Genesis 2:4-17

God has finished creating heaven and earth. Now the Genesis account turns its focus to His creation of humanity.

2:4 This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created — when the LORD God made the earth and heavens.

5 Now no shrub of the field had yet grown on the earth, and no plant of the field had yet sprouted, for the LORD God had not caused it to rain on the earth, and there was no man to cultivate the ground. 6 Springs would well up from the earth and water the whole surface of the ground. 7 The LORD God formed the man from the soil of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.

In verse 5 the first term (Hebrew siakh) probably refers to wild, uncultivated plants while the second (‘esev) refers to cultivated grains. The second part of the verse explains the lack of these two things: there was no rain and no man. It is hard to say for sure whether no rain had yet fallen on the earth or it’s just that there was little or no rain in a particular region being referred to here. “Man” is the Hebrew word ‘adam which here refers to all humanity, though it can also refer to an individual male or be used as a proper name, depending on the context.

In verse 7, “formed” is the Hebrew verb yatsar which means “to form” or “to fashion,” usually by plan or design. The man was a combination of a body (the soil of the ground), which linked him to creation, and a spirit (the breath of life). “Breath” is the Hebrew nyshamah, used for God and the life imparted to humans, but not animals. These two things together made man a “living being” (Hebrew nephes hayyah). This is the same term used in 1:20 for the “living creatures” that God created in the sea and the sky. Humans, like the animals, are a combination of the material and immaterial. But humans have a likeness to God and an ability to relate to Him that animals do not have.

8 The LORD God planted an orchard in the east, in Eden; and there he placed the man he had formed. 9 The LORD God made all kinds of trees grow from the soil, every tree that was pleasing to look at and good for food. (Now the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil were in the middle of the orchard.)

10 Now a river flows from Eden to water the orchard, and from there it divides into four headstreams. 11 The name of the first is Pishon; it runs through the entire land of Havilah, where there is gold. 12 (The gold of that land is pure; pearls and lapis lazuli are also there). 13 The name of the second river is Gihon; it runs through the entire land of Cush. 14 The name of the third river is Tigris; it runs along the east side of Assyria. The fourth river is the Euphrates.

The Genesis account has God planting an orchard (traditionally translated ‘garden’) where the man He has created is placed. This garden is in Eden, an unspecified and mysterious location. Verses 10-14 are little help but the reference to “east” (east of Israel?) and the Euphrates suggest somewhere in the Middle East.

15 The LORD God took the man and placed him in the orchard in Eden to care for it and to maintain it. 16 Then the LORD God commanded the man, “You may freely eat fruit from every tree of the orchard, 17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will surely die.”

Verses 15-17 offer some clues about man’s spiritual state and relationship with God at this point. For one thing, he was put to work (verse 15). This work may not have been very difficult, but even so, man was involved in gainful activity; he was not just lounging around. So work preceeded the rebellion of humans against God; it was not a result of the fall of humanity and is not an inherently bad thing.

Also, man had the capacity to make moral choices — to choose between right and wrong. “Commanded” in verse 16 is the first appearance in the Bible of the Hebrew verb tsavah (“to command”). God commanded the man to not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. It would be unwise to assume that man did not yet have any understanding of good and evil. He must have had enough moral understanding to comprehend that obeying this command would be a good idea and disobeying it would not; otherwise why would God have given that command? Also, while we today tend to view the terms ‘good’ and ‘evil’ as pertaining to whether something is morally right or wrong, this is not always the case in the Bible. ‘Good’ is sometimes used in scripture to describe something as being in conformity with God’s will (for example throughout the creation narrative in chapter one). The Hebrew word ra’ (“evil”) has a very broad range of meanings in the Bible, depending on the context. It can refer to difficulty or misfortune in a practical sense (for example, Isaiah 45.7) or intrinsic moral and spiritual evil, with many variations and gradations for both of those senses.

It also appears that man knew what death was; at least it seems reasonable to assume that God’s warning at the end of verse 17 would mean something to him.