Genesis Chapter 2– John Karmelich

1. Jesus said at Sermon on the Mount “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

a) So, any questions so far? J

b) Genesis Chapter 2 is about God’s perfection.

c) It starts with the more details about “Day 6” of creation and ends with the first marriage.

d) It is about the ideal that God wants between a man and a women.

e) It is about the ideal world that existed prior to sin.

f) In Chapter 3 we have the downfall of man.

g) Here in Chapter 2, we have the “ideal” that God first created for man.

i) It may give us clues what life is like in heaven.

ii) More importantly, it teaches us about God’s love and plan for our lives.

h) One can also see God in the background saying to Adam, “See how much I love you. I created this ideal world for you. I created Eve as a helper for you. Go have fun. J”

i) The purpose of life is to live For God. This is the world God created for Adam and Eve.

j) We’ll deal with the rebellion in the next lesson. Today, we’ll focus on the ideal.

k) With that, I’m keeping my intro real short because I have a lot of ground to cover.

2. Chapter 2, Verse 1 Thus, the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array. ² By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work.

a) In a “sense”, we are still working on Chapter 1.

b) The chapter breaks were not added until the 12^th Century, AD. If I was in charge, the correct chapter break would be at Verse 4. I’m not, so here we are at “Verse 1”.

c) Chapter 2, Verses 1-3 continue the creation-story as told in Chapter 1.

d) Verses 1-3 focus on the 7^th day, which is the day God stopped creating.

e) In Verse 1, it says that God had “finished” the work he has been doing.

i) In John’s Gospel, Jesus says, ““My Father has been working until now, and I have been working.” (John 5:17, NIV). Is that a contradiction?

ii) No, and this is a another reason why I believe in a literal 7-day creation. If you are Christian, and believe that the seven days represent seven era’s-of-time and we’re still in the 3^rd day, you are contradicting Jesus!

iii) In fairness, you can interpret this to mean that God stopped creating the universe and set it in motion in the six days of creation. This view is that after the 6^th day, everything else “worked by itself”.

a) Personally, I can’t see it that way. It is too contradictory to the all of the “creation” of new people through God.

b) If everything is “working by itself” after six days, how do you explain the flood? How do you explain anyone being resurrected unless God is still somehow “working”?

f) Remember the purpose of the 6-days of work and 1 day of God resting was to give us a model of resting on the 7^th day. God could have made the world in six seconds or six minutes. God “took his time” and worked over a six day period as a model for how we are too work.

g) God does not need rest in the same way we need rest. God did not plop on the couch on the 7^th day and sleep in. J God is perfect and therefore has no need of anything.
I simply see the 7^th day as a literal 24 period where no creation took place.

3. Verse 3: And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.

a) There is a word used in the King James and other translations called “sanctified”. The NIV translation says “made it holy”. The idea is to “set it apart”.

i) Suppose you had 6 chairs around a dinning room table. You took one of those chairs and said, “This chair is only for my wife Nancy. No one else may use it and there are no exceptions.” You just “sanctified” that chair for Nancy.

b) The idea behind making the 7^th day special is to take one day out of seven and stop whatever you “normally” do.

c) God designed it this way for our happiness. It is one of the 10 commandments.

d) On to the classical question: What does this mean for the Christian believer? Does the Christian have to stop whatever they are doing on the “Sabbath?”

i) First, let’s clear up the word “Sabbath”. It is Hebrew for “rest” and has nothing to do with the word Saturday. On our modern calendar, for close to a few thousand years, “Sunday” is the first day of the week, so therefore, Jews celebrate the Sabbath on Saturdays. That is it.

ii) As to the Christian, first of all, the Sabbath-rest requirement was formally fulfilled in Jesus. Here are a couple of support-text’s for that idea.

a) Jesus said, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.”
(Matthew 5:17, NIV)

b) There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; for anyone who enters God’s rest also rests from his own work, just as God did from his. Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one will fall by following their example of disobedience. (Hebrews 4:9-11, NIV)

c) “Entering the rest” is about trusting in Jesus for your salvation.

iii) Given that Jesus fulfills the role of our “Sabbath rest”, what are we suppose to do on Sundays? J

a) Here is where good Christians differ. I take the view that if you are grateful for what Jesus did for you, you then want to obey his commandments. The Sabbath rest is there for our happiness. God does not want a stressed out believer. We can’t be good witnesses for Jesus if we are stressed-out workaholics! Yes the dishes still can and need to be washed on Sundays. The focus is on one’s occupation. Work six days (or less) and rest on the seventh day.

b) As far as formal Christian worship and the Sabbath, Paul said it best: “One man considers one day more sacred than another; another man considers every day alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. He who regards one day as special, does so to the Lord… If we live, we live to the Lord; and if we die, we die to the Lord. (Romans 14:5-8a, NIV)

4. Verse 4: This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created.

a) Now we start the “real” Chapter 2. J

b) Most of Chapter 2 focuses on the events that take place during the 6^th day of creation. It is a “commentary” of further details of Chapter 1.

c) The word translated “account” is better translated “generations”.

d) It is as if Moses is saying “This is a genealogy of the world from God, through Adam and Eve. This section ends right before the Noah story in Chapter 6.

e) Some suspect Adam wrote this section himself and the story was somehow saved and passed on to Moses. Either that, or it was divinely written by God directly to Moses exactly as it happened. I lean toward the “Adam” theory, and I’ll explain why in a few verses. The truth is we don’t know for sure..

5. Verse 4 (cont.) When the LORD God made the earth and the heavens-- ⁵ and 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, ⁶ but streams came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground—

a) We are now back to “Day 1” of the creation. This story focuses on “Day 6”, but this introduction focuses on Day 1.

b) The main point of this introduction is that “When Adam came around, there was no rain.”

i) One of Noah’s problems was to explain to people what “rain” and “storms” were.

c) Remember that there were waters “above the earth and below the earth” (Genesis 1:20).

i) This means that above the atmosphere later there was a water (or ice) layer.

ii) This gave the world a “hot-house” effect where the whole world had tropical weather. In order for rain to happen, there has to be inconsistent weather from one location to another so that clouds move.

iii) These verses are saying that prior to the prior to the flood all the agriculture was water-feed by a mist-system that came from the water stored beneath the earth.

d) Before we move on, Notice in Verse 5, the expression “The LORD God”.

i) This is the first time the word “LORD” appears. The transliteration of the Hebrew is where we get “JWTH” or “Je-Hov-Ah”.

ii) This is where the bad-theory comes in that different people wrote different parts of Genesis. This is nonsense! First of all, Jesus claims Moses wrote the first five books of the bible. Second, why can’t an author use different titles for God to express different actions by God?

a) Genesis Chapter 1 focuses on God’s creation. Therefore the other word for God “El-o-heem” is used. This title represents God in his majestic power.

b) Genesis Chapter 2 and 3 focus on God’s relationship with Adam and Eve. The title “Jehovah” can be translated “I am” or “The Becoming One”.

(1) The idea is of God revealing himself to mankind.

6. Verse 7: -- the 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.

a) The NIV translation uses a hyphen at the beginning of this sentence. It is as if to say Verse 7 connects with the previous thought, but it is also a new idea.

i) I say this because some people see Chapter 2 and say the 7^th day is an “era of time” covering the creation of the heaven and earth and then man.

ii) Remember in Chapter 1, the earth was made on Day 1 and man on Day 6.

iii) The solution is to treat Verse 7 as the beginning of a discussion of Day 6 with more details. To paraphrase this section, “Here are more things that happened on Day 6, but first let me give you a relevant introduction in Verses 4-6.”

b) God is describing how he created man on Day 6. The big question to ask is why did God choose this method?

i) Let’s face it, God could have made man “out of thin air” and he existed.

ii) Instead, God goes to the trouble of telling us that he made man out of the dust of the ground and “breathed” life into him.

iii) First of all, God does not have a mouth. It is not as if God the Father performed “mouth to nose” recitation on Adam in order to get him to breathe. J

iv) The Hebrew word for “breath” is the same word used for “Spirit”.

a) It is the introduction of God giving a “spiritual nature” to man.

b) I said in the last lesson how only humans have a need to worship something. This is the introduction of man having that need.

c) God created us with a need to worship him.

v) The next thing I wondered about is “why the nose?” Why not his mouth?

a) This is more proof I spend way too much time thinking about this stuff! J

b) I did a search of the word “nose” in the bible, and the best I can tell is God mostly associates nostrils with breathing and smelling and the mouth with eating and speaking.

c) I don’t know, maybe God wanted Adam to “save his first kiss for Eve”. J

c) It is also interesting that the six elements that make up the dust of the ground is the same six elements that make up the human body. It is almost as if God took the molecules out of the dust and rearranged them to form a human being.

d) On a simpler level, I believe God choose this method of creation simply to remind us that are bodies are going to return to dust one day.

i) The spiritual aspect is “something special”. The soul is what lives forever.

ii) One of the classical debates in Christianity is over the “body resurrection”.

a) Does God resurrect our physical bodies that we have here on earth?

b) I personally lean toward the idea that we have a new body in heaven, one that can withstand whatever heaven is going to be like, just like the bodies made for us on earth are designed to fit into this atmosphere.

c) Others argue for a literal resurrection, and our new bodies are “transformations” of the old bodies.

d) I don’t know how God will work it out. That is his problem. J

e) I liked the computer analogy: A computer CD has the same weight whether or not it is blank or full of music or software. The “real you” is like the music software that gets “transferred” to a new body when it is resurrected. The physical CD decays into the ground.

iii) Let’s get back to the idea of “dust we are from, dust we shall return”.

a) It is that reminder that life is special and God wants us to make the best of it. True happiness comes when you live your life to please God and do his will as opposed to your own.

e) Based on this verse, I also take the view that Adam was “born” as a full adult.

i) Whether or not he had a belly button is still a mystery! J

ii) God needed a full adult who could walk and survive on his own.

iii) It sort of answers the famous “chicken and egg” dilemma of who came first.
It looks like the “chicken wins” as Adam was created as a full being.

7. Verse 8: Now the LORD God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed.

a) Notice that Eden is not the name of garden, just the location where the Garden was located.

b) Here is an interesting detail. Notice the word “planted” is past tense.

i) It is true in the original Hebrew as well.

ii) This means that Adam wrote this as if it was past tense.

iii) It probably means that Adam wrote this section (or Moses wrote it from Adam’s perspective) from a time-frame after Adam & Eve were banished from the Garden of Eden for eating the wrong fruit.

iv) Based on Verse 8 and a few of the upcoming verses, I suspect Adam traveled around the area and did some exploring. He named the area where the Garden was located “Eden”.

c) I am fascinated by the word “east” in Verse 8. My first thought was “East of what?” J

i) My answer is speculation. With that said, here is something to consider.

a) I believe Adam wrote this past tense. He will be banished from Eden.

b) Ezekiel teaches that when the Messiah comes, it will be from the “East”.

(1) Then the man brought me to the gate facing east, ²and I saw the glory of the God of Israel coming from the east” (Eze. 43:1-2a, NIV)

c) I think what we have here in Genesis 2 is a “word picture” of looking toward the East for a coming Messiah.

d) Just as Adam, in his banished state, looked to the “East” where Eden was as the place of his fellowship with God, so the Christian looks “to the East” for the Second Coming of Christ.

e) Again, its just my weird theory. Take it if you like. J

ii) Another view is that wherever Adam was originally located, God moved him eastward to the Garden of Eden. Whatever else that could mean, we don’t know.

8. Verse 9: And the LORD God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground--trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

a) Ok, the plot thickens. J

b) All we know about the Garden of Eden is that:

i) 1) God made it. (Verse 8)

ii) 2) There is this “tree of life” in the Garden. (Verse 9)

iii) 3) There is this “tree of the knowledge of good and evil”. (Verse 9)

iv) 4) Adam was in charge of taking care of this garden. (Verse 15)

c) Let’s talk about these two trees. First, let’s discuss the “tree of life”.

i) This same tree appears again in Revelation:

a) “I (Jesus) will give the right (speaking to the saved) to eat from the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.” (Revelation 2:7 NIV)

(1) This verse indicates that when we are resurrected, somehow we will see this tree ourselves.

b) “On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. (Revelation 22:2, NIV)

(1) When we get to heaven, there will be (at least) two of these trees.

(2) It bears 12 fruits, one per month. That is pretty impressive. J

(3) Eating this fruit will “heal” us. What that means is uncertain.

c) The other two references to this tree in Revelation (22:14 and 22:19) both have to do with blessings for those who are saved. We don’t get a lot of details from these other verses other than the promise we get to partake of the fruit of these trees when we get there

ii) In summary, the tree appears to be a word-picture of our eternal life, or at least, life during the 1,000 year future-millennium (See Revelation 20).

iii) So, do we have a literal tree in view in Genesis and Revelation?

a) I believe so. I believe “if the plain text makes perfect sense, seek no other sense”. If we make metaphoric analogies of these trees, we can do that with every other “thing” in the bible and never take anything literally. Therefore, if it says it is a tree, and the bible says it is not a metaphor, it is pretty much a tree. J

d) Now lets get to the bad tree. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

i) We’ll discuss this more in the lesson on Chapter 3.

ii) I do believe it was a literal tree. Whatever fruit was eaten from this tree, it was somehow “toxic” and man became no longer a perfect being.

iii) At this point, I just want to talk about why the tree was there:

a) God wants us to love him out of free will. He didn’t create us as robots who are programmed to love Him. If we have free will, we must have a choice. That choice must be enticing or else we wouldn’t freely pick God.

b) In many ways, the remainder of the bible is all about “Adam making the wrong choice”.

(1) It is about the remedy for Adam’s decision which is Jesus.

(2) It is also about why Adam made that choice and why it was better if he didn’t choose it in the first place.

iv) In a sense, this tree does not “sound bad”. After all, does not want us to discern what is good and evil? That type of question misses the point.

a) What this tree represents is the concept of doing God’s will. God gave the order not to eat of this tree. It would be like me saying “That bottle is full of poison and it will kill you. You have the free will to drink of it, but the day you do, you will die.”

b) With Adam and Eve eating of that tree, they willfully choose to disobey God. It became a “generic character trait” that is passed on.

(1) I do believe to “sin” is generic. Ask yourself, do you have to teach a child how to lie, or does he or she do it instinctively?

(2) On a related topic, I do believe all young children go to heaven. There is some age of “accountability” before God.

c) As to God and evil, look at what Paul said: “I find then a law, that evil is present with me, the one who wills to do good. For I delight in the law of God according to the inward man. But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. (Romans 7:21-23 NKJV).

(1) Paul seems to be describing the “good and evil” within Him.

(2) In a sense, Paul is describing the “generic trait” passed on from Adam. It is the “knowledge of good” in that we instinctively know what is right and to seek God and the “knowledge of evil” in that we willfully choose to disobey God’s laws.

9. Verse 10: A river watering the garden flowed from Eden; from there it was separated into four headwaters. ¹¹ The name of the first is the Pishon; it winds through the entire land of Havilah, where there is gold. ¹² (The gold of that land is good; aromatic resin and onyx are also there.)
¹³ The name of the second river is the Gihon; it winds through the entire land of Cush. ¹⁴ The name of the third river is the Tigris; it runs along the east side of Asshur. And the fourth river is the Euphrates.

a) Adam (through Moses) is describing 4 rivers flowing from Eden.

b) Notice the word “flowed” is in past tense. It is almost as if it was written “Post-Flood”.

i) It does not say “it is still flowing, it says “it flowed”.

c) I personally get the impression that Adam did some exploring after he was banished.

i) Notice that all the things Adam discovered along the rivers were beautiful to behold: 1) gold, 2) aromatic (sweet-smelling) resin (a gum), 3) onyx (jewel) stones.

ii) It is almost as if God is telling Adam, “Yes you are banished from the Garden. But I still love you and care for you, and will still find beautiful things out there.

d) Remember is that these 4 rivers are all “pre-flood”. They were all destroyed.

e) The first two no longer exist. There are some strange commentaries claiming to know their location. Personally I believe they are gone. They are written to tell us that Adam did some exploring and of the “finds” he found when he traveled along them.

f) The last two are the Tigris and the Euphrates.

i) (Technically, the Hebrew word is not “Tigris”, but its an acceptable translation.)

ii) Remember that Noah lived before and after the flood. There is the possibility that Noah renamed the “modern” Tigris and Euphrates after these two ancient rivers because they “resembled” the originals or ran near the original courses.

iii) There is also the possibility that the “new” rivers ran along the same bank streams or similar bank streams. It is also a possibility. The truth is we don’t know.

g) Another interesting thing to contemplate is that Adam didn’t comment on the Euphrates.

i) Did he never explore this river?

ii) <