Genesis 2

Chapter 2. The Beginning of the Human RaceGen_1:26-30; Genesis 2:7-25

Section I: Bible Account of the Origin of Man

Section I—Bible Account of the Origin of ManThe Crown of Creation

1. Man appears upon the scene as the last and crowning stage of the work of creation. The world has been prepared for his home, and now the occupant appears upon the field and takes possession of his fair inheritance. He is in a sense the climax and crown of the material universe. He has been called a microcosm—a little world in his own person, combining the elements and substance of the very ground he treads upon and the qualities of the lower orders of creation over which he rules, with those higher endowments which link him with the Deity and the heavens, and make him an heir of immortality. The Handiwork of God
2. Man is the special handiwork of God. He is not the blind result of fortuitous elements and atoms, nor a mere evolution from lower forms of life. He is created by the very hand of God Himself, as a distinct order of existence, and the object of the most deliberate counsel, and all the resources of the divine wisdom and power. Two words are used in the Hebrew language to describe the creation of man. One is the word create, already referred to as denoting the direct creative work of God through His omnipotence, and without any previous materials. The other is the word formed, which implies the existence of previous matter, and its being incorporated into his form and structure. Both of these are used with respect to man to indicate that, while the materials of the physical creation were employed in his structure and he was formed out of the dust of the ground, yet his higher nature was created by the direct fiat of the Almighty as really and completely as the universe was created in the beginning. This act of creation does not merely apply to the spirit of man, but to the entire being; for it is used in the 27th verse of the first chapter with respect to the sexual relations of man and woman as male and female, and therefore must include the physical as well as the spiritual nature. His Threefold Nature
3. This leads us to the next fact—that man was created with a threefold nature. The language of the original distinctly implies the two elements of the spiritual and material nature of man, and it would seem that even a psychical life is also specified in distinction from a spiritual. Certainly we know that in the Scriptures human nature is described under this threefold division: spirit, soul and body, and it would not be strange if we should find them in the original account of man’s creation. The words of the seventh verse of the second chapter, “The Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground,” describe his physical creation. The word used here for man is Adam. “He formed the Adam out of the dust of the Adamah,” so the word Adam means one formed from the earth. Science has shown that the chemical ingredients of the human body are the very same as those we find in the soil of the earth’s surface and the limestone beneath; only it needed divine omnipotence to constitute and quicken it into life. This idea of man’s formation out of the earth is familiar throughout the Scriptures, and referred to in Job 33:6, Ecclesiastes 3:20, 1 Corinthians 15:47 and Psalms 146:4. There is nothing in this akin to the doctrine of evolution, which teaches not that man was made from dust, but evolved from lower brutes. The conception of the Creator taking even the chemical elements that science can classify and measure in the finest detail, but with all its wisdom cannot constitute into a living man, and by one breath from His own mouth, sending it forth a living, intelligent and immortal being, is as stupendous and divine as to create it out of nothing. The spiritual creation of man is described in the next clause, “[He] breathed into his nostrils the breath of life” (Genesis 2:7). This is not said of any other creature. This was the imparting to man of the divine spirit, the very life of God Himself. The expression here used, “breath of life,” is never applied directly to brutes. In the Hebrew it is plural; it is “breath of lives.” This implies that man received more than one kind of life, not only the animal vitality, but also a rational and spiritual subsistence. What a beautiful type of the process by which the spiritual life is again restored in the new man. It is in-breathed by the Holy Spirit. So our Lord, in leaving His disciples, breathed upon them and said, “Receive the Holy Ghost” (John 20:22). This was the birth of the Church. The third expression used about man’s creation, “Man became a living soul” (Genesis 2:7) seems to refer to his psychical nature, the department of our being to which the term soul is usually applied in the New Testament. The Greek word for this is psyche. And so it is employed in 1 Corinthians 15:45 with reference to this very passage. “‘The first man Adam became a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit.” This, then, constitutes the entire man, as we see again in the prayer of the apostle for our sanctification: “Your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Thessalonians 5:23); and also in the picture of our Savior’s childhood: “And the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom: and the grace of God was upon him.” (Luke 2:40). In God’s Image
4. The being thus created is said to have been “in the image of God.” This expression is repeated in the 26th and 27th verses of the first chapter, where the word, or its equivalent, is used four times. Wherein this likeness consisted, we can only know imperfectly. We know the true and perfect man, the Lord Jesus Christ, is the perfect image of the Father. Perhaps the threefold nature of man was designed to shadow forth the personality of the Trinity. Perhaps, also, the unity of the sexual nature of man as first created, including both the woman and the offspring in the one human being originally created, was also designed to prefigure the divine relations of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Possibly even the face and form of man were designed in some way to represent God. Certainly we know his spiritual and moral qualities were the transcript and reflection of his Father. In the new creation we are restored to the image of God, and this is said by the apostle to consist in knowledge, righteousness and true holiness (Colossians 3:10; Ephesians 4:24; Ecclesiastes 7:29). This has been already realized in every one of His redeemed ones. “But we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2). Male and Female
5. Man was created male and female. This does not mean, as would seem at first from the language, that He created the male and the female at the same time, but He created man both male and female in one person. The woman was included in the man both physically and psychically, and afterwards was taken out of the man and constituted in her own individuality. This is a strange conception of humanity. But we find traces of it even in the reasonings of Socrates and the writings of Plato, where man is represented as originally a twofold being with four hands, four limbs and two faces, afterwards divided by the gods, and ever since each has been looking for its counterpart, and this is the explanation of the social element of human life. This, of course, was a rude and clumsy shadow of the original and scriptural truth. Back of that truth lies the great mystery of redemption, in symbol, namely, that Christ, the second Adam, contained first in His own person the whole body of His redeemed ones, and that they have been born out of His very life as Eve was out of Adam. The fact that man contained in his own person, at first, all the race, was the reason why he acted representatively for them, and his fall involved their ruin. This natural headship of Adam is the type of Christ’s headship over His new race. The details of woman’s formation are given in the second chapter, Genesis 2:21-24. During a deep sleep, or as the Septuagint expresses it, ecstasy—the same as afterwards fell on Abraham during his vision of the future (Genesis 15:12)—God separated one of Adam’s ribs from his form, and “built it,” as the Hebrew expresses it, into a woman, and then gave her back to him as the partner of the life from which she had sprung. Adam gave her the name woman, literally man-ess, and said, “This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh” (Genesis 2:23). Dominion All this expresses very beautifully the natural relations of man and woman, but more profoundly the great spiritual mystery of Christ and His Church, as we shall see later.
6. Man is constituted the ruler of the terrestrial creation (Genesis 1:26), “Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.” And so God brought to Adam all the lower animals, and placed them under his authority (Genesis 2:19). This dominion is man’s primeval right, and although it has been forfeited by the fall, and is ever dependent upon his retaining the image of God, yet it shall be again restored in the fullness of redemption and the kingdom of glory. In the eighth Psalm it is prophetically described as the transcendent dignity of man. What is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him? You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You made him ruler over the works of your hands; you put everything under his feet. (Psalms 8:4-6) In referring to this in Hebrews, the author of that epistle admits that it is not yet realized in man’s actual experience; but it has all been consummated in the person of Christ, the true Man, and shall yet be shared by all His brethren in the consummation of their redemption. Man’s lordship over nature, like every other gift of the Creator, has been shamefully abused for the injury of the lower creation, and therefore the whole creation is represented as groaning and travailing together in pain, and crying out for the redemption of the body at Christ’s second coming. Innocent
7. Man was created innocent and upright. The statement that “were not ashamed” (Genesis 2:25) implies the perfect innocency of our first estate. This is also expressed by the “image of God.” Later inspired pages declare, “God hath made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions” (Ecclesiastes 7:29). Man’s original purity was not infallible, and yet it was faultless. It was of the same nature as the holiness of the unfallen angels. It is not the same as that to which we are restored in the new creation. That will be not human perfection, but the divine nature, and it shall be constituted infallible, through the grace of God and the eternal redemption of Jesus Christ our Lord. Eden
8. The new race is placed in an earthly paradise. The name Eden means delight. The location is uncertain, but probably somewhere in the hills of Armenia, near the headwaters of the Euphrates and Tigris. Eastward means, naturally, east of Palestine. The rivers are our chief indexes in fixing the site. The first, Pison, was probably the river Halys which flows into the Black Sea. Gihon would then be the Araxes, which flows into the Caspian Sea. The latter two, the Hiddekel and Euphrates, are easily identified as the Tigris and the Euphrates, flowing southward into the Persian Gulf. Spiritual Foreshadowings The names have a special significance: Pison meaning “flowing forth,” suggesting freeness; Gihon, “bursting forth,” denotes fullness; Hiddekel expressing “rapidity of motion,” which is literally true of the Tigris; and Euphrates signifying “sweetness” or “fruitfulness.” It is not hard to find in these four names and their place in Eden a fourfold type of the fullness of the gospel in its freeness of salvation, its fullness of grace, its power over all evil in our life and its blessed hope of the future. It is not necessary to say that the paradise of Eden finds its fulfillment and its restoration in the closing chapters of the book of Revelation. In Covenant with God
9. The human race, thus created and crowned with happiness and blessing, is placed in covenant relations and united in holy fellowship with God Himself. Therefore the name of the Divine Being Himself is changed at the commencement of the account of man’s creation, early in the second chapter. This change from the word Elohim to Jehovah Elohim has been a great stumbling block to all the infidel critics of the Bible, and they have hastily assumed that it proves a double authorship of the book of Genesis. The eye of faith and the higher spirit of Christian interpretation see in it a beautiful advance in the revelation of God. While dealing with the natural creation, He is represented under the name that expresses rather His absolute power and Godhead. But the moment that He comes to deal directly with man, His own beloved child, He changes His name and speaks to him as Jehovah, the covenant God. The terms of the covenant into which He received our first parents are clearly stated. There was no limitation upon the bounty and love of their Father and the fullness of their inheritance, except one simple test of implicit obedience, which involved no sacrifice of happiness and no question of love. One tree alone they must not partake of, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Not that this tree contained in itself any natural quality of evil, but to taste it after it was prohibited would bring the knowledge, because of the actual experience of sin. There was no injustice in exposing man to such a temptation, for virtue is doubly valuable and doubly recompensed when it has been proved and tried; and purity without a test might not be worthy of the name. The obedience of man to this simple test would have brought to him and to his race the highest blessing. And his disobedience involved them, as well as himself, in the bitter consequences. The relations of Adam and Eve with their heavenly parent were intimate and blessed. God Himself came to visit them in their happy home, and they met Him with unreserved confidence and unlimited delight. And so it was the type of that place and time when “the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God” (Revelation 21:3).

Section II: Errors Contradicted by the Bible Account of Man’s Creation

Section II—Errors Contradicted by the Bible Account of Man’s Creation1. Materialism This is the philosophy which attributes man’s nature, as well as the entire universe, to the combination of atoms of matter, through purely fortuitous circumstances and causes. The various schools of materialistic thought have as many theories, substantially agreeing in the self-existence of matter and the possibility of spontaneous life. It is enough to say that science has produced no evidence that life has ever been generated, even in its lowest form, without the contact of previously existing life. The latest conclusions from scientific researches and experiments have confirmed this fact: that life is not spontaneous or self-existent, and must be imparted from a living being. And we need not add that the entire teaching of the Scriptures is antagonistic wholly to all the principles of materialism. God is the Creator of our spirits and the Former of our bodies; and even the successive generations of men, although reproduced through natural laws and second causes, are declared to be in each individual instance the work of His creating hand. “For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring” (Acts 17:28). 2. Evolution This doctrine, which has been more systematically developed and formulated in recent years, claims to take higher ground than pure Materialism, or absolute Atheism, inasmuch as it admits the preexistence of certain lower types of life, without attempting to account for them; and then traces all subsequent species, including man, the last and highest type, from these primordial types. Scientifically, it has only succeeded up to this time in producing a number of partial illustrations and examples of its so-called laws of development, and contents itself with weaving these together into a hypothesis whose missing links it expects yet to discover, and so complete the chain of physical facts and scientific demonstrations. While many superior minds have adopted this theory, yet many candid and sober scientific teachers maintain that the theory is a mere hypothesis, lacking any complete or satisfactory scientific demonstration, and contradicted by some of the most inexorable facts of physiology; especially this cardinal and insurmountable difficulty that even in the present orders of the animal world, it is certain that species do not blend and propagate a new species, but that such unions always terminate with the second link, and leave it without the power of reproduction. Apart, however, from scientific or philosophical speculations, the child of faith is left with sufficient light from God’s holy Word to show him that Evolution is for him forbidden ground, and human nature a direct creation of divine power and goodness. Man’s pedigree runs thus downward into folly: “a scientist, which was the son of an ape, which was the son of a zoophyte, which was the son of a protoplasm.” God’s sublime genealogy is this: “A patriarch which was the son of Abraham; which was the son of Noah; which was the son of Adam; which was the son of God!” 3. Original Diversity of Human Races The Mosaic account traces back all the families of earth to one parent stock, and all other Scriptures confirm this inspired record. In speaking to the very men and schools of thought whence all our modern philosophy has sprung, the Apostle Paul declared on Mars Hill that God made men of all nations from “one blood” (Acts 17:26). And the latest and soundest deductions of Ethnology and Philology all lead us back to the same conclusion, and to the simple and single origin of the human race. 4. Theories of the Antiquity of Man The claims that have occasionally been put forth from alleged geological phenomena that the human race must have existed on the earth from an illimitable period, have been gradually reduced to a very simple sum, which in no sense contradicts a reasonable construction of the sacred record. All the oldest types of human fossils in no respect essentially differ from the men of today, and belong to a period in no respect different from that assigned to man in the records of Genesis.

Section III: Spiritual Teachings of the Account of Man’s Creation

Section III—Spiritual Teachings of the Account of Man’s CreationMan’s Dignity

1. The dignity and value of man in contrast with the lower orders of creation is seen in the special attention bestowed on man’s creation, and the lordship granted to him over the inferior creatures and the material world. Our Savior frequently emphasized this important truth, and based upon it the claims of man to God’s providential care, and to the sympathy and consideration of his fellow men. “How much then is a man better than a sheep?” (Matthew 12:12) was His plea on the score of simple humanity for the healing of the sufferer. “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father. You are worth more than many sparrows” (Matthew 10:29, Matthew 10:31) is the ground of His appeal to His disciples to trust the care of their heavenly Father and leave on Him their needless care. God is not called the sparrows’ Father, but your Father. This was the ground on which the life of man was guarded by God’s most solemn sanctions in the covenant of Noah, in what is regarded as the first appointment of capital punishment: “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made man” (Genesis 9:6). We are taught by the apostle to “show proper respect to everyone” (1 Peter 2:17), simply as men. The value of the human soul alone was worth the sacrifice of the Son of God. Let us cherish a deeper sense of the sacredness of human life and the momentous importance of human destiny from this picture of creation. The Second Adam
2. Christ, the second Adam, is represented in type in the first head of humanity. From one father all the generations of earth have sprung, inheriting his curse and transmitted nature and depravity, by virtue of their oneness with him in blood and birth. So Christ, the second Adam, has also His spiritual seed and offspring, and by virtue of their union with Him they share His high place of acceptance and sonship, and partake in all the benefits of His obedience and satisfaction to the claims of justice. We were recognized in Him when He died and rose again. We were born out of Him in our regeneration. And we share with Him all His rights and destinies. “As in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive” (1 Corinthians 15:22). This does not mean that all men shall be made alive in Christ, but all men who are in Christ shall be made alive. The New Creation
3. The new creation and the spiritual regeneration of man in the image of God is beautifully foreshadowed in the story of Genesis. Through the breath of God the soul is quickened into His life and likeness. All the Persons of the Trinity are united in counsel and cooperation in this supreme work of divine wisdom, love and power. And again the words are repeated in substance, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness” (Genesis 1:26). “For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works” (Ephesians 2:10). “And have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator” (Colossians 3:10). “To be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.” (Ephesians 4:23-24). The Bride of Christ
4. The relation of the Church to Christ is unfolded in the exquisite figure of Eve’s creation from the body of Adam, and then her marriage to the man from whom she had been taken. So the Church is born of Christ, and then wedded to Christ. So also the individual soul is taken from His very life and nature and given back to Him in eternal betrothal and perfect spiritual union. This is one of the great mysteries of the gospel, which will reach at length its consummation in the marriage of the Lamb. Christ is the Husband of the Church and the Head of the body. “Just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless… For we are members of his body” (Ephesians 5:25-27, Ephesians 5:30). Man’s Dominion
5. Man’s kingly place as the heir of the world and the lord of the earth in the millennial age is foreshadowed in his original creation and dominion. This is one of his redemption rights, and waits its fulfillment at the Lord’s coming. It is already realized in the exaltation of Christ, and shall likewise be accomplished in our expected glory. “We do not see everything subject to him. But we see Jesus” (Hebrews 2:8-9) exalted; and already we can sing with the redeemed: “To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood, and has made us to be a kingdom and priests to serve his God and Father—to him be glory and power for ever and ever” (Revelation 1:5-6). And in a little while, if we but overcome, we shall sit down with Him on His throne, and share with Him the dominion of the ages to come. The Future Paradise
6. The glorious hopes that await God’s children in the future age are also prefigured in the happy scene of the primeval paradise. They reappear restored and inexpressibly increased in the closing visions of the book of Revelation. The earthly Eden has been exchanged for the New Jerusalem; the primeval heavens and earth, for a new heaven and a new earth wherein dwell righteousness; the happy human pair, for the great multitude which no man can number, out of all kindreds and tribes and tongues; the transient innocence and uprightness of their first estate, for the divine and perfect likeness of God, and an established and ineffable state of eternal holiness and divine perfection; and all the joys and blessings of paradise lost are multiplied a thousandfold, and secured beyond the possibility of forfeiture through the ages of eternity in a more glorious paradise restored. Practical Lessons
7. Many practical lessons respecting the sacredness of the Sabbath, the sanctity of the home, and the social duties and responsibilities of life are taught us by this inspired picture of the primeval life of the human family. Man may learn the affection and respect which he owes to woman and the place of honor and equality which he should give to her. Woman may learn from her derivation from the man and her being given back to him, to live not for herself but for others, and to lose her identity in self-sacrifice and loving service. And both may learn from their own relations the intimacy of that love into which Christ receives us, in the higher bond of union of which all earthly bonds are but feeble types.