Gen 2:4-25 · Read 10 min · think and write 15 min
The first line of the Bible is: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen 1:1).
Chapter 1 tells of God’s creation day by day, and when it comes to man it says: “God created man in his own image. In God’s image he created him; male and female he created them” (Gen 1:27). At the end of the chapter: “God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good” (Gen 1:31).
Chapter 2 tells of the making of man once more, and this time from close up: how God made the man, where he put him, and how he made the woman. That is what this lesson reads.
4This is the history of 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.
5No plant of the field was yet on the earth, and no herb of the field had yet sprung up; for the LORD God had not caused it to rain on the earth. There was not a man to till the ground,
6but a mist went up from the earth, and watered the whole surface of the ground.
7The LORD God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.
8The LORD God planted a garden eastward, in Eden, and there he put the man whom he had formed.
9Out of the ground the LORD God made every tree to grow that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food, including the tree of life in the middle of the garden and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
10A river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from there it was parted, and became the source of four rivers.
11The name of the first is Pishon: it flows through the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold;
12and the gold of that land is good. Bdellium and onyx stone are also there.
13The name of the second river is Gihon. It is the same river that flows through the whole land of Cush.
14The name of the third river is Hiddekel. This is the one which flows in front of Assyria. The fourth river is the Euphrates.
15The LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to cultivate and keep it.
16The LORD God commanded the man, saying, “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden;
17but you shall not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; for in the day that you eat of it, you will surely die.”
18The LORD God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make him a helper comparable to him.”
19Out of the ground the LORD God formed every animal of the field, and every bird of the sky, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. Whatever the man called every living creature became its name.
20The man gave names to all livestock, and to the birds of the sky, and to every animal of the field; but for man there was not found a helper comparable to him.
21The LORD God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep. As the man slept, he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh in its place.
22The LORD God made a woman from the rib which he had taken from the man, and brought her to the man.
23The man said, “This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh. She will be called ‘woman,’ because she was taken out of Man.”
24Therefore a man will leave his father and his mother, and will join with his wife, and they will be one flesh.
25The man and his wife were both naked, and they were not ashamed.
Dust and breath. “The LORD God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul” (v. 7). Man was made from dust; man became a living soul because God breathed the breath of life into his nostrils.
To cultivate and keep it. God planted a garden in Eden (v. 8), and “made every tree to grow that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food” (v. 9). “The LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to cultivate and keep it” (v. 15). In the garden, from the very start, man had work to do.
The one command. God commanded him: “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden” (v. 16), with only one exception: “but you shall not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; for in the day that you eat of it, you will surely die” (v. 17). What they could eat was “every tree of the garden”; what they could not eat was one tree.
Not good to be alone. Everything was there, and yet God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make him a helper comparable to him” (v. 18). God brought the animals and birds to the man “to see what he would call them” (v. 19); the man named them all, “but for man there was not found a helper comparable to him” (v. 20).
Bone of my bones. “The LORD God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep. As the man slept, he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh in its place” (v. 21). From the rib God made a woman, “and brought her to the man” (v. 22). Here the Bible records for the first time words that a human being spoke: “This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh. She will be called ‘woman,’ because she was taken out of Man” (v. 23).
Not ashamed. The passage goes on: “Therefore a man will leave his father and his mother, and will join with his wife, and they will be one flesh” (v. 24). The chapter stops at: “The man and his wife were both naked, and they were not ashamed” (v. 25).
An Israelite poet, looking at the sky, also thought about how man was made: “When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have ordained” (Ps 8:3), “what is man, that you think of him? What is the son of man, that you care for him?” (Ps 8:4).
Readers can see this: man, made from dust, is someone God himself breathed into, himself put in place, himself cares for. When Israel read Genesis 2, they also sang psalms like this.
Perhaps you, too, sometimes look down on yourself: you feel you are nothing, only dust; or you feel that what you do every day has no meaning.
This lesson does not say you are something great. What it shows you is this: man really was made from dust, but the breath was breathed in by God; and God put man in the garden and gave him the work “to cultivate and keep it” (v. 15). The Psalms have this line: “I will give thanks to you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made” (Ps 139:14).
This week: Choose one thing that has been put into your hands — a job, a place, a person you look after. This week, do it well and with care; and as you do it, think of verse 15: when God put man in the garden, this was the work he gave him from the start.
The passage says: “The LORD God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul” (Gen 2:7).
The New Testament quotes this line. Paul says: “For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive” (1 Cor 15:22). He also says: “So also it is written, ‘The first man Adam became a living soul.’ The last Adam became a life-giving spirit” (1 Cor 15:45).
Read the two side by side: “The first man Adam became a living soul” (1 Cor 15:45), taken from verse 7 of this lesson; and Paul goes on, “The last Adam became a life-giving spirit” (1 Cor 15:45).
Scripture: World English Bible.