Genesis · Pentateuch (Law)

Genesis 2

God rests on the seventh day and blesses it, forms the man and the woman, places them in Eden, and establishes marriage and stewardship.

c. 4004 BCKey verses Genesis 2:3, 2:7, 2:15-17, 2:18, 2:24Read Genesis 2 in the ESVopens BibleGateway
Haran, about 1,250 ftAbram’s road from Haran into Canaan (Genesis 12:4-6), about 420 milesShechem, about 1,900 ft

2:3

“So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation.”

Genesis 2:3, ESV

The chapter at a glance

  1. 1–3The seventh dayGod rests, blesses the day, and makes it holy
  2. 4–7Man formed from dustThe LORD God breathes life into the man
  3. 8–14The garden in EdenA place of abundance where God dwells with man
  4. 15–17Work and the commandMan is given a calling and one prohibition
  5. 18–20Not good to be aloneNo creature is a helper fit for him
  6. 21–25The woman and marriageGod makes the woman and joins the two as one flesh

The chapter in brief

The heavens and the earth are finished, and on the seventh day God rests from all His work, blesses the day, and makes it holy. Then the account returns to the sixth day and looks closely. The LORD God forms the man of dust from the ground and breathes into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man becomes a living creature. God plants a garden in Eden, watered by a river that divides into four, and puts the man there to work it and keep it. He may eat of every tree but one: of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil he shall not eat, “for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” God says it is not good for the man to be alone and brings the animals to him to name, but no helper fit for him is found. So God puts the man into a deep sleep, takes one of his ribs, makes a woman, and brings her to him. The man rejoices, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh,” and the narrator draws the lesson for every marriage after: a man leaves his father and mother, holds fast to his wife, and the two become one flesh. They are naked and not ashamed.

Chapter 1 shows God the Creator over all; chapter 2 shows the same God near, forming, breathing, planting, and bringing a bride to her husband. Here are the gifts God gave before sin: rest, work, a garden, a command to obey, and marriage. Each one points beyond itself to Christ. The rest of the seventh day becomes the “Sabbath rest for the people of God” that Christ brings (Hebrews 4:9-10). The garden where God walked with man is the first picture of the dwelling of God with His people, restored at the end (Revelation 21:3; 22:1-5). And Paul calls the one-flesh union of verse 24 a profound mystery that “refers to Christ and the church” (Ephesians 5:32), and many readers since the early church have seen a picture in the story itself: from the side of the sleeping Adam came his bride, and from the death of the last Adam comes His church.

Points for discussion

vv. 1–3

The seventh day

Every other day closes with “there was evening and there was morning”; the seventh does not. God does not rest because He is tired (Isaiah 40:28). He rests because the work is finished and good, and He blesses the day and makes it holy. This is the first thing in the Bible God calls holy, and it is a time, not a place. The fourth commandment builds on it (Exodus 20:11), and Jesus says “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27), a gift woven into creation before Israel or the law. Christians differ on how that gift is kept now. Some hold that every day is alike and the Sabbath command was fulfilled in Christ and left to conscience (Romans 14:5; Colossians 2:16). This commentary holds, with the Westminster Confession (21.7), that the creation pattern of one day in seven continues as the Christian Sabbath, now kept on the first day of the week, the Lord’s Day, the day of the resurrection. Those verses in Romans and Colossians we read of the old ceremonial days. Either way, the deeper rest is Christ’s: “there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God” (Hebrews 4:9), entered by faith, not earned by works.

vv. 4–7

Dust and breath

At verse 4 the divine name changes. Chapter 1 says “God”; from here the narrator says “the LORD God,” joining the Creator’s title to the covenant name God would reveal to Moses (Exodus 3:14-15). The God who made the stars is the God who makes a covenant. Verse 4 also begins the first of the “These are the generations” headings that organize Genesis. The man is made of two things: dust from the ground and the breath of life from God. We are humble, made of the same stuff as the earth, and dignified, alive because God breathed. Paul quotes the end of the verse, “The first man Adam became a living being,” and sets beside it “the last Adam became a life-giving spirit” (1 Corinthians 15:45). The first Adam received life; Christ gives it.

For discussion

Chapter 1 and chapter 2 describe the creation of man from different angles. Is chapter 2 a second account in tension with the first, or a closer look at the sixth day? Compare Genesis 2:4-7 with 1:26-27, and Matthew 19:4-5, where Jesus quotes both in one breath.

vv. 8–17

The garden and the command

The garden is a real place, with rivers named, two of which, the Tigris and the Euphrates, we still know. It is also more than a farm. God walks there (3:8), and many readers see in it the first sanctuary: the two verbs of verse 15, “to work it and keep it,” are used together of the Levites’ service and guard at the tabernacle (Numbers 3:7-8), and cherubim will later guard the way in (3:24; compare Exodus 26:31). Work is part of the good world, not a result of the fall. Then God gives one command, generous on the one side (“You may surely eat of every tree”) and narrow on the other. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil tests whether man will receive the knowledge of good and evil from God’s mouth or take it for himself. Many Reformed readers, with the Westminster Confession (7.2), see here a covenant of works, life promised on condition of obedience, with Adam standing for all his descendants. Hosea 6:7 reads in the ESV, “like Adam they transgressed the covenant,” though some take “Adam” there as the name of a town. What Adam failed to give, Christ gave, “obedient to the point of death” (Philippians 2:8).

For discussion

“In the day that you eat of it you shall surely die,” yet Adam lived 930 years (5:5). In what sense did he die that day? Consider Ephesians 2:1 and Romans 5:12.

vv. 18–20

Not good to be alone

After seven verdicts of “good” in chapter 1, here is the first thing God calls “not good”: the man alone. God’s answer is “a helper fit for him.” The word ezer carries no hint of lesser worth. It is used often of God Himself: “he is our help and our shield” (Psalm 33:20); “My help comes from the LORD” (Psalm 121:2). “Fit for him” means corresponding to him, like him and yet not the same. Before God brings the woman, He has the man name the animals. The naming exercises the dominion of 1:28, and it shows the man what is missing: among every creature, “for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him” (v. 20).

vv. 21–25

Bone of my bones

God builds the woman from the man’s side and brings her to him as a father brings a bride. The man’s first recorded words are a song, with a play on words the ESV keeps: she is ishshah, Woman, “because she was taken out of Man,” ish. Verse 24 is the charter of marriage: leave, hold fast, become one flesh. Jesus quotes it to say that God joins a husband and wife and no one may separate them (Matthew 19:4-6), and that later practices such as divorce for hardness of heart were not so “from the beginning” (Matthew 19:8). Paul quotes it too, and says the mystery is profound and “refers to Christ and the church” (Ephesians 5:32). Many readers since the early centuries have seen the picture: as Eve was taken from the side of the sleeping Adam, the church is born from the wounded side of Christ. That is a type the New Testament does not spell out, so we hold it gently; Paul’s own line from marriage to Christ we hold firmly.

vv. 18–25

Order and equality

Two truths stand side by side here. The man and the woman are equal, both made in God’s image (1:27), and “in the Lord woman is not independent of man nor man of woman” (1 Corinthians 11:11). And there is an order: the man is formed first, and Paul grounds teaching on the gathered church in it (1 Timothy 2:12-13; compare 1 Corinthians 11:8-9). This commentary holds both mutual submission and headship in marriage (Ephesians 5:21-25), headship received willingly and never compelled, pictured in the incarnate Son’s willing obedience (never a rank in the Godhead), and always self-giving, never harsh (Colossians 3:19). No one is commanded to remain in danger. In the church, this commentary holds that women should not deliver the sermon to the gathered church (1 Timothy 2:12-13), while gladly honoring the many ways women serve and remaining open to the conversation; many faithful believers read Paul’s appeal to creation differently. None of this should divide us, though it is worth discussing.

Threads across the chapter

  • Gifts before the fall. Rest (vv. 1-3), life (v. 7), a garden (vv. 8-14), work (v. 15), and marriage (vv. 21-25) are all given before sin enters, so none of them is a curse.

  • God near at hand. The LORD God forms, breathes, plants, takes, builds, and brings (vv. 7-22), the same Creator of chapter 1 now close beside His creature.

  • Life and death. The breath of life (v. 7) and the tree of life (v. 9) stand opposite the warning “you shall surely die” (v. 17).

  • Alone and one. “It is not good that the man should be alone” (v. 18) is answered by “one flesh” (v. 24), and both are answered at last in Christ and the church.

Key words

2:7
נֶפֶשׁ חַיָּה nephesh chayyah“Living creature”; the same phrase used of the animals (1:24), but only the man receives the breath of God directly
2:15
עָבַד / שָׁמַר avad, shamar“Work... keep”; a pair later used of priestly service and guard duty at the tabernacle
2:18
עֵזֶר כְּנֶגְדּוֹ ezer kenegdo“Helper fit for him”; a word used often of God, with no hint of lesser worth
2:23
אִישׁ / אִשָּׁה ish, ishshah“Man... Woman”; the wordplay that marks her as of his own kind

Cross-references

Questions for your group

  1. 1

    Why might Genesis return to the sixth day in such close detail after chapter 1 has already told us man was made?

  2. 2

    What does it say about God that work, rest, and marriage were all His gifts before sin entered the world?

  3. 3

    The first “not good” in the Bible is loneliness. How should that shape the way the church treats single people, widows, and the isolated, not only married couples?

  4. 4

    How does Paul’s reading of verse 24 (Ephesians 5:32) change what a Christian marriage is meant to show the world?

  5. 5

    Where do we tend to treat God’s one “you shall not” as more important than His many “you may surely eat”?

My notes