2:4b -7 — When the Lord God made the earth and the heavens—⁵and no shrub of the field had yet appeared on the earth 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, ⁶but streams came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground—⁷the 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.

The first thing a careful reader notices in reading into Gen 2-3 is that, instead of 'elohim, 'God,' used everywhere in Gen 1-2:4a, the reference to God in this account is everywhere, except in the dialogue between the serpent and the woman (3:1b-5), a compound of the personal name of God, YHWH (the tetragrammaton) and the generic term 'elohim for "God." While this fact was once used as a rather dubious basis for the proposal that the difference reflects different sources, it is increasingly recognized that it is theology that determines the usage. So observes Victor Hamilton:

In Gen. 1 the emphasis is on creation via the majestic God who speaks and it is done. The more generic name for God—'^elohim—fits this emphasis admirably. By contrast, the emphasis in 2:4ff. is more personal. The context here is not a universe but a garden. Also, the picture of man here is not of one with authority but of one under authority, as a vassal in a covenant relationship. To be sure, Yahweh would be the proper designation for the deity at this point. The author proceeded, however, to append '^elohim to Yahweh to conjoin the concept of a God whose sovereign control extends to both the material and the moral world.1

This fresh view of God as personal is further nourished. In this account God does not create the First Man,2 but forms (yatsar) him. He makes/builds (banah) the woman (v22). He does not command the garden into existence; rather He plants (nata') it. He is pictured here not as someone "up there," but as a working god down here, almost incarnate we might say. Though not in the way we can speak of Jesus was incarnate, these chapters introduce us to a God who clearly was not worried about getting dirty and vulnerable in the mud of the world. In the Garden "God casually strolls," observes William Brown, "enjoying the company of the garden's denizens . . . [and] is no outsider waiting for the right time to gloriously enter creation. No, it is in YHWH's nature to enter nature and enjoy creation's good company."3 Sebastian Moore makes an interesting observation about God in the psalms: "God behaves in the psalms in ways he is not allowed to behave in systematic theology."4 God, of course, could behave like that in the psalms only because He had already behaved like that, as Genesis here shows, from the beginning.

In a style similar to what we have found in 1:2, the author takes us back in time — not to "the beginning" — but to a time during the process of putting the earth together when "no shrub of the field . . . and no plant had yet sprung up" (v2b). Whereas Gen 1 had a broad cosmic view of things, here the "ground-level" view is emphasized. While, e.g., the merism implying all created things still appears, it is inverted to "the earth and the heavens" instead of "the heavens and the earth." It is also immediately followed by five clear references to the solid earth in v5: "the field" (hassadeh) 2x, "the earth" (ha'aretz) 2x, as well as "the ground" ('adamah). Soon it becomes obvious that it is to the Garden of Eden he wants to shift the frame of view.

But the earth—though not exactly the "without form and void" of Gen1—is still barren ground. The absence, and the apparent reasons for the absence, of "shrub[s] (siach) of the field" and "plant[s] ('eseb) of the field" (v5) is puzzling. If "streams ('ed) came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the gound" (v6), why would shrubs and plants not grow? Why would only rain do to sustain their growth? Why was tillage by humans necessary for these plants to grow? No satisfactory answers have been given to these questions. Part of the reason is because these verses contain a number of difficult Hebrew words. Siach, translated "shrub," appears, as a botanical reference, only three other times in the OT (Gen 21:15; Job 30:4; 7); this provides hardly adequate material for a clear identification of what it means. 'ed, "streams" (v6) is an even harder nut to crack; it is found only one other time in the OT, at Job 36:27.⁵ If 'ed really means 'streams,' how do they "come up" from the earth? Water tends to "go down." Attempts to find help from cognate languages have yielded precious little. Neither does Gordon Wenham's proposal "fresh water ocean"6 shed additional light, nor the "springs" of ancient translations ike the Septuagint and the Vulgate. Our lack of comprehension here, however, is not fatal to our understanding of what the author intents.7 These two verses provide only circumstantial information. The verse of real significance is v7: "the Lord God (Yhwh 'elohim) 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."

Man is simply a worthless vessel
bearing the greatest of all possible gifts — the breathe of God.
What glory!

The account of the creation of humans in Gen 1 had been an elaborate affair: he was the object of extraordinary divine conception, made in the divine image, an agent of authority over the beasts of the sea, air and ground, and provisioned, and taking up four long verses. Here his creation is accounted for in all of only one short verse of 13 words (in Hebrew).

Instead of being "created", here man was fashioned—yatzar, the same word used for what potters do with pots—and from 'apar min-ha'adamah, "the dust/ash of the ground." Many Christians read this expression as a statement of chemistry and, perhaps, that was how many ancient readers would have understood it that way as well. But the ancient readers would very likely also see that it is its significance, not the chemistry, that the story wanted grasped. The point cannot be missed, because no matter what culture we come from, dust/ash ('apar) means 'rubbish,' 'worthlessness,' the meanest of the mean.8 Even the name used of him, "the man" (ha'adam) is simply a contraction of 'the ground' (ha'adamah). He was, in the most literal sense of the word, just an "earthling." This nothing, however, possesses something nothing else in creation is credited in the Bible as having: "the breath of life" breathed into him by Yahweh 'elohim. Whatever we may make of our clever doctrines of man as body, spirit, and/or soul, the author of Genesis—complementing his portrayal of man as bearing the image of God in 1:26ff.—is quite unambiguous: man is simply a worthless vessel bearing the greatest of all possible gifts—the breathe of God. What glory!

Even as the author takes us back to the early days God of forming the man here in the midst of the barren land, he already has a plan for how the story will unfold; look at this:

A. Yhwh God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. Then Yhwh God planted a garden in Eden—there He put the man, 2:7-8.

B. Yhwh made "all kinds of trees (kol-'ets) grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food (ma'akal)," 2:8-9a.

C. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil," 2:9b.

A'. Yhwh God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it, 2:15.

B'. "And Yhwh God commanded the man, 'You are free to eat ('akol to'kel) from any tree (kol 'ets) in the garden," 2:16.

C'. "but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die,'" 2:17.

We shall return to examine what this may mean as we look at the verses in detail.

You may wish to read the following commentaries-expositions:

John Calvin
Matthew Henry

Low Chai Hok
©Alberith, 2016

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