Genesis 2:4-25

Special creation
(Genesis 2:4-25)

Creation exists for the glory of God. Psalm 19 reveals that every aspect of the created order shouts this fact constantly:

The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge. There is no speech, nor are there words, whose voice is not heard. Their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. In them he has set a tent for the sun, which comes out like a bridegroom leaving his chamber, and, like a strong man, runs its course with joy. Its rising is from the end of the heavens, and its circuit to the end of them, and there is nothing hidden from its heat. (Ps 19:1–6)

Creation declares it, proclaims it, pours it forth in speech day by day, and reveals it night by night. This begs the question: what exactly is being proclaimed? What is the glory of God? The word “glory” is hard to define, but in the broadest sense, it means specialness. In other words, the heavens declare His specialness, the sky proclaims it, day to day speaks it, and night reveals it. Man is the only creature given a voice, and yet so often, he remains silent.

Paul tells us that what can be known about God is plain to us in the things that have been made, and still we suppress the truth (Rom 1:18-23). Refusing to even acknowledge the specialness of His creation, we instead turn to foolish myths seeing our origins as a mere accident of time plus chance. We have literally “exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things” (Rom 1:23).

The implications of this are profound. Sacredness is reduced to profaneness for, after all, what really is the difference between sacred and profane in an accidental, purposeless, godless universe? God’s design is reduced to a blind process so that everything is wrought by nothing, for nothing, with nothing as its goal. If this is true, then there is no purpose, no plan, and no prescription for how anything ought to be.

In contrast to all of this, the psalmist tells us that man is to “be glad in his Maker,” “rejoice in their King,” and “praise His Name with dancing” (Ps 149:1-5). As the world ignores God, the godly are called to “exult in His glory” (Ps 149:5) and to exult by becoming images of His specialness “from one degree of glory to another” (2 Cor 3:18). The degrees of this glory are seen in ascending order in Genesis 2:4-25.

This is the eyewitness account of special creation
Genesis 2:4a

The Hebrew word “toledot”, translated as “generations,” is repeated throughout Genesis. The significance of the term is not in its definition, but its implication. The word “generations” refers to the genetic line that came from a person. The implication of the term is that it is likely a colophon, a bibliographic list, often given at the end of an eyewitness testimony. In other words, these references to “generations” are references of eyewitness bibliographic information used by Moses to compile Genesis. Genesis lists nine specific bibliographic references:

I. Creation – Genesis 2:4
II. Adam – Genesis 5:1
III. Noah and his sons – Genesis 6:9, 10:1, 32
IV. Shem – Genesis 11:10
V. Terah – Genesis 11:27
VI. Ishmael – Genesis 25:12-13, 1 Chronicles 1:29
VII. Isaac – Genesis 25:19
VIII. Esau – Genesis 36:1, 9
IX. Jacob – Genesis 37:2

If the above theory is true, then Genesis 2:4 is showing us the eyewitness testimony of the heavens and the earth in regards to creation itself. Outside of God Himself, who would be the eyewitnesses in view? Perhaps angels. After all, God refers to angels witnessing His creation of the physical universe:

Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding.
Who determined its measurements—surely you know! Or who stretched the line upon it?
On what were its bases sunk, or who laid its cornerstone, when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy? (Job 38:4–7)

God speaks of when “the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy” in response to Him laying the foundation of the earth (Job 38:4-7). These angels must have been created before the foundations of the earth was laid. Further, these angels would have been eyewitness observers of the events of creation. Could Moses have gotten this testimony of creation from an angelic, eyewitness source? Moses tells us that ten thousand holy ones were present with God on Mount Sinai (Deut 33:2). Luke tells us that the Law was delivered by angels, first to Moses who then brought it to the people (Acts 7:53). Moses evidently had access to angelic witnesses. It is not undue to think that God used this angelic testimony to help color in the details of the Genesis account of creation. What then were the angels reporting to Moses? The glory of God in His created work in ascending order, beginning with the creation of matter.

If Genesis 1:1-2:3 is about the chronological facts of creation, Genesis 2:4-25 is about the chronological glory of God seen in the details of creation on the sixth day. In other words, Genesis 2:4-25 is not a separate retelling of Genesis 1. Rather, it is a zoomed-in account of the sixth day of creation focused on the ascending glory of God’s work in creation.

The glory of God is seen in matter
Genesis 2:4b

This is the first time in the Bible that God is called YHWH, which is transliterated from the Hebrew consonants YHVH. In most English Bibles it is translated as “the Lord.” This is the name God revealed to Moses when he asked God His name (Ex 3:14; 6:2-3) and it means I AM. God is the self-existent one who reveals Himself. The word YHWH, followed by the more familiar word “Eloheim,” meaning “the strong one,” is translated in most English Bibles as “God.” It was this strong, self-existent God who made the heavens and the earth.

Having just read an account of this special creation in Genesis 1, the reference to time here is vague and unspecific. What day is in view here? The answer isn’t obvious until three verses later when it becomes apparent that the sixth day is in view, the day man was made (Gen 2:7). Before getting to the creation of man, the focus is on the creation of the heavens and the earth. To put it another way, before getting to the creation of man, the focus is on the creation of matter.

Paul reminds us that the glory of God is plain to us in what has been made, that His invisible attributes are made known by His visible creation (Rom 1:18-20). Though the glory of God is seen in matter, it doesn’t stop with mere matter. It ascends to further glory in the next section with man.

The glory of matter is seen in man
Genesis 2:5-17

The details here can seem confusing. At first glance it seems like the order of creation of man, animals, and trees is different here than in Genesis 1. But when it is remembered that day six is in view it becomes less confusing. It makes perfect sense then that Genesis 2 is a zoomed-in chronology of the sixth day. In this zoomed-in chronology, Adam is created (Gen 2:7), the Garden of Eden is created (Gen 2:8-9), the river system is described (Gen 2:10-14), Adam is given instructions (Gen 2:15-17), Adam names some of the kinds of animals (Gen 2:18-20), Eve is created (Gen 2:21-22), and mankind is created (Gen 2:23-25). In chapter 1, God was preparing the environment for the man He creates in Genesis 2.

The fact that man is taken from the dust of the ground is interesting. We are literally from the dust and it is to dust that we return after we die (Gen 3:19). Being from the dust, our bodies are made up of 15 or 16 different chemical elements, the same elements found in the ground. Death then is a reminder that we are literally from the ground, yet man is certainly worth more than dust, for God breathed life into him and made him in the image of God.

However, death is nowhere in view at this point. Instead, God’s special care in placing man in the Garden and giving him food from every tree is in view. The warning to not eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil and the subsequent death that would result from doing so is mere foreshadowing at this point. The main point is the ascent from matter to man. The ascent from one degree of glory to the next. Psalm 8 captures this well:

O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens. Out of the mouth of babies and infants, you have established strength because of your foes, to still the enemy and the avenger. When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him? Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You have given him dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field, the birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the seas. O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! (Ps 8:1–9)

The glory of God is seen in matter and the glory of matter is seen in man. Fittingly, this order is reversed in terms of redemption, where man is redeemed before matter is redeemed in descending order of importance (Rom 8:18-23). God’s glory does not stop with man, however. It ascends in the next section to the creation of woman.

The glory of man is seen in woman
Genesis 2:18-24

Before declaring Creation very good at the end of the sixth day (Gen 1:31), God has to make woman. When God says “it is not good that man should be alone,” He does so using a highly emphatic negative. To rectify this terrible situation, God announces He “will make a helper fit for him.” The word helper does not point to something lesser, but actually to an indispensable partner. This indispensableness of woman is seen in the inadequacy of any other creature to be “fit for him.”

God does not go back to the dust to fashion woman, but to Adam. When it refers to Adam’s rib, it is likely referring to his side. The same word is used thirty-four other times in the Old Testament to refer to a person’s side. Woman is thus a perfect fit for man, for she initially came out of him.

The ramifications of this perfect fit are seen in the one flesh union between Adam and Eve in the Garden (Gen 2:25). When they come together as one flesh, they are returning to where they belonged from the start. Every time a person gets married, they are to leave their family unit to begin a new one, uniting in this special way designed since the beginning of time. This powerful imagery of oneness is frequently used throughout the Bible to show the union promised between Christ and His bride, the Church (1 Cor 6:16-17; 2 Cor 11:2; Eph 5:22-33; Rev 19:7). This is a union prayed for by Christ in His high priestly prayer, that we would be perfectly one (John 17:20-23).

Adam immediately recognized the glory of woman in his first recorded words, and names his new companion “woman,” a name closely related in Hebrew to the name “man.” Appropriately, God named Adam in relation to the ground, but Adam named woman in relation to himself. Thus, the glory of the ground, or matter, is seen in the man who came from it, and the glory of the man is seen in the woman, who came from him. The apostle Paul makes this fact plain when he says that man “is the image and glory of God, but woman is the glory of man. For man was not made from woman, but woman from man” (1 Cor 11:7-8). God’s glory does not stop with woman, however, but it ascends yet again in the next section regarding the creation of mankind.

The glory of woman is seen in mankind
Genesis 2:25

Instead of referring here to the man and the woman, the reference is to “the man and his wife.” Further, the reference is to them being naked and unashamed. Clearly, the marriage bed is in view, which means that the family is in view, but what does that have to do with being unashamed? The answer is seen in the contrast of chapter 3, where the husband and wife became ashamed of their nakedness and sewed fig leaves together in an attempt to cover it (Gen 3:7). In both cases, the reference has to do not so much with the nakedness itself, but what it leads to—namely, children. When Adam calls his wife the mother of all living (Gen 3:20-21) he acknowledges that from her womb would come mankind. This then leads us to the next step in the story of ascending glory. The glory of God is seen in matter, the glory of matter is seen in man, the glory of man is seen in woman, and the glory of woman is seen in mankind.

There is one final step in this ascending scale of glory, but it doesn’t come until Christ is born. When Paul told Timothy that woman is saved through childbearing (1 Tim 2:15), he did not mean that the act of having children was somehow a sacrament or that it was efficacious for salvation. Instead, he meant that through the process of having children, Christ the Savior was eventually born.

The last step in the scale is thus complete: the glory of matter is seen in man, the glory of man is seen in woman, the glory of woman is seen in mankind, and the glory of mankind is seen in Christ. This is good news for the one who has faith in Christ, for “we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another” (2 Cor 3:18).