2024-08-07_Man is made for God’s Tabernacle (Genesis 2:1-8)

Thus the heavens and the earth were finished: This verse is the bookend to Genesis 1:1. As discussed, God begins creation in time (“In the beginning [when] God created…”). Already, there existed a primordial semblance of space/time with an earth characterized by the fact that it is without form and void. There is already “the deep” and “the face of the waters.” No doubt, these precursors to creation exist because of God, but they are not examples of His creation per se, but rather a disorder that has the potentiality to be ordered. Creation per se is the divine act of bringing order to that preexisting disorder. There is no disorder in God, so creation starts and proceeds when/where God is acting outside of Himself, which is to say, God is acting when/where there is a disordered, primordial space/time that, to the extent it is disordered, is not synonymous with God. The divine act of creation begins in space/time, but ends where “the heavens and the earth were finished,” which is to say, where they are in complete harmony with God. The heavens and the earth are not God, but in being in total harmony with God, they can be said to have been subsumed into God. Space/Time now is “finished,” which is to say, subsumed into God’s eternity. So, with God, what begins in time ends in eternity. God not only orders what is disordered. He also elevates it into Himself, for the completeness of anything is when that thing is a created thing and yet also in God, just as the completeness of mankind is the very man and the very God of the Incarnation.

The completeness of man is that man should remain a created being, meaning that he is not God, but neither is he disordered, or out of harmony with God, any longer: So John 17:15: I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil [evil being absence of the good, or that which disorders man].

The completeness of man is that man, though a created being, exists in God, which is to say, in God’s eternal life: So John 17:21: That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us…

So, man is not to be taken from the world, and yet is to be inside God. Man remains a created being, but also is subsumed into God, like the heavens and the earth are created but also “finished,” which is to say, in such harmony with God as to be subsumed into Him.

And all the host of them: The Hebrew word for host is ṣâbâ, which means literally army, but also more broadly means an organized and purposeful plurality. The heavens and the earth are “finished,” not in the sense that there is no more purpose for them, but in the sense that they are in total harmony with God.

There is still more work to be done with the heavens and the earth, but because they are in total harmony with God, it is God’s work principally that is to be done in and through the heavens and the earth: So John 5:17:  But Jesus answered them, My Father is working still, and I am working.

He rested on the seventh day: The Hebrew word translated as rested is shâbath, which is better translated as ceasing. The connotation is not idleness but rather an alteration in the direction of divine activity. God, the Author, has finished the first chapter, and is now about to start the second chapter. He has ceased what He was doing for the sake of what is next.

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary: As a human artificer completes his work just when he has brought it up to his ideal and ceases to work upon it, so in an infinitely higher sense, God completed the creation of the world with all its inhabitants by ceasing to produce any new thing and entering back into the rest of His all-sufficient eternal Being, from which He had come forth, as it were, at and in the creation of a world which is distinct from His own essence…This rest of the Creator was indeed the consequence of His self-satisfaction in the now united and harmonious [created order]. This self-satisfaction in His creation, which we call His pleasure in His work, was also a spiritual power, which then streamed forth as a blessing upon the creation itself, bringing it into the blessedness of the rest of God and thus filling it with His peace…[And yet there is more to be done with the heavens and the earth, for] As the whole earthly creation is subject to the changes of time and the law of temporal motion and development; so all of the creatures not only stand in need of definite recurring periods of rest, for the sake of recruiting their strength and gaining new power for further development, but they also look forward to a time when all restlessness shall give place to the blessed rest of the perfect consummation. To this rest the resting of God points forward; and to this rest, this divine shâbath, or Sabbath, shall the whole world, especially man, the head of the earthly creation, eventually come.

God rested, not just in the pleasure of His self-satisfaction, but that man may come to rest as well: So Hebrews 4:9: So then, there remains a Sabbath rest [still waiting] for the people of God. 

Thus, just as the heavens and the earth, though created, find their completeness in God’s eternity, so man, though created, will find his completeness in God’s rest. Again, this is not idleness, but rather “ceasing” in his prior separation from God and “beginning” a new chapter of living in God. The Seventh Day is the beginning of the new week, so the “rest” on that day is really the discarding of the past week and the embracing of the new week. For in the Resurrection of Christ Jesus on the Seventh Day, we are made “a new creature” fit to do the labors for God we could not have done when beleaguered by sins (2 Corinthians 5:17).

And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: To bless is to set apart to acknowledge what is already good and to establish that, what is good, will remain good, and so find favor with God, if what is good persists in being what it is. For example, a Christian marriage will be blessed because it is good, which is to say, it conforms with God’s will in its form and in its purpose. Also, a Christian marriage will be blessed because, if it remains in conformity with God’s will, it will continue to be good going forward. To be sanctified means to be holy. Only God is eternally holy, which is to say, only God is the definition of holiness, so what is holy is what is like God. What is profane is what is unlike God. Therefore, since the seventh day is blessed and sanctified, this means that it is set apart from all the other days and has been designated by God to be holy, which is to say, to be like Him. Technically, the seventh day is not definitionally holy but rather derivatively holy, which is to say, it is holy since God wills that to be so. If and when man ceases to be sinful (discards the previous week), and is reborn without sin (embraces the new week), man will find his rest, that is, he will acquire a holiness from God that had been intended for him from the start. Man will not be God, but he will be like God, as God had intended for him when God blessed and sanctified His own Seventh Day.

God rested on, blessed, and sanctified that Seventh Day for man: So Mark 2:27-28: He said unto them, The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath: Therefore the Son of man is Lord also of the sabbath.

The Hebrew word for generations is tô-l’-dôth, which is better translated as “successions by descent,” or “genealogies.” Genesis 2:4 is referring back to the first Creation Story which concludes here. The connotation is that the succession of “days of creation” is akin to the succession of generations in a formal genealogy, so we could say that “the first day” begat “the second day,” “the second” begat “the third,” and so forth. This is important because in the Holy Bible generally the genealogies manifest God’s Providential Hand in history in how a certain lineage will reaffirm in human history God’s covenantal promise. So before Christ Jesus, we behold the genealogy that leads from Adam, to Noah, to Abraham, to Moses, to David, and finally to Jesus. After Christ Jesus, we behold the Apostolic Succession, which is the laying on of hands from one generation of Bishops unto the next. The blood lineage we see in the Old Testament genealogy is replaced with the transmission of the Holy Spirit from Apostle to Bishop in the New Testament – the blood lineage being a similitude of the Spirit infused new creation that begins with Christ Jesus and then goes forward from Him through the Church. The idea is that God draws a line through history as an indication that His Providential Hand is never forsaken on His part notwithstanding man’s sinfulness. We see this divine providential line through history embedded in the tô-l’-dôth of His creation.

And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew [was in the earth]: The plants and the herbs have yet to sprout out from beneath the earth. The reason is that it has not yet rained, and man has not yet been created to till the ground. At first glance, this seems to contradict Genesis 1:11-12, for in the first Creation Story, the plants are created before man, and yet here it would seem that man precedes the plants, or at least man precedes the plants sprouting out from beneath the earth.

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary: The creation of the plants is not alluded to here at all, but simply the planting of the garden in Eden. The growing of the shrubs and sprouting of the herbs is different from the creation or first production of the vegetable kingdom, and relates to the growing and sprouting of plants and germs which were called into existence by the creation, the natural development of plants as it had steadily proceeded ever since the creation. This later development would be dependent upon rain and human culture… Moreover, the shrub and herb of the field here do not embrace the whole of the vegetable productions of the earth.

In essence, God is here setting aside a special field which will not come to life until man is created. This field is for man. For however long, God will protect it, set it apart from the rest of creation, as a kind of Promised Land for man. Until it is ready to be used for its purpose, God will hover over it as He did “the face of the waters,” just as He will preserve Canaan for the coming of the Jews to establish Israel, and just as He will preserve Israel for the coming of Christ Jesus. God protects what is promised for man before man is in a position to realize that promise. This alludes to God’s parental love for man as it does for man’s central place in God’s eyes (see Job 34:21: For God’s eyes are upon the ways of man, and He seeth all).

This mist is in reference to the special field God has set aside for man. Just as man will be coming up from beneath the earth, for he will be created of moist dust that comes up from beneath the earth, so the waters and the plants that soon will nourish man in this field are coming up from beneath the earth. As Christians, we can see here a Resurrection allusion, for in the Resurrection, new life comes up from beneath the earth (or comes up from in the grave). Life comes up from what is dead, for the hand of God is at work here.

The life that God brings up from what is dead will be superabundant: So Job 36:27-28: For he maketh small the drops of water: they pour down rain according to the vapour [same word as mist above] thereof:  Which the clouds then do drop and distil upon man abundantly.

And the Lord God: Here is a name given to the Creator, Jehovah. Where the word LORD is printed in capital letters in our English Bibles, in the original it is Jehovah. Jehovah is that name of God which denotes that He alone has His being of himself, and therefore that he gives being to all creatures and things. Earlier, God is named Elohim, which suggests the transcendent and almighty character of God revealed in the grandeur of the first Creation Story. By contrast, Jehovah is a more intimate name for God. There is a subtle lovingness with Jehovah bestowing His eternal beingness into created things. He intends for all new and derivative beings to be intimately connected with His eternal beingness (meaning His non-derivative beingness), for the end purpose of all living things is to be created life and life lived abundantly in Him.

Formed man of the dust of the ground: The Hebrew word for dust used here is adâmah. It is better translated as the cultivated ground. God has cultivated this special field by drawing the mist out from beneath the earth and, when rain forms, the plant and the herb that have been waiting for this moment underneath the earth for an undefined period of time. So, the rain and the plant life in this field are attributable not to the natural processes unleashed by the first stage of creation but by God’s direct intercession. As discussed, the actual plants and herbs coming out from the ground are natural developments from the primordial plant life described in the first Creation Story, but the fact of this rain and the fact of these plants coming out from the ground at this place and time are attributable directly to God. He has cultivated the ground for the coming of man. He will guide man in cultivating the ground as soon as man is formed. Therefore, being formed of the dust of this special field, man from the beginning is caught up into God’s work. This is in line with Genesis 1:26, where man is made in the image and in the likeness of God.

Only after man sins do we see the idea that coming from dust and returning to dust imply man’s underlying sinful earthiness. The reason is that, after man sins, the dust itself is as corrupted as man, since all of creation has been caught up into man’s fall from grace.

Before man sins, though, there is no reason to think of the dust as lower and the spiritual as higher. This is a Gnostic conceit. It is incompatible with what we observe in Genesis 1:1-2:3 that God sees that the created world is good.

And breathed into his nostrils the breath of life: Man is the coming together of created order and divine life. As man is formed from the dust, he is of the created order. As God breathes Himself into man’s nostrils, he is of the divine life. The connotation is that man is formed of the dust, and receives God’s breath in his nostrils, at the same time. From the start, man is this union of creation and eternity. For this reason, man stands in esteem above everything else ever created, including the angels, and yet he will remain forever below God, since any divine attributes in man are derived from God and not from himself.

And man became a living soul: Unlike the animals, man received his life from a distinct act of Divine inbreathing; certainly not an in-breathing of atmospheric air, but rather an inflatus from the Ruach Elohim, or the Spirit of God, a communication from the whole personality of the Godhead. In effect man was thereby constituted a nephesh chayyah [soul pertaining to the lower animals], but in him the life principle conferred a divine personality which was wanting in them. What separates man’s living soul from the nephesh chayyah is the breath of God in him, which is to say, man being in the image and likeness of God. Man is like the lower animals in breathing atmospheric air, but he is unlike them in receiving God’s breath.

God sets aside a special field for the creation of man, but this special field is not Eden, for Eden is eastward from where man had been formed. So, there are two places set apart. The special field is like the manger where Christ Jesus is born. It is in the world but ordained by God for this purpose. Eden is the Temple to the east. It is even more of a sanctuary for man.