April 10, 2018 - Day 2 - Genesis 2

So I'm actually going to go through the entire Bible, one chapter at a time, one day at a time. My hope is that we can read it together as though we've never read it. There are 1189 chapters in the Bible, so this is going to go on until mid-July 2021. I understand that sounds crazy, but I'm committed to it. Please join me on this Facebook journey. As always, comments are greatly appreciated, but be kind.

Genesis 2:

An interesting thing to note here when the text refers to God as "he." The verb used for creating here is "bara" which is masculine, thus implying "he." Given that this was a highly patriarchal society, it makes sense that a masculine verb was used; but I don't believe this at all suggests "God" is male.

This chapter opens with God resting after all the creating going on. It seems rather odd that God would need to rest, so this appears pretty poetic to me. Though I do believe its a reminder to us that rest is important in the midst of hard work.

When we get to verse 5, we see that we already have a contradiction. As Josh mentioned, in Genesis 1 we see plants appear on the 3rd "day," which is before man was made. In Genesis 2, it tells us that man was made before the plants appeared. So which one is it? Once we read this literally, we have to do mental gymnastics to keep it from falling apart. Frankly, I don't care because this is a 3500 year old poem written by incredibly primitive people; of course its not going to line up.

It says God "breathed" into the nostrils of the man. Does God have lungs? Lips? Breath? Seems odd. Again, seems like just poetry.

God warns the man to eat from any tree except one tree, for he will die. Doesn't this sound familiar? How many times in our lives have we reached for the forbidden fruit, only to find ourselves in despair, bitterness and hate; from life to death. We've all done this.

The word "Adam" is just the Hebrew word for "mankind," but is important to note this is a generic noun, and is not necessarily male. Even in Genesis 1 where "man" is used, the word is "ha-adam" and just means mankind as it does here. Again, not exclusively male. I thought this was really interesting.

Oddly, God makes a bunch of animals next, lets "Adam" name them, but realizes this isn't good enough for Adam so he makes a woman from the rib of Adam while has sleeping (divine anesthesia?). 

Now the translation of the word "woman" is actually pretty complicated. She received the name "Hawwah" (Eve) which means "living" in Hebrew. The word "woman" is "ishah" which is from the word "ish" (which means "man" - remember that Adam does not mean man, but mankind). However, ish and ishah are not connected at all. Interesting.

It tells us next that a man leaves his father and mother and becomes one flesh with a woman. This is obviously metaphorical unless they are sewn together. Its important to remember a few things here: In this time, people were married very, very young - at ages that would appall us. And there was likely very young girls marrying much older guys - something else we would find appalling. I say this because there's a temptation to fantasize "traditional Biblical marriage," when in fact it was not something we would ever tolerate.

Another important caveat: The concept of sexual orientation simply did not exist at this time. The idea that two people of the same sex were in a consenting relationship was as foreign as the idea of gravity. The only context was extramarital, and that is never okay.

Genesis 2 closes with the man and woman being naked and unashamed. Why does the author tell us they felt no shame? What do you think?

(Remember: Our only biblical context up to this point are Genesis 1 and 2. Lets not skip ahead!)