Genesis 2 explained
Dust and breath
Genesis 2:4-25 · World English Bible
“The LORD God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.”
In short
Genesis 2 comes down to the ground. God, now named as the LORD, shapes a man from the dust like a potter, breathes the breath of life into him, gives him work and one limit, and calls only one thing not good, being alone, before he makes a partner who matches him.
What's really going on
A new heading, and a closer look
Verse 4 opens with a heading: "This is the history of the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created". The Hebrew word behind "generations", toledot, heads new sections of Genesis again and again (5:1, 6:9, 10:1, 11:10, 11:27, 25:12, 25:19, 36:1, 36:9, 37:2). Chapter 1 gave the wide shot: the whole world in seven days. From here the story comes down to one garden, one man and one woman.
Easily missed
The man and the woman have no names yet
In this chapter he is almost always ha-adam, "the man", and she is ishah, "a woman" or "his wife". The WEB first calls him Adam in 3:17, and the man names her Eve in 3:20.
Genesis 2:22-25 · Genesis 3:17 · Genesis 3:20
Where it leads to Jesus
The first Adam and the last
Genesis 2:7leads to1 Corinthians 15:45
Paul quotes this verse, "The first man Adam became a living soul", and adds, "The last Adam became a life-giving spirit." In Romans he calls Adam "a foreshadowing of him who was to come". The first man received life; Jesus gives it.
The Hebrew word behind it
אֲדָמָהadamahsay a-da-MAH
Ground, soil, the land that is farmed. Verse 7 says God formed ha-adam, the man, from the dust of ha-adamah, the ground. The two words sound alike, and the chapter plays on it: the man is made from the ground, the ground waits for someone to work it (verse 5), and after he sins he is told he will return to it (3:19).
Talk about it
Work was part of the garden before anything went wrong. How does that change the way you see your own work this week?
Read all of Genesis 2 with Favor
This is a taste. In Favor, the whole chapter explains itself as you read: 11 questions along the way, 11 more Hebrew words, 9 more sections on what's really going on and the honest questions, and a short check at the end. Alone, or with your people.
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Scripture quotations are from the World English Bible, which is in the public domain. Hebrew and Greek words are checked against the original-language texts and public-domain lexicons. What we believe