Genesis 2

Genesis 2:1

SEVENTH DAY — SABBATH, Genesis 2:1-3.

1. All the host of them — That is, all the things, animate and inanimate, which made up the several works of creation.

Genesis 2:2

2. On the seventh day God ended his work — “The completion or finishing (λμδ) of the work of creation on the seventh day (not on the sixth, as Sept., Samuel, Syr., erroneously render it) can only be understood by regarding the clauses which are connected with ειλμby Vav consec. as containing the actual completion, that is, by supposing the completion to consist, negatively, in the cessation of the work of creation, and positively, in the blessing and sanctifying of the seventh day. The cessation itself formed a part of the completion of the work. For this meaning of ωׁ ?αϊ, see Genesis 8:22; Job 32:1. As a human artificer completes his work just when he has brought it to his ideal and ceases to work upon it, so, in an infinitely higher sense, God completed the creation of the world with all its inhabitants by ceasing to create any thing new, and entering into the rest of his all-sufficient eternal Being, from which he had come forth, as it were, at and in the creation of a world distinct from his own essence.” — Keil. God did not rest because he was weary, but because he had finished his work; and his rest was the divine refreshment of holy contemplation.

Exodus 31:17. The fact that there is no mention of the morning and evening of the seventh day is no evidence that that day, as here intended, continues still.

Genesis 2:3

3. Created and made — Hebrews, created to make. That is, created for the purpose of moulding into such forms and putting to such uses as are here described.

Genesis 2:4-4

The Generations of the Heavens and the Land, Genesis 2:4 to Genesis 4:26. In chapters 1, and Genesis 2:1-3, the sacred writer gives us his account of the creation of the heavens and the land; he now proceeds to give us their generations, ϊεμψεϊ. His historical standpoint is the day from which these generations start; the day when man was formed of the dust of the ground, and of the breath of life from the heavens. So the first man is conceived of as the product of the heavens and the land by the word of God. Hence, Adam was the son of God, (Luke 3:38,) and the day of his creation was the point of time when Jehovah-God first revealed himself in history as one with the Creator. In chapter i, which narrates the beginning of the heavens and the land, we find mention of Elohim only, the God in whom (as the plural form of the name intimates) centres all fulness and manifoldness of Divine Powers. At the beginning of this section stands the name ιδεδ, Jehovah, the personal Revealer and Redeemer, who enters into covenant with his creatures, and places man under moral law. The information supplied in this chapter is fundamental to the history of redemption. Here we learn of man’s original estate; the conditions of the first covenant of works; the sanctity of the family relation; and the innocency of the first human pair. Without the information here supplied the subsequent history of man and of redemption would be an insoluble enigma.

Genesis 2:5

5. And every plant… before it was in the earth — The common version is utterly wrong in connecting this verse with what precedes, and so punctuating it as to make plant and herb grammatically the objects of made in Genesis 2:4, the same as earth and heavens of that verse. Literally this verse reads: And every shrub of the field not yet was (ιδιδ, future form, involving the idea of becoming, arising, growing, in the land, and every herb of the field not yet was sprouting, for Jehovah-God had not caused it to rain upon the land; and no man to work the ground. This exhibits the Hebrew idiom, but a more proper translation would be: And no shrub of the field was yet arising in the land, and no herb of the field was yet sprouting. The future form ιδιδ, will be, taken in connexion with the future ιφξη, will sprout, shows that a process of growth is contemplated, not the simple fact of existence. Hence the meaning is, (not that there was yet no plant or herb existing in the land, but,) none of the plants or herbs of the fields of Eden had as yet entered upon the processes of growth.

A reason for this is given in the statement that rain had not yet fallen. The dry ground had been made to appear, (Genesis 1:9,) and grass and herb had been produced by the Almighty fiat, (Genesis 1:11-12,) but the ground was not yet watered with rain, and the processes of vegetation were not yet in progress. Not a man to till the ground — Here note that the conceptual standpoint is previous to the formation of man; and the whole narrative naturally reverts to what we may suppose to have been the condition of things on the morning of the sixth day. Nevertheless the exact order of events in this chapter is not definitely stated, as in chapter 1.

Genesis 2:6

6. A mist — àã, a mist, a vapour. This first watering of the whole face of the ground was accomplished by an ascending vapour. Here is no mention of rain falling; but rather of mist going up. Perhaps, however, the one thought is designed to imply the other. The sacred writer thus also intimates how the vast reservoir of “waters above the firmament” (Genesis 1:7) were thenceforth to be supplied.

Genesis 2:7

7. Formed man — Here occurs for the first time the word ιφψ, to form. The production of man is here viewed not so much as a creation, but rather as a formation. Comp. note on Genesis 1:1. It is viewed from the standpoint of the generation of the heavens and the land, and conceived as a process: dust… breath of life… living soul. Having passed from the narrative of creation to a narrative of generations, the sacred writer would have us think of man as not merely created by miracle, but also as brought forth into form and activity by a gradational process of creation.

First, God “formed man of dust from the ground.” ςτψ, dust, is here grammatically the “accusative of the material,” and denotes the ground as the source of the primeval generation of man’s body. Hence mortal man is from the earth, (Psalms 10:18,) and we speak of “mother earth.” Breathed into his nostrils the breath of life — So man is not only earthborn, but heavenborn.

As to his body, he is from the dust; but as to his soul he is, as the Greek poet and Paul affirm, the offspring of God. Acts 17:28-29. God breathed out of himself into the body of the first man the breath of life, πωׁ ?ξϊηιιν, breath of lives. Some have held that the plural, lives, in this Hebrew expression, was designed to denote the twofold life of man — animal and spiritual; or perhaps the various powers and operations of the human soul. But the frequent use of the same plural form in other connexions (as tree of life, Genesis 2:9; ways of life, Proverbs 2:19) is against such an interpretation. In Genesis 7:22, we have the expression breath of the spirit of life applied to the whole living animal creation.

And (the) man became a living soul — This is the third stage, and the outcome of the creative process. Man thus became a self-conscious, living creature.

The expression ηιδπτωׁ, soul of life, or living soul, is used also in Genesis 1:20-21; Genesis 1:24; Genesis 1:30, of fishes, birds, and other animals. But the divine process by which man comes to be such a living creature is what we are to note. His soul-endowed nature is the result of an extraordinary divine inbreathing; an “inspiration from the Almighty.” Job 32:8; Job 33:4. Hence we incline, with Delitzsch, to regard the breath of life in this verse (and which occurs nowhere else in this section) as denoting the spirit as distinguished from the soul of man. Accordingly, while discarding the low mechanical anthropomorphic conception of God as a workman, fashioning a clod of earth with his hands, and then standing near it to breathe into it a breath from without, we nevertheless discern in this narrative a divine process in the creation of man. “It begins,” says Delitzsch, “with the constitution of the body, as the regeneration (palin-genesia) of man shall one day end with the reconstitution of the body. God first formed the human body, introducing the formative powers of entire nature into the moist earth taken from the soil of Eden, and placing them in co-operation; whereon he then breathed into this form the creative spirit, which, because it originated after the manner of breathing, may just as well be called his spirit as man’s spirit, because it is his breath made into the spirit of man. This spirit, entering into the form of the body, did not remain hidden in itself, but revealed itself, by virtue of its likeness to God, as soul, which corresponds to the doxa (glory) of the Godhead, and by means of the soul subjected to itself the corporeity, by combining within the unity of its own intrinsic vitality the energies of the bodily material, as they reciprocally act on one another in accordance with the life of nature.… For the soul, as Tertullian says, is the body of the spirit, and the flesh is the body of the soul.” — Biblical Psychology, p. 102.

Genesis 2:8

8. Planted a garden eastward in Eden — The word Eden is here first introduced, and without any explanation. It seems most natural to understand it as the proper name of the land (ΰψφ) of the preceding narrative. The word signifies pleasure, delight, and thus corresponds with the Greek ηδονη. The Septuagint and Vulgate translate βο, garden, by the word paradise, (a park,) and the word came at length to be used as a proper name for the garden of Eden, and also for the abode of disembodied spirits. Compare Luke 23:43; 2 Corinthians 12:4.

The Vulgate never renders Eden as a proper name; and the Septuagint only here, in Genesis 2:10, and in Genesis 4:16. Accordingly some translate:God planted a garden in a delightful region. But the word eastward (ξχγν, from the east, or, on the east, that is, in the eastern part) serves to put on Eden the character of a proper name. And a most suitable name it was for the land where man first appeared, created in the image of God. That land, from the dust of which Adam was formed, in which every tree and shrub and herb was very good, being supernaturally produced by the power of God, might well be called Eden. The garden was planted in the eastern section of this Eden-land.

There he put the man whom he had formed — These words, taken in connexion with Genesis 2:15, are supposed to imply that Adam was created outside of paradise, and afterward transported thither. But the word ωׂ ?εν, here used, and πεη, in Genesis 2:15, both convey the idea of establishment in some place without any necessary allusion to a previous state. We might say of Eve, as well as of Adam, that God took her and placed her in paradise, without necessarily implying that she was created outside of the garden. The order of the narrative would indicate that man was formed before the garden was prepared for him. But the order of the narrative by no means implies, or requires us to assume, a corresponding chronological sequence of the things narrated. It would require volumes to chronicle all the opinions and discussions relative to the location of the garden of Eden, and the four rivers mentioned Genesis 2:11-14. Three theories have been particularly urged —one which locates the garden near the junction of the Tigris and Euphrates, or somewhere between that junction and the Persian Gulf; another which locates it in the highlands of Armenia, near the sources of these rivers; and a third which places it in the far East, in the mountainous highlands of Central Asia, near the sources of the Indus, the Helmend, the Oxus, and the Jaxartes rivers. All these theories become worthless the moment we allow that the deluge may have borne the family of Noah far away from the primeval home of man. The notion that the rivers and countries subsequently known as Hiddekel, Euphrates, Havilah, Cush, etc., are identical with the lands and rivers of Eden is also destitute of any sure foundation. For we must remember the universal habit of migratory tribes and new colonies to give old and familiar names to the new rivers, mountains, and countries which they discover and occupy. Nothing could have been more natural than for the sons of Noah to give to new objects names from the old fatherland.

Prof. W.F. Warren, in his Paradise Found, the Cradle of the Human Race at the North Pole, Boston, 1885, adduces a variety of arguments to prove that the primitive Eden was at the Arctic pole. Nothing in the legitimate interpretation of this Scripture is inconsistent with such an hypothesis; but we make no attempt to determine the site of paradise, inasmuch as we find nothing in this narrative that appears sufficient to solve that problem. It is, however, very probable that the original Eden of the human race was submerged and obliterated by the deluge.

Genesis 2:9

9. Out of the ground… every tree — These growths of the garden may be regarded as special creations; a part of the special work of fitting up the garden for man: or they may be understood as a general statement made without reference to time. The context makes the former supposition the more probable one. The tree of life — A tree of special value and significance, the eating of whose fruit perpetuated life forever. Genesis 3:22. Prof.

Warren cites the singular agreement of many ancient religions in associating their paradise-tree with the axis of the world, and observes: “If the garden of Eden was precisely at the North Pole, it is plain that a goodly tree standing in the centre of that garden would have had a visible and obvious cosmical significance, which could by no possibility belong to any other. — Paradise Found, p. 263. In the midst of the garden — As if it were to be the most conspicuous object there, and a constant prophecy to man that he was made for immortality. Comp. Revelation 2:7; Revelation 22:2. And the tree of knowledge of good and evil — The notion that the tree of life and the tree of knowledge were identical is not the most natural meaning of this language. This tree, says Jacobus, “was so-called not merely as a test for proving man, and showing whether he would choose the good or the evil; nor merely because by eating it he would come to know both good and evil, and the evil so that he would know the good in the new light of contrast with the evil. Both these are involved. But it was set also as a symbol of the divine knowledge to which man should not aspire, but to which he should submit his own judgment and knowledge. The positive prohibition was to be a standing discipline of the human reason, and a standing symbol of the limitation of religious thought.” These two trees being named in immediate connexion with the other trees of the garden, are to be understood literally of two particular trees, and not allegorically, as if they were merely symbols. See more on Genesis 2:17; Genesis 3:7.

Genesis 2:10

10. A river went out of Eden — This river, like the trees just named, constituted a part of the perfection of the earthly paradise. Comp. Revelation 22:1-2. From thence — From the garden. The verse clearly implies that the river had its source in the garden, and from that place, as a centre, divided itself off, was parted so as to become the fountain heads of four different streams. Hence by river we may understand river system, set of rivers, all identified as to their origin, but whether flowing from four neighboring fountains or from one may be left undecided. Some suppose the river flowed as one stream through the garden, and after leaving it became divided into four heads or beginnings of rivers.

Genesis 2:11

11. Pison… Havilah — After the views above given as to the site of paradise and the land of Eden, it would be idle to enumerate the diverse speculations and conjectures touching the rivers and lands designated in this and the following verses. The name Pison occurs nowhere else; but Havilah appears in Genesis 10:7, as the name of a son of Ham, and in Genesis 2:29 as that of a son of Shem. Nothing would have been more natural than for the sons of Noah to transfer antediluvian names to their children. In Genesis 25:18, and 1 Samuel 15:7, the name appears as that of a country south-east of Palestine — probably because settled by the descendants of a patriarch of this name. Where there is gold — The land of Eden was rich in precious metals and other costly substances.

Genesis 2:12

12. Bdellium — The word δαγμη occurs only here and in Numbers 11:7. The Septuagint renders it by ανθραξ in this passage, and by κρυσταλλος in Numbers. Gesenius, following Bochart and the rabbins, takes the word collectively in the sense of pearls. The English version, bdellium, follows Josephus, the Vulgate, and the Greek versions of Aquila, Theodotion, and Symmachus, and is as probably correct as any. Bdellium is a transparent, waxlike resin, now found on the trunks of trees in India. Onyx stone — Some render beryl; others, sardonyx. Some precious stone is meant, but it is impossible to determine its identity.

Genesis 2:13

13. Gihon — This name occurs again only as denoting a fountain near Jerusalem. 1 Kings 1:33; 1 Kings 1:38; 1 Kings 1:45; 2 Chronicles 32:30. Compasseth the whole land of Ethiopia — The attempt to explain this as referring to any of the lands subsequently known as Ethiopia, or Cush, are, perhaps, the best possible refutation of the notion that the rivers of Eden are identical with any rivers now known. Cush was evidently the name of a region or country in the land of Eden, and it was very natural for Ham, the son of Noah, after the flood to name one of his sons in memory of this ancient country. Genesis 10:6. The same considerations apply to the names Hiddekel, Assyria, (or Asshur; compare Genesis 10:11; Genesis 10:22,) and Euphrates, or Phrath, in the following verse. There is no sufficient reason for the belief that the original rivers and countries of Eden remained traceable after the flood.

Genesis 2:15

15. Took the man — See note on Genesis 2:8. To dress it and to keep it — The world was made for man, and it became his noble intellect and skillful hand to give direction to its growths. Man was made for work, and labour was honourable in the primitive Eden. God himself is revealed as working, and furnishing a divine example. Hence the commandment: “Six days shalt thou labour,… for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth.” Exodus 20:9; Exodus 20:11. To dress, that is, to work and cultivate the garden, was one means of keeping it, for its vegetation might grow wild, and suffer also from the beasts of the field. The man was placed in paradise to keep it, (ùׁ ?îø, guard, preserve,) not to lose it. Perhaps the word may indicate that an evil enemy was lurking near.

Genesis 2:16

16. The Lord God commanded the man — The Hebrew form of expression, ειφεςμδΰγν, and put a commandment upon the man, suggests the thought of an authoritative law coming down upon him from above. The word man is to be understood here as in Genesis 5:2, of the man and his wife, and not as excluding the woman from the obligation of the law. The woman herself acknowledges this in Genesis 3:2-3. The commandment might, indeed, have been given first to the man, and afterward repeated to the man and his wife together, thus intensifying in them both a sense of its importance. An exact chronological order of particular events is evidently not exhibited in this chapter.

Here is the first revelation of moral law. The divine commandment appeals to man’s intellectual and moral nature, recognising him as a thinking religious being. The commandment is simple, specific, positive, and so adapted to test the free and responsible nature of the being to whom it was addressed. Observe that the first great commandment, which served to test man’s moral life, was of a negative form — a prohibition. See next verse. Freely eat — The intensified form of expression (Hebrews, eating thou mayest eat) confers the most unrestricted enjoyment of all the fruitage of the garden. Many understand from this reference to the fruit of trees, as also from Genesis 1:29, that man at first subsisted on the fruit of trees alone. This, taken in connexion with the absence of any allusion to the use of animal food in these first records of the race, may be a legitimate inference, but is nowhere clearly asserted.

Genesis 2:17

17. Of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil — It is idle to speculate on the physical nature of this mysterious tree; and the supposition that its fruit contained a natural poison, which must sooner or later have resulted in the death of the eater, is without warrant in the Scripture. Nordo we see sound reason in classing this account of the tree of knowledge with the myths and traditions of prophetic trees, or in seeking to identify it (or the tree of life) with the sacred plant or branch which appears so noticeably on Chaldean, Assyrian, and Persian monuments. All that clearly appears in this narrative is, that the fruit of a particular tree (or, perhaps, class of trees) was designated as not to be eaten, and the name seems to have been given in anticipation of what would result from eating the forbidden fruit. Its name, therefore, indicated the moral purpose which it served rather than any natural or physical character of the tree itself. The design of the prohibition of this particular fruit was to test man’s moral nature, to develop his love for his Maker by deliberate choice of the good and deliberate rejection of the evil. Thus would he come to distinguish clearly between good and evil by acquiring a godlike permanence in the good, and like steadfast opposition to all evil. By disobedience he came to know good and evil in the Satanic way, becoming experimentally identified with the evil, and thus opposed to God. The disposition which some have shown to ridicule the literal interpretation of this narrative, and to assume that it was unworthy of God and incompatible with the dignity of man’s original state to make his and his posterity’s happiness depend upon the non-eating of a certain tree, springs from notions of God and of man which are unscriptural. The simplicity, clearness, and positive character of the prohibition are conspicuous marks of its fitness as a moral test. The newly created Adam, with great possibilities, was yet undeveloped and undisciplined. His mental and religious nature, like that of a child, would be best trained by a positive commandment, which rested in the authority of the Creator rather than in the reason of the creature whose love and loyalty were to be tested. Moreover, as food was a natural want of man, the most convenient and suitable form of the first law given for his moral guidance was one in which a broad permission and a single prohibition related to the matter of eating. In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die — Solemn and startling words to be uttered in the bowers of paradise!

What all this terrible penalty involved was doubtless a mystery to the man, and no subsequent revelation has fully cleared the awful mystery. The comments of Muller (Christian Doctrine of Sin, vol. ii, page 291, Edinburgh, 1868) furnish an excellent statement of the doctrine of the ancient Scripture: “If we compare the penalty of death threatened Genesis 2:17, with the fulfilment of the sentence after the first transgression, (Genesis 3:16-22,) two things are manifest.

On the one hand we find that the death which was to follow the commission of sin included not only physical death, but the various ills that flesh is heir to — the manifold pains and miseries of our earthly lot; and these are represented as resulting from sin, which ends in death. Thus the well known difficulty involved in the word áéåí, in the day, is at once obviated. In the very day of disobedience a life begins which is at the same time a death. It thus appears, too, that when the serpent in his subtlety said to Eve, ‘Ye shall not surely die,’ this was not a bare lie, but a half truth, and therefore a double deception. But, on the other hand, we find by comparing the two passages that physical death is the real kernel and gist of the punishment. For the sentence pronounced concludes with the prophecy of death, making this the most important element, by emphatic repetition; (Genesis 3:19;) and the account of the execution of the sentence lays stress chiefly upon the fact of man’s exclusion from the means of imperishable life.” See Genesis 3:22; Genesis 3:24.

Genesis 2:18

18. Not good that the man should be alone — He was designed to be a social being, capable of holding intercourse with other beings like himself, as well as with God and angels. Help meet — Hebrews, I will make for him a helper as over against him, ëðâãå, corresponding to him — that is, a suitable companion; one who can assist him in his labours, share his counsels, and reciprocate his feelings.

Genesis 2:19

19. Every beast of the field — That is, representative animals of the garden; not, as some would understand, (and thence erect a skeptical objection to the history,) all the genera, species, and individuals of the animal creation of all climates throughout the world. The apparent design of the writer in introducing here this statement of the animals of Paradise was to show that among all these lower orders of animal life there was no proper companion for the man. He gave these several creatures names according to their natures; but for Adam was not found a helper corresponding to him (Genesis 2:20) among them all. It required no very long time for God to cause the animals of Paradise to pass before Adam and receive their names from him. This was a very proper prelude to the formation of the woman, for it served to awaken in the man a consciousness of his need of a companion.

Genesis 2:20

20. Adam gave names to all cattle — Adam was the first great scientist. For what is all natural science but a discovery of the objects of nature, observing, discriminating, and giving them names? Adam, by a lofty intuition, and a judgment and inspiration unrivaled by any of his sons, first gave facile expression in names to the qualities of the creatures he observed. “Still we are not to suppose that Adam’s insight into the character of the animals was a perfect comprehension of the secrets of nature; it is rather to be regarded as the pure, simple, lively view of an innocent child full of undeveloped depth of mind.” — Gerlach. And yet we may suppose that he uttered the names by means of a divine impulse acting vigorously on his human powers, and giving them a normal development. “The man sees the animals, and thinks of what they are and how they look; and these thoughts, in themselves already inward words, take the form involuntarily of audible names, which he utters to the beasts.” — Delitzsch. And to this we may add the words of Keil: “The thoughts of Adam with regard to the animals, we are not to regard as the mere results of reflection; but as a deep and direct mental insight into the nature of the animals.”

Genesis 2:21

21. Caused a deep sleep to fall — úøãîç, deep sleep, not an ordinary slumber, but a profound sleep in which all self-consciousness was suspended. One of his ribs — Hence the force of the old proverb: The part of which woman was made was not taken from his head, as if she were to be a lord over him, nor from his feet, as if he might tread upon her, but from his side, to show that she was to be his companion and equal.

Genesis 2:22

22. Made he a woman — Hebrews, Built… the rib which he had taken from the man into a woman. This is a simple statement of fact, and skeptical speculation and jest respecting it are idle and absurd. “The woman was created, not of the dust of the earth, but from a rib of Adam, because she was formed for an inseparable unity and fellowship of life with the man, and the mode of her creation was to lay the actual foundation for the moral ordinance of marriage.” — Keil. Brought her — Not that she was formed at a great distance from him, but as soon as he awoke from his deep sleep, she was brought to his notice, that is, stood before him.

Genesis 2:23

23. This is now bone — Hebrews, This — the time — bone of my bones, etc. äôòí, the time, is here equivalent to the adverb now. Comp. Genesis 30:20. The words are an exclamation, and indicate the joyful surprise with which he recognises this time, after having looked hitherto repeatedly among the lower animals in vain, a suitable companion for himself. Shall be called Woman — He gives her at once her proper name, and he does it by means of the same deep insight into her nature as that by which he named the living creatures of Paradise.

Thus now has the sacred writer completed a fuller description of the creation of man, male and female, than it was his design to give in the previous section, Genesis 1:27. That was creation, this formation. See above on Genesis 2:7. On the proper name of the woman, see Genesis 3:20.

Genesis 2:24

24. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh — Some interpreters (Delitzsch, Lange) regard these as the words of Adam, spoken as by a prophetic impulse from God; while others (Keil, Gerlach, Turner) regard them as the words of the inspired historian. The latter is the more probable view. In Matthew 19:3-6, Jesus showed from this passage that the marriage tie is most holy and inviolable. Says Otto von Gerlach: “There will be times and circumstances when a man is permitted, nay, is commanded, to leave his father and his mother, but his wife he is never permitted to leave — they both shall be one. This is not said of the woman, because she already, by her marriage, has left father and mother, and become subject to her husband. Here it is not spoken of leaving father and mother for the sake of marrying, but of a leaving after marriage.”

Genesis 2:25

25. Not ashamed — For where there is no sin, but a heavenly consciousness of perfect innocence, there can be no sense of shame.