him that, on his view, the idea that there is a self that decides things, acts and is responsible, is an illusion because actually there's only brains and chemicals and this “self” doesn't exist - it never did and there’s nobody to die, and asked him whether he agreed with that kind of reductionist explanation of who his wife is, and who he was, he said ‘Yes’ and thought that view is ‘probably right’[2].
No wonder Colin Hay sings, after he rejects talking to Jesus in his song, ‘Beautiful World’?
“And still this emptiness persists Perhaps this is as good as it gets When you’ve given up the drink and those nasty cigarettes Now I leave the party early at least with no regrets I watch the sun as it comes up I watch it as it sets Yeah this is as good as it gets.”
In the song, the meaning of life is doing what you like (as long as it doesn’t involve anger, automatic guns, death in large numbers, or no respect for children and little ones). But it is about I like swimming in the sea, I like making my own tea, I like driving in my car, rolling the top down, and traveling quite far, I like sleeping with Marie, about having sex with someone who doesn’t love you. But for him, still the emptiness persists. Completely consistent with Atheism, though it desparately tries to avoid this outcome[3].
Are we what the economist thinks of us? Either producers or consumers. On the one hand, are we units of production, that pump out this months widgets that people are prepared to pay for. Or are we consumers, simply bundles of needs and wants needing to be satisfied, that endlessly use up stuff up and spit it out. Greenhouse gases, carbon, precious resources, food, consumer durables.
Well, Scripture answers us with a very different answer. When, 3000 years ago, King David looked up at the heavens and considered God’s works and said, ‘What is man that you are mindful of him, and the Son of Man, that you care for him?’ he answered himself with these words:
‘You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honour; You made him ruler over the works of your hands; you put everything under his feet: all flocks and herds and the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, and all that swim the paths of the sea’ (Psalm 8:5-8 NIV)
We are not simply the sum total of our chemical composition. We are not evolutionary accidents, the result of blind purposeless forces. We are fearfully and wonderfully made, and placed a little lower than the angels. We rule the world, male and female, under God the ruler of the world.
Well, we learnt this from Genesis chapter 1 last week But in Genesis Chapter 2:4-25, the author Moses will drill down. See, Genesis 1:1-2:3 takes the panoramic view. It is the wide-angle lense. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. But Chapter 2 drills down. It concentrates on Day 6. But not on all of Day 6, but on the most important part of Day 6, on the creation of humanity. And it focuses not on the whole world but on one place in all of God’s world, the Garden of Eden. Genesis Chapter 1 is the whole pavlova.. Genesis Chapter 2 is a thin slice which takes the juiciest cherry it can find.
So we come to Genesis chapter 2 verse 4: And a literal translation reads:
‘These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created in the day that the LORD God made earth and heavens.
And here in this verse we notice two things that have not occurred in the bible up until now.
First, we observe the word ‘toledot’, which is going to come up quite a bit in the book of Genesis. The NIV translates it as ‘account’. But it is much better translated as ‘generations’, as it is in the King James, and Revised Version and ESV. Now, ‘generations’ doesn’t really mean ‘account’. But the word really means ‘what these things produced’. It means ‘offsprings’[4]. It means what someone or something ‘begets’. This heading really tells us about the offspring of the heavens and the earth. What is the important line that succeeds from the heavens and the earth? And it is, ‘humanity’.
Yes, the earth has produced animals and plants, and fish and birds. But these things aren’t the topic of Genesis, nor Scripture, as good as they are. For Scripture is a history of humanity, and humanities creation, fall and restoration through the Son of Man born of a woman, Jesus Christ. Humanity is the offspring of the heavens and earth that God is most concerned about.
The second thing we observe, for the first time in the bible, is God’s special Old Testament name. It is not just God that we meet, ‘Elohim’. It is ‘the LORD God’, Yahweh Elohim. We observe a shift from ‘God’ (elohim) in chapter 1 to ‘the LORD God’ (Yahweh Elohim) in chapters 2-3. Now, for the first time in the bible, God’s personal name, Yahweh, is used. The God who made the heavens and the earth is also the personal God, Yahweh. And Yahweh entered into relationship with the man and his wife. He is a personal, relational God. And we will continue seeing him enter into relationships with humanity. With Noah, and Abraham, and with Isaac, and with Jacob, and his offspring, whose name is changed to Israel, for he wrestles with God. He will make covenants, or promises, with man. And Yahweh is his particular covenant name.
So the high point of creation is the creation of the man and his wife, and the relational God Yahweh who enters relationship with the man and his wife is the same one who created the universe.
Now we are given very clearly the circumstances when God makes the man. We are given the time and place of man’s generation. Genesis chapter 2 Verses 5 and 6:
And no shrub of the field[5] had yet appeared on the earth [or probably better, land], and no plant of the field had yet sprung up, for the LORD God had not sent rain on the earth and there was no man to work the ground, but streams [or mist or even clouds] came up from the earth [or land] and watered the whole surface of the ground,
This is what the land was like when and where God made man.
The man is made before and plants and shrubs of the field had sprouted (verse 6). Now, in chapter 1, on Day 3, seed bearing ‘plants’ had already grown up. But on Day 6, of which chapter 2 seems a close up, there is a type of plant that has not yet sprung up. It is the type of plant that requires man. The ‘plants of the field’. In other words, cultivated crops.
One imagines wheat and rice and other staple food crops. The ‘plants of the field’ are mentioned again in chapter 3 verse 18. They are humanity’s food. There they are mentioned as part of the curse on the man. Because of his sin, the ground is cursed, and he will eat ‘the plants of the field’ as his hard-earned food.
Moreover, we are told the man had been made before there had been rain. God will send rain, in chapter 7 verse 4. But it will be rain that undoes the work of creation, in the flood. Because of sin, the rain will destroy the human world and wipe away all the men.
And further, there was ‘no man to work the ground’. Again, it points us forward to chapter 3 verse 24, where the man and his wife are banished from the Garden of Eden to ‘work the ground’ that the LORD God has cursed. So here, in these mentions of no rain, of no plants of the field, and of working the ground, we see that the account is preparing us for life after disaster has struck.
We are about to see a ‘paradise’. But it is only the paradise of a moment. We about to see a garden. But it is a garden for the briefest period of time. The garden will fade away into stony hard fields. And even now, before the creation of man, let alone the fall, the account is preparing us for the time after the fall.
It is in these conditions that God formed the man from the ground. It appears that the field from which God has taken the dirt is not yet covered by vegetation. There is bare ground or earth. We might say ‘soil’ or ‘dirt’ or even ‘mud’. And from this dirt on the bare ground, God forms the man. And the process of God giving life to the man is a two-stage process. Verse 7:
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.
Yahweh formed the man. It is the same verb that is used for the potter who makes pottery. Even though we do not yet have the rains of the flood, God still in his kindness watered the ground. And from that moistened ground, the Adamah, God formed the man, the Adam, as a potter makes his pottery. The man is an ‘earthling’, drawn from the earth and made from earth. He is God’s ‘earthenware’. He is made of ‘earth’, what we would call ‘dirt’. He is the offspring of the earth, and drawn from it.
But the man is not yet a living being. For there is a yet more intimate process to be described. God breathed in his nostrils the breath of life. This is not the word for Spirit, ruach. Two different words are used than the word for the Spirit. In a similar way a person does mouth to mouth, rescusitation, God is pictured as blowing breath into his nose to give the man life.
God forms the man. God breathes life into the man. And the man becomes a living soul.
His creation is different from the animals. God is intimately involved in the process. And there are some stark ‘anthropomorphisms’ in the process. Some stark descriptions of God acting as a man does. He does not just speak, he also does, with hands and arms and mouth and lungs. In making man, God does not just majestically speak from on high, and it is so. The LORD God condescends to ‘play in the dirt’, so to speak. He comes down to the ground and get his hands dirty on the potters wheel. He fashions and shapes the moistened earth. And then he bends over and puts his mouth over the nose of the formed man, in the same way mouth to mouth is meant to be performed on a small child, and God breathes in his nostrils.
The man is different from the other animals. He is not just the offspring of the earth. He is in a very intimate sense, in a sense not shared by the rest of creation, the handiwork of God.
Yahweh is not simply portrayed as a potter. He is also a gardener. And just as our account drilled down to focus on the time and circumstances of man’s creation – no rain, no plants of the field – it also drills down to give us the location of the garden, which the LORD God plants to be the man’s environment.
We are in the East. And you might say, ‘East of what?’ And I would say, ‘East of the promised land, of course’. For this account was written for Israelites.
And as Moses drills down to give us the location of the garden, we are at once informed that this was a real place, but also frustrated because this is now an inaccessible place.
The location is given as a land called Eden. It is a well-watered land, indicated by the four headwaters that flow out of it. The location of two rivers are well known. They are the Tigris and the Euphrates. And they serve to set our general location somewhere in the middle east. Two rivers no longer exist, or are not known. These are the Pishon and the Gihon. They are described more fully, as is the land of Havilah. The land of Havilah watered by the Pishon is the most well described. But the depth of it’s description is in inverse relationship to our knowledge about it. No-one knows where the land of Havilah is. And yet our author gives the descriptions of abundance of gold and precious stones and aromatic resin.
But that’s where we want to go! We want to go to the place where there a jewels and gold and valuable, precious things. We want to go to well-watered, lush lands. And we salivate over the possibilities. But we cannot go there. Access is denied.
For the account is written for people after the fall and the flood. Havilah, like Eden which watered it, is no longer accessible. The well-watered Eden is an area beyond our reach, speaking of abundant riches that are no longer available to us and which we can no longer appropriate. Even before the cherubim is positioned to stand guard outside the garden, the reader knows straight away that there is no access to this place, though once it was real.
The only way to access such places, according to the New Testament, is through the New Creation brought about by Christ. If gold and precious stones and a life giving river are what you seek, you must come to Jesus Christ and wait for him to remake the heavens and the earth. The New Jerusalem coming down from heaven is paved with gold, the foundations of it’s walls are decorated with every kind of precious stone, and down the middle of it’s great street runs the river of the water of life (Revelation 21-22). And the only way to the free gift of the water of life is through Jesus Christ, by the Spirit. And the Spirit and the bride say come, and take the living water without any cost.
The garden itself is described as a beautiful orchard with all kinds of fruit trees. They are pleasing to the eye and good for food. Good to look at and good to eat. And two trees get a specific mention, ‘the tree of life’ and ‘the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.’
It is interesting that when we compare this with the new heavens and the new earth, the new city of Jerusalem at the end of the book of Revelation, that there is only one tree mentioned located in two places. In Revelation chapter 22 verses 2 and 3, we read:
‘On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. 3No longer will there be any curse.’
Again, rushing to the end of the story, there is no ‘tree of the knowledge of good and evil’ in the New Jerusalem; Only the tree of life on both sides of the river. In other words, there is no chance of another Genesis 3 disaster in the New Jerusalem. There is no ‘tree of the knowledge of good and evil’. And ‘nothing impure will enter’ the new Jerusalem, as the serpent did in the garden in Eden.
But at this stage of the story, the garden is pure. And it is made for the man. God once again has shown himself a generous creator and provider.
These descriptions of the garden prepare us for man’s entry in the garden. And the man is placed there for two things. Rest and Test.
Rest in the garden
First, rest. Verse 15:
The LORD GOD took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.
God gathered the moist dirt from the ground. He formed him, and breathed life into him. And then took the man out of the land where he had formed him. He took him from the uncultivated but moist fields. And transported him to the garden.
And the man is placed in the garden to work the garden (2:15). There was no man to work the ground in verse 5. But God doesn’t want man to work the ground. At this stage, the LORD God wants him to work the garden. And the fact that the man was called to ‘work’ the garden shows yet another way God made him in his image. For God is a worker. He created the heavens and the earth. And he made man also to be a worker.
But the man’s work in the garden was a type of ‘rest’. In fact, the word that is used for God ‘putting’ the man in the garden is that God ‘rested’ the man in the garden (2:15). It is the word nuach, from which the name Noah is derived (5:29). The man was to have the ‘comfort’ from ‘working the ground’ that Noah’s parents hoped that their son would bring them, and instead of working the ground, from which he was taken, he works the garden, and watches over it, perhaps meaning guarding it (maybe from snakes!) or perhaps even hinting at his enjoyment of a good provision from God.
Literally, I might translate the clause in verse 15, ‘and he [God] rested him [the man] in the garden of Eden to work it and watch it’ (2:15) It is the same word used in Exodus 20:11, when God is described as having rested on the Sabbath day. The garden is God bringing the man into relationship with him to enjoy his rest. So the work God set the man in the garden is really ‘rest’.
There is another way of taking the Hebrew words translated by the all the English versions in verse 15, ‘to work it and take care of it’. They could also have the meaning ‘to worship and to obey’. And if the words have this nuance, it shows that the man is called not just to serve the garden, but that his primary relationship is to Yahweh, and it is to worship and obey the covenant making God, Yahweh. It would then ground the Westminster catechism’s first question that the chief end of man being to worship God and enjoy him forever.
Test in the garden
But life in the garden is not just a rest. It is also a test. For God gives the man a great provision, but also a solemn command: Verses 16 and 17:
And the LORD God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it [lit, in the day you eat of it] you will surely die.”
You can certainly eat from every tree in the garden, except one. The penalty for eating that tree is death. Probably not just physical death. Probably also it meant liability to spiritual death, to which the physical death points[6].
And the idiom ‘on the day’, as in chapter 2 verse 4, indicates that the word ‘day’ can have a wider reference than to just a 24 hour period. For Adam did not die on the exact die he ate it. He lived 930 years, and then he died. But the effects of spiritual death, of his separation from God because of his sin, began immediately.
But again, that is for next time, when we look at Genesis chapter 3. For now, we see a situation where paradise is at risk. The garden is a place not just of rest, but of test. Will the man obey the LORD God’s command? The LORD God is still in control. But he has, for his own good purposes, allowed the man a choice. It is over to the man to obey or disobey. And God will hold the man accountable for his choice.
Now we remember that Genesis 2 is up close and personal with Genesis chapter 1 Day 6. And on Day 6, in chapter 1 verses 27 and 28, we read:
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground’.
So we are introduced to humanity as male and female. There are two ways of being human. Humanity is not just male and not just female. It is male and female together.
And as we read, we noticed that at the end of day 6, God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.
But as we focus back on Day 6 in chapter 2, we notice that there is something that occurs during Day 6 that was not good. And by the end of that creation day, the LORD God will have rectified it, turning the ‘not good’ not just to ‘good’, but to ‘very good’. Verse 18:
The LORD God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him”.
From the perspective of creation, being alone is not good. From the perspective of the New Creation, it is good for a man not to marry. It is good for a woman to remain single (1 Corinthians 7). But from the perspective of life under the sun, it is not good for a man to be alone.
Now the man names all the beasts of the field and livestock and birds in verses 19-20. This seems to refer to the domestic animals and birds. Like the man, they are formed from the ground. And he has a relationship with them, shown by his naming them. His mandate is to rule over them as part of the animal kingdom.
But they are not suitable to him as a helper. Only the woman who is to come is called a helper. That is, the Man is inadequate by himself to do the tasks for which God has made him. She will complete him and humanity. This is clearly the case in the bearing of children, but also may include his work, and the mutual companionship each provides the other. She is one who matches him, one like him, but different enough to complement him.
And for God none of these domestic animals and birds are good enough. Now there is nothing wrong with having a pet. The animals are good and made by God. But they are not suitable as a companion for the man. And God not only says this to the man. He shows him. Absence makes the heart grow fonder. And God makes the man wait. As he names all the domestic animals and birds, none of them are adequate and suitable.
So God put’s Adam under general anesthetic. He took out a rib and from it fashioned the woman, Eve. And when Adam wakes up, he likes what he sees. ‘Wow, this at last is now bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh’. Look, she is just right, she fits me perfectly.
He names her. He names the animals, and that brings them into relationship with him. He with his wife are called to rule over the animals. The husband is not said here to ‘rule over’ his wife. In chapter 1, they are both said to ‘rule’. They rule together as united humanity over the named animals. The notion of ‘rule over’ comes after the fall, and is a reality of our fallen world. In Genesis 3:16, the wife’s desire is for her husband, and he will rule over her. Then there is the battle of the sexes that we see played out in every fallen marriage and in our world.
But here the man names her. And as Mike Wizowski says, ‘Once you name it, you start getting attached to it’. She belongs to him, not as a piece of property, but as a helper and co-heir.
And he is united with her. There is an order. He is made first, she second. There is a purpose. He is made to serve and obey, she is made as a helper suitable and like him. He is oriented toward the Creator who spoke to him and the garden. She is oriented toward him to help him in his service of the garden and the creator. As Paul says by the Spirit of God, and even though it is so un-politically correct, it is therefore true:
The man is the image and glory of God, but the woman is the glory of man, for man did not come from woman, but woman from man; neither was man created for woman, but woman for man. (1 Corinthians 11:7-9 NIV)
But there is a unity. She is taken from him. But he will soon be taken from her. And on mother’s day, we remember. ‘For as woman came from man, so also man is born of woman’ (1 Corinthians 11:12). Every man born since Adam came via woman. All of his offspring will be taken from her.
But they are one flesh in yet another way. They are one flesh in that she is taken from his body. They are one flesh in that his children will be taken from her body. And they are one flesh in that their bodies will be sexually united. For they are in the garden naked, with no shame. Here is the first marriage between Adam and Eve, where the man and the woman become one flesh. And one flesh is later described as a sexual relationship. So there is sex in the garden, and it is good sex. For it is between the man and his wife.
But as I’ve already said, the paradise of the garden is short lived. And after the fall, nothing will be the same. Nothing will be marred beyond recognition. There is still good in God’s creation. But we must not underestimate the effects of human sin.
Lets pray.
[1] R Dawkins, River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life, pp 154-5, cited in Martin Ayers, Naked God: The Truth About God Exposed, 22
[2] http://www.damaris.org/content/content.php?type=5&id=102. See also where we read: Suppose some lads break into an old man's house and kill him. Suppose they say: "Well, we accept the evolutionist worldview. He was old and sick, and he didn't contribute anything to society." How would you show them that what they had done was wrong?
You credit them with rather more rational thought than I suspect the real thugs would have had.
If somebody used my views to justify a completely self - centred lifestyle, which involved trampling all over other people in any way they chose roughly what, I suppose, at a sociological level social Darwinists did - I think I would be fairly hard put to it to argue on purely intellectual grounds.
I think it would be more: "This is not a society in which I wish to live. Without having a rational reason for it necessarily, I'm going to do whatever I can to stop you doing this." They'll say, "This is the society we want to live in." I couldn't, ultimately, argue intellectually against somebody who did something I found obnoxious. I think I could finally only say, "Well, in this society you can't get away with it" and call the police. I realise this is very weak, and I've said I don't feel equipped to produce moral arguments in the way I feel equipped to produce arguments of a cosmological and biological kind. But I still think it's a separate issue from beliefs in cosmic truths.
[3] Note what Richard Dawkins said of whether he could criticize a completely self-centred lifestyle:
‘If somebody used my views to justify a completely self-centred lifestyle, which involved trampling all over other people in any way they chose … I think I would be fairly hard put to it to argue on purely intellectual grounds … I couldn’t , ultimately, argue intellectually against somebody who did something I found obnoxious. I think I could finally only say, “Well, in this society you can’t get away with it” and call the police.’:
[4] Kidner, Genesis: TOTC, 59
[5] Some liken the ‘shrub of the field’ to the thorns and thistles of 3:18. This is possible, but there is probably not enough proof to be sure of the correspondence.
[6] For the argument for spiritual death, see Collins, Genesis 1-4, 118