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,
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.
6. But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground.
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.
8. And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed.
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.
(...)
19. And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.
20. And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him.
21. And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof;
22. And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.
comments:
What order things are listed in, in the account of the creation, may or may not be literal, or may be generalized (or summarized) in many ways. I think it worth mentioning that in these verses, the order differs from what was listed in chapter 1.
In verse 5 (of chapter 2), it says that the plants were created before they were in the earth, before they grew, and goes on to suggest (in later verses) that the ground was watered, then a man was formed, and then the plants were made to grow (including the garden planted in Eden). After that, the man was placed in the garden, the animals (all other creatures) were formed, and then the woman. It has been said by some that the two different orders (comparing chapter 2 with chapter 1) indicate spiritual creation, and physical creation. Things being spiritually created, prepared, planned, and organized before the actual work of the creation sounds very reasonable to me, so I favor that explanation.
Another suggestion is that the order doesn't matter, or at least, that to us in our lives now, what order things were created in doesn't matter as much as the simple fact that all these things were created, that they exist. I trust that whatever order things were created in, was according to God's plan, and that whatever means were used to create them, was in whatever way God saw best to do it.
I have said before, that I believe the most important things are that credit for the creation goes to God, and that things were organized according to God's plan, rather than haphazard or accidental. I also believe that while we mortals here in our limited perceptions of our universe and reality in this life experience time in a strictly linear way, God is able to perceive the whole of it in a non-linear way, which may be described as "knowing the end from the beginning" not simply to say, knowing how it all will end, right from the very beginning; but also to say that God, in being able to see everything taken all together, knows what must happen in cause-and-effect relationships, to choose an effect or outcome, and then select the cause or circumstances that will lead to that end. Situations where from our perspective, all outcomes of a particular situation may appear equal, but God knows which one will lead to a better result much farther down the line. Or, alternatively, in many situations, in our limited point of view we may judge that one result of a current situation would be much better for us than another, but God can see that the result we don't like now will later on lead to something far better. And, sometimes, God may see that our choosing what we want now will lead to a negative impact on our lives later, and will allow us to still choose for ourselves... but may warn us that it is a bad choice, even if we currently have no other way of knowing that, or if popular opinion even claims the opposite.
One way I like to imagine that sort of perspective (which may be described as an eternal perspective) is by thinking of what it is like for someone who is writing a book (or a screenplay) or designing a game. Some very important parts may be written or designed that come later in the narrative, and then afterwards, the writer/designer plans what needs to happen before that, to lead up to it. At any time, the author can revisit any part of the timeline that may be desired to work on it, and if the characters in the story were capable of being aware of it, it would appear as though the creator is visiting every part of the story and making edits to it all at once, at any and every point in time, and in all places at once, and who always knows what everyone is thinking, and what everyone will do and where it will lead. It doesn't matter if the creator is literally in more than one place at a time from the creator's own perspective, because in working on every part of the story, in every location of it, in whatever order, the creator's hand is in everything. The resulting work has a beginning and an end and everything in between, and that is how the characters in the story (or someone reading a book or playing a game) experience it.
For someone reading a book, a similar perspective can be achieved after one has read the whole book, knows everything that will happen, and can then return to any page of the book to re-read a scene that, for the characters, is happening for the first time and they don't know what's going to happen yet, but the reader who has finished the book knows. Similarly, people watching a movie or tv show that they've seen before can go back and re-watch any scene in the story, in any order, and know what happened before each and what will happen after, but the characters in the story are still experiencing it in linear order because they are inside the story - unlike the people watching, who are outside of it. Playing a game and going back to re-play different parts of it can give a similar effect, and especially where one who has played the game all the way through may have a different perspective, being able to go back and choose something different at some point in order to achieve a different result later on in the game, gets closer to the perspective one has when writing a story and planning things out. The actual story still occurs in a linear way (usually) but the perspective of the player is different from what it was on the first playthrough.
I don't mean to suggest that God needs to micromanage everything. As I said before, many things that are a part of God's creation are set up so they can maintain themselves without needing everything managed for them. Also, it's pretty obvious to an awful lot of people, that God doesn't micromanage people... in that it's very common for people to not experience immediate divine retribution or reward for their bad or good behavior, and God doesn't immediately answer every prayer with instant guidance or other help. God clearly allows many situations where people are left to experience the natural consequences of their actions, or situations where they need the help of others, without God babying (or infantilizing) everyone. I see this as similar to when reasonable parents allow their children to learn to make decisions for themselves, to learn to do things for themselves, and to help each other do things instead of the parents doing everything for the children.
So as I was saying... for things like plants growing, animals migrating, weather changing, and everything else in nature, God could choose the desired result and see/know everything that would need to be in a cause-effect chain to reach that result, and thus in creating the world and everything in it, God could know from the beginning what to set in motion and how to prepare things, in order to have everything develop in the way that God chose. Even with things that may seem accidental or inconsequential. If God can see it all happening in a non-linear way, then even things that God may not directly cause to happen, would be known beforehand and God either allows them to be so, or plans in advance for a particular result, like when a gardener prunes a tree or grafts a branch or takes some other action but then lets the tree continue to grow under those circumstances so that it will eventually achieve a desired outcome. The tree does the growing, and the gardener doesn't need to form every new leaf and bud, but directs the overall growth and sometimes takes action to influence small parts of the tree as well as large ones, through both direct and indirect means.
Another thing I'd like to say about what I believe, regarding the means God used in the creation. To begin with, I don't claim to know how God does anything, but I absolutely do believe that God doesn't work against the laws of nature (including laws of physics, thermodynamics, etc.) but that the laws of nature include a great many things that humankind does not currently understand, from our point of view in this mortal life on one planet, limited to a perspective that is both time-linear and restricted to only 3 spacial dimensions. Keep in mind things like... mankind makes use of many metals which do not normally float, but by using Archimedes' principle, large ships made (mostly) of metal, are able to float in the ocean. Gravity normally causes things to fall, but using principles of aerodynamics, winged creatures can fly and humans can build devices that fly as well. Using sufficient propulsion methods, things can be launched into space from the surface of the Earth. It's not anti-gravity or some other means of causing gravity to cease functioning... it's just using additional laws of physics wisely, in order to achieve something more than what you'd get if gravity were the only thing in play. I don't believe that it makes anything done by God seem any less miraculous, to believe that it's in keeping with scientific principles, and not magic. Miraculous is what we call things that are wonderful and good and which we are not able to do ourselves, and that we cannot fathom the means used to achive them. God works miracles all the time, and just because we don't understand it all yet, doesn't mean it's not possible. It doesn't have to be magic, to be miraculous.
As I've said that we, in this life, as mortal humans, are limited to a time-linear perspective and only being able to directly observe 3 spacial dimensions using our available senses, there's a limit to how much we can know for certain (in this life) about everything. I don't believe that means we should limit our attempts to understand, our efforts in scientific inquiry. It's just that I believe in a life after this, where we will be able to learn much more, after we learn all that we can in this life. It also means that I believe that it's okay if we don't understand everything yet, and that includes the means God used in creating the Earth and everything on it, and indeed, the rest of this universe as well. As fascinating as it may be for scientific inquiry (and worthwhile effort in any case) I don't think anyone can expect to piece together the full story of the Earth's formation and the development of life on Earth, based on things that can be weighed, measured, examined, and recorded in the current state of the world from our limited perceptual range as mortal human beings. I don't believe there's enough surviving, physical tangible evidence to record and examine. It's simply incomplete, and always will be. We can't really learn the full story that way, only fragments. I hope that we may learn more about it from God in the hereafter, but I believe that there are - spiritually - more important things that God wishes to teach us while we are still in this life. I'm not saying there's no value to studying fossils and ancient geology, and other areas of scientific inquiry (I do in fact believe that there is a great deal of value to what can be learned through such studies) ...I'm just trying to say that I don't think we should expect a full set of answers from it about who Adam and Eve were, the nature of a human soul or the souls of other living things, nor should one base one's spiritual foundation on whether or not the fossil record could ever answer such questions. We should look to God for answers about spiritual things.
