[This was first posted in 2013, reposted 2014; absolutely worth revisiting in 2019! This 2nd chapter of the book of beginnings has 2 highlights: the Sabbath, and humankind. There are enough articles about the Sabbath posted on this website, but we have not explored the specifics in the making of ‘humankind’ to where we are satisfied. The Rabbis have their various interpretations included in the commentary here; we do not fully agree with them in everything but it’s always a good starting point to get their opinion first and then work from there—where and why we think differently or deviate from their point of view and mind you, they themselves don’t always agree with each other nor do they follow one trend of thought.
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It is good to keep in mind the following with regard the making of humankind:
- first, we prefer using ‘humankind’ instead of ‘man’, in fact ‘humanity’ is another good term. . .
- second, in this account of the beginnings, one being is formed from the dust of the ground . . . and that being is gendered, so to speak, as the first ‘male’ (according to traditional interpretation) but consider this: if “adamah” means ‘humankind’ made from the dust of the ground, what if “adamah” contains the male/female genders at the beginning and then they are split into two? Quite a provocative thought eh?
- third, from within that being is formed the first of the female gender (according to traditional interpretation), but ponder on the previous possibility . . . is it too far-fetched to think that the Creator in His wisdom, created the highlight of all created beings, as one, to be split into male and female, always attracted to each other to fulfill each other, to complement each other?
- fourth, in keeping with points 2 and 3, there have been discussions, Rabbinic in fact, that the first human being was actually a hermaphrodite because of this Genesis account; that from the first humankind’s ‘side’ (not rib) was taken or separated a ‘humankind’ but of a different gender. Keep chewing on these for now . . .
If the Creator made humankind male and female, and the command given to them is to ‘multiply’, then procreation is the obvious intention so, where does that fit into the scheme of things in this age where same-sex ‘marriage’ is being foisted upon us as the ‘new normal’?
Other issues: Have you checked out the feminist bible version where God is referred to as a ‘she’? How much impact does gender-language have on the thinking of each generation? Oy vey as the Jews would say, what if the bible is retranslated to suit the transgender generation that has come out of the closet, with a vengeance at that?
Ultimately, it is not what “men” . . . ahem, better term . . .”humanity” . . . think that counts, the only question left is: what does God think? In fact, what has the Creator stated about His design of humankind? This chapter should settle it.
Unbracketed commentary is from Pentateuch and Haftorahs, ed. Dr. J.H. Hertz; translation is EF/Everett Fox, The Five Books of Moses with commentary “EF”; additional commentary by Robert Alter “RA” from his translation The Five Books of Moses.–Admin1.]
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THE SABBATH
The Torah was not originally divided into chapters. Such divisions originated in the Middle Ages; and, because of its convenience, found its way into the printed Hebrew text. Sometimes, as here, the division is misleading. Thus, the next three verses belong to the preceding chapter, and form its worthy and incomparable conclusion.
Genesis/Bere’shith 2
1 Thus were finished the heavens and the earth, with all of their array.
were finished. The Heb. verb implies not only completion but perfection.
host. lit. ‘army’; the totality of the universe conceived as an organized whole, a cosmos.
2 God had finished, on the seventh day, his work that he had made, and then he ceased, on the seventh day, from all his work that he had made.
seventh day. ‘What did the world lack after the six day’s toil’? Rest. So God finished His labours on the seventh day by the creation of a day of rest, the Sabbath’ (Midrash).
finished. Better, ‘had finished’ (Mendelssohn, M. Friedlander).
rested. Heb. ‘desisted’, from creating. In the 4th commandment (Exod. XX,11) God is said to have ‘rested’ (vayanach) on the 7th day. This ascribing of human actions to God is called anthropomorphism, and is employed in the Bible to make intelligible to the finite, human mind that which relates to the Infinite. The Talmudic saying, ‘The Torah speaks the ordinary language of men,’ became a leading principle in later Jewish interpretation of Scripture.
3 God gave the seventh day his blessing, and he hallowed it,
for on it he ceased from all his work, that by creating, God had made.
God blessed. The Creator endowed the Sabbath with a blessing which would be experienced by all who observed it. On the Sabbath, the Talmud says, the Jew receives an ‘additional soul’, i.e. his spiritual nature is heightened through the influence of the holy day.
hallowed. lit. ‘set apart’ from profane usage. The Sabbath demands more than stoppage of work. It is specifically marked off as a day consecrated to God and the life of the spirit.
in creating had made. lit. ‘which God created to make’, i.e. to continue acting (Ibn Ezra, Abarbanel) throughout time by the unceasing operation of Divine laws. This thought is contained in the Prayer Book (p. 39): ‘In His goodness He reneweth the creation every day continually.’ Or, as the Rabbis say, the work of creation continues, and the world is still in the process of creation, as long as the conflict between good and evil remains undecided. Ethically the world is thus still ‘unfinished’, and it is man’s glorious privilege to help finish it. He can by his life hasten the triumph of the forces of good in the universe.
[EF] gave . . . his blessing: Or, “blessed,” here expanded in English for rhythmical reasons. by creating, God had made: Hebrew difficult. Buber’s working papers show numerous attempts at a solution.
THE BEGINNINGS OF THE HUMAN RACE
(a) THE GARDEN OF EDEN
Chapter II is not another account of Creation. No mention is made in it of the formation of the dry land, the sea, the sun, moon or stars. It is nothing else but the sequel of the preceding chapter. In Chap. I, man is considered as part of the general scheme of created things. Chap II supplements the brief mention of the creation of man in v. 27 of the last chapter, by describing the formation of man and woman and their first dwelling place, as preliminary to the Temptation, and the consequent expulsion from the Garden of Eden in Chap. III. Only such details as are indispensable for the understanding of the event are given.
4 These are the begettings of the heavens and the earth: their being created.
At the time of YHWH, God’s making of earth and heaven,
These are the generations of the heaven and of the earth. Some consider these words as a summary of the preceding chapter (Rashi). Elsewhere, however, in 10 different sections of the Book of Genesis, such opening words (‘these are the generations’) always refer to the things that follow: e.g. ‘These are the generations of Noah’ (VI,9), means these are the descendants of Adam. In the same way, ‘the generations of the heaven and the earth’ here begins the account of man, the offspring of heaven and earth; or, the history of Adam and his family.
in the day that. Heb. idiom for ‘at the time when’.
LORD God. Heb. Adonay Elohim. The two most important Names of the Deity are here used. ‘LORD’ is the usual English translation of Adonay. Adonay is the prescribed traditional reading of the Divine Name expressed in the four Hebrew letters YHWH—which is never pronounced as written. this Divine Name is spoken of as the Tetragrammaton, which is a Greek word meaning ‘the Name of four letters’. The High Priest of old pronounced it as written, on the Day of Atonement during the Temple Service; whereupon all the people fell on their faces and exclaimed, ‘Blessed be His Name whose glorious Kingdom is for ever and ever.’ The Heb. root of that Divine Name means ‘to be’; Adonay thus expresses the eternal self-existence of Him who is the Author of all existence. A possible rendering, therefore, for Adonay is ‘The Eternal’, and this has been adopted in some Jewish versions of Scripture.
The other and more general Divine Name is Elohim. Whereas Adonay is used whenever the Divine is spoken of in close relationship with men or nations, Elohim denotes God as the Creator and Moral Governor of the Universe. The Rabbis find a clear distinction in the use of these two terms: Adonay (LORD) describes the Deity stressing His lovingkindness, His acts of mercy and condescension and revelation to mankind; while Elohim (God) emphasizes His justice and rulership. The Midrash says, ‘Thus spake the Holy One, blessed be He: If I create the world by Mercy alone, sin will abound; if by Justice alone, how can the world endure? I will create it by both.’ In the first chapter of Genesis, which treats of the Universe as a whole, Elohim (‘God’) is used; but in the second chapter, which begins the story of man, that Divine Name is no longer used along, but together with Adonay (‘LORD God’). There was soon need for the exercise of the Divine mercy.
earth and heaven. Since the center of interest now turns to man, earth is mentioned before heaven.
[RA] As many modern commentators have noted, the first Creation account concludes with the summarizing phrase in the first half of this verse: “This is the tale [literally, these are the begettings] of the heavens and the earth when they were created,” these two paired terms, “heavens” and “earth,” taking us back in an envelope structure to the paired terms of the very first verse of the Creation story. Now, after the grand choreography of resonant parallel utterances of the cosmogony, the style changes sharply. Instead of the symmetry of parataxis, hypotaxis is initially prominent: the second account begins with elaborate syntactical subordination in a long complex sentence that uncoils all the way from the second part of verse 4 to the end of verse 7. In this more vividly anthropomorphic account, God, now called YHWH ‘Elohim instead of ‘Elohim as in the first version, does not summon things into being from a lofty distance through the mere agency of divine speech, but works as a craftsman, fashioning (yatsar instead of bara’, “create”), blowing life-breath into nostrils, building a woman from a rib. Whatever the disparate historical origins of the two accounts, the redaction gives us first a harmonious cosmic overview of creation and then a plunge into the technological nitty-gritty and moral ambiguities of human origins.
5 no bush of the field was yet on earth,
no plant of the field had yet sprung up,
for YHWH, God, had not made it rain upon the earth,
and there was no human/adam to till the soil/adama—
no shrub. Vegetation remained in the same state as on the day of its creation (see I,11), through lack of rain.
not a man. The edible fruits of the earth require not only God’s gift of rain, but also man’s cultivation. Man must be a co-worker with God in making this earth a garden.
[EF] human/adam . . . soil/adama: The sound connection, the first folk etymology in the Bible, establishes the intimacy of humankind with the ground (note the curses in 3:17 and 4:11). Human beings are created from the soil, just as animals are (v. 19). Some have suggested “human . . . humus” to reflect the word play.
6 but a surge would well up from the ground and water all the face of the soil;
there went up. ‘There used to go up.’ The Heb. verb expresses repeated action.
a mist. In Assyrian, the word means the ‘overflow of a river’, and it may here have the same significance.
watered. The vegetation did not therefore decay, though there was insufficient moisture for growth.
[EF] surge: Or, “flow.”
7 and YHWH, God, formed the human, of dust from the soil,
he blew into his nostrils the breath of life
and the human became a living being.
formed. The Heb. is from the same root, yatzar, as is used of the potter moulding clay into a vessel, possibly to remind us that man is ‘as clay in the hands of the potter.’ The Rabbis point to the fract that in this verse the word for ‘formed’ (vayyitzer) is written with two yods, whereas in v. 19 when relating the creation of animals, it has only one yod. Man alone, they declare, is endowed with both a Yetzer tob (a good inclination) and a Yetzer ra (an evil inclination); whereas animals have no moral discrimination or moral conflict. Another explanation is: man alone is a citizen of two worlds; he is both earth and of heaven.
dust of the ground. ‘From which part of the earth’s great surface did He gather the dust?’ ask the Rabbis. Rabbi Meir answered, ‘From every part of the habitable earth was the dust taken for the formation of Adam.’ In a word, men of all lands and climes are brothers. Other Rabbis held that the dust was taken from the site on which the Holy Temple, with the altar of Atonement, was in later ages to be built. That means, though man comes from the dust, sin is not a permanent part of his nature. Man can overcome sin, and through repentance attain to at-one-ment with his Maker.
a living soul. The term may mean nothing more than ‘living entity’. The Targum, however, renders it by ‘a speaking spirit’; viz. personality endowed with the faculty of thinking and expressing his thoughts in speech.
[RA] the human, humus. The Hebrew etymological pun is ‘adam, “human,” from the soil, ‘adamah.
8-17. THE GARDEN
8 YHWH, God, planted a garden in Eden/Land-of-Pleasure, in the east,
and there he placed the human whom he had formed.
garden. The ancient Versions translate it by the Persian word ‘Paradise’, lit. enclosure or park.
eastward. Either, ‘in the East,’ the home of the earliest civilization; or, situated east of Eden. The Targum translates it,’aforetime.’
Eden. The Heb. word means ‘delight’; but it is probably the name of a country, Edinu (signifying ‘plain, steppe’); and may denote the extensive plain watered by the rivers Tigris and Euphrates. The phrase ‘Garden of Eden’ became in course of time descriptive of any place possessing beauty and fertility. In later Jewish literature, it signifies the Heavenly Paradise where the souls of the righteous repose in felicity.
[EF] Eden/Land-of-Pleasure: For another use of the Hebrew root, see 18:12. The usage here may be a folk etymology; Speiser translates it as “steppe.”
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9 YHWH, God, caused to spring up from the soil
every type of tree, desirable to look and good to eat,
and the Tree of Life in the midst of the garden
and the Tree of Knowing of Good and Evil.
tree of life. The fruit of which prolongs life, or renders immortal. The phrase also occurs in a purely figurative sense, e.g. Prov. III,18.
the knowledge of good and evil. The Targum paraphrase is, ‘the tree, the eaters of whose fruits know to distinguish between good and evil.’ The expression ‘good and evil’ denotes the knowledge which infancy lacks and experience acquires (‘Your children, that this day have no knowledge of good or evil’, Deut. I,39). ‘Knowledge of good and evil’ may also mean knowledge of all things, i.e. omniscience; see III,5.
[EF] Tree of Life: Conferring immortality on the eater of its fruit. Knowing of Good and Evil: Interpreters disagree on the meaning of this phrase. It could be a merism (as in “knowledge from A to Z”—that is, of everything), or an expression of moral choice.
10 Now a river goes out from Eden, to water the garden,
and from there it divides and becomes four stream-heads.
it was parted. After passing through the Garden, it divided into four separate streams.
[EF] stream-heads: Branches of tributaries.
11 The name of the first one is Pishon/Spreader–that is the one
that circles through all the land of Havila, where gold is;
Pishon. Nowhere mentioned in the Bible.
Havilah. X,29. NE of Arabia, on the Persian Gulf. Arabia was famed in antiquity for its gold.
12 the gold of that land is good, there too are bdellium and the precious-stone carnelian.
bdellium. Possibly the pearl.
[EF] bdellium . . . carnelian: Identification uncertain; others suggest, for instance, “lapis” and “onyx.”
13 The name of the second river is Gihon/Gusher—that is the one that circles through all the land of Cush.
Gihon. Like the Pishon, the identity of this river is a matter of conjecture.
Cush. Usually rendered Ethiopia; but it may also denote some territory in Asia.
14 The name of the third river is Hiddekel/Tigris—that is the one that goes to the east of Assyria.
And the fourth river—that is Perat/Euphrates.
Asshur. Assyria; which lies some distance East of the Tigris and possibly includes Babylonia.
Euphrates. No further description is given, because it was universally known as ‘the great River’ (Deut. I,7) and ‘the River’ (Exod. XXIII,31, Isa. VII,20).
15 YHWH, God, took the human and set him and set him in the garden of Eden, to work it and to watch it.
to dress it and to keep it. i.e. to fill it and guard it from running wild. Not indolence but congenial work is man’s Divinely allotted portion.
[EF] work: A different Hebrew word (here, avod) from the one used in 2:2-3 (melakha).
16 YHWH, God, commanded concerning the human, saying:
From every (other) tree of the garden you may eat, yes, eat,
‘See what a great thing is work! The first man was not to taste of anything until he had done some work. Only after God told him to cultivate and keep the garden, did He give him permission to eat of its fruits’ (Aboth di Rabbi Nathan).
[EF] eat, yes, eat: Heb. akhol tokhel, literally, “eating you may eat.” Others use “you may freely eat”; I have followed B-R’s practice of doubling the verb throughout, which retains the sound as well as the meaning. In this passage, as in many instances, I have inserted the word “yes” for rhythmical reasons.
[RA] 16-17. surely eat . . . doomed to die. The form of the Hebrew in both instances is what grammarians call the infinitive absolute: the infinitive immediately followed by a conjugated form of the same verb. the general effect of this repetition is to add emphasis to the verb, but because in the case of the verb “to die” it is the pattern regularly used in the Bible for the issuing of death sentences, “doomed to die” is an appropriate equivalent.
17 but from the Tree of the Knowing of Good and Evil—
you are not to eat from it,
for on the day that you eat from it, you must die, yes die.
thou shalt not eat. Man’s most sacred privilege is freedom of will, the ability to obey or to disobey his Maker. This sharp limitation of self-gratification, this ‘dietary law’, was to test the use he would make of his freedom; and it thus begins the moral discipline of man. Unlike the beast, man has also a spiritual life, which demands the subordination of man’s desires to the law of God. The will of God revealed in His Law is the one eternal and unfailing guide as to what constitutes good and evil—and not man’s instincts, or even his Reason, which in the hour of temptation often call light darkness and darkness light.
thou shalt surely die. i.e. thou must inevitably become mortal (Symmachus). While this explanation removes the difficulty that Adam and Eve lived a long time after they had eaten of the forbidden fruit, it assumes that man was created to be a deathless being. A simpler explanation is that in view of all the circumstances of the temptation, the All-merciful God mercifully modified the penalty, and they did not die on the day of their sin.
[EF] die, yes, die: Others use “surely die.”
18-25. CREATION OF WOMAN
18 Now YHWH, God, said:
It is not good for the human to be alone,
I will make him a helper corresponding to him.
it is not good. From this verse the Rabbis deduce that marriage is a Divine institution, a holy estate in which alone man lives his true and complete life. Celibacy is contrary to nature.
a help. A wife is not a man’s shadow or subordinate, but his other self, his ‘helper’, in a sense which no other creature on earth can be.
meet for him. To match him. The Heb. term k’negdo may mean either ‘at his side’, i.e. corresponding to him.
[EF] It is not good: In contrast to the refrain of Gen I, “God saw that it was good.” corresponding to: Lit. “opposite.” The whole phrase (Heb. ezer kenegdo) could be rendered “a helping counterpart.” At any rate, the Hebrew does not suggest a subordinate position for women.
[RA] sustainer beside him. The Hebrew ezer kenegdo (King James Version “help meet”) is notoriously difficult to translate. The second term means “alongside him,” “opposite him,” “a counterpart of him.” “Help” is too weak because it suggests a merely auxiliary function, whereas ezer elsewhere connotes active intervention on behalf of someone, especially in military contexts, as often in Psalms.
19 So YHWH, God, formed from the soil every living-thing of the field and every fowl of the heavens
and brought each to the human, to see what he would call it;
and whatever the human called it as a living being, that became its name.
Better, The LORD God, having formed out of the ground every beast of the field, and every fowl of heaven, brought them unto the man (S.R. Hirsch, Delitzsch, and W.H. Green). See I,21,25. The fishes are not alluded to because they are precluded from becoming man’s companions.
call them. Man alone has language, and can give birth to languages. In giving names to earth’s creatures, he would establish his dominion over them (I,26,28). The name would also reflect the impression produced on his mind by each creature, and indicate whether he regarded it as a fit companion for himself.
20. The human called out names for every herd-animal and for the fowl of the heavens and for every living-thing of the field,
but for the human, there could be found no helper corresponding to him.
but for Adam. The dignity of human nature could not, in few words, be more beautifully expressed (Dillmann).
[EF] called out: Or “gave.” for the human: Others use “for Adam” or “for a man.”
21 So YHWH, God, caused a deep slumber to fall upon the human, so that he slept,
he took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh in its place.
deep sleep. As in XV,12, the word implies that something mysterious and awe-inspiring was about to take place.
The Creation of Eve, Michelangelo Buonarotti
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one of his ribs. Woman was not formed from the dust of the earth, but from man’s own body.
[EF: Or possibly sides, paralleling other ancient peoples’ concept of an original being that was androgynous.]
‘We have here a wonderfully conceived allegory designed to set forth the moral and social relation of the sexes to each other, the dependence of woman upon man, her close relationship to him, and the foundation existing in nature for the attachment springing up between them. the woman is formed out of the man’s side; hence it is the wife’s natural duty to be at hand, ready at all times to be a “help” to her husband; it is the husband’s natural duty ever to cherish and defend his wife, as part f his own self’ (Driver).
[EF] ribs: Or possibly, “sides,” paralleling other ancient peoples’ concept of an original being that was androgynous.
22 YHWH, God, built the rib that he had taken from the human into a woman
and brought her to the human.
made. lit. “builded’; the Rabbis connected this striking use with the noun ‘understanding,’ intuition, and remarked, ‘This teaches that God has endowed woman with greater intuition than He has man.’
[RA] built. Though this may seem an odd term for the creation of woman, it complements the potter’s term, “fashion,” used for the creation of first human, and is more appropriate because the LORD is now working with hard material, not soft clay. As Nahum Sarna has observed, the Hebrew for “rib,” tselà, is also used elsewhere to designate an architectural element.
23 The human said:
This-time, she-is-it!
Bone from my bones,
flesh from my flesh!
She shall be called Woman/Isha,
for from Man/Ish she was taken!
bone of my bones. The phrase passed into popular speech (XXIX,14).
woman. The Heb. word is Ishshah; that for man is Ish. The similarity in sound emphasizes the spiritual identity of man and woman.
[EF: she: Lit. “this-one.”]
[RA] The first human is given reported speech for the first time only when there is another human to whom to respond. The speech takes the form of verse, a naming-poem, in which each of the two lines begins with the feminine indicative pronoun, zo’t, “this one,” which is also the last Hebrew word of the poem, cinching it in a tight envelope structure.
24 Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife,
and they become one flesh.
shall a man leave. Or, ‘therefore doth a man leave his father and his mother, and doth cleave . . . and they become one flesh.’ Rashi says: ‘These words are by the Holy Spirit: i.e. this verse is not spoken by Adam, but is the inspired comment of Moses in order to inculcate the Jewish ideal of marriage as a unique tie which binds a man to his wife even closer than to his parents.
The Biblical ideal is the monogamic marriage; a man shall cleave ‘to his wife’, not to his wives. The sacredness of marriage relations, according to Scripture, thus goes back to the very birth of human society; nay, it is part of the scheme of Creation. The Rabbinic term for marriage means lit. ‘the sanctities,’ sanctification; the purpose of marriage being to preserve and sanctify that which had been made in the image of God; one entity, sharing the joys and burdens of life.
[RA] Therefore. This term, ‘alken, is the formula for introducing an etiological explanation: here, why it is that man separates from his parents and is drawn to join bodily, and otherwise, to a woman.
25 Now the two of them, the human and his wife, were nude, yet they were not ashamed.
not ashamed. Before eating of the forbidden fruit, they were like children in the Orient, who in the innocence and ignorance of childhood run about unclothed.
[RA] And the two of them. But characteristically, the narrative immediately unsettles the neatness of the etiological certainty, for the first couple are two, not one flesh, and their obliviousness to their nakedness is darkened by the foreshadow of the moment about to be narrated in which their innocence will be lost.
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[Straight Text/No Commentary]