Let’s open our Bibles to Genesis Chapter 2, Genesis Chapter 2. And we are looking at Verses 4 to 25, this wonderfully informative Chapter on the original history of man. Chapter 1, the origin of creation, and here is the origin of man. The detailed, original history of man begins in Genesis 2:4 with the words: “This is the account” or “This is the generations,” the “toledoth.” “The generations,” really, of man “that are in the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day the Lord God made earth and heaven.” So that is a launch point for the discussion of the details of the creation of man and his original history in the garden.
Now, remember: Man and woman were created on day six. If you go back into Chapter 1 and Verse 26: “God said, ‘Let us make man in Our image according to Our likeness; let them rule over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the sky, over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.’ And God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. And God blessed them; and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.’” And, of course: “God said, ‘I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth, every tree which has fruit yielding seed; it shall be food for you; and to every beast of the earth, every bird of the sky and every thing that moves on the earth which has life, I have given every green plant for food; and it was so.” Everybody was vegetarian in the original creation, even the animals. “And God saw all that He had made and, behold, it was very good. And there was evening, there was morning, the sixth day.”
So the creation of man came on the sixth day, along with the creation of the animals mentioned in Verses 24 and 25. So on day six, it says, God made man. He created man, Verse 27: “Male and female He created them.” Now Chapter 2 goes back into day six and gives us the details. All we know about the other five days of creation is given in Chapter 1. But when you come to day six and, in particular, the creation of man, God knows we need more details. So Chapter 2 gives us more detail on the creation of man, which was from day six in Chapter 1. So what you have in Chapter 2 is an expansion of the creation of man indicated on day six in Chapter 1.
Now the thing that sets man apart is he is created in God’s image. And I have been telling you that means he is given self-consciousness. Animals have consciousness, but not self-consciousness. He is conscious is of his own existence. He is given personality. He is given rationality. He is given creativity. And most importantly, he is the only one in all the creation of the heavens and the earth that can enjoy relationship, relationship. And that is indicated when God says: “Let Us make man.” God never says that in the creation of anything else except man. And God introduces Himself as a plurality in the creation of man, which indicates to us that man is going to be made to enjoy relationship, which God Himself enjoys, and that’s part of being made in God’s image.
Now, we have gone into Chapter 2 and we’ve looked at some of the features of the creation of man. We have seen his creation, starting in Verse 5 and going down to Verse 7. We learn something of the condition at that time. There weren’t any weeds in the world, because the fall hadn’t happened yet. There weren’t any crops, because man didn’t need to till the soil. The water that really watered the earth didn’t come from above through rain. It came from underground subterranean sources and it gushed up in springs, and literally covered “the whole surface of the ground,” Verse 6 says. So in that wonderful world of creation which knew no rain and therefore, had a constant water supply; didn’t alter like the rain does, which comes and goes, and sometimes you have drought and sometimes you have flood. You had a perfect system watering the perfect environment of the world, and you had no weeds to interrupt the free growing of all the beautiful things that God had planted. And you had no necessity to plant crops, because everything man needed “good for food” was already there and flourishing. It didn’t take any work on his part.
In that perfect environment, God created man, and we found out about the creation of man. Then when we came to the second point, we came to Verse 8, and that was not the creation of man, but the location of man. And God made a garden, and God was the original gardener, planted a garden. And we remember it was east, probably east of the nation of Israel. It was in the place called Eden which as we noted for you, is an ancient word that has reference to a well-watered place. There “He placed man.” And in that place was: “Every tree pleasing to the sight, good for food; the tree of life in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.” And then it goes on to describe how a river gushed up from beneath the ground and came out of Eden and spread itself over this garden, and eventually ran out into four other rivers. And the garden stretched out into areas “where there was gold,” and where there was “bdellium,” which was a certain resin used for fragrance and incense, and there was onyx stone there. And then this other river the Pishon went there; the Gihon flowed around the land of Cush, and then the Tigris or the Hiddekel, and then the Euphrates. And so this is the wonderful garden; well-watered with all kinds of resources, all kinds of wealth, all kinds of wondrous things. And man is placed in that garden.
“This article originally appeared here at Bible Bulletin Board.”
