It’s popular in some circles to think of Gen 2 as a second, somewhat contradictory account of human and God’s creation. In fact, Gen 2 employs a common literary device.
Background is sketched first, and then one feature is highlighted with additional details. A chorus sings, then one singer steps forward into the spotlight.
A guide exposes the panorama of a giant mural and then leads his tour closer to examine the detail.
Introduction
There is every indication that this is what we have in Gen 2. The phrase in verse 4, “This is the account of,” sets off the introduction of each new section in Genesis (5:1; 6:9; 10:1; 11:10, 27; 25:12,19; 36:11-19; 37:2).
The Creation scenery is set in place in Gen 1; now the writer invites us to take our seats and observe the play.
Looking closely at chapter 2, we see much evidence that man truly is special to God. These are found primarily in the record of how God planned Eden to meet the various needs of Adam’s personality.
Adam and Eden
Remember that God’s own personality was mirrored in Adam. With God, Adam shared a capacity to appreciate.
So the plantings of Eden included all trees “that were pleasing to the eye” (v. 9). God knew that man would be dissatisfied without work, so in the Garden God let Adam “work it and take care of it” (v. 15).
Animal and man
God knew man’s need for opportunity to use his intellectual capacities, so God brought all the animals to the man “to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name” (v. 19).
God knew man’s need for freedom to choose, so He placed a forbidden tree in the Garden and commanded man not to eat fruit from it.
Adam and Eve
This action once and for all set man apart from programmed robots and demanded that he use his capacity to value and to choose. God knew man’s need for intimacy with others of his kind, so God gave Adam and Eve to each other.
And, finally, God knew man’s need for fellowship with Him. So God gave Adam and Eve His own presence as evenings fell (3:8).
Each of these actions shows how deeply concerned God was that man’s needs be met, and how special man, this being who was “in His own image” (1:27), was to Him. In the design of Eden, God continued to reveal the fact that His own nature is one of love.
God’s heart
There are many ways in which we might respond to this witness to the special place man has in God’s heart. For one, we might worship, echoing the wonder of the psalmist, “What is man, that You are mindful of him?” (Ps 8:4)
For another, we might take comfort. The God whose care we see exhibited here still cares for you and me today. “In all things God works for the good of those who love Him” (Rom 8:28). God still designs experiences as loving gifts to those whom He holds dear.
For another response, we might take heart. “If God be for us, who can be against us?” (v. 31, KJV) When God has affirmed us as His own concern, no circumstance can overcome us. Dominion, still a gift from Him, is ours.
New life
The Genesis account makes it plain that man is a special creation, not a being whose flesh was formed from brutes, with the spark of likeness added as an afterthought.
The picture in Gen 2 shows God kneeling in tenderness to mould fresh clay. Then God breathed His own breath into that shape, and “man became a living being” (v. 7).
Both the material and immaterial dimensions of the human personality come from God, combined in a unique blend. And that blend will persist through all eternity, as ultimately you and I share both the shape and the character of Christ, who unites God with man in His own Person.
Eden
What I find important about Eden is the care God took in its design and what this tells us about ourselves and about Him.
What we usually ask about Eden is, “Where was it?”
Two of the rivers mentioned in the biblical text are well known, so this has led scholars to suggest the narrowing above Babylon, or further south near the Persian Gulf, as likely sites.
While archaeologists have agreed that the Fertile Crescent area is the focus of the most ancient and advanced civilisations on earth, there is no way today to pinpoint the location of Eden.
Woman
When we turn again to Scripture, the focus remains on Gen 2 and its messages.
One of the most important messages has to do with the identity of women. This is something we are all concerned about these days, and with good reason. In church and society, women’s identity has been clouded with a variety of myths.
Popular notions often project girls as more suggestible than boys, as having less self-esteem, as lacking motivation to achieve, as less aggressive, and certainly as less analytic.
Tragic misunderstandings of Scripture have led some to affirm an actual inferiority of women on supposed religious grounds.
Not only does this violate the spirit of Eph. 5, in which man’s headship is associated not with the right to command but with the responsibility to love as Jesus loved, but it totally misses the implications of the Genesis Creation account.
What do we see in Genesis?
We see first a deep need for a woman as someone designed to fit the emptiness in a man’s life (“a helper suitable for him,” Gen 2:18). To fill the need, God did not turn again to clay.
If he had, man might later have imagined that woman, as a second creation, was somehow inferior to him. No, God put Adam to sleep and, while he rested, took a rib from him.
Working His great wonders, from that rib God shaped Eve. When God brought Eve to Adam, the man recognised her, and the words of verse 23 stand as a witness to the essential identity of woman with man:
This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called “woman,” for she was taken out of man.
Man and Image of God
When God sought fellowship, He created man in His own image. But when this person God had made knew a similar need for intimacy, God gave an even greater gift.
Woman, taken from the living flesh of man, is far more than a reflection of man’s image. Woman, taken from the living flesh of man, shares fully in man’s identity.
Testimonies
In a testimony echoed by the New Testament, the Word of God lifts man and woman and places them, side by side, at the pinnacle of God’s creation.
There, together, each shares fully as a fellow heir of the dominion God proclaims, each of us a choice and precious object of His love.
After man had sinned and God had intervened, God provided an alternative for man so that we could be friendly with Him again.
Application
God’s new covenant is beautifully illustrated by saying, “Their sins and lawless acts I will remember no more.” This assurance underscores God’s forgiveness, made possible by Jesus’ once-for-all sacrifice.
Through this sacrifice, believers can gain direct access to God. The new covenant replaces the old covenant and offers eternal salvation and intimate fellowship with God.
Jesus’ sacrifice ends the need for repeated rituals and intermediaries between man and God. We can now approach God directly and confidently as His children.
We are no longer the servants but the children of Jesus Christ. When we embrace God’s new covenant, our lives will be transformed.
We shall live free from the guilt of sins and shame through Jesus Christ’s sacrifice. With free access to God, we now enjoy God’s presence in prayer and the assurance of eternal salvation.
Our relationship with God is no longer defined by rules and regulations but by grace and love. Read further on this page.
