Do Genesis 1 and 2 give contradictory accounts of Creation?
Genesis 1 presents the six-day Creation Week, culminating in God forming man on day six, and a day of rest on the seventh day. The scope is cosmic, establishing the order of the heavenly bodies, and the position of Earth as part of God’s divine order. This chapter also describes the change from an empty, dark void to a full and vibrant world of nature that God pronounced “very good.” Then, as the crowning act of Creation, humanity was given the role of caring for what God had made.
Genesis 2 moves in closer and focuses just on day six of Creation Week. After we learn about God’s seven-day grand design, the second chapter of Genesis tells howHe created humankind. The rest of the Bible focuses on humanity’s position within the world, but this chapter zooms in on the events relating to man’s relationship with God.
Genesis 2 tells about:
– The Garden of Eden, man’s dwelling place.
– The tree of life, man’s way to continue living.
– Man’s task of tending the Garden.
– The prohibition of eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
– Man’s relationship with the helper God created for him.
– Man’s task of naming all the animals.
– The names of the first man and woman: Adam and Eve.
These chapters do not contradict each other. Instead, the second chapter highlights the importance of humankind in the world God created. Nonetheless, two statements in Genesis 2 need further explanation to verify the unity of these chapters:
Statement 1: Genesis 2:19 seems to say that the animals were formed after man, while Genesis 1:26 says man was created after the animals. The explanation of this text lies in an understanding of Hebrew verb tenses. Hebrew verbs express either completed action, or incompleted action. In the case of Genesis 2:19, the verb to form is a verb of completed action. It could be translated as “and He formed,” “and He has formed,” or “and He had formed.” The context determines how the verb should be translated into English. The order given in Genesis 1:24–28 provides the context—animals first, then humans. Verses 18–20 strengthen that context by describing that God participated with Adam in searching through all the living creatures He had already made to confirm to Adam that none of them were a suitable partner for him. Instead, it was to be obvious to Adam that he and the helper God was about to create would be a perfect match for each other.
Statement 2: Genesis 2:5 seems to say that at the time when man was created, no plants had yet been formed on the Earth, while Genesis 1:11 establishes vegetation to cover the Earth on day four of Creation Week. God’s work was finished (Genesis 2:1), yet there were still four things that had not appeared in that perfect Creation:
- No “plant of the field.” The Hebrew word for plant in Genesis 2:5 is not the same word in Genesis 1:11–12. This Hebrew word for plant appears in only two other texts: Genesis 21:15 and Job 30:4, 7, where it is a xerophyte plant adapted to desert environments, a spiny and thorny plant that needs very little water. This is the bane of the gardener, and is never deliberately planted: weeds. Before the entrance of sin, weeds did not grow.
- No “herbs of the field.” The Hebrew word for herbs is a common word, but the full phrase, “herbs of the field” only occurs here and in Genesis 3:18, where we read that people will eat the herbs of the field by painful toil, because of the fall of sin. Genesis 3:19 further clarifies that this will be their way of making bread. So this phrase refers to grain, attained by tilling the ground. Unlike the orchard planted by God, growing grain is an endeavor of uncertainty that man did not participate in until after sin.
- No man to till the ground. The critical phrase is the modifier, “to till the ground.” Man was created and given the job of ruling over God’s Creation in Genesis 1:26, 30. But God did not intend man to labor by painful toil, tilling the ground for his food. Eden was not a vegetable garden, but a mature orchard, given as a gift from God to supply food. Working the garden (Genesis 2:15) is not the same as tilling the ground. Because of sin, the ground was cursed (Genesis 3:17), and required intense physical labor.
- There was no rain. The Earth was irrigated by a mist rising from beneath the surface (Genesis 2:6). Rain appeared as an act of judgment against sin (Genesis 7:12), not as a source for sustaining agriculture.
In conclusion, each of the four things that were not present in God’s finished Creation appeared later as the result of sin. They were not intended to be present in God’s perfect world, but they were mentioned because Genesis was written after the fall. Rather than contradicting the picture of God’s perfect Creation in Genesis 1, Genesis 2:5 strengthens it by showing the transformations that had taken place after sin that changed God’s perfect world.