Genesis 2:4 Commentary and Bible Study

Modern versions tend to lose the word ‘generations’ which is a great shame, and they use alternative words: ‘this is the history of’, or ‘this is the account of the heavens and the earth’. But ‘generations’ is in the original and it’s actually important, because although it doesn’t seem readily to fit in this particular verse, there are altogether ten uses of this in the Book of Genesis. These are divisions of the Book of Genesis. This is a history book with 10 original chapters. The 10 original chapters are obscured by the imposition of the chapters that we have today which do not coincide with the original chapters. The ten original chapters – if we may call them chapters – of the Book of Genesis all start with these same words. If you look on to chapter 5 and verse 1: ‘This is the book of the generations of Adam’, and then the immediate descendants of Adam and Eve are listed and chronicled, and so on, and this term is used repeatedly for different stages of the history in the Book of Genesis. But the first time it is used is in chapter 2 verse 4: ‘These are the generations’ not of Adam – that’s going to follow in chapter 5, although some of his descendants are certainly mentioned in chapter 4 – but ‘these are the generations of the heavens and of the earth’. What does it mean? Well it would appear to mean this: that God creates the heavens, space and the earth, and then God so works that the earth – as though it is a person – brings forth. Brings forth what? The plants and the animals, and then, from the dust of the ground – or as Luther had it in the German, from a lump of earth – Adam. So the earth is seen almost as a parent. Here are the first, the immediate generations who came straight out of earth: Adam, and Eve who came out of Adam. So those two, they are the progeny if you like, they are the descendants of earth. And so the first section is, here are the generations of the heaven and earth, the first beings, and then in chapter 5 it will be ‘here are the generations of Adam’.Now it’s interesting to note this, because you can see that from chapter 2 verse 4 there is another subject. When people say there are contradictions between chapter 1 and chapter 2 they are ignorant of this. Chapter 2 verse 4 says now we begin a sub-section, a section of its own. We are now going to deal with the children, as it were, of the dust of the earth, the progeny, the children of the created, beginning world. And so more information is given about Adam, his home that was provided for him, and so on, and subsequently in chapter 3 his fall. You are not now dealing with an order of creation; you are dealing with what actually happened to the man, the first man. Well, they don’t recognise that, the people who are looking for trouble. They don’t understand that the two chapters are dealing with different subjects: one the order of creation, the other what happened to the first man. So we look at it in that light.