Genesis 2 - New Catholic Bible (NCB)

Chapter 2

¹ This is how the heavens and the earth and everything in them were made.

^{2 [a]}God completed his work on the seventh day and on the seventh day he rested from all of his work. ³ God blessed the seventh day and he consecrated it, for on it he rested from all the work he had done when he created all things.

⁴ This was the origin of the heavens and the earth when they were first created.

Origin of Human Beings.^[b] When the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, ⁵ there were not yet any plants of the field nor had any herbs sprouted in the field, for the Lord God had not yet made it rain upon the earth and there was no one to till the soil. ⁶ He made a mist rise out of the ground to water the whole surface of the earth. ⁷ Then the Lord God formed man^[c] out of the dust of the earth and he breathed his breath of life into his nostrils and man became a living creature.

⁸ And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden,^[d] in the east, and he put the man he had formed there. ⁹ The Lord God made all sorts of beautiful and nourishing trees sprout out of the earth, among which was the tree of life^[e] in the middle of the garden and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

¹⁰ A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden; then it divided into four tributaries. ^{11 [f]}The first river was called the Pishon. It waters the whole land of Havilah where one can find gold, ¹² and the gold of that land is good. One can also find bdellium and onyx in that land. ¹³ The second river is the Gihon. It flows in the land of Ethiopia. ¹⁴ The third river is the Tigris. It flows to the east of the land of Asshur. The fourth river is the Euphrates.

¹⁵ The Lord God took the man and placed him in the Garden of Eden so that he might work it and care for it. ¹⁶ The Lord God told the man, “You can eat of any of the trees in the garden, ¹⁷ but you must never eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. If you were to eat from it, you would surely die.”

^{18 [g]}And the Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone.^[h] I wish to make another creature who will be like him.”

¹⁹ The Lord God therefore formed every sort of wild animal and all the birds of the air, and he brought them before the man to see what he would name them.^[i] Whatever the man called each living creature, that was the name that it would bear. ²⁰ The man gave names to every type of animal, all the birds of the air and all the wild animals, but the man could not find anything that was like him.

²¹ The Lord God therefore caused the man to fall into a deep sleep. He took one of his ribs and replaced it with flesh. ²² The Lord God then formed a woman out of the rib that he had taken from the man. He brought her before the man.

²³ The man said,

“This one is bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh.^[j]
She shall be called woman
because she was taken from man.”

²⁴ This is why a man leaves his father and his mother^[k] and joins with a wife, and the two become one flesh.

²⁵ Now the man and the woman were naked, but they did not feel any shame.

Footnotes

1. Genesis 2:2 The model of a week that the Priestly account uses in describing the divine creation is meant to teach that the pattern of days of work followed by rest on the seventh day originates in the will of God himself.
2. Genesis 2:4 The preceding section (Gen 1:1—2:4a) is to be interpreted as a rethinking of certain aspects of creation and an integration, into a systematic and much broader vision, of what had already been set down in the following story, which is older. This Yahwist account of origins is a single piece that is subdivided into chapters 2, 3, and 4. In its literary form it follows the structure of Sumerian-Babylonian hymns that sing of the origins of civilization, but in its content it is truly religious and completely independent of those mythologies. It expresses, in popular language, a theology of the greatest richness and depth.
   God is here called by his proper name, Yahweh, the name under which he reveals himself to his people, Israel; he alone, and no one else, is the maker of the entire world.
   Man has need of a collaborator, and God provides this. Woman will be by her nature far superior to the animals, which however will provide help to her and the man. The man exercises dominion over them, while man and woman are made for each other and will achieve their purpose each through the other. This law that God has written into the nature of human beings is the basis for the unity of the couple in marriage, which establishes a single human entity that is no longer divisible into parts. Jesus will reaffirm this exigency (Mt 19:3-8) and St. Paul will remind Christian spouses that their union contributes to actuating in time an unsuspected spiritual reality, namely, the fruitful union of Christ and the Church, in which children of God are born (Eph 5:31-32).
   The story of creation is meant to say what kind of beings men and women are and what their origin is, but it does not go into detail on the way in which they were created; it does not specify whether God formed man and woman by direct action or through the cooperation of natural forces that took very long periods to accomplish their work. At the same time, the story emphasizes the fact that the material being is animated by a higher vital principle that is not a product of nature but is infused by God himself. Finally, in describing the unity of the couple formed by the Creator the story proclaims that the human species is one.
3. Genesis 2:7 Man, in Hebrew adam, is the common name of the human species; only beginning in Gen 4:25 and 5:1 will it be regarded as the proper name of the first male. Here and in 3:19, 23, the author connects it with Hebrew adama, “earth.” This is not a scientific etymology but a popular one, based on assonance. In fact, it seems that adam derives from Sumerian ada-mu, “my father.” His companion, too, is initially called “woman” and receives the proper name “Eve” only from Gen 3:20 on. It seems that this name, haua in Hebrew, derives from Sumerian ama, “mother.”
4. Genesis 2:8 Eden is derived from Sumerian edin, which means a level, steppe-like, desert region. The garden occupies an eastern section of it; this word, too, gan in Hebrew, is properly Sumerian and means a watered and cultivated piece of land. It was translated into Greek as paradeisos, “garden,” giving rise to the name “earthly paradise.”
5. Genesis 2:9 The tree of life symbolizes the possibility of becoming immortal that was granted as an unmerited gift to human beings, although these were by nature subject to death (Gen 3:22). The tree of the knowledge of good and evil symbolizes the attribute proper to the Creator, by reason of which God is the foundation of the moral order. The first couple attempt to usurp this attribute (Gen 3:5, 22), desiring to decide for themselves what is good and evil for them.
6. Genesis 2:11 The Pishon and the Gihon are completely unknown; if Gen 10:20 is taken into account, Havilah would be in Arabia.
7. Genesis 2:18 This is the only full account of the creation of woman in ancient Near Eastern literature.
8. Genesis 2:18 Not good . . . to be alone: without female companionship and a partner in reproduction, the man could not fully realize his humanity.
9. Genesis 2:19 Name them: this was the man’s first act of dominion over the creatures around him.
10. Genesis 2:23 Bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh: a common Semitic way of expressing consanguinity (Gen 29:14) or membership in the same tribe or even simply in the same people (2 Sam 5:1; 19:13-14) or the same city (Jdg 9:2). Here it means that the woman has the same nature as the man; she alone can make possible the love that characterizes the matrimonial bond. The words she shall be called woman, etc., can be understood only in light of the assonance in the original text: Hebrew, isha, “woman,” seems to be the feminine form of ish, “man” in the sense of “male” (adam refers to man as including both man and woman, i.e., possessing the nature common to all human beings).
11. Genesis 2:24 Leaves his father and his mother: instead of remaining under the protective custody of his parents, a man leaves them and, with his wife, establishes a new family unit. Joins . . . one flesh: the divine intention for husband and wife was monogamy. Together they were to form an inseparable union, of which “one flesh” is both a sign and an expression.