A Strange, New World

Genesis 2:4-25 is our text for today's post.  Along with Genesis 1, this passage reveals "a strange, new world".  The passage in Genesis 2 more or less goes back and provides a more detailed look into the creation of Adam on Day Six and first days after the first Sabbath.

Verses 5-7, while extremely troubling to those who hold to a creation over many years, make perfect sense when you accept a literal, six days of creation.  Here are the verses for your convenience:

5Now 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.6Springs would well up from the earth and water the whole surface of the ground. 7The 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.

Genesis 2:5-7 (NET)

It is entirely reasonable, then, to accept God created plant life on Day Three, but that such plant life then began growing at a normal rate after its creation, watered by mists and springs.  Three literal days later, on Day Six, God created Adam.

Verses 9-14 describe Eden's location in that day, before the worldwide flood, described in Genesis 6.  This information was transmitted over the generations until Moses formally codified it into the book of Genesis.  The Tigris and the Euphrates rivers still exist to this day, giving us a general idea of the geographical location of the original Eden.  However, we are unable to pinpoint Eden's actual location due to the cataclysmic earth changes that resulted from the worldwide flood.

Moreover....

We would be making a serious error to look at our world today, even the wild "untouched" areas of Earth and deduce that "the heavens and the earth" today are very much like how they were at their original creation.  We tend to look at our current state of being as humans and make false deductions about the past, by observing the present.  This, of course, presupposes the past was exactly like the present, which is most certainly untrue (based on what we learn from Genesis).

Case in point:  take a look back at Genesis 1:29-30 (NET) - -

29Then God said, “I now give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the entire earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. 30And to all the animals of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to all the creatures that move on the ground – everything that has the breath of life in it – I give every green plant for food.” It was so.

We don't hear many sermons preached on this topic, but the truth is that, before the introduction of sin into the human race and, by extension, into God's original "it was very good" creation, all animal life was vegetarian; all were herbivores.  I'll delve more into that later.

Note also that rain did not fall from the skies to water the Earth in these days (Gen 2:5).  In fact, the first time rain fell on the Earth was when God initiated the process to produce the great flood of Genesis 6.

Adam spent some undetermined amount of time - - scripture does not say - - interacting with God's creation, tending the Garden of Eden, and naming the animals (Genesis 2:19-20 NET)

19The Lord God formed out of the ground every living animal of the field and every bird of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them, and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. 20So the man named all the animals, the birds of the air, and the living creatures of the field, but for Adam no companion who corresponded to him was found.

At some point, Eve was created.  For some reason, God wanted us to know that Eve was created after Adam and that she was created from the body of Adam.  I'm glad Father in His divine plan chose to reveal this information to us.  Such does not imply Eve was in any way inferior to Adam, but merely that the male and female of our species are inextricably linked.  It also points out the very true differences between male and female.  (All this modern-day nonsense about allowing children to determine their own genders is just that - - satanic nonsense.)

We would also be mistaken to believe that our human biology today is anything more than inferior to that of Adam and Eve.  There is no doubt our race (in fact the entire creation) has been corrupted/diminished by the sin curse which Adam and Eve brought upon all of God's perfect work.  Keep in mind: Adam lived to be over 900 years old.  Living for hundreds of years was, according to scripture, commonplace in those days.  Over time, the sin curse produced more and more negative effects in this world, and not just on Earth.  The Bible says "the whole creation groans" under it (Romans 8:22).  Nasty, destructive "weeds" in the Garden of Life....

How long did Adam and Eve dwell in Eden before that great, fatal mistake was made?  We are not given that information.  But, in the next post, we will continue to look at the early days of Adam and Eve, while considering the question that has been posed by so many doubters:  "Who did Cain, Abel and Seth marry?"