Genesis 2:4

(4) When they were created. —Heb., in, or upon, their creation. In the day.—Viewed in its several stages, and with reference to the weekly rest, there were six days of creation, which are here described as one day, because they were but divisions in one continuous act. The Lord God.—Jehovah-Elohim. (See Excursus at the end of this book.) EXCURSUS C: ON THE DURATION OF THE PARADISIACAL STATE OF INNOCENCE. The Bereshit Rabba argues that Adam and Eve remained in their original state of innocence for six hours only. Others have supposed that the events recorded in Genesis 2:4 to Genesis 3:24 took place in the course of twenty-four hours, and suppose that this is proved by what is said in Genesis 2:4, that the earth and heavens, with Adam and the garden, were all made in one day, before the end of which they suppose that he fell. This view, like that which in Genesis 1 interprets each creative day of a similar period, really amounts to this: that the narrative of Holy Scripture is to be forced to bend to an arbitrary meaning put upon a single word, and drawn not from its meaning in Hebrew, but from its ordinary use in English. More correctly, we might venture to say that the use of the word day in Genesis 2:4 is a Divine warning against so wilful a method of exposition. Read intelligently, the progress of time is carefully marked. In Genesis 2:6 the earth is watered by a mist: in paradise there are mighty rivers.

Now, mist would not produce rivers; and if there were mist in the morning, and rain in the afternoon, a long period of time would still be necessary before the falling rains would form for themselves definite channels. A vast space must have elapsed between the mist period and that in which the Tigris and Euphrates rolled along their mighty floods. And with this the narrative agrees. All is slow and gradual. God does not summon the Garden of Eden into existence by a sudden command, but He “planted” it, and “out of the ground He “made to grow” such trees as were most remarkable for beauty, and whose fruit was most suitable for human food. In some favoured spot, in soil fertile and fit for their development, God, by a special providence, caused such plants to germinate as would best supply the needs of a creature so feeble as man, until, by the aid of his reason, he has invented those aids and helps which the animals possess in their own bodily organisation. The creation of full-grown trees belongs to the region of magic. A book which gravely recorded such an act would justly be relegated to the Apocrypha; for the God of revelation works by law, and with such long ages of preparation that human eagerness is often tempted to cry, “How long?” and to pray that God would hasten His work. And next, as regards Adam.

4 . These are the generations … created ] These words, as they stand here, seem to form a summary of the preceding account of the Creation. Elsewhere, however, the phrase “These are the generations, &c.” is the formula employed in P as a heading, title, or superscription, to introduce the passage that follows . Cf. Genesis 5:1 , “The generations of Adam,” Genesis 6:9 (Noah), Genesis 10:1 (The Sons of Noah), Genesis 11:10 (Shem), 27 (Terah), Genesis 25:12 (Ishmael). The conjecture has been made that the formula “These are the generations, &c.” originally stood at the beginning of ch. 1, and was transferred to its present place, either, in order that the book might begin with the word b’rêshîth (= “In the beginning”), or to obtain a sentence which would serve both as an epitome of the opening section and as a link with the one that follows. generations ] Heb. tô-l’-dôth = “successions by descent,” usually meaning “the chronicles,” or “genealogies,” of persons and families, is here metaphorically applied to “the heaven and the earth” in the sense of the “history” of their origin and their offspring. LXX, therefore, gives an explanatory rendering, αὕτη ἡ βίβλος γενέσεως οὐρανοῦ καὶ γῆς . It is quite a different word from that found, e.g. in Genesis 15:16 , “in the fourth generation ” (Heb. dôr , LXX γενέα ). created ] This word closes the first section of the book, and there should be a full stop after it.

The next section, giving another narrative, at of the creation of man and of Paradise, opens with the words “In the day that.” The first section has been derived from the materials of the Priestly Code (P), the second is from the Prophetic Writing (J). The styles which characterize the two sources offer a marked contrast. 4b–7. The Creation of Man 4 . in the day that ] There is no allusion here to the Days of Creation. It is simply the vivid Hebrew idiom for “at the time when.” the Lord God ] The Hebrew words “Jahveh Elohim” are used in this section for the Almighty. On the Sacred Names, see Introduction. The use of JHVH, the Name of the God of Israel (Exodus 3) which the Jews in reverence forbore to pronounce, and which received, in the 16th century, the wholly erroneous pronunciation of “Jehovah,” is one of the characteristics of the writing of J. In the previous section, Genesis 1:1 to Genesis 2:4 a, the Sacred Name is “Elohim” = “God”; and the use of “Elohim” is prevalent in the P Narratives of Gen. In the present section, Genesis 2:4 b–3:24, the Sacred Name is a combination of Jahveh and Elohim , i.e. Jehovah (= Lord) and “God.” In the next section, the story of Cain and Abel, Jehovah alone is used; throughout the rest of Genesis we find either Jehovah or Elohim alone. The combination of the two Sacred Names is elsewhere of exceedingly rare occurrence. How to account for it in the present passage, is a problem to which no certain answer can be given.

4. These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth—the history or account of their production. Whence did Moses obtain this account so different from the puerile and absurd fictions of the heathen? Not from any human source, for man was not in existence to witness it; not from the light of nature or reason, for though they proclaim the eternal power and Godhead by the things which are made, they cannot tell how they were made. None but the Creator Himself could give this information, and therefore it is through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God (Heb 11:3).

Verse 4. - These are the generations is the usual heading for the different sections into which the Book of Genesis is divided (vial. Genesis 5:1 ; Genesis 6:9 ; Genesis 10:1 ; Genesis 11:10, 27 ; Genesis 25:12, 19 ; Genesis 36:1 ; Genesis 37:2 ). Misled by the LXX., who render toldoth by ἡ βίβλος γενέσεως , Ranks, Title, Havernick, Tuch, Ewald, and Stahelin disconnect the entire verse from the second section, which says nothing about the origination of the heavens and the earth, and append it to the preceding, in which their creation is described. Ilgen improves on their suggestion by transferring it to the commencement of Genesis 1 , as an appropriate superscription. Dreschler, Vaihingel Bohlen, Oehler, Macdonald, et alii divide the verse into two clauses, and annex the former to what precedes, commencing the ensuing narrative with the latter. All of these proposals are, however, rendered unnecessary by simply observing that toldoth (from yaladh , to bear, to beget; hence begettings, procreations, evolutions, developments) does not describe the antecedents, but the consequents, of either thing or Person (Rosen., Keil, Kalisch). The toldoth of Noah are not the genealogical list of the patriarch's ancestry, but the tabulated register of his posterity; and so the generations of the heavens and the earth refer not to their original production (Gesenius), but to their onward movements from creation downwards (Keil).