> [!Scripture] >**4 This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made earth and heaven. >5 Now no shrub of the field was yet in the earth, and no plant of the field had yet sprouted, for the LORD God had not sent rain upon the earth, and there was no man to cultivate the ground. >6 But a mist used to rise from the earth and water the whole surface of the ground. >7 Then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.** <img src="https://audio.mhbbible.com/media%3Agenesis%202%204-7.jpg" alt="Genesis 2:4-7" style="max-width: 100%; height: auto;"> > [!success] Audio Commentary > <audio controls src="https://audio.mhbbible.com/Genesis%202%204-7.ogg"></audio> ## Brief Observations - **The introduction of Jehovah (YHWH or Yahweh)** — This is the first time Scripture calls God “LORD,” shifting from Elohim (all-powerful Creator) in chapter 1. Jehovah-Elohim combines both, revealing Him as the all-powerful Creator of perfection—self-existent, self-actualized, dependent on nothing, the eternal Prime Mover and First Cause who upholds every quark and atom. + **God’s self-existence sets Him apart** — Unlike mythological gods or anything else, God didn’t begin or rely on preconditions; He simply is. Everything else traces its being back to Him—like a chair upheld by the floor, foundation, ground, all the way to the uncaused Cause. This is why Jehovah appears at creation’s completion: He gives being to all. - **The narrative jumps back for deeper focus on man** — Chapter 2 isn’t strictly linear; verse 4 rewinds to day 6 before man’s creation (the Yahwist account), detailing humanity at higher resolution. No shrubs or plants had sprouted yet—not from lack, but to highlight dependence on God’s word and provision. + **All growth depends on God’s sovereign word** — Vegetation didn’t sprout from earth’s own power but by God’s command. Even rain is His gift—He withholds or sends it as He wills (Amos 4). This extends to spiritual growth: you can’t sanctify yourself or become Christlike on your own; God alone works it in you. - **No rain, no man to till the ground** — Before man, a mist (or underground springs) watered the earth, showing God’s direct providence without human labor. This pre-Fall harmony reminds us: even disasters (which He controls) highlight His sovereignty and often reveal Christian compassion in response—serving victims, reflecting His care. + **God forms man from dust and breathes life** — Jehovah Elohim shapes Adam from the ground’s dust (adamah, a wordplay), then breathes the breath of life (neshamah) into his nostrils, making him a living soul (nephesh). Body from earth, spirit from God’s direct breath—intimate, life-giving, transforming clay into something beloved. - **The soul is your eternal, divine essence** — Your spirit originates in God, the Father and Former of spirits—literally your Father in the truest sense. At death, dust returns to earth, spirit to God (Ecclesiastes 12). The soul is your conscious core; without it, the body is lifeless clay. With it, even a corpse becomes repulsive without the breath that turns loathsome dust into an object of love. + **Humanity’s unique accountability** — Made in God’s image, we’re eternally valuable but also culpable for sin—corrupting that image separates us from Him. Satan, not image-bearing, may not “sin” in the same way (able to stand in God’s presence in Job). This explains why idolatry (worshiping creation over Creator) is so offensive: our souls came from Him, yet we bow to lesser things. - **Long for God like home** — Your soul should ache for Him as for home after a long journey. Jesus committed His spirit to the Father on the cross; we do the same at death (“Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust”). Ezekiel’s dry bones vision shows God’s power to revive hopeless souls: He opens graves, puts His Spirit in us, and brings life anew. + **Steward your soul wisely—it’s all that lasts** — God gave this miraculous gift; at death, we account for how we used it. What profits gaining the world if you forfeit your soul (Mark 8)? Deny self, take up your cross, lose your life for Christ’s sake—to save it eternally. God prioritizes your soul’s well-being, even over bodily comfort—trust Him; heavenly treasure isn’t vain. - **Christ echoes our creation** — He used clay to heal the blind man (John 9), honoring our dusty origins. He breathed on disciples to give the Holy Spirit (John 20), mirroring God’s breath of life. In Him, body and soul find perfect union and redemption. ## Full Commentary This passage marks the first place in holy scripture where see our God referred to as the LORD or Jehovah. This name of God is also sometimes called the tetragrammaton which is when you see the all capital letters YHWH, often pronounced “Yahweh.” In the first chapter of Genesis God was called Elohim, and this name appeared more than 30 times. Elohim is one of the Hebrew names for God and it means _all-powerful Creator_. More of God’s character is revealed to us with this compound name Jehovah-Elohim because it means _all-powerful Creator God of perfection_. This title shows us that, not only is God all-powerful to begin His works, but He’s also all-powerful to finish them. The perfection communicated by the name Jehovah is a kind of completeness. The name indicates God is entirely self-actualized. Nothing had to happen to cause God to exist and God’s existence does not depend on anything. His eternal self-existence makes God utterly unique from any other person or phenomenon we know of — including idolatrous mythological gods. Not only is God self-actualized in this way, but the actuality of every part of the universe (down to the smallest quark) is entirely dependent on Him. This is what apologists mean when they refer to God as the Prime Mover or the First Cause of all things. An easy way to think about this is to imagine sitting in a chair. The chair’s purpose only exists because it’s being upheld by the floor underneath it. The floor is being upheld by the foundation. The foundation is being upheld by the ground. The ground is being upheld by bedrock and tectonic plates, etc. You can follow this path of dependence all the way back to God — whose eternal upholding of all things depends on nothing. That’s what it means to be self-actualized and this self-actuality is one of the primary characteristics communicated by the name Jehovah. God gives being to all things and so it makes sense He is called Jehovah when the creation of the heavens and the Earth is finished. As you’re reading the creation account, it can be easy to confuse your timelines if you read both chapters 1 and 2 as chronologically linear. They are chronological insofar as the seven days are concerned — but beginning in verse 4 of chapter 2 we see the narrative jump backwards by one day so the creation of humanity can be carefully expanded upon. This jump is the delineation between what is called the Priestly account of creation and the Yahwist account of creation. The Yahwist account is what we’re studying today. So when you read that, “no shrub of the field was yet in the earth, and no plant of the field had yet sprouted…” this is specifically referring to the sixth day _before_ humanity was created. It is beginning with this part of the sixth day where the rest of our studies in chapter 2 will examine the creation of man at a higher resolution. We spoke before about how, in the pre-Fall created order, the green plants and fruits of the Earth were given as food for man and animals. We also noted how the Earth did not bring forth the vegetation from its own resources — but that the fruits were given life by the power of God’s spoken word. The foliage is mentioned at the beginning of this account because of its significance as the food source for man. We might take a moment to appreciate the sovereign authority of God’s word — even the plants and fruits of the Earth cannot grow without their dependence on it. The same is true for grace in a person’s soul. You cannot become more Christlike on your own resources anymore than the vegetation could grow without God. God is the one who sanctifies your spirit and makes you more like Jesus. Your Christlikeness is the work of God’s own hands. In verse 5 we read, “God had not sent rain upon the earth, and there was no man to cultivate the ground.” God’s sovereignty over the growth of the plants extends equally to the provision of rain itself. Rain is a gift from God. If some place is experiencing a drought, it’s because God has not sent rain there. If some place is experiencing too much rain, it is God who is causing it. When speaking to a rebellious Israel in Amos chapter 4 God says, "Furthermore, I withheld the rain from you While there were still three months until harvest. Then I would send rain on one city And on another city I would not send rain; One part would be rained on, While the part not rained on would dry up.” God’s authoritarian control over nature raises some questions about natural disasters — why would He allow or even cause such things to happen? It’s worth noting how even in the aftermath of such devastating circumstances it is often Christians who are serving to rescue victims and provide emergency supplies. Here’s how I deal with such questions: If I’m not able to explain _how_ or _why_ a certain event or natural disaster can be worked together for good — I don’t even try in regard to the actual event. I would not call a specific hurricane or flood a good thing if I can’t see how it is good. But I do know that God is in control of all of it and God is good — and therefore He must work it together for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose. We know God tends to work by second and third order causes. For instance, today God continues to cause plants and crops to grow using natural processes like rain and humanity’s efforts at farming. But God is never restrained by these natural causes. Part of why He caused plants to grow before the sun existed or before the rain fell is to demonstrate for us that He is not captured by any of these things — He governs them. God is able to do as He pleases even if His movements break the laws of nature. None of this is to suggest we should just sit back and wait for God to act. Rejecting the common means God has given us for doing such things as growing crops in order that we might see God do it by way of miracle is a form of testing God. Testing God is strictly prohibited in the scriptures. God’s sovereignty over nature simply expresses that when our own means fail us, we should continue to trust God and His powerful provision. We know God is faithful to provide for what He planted and so we should trust — even when there is no rain — that He will find some other way of watering it. In this instance He caused a mist to rise from the earth and water the entire surface of the ground. He could have brought torrents of rain from the sky in some spectacular tempest — but instead He chose to use a gentle mist. God often uses the weakest means to achieve seemingly impossible ends. He uses this method because it points more people to the excellency of His power and glorifies His name among them. If God achieves a great thing through a weak vessel, I’m more likely to believe it was God who did it. I’m also more likely to understand how His power is not contingent on the power of others including myself. The mist watered the earth without spectacle, and in the same way God often waters His Church, sustaining it, without making any noise. Verse 7 begins to reveal God’s creating humanity in greater detail. You might think of a human being as a microcosm of the entire creation insofar as we consist of both heaven and earth. Eternal spirits indwelling mortal bodies which were fashioned from the dust of the earth. Scripture says human beings are fearfully and wonderfully made. The value for human life is a foundational tenet of any Christian’s worldview. We must value human life because human beings are God’s most complex creations and God Himself is infinitely valuable. We are shaped from the dust which is worth nothing, but the breath of the Almighty has given us life — and that makes us worth everything. It’s fascinating to contemplate the omnipotent creative power of God. He made the universe from nothing. Then He made the most valuable creation in the universe from next to nothing — the dust of the ground. If we follow the narrative literally we might expect the dust of the ground to be moistened by the mist at this moment when God shaped man from it. Paul writes to the Corinthian church that the first man (meaning Adam) is from the earth, and the second man (meaning Christ) is from Heaven. The human body is so tightly connected to the earth that scripture often uses one to refer to the other. Psalm 139 calls our mother’s womb _the depths of the earth_. And in Job we see our final resting place — such as a grave or a tomb — used interchangeably with our mother’s womb. We are the clay and God is the sculptor. Some vessels are made for glory and some vessels are made for destruction — but all vessels come under the authority of the potter. All of us are made of dust, we come from dust, and to dust we shall return in death. That is the natural condition of man without God. We have nothing at all to be proud of. When God creates man we see a change in the verb used. Scripture says God _formed_ man, which implies a careful and exacting process. This may not have been an instant creation like that of the cosmos. The verb used here denotes a potter shaping His vessel on a wheel. Scripture says we are the clay, God is the potter, and all of us are the work of His hands. This is not simply referring to our physical bodies either — God has shaped our personalities, our strengths, our weaknesses, our tendencies, and even the unfolding of our lives. Psalm 139:15-16 read, “My frame was not hidden from You, When I was made in secret, And skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth; Your eyes have seen my unformed substance; And in Your book were all written The days that were ordained for me, When as yet there was not one of them.” The only sensible way for us to respond to such careful creation is to present our bodies as a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is our spiritual service of worship. We should steward our bodies well because scripture says our bodies are living temples indwelled by the Spirit of God. God remembers our mortal frame and He knows that we are dust. He doesn’t expect us to live lives of supernatural strength incongruent with the bodies we have. Our mortal bodies, such as we experience them now with all of their shortcomings and diseases, will not be preserved into the kingdom of glory. Rather God, by His almighty power, will give us glorified bodies. Scripture says God “will transform the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of His glory, by the exertion of the power that He has even to subject all things to Himself.” When we spend eternity in the direct presence of God we will no longer need to experience the pain and suffering which comes from inhabiting a mortal frame. One of the most important lines in the entire creation account comes when God breathes the breath of life into man and he becomes a living being. Our source of life did not come from the earth or from earthly things. Our souls came from the divine, heavenly substance of the breath of God. Each one of us is like an intersection between Heaven and Earth. Our spirits are made from heavenly things while our bodies are made from earthly things. The heavenly essence of our spirits is the cornerstone of why human life is valuable. We are not immediately comparable to anything else God created. Since we are image-bearers of God, we are uniquely accountable for sin. You’ll often hear well-intentioned — although I would say theologically mistaken — pastors suggest animals can’t go to heaven because they aren’t covered by the righteousness of Christ. The issue with this claim is the postulate that animals have sin which needs covered to begin with. Animals kill each other and rape each other, but I don’t think it’s possible for animals to sin because animals do not have the law of God. Sin means to miss the mark, and you can’t miss the mark if there is no mark. You may have also heard that animals can’t go to heaven because they have no souls or somehow lack consciousness. This is an even more fallacious claim than the first, both biblically and experientially. When you take an animal as a pet, assuming your conscience isn’t seared by corruption, you’ll form a love-bond with it. This bond with an animal is not a sign of spiritual immaturity or an indication you fail to value human life properly. Much to the contrary, this human-animal connection is recognized by God Himself in scripture when He speaks to David through the prophet Nathan concerning the man who had a pet lamb who was, “like a daughter to him.” To suggest animals lack souls or consciousness is violative of an axiom of our own experience which tells us consciousness is necessary for navigating this space we all inhabit. If you doubt this axiom, try losing your own consciousness and report back. But it’s not just experiential evidence, scripture itself uses the Hebrew word “nephesh” to describe the higher order animals — this is the same word used to describe human beings as ensouled. It is well past time for properly educated Christians to put to rest the false dichotomy suggesting a love for animals means you don’t value human life — or that you can’t acknowledge humanity’s superior worth while also harboring eternal love for an animal. Both things can be done at the same time and in many cases _should_ be done at the same time. Satan is evil and has been a liar from the beginning, but I would go so far as to say I don’t think it’s possible for Satan to sin either. We know sinners cannot stand in the direct presence of God, but at the beginning of Job’s story we see Satan standing in God’s presence in heaven. I think this is made possible because Satan is not made in God’s image. And so while humanity is uniquely valuable because we are image-bearers of God, we are also uniquely accountable when we corrupt this image with our sins. This eternal essence is also why humanity’s idolatrous worship of the creation is such an offense against God. Your spirit came from God and He gave it to be put into your body. The final chapter of Ecclesiastes describes death by saying the dust of your body returns to the earth as it was, and your spirit returns to God who gave it. God is both the former of spirits and the Father of spirits. So when we call God our Father we’re not merely trying to use mortal language to describe a relationship. It’s not wrong to suggest God is your Father is the most literal sense when it comes to your spirit. Your spirit originated in Him. He made it and He gave it, and when it goes back to Him it’s really just going back home. Our souls should long for God in the same way we long for home when we’re away on a long trip. Just before Jesus took His last breath on the cross He shouted out, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.” Ministers do the same thing at graveside committals today when a person dies and is buried. Often they use a traditional phrase from the Book of Common prayer which reads, “Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” As this indicates the final resting place of our mortal bodies. Many times this is followed by the same words Jesus said, “Father, into your hands we commit his or her spirit.” Your soul is the divine center of consciousness. The soul is the man and the soul is the truest essence of your being. Your body is simply a conglomeration of dust and clay without it. Your body needs your soul like a kind of life support. The breath of life given by God is so powerful and beautiful and it takes something loathsome and turns it into an object of love. We are repulsed by a decomposing corpse and yet we cannot survive without the touch of a living person. The difference is the soul given by the breath of God. That’s how magnificent and powerful it is. We see its magnificence and power on full display in the prophet’s vision found in Ezekiel chapter 37. God orders Ezekiel to prophesy over the valley of dry bones — resurrecting all of them to life. After this marvelous occurrence God said to Ezekiel, “Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel; behold, they say, 'Our bones are dried up and our hope has perished. We are completely cut off.' "Therefore prophesy and say to them, 'Thus says the Lord GOD, "Behold, I will open your graves and cause you to come up out of your graves, My people; and I will bring you into the land of Israel. "Then you will know that I am the LORD, when I have opened your graves and caused you to come up out of your graves, My people. "I will put My Spirit within you and you will come to life, and I will place you on your own land. Then you will know that I, the LORD, have spoken and done it.” God gave us our souls, and when we die we must give an account to God for how we used them. What did we do with such a miraculous gift? How did we steward the only eternal part of us? What does it gain a man if he sell his soul for the entire world when all of us know we are destined to lose the world too? Jesus warned His own disciples including an entire crowd of people when He said, “"If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel's will save it. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world, and forfeit his soul? For what will a man give in exchange for his soul?” God’s primary concern is always the eternal well-being of our souls. Sometimes this comes at the expense of our bodies and sometimes we must sacrifice temporary desires in service to it. But we can trust in God that we do not store up treasure in heaven without cause. We can trust that careful stewardship of our souls is not a temporary vanity lost to death. Our bodies are shaped from the dust of the ground, and I think Christ paid homage to this when He used clay to anoint the blind man’s eyes and restore his vision. Our spirits are breathed into us by God, and I think Christ reminded us of this when He breathed on His disciples and gave them the Holy Ghost.