Gen 2:7 Then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.
There’s a distinction in the Hebrew text of v.7 that is invisible in English but which every original reader would recognize. The Hebrew text says that God “
NPHCH into his nostrils the SPIRIT OF LIFE and man became a living NPHSH.”
Notice how similar those two Hebrew words look – NPHCH and NPHSH. There’s a reason for that. The Hebrew words that describe God’s “BREATH” and man as a “LIVING BEING” are intricately related. They come from the same root word. The first is a verb and the second is a noun form of the same word, very much like our English words “Breathe” and “Breath.”
It sounds funny in English, but the Hebrew literally says “
God BREATHED into his nostrils the SPIRIT of life and man became a living BREATH.”
God created man from the earth just as He did plants (1:11-12) and animals (1:24). But verse 7 gives an important distinction.
James 2:26 says, “
the body without the spirit is dead.” And Genesis here says that God personally formed man from the earth’s dust and breathed the spirit of life into his nostrils. That’s unique among all of creation.
This is significant! Adam was composed of both the earth and God - both the creation (from the dust) and the creator (from God’s breath of the spirit)!
Remember when 1:26-27 said, without explanation, that God created man in His own image? That fact isn’t mentioned directly in chapters 2 and 3. In fact, it isn’t mentioned again until
5:1-3, “
When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God. He created them male and female and blessed them. And when they were created, he called them ‘man.’ When Adam had lived 130 years, he had a son in his own likeness, in his own image; and he named him Seth.”
Yet I think here in 2:7 the writer at least partly describes that image. The Divine breath of life, in the form of God’s Spirit, made man a “living breath,” which distinguished him from the animals and kept him eternally alive.
What does it mean for man to have been created in God’s image? The phrase itself simply means “in God’s likeness,” or “like God.” So the question is simply “how is (or maybe ‘how was’) man like God?”
I think we can miss a big part of the point of the statement by limiting that image too strictly. Whatever it means must be revealed in the context, and the context reveals many similarities between God and man.
We’ve already seen three of those similarities revealed in the immediate context of the “image” statement (1:26-27).
- Gen 1: 16 - Man was created as what might be called a “multiple single.” As we know God to be three-in-one (the trinity, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit), so also God made man male and female. This “multiple singularity” of both God and man is expressed plainly in the wording of those verses: “God (singular) said let us (plural) make man in our (plural) image (singular). Let them (plural) rule…God made man (singular)… in the image of God He created him (singular); male and female He created them (plural)
- Gen 1:17 - God and man are the only ones who have dominion or rule. God bestowed His authority over creation on man.
- Gen 2:7 - In our current passage, God breathed His own Spirit into man to give him divine, eternal life.
All of these similarities between God and man, I think, are the likeness (image) of God in man. I believe there is more, and I’ll comment on that in future studies.
Gen 2:8 The LORD God planted a garden toward the east, in Eden; and there He placed the man whom He had formed. 9 Out of the ground the LORD God caused to grow every tree that is pleasing to the sight and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
In
Genesis 3:22, from the phrase “
eat and live forever,” we will learn that this is the tree of “eternal” life.
God lovingly, carefully, intentionally crafted an edenic existence in eternal paradise for mankind and planted a garden with a tree of life in the middle.
Where was this garden?
An important detail here is often overlooked, especially in children’s books and movies. God planted this garden in a specific location, which was called Eden (which means “Delight” in Hebrew).
Neither the garden nor Eden was the entire world. They were specific geographic locations within the earth. Also, the garden itself is not called Eden. The garden isn’t given a name at all. It is a garden that God Himself created specifically for man in one region of the world that was called Eden.
In other words, the earth was larger than Eden, and Eden was larger than the garden.
Also notice that the phrase “toward the east” in v.8 describes the garden’s location in Eden. It doesn’t describe Eden itself. Eden may have been East, but if so this text doesn’t say it.
I mention this because many commentators surmise that since these words would have originally been written and read in Israel, the phrase “toward the east” suggests that Eden was east of Israel.
I guess Eden could have been east of Israel, but if it was you can’t find that here. This text simply says that the garden was toward the eastern part of Eden.
2:10 Now a river flowed out of Eden to water the garden; and from there it divided and became four rivers. 11 The name of the first is Pishon; it flows around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold. 12 The gold of that land is good; the bdellium and the onyx stone are there. 13 The name of the second river is Gihon; it flows around the whole land of Cush. 14 The name of the third river is Tigris; it flows east of Assyria. And the fourth river is the Euphrates.
Notice the exhaustive detail given here! The original writer definitely wanted the readers to be able to find this place.
The river mentioned in v.10 flowed from east to west (at least at the point where the garden was).
I’ll mention here that you might see me using the word “myth” when I describe Genesis 1-3. “Myth” in its strictest literary definition doesn’t mean fiction. The
Concise Oxford English Dictionary, 11th Edition, gives the following definition #1 for myth:
[See Page 970, or search the wor "myth" at the following link:
www.amazon.com/Concise-Oxford-English-Dictionary-Edition/dp/0199548412/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1401585055&sr=8-2&keywords=concise+oxford+english+dictionary#reader_0199548412 ]
In Genesis 1-3 I think we have a story that describes things which actually happened but which are often so different from our experience that symbolic language must be used for us to understand them.
Conservative biblical scholar J.J. Scullion did a great job of summarizing the same position I take. In his article
New Thinking on creation and Sin in Genesis I-XI," Australian Biblical Review 22 (October 1974), pages 2-3, Scullion wrote:
In that limited sense, I do think the events of Genesis 1-3 are myth. I’ll bring out why I think that’s the case in upcoming studies. But please understand that I don’t mean “fiction” when I use that word.
The events aren’t only myth. The current verses demonstrate clearly that they are history, even verifiable history.
Though today we can’t precisely locate Eden or the garden, it’s obvious from the great detail given that the original readers could.
We can get a good idea of their location, though. As it turns out, the area described is somewhere in Mesopotamia, in the area we call the Fertile Crescent (Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, Turkey).
What do we know about the 4 rivers that are mentioned here?
RIVER 1: PISHON, which flows from a land of Havilah
The writer of Genesis 2 put much more effort into describing this river than the other three. Maybe this is because he knew it was harder to identify. Havilah is not a known region today, but there is a strong possibility that it is a modern day place that is now called Ha 'ill in Northern Arabia. This place does have a dry river that continues to the Euphrates.
RIVER 2: GIHON
The KJV says that the Gihon flowed around the whole land of ETHIOPIA, but this is misleading. Nearly every other modern translation goes with the original Hebrew word CUSH rather than Ethiopia. The Hebrews did refer to our modern Ethiopia as “Cush,” but they called many, many other places Cush as well. Ancient people weren’t into giving places distinctive names like we are. They used Race names rather than Place names. When a family clan which had become a nationality or race migrated to a new area, the new area acquired the family’s name. If there was a major split in a nationality and part of that race migrated elsewhere, both places would have the same name. Noah had a son named Ham who had a son named Cush (Genesis 10). It is possible this migration is what happened to the "Cush" of Genesis 2. The descendants of Cush may have split, one part remaining in Asia, the other migrating to Africa to become the Ethiopia we still know to this day. What we do know for sure is that more than one "Cush" existed. There is also a river named Diyala in Mesopotamia which circles a mountain range called "Pushti-Kuh" – which you can see looks and sounds much like “Kush.” The people who lived there around 1400 BC (the time of Moses!) were called "Kassites" (which looks and sounds much like “Cushites”). And this river empties into the Tigris!
RIVER 3: TIGRIS – A well-known river
RIVER 4: EUPHRATES – Also a well-known river
If nothing else, it is definitely worth noting that the writer provides very precise detail, and provides greater detail for the 2 rivers that we have most trouble identifying.
Why is this significant? Because it shows that he is describing things that were very real to the experiences of his original readers. They could take his descriptions and find the places he mentioned.
If this were pure fiction, those details would be ridiculous.
