Chapter Two

Genesis 2

Let me state again that I am not promoting creationism. I am just giving my view of what the authors believed and wrote about in the Old Testament. The things they wrote about in the early chapters of Genesis were just stories about things that they thought happened thousands of years before their time.

The most obvious thing the authors were trying to do was to give a group of people an identity. They also wanted to give them a religion. Back in those days and even extending up to the present time, government and religion were inseperable. The Islamic countries of today are perfect examples of that. The same governments are perfect examples of why the United States constitution insists that we separate church and state, one reason being, when you have more than one form of religion who's to govern?

Having said that, back to Chapter Two. Click on this link and open a seperate window to follow along.

The first thing I will do is eliminate the first three verses or this chapter because I believe they were supposed to be part of Chapter One and they were added by the author in order to justify the law of the Sabbath for the Israelites.

This chapter is a radically different version of how the heavens and the earth were created in comparason to Chapter One. In Chapter One, man and woman were created last, after all of the other living things were created. In this chapter man is created first and then the other plants and animals are created and finally woman is created last. How do we explain this?

I think that we have descriptions of two different creations. Chapter One describes the original creation and the humans were what we would now call, 'hunter gatherers.' These humans spread over the earth and lived in harmony with the other living things that the gods had created. There was no guilt or shame and all lived together in peace and harmony. Yes, humans killed animals for food but it was done naturally and with respect. It was all a part of nature.

Chapter Two describes the time when agriculture began and man first domesticated animals to do his work and supply him with food. By the time we come to verse eight the first humans had already been created as described in Chapter One but there was not, as yet, a man to 'till the earth.' In other words human beings had not started farming and were just getting their food where they happened to find it.

I guess that the God named LORD didn't much care for the humdrum peace and harmony and he decided to liven things up by creating (training) man to till the soil and start farming and later build cities and learn many other trades.

The first question I have is who was the God named LORD? In my opinion, he was one of the gods of Chapter One who had a slightly different opinion than the other gods on how to handle the creation that they had made.

If I understand verse seven correctly, it appears that the God named LORD wasn't able to train the hunter gatherers to till the soil and he had to create a new man to do this work. I believe this refers to modern homo sapien sapiens that came into existence a couple of hundred thousand years ago. Perhaps hominids like Neanderthal man were unable to comprehend farming and couldn't compete with the newly created humans and so became extinct.

According to verse eight, even the new man that the LORD had created could not comprehend farming because the Lord had to make the first garden in order to show the man how to do it. Verse nine states the the LORD also had to domesticate the first plants.

Verse nine also indicates that by giving the first humans the knowledge of farming he was also training him in biology/zoology, and making it possible for the humans to discover how to prevent their own death which they are still working on today. Also farming allowed man to settle in one place and start claiming land as his own personal property. Once man started having possessions then he had to make laws to protect them. The concept of 'good' and 'evil' came into being.

Verses ten through sixteen describe the area where the LORD decided it was the best place to start his project.

Verse seventeen describes the start of man's religious training to dumb him down and keep him from using his new found abilities to their fullest. Superstition is a great inhibiter of knowledge.

The rest of the chapter tells of how the LORD trained the first farmer and how he had to create a woman who had the same abilities as the man whom he created. By the end of the chapter the man and woman were still as innocent as the hunter gatherers they were replacing and had not yet developed the laws of good and evil which is, of course, religion.

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,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.

There went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground. The God named LORD formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

The God named LORD planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

A river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads. The name of the first is Pison: that is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold; and the gold of that land is good: there is bdellium and the onyx stone.

The name of the second river is Gihon: the same is it that compasseth the whole land of Ethiopia. The name of the third river is Hiddekel: that is it which goeth toward the east of Assyria. And the fourth river is Euphrates.

The God named LORD took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.The LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

The God named LORD said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him. Out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof. Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him.

The God named LORD caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; and the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man. Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.

They were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.