Columbiana County Jail 01/16/2026
Notes
Transcript
Genesis 2:7-14
Genesis 2:7-14
7 And 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.
This is the moment when all human life begins. In Genesis 1, it describes the creation of the entire universe. As part of the story, men and women are also formed.
27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
Genesis 2 narrows that focus on the creation of the first man, giving additional details, and helping us to see that humanity is special among the rest of creation.
In this verse
1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
God’s creation is described using the term ba’ra, which implies “creation” in the sense of “coming into being” or of “something from nothing”. But here in our verse, the creation of the first human being uses the Hebrew word for “formed” (yi’ser). This describes the actions of an artist, a sculptor, or a potter. Why? This term is specific in that it always refers to work done on some existing substance. How does this apply? In this case, God is forming human life from the ground itself. That Hebrew word is a’par, which refers to dirt, powder, debris, or ash.
Following this storyline of this verse, what was man? Man was merely a lump of well-formed dirt. It is what God did next that made us alive. He breathed into the man’s nose the breath of life. What does this mean? Literally, God breathed life into a lump, transforming it into a living soul. This made man a living being.
All of life originated with God, but human life began with the personal breath of God. Without God, we would simply not live. The name Adam is directly from the Hebrew a’dam, which literally means “man”. The name reflects the dust from which we are formed : the Hebrew word for ground is adamah.
This verse clearly states that God Himself formed man out of the dust of the ground. God personally designed the size, shape, and detail of the first human being. God was intentional designing exactly what He intended to make.
8 And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed.
After forming the first human being, God planted a garden in a region called Eden. English translations of this verse all include some concept of “east” in describing the location of the garden. The original Hebrew says gan b e den mi qe’dem, which is literally means “a garden towards the east, in Eden”. I want to point out that “Eden” , literally speaking, is a territory where the garden is located, not the actual garden itself. From the geography given in the following verses, it is very logical to conclude that Eden was in the region of Mesopotamia. Just a fun fact, the original readers of Genesis, would have been west of that area.
In the first chapter of Genesis, we see God is the Provider. In each of the first three days, He fashions an environment suitable for a later creation. On days four, five, and six; God places a new creation in each of those prepared places. Here we see God making provisions for man, planting a garden of trees and placing man there. The garden would be man’s first home.
9 And 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.
Here, the garden planted by God, is described as a place where God sprung up a variety of beautiful trees bearing good fruit. According to this description, there are many different types of fruit bearing trees in this location.
Two specific trees are mentioned in this verse. They are standing in the middle of the garden. The first one mentioned is the Tree of Life and the second one mentioned is the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. We will soon learn that God designed these two trees with special properties.
Those who ate from the Tree of Life would live forever.
22 And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever:
The function of this tree seems to be immortality comes from continually eating from it. God did not prohibit Adam and Eve from eating its fruit at first, and they were not rendered permanently immortal by it. This means they had to continue to keep eating from this tree to live forever.
On the other hand, those who ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil would leave their state of innocence behind. We will see that in the later verses, God will forbid Adam and Eve from eating from this tree. The “knowledge” here is experience. The fruit of this tree would not impart information, but it would cause man to experience both good and evil in ways not intended by God. Eating from this tree would make man aware of the existence of evil, which is opposition to God, by participating in it.
10 And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads.
The next five verses are a parenthesis. This is a separate section of text that could be set aside without disrupting the story. These words are simply explaining the geography of the Garden of Eden. The main story will resume in verse 15.
According the our verse, a mighty river watered Eden’s garden. Again, Eden includes more than just a garden. it seems to be a geographical region. After leaving the area of Eden, this river will split into four separate rivers. We will see these listed in verses 11 - 14. The description of these four rivers will help to locate the region of Eden. It is though not the specific location of the garden.
Out of the four rivers listed, the Tigiris and Euphrates are known today. They are located in the geographical location that is most likely to have been near Eden. The other two rivers though, may or may not exist today. Why? Given this is a pre-flood geography, there is no way to say for sure if these rivers are exactly the same as the waterways currently called by those names.
11 The name of the first is Pison: that is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold;
The first of the four rivers described is Pishon. The word “Pishon” means to leap and may have come from a physical description of the river itself. The river might have been turbulent, crooked, or steep and filled with waterfalls and eddies. Pishon is described as flowing around the land of Havilah.
Some people have suggested Havilah may be Arabia, an area known for gold. If that is right, Pishon would have been an Arabian river or one associated with the Persian Gulf. Unlike the Tigris and Euphrates, we really do not have an explicit connection between the Pishon and a known waterway in the modern world.
12 And the gold of that land is good: there is bdellium and the onyx stone.
This passage helps us to understand where the region of Eden was without knowing the specific location of the garden. We are seeing these four rivers which came from a larger river flowing out of the territory of Eden. These rivers correspond to rivers and lands we know in the modern world.
This verse describes the quality of that gold as good or possibly pure. This is also found in the region where there is onyx stone, which would later be important to Israel. Why? They used them to decorate the temple and tabernacle. This land is said to be rich in bdellium, a translucent substance, though due to ancient flexibility in describing gems and minerals, this particular mention might be of some completely different stone.
13 And the name of the second river is Gihon: the same is it that compasseth the whole land of Ethiopia.
The second river described is the Gihon river. It was the one that flowed around the land of Ethiopia, also known as the land of Cush. The region of “Cush” is quite some distance from the other territories mentioned in this passage. Some have suggested this might be a different area known in the ancient times as Cush, perhaps in the mountains of Mesopotamia. This would makes sense concerning the geography described.
As with the Pishon, we can not make a strong link between this river and one known in the modern world. As this description is of a pre-flood world, there is a possibility that the river was destroyed and no longer exists. It is also possible what this passage calls the Pishon and Gihon might be tributaries of the larger Euphrates river.
14 And the name of the third river is Hiddekel: that is it which goeth toward the east of Assyria. And the fourth river is Euphrates.
This passage, starting in verse 10, describes a river which splits into four smaller waterways after leaving Eden, There rivers show connections to rivers and lands we know in our modern world, but for the most part can not be identified. Now these details would have been useful for the original readers of Genesis, in knowing where Eden was located, but without knowing exactly where the garden had been.
No one can agree on the locations of the two previous rivers mentioned. However the Tigris and Euphrates are well known rivers in the region to this day. Another name for the Tigris was Hiddekel. In fact, these two waterways are strongly connected with the ancient region known as Mesopotamia.
The Tigris flows east of the ancient Assyrian capital of Ashur. the Euphrates river is to the west of the Tigris. These rivers flow from the region of modern day Turkey, through modern day Iraq, and join into a single path before emptying into the Persian Gulf.
