Genesis 2:1-14

By the looks of it, it seems as though God has been doing all His creative work on a schedule that looks sort of like this:

Day 0 - Water/Air/Emptiness

Day 1 - Sky/Light

Day 2 - Land/Sea/Vegetation

Day 3 - Sun/Moon/Starts

Day 4 - Sea Creatures/Air Creatures

Day 5 - Land Creatures

Day 6 - Humans

Today, we deal with Genesis 2:1-14 (click on the link to read the passage on Bible Gateway). God is in his seventh day, He has finished creation, and He "rests" from his work and sanctifies the day. Assuming that God does not need literal rest, I have always taken the word "rest" to mean simply that God "stopped" creating. And the fact that God sanctifies the day that He stopped creating implies (to me) that this was a permanent stop. Or, in other words, the prototype or original version of everything that would ever exist was created in these first "seven days" (which may or may not be a literal seven days). If this is true, I wonder if there could be an implication here for the theory of evolution? Perhaps God created everything's origin and just allowed nature to run its course from there? Or perhaps my ideas are all wrong and God went right back to creating on "Day 8."

After pausing to talk about the Sabbath, the Bible gives a more detailed account of the creation of humanity. Geneses 2:4-7 talks about how God formed man out of dust in the day when "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..." This is kind of a contradiction, since chapter one says that vegetation was created and commanded to reproduce on Day 2, and humans are not formed until Day 6. The only way for this to not be a contradiction would be if vegetation did not grow right away when God commanded it.

God creates man out of dust and breathes life into his nostrils. As a sidenote, I've read somewhere that the word for life in Hebrew is "Chai" or "Chay," but in any case looks like this: , and that this word in the Bible is actually in the plural, "Chayim," which is to say that God breathed more than one life into Adam - His spirit and His soul. This is the reason that Jews believe in yetzer tov and yezter hara - which I will talk about later.

Something I think Christians always overlook or forget about is that "Eden" is not a garden in and of itself. Eden is a place in which there is a garden called "The Garden of Eden." Adam was created in Eden, and after Adam's creation (Gen 2:7-8) God created the 'garden' and placed Adam in it. God caused trees to grow in this garden. But what about the vegetation outside of the garden? Had it begun growing yet? Could this be a clue that the earth was "fallen" before the actual "fall"? Why would God command something to grow (on day 2) that didn't grow until at least day 6? And if things were growing as intended, why does the Bible say that no shrubs were on the earth when Adam was created - although Adam was created after the creation of shrubs? And, if things were growing as intended, why did God need to create another garden on day 6? Wouldn't there have already been one?

In the garden of Eden are two trees: (1) The Tree of Life. (2) The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. I think this is another detail that Christians tend to overlook. The Bible then describes a river flowing out of Eden to water the Garden. The river breaks off into four separate rivers - Pishon, Gihon, the Tigris, and the Euphrates. And the land surrounding these four rivers is described - there's Havilah, Cush, and Assyria. I wonder if anyone was living in these lands? Did God really only create Adam and Eve when He first created humans? Or did He create hundreds of humans at the same time, and the Bible only follows the story of Adam and Eve?