Genesis 2:3-9: “And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made. These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens, And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew: for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground. But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground. And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.”
Sabbath and the Seventh day
Starting with verse 3, the seventh day, it is a special day of God’s creation, and He blessed it. He sanctified it. He made it holy. The Bible says, “because that in it He rested.” That means that He stopped from all His work which God created and made.
To further expound verse 3, we need to look at Exodus 20. God did something special on the seventh day. He wanted people to remember what He did. God wants people to keep it in mind now because when He did that, the children of Israel have not been following the Sabbath. Why? That is because God did not ordain or give the command until the Law of Moses.
Exodus 20:11: “For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.”
Notice that in six days, the Lord made heaven and earth. These are the six days of creation. It says “He rested on the seventh day and hallowed it.” That is why He says to “remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy” (Exodus 20:8). That is why He told the children of Israel to remember the Sabbath.
The Seventh Day Adventists are very clever with scripture. They will try to argue verse 8, “remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy” that Sabbath was before Moses and that Christians need to remember it.
When a Christian goes back to Genesis 2, God blessed and sanctified the seventh day. Then they will say, “see God did something special on Saturday, so why are you not observing it?” Well, the answer to that is straightforward. All one must do when they read Genesis chapter 2 is to see that God considered the seventh day to be special. He never commanded Adam or anyone to keep the sabbath day. It only said that God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it. Isn’t God’s book holy? Yes, but that doesn’t mean that we need to have a special day of remembrance of the Bible.
The Seventh Day Adventist will argue that in Exodus 20:8, it says “to remember.” So, in other words, they did observe it before. So, because they were observing it before, God reminds them about what they observed back then.
There is an easy answer to this. In Exodus 20:8, God said to “remember the Sabbath.” It is because of the six days of creation He did, he blessed and sanctified it. The commandment is not given to anyone apart from the Jews about observing the sabbath day. It was a sign only for the nation of Israel. No one observed the Sabbath during Adam’s time. It started by the Law of Moses. It is important to understand that the Law of Moses was given to the children of Israel and not given to the whole world.
Exodus 20:1-2: “And God spake all these words, saying, I am the LORD thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.”
Who is God speaking to? He is speaking to the Jews.
One can not find a single verse in the whole Bible stating that Adam was to observe the Sabbath.
If the Seventh Day Adventist says that the Sabbath has been something from the past, Sabbath day, the seventh day of the week has always been around but there was no observance from the past until now. Here is a verse that says sabbath observance will not happen until the future for everyone.
Colossians 2:16: “Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days: Which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ.”
It is in the future that we will observe the Sabbath.
If one thinks that the people always knew to observe the Sabbath from the beginning of Adam until now, then they should look at the following passage.
Nehemiah 9:13-14: “Thou camest down also upon mount Sinai, and spakest with them from heaven, and gavest them right judgments, and true laws, good statutes and commandments: And madest known unto them thy holy Sabbath, and commandedst them precepts, statutes, and laws, by the hand of Moses thy servant:”
It was not until God gave the Law of Moses at Sinai that they knew about observing the Sabbath. It says that it was made known to them at Mount Sinai and not in the beginning.
The day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens
Genesis 2:4: “These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens,”
Notice that the Bible says, “heavens (plural) and of the earth.” The reason is that God created everything. There are three heavens:
- the first heaven is the sky,
- the second is outer space,
- and then the third heaven is where God is living.
God created everything, but God calls it, “these are the generations.” Notice generations are plural. God considers everything He created as generations, which means lifetime. Our generations are our chronology.
In verse 4, it says “day” in the singular. He switches and calls it a singular day where the Lord God made the earth and the heavens. From the previous study, one day means literally 24 hours. Verse 4 seems to be the prooftext for evolutionists claiming one day is not 24 hours but a long period.
The evolutionists are not right. Genesis 1 has six days of creation, and Genesis 2 is a single day. In the rule of contrast, one must understand how we can tell which interpretation is correct. Why the interpretation is not going to be 24 hours or long ages of time is because these two contradict each other. They contradict each other, but they must both be true, so they both mean different meanings. Also, remember verse 4, the rule of interpretation is that to always look at the context. The verse will reveal if it is figurative or literal. We do not need to force it to be figurative. Let’s look at the verse: “these are the generations”- that is considered one day. Was that not easy?!
The Bible also shows, “the day of the Lord.” The day of the Lord is not referred to as one single day. It talks about the world set on fire; it talks about God coming down on Armageddon to rule the world. It talks about a time where even some sort of rapture occurs. All of these can not be in one 24 hour day. There are many events or days within that one single day. A heretic always uses figurative interpretation.
Hosea 7:2-3: “And they consider not in their hearts that I remember all their wickedness: now their own doings have beset them about; they are before my face. They make the king glad with their wickedness, and the princes with their lies.”
These wicked Jews have caused and influenced their king to fall into sin with them. The Jews have been doing this with their wicked king sinning against God for a long time. Notice how the Bible words it; look at the figurative language here.
Hosea 7:4-5: “They are all adulterers, as an oven heated by the baker, who ceaseth from raising after he hath kneaded the dough, until it be leavened. In the day of our king the princes have made him sick with bottles of wine; he stretched out his hand with scorners.”
Notice in verse 4 of Hosea, “as,” this shows the figurative language. In verse 5, “in that day” is in a singular form. Verse 4 paints a figurative context:
- oven heated by the baker
- kneaded the dough
- sick with bottles of wine
Some portions of these verses can be literal and physical such as getting drunk. When God calls them adulterers in verse 4, remember that in the book of Hosea, God says that when they went after other gods. He does not mean physically, sexually, but spiritually. Therefore notice the figurative language. We must keep an eye out that one day can be figurative.
Plants and no rain
Genesis 2:5: “And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew: for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground.”
At Genesis 2:4, God talks about everything He created, and verse 5 is a continuation of that. Notice it says every plant before there were plants in the earth. It seems that God is making it very clear that He created it and it did not evolve randomly.
Romans 1:20: “For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:”
This is what God said in Genesis chapter 2: “Every plant that you see in the field and every herb that grows, know that before it grew, that I was the one that created it.”
The natural workings of nature including rainfall, were not operating at that time. God did not cause it to rain and there was no farmer to till the ground. But there went up a mist from the earth and watered the whole face of the ground. This mist would provide the water and humidity that vegetation needed.
Who is the “real you”?
Genesis 2:7: “And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.”
God breathed into Adam with “the breath of life.” When he breathed into Adam, he became a living soul. We see here body, soul, and spirit.
Body- God formed man from the dust of the ground
Spirit- and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life
Soul- and man became a living soul
Look at Genesis 2:7 carefully. We see God created a body, and God put the Spirit there, but the real Adam is when he became a living soul.
What is the Garden of Eden?
Genesis 2:8: “And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed.”
The garden of Eden is not Eden itself. There are a few times in the Bible where God will say Eden as a reference to the garden of Eden. Sometimes the Lord will do that, but we clearly see that the garden of Eden is not Eden in this passage.
Now, the question is, what is Eden?
Possibility #1 is Eden could be a particular location of Land. Look up the references or mentions of Eden in the Bible to see this.
Possibility #2 is that it refers to a mountain.
Ezekiel 28:13: “Thou hast been in Eden the garden of God; every precious stone was thy covering, the sardius, topaz, and the diamond, the beryl, the onyx, and the jasper, the sapphire, the emerald, and the carbuncle, and gold: the workmanship of thy tabrets and of thy pipes was prepared in thee in the day that thou wast created.”
God talks about Eden and talks about the garden of God which was in Eden. There could be a garden which is on the east side of the mountain of Eden.
Ezekiel 28:14: “Thou art the anointed cherub that covereth; and I have set thee so: thou wast upon the holy mountain of God; thou hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire.”
Ezekiel 28:16: “By the multitude of thy merchandise they have filled the midst of thee with violence, and thou hast sinned: therefore I will cast thee as profane out of the mountain of God: and I will destroy thee, O covering cherub, from the midst of the stones of fire.”
Satan was on the mountain, and in verse 13, he has been in Eden. Eden could be a reference to the mountain. This makes even more sense when we study the four rivers mentioned in Genesis. Is it possible to have a garden on a mountain? Yes, Jesus went to the garden of Gethsemane in the Mount of Olives.
Luke 22:39: “And he came out, and went, as he was wont, to the mount of Olives; and his disciples also followed him.”
At the latter part of Genesis 2:8, “and there he put the man whom He had formed.” God created man, formed him from the dust of the ground, and then put him into the garden. It could be that God formed man in Eden, and then from Eden, he put him in the garden. If one looks at history, why do people attribute something high and spiritual at the top of mountains? The Greeks did with their gods and Zeus.
Genesis 2:9: “And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.”
God, made every single tree that is pleasant to sight out of the ground. It was also good to eat. He mentions the Tree of Life and the tree of knowledge of good and evil in the midst of the garden.
What is the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil?
It is common for people to think that Adam and Eve ate an apple. That is false. The Tree of Knowledge of good and evil would be referring to grapes. Why? This is the best candidate for a fruit in the Bible that is always attributed to sin.
God didn’t forbid the apple, which is likened to silver, a positive reference. Grape is always negative; it only became positive when God came to the scene. When Jesus said this fruit of the vine (grapefruit) pictures His blood, he says “when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom.”
Numbers 6:3: “He shall separate himself from wine and strong drink, and shall drink no vinegar of wine, or vinegar of strong drink, neither shall he drink any liquor of grapes, nor eat moist grapes, or dried.”
Some people might argue that grapes can’t come from a tree because they come from a vine. There is no such thing as grapes growing on trees. However, the next verse will show that a vine is indeed labeled as a tree.
Numbers 6:4: “All the days of his separation shall he eat nothing that is made of the vine tree, from the kernels even to the husk.”
“Vine tree”- God says it is a tree. God does not give manmade terminologies in the Bible. For example, the scientist thinks he debunks God because Jesus calls a whale a fish. God created it; He can call it what He wants.
The Tree of Life could be olives? Why? The Tree of Knowledge of good and evil gave death and gave sin. What is the best candidate for a fruit to be attributed to life? The Holy Spirit. In Genesis 2:7, we read that He breathed into Adam. The Holy Spirit is attributed to olive oil.
It is not a coincidence that Job 15 talks about grapes and olive in the same verse.
Job 15:32-33: “It shall be accomplished before his time, and his branch shall not be green. He shall shake off his unripe grape as the vine, and shall cast off his flower as the olive.”
It mentions a certain timing and season of grapes and olives when it has not yet matured. If the grape has not matured, it is sour, and God connects that to death.
Jeremiah 31:30: “But every one shall die for his own iniquity: every man that eateth the sour grape, his teeth shall be set on edge.”
We see God attributes death to the sour grape (grape has not matured). Perhaps, Adam and Eve partook in the fruit when it was sour, immature, and they were not ready for eating. If that is the case, the timing for an olive and a grape to ripen is approximately the same. When you look at the grape or the olive when they have not fully bloomed or blossomed, they look very similar. Maybe that was why they did not eat from the tree of life yet because it was not the right time. If this is limited to a season or two, we could probably time when Adam and Eve were in the garden. It would have been winter.