Genesis 2: 4 - 25

⁴These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens,  ⁵And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew: for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground.
 ⁶But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground.
 ⁷And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.
 ⁸And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed.
 ⁹And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
 ¹⁰And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads.
 ¹¹The name of the first is Pison: that is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold;
 ¹²And the gold of that land is good: there is bdellium and the onyx stone.
 ¹³And the name of the second river is Gihon: the same is it that compasseth the whole land of Ethiopia.
 ¹⁴And the name of the third river is Hiddekel: that is it which goeth toward the east of Assyria. And the fourth river is Euphrates.
 ¹⁵And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.
 ¹⁶And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat:
 ¹⁷But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.
 ¹⁸And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.
 ¹⁹And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.
 ²⁰And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him.
 ²¹And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof;
 ²²And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.
 ²³And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.
 ²⁴Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.
 ²⁵And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.


Today we have a slightly longer passage. Many people get confused by this part of the bible. It says that God created Adam prior to creating vegetation or land animals; but, we just finished reading how God created vegetation and animals after man. How could it be that the writer didn't see that he just apparently contradicted himself. There are two possible answers, one that God created humans in two separate events and the other is that God created two kinds of people, you should know this from science, Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens. Archaeologists tell us that the Neanderthals had the early advantage, that they died off and we passed them up. We will get back to that when we get to the story of Noah.

God did indeed create two types of people. Humans are descendants of Adam and Eve. Bottom line is that Adam and Eve were created and put apart from all other people in the Garden of Eden and others were created a few days later. The fact is that we don't get a lot of discussion about the people who were created on the sixth day. Later in Genesis when Cain kills his brother Abel, we are told that God puts a mark on Cain and sends him out of the garden and Abel is afraid other people will see the mark and harm him. At some point in time God must have told Adam and Eve about the other people he created after them.

Science has proven that all people currently living on this earth are descended from one woman. It has to do with the genetics that women pass down to their daughters. Funny how the bible said that six thousand years ago and we only discovered it in the last 20 years. I remember reading an article about the scientist that discovered it, she said that the data indicated that the original woman had come from asia; but, because they knew we had come out of Africa, she re-interpreted the data. The article was either in Time or Newsweek and I don't care enough to go find it.

So, Adam and Eve were created and placed in the garden. They were separated from the other people originally, see that pattern again. Now, it says that God created man out of the ground, out of dirt. We are in fact made of the same stuff; but, how did they know that 6,000 years ago? There is a song by Joni Mitchell, she wrote, "We are stardust, we are golden, we are million year old carbon", they didn't know that a thousand years ago. Look at the other religions and see how many got that right. This is why we must understand the context and the time when these things were explained to people. Telling people thousand of years ago that we came from dirt was more outrageous then telling people that we evolved from fish; but, the bible is correct and science says that we are made of the stuff.

When God created Adam it says that he breathed into his nostrils and gave the man life and a living soul. Your "soul", your individuality comes from God, he gave us a part of him so that we could be us, he gave us self awareness and self-determination. We are in his image and that includes getting to decide for ourselves who we are, what we will live by, free will. We are special, everyone of us is unique and a creation of Gods.

After God created Adam, he then created the garden of eden, an oasis in a barren world. Within the garden God made two trees, one gave eternal life and the other gave the knowledge of good and evil. Once again we see the pattern, God created two things the same; but, with great differences.

I wish to pass on something that I was told and believe about the bible and God. Everything God says is important, if he says something once it is important; but, if he says it three times then it is really important. Three times means that a final decision must be made by people. It is the final chance and then we get to live with the consequences, we can turn; but, we will still have consequences. Consider that when you read the bible or make decisions in your life.

Lets talk about the two trees now. God didn't put them there by accident. He knew that they would probably try one or the other eventually, so why did he put them there? It was a choice for us to make. We assume that everything was great; but, Eve did not eat of the tree of life, she chose the tree of death. Satan did not trick Eve, he only thought he did. She knew she might die and ate of it anyways. This, what I am going to discuss is not commonly believed in Christianity; but, I ask you to read what others have said and then consider what I am saying. How can you know when you are learning false doctrine if you do not test everything that others tell you? We will get into this further when we get to the next post in detail, in the meantime, try and answer for yourself why Eve chose the tree that God said led to death rather than the one that he said was the tree of life.

Eve was innocent and Adam was innocent, they did not know how to lie, they were like children and sitting in front of the all knowing. I am pretty sure they understood that God knew more than they did. I want people to learn how to discern, to truly read the bible and think about it themselves and to learn to check everything they are told including what I write; but, don't think that just because the crowd believes it that it is true.

God put both before man knowing that they would eventually eat of one. This upsets some people because they do not understand what our choice was. We should thank Eve for having made the better choice. If Eve had eaten from the tree of life then humans would not know the difference between good and evil, we would remain eternal children. I believe angels are less complex and more childlike than humans because they are incapable of learning, they got eternal life.

God put the trees there and we got to decide which we would eat from. He knew we would choose; but, the choice was left to us and to understand that deeper we have to understand why Eve chose as she did, just not yet. After God made the trees of Knowledge and Life, we are told of four rivers that flowed from Eden. We are told where the rivers went; but, we are not told why he had four coming out of Eden and I don't have a clue; but, there is a reason, God does not do anything without a plan or a reason. He knows every cell of our body and the universe, nothing is an accident.

It says that God put Adam in the garden to take care of it. God could have made it so that it did not need to be taken care of. Why did God put him there to take care of it? Well, I have a couple of thoughts. Either God wanted to give Adam something to do to keep him busy or God wanted him to learn how to farm, learn a skill that he would need later. We do know that Cain was a farmer. My guess is that his father taught him.

We now get back to the trees. God put the two trees in the garden; but, he did not say that it was bad to eat of the tree of life, he only said that they would die if they ate from the tree of knowledge. What would have happened if Eve had eaten from the tree of life?

We will discuss all of this more at a later time; but, I didn't want to put too much out for one post. I think there will be enough to learn from this post for a day. I love Genesis because we are given so little information and so much to consider the possibilities, a puzzle and my little autistic brain loves puzzles. My gift is pattern recognition according to the tests for the military that I took.

The next thing in the story is that God determines to make a mate for Adam. He says that it is not good for man to be alone so he will make him a mate. This is critical to understanding God and the universe. God made us in his image and knew that it was not good for us to be alone. Do you think it was good for God to be alone, alone in the darkness? If you grew up in the church and believed everything you were told then you will probably not be able to answer this question without relying on tradition and tradition would say that God was just as satisfied without us as he is with us and I don't believe that. I believe God created us to have a relationship with him because he knew that it is not good to be alone, not even for him.

Some will doubt this interpretation; but, be careful, I read my bible deeply. Either God created us to just make us happy or he created us to grow. Either he created us so that we would just have no pain or he created us to become better so that we could relate to him on some aspect with our own unique perspective. We were not an afterthought, God created us with a purpose and if our lives are any indication, it is a lot more than just to have fun. God created the whole universe just so that he could create us, we were the ultimate creation that he made everything else for. Please understand how important you are and how important you are to God. We pass through this life to something much more pleasant; but, we have to be us first.

So God decides that Adam needs a help mate and creates all the animals. None of the animals are in the image of Adam, they are different and cannot relate to him. He names all the animals but does not find a mate. God knew that Adam would not. Lets get back to something. God said that it was not good for Adam to be alone; but, Adam was not alone, he was with God. Neither God nor the animals was a mate for Adam, he was not of the exact same stuff, he was not close enough to their level of understanding, smarter than the animals and not as knowledgeable as God.

Why didn't God just create Eve? God knew who and what would be a good helper. God also knew that he was not a mate for Adam. Adam had to understand that. He named all the animals and knew that he had not found the right mate. This is where you begin to get an understanding that few have. God created Adam from Eve because he made us in his likeness and we came from God. We are a piece of God, emphasis on piece. We are not God, we are an aspect of him, we are of him, we are special and loved by him. He loves every part of him because he is worthy of love, he has earned it. A God that created us just for torment would not be worthy of our love and that is not what God created us for, how could he torment himself?

I know that this is a long post and I know that it may take people a day or two to read it, don't feel bad. I want to provide enough content for people to read as they feel comfortable. I do hope that I am providing you some things to think about even if you thought you knew the bible. You can agree or disagree; but, you will have to prove your point and not just repeat what you have been told, I will have an answer.

I had originally only planned on discussing verses 4 - 17; but, I am going to finish off the chapter. God took an aspect of Adam to create Eve, same as he did to create us. God created us in his image and he created Eve in the image of man, similar but different. Women and men are different, we are fundamentally different. God did not simply create another God, he created something in his image; but, different. He created us from within himself in the same way that he created Eve from within Adam. This is very heavy stuff if you think about it, which is why people do not.

God put Adam to sleep, removed a rib and created Eve from that rib. Consider verse 23, Adam says that this is bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh. Verse 24 says that because we are of one flesh and bone and man will leave his family for a woman and they shall become one. Yep. A man and a woman that are meant to be soul mates become one for eternity, everything else is for the here and now.

If we are to unite with God then we must be one and that is a special relationship that many do not find here on earth, their soulmate. From our soulmate we are able to be fruitful and multiply, we are able to have offspring. God referred to "we" when talking to himself. Well, if we are in his image than "we" must be similar but different. He made us man and women in his image while referring to himself in the plural. Something deeper is going on. It is so fundamental that we do not understand it.

After creating Eve, it says that they were both naked and not ashamed. Well, God created a mate for Adam, they had children and neither was ashamed of their nakedness. Why would they be, it was just the two of them and God, he knew what parts he put on them and so did they. They could not be ashamed and were children, they didn't know shame because they had no knowledge of good and evil or other people. I was never ashamed of being naked in front of my wife, she had seen my body many times, she had seen me sick, she had seen me with hemorrhoids, she had seen me sick and seen me at my physical best, I had seen her in the same conditions. No shame, it is your spouse and they should know you fully, that is how we become one flesh. We do not see another body, we see our own when we see our soul mates body and are married and have cleaved, united as one.

 When we unite as we are intended we become a new being and it is not about the body, it is about the soul. God does not argue with himself, he is in agreement but shows himself as body and soul to us, Jesus and the wholly spirit are what he is made of and the combination of them is greater than the parts. This is not what the "church" teaches; but, let them correct me, it will confound them. Do not seek for answers, seek for understanding. Problem with the church today is that it seeks short cuts, it seeks answers and stopped looking for understanding, it stopped looking to grow theologically. Nobody can understand God, we can only understand what can be known by us at a time and then learn more about him. The church isn't growing because it is not understanding God better. It is not trying to, it is just repeating what it knew.

The church has often said terrible things about Eve. Eve did not have it easy, she knew she loved Adam, God made her in his image to love him, to be his helper. Adam was Eve's God in a manner. Later we will discuss the proof of this; but, by the time you read it you won't remember that I said it here first. Moses didn't wish to speak to Pharaoh, God said that he could have Aaron do it for him, he said that Moses would be to Aaron as God was to Moses. Get it?

Eve loved Adam with all her heart, his pain was greater to her than her own was to her. We should feel the same way about the lord, we are to be his bride. Life is about pain and pleasure on a level. Our pain is lessoned when we share it and our pleasure is intensified when we share it. This is the God pattern, from one comes all and all variations in between. It is how one becomes many. This is undeniable, in the beginning was God, one. He chose to create us, to become many; but, still remain him. God is all that is, we are part of all that is, we are created by him as part of him not apart from him. Understanding becomes love (forgiveness) and because there is love we can have understanding (thought). Be well and send in your questions.