Category Archives: Books of the Bible

Bible Interpretation, Books of the Bible

Why Are Old Testament Sacrifices Incapable of Completely Dealing with Sin? Part 1

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Post Author: Bill Pratt 

Although virtually no Christians advocate a return to the sacrifices enumerated in the Law, especially in the Book of Leviticus, we should still ask ourselves why this system was not sufficient to completely deal with the sins of mankind.

Duane Lindsey provides a very helpful explanation of the issues in The Bible Knowledge Commentary. Lindsey first notes that the sacrifices did accomplish something. Atonement for sins is mentioned several times in Leviticus. According to Lindsey,

[S]acrificial atonement involved the actual removal of the guilt and punishment for the particular sin(s) involved. The broad scope of the sacrifices on the Day of Atonement . . . extended this principle to include “all the people” (Lev 16:33) and “all their sins” (v. 22), that is, “all the sins of the Israelites” (v. 34). The complete forgiveness of the Israelites’ sins for the past year is further described in terms of cleansing from sin in verse 30.

But Lindsey notes that there were several limitations of these sacrifices that made them unable to finally and completely deal with mankind’s sin problem.

First, the sacrifices were limited in their moral efficacy. Since empty ritualism was never an acceptable option to God, a truly acceptable sacrifice must have been prompted by genuine faith and moral obedience to the revealed will of God (26:14–45, esp. v. 31; Pss. 40:6–8; 51:16–17; Prov. 21:27; Amos 5:21–24; Heb. 10:5–10; 11:4, 6).

Sacrifices that were not brought in faith were perhaps sufficient at times for restoring ceremonial cleanness and meeting civil requirements (e.g., the restitution connected with the guilt offering), but did not really please God because they were empty formality. . . .

Second, with the possible exception of the Day of Atonement ritual, the sacrifices were limited in scope to certain kinds of personal sins. Theologically they did not atone for the sin nature, or for the imputed sin of Adam. Nor did they even include willful acts of sin which were committed in defiance of God (cf. Num. 15:30–31, and comments on Lev. 4:1–2). Therefore Levitical sacrifice was not a complete and final scheme whereby all forms of sin could be removed.

It was mainly concerned with sins of ignorance, accident, carelessness, and omission, including sins of ritual defilement and misdemeanors that violated property rights. Sins for which there was no individual sacrifice were those done in defiance of the Lord and His commands—willful violations of the Ten Commandments (except minor violations of the eighth and ninth commands), willful disregard for ceremonial regulations, and any other violations of covenant relationship between Israel and the Lord. Such sins could be immediately forgiven only on the basis of unqualified grace in response to faith and repentance (cf. Pss. 32; 51). Otherwise they awaited the cleansing of the Day of Atonement ritual.

We’ll look at three more limitations of the Levitical sacrifices in part 2.

Books of the Bible, Historical Christ, New Testament Reliability

Were the Gospels Written and Circulated Anonymously? Part 4

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

In part 3 we finished looking at Richard Bauckham’s second reason for rejecting the anonymity of the Gospels. Bauckham concludes with the third of his three reasons. About the first two reasons, Bauckham explains that these

two lines of argument establish that as soon as the Gospels circulated around the churches they had author’s names attached to them, even though such names were not part of the text of the Gospels. Our further question about anonymity concerns the contents of the Gospels: do the Gospel-writers present the traditions they preserve as derived from named eyewitnesses or as anonymous community tradition to which no specific names could be attached? Here we need only to resume the evidence we discussed in chapters 3– 8:

(i) Where the names of relatively minor characters are given in the Gospels, the reason is usually that the tradition to which the name is attached derived from that person.

(ii) In all three Synoptic Gospels, the explanation of the care with which the list of the Twelve has been preserved and recorded is that they were known to be the official body of eyewitnesses who had formulated a body of traditions on which the three Synoptic Gospels depend.

(iii) Three of the Gospels — Mark, Luke, and John — deploy a literary device, the inclusio of eyewitness testimony, to indicate the most extensive eyewitness source( s) of their Gospels. Mark’s use of the device points to Peter (indicating that Mark’s traditions are those of the Twelve in the form that Peter told and supplemented). Luke also acknowledges Peter as the most extensive eyewitness source of his narrative, but by making also a secondary use of the device he indicates that the group of women disciples of Jesus were also an important eyewitness source of his Gospel. John’s Gospel plays on Mark’s use of this device in order to stake its claim for the Beloved Disciple as an eyewitness as important as — even, in a sense, more important than — Peter.

What do all of these arguments prove about the Gospels?

These arguments show not simply that, as a matter of fact, the traditions in the Gospels have eyewitness sources but, very importantly, that the Gospels themselves indicate their own eyewitness sources. Once we recognize these ways in which the Gospels indicate their sources, we can see that they pass on traditions not in the name of the anonymous collective but in the name of the specific eyewitnesses who were responsible for these traditions.

What Bauckham has said is incredibly important. He has made persuasive arguments that the contents of the four Gospels derive from eyewitness sources and that these sources were well-known by the early Christian community. The idea that the Gospels are an anonymous collection of legends and tales that were eventually compiled into written accounts just does not stand up from the evidence.

Books of the Bible, Historical Christ, New Testament Reliability

Were the Gospels Written and Circulated Anonymously? Part 3

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

In part 2 we finished looking at Richard Bauckham’s first reason for rejecting the anonymity of the Gospels. Bauckham continues with the second of his three reasons, the traditional titles of the Gospels.

Throughout the early manuscript tradition, from c. 200 onward, the only titles for all four canonical Gospels are in the form “Gospel according to  .  .  .” (euangelion kata  .  .  .), with the exception of manuscripts Vaticanus and Sinaiticus which have the short form “According to.  .  .  .”

Martin Hengel has argued persuasively, not only that the longer form was the earlier form, but also that the meaning is not “the Gospel writing written according to the tradition that derives from Mark,” but “the Gospel (i.e., the one and only gospel message) according to Mark’s account.” The usual genitive for the author’s name has been avoided in favor of the very unusual “according to  .  .  .” (kata  .  .  .) formula, in order to “express the fact that here the gospel was narrated in the particular version of the evangelist in question.”

So why is this fact important?

Each of these titles therefore presupposes the existence of other Gospel writings (not necessarily all three of the other canonical ones), from which the Gospel in question needed to be distinguished. A Christian community that knew only one Gospel writing would not have needed to entitle it in this way. Even a Gospel writer who knew other Gospels to be circulating around the churches could have himself given this form of title to his work. (In the first century CE, most authors gave their books titles, but the practice was not universal.)

Why would the early Christian communities need or want to distinguish between the different Gospel accounts?

Whether or not any of these titles originate from the authors themselves, the need for titles that distinguished one Gospel from another would arise as soon as any Christian community had copies of more than one in its library and was reading more than one in its worship meetings. For the former purpose, it would have been necessary to identify books externally, when, for example, they were placed side-by-side on a shelf. For this purpose a short title with the author’s name would be written either on the outside of the scroll or on a papyrus or parchment tag that hung down when the scroll was placed horizontally on a shelf.

In the case of codices, “labels appeared on all possible surfaces: edges, covers, and spines.” In this sense also, therefore, Gospels would not have been anonymous when they first circulated around the churches. A church receiving its first copy of one such would have received with it information, at least in oral form, about its authorship and then used its author’s name when labeling the book and when reading from it in worship.

So when did the titles start getting attached to the various Gospels?

Hengel argues that, given that the Gospels must have acquired titles at a very early stage, the titles that survive in the earliest manuscript tradition (c. 200 onward) are these “original” titles.  In favor of this is the fact that no evidence exists that these Gospels were ever known by other names. The unusual form of the titles and the universal use of them as soon as we have any evidence suggest that they originated at an early stage.

Once the Gospels were widely known it would be much more difficult for a standard form of title for all four Gospels to have come into universal use. Helmut Koester, who thinks Marcion was the first person to use the word “Gospel” for a book, rejects Hengel’s argument that the full form “Gospel according to  .  .  .” could have been used to entitle the Gospels already early in the second century, though he does not necessarily deny that the ascriptions to authors may be early. However, Graham Stanton supports Hengel’s argument on the basis of other early instances of the term “Gospel” (euangelion) used for a written Gospel.

Whether or not the actual form of title, “Gospel according to  .  .  .” was already used when the Gospels first circulated around the churches, it is very likely that the ascription of the Gospels to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John dates from this very early stage, since this is the only way that one of the Gospels could have been distinguished from another. Our evidence offers no alternative way in which this could have been done. Again the universality of these ascriptions of authorship and the fact that they seem never to have been disputed indicate that they became established usage as soon as the Gospels were circulating.

In part 4, we will look at Bauckham’s third reason for rejecting the anonymity of the Gospels.

Books of the Bible, Historical Christ, New Testament Reliability

Were the Gospels Written and Circulated Anonymously? Part 2

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

In part 1 we started looking at Richard Bauckham’s case against the anonymity of the Gospels. He offered three main reasons for rejecting this view. We were right in the middle of the first reason, and that is where we pick up. Bauckham explains why the Gospel of Luke could not be anonymous:

The clearest case is Luke because of the dedication of the work to Theophilus (1: 3), probably a patron. It is inconceivable that a work with a named dedicatee should have been anonymous. The author’s name may have featured in an original title, but in any case would have been known to the dedicatee and other first readers because the author would have presented the book to the dedicatee.

Of course, this in itself does not guarantee that the author was named Luke; the attribution to Luke could be later and erroneous. But we are not, at this point, concerned with establishing the real authorship of each Gospel, only with refuting the idea that the Gospels were presented and received as anonymous works whose contents would have been taken as coming from the community rather than from known authors.

Bauckham then examines the Gospel according to John:

In the case of John’s Gospel, 21: 23 is important in showing that the Beloved Disciple — ostensibly, at least, the author (21: 24) — was an identifiable figure, someone about whom a rumor could circulate, at least in some circles. Although he remains anonymous within the Gospel, its first readers must have known his name.

Finally, the Gospel according to Matthew:

The case of Matthew is more complex. It requires the connection of two facts about the Gospel. One is that the figure of Matthew, who in the other Gospels appears only as a name in the lists of the Twelve in Mark and Luke, acquires a higher profile in the Gospel of Matthew. In this Gospel, he is dubbed “the tax collector” in the list of the Twelve (10: 3), while in the story about the call of a tax collector, whom Mark and Luke call Levi, the tax collector is named Matthew (9: 9). This definite, albeit quite small, emphasis on the character Matthew within the Gospel cannot be unconnected with the other relevant fact: that the title of the Gospel associates it with Matthew (“ according to Matthew”) in a way that, while it may not necessarily indicate authorship as such, certainly treats the apostle Matthew as in some way this Gospel’s source.

We shall consider the titles of the Gospels shortly, but here we need take the title of Matthew simply as evidence from some early stage of the Gospel’s transmission. It is hardly likely that the Gospel came to be associated with Matthew on the basis of the references to him in 9: 9 and 10: 3. These references are surely not prominent enough to have made readers think Matthew must be the author. Much more likely, the author was responsible both for these references to Matthew and for the attribution of the work to Matthew, which would therefore have been original, presumably included in a title.

In part 3, we will look at Bauckham’s second reason for rejecting the anonymity of the Gospels.

Books of the Bible, Historical Christ, New Testament Reliability

Were the Gospels Written and Circulated Anonymously? Part 1

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Post Author: Bill Pratt 

One of the most common refrains we hear from skeptics is that the Gospels are anonymous community documents that are simply collections of folklore and legend. They were never meant to record eyewitness testimony about the life of Jesus. Are they correct?

Not according to biblical scholar Richard Bauckham. In his book Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, Bauckham builds a strong case against this view. First, he summarizes the skeptical view:

The assumption that Jesus traditions circulated anonymously in the early church and that therefore the Gospels in which they were gathered and recorded were also originally anonymous was very widespread in twentieth-century Gospels scholarship. It was propagated by the form critics as a corollary of their use of the model of folklore, which is passed down anonymously by communities. The Gospels, they thought, were folk literature, similarly anonymous.

This use of the model of folklore has been discredited, . . . , partly because there is a great difference between folk traditions passed down over centuries and the short span of time — less than a lifetime — that elapsed before Gospels were written. But it is remarkable how tenacious has been the idea that not only the traditions but the Gospels themselves were originally anonymous.

Bauckham argues that there are “three main reasons for rejecting this view of both the traditions and the Gospels:”

(1) In three cases — Luke, John, and Matthew — the evidence of the Gospel itself shows that it was not intended to be anonymous. All four Gospels are anonymous in the formal sense that the author’s name does not appear in the text of the work itself, only in the title (which we will discuss below). But this does not mean that they were intentionally anonymous.

Many ancient works were anonymous in the same formal sense, and the name may not even appear in the surviving title of the work. For example, this is true of Lucian’s Life of Demonax (Dēmōnactos bios), which as a bios (ancient biography) is generically comparable with the Gospels. Yet Lucian speaks throughout in the first person and obviously expects his readers to know who he is.

Such works would often have been circulated in the first instance among friends or acquaintances of the author who would know who the author was from the oral context in which the work was first read. Knowledge of authorship would be passed on when copies were made for other readers, and the name would be noted, with a brief title, on the outside of the scroll or on a label affixed to the scroll. In denying that the Gospels were originally anonymous, our intention is to deny that they were first presented as works without authors.

In part 2 of this series, we continue with Bauckham’s case against the anonymity of the Gospels.

Bible Interpretation, Books of the Bible, Sunday School

Commentary on Genesis 15 (Abrahamic Covenant)

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Post Author: Bill Pratt 

In verses 1-6 in Genesis 15, Abraham has an incredibly important conversation with God. First, in verse 1 God reassures Abraham that he should not be afraid, that God is his reward. In verses 2-3, however, Abraham questions God about the promise God made to Abraham previously. Recall that God promised Abraham that his descendants would become a great nation in Genesis 12.

Abraham complains to God that because he has no children, his only heir will be one of his servants, Eliezer of Damascus. How can God’s promise be fulfilled if Abraham has no children? He and his wife are very old and his wife is barren.

In verses 4-5, God reassures Abraham that a biological son would be his heir. In fact, God lets Abraham know that his descendants will be numbered like the stars in heaven. What is Abraham’s response to God’s promise?

In verse 6, we see one of the most important sentences in the Bible.  “Abram believed the LORD, and he credited it to him as righteousness.” It could be argued that the entire narrative of God’s redemptive plan for mankind revolves around this verse. Because Abraham believed God, he was known as righteous. Abraham’s obedience flowed from his belief, and this is why the person who believes will also obey. It is not either/or. It is both/and.

After God reiterated to Abraham that he would have natural descendants that would be numbered like the stars, God also reminded Abraham that he would receive the land promised to him in Genesis 12. When Abraham asks God how he will know that he will receive the land, God instructs Abraham to get a “heifer, a goat and a ram, each three years old, along with a dove and a young pigeon.”

The heifer, goat, and ram were cut in two, but not the birds.  In verses 12-21, God makes a covenant with Abraham with an amazing pyrotechnical display. “A smoking firepot with a blazing torch appeared and passed between the pieces.” In the ancient world, parties to a covenant would sometimes walk between slaughtered animals as part of the ceremony. In this case, God is the only one passing through the animals, because he is making the promise on his own.

This covenant is an unconditional promise to Abraham that his descendants will be given the land of Canaan, land that is bordered by the Nile River and the Euphrates River. Notice that these borders are coincident with the borders around the Garden of Eden. God would return his people to a land of paradise.

Before all of this would happen, though, Abrahams’ descendants would be enslaved in a foreign land for 400 years. This, of course, foreshadows the Israelites’ slavery in Egypt for 400 years. Remember that the book of Genesis is being written to the Israelites prior to their entering the Promised Land. This covenant of God made with Abraham would be especially poignant to them as they wondered whether they would ever see the Promised Land. Moses, by recording God’s promise to Abraham, reassures them that they will.

God’s promises are always kept, but they may take longer than we like. Abraham would not receive the land immediately, but only after centuries would pass. Yet, we see that Abraham still believed.

Bible Interpretation, Books of the Bible, Sunday School

Commentary on Genesis 11-12 (Call of Abraham)

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Post Author: Bill Pratt 

The calling of Abraham (his name would be changed from Abram to Abraham in Genesis 17) in Genesis 12 is one of the first biblical events that historians can date with any kind of precision.  Many scholars believe that Abraham moved to Canaan around 2100 BC, or 2100 years before the birth of Christ.

Ur of the Chaldeans, where Abraham’s family originated, is thought to be located southwest of  the ancient city of Babylon, located in what is now Iraq, near the modern town of Hilla, and on the eastern bank of the Euphrates river.  Babylon was founded near the end of the 3rd millennium BC, and lasted through the 2nd century AD.

On to the verses….

In chapter 11, verses 27-30 introduce the reader to Abram’s family (his name would later be changed to Abraham by God).  We learn that Abraham’s father is named Terah and that Abraham has brothers named Nahor and Haran.  Abraham’s wife is named Sarah (her name is changed from Sarai to Sarah in Genesis 17) and Nahor’s wife is named Milcah.

Then in verse 30, out of the blue, we read that Sarah cannot conceive children.  In the ancient near east, for a woman to be unable to conceive a child was devastating to her and her husband.  The author of Genesis 11 is letting the reader know that if Abraham is going to have any children with Sarah, God must intervene.  The need for God to intervene will strike the reader as we read the first verses of chapter 12, where Abraham’s descendants are promised blessings.  How can Abraham have any descendants if his wife is barren?

In verses 31-32, we learn that Terah actually had left Ur and made it as far as the city of Haran (not to be confused with Abrahams’ brother). See this link to a map showing Abraham’s journeys.

As we come to chapter 12, we read some of the most important verses in the entire Bible.  Here the author of Genesis tells us about God’s plan to bless mankind after the disasters that had occurred at the Fall, the Flood, and the Tower of Babel.  We learn how God will create for himself a people who acknowledge him as the one true God, and who have as their homeland a place called the Lord’s Land.

According to the Zondervan NIV Study Bible,

In the ancient world of the OT, all the various gods that were worshiped and relied on were gods of a particular place and/or a particular people (a family, tribe, or nation—the choice of the gods to be venerated by the social unit resting in the hands of the communal leader[s]). The most effective way for the true God to break into such a religious world and gain world recognition was to establish a relationship with a patriarchal head of household and call him away from his idolatrous clan and from the place(s) with which its gods were linked and to establish that patriarch’s household as the beginnings of a people who acknowledged only him as their God, and then locate them in a place/land that he claimed as his own. That is the program that Yahweh initiated with his summons to Abram.

Note the seven parts of God’s promise to Abraham in verses 2-3 of chapter 12.  First, “I will make you into a great nation.”  Second, “I will bless you.”  Third, “I will make your name great.”  Fourth, “You will be a blessing.” (Some scholars read this fourth part as a command to Abraham, not a promise).  Fifth, “I will bless those who bless you.”  Sixth, “Whoever curses you I will curse.”  Seventh, “All peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”  Because of the Hebrew literary style used in this section containing the promises, the original readers would have understood the first and seventh promises to be the most important, that God would make Abraham into a great nation, and that all peoples on earth would be blessed.

In verses 4-9, Abraham’s journey into Canaan is described.  We learn that Lot, who is Abraham’s nephew, accompanies him to Canaan.  Lot will be an important figure in the coming chapters of Genesis, and that is why the reader is alerted to his presence.

There are three particular places mentioned in Canaan that Abraham visits, all of which are later visited by Jacob, the grandson of Abraham, when Jacob returns to Canaan, and all of which are mentioned as sites occupied by Joshua in the conquest of Canaan some 700 years later.  These three sites are 1) Shechem, 2) a place between Bethel and Ai, and 3) the Negev. At Shechem, and between Bethel and Ai, Abraham builds altars to the Lord.  At Shechem, God appears to Abraham to reassure him that his offspring would have the land.

Bible Interpretation, Books of the Bible, Sunday School

Commentary on Genesis 6-8 (The Flood)

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Post Author: Bill Pratt 

In verses 5-7 in chapter 6, we learn that God is deeply grieved by the wickedness of mankind.  Since the days of Adam and Eve, mankind has become more and more sinful.  The wickedness has become so extreme that God decides he will exterminate the entire human race.  Only one family will escape his judgment: the family of Noah.

Why is Noah to be spared from the impending flood?  “Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked with God.”  The answer is simple: Noah obeyed God, and this is what God desires from human beings.

In verses 11-22, Noah receives detailed instructions from God on how to build the ark that will house his family and the animals that God will spare from the flood.  The details are provided by the author to demonstrate the meticulous obedience of Noah.  Noah is an example to the reader of how a person is to follow God.

In verse 22, we read, “Noah did everything just as God commanded him.”  The fact that Noah was spared from the flood because he did as God commanded is repeated three more times in chapter 7 in verses 5, 9, and 16.  Obedience to God is a central theme for the book of Genesis and the entire Pentateuch.

In chapter 7, the flood begins and Noah’s family is safe inside the ark.  God gives specific instructions about taking extra “clean” animals on board the ark so that Noah’s family will not have to eat “unclean” animals during the flood.  These instructions foreshadow the instructions by God to bring unblemished animals to be sacrificed at the tabernacle constructed by the Israelites as they wandered the desert for 40 years.

Remember that Genesis 7 was most likely given to the Israelites during the 40 years in the wilderness, so it is important to consider how they would have heard the account of Noah, given their experience in the wilderness.  Likewise, the forty days and forty nights of rain parallel the forty years in the wilderness.

As the flood is described, we don’t hear about those who perish until verse 21 of chapter 7.  Here we are reminded of the animals and humans that were killed, and that only Noah’s family and the animals on the ark are saved.

In chapter 8, the inhabitants of the ark are finally able to emerge.  Verse 1 reminds us that God remembered Noah and sent a wind over the waters so that they would recede (reminiscent of the parting of the Red Sea).  Noah must wait for God to act before the ark rests on dry land and everyone can exit.

Theologian John Sailhamer notes, “The image that emerges from this narrative is that of a righteous and faithful remnant patiently waiting for God’s deliverance.”  Henceforth, the Flood, in the Bible, symbolizes God’s judgment of sin, and Noah symbolizes the salvation of the faithful.

Bible Interpretation, Books of the Bible, Sunday School

Commentary on Genesis 3 (The Fall)

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Post Author: Bill Pratt 

Genesis 3 describes the rebellion of Adam and Eve against God and the immediate consequences of that rebellion.  In verses 1-7, we see Eve being tempted by a serpent, which the author describes as crafty.  Later in the Bible, in the book of Revelation, this serpent is identified as Satan.  The serpent tells Eve that she can become like God, knowing good from evil, if she will only eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the tree that God forbade Adam and Eve to eat from.  The serpent also denies that Eve will die, as God warned.

In essence, Eve wants to gain wisdom that she thinks God is withholding from her.  She takes the fruit from the tree and then gives some to Adam, who also eats the fruit.  Instead of becoming like God in wisdom, disaster occurred.  Before eating the fruit, they were unashamed of their naked bodies, but after eating the fruit, they became ashamed and hid themselves from each other and God.

God had already given them every good thing they would ever need, but they instead desired to know good and evil apart from God.  They thought they could improve themselves by eating from the tree that God had forbidden.  They doubted God’s promise of the consequences of their disobedience, and they believed the serpent’s lies.

In verses 8-13, God confronts Adam and Eve with their disobedience.  Notice what has changed.  Before, Adam and Eve conversed with God openly in the garden, and now they are hiding from him, out of shame.  Their newly gained knowledge of good and evil has not made them more like God, it has distanced them from God.  Not only are they distanced from God, but Adam now blames Eve for giving him the fruit, and he even blames God for creating Eve in the first place.  What a difference!

In verses 14-19, God explains to Adam and Eve the consequences of their disobedience.  The serpent is cursed, but in this curse God promises that Eve’s offspring will battle with the serpent’s offspring, and one day Eve’s descendant will crush the serpent – a foreshadowing of Jesus’s victory over Satan on the cross.

There were also consequences for Eve and all women after her.  First, the joy of childbirth would now be mixed with extreme pain.  Second, the perfect marital relationship that Adam and Eve possessed would be corrupted.  As Eugene Peterson paraphrases God’s message to Eve, “You’ll want to please your husband, but he’ll lord it over you.”

There were also consequences for Adam.  Because of his disobedience, the ground would be cursed, which meant that he would have to work extremely hard to get any food out of the ground.  In the garden, food was provided by God, but now man would have to “sweat in the fields from dawn to dusk.”

Finally, in verses 20-24 God banishes Adam and Eve from the garden so that they cannot eat of the tree of life, and live forever.  In addition, they would also be cut off from God’s immediate presence they had enjoyed in the garden.  The one silver lining is that God did not destroy the garden, so we are left with hope that some day we will be able to re-enter it.

Bible Interpretation, Books of the Bible

Commentary on Genesis 2

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Post Author: Bill Pratt 

In Genesis 2 the creation account of Genesis 1 is continued, but now with focus on the creation of humankind.  In Genesis 1, we saw that mankind was the pinnacle of God’s overall creative work, so Genesis 2 gives a more detailed account of how the first man and first woman were created.

In verses 4-7, we learn that before man is created, and before the Fall of mankind, the world is different.  Shrubs and plants of the field do not yet exist because there is no rain and no men to farm the fields. God takes dirt from the ground and forms man (Adam), and then God blows into his nostrils the breath of life.

Note that God is not described blowing into the nostrils of any other creatures.  Also, recall from Genesis 1 that only humans are made in the “image of god.”  The first two chapters of the Bible give great prominence to human beings during God’s process of creation.  Human beings are not a mere afterthought; they appear to be the very reason God created the heavens and the earth.

In verses 8-15, we are told that God places Adam in a paradise, a garden located in an area of the world called Eden.  There is plenty of food for Adam in the garden, food that God has provided for him.  There are also two trees in the middle of the garden, one called the tree of life and another called the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Adam is told to keep the garden orderly, to take care of it.  The Hebrew in verse 15 can also be translated to indicate that Adam is to worship and obey God.  God is providing everything Adam needs at this point.

Foreshadowing the events of Genesis 3, the Fall, God commands Adam to “not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.”  Aside from God’s desire for Adam to worship and obey him, and care for the garden, this is the first command God gives Adam with negative consequences if he fails to obey.

Verses 18-25 then shift the focus to the creation of the first woman, Eve. What is incredibly important to notice in verses 18-20 is that no animal is suitable to be a helper for Adam.  Although Adam is given the privilege of naming the other animals, Adam sees that he is completely unlike all the animals he names.

So God performs the first ever human surgery and creates Eve out of the bones of Adam.  When Adam sees Eve, he immediately realizes that she is just like him – “bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.”  Verses 24-25 introduce the institution of marriage between one man and one woman, and they indicate that one of the primary purposes of the married couple is to sexually reproduce.