Creation 2

Genesis 2:4

These are the generations of the heavens

and of the earth

when they were created,

in the day that the Lord God made

the earth and the heavens.

Genesis 2:1-4 really belong as part of the first chapter of Genesis.  Genesis 2:5-7 could be a sort of recap, restatement in other terms, of Creation.  And the rest of chapter 2 adds details to the story.

Genesis 2:5-6

[At the time that God created the world and all . . .]

And every plant of the field

before it was in the earth,

and every herb of the field before it grew:

for the Lord God had not caused

it to rain upon the earth,

and there was not a man to till the ground.

But there went up a mist

from the earth,

and watered the whole

face of the ground.

Some have considered Genesis 1 and 2 to be at odds with each other.  Some have said that one was what God planned to do, and the other the carrying forward of the plan.  Some have said one was a spiritual creation, and one a physical creation.  God only knows.  But as I read and ponder these verses, and try to imagine what might have been happening, I look carefully at the words . . .

1.  Compare the creation of plant life, Gen 1:11-12, with Gen 2:5-6 . . . the latter talks about plants “of the field”.

2.  Gen 2:5-6 talks about these plants of the field before they grew on earth.

4.  And why was this before they grew on the earth?  Because

a.  it had not yet rained

b.  there wasn’t any man to till the earth

Why should those things matter?  There was a mist that rose up to water things.  But it seems to me that this verse is talking about the inception of agriculture.  Agriculture requires a man to “till the earth”.  It generally involves rain and directing water that originated as rain.  It involves not just plant life, but plants “of the field”.  I think the plant life was there, but agriculture turned plant life into food.  Of course there are hunter-gatherers, but civilization and population could bloom when agriculture took hold.  More about this below.

What does the mist rising up from the ground tell us about the earth at this stage?  Probably a humid, moist climate, something akin to a hot steamy jungle?  Perhaps still not a very highly stratisfied atmosphere.  Perhaps lots of greenhouse gases keeping temps up so that water vapor rising doesn’t hit cool air that turns it into rain.

Genesis 2:7

And the Lord God

formed man of the dust of the ground,

and breathed into his nostrils

the breath of life;

and man became a living soul.

It doesn’t seem likely to me that God created a man on the earth before all other life.  It does seem likely that when he created mankind, He gave them the intellect, inspiration, instruction to develop agriculture from original species that had the potential of sustaining the human family.

“The dust of the ground” is essentially the elements of the earth–which make up our bodies.

The Bible doesn’t say man was poofed into existence, but that he was formed from material already available.  How did God “form” man?  That He didn’t say here.  Obviously He knew how to put things together. Scientists now days have learned to grow tissues in a lab, and God with His vastly superior intellect knew how to give those tissues life.  Not just any kind of life, but a life with a unique soul.