Chuck Larsen

Genesis 2:6 wraps up the description of the land that God had prepared as a home for mankind. It had not rained. There were no bushes or trees primarily because there was no one to work the land.” The last part of the description is “…and a mist was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground.” Hughes argues that the word “mist” might be better understood as “streams.” Then he says, “The mention of streams watering the earth is likely a reference to recurrent flooding of the Tigris and Euphrates. Without man to irrigate the land, the rising streams were useless. All this—the lack of rain and shrubs and plants—points to the untended condition of the earth.”^[1]

There is a more interesting use of the word for “mist” though that makes me think that it’s not “streams” or any kind of flowing water. It’s just ephemeral. You can’t see it yet it makes the ground wet. But its primary use seems to be in contrast to rain which you can see and which is necessary for productive agricultural life. Ryken observes, “Although English translations do not sufficiently acknowledge it, the word translated as ‘vanity’ more than thirty times in the book of Ecclesiastes could more appropriately be translated ‘mist’ or ‘vapor.’ In the book of Proverbs, the fleetingness and emptiness of ill-gotten gain are compared to a mist that dissipates: ‘The getting of treasures by a lying tongue is a fleeting vapor’ (Prov 21:6). The ephemeral quality of life itself is pictured by James as ‘a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes’ (Jas 4:14).”^[2] Another use of the “mist idea” is from the book of Sirach 24:1-3 as recorded in the New Jerusalem Bible. It tells us that Wisdom is compared to the mist that covered the earth. It reads, “Wisdom speaks her own praises, in the midst of her people she glories in herself. She opens her mouth in the assembly of the Most High, she glories in herself in the presence of the Mighty One: ‘I came forth from the mouth of the Most High, and I covered the earth like mist.’”

Well, what’s right? Is it a cloudy ephemeral mist or a stream? It seems that Hughes is probably right. The word took on a different meaning in the passages that Ryken speaks of above. Dealing with it as a “problem” text, O’Brien explains it thusly, “The picture that emerges from verse 6, then, isn’t of a misty, cloud-shrouded earth, but of an earth where the rivers provided enough water for the sparse wild vegetation common in such semi-arid regions. But the intense cultivation of the land necessary after the fall required rainfall plus the added benefit of irrigation from the streams provided by God for that purpose.”^[3]

^[1] Hughes, R. Kent. 2004. Genesis: Beginning and Blessing. Preaching the Word. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books.

^[2] Ryken, Leland, Jim Wilhoit, Tremper Longman, Colin Duriez, Douglas Penney, and Daniel G. Reid. 2000. In Dictionary of Biblical Imagery, electronic ed., 562. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.

^[3] O’Brien, David E. 1990. Today’s Handbook for Solving Bible Difficulties. Minneapolis, MN: David E. O’Brien.

When you read the description of the earth from Genesis 2:5, you get the idea of a barren landscape. The verse says, “When no bush of the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up—for the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the land, and there was no man to work the ground.” I think Wenham gets this and says, “The writer flashes back to the situation before mankind was created on the sixth day (1:26–28) and describes a typical middle-eastern desert, which requires human effort to irrigate and make it bloom.”^[1]

On our tours of Israel, we took the bus everywhere we went. Our tour guide, Ronny Simon, a retired Israeli Army Colonel, would point out the various sites that we drove by and items of interest he would point out. Out the window to our left, he pointed out a beautiful green landscape with palm trees, pomegranate trees, pineapple trees and grapes of just about every kind imaginable. Then he turned our attention to the right side of the highway and all you saw was a desert wasteland. A scattered Bedouin camp here and there but nothing else. The left side was under Israeli control. The right side was under Arab control. This was a scene that Ronny never failed to point out to us throughout our bus trips.

The Lord rarely causes it to rain in the deserts of the mid-east still today. But he has brought his people back from being scattered all over the world to work the land. And work the land, they do. They’ve turned the wasteland into a beautiful garden. When we were in Israel in 2013, Ronny told us about Israel’s plans to take water from the Mediterranean to water their deserts. This project in Israel is called “Reclaiming the deserts.” It had not yet begun when we were there but just four years later, I read this: “The water that flows into Sorek desalination plant is drawn from near the Mediterranean Sea floor. Pumped inland, the water is cleansed, step by step, of salts and impurities. The transmutation does not take long. Forty minutes after entering the facility, the stuff of sailboats and sunbathers is now drinkable. Sorek is the newest of five Israeli coastal desalination plants. A national mission in the last decade to develop the fleet, plus many more years of investment in wastewater recycling facilities, has turned Israel into as much a water producer as a water consumer. Nearly half of the country’s water supply is now manufactured, either by desalting the Mediterranean or purifying urban sewage.” Sitting under a palm tree with a glass of pomegranate juice, one can almost feel the idea of the Garden of Eden. Seow observed, “Now in the garden of God, the unending waters of the deep are harnessed for good, giving nourishment for the trees there (Ezek 31:4, 15). Likewise, the deep provided life-giving waters to the Israelites in the wilderness (Ps 78:15–16; cf. Exod 17:6).”^[2]

^[1] Wenham, Gordon J. 1994. “Genesis.” In New Bible Commentary: 21st Century Edition, edited by D. A. Carson, R. T. France, J. A. Motyer, and G. J. Wenham, 4th ed., 62. Leicester, England; Downers Grove, IL: Inter-Varsity Press.

^[2] Seow, C. L. 1992. “Deep, The.” In The Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary, edited by David Noel Freedman, 2:125. New York: Doubleday.

Genesis 2:4 begins with a very important phrase: “These are the Generations…” Ira YA, “These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens.” They are in Hebrew the “toledots” of Genesis and appear 11 times. Each time it specifically begins the story of a generation related to a key figure in the Book. This, the first one, is going to tell us the story of Adam and Eve. That’s why we begin with another account of God’s creating him and Eve. Then in Chapter five, when God’s story moves on to the following generation we learn all about Adam and Eve’s descendants down to Noah. Chapter 6 introduces us to Noah and flood. Chapter 10 begins the story of Noah’s sons and in Chapter 11 we see God’s selection of Shem as the line from which He will fulfill the promise he gives to Adam and Eve of a coming “seed of the woman” that will save them from their sin. At the end of Chapter 11 we meet Terah and are introduced to Abraham. A brief excursion occurs in Chapter 25 with the introduction of the line of Ishmael and is then followed by the line of Isaac with his two sons Esau and Jacob. Chapter 36 begins with the list of Esau’s descendants and then chapter 37 begins the story of Jacob and the twelve sons ending the book with the story of Joseph, a redeemer in his own right!

Many of the modern translations use the word “story” instead of “generations” because of it being in a narrative form like all stories. Thus we can see that the Bible, from it’s beginning is really a “story.” It’s a true story and it’s “His Story.” I wonder if that’s where we got the word “history” from? It might be connected to the change in God’s name we see here. Instead of Elohim, as we have throughout chapter 1, we now have Yahweh-Elohim. In English translation it’s usually translated as “The Lord God.” The change of the name is significant because there is a move from God as the creator God of all things to the God who redeems and has a personal relationship with his people as we’ll see from this point on. In the first chapter we might say that God builds the house but now he begins building a home. Kent Hughes talks about this: “Significantly, the only place in chapters 2–4 that it is not used is 3:2–5, when the serpent and Eve consciously avoid the personal name of God as she is lured toward sin. Gordon Wenham, the eminent Genesis commentator, remarks, ‘The god they are talking about is malevolent, secretive, and concerned to restrict man: his character is so different from that of Yahweh Elohim that the narrative pointedly avoids the name in the dialogue.’”^[1] Satan and Eve speak of a God that is trying to keep something good from Adam and Eve. He’s not a God who can be trusted. He’s the God who is holding back the truth. But the truth is, God is the ever-loving God who always has our best interest foremost in mind. That’s what “The Lord God” signifies. Any contrary view echoes the view of Satan as he addressed Eve.

According to ancient folklore many pagan religions, especially those in Egypt, attributed supernatural powers over someone by knowing their name. Isis, the Egyptian Goddess, wanted so bad to have power of the great “Ra.” She achieved her own divinity by learning his name. One website said, “Whosoever could learn the secret (of Ra’s name), to that one—god or man—would belong the dominion over all the world, and even Ra himself must be in subjection. Jealously did Ra guard his secret, and kept it ever in his breast, lest it should be taken from him, and his power diminished.” The true God loves His subjects and shares his name with them. Since he is the one and only true God he is not afraid. But entrusts himself to his creation. Barth says, “The God whose creative work is to be described is from the very outset called Yahweh Elohim: the God who reveals His name to Israel; who under this name has chosen and called Israel and has dealt with it as its Lord.”^[2] This one true God will come to his people in the flesh and his name was “Jesus.” He would entrust himself to his own people and they would hang him on the cross.

^[1] Hughes, R. Kent. 2004. Genesis: Beginning and Blessing. Preaching the Word. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books.

^[2] Barth, Karl, Geoffrey William Bromiley, and Thomas F. Torrance. 2004. Church Dogmatics: The Doctrine of Creation, Part 1. Vol. 3. London; New York: T&T Clark.