The Second Creation Account

The Second Creation Account

February 16, 2025

Let’s look at Genesis chapter 2 this morning. We’re now beginning to really work through the text of Genesis, and we’ll spend a good deal of time on the first 11 chapters of Genesis. We’ll take much bigger chunks  in chapters 12 through 50. The groundwork is laid in these first 11 chapters for many of the themes that get played out in the second half of the book.

Creation of Adam

Today we’re in Genesis 2, beginning at verse 4. We’re entering what I’m calling here the second creation account. And we noted, as we looked in the structure of Genesis, you have this phrase in verse 4: “This is the history of the heavens and the Earth.” This is the toledot, which we’ll talk about in a moment. Genesis 2:4 begins a section that is complementary to the first account. The first chapter through Genesis 2:3, and then beginning in Genesis 2:4 to the end of the chapter, there are two accounts of creation and they’re complementary, which means the two accounts enhance each other. The first focuses on the creation of all things in the universe. The second focuses on the creation of humanity and the fall of mankind—probably better stated, it sets us up for understanding the fall. You don’t make any sense of chapter 3 in Genesis if you don’t have chapter 2. You really need that here.

It’s important to note—and I just say this because this is an accusation that’s been made many times against the book of Genesis—the two accounts don’t contradict each other. Each is an accurate description of God’s creation that reveals various aspects of God’s design and purpose for His creation. But they are two different accounts, or two different ways of telling what happened there in God’s creation of mankind and in Spirit-enabled things.

Now let’s just look a little bit at this second creation account. First of all, we have the creation of Adam. And as I mentioned a moment ago, we have the first toledot in verse number 4. You might remember that this phrase is often translated in Genesis as “This is the genealogy of.” That’s the word toledot there—it’s the Hebrew word toledot, and that’s the word that shows up here in Genesis 2:4. It’s literally “This is the genealogy of the heavens and the Earth.” What’s unique about Genesis 2:4 is that it’s the heavens and the Earth that are the progenitor of what follows, and not a human being. Every other time that we see this word toledot show up in Genesis, it’s always a person.

Look with me at Genesis 5:1: “This is the book of the genealogy of Adam,” the toledot of Adam, “in the day that God created man, He made him in the likeness of God.” And if we were to continue on, we could see this showing up with Noah, we’ll see it showing up with Abraham, and so on. The phrase in Genesis 2:4 is very similar—it uses this word toledot, but it’s not a person that begins the account. It’s God and His creation that begins the account, so it’s unique.

We also have in Genesis Chapter 2 the first use of the name “Lord” (capital LORD) or Yahweh. In chapter one, a different word for God is used—that’s the word Elohim. Both of these are good words to describe God, but each tells us something slightly different about God. Elohim speaks of God’s creative power as an omnipotent (all-powerful) deity, while Yahweh or LORD emphasizes the covenant relationship between God and His people. Thus, Elohim Yahweh, or the Lord God, teaches the people of Israel, who first received this, that they had a relationship with the all-powerful creator God. Remember that one of the key themes in the book of Genesis is: Where did Israel come from? How do they relate to the nations of the Earth? What is God doing in them? And right away we’re set in the context, as we reveal something about their God, that He’s the all-powerful God who covenants with them.

“LORD God” (Yahweh Elohim) is actually a unique phrase that only shows up a couple of times in the whole of the Pentateuch. It shows up elsewhere in some of the prophets and the psalms, but Moses only uses it in a couple of places, and this is one of them. It emphasizes this unique role of God as the all-powerful creator and His people, Israel, and by extension, even us today having a relationship with Him.

Now incidentally, this will get to something here about the JEDP source theory—you know, the idea that Moses wasn’t the author of the Pentateuch but rather an editor who compiled different source documents and mashed them together to form one continuous story, and that wasn’t even completed until you get to like the fifth century BC. That’s the JEDP source theory. Well, one of the places they say that’s evident is actually right here in Genesis 2:4 and following, because in Genesis 1, they say, see that was an older account where we have Elohim being used—that’s the E in the JEDP theory—and then Genesis 2, where we see the Lord being used, that’s the Jehovah, the J or the Yahweh part. And so these are two different rival religions in the people of Israel that were blended over time into one.

Well, that doesn’t make much sense if you just follow the whole structure of the narrative. One of the things that’s interesting here is that Moses actually mashes the two terms together in a single verse: “Lord God.” You might ask, how do the liberal scholars account for that? They say, well, that was just a later editor who did that. That’s literally their response. “Moses could not have possibly thought of God in that way.” So this is one of those sections that people who want to deny the authority and the inspiration of the Bible use to attack it.

We have a similar issue in verses 5 through 7: “This is the history of the heavens and the Earth in the day that the Lord made the Earth and the heavens. Before any plant of the field was in the Earth and before any herb of the field had grown, for the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the Earth, and there was no man to till the ground, but a mist went up from the Earth and watered the whole face of the ground. And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being.”

The question that’s been brought up is that people say these are two different accounts of creation, and they contradict each other, because it sure looks like in verse number 5 that we don’t have any plants on the Earth and then God creates the human—mankind—before there was any plant in the Earth, any herb. That would seem to be a problem if we go back to Genesis 1, because when was the plant life created in the days of creation? Day 3. And when was humanity created? Day 6. So Day 3 plants are created, Day 6 humanity is created. 

This is one of those texts that the JEDP theory people suggest as an indication of two very different sources. However, if that was true, why would an editor not try to smooth that out and smooth other stuff out? A better understanding is that these verses are given in anticipation of the creation of humanity and in anticipation of Genesis 3:8-24, where we see the judgment for sin come into play.

What we mean by that is this: before the creation of humanity and before the cultivating work that humanity would accomplish, plants would reproduce naturally. In fact, it’s actually interesting that the word for bush or plant in verse 5 is not the same word that is used for the plant life in chapter one. After the creation of humanity, the Earth would be cultivated—Adam is going to be tasked with cultivating the Earth, tending and keeping the garden. Furthermore, when you get into Genesis chapter 3, we actually find that the cultivation of the Earth gets really, really difficult. The man has to till the Earth, has to rip up the weeds. We’ve got to make stuff actually happen—it isn’t going to happen automatically.

So the emphasis here is that before any of that happened, before any cultivating work happened by mankind, God then created the man. The plants were already created—the cultivating work and the cultivating work affected by sin happened after the creation of mankind. So there’s no contradiction between what Moses says here in Genesis 2 and what he said in Genesis chapter 1.

We could spend time talking about what it means for God to breathe into mankind the breath of life. There’s a soul–a spiritual element–that happens, but we’ve already covered that as we thought about the image of God in humanity.    

Adam in the Garden

Now we have Adam in the garden in verses 8 through 17. This is an important theme that is going to show up a number of times here, both in Genesis 2 and 3 and in general, and that is that we need to note that God provided for Adam in the creation of the garden. God’s provision is showing up in many ways in Genesis 1 and 2. He provides the Earth with all of its fullness and beauty and glory. He provides seasons and times with the creation of the Sun, Moon, and stars, and here He provides Adam a garden—the garden of Eden.

There is a description in these verses of the geographical location of the garden. There are four rivers that are mentioned. There are people who try to figure out where this is exactly, and I would just advise you not to do that. The reason is, there are several questions. First of all, there are two rivers for sure in that list—the Tigris and Euphrates. We’ve probably heard about those in any basic geography lesson. But the other two rivers, we don’t really know where they are. And even more, it’s not altogether clear that the Tigris and Euphrates mentioned here in Genesis 2 are the same ones that we think of today.

Even if they were, rivers don’t stay in one place often for thousands of years. And we also have to ask the question: is Moses giving a description here of what this was before the flood or after? We’re not entirely sure. Even today you can go to locations in the world, and they’ll tell you the river used to be here and now it’s over there. That could have happened here. It also could be that this is a pre-flood description, so we just don’t know with certainty where the garden of Eden is.

Incidentally, when you teach this material in a lot of third-world contexts, people tend to really latch onto these details and want to pull supposed theological truths out of them. Even teaching Genesis in Chad, we actually had to talk about this extensively: “Brothers, don’t spend all your time trying to figure out where Eden is—that’s not the point of this text. That isn’t going to bring sanctification for your soul.” Maybe along the road, we’ll discover some new things, maybe we’ll actually know someday, but we have not to this point with archaeology or geography, so it’s not a thing to lose sleep over.

The garden, though—the main theme is that God provided for Adam with this beautiful garden Eden. By the way, the word means “delight”. This was a delightful place for Adam.

Two trees, of course, are noted: the tree of life and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Similarly to trying to speculate about the garden of Eden, we should not try to speculate and imagine a particular kind of tree, nor should we think that there was some sort of innate power in the trees themselves—that one had the power of death in its fruit or one had the power of life in its fruit. What set these trees apart was God’s commandment regarding them. Man would live or die not because he tasted some sort of magic potion that came from those trees, but because he disobeyed or obeyed the word of the Lord.

In fact, even the terms “good and evil” do not necessarily mean that the property of the tree was morally good or morally evil. The words “good and evil” can literally be translated as “good and bad.” There’s actually a different Hebrew word that speaks of explicit moral evil. This word is often translated in the context of just something being bad. Something can be good or bad in terms of its functional properties, not its moral properties.

For instance, if we say that we have a “bad harvest,” it indicates not that there’s something morally wrong with our harvest. A bad harvest indicates that it didn’t measure up to what we wanted it to be—it didn’t function as we thought it was going to function. Also, if we say we had a “good harvest,” the same thing applies. It’s not like there’s something spiritually good in the wheat or in the corn or in the apple trees. We just mean that it did what it was supposed to do.

By the way, if you look all through Genesis 1 and 2, Moses consistently uses the words “good” and “bad” in these first two chapters in this functional sense. “And God saw that it was good” appears repeatedly in Genesis 1. In fact, if you count all the way through, there are seven times that God says it was good. On the seventh time in terms of His creation, He says it was “very good.”

When God, for instance, created the light and the darkness and He says that it’s good, is He saying that the light itself had some sort of spiritually moral property to it? No, it did what it was supposed to do. Just like if you get a good car—we like it because it does what it’s supposed to do. We don’t like lemons for cars that become money pits—that’s a bad car.

When we see “good and evil” here in the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, we’re not saying that there’s some sort of moral property to the tree itself. The tree rather represented the opportunity for Adam to live autonomously apart from God’s rule. That’s the heart of the problem. It was not good for man to live outside the rule of God. Adam’s job was to trust and obey.

Think about Adam: he’s placed into a fully constructed universe. We’ve got the Sun, the Moon, the stars, we’ve got the seas, we have the dry land, we have the light, we have the dark, we have the plants, we have the sea creatures, we have the animals, we have the birds that fly in the sky—we have all of that stuff. And Adam is placed into this world, and even more than that, placed already into a ready-made delightful garden. He has been given every possible good thing. Everything works like it’s supposed to work, and Adam just simply needs to trust God and say, “God, you are the ruler, you have entrusted this to me. I believe you and therefore I will obey you.” That’s what Adam’s task is to do. And of course, when we get to Genesis 3, we find out that he doesn’t do that well at all.

God does warn about the punishment of death “on the same day.” This does not mean that they would die immediately. It’s likely speaking of an announcement of death from God in this text. “In the day you eat of it, you shall surely die.” There are a bunch of grammatical reasons why that’s probably the case of an announcement—you can actually find similar structures in Hebrew language where it’s like a royal decree of something. “This day, this will happen” is an announcement of something that will come into effect. It’s likely not saying that this particular day Adam would die. Rather, this is the day in which this will go into effect—as soon as you eat of that tree, you will die.

Adam and Eve

Then we have in verses 18 through 25, Adam and Eve in the garden. Notice this as we think about verse 18: God’s provision for Adam continues. God saw that Adam needed a helper who was suitable for him. This is another provision of God’s love, and maybe you’ve never thought about this in Genesis 2, but it’s God who noticed that Adam needed a helper before Adam even knew that.

I mean, we don’t know how long this occurred before God makes Eve. It appears from Genesis Chapter 1 that Adam and Eve were created on day 6, so was this 20 minutes after Adam woke up? Was this a couple of hours? Was it most of the day? Was it that God created Adam in the morning and by the evening Eve is created? Sometime within that one day, this happens—male and female are created on day 6.

What was it like for Adam? He becomes alive in the middle of this absolutely fantastic garden. I don’t think we can put into words what that experience must have been like. I’m sure for him, he’s walking around like, “Oh my goodness, this is amazing,” seeing, touching, tasting, smelling things all for the very first time.

Some of you were here yesterday for the funeral for Glenn Koskinen, and his nephew gave a testimony of how Glenn actually planted the seed of the gospel in his life and later he became a Christian. For those of you who remember this—all my kids that were there thought this was fascinating, I did too—he talked about being with Glenn for the first time at Glenn’s parents’ country store up north and tasting 7-Up for the first time. And that was striking. Even more than that, it wasn’t until 1960 that he tasted pizza for the first time. He said, being a Finlander, his stomach didn’t really handle spice, so all the red sauce, he was concerned about that, but he apparently liked it because he eats pizza to this day in his 80s.

You think about that. You didn’t have pizza until you were in your 30s? But then we went home last night and we were talking about how even as a kid, Mexican places in the 1980s were few and far between. My family—we were actually talking about this—my parents came over last night, met up and had supper with them. The kids mentioned this to my parents, and I mentioned the Mexican thing. As a kid in the 1980s, we had tacos almost every single week. But the only reason for that was that my dad’s mom and dad, my grandparents, moved to Denver, Colorado. There’s a heavy Mexican population there and has been for a long time. Because of that, the idea of tacos on a regular basis was introduced to my grandparents, who are from northern Wisconsin. The idea of having a taco was something totally foreign to them—they’d never seen one. They go to Denver and they’re like, “These are really good!”

So I grew up eating tacos like every week in the 1980s. I discovered that was not true for most kids around. And you know what it’s like to taste something new and it’s delicious if you like it. We’re seeing a similar thing today with the huge rise in the United States of Thai and Korean foods. How many people have been to a Thai or Korean restaurant? People are trying this new stuff, and it’s like “Whoa, this is actually good.” You look at this weird stuff floating in the soup and you think “Is this actually going to taste good?” and it’s like, wow, there’s rich flavors there.

So here’s Adam in the garden, and I think about this: he’s there, the breath of life has come into him, he wakes up and he’s just like “Cool, cool, cool, cool” everywhere he goes. He does not even know that he needs anything at this point. When you think about that, he does not even know—it’s God who looks down and says “This is not good.” In fact, it’s interesting, this is the first time that God says there’s one thing that’s not good. “It’s good, it’s good, it’s good, it’s good, it’s good, it’s good”—seven times in Genesis. In fact, here in Genesis 2, you read about the gold that is in this particular area—it’s good gold. Here’s one thing that’s not good: it’s not good that man is alone.

So God, even before Adam realizes that he needs help, God has already provided for him. One of the themes that we need to remember occurs throughout the book of Genesis is that God is the hero of the story continually. He is the hero of the story. It’s God who creates, it’s God who provides, it’s God who plans—He does all of this work.

God created the animals and brought them to Adam, presumably to make him notice the difference between him and them. This becomes really a divine object lesson to show Adam that he needs someone who’s like him. So Adam at this point doesn’t even know his own heart or his own circumstances, but God has already got it and He’s providing for him and showing Adam graciously, “You need this.”

And you have that phrase there in Genesis 2: he names all the animals, and then it says, “but for Adam there was not found a helper comparable to him.” There was nobody like him. And it was like “Cool, cool, cool, cool… not cool.” This is not good. God already knew that, and so He’s providing for Adam at this point.

Obviously, we also see that the Bible very clearly shows that man from his creation was gifted with intelligence. We also see Adam exercising dominion immediately by naming the animals. Remember that one of the blessings of humanity is to be fruitful and multiply, subdue the Earth, fill the Earth, have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, the plants, the animals. This is Adam already exercising dominion over those things.

We may not think of this as a big deal, but the power to name something is actually given to someone who has the ability to have dominion, to rule. All right, so I don’t care whatever you think about it—President Trump has just renamed a whole body of water. I could comment about that for good or ill. I think all the people who write textbooks are pretty mad because they’ve got a lot of editing to do going forward. Apple Maps and Google Maps have already been updated—it’s now the Gulf of America. But that is granted from someone with ability—if somebody has dominion over something. Now again, you can probably have the pros and cons of that decision, but nonetheless, that’s someone who’s exercising dominion. When you name something, you are exercising some realm of control over it, and Adam does that with the animals.

He furthermore does that with the woman, his wife. “She shall be called Ishah,” which is the word for woman. It’s interesting, actually, in Hebrew—I remember this years ago, I had a Bible professor in college who just said the difference between those two words, “ish” and “ishah,” are really good descriptions of man and woman. “Ish” is like “ish”—harsh—but in Hebrew “ishah” is something that is softer in sound. And I think that was intentional by Adam. He sees her, she is beautiful, and he gives her a name that is reflective of that beauty.

Now of course, Moses here identifies Adam and Eve’s union as the first marriage in verse 24. Marriage is a divine institution. Therefore, or “for this reason,” it is in this text completely biblical to leave one’s parents to attach oneself strongly to his wife in order to become one flesh. You can see the verses that this is repeated in the New Testament. This idea—Jesus and Paul directly quote this text as applying it to marriage, and God knew that Adam needed this.

The man and the woman as a couple were naked in the garden. The text tells us that they were without shame. They were not ashamed of being completely uncovered in front of each other. They had nothing to hide. It’s only because of sin that the necessity to hide comes into play in their relationship.

It is clear in the Bible that men are to be the leaders in the home. In fact, we see, even initially, Adam in naming his wife is exercising what appears to be—and Paul picks up on this in First Timothy—that there is an order from the authority of God to the authority of the husband in the home to one’s wife. However, Genesis 2, along with Genesis 1:27, teach us that the image of God is stamped on both men and women. This is important to say: both have equal value before God. Each do have different roles, but they are equal in value. Men and women complement each other—each have their strengths and each have their roles. Men are never to think of their wives or women as less than themselves. They are to see them as gracious gifts of God. They help serve their husbands, but they are not lesser creatures and they have many great gifts to offer. And in Genesis 2, I think Adam recognized that right away, and he offers the first human poem in human history to describe her.

Sabbath

We also notice in Genesis 1 and 2 here, the idea of Sabbath is introduced. The idea of Sabbath is instituted before sin and before the law—before sin and before the Old Testament law, the Mosaic law. The word literally means “to rest” or “to stop.” God didn’t do that because He was exhausted—He’s omnipotent—but rather because His work of creation was finished. This is an important concept that’s often lost in our world today: taking a day of rest is something that humanity needs. Jesus affirms this in Mark—the Lord made Sabbath for man, knew that he would need it.

Sabbath is a concept that’s lost in our society today. It’s funny because we have both, in some senses, the most lazy generations in American history, but also the generations that don’t actually take a break from anything. They’re constantly engaged, often in frivolous stuff, but no actual rest. And by rest, we don’t mean necessarily like going to bed and sleeping, but detaching from the things that make demands on us in life—and by the way, one of those things is devices like cell phones that literally control us at times. Sabbath is an idea that’s instituted in creation order. Taking some time for rest is something that humanity needs. You’ll end up resting one way or another. You’ll either do it intentionally or you will do it unintentionally when eventually your body says “STOP. You can’t do this any more.”  Going without a break will damage your body and your relationships if you don’t take time to slow down and enjoy the good gifts of God’s creation. 

Here’s my general rule of thumb for a day of rest: you should never do anything on a day of rest that you feel you have to do. I don’t mean like coming to church—that should be an opportunity for joy and rest. I mean, as soon as it becomes something that is work, you’re not resting anymore. So if you’re somebody who has a desk job and for you, it’s like “I just want to get outside and stick my hands in dirt and feel the sun on me,” that’s probably rest for you. It’s probably relaxation. But as soon as you’re cursing the thorns and the thistles as you’re trying to pull them out and you’re getting irritated in your heart, that’s probably not rest for you anymore—now it’s in the work category, so stop.

Mondays are my day off because Sundays are rarely days of rest for me. Probably tomorrow I will work a little bit on my basement. I have a project that has been put on the back burner for about six years of finishing the bathroom in my basement, and I will probably do that because I like working with my hands and I do a lot of sitting. But as soon as it becomes irritating—and it will, because working on that kind of stuff is not stuff I do every day—as soon as it happens, I’m like “I’m done,” and we’ll go find something else to enjoy. That’s for free—that’s a good rule of thumb. As soon as something becomes irritating and work, stop it. Enjoy—God gives good gifts.