The Lᴏʀᴅ creates Eve.

Genesis 2.18-25.

Continuing the second creation story. In the first story, God created the birds on day five and the land animals on day six, and humans right after the animals. In the second, God creates the male human, “Adam,” first. Then makes him a garden to tend, puts him in it, and tells him all the trees are his to eat from—except the one, which’ll kill him.

And then—part of the same Hebrew paragraph—God decides Adam needs a partner, because when humans are alone, we get weird. It’s not just when Christians skip church. Everything God created is good, Ge 1.31 but this particular situation is not good.

Genesis 2.18-25 KWL

18The god YHWH said, “It’s not good

that the human is all by himself.

I will make for him a helper,

like his counterpart.”

19The god YHWH shaped from the soil

every wild living creature

and every bird of the skies.

He brought them to the human

to see what the human called them.

Whatever the human called each living soul,

that was its name.

20The human called the names

of every beast, bird of the sky,

and every wild living creature.

As for the human, he didn’t find a helper,

like his counterpart.

21The god YHWH made

a deep sleep fall upon the human,

and he slept.

God took one of his ribs

and filled in the flesh under it.

22The god YHWH built the rib,

which he took from the human,

into a woman,

and brought her to the human.

23The human said,

“Now this is a bone from my bones,

flesh from my flesh.

For this person will be called woman,

for this person was taken out of man.”

24This is why a man will leave his father and his mother

and cling to his woman.

They become one flesh.

25The two of them were naked—

the human and his woman.

They felt no shame.

The author of Genesis (who isn’t Moses, but for convenience, I call him “Moe”) tells us right away in verse 24 the reason for this story: It’s why women and men pair up. It’s why women and men have a closer relationship with one another than between parents and children. We’re fully compatible. We’re partners. The woman was created as “a helper, like his counterpart.” She was meant to be Adam’s equal.

No, not a subordinate. Sexists will insist women are created to serve men. It is true we humans are created to serve one another, but that’s regardless of race or gender: White men like me are created to also serve women and nonwhites. (And not by bossing them around; that’s just a devilish redefinition of service.) Men serve women; women serve men. But sexists wanna find biblical reasons for their godless attitudes, and they’ll distort Genesis to justify it.

The bonkers thing is, Genesis was written in a sexist, patriarchal culture, where women were likewise considered subordinate to men. And even then, the writer of Genesis doesn’t describe God creating women to serve men. She’s an עֵ֖זֶר/etsér, “help, aid, rescue.” When the man can’t do it alone, the woman helps. Same as the man—when the woman can’t do it alone, the man helps. Same as God—when we can’t do it alone, the Holy Spirit helps. She’s his counterpart, his partner, his advocate, his friend, his love. They complete one another.

Any interpretation which doesn’t affirm their equal status and mutual service, is exploitative. And is wholly inappropriate for Christians.

The second creation story.

Genesis 2.4-17.

Back in college I took a Pentateuch class—πεντάτευχος/pentátefkhos being Greek for “five cases,” i.e. the five boxes in which the five “books of Moses,” the Torah, were kept. It was a fun class; our professor got us up to speed on what current bible scholars, both conservative and liberal, taught about the Torah. And occasionally he’d drop facts on us which we’d never noticed before. Like how Genesis has two creation stories: The six days of creation, Ge 1.1 – 2.3 and how Adam and Eve came to be—then be banished from paradise. Ge 2.4 – 3.24

Yep. First he had us read the first story, then stop; then pointed out how the first story never refers to God as the LORD—but this next story does, throughout. And is more of an answer to the question, “Why didn’t God, who’s such a good, wise, benevolent Father, make the earth a suffering-free, death-free paradise for us?” Well… it turns out he did. But we completely f---ed it up.

The six days of creation are a rebuttal to ancient middle eastern myths about creation. This second story has a whole different point. Same as the first story, it’s not a scientific explanation for creation; it’s not about how God did it, but that he did it, and why. We can figure out how with research and experiments—and by avoiding the Creation Museum, which only wants your loyalty to their anti-evolutionary theories, and of course your money.

Because the second story refers to יְהוָ֥ה אֱלֹהִ֖ים/YHWH Elohím, “the LORD God” throughout, and not just Elohím, “God,” like the first story, many biblical scholars figure it was obviously composed by a different author than the guy who wrote the first story. Probably. But one guy assembled all those stories into Genesis, so that’d be the author of Genesis—who wrote the book after there were kings in Israel. Ge 36.31 So, not till the 12th century BC… so definitely not Moses ben Amram, who lived in the 15th century. But I usually call the author “Moe” anyway.

And here’s where Moe tells the second creation story.

Genesis 2.4-17 KWL

4These are the stories of the skies and the land

in the day of their creation.

The god YHWH made land and skies,

5and every domestic plant before it was in the land,

and every domestic herb before it sprouted.

For the god YHWH didn’t yet bring rain to the land,

and no human to work the soil.

6Instead a water vapor came up from the land,

and gave a drink to all the surface of the soil.

7The god YHWH shaped the human

out of dust from the soil.

He breathed into the human’s nostrils a breath of life,

and the human was now a living soul.

8The god YHWH planted a garden in Eden,

in the east,

and there he put the human

which he shaped.

9The god YHWH sprouted from the soil

every pleasant-looking tree, good for food.

And the tree of life in the middle of the garden—

and the tree of knowing good and bad.

10A river flowed out of Eden to give the garden a drink.

It divided from there to be four heads.

11One is named Pišón.

It surrounds all the land of Havilá, which has gold.

12The land’s gold is good.

Fragrant resin and onyx stones are also there.

13The second river is named Gikhón.

It surrounds all the land of Cuš.

14The third river is named Khiddeqél.

It flows in front of Assyria.

The fourth river is Perát.

15The god YHWH took the human

and rested him in the garden of Eden,

to work it and watch it.

16The god YHWH ordered the human,

saying, “Eat, eat of every tree in the garden!

17Don’t eat from the tree of knowing good and bad.

For the day you eat from it, you die, die.”

The Lᴏʀᴅ takes a day off.

Genesis 2.1-3.

The first creation story doesn’t end at the end of Genesis 1. It continues three verses into chapter 2, with day seven—the passage which establishes the sabbath.

Genesis 2.1-3 KWL

1The skies and the land

and all their armies

were completed.

2God completed on day seven

his handiwork which he made.

God stopped on day seven

from all his handiwork which he made.

3God blessed day seven

and made it sacredly unique,

for in it, he stopped from all his handiwork,

which is all the creation God did.

Unique holy days weren’t anything new to the ancients. But they weren’t as frequent as the Hebrew holy day of sabbath, which arrived every seventh day.

The ancient Sumerians had a five-day week. But in certain months—in Elul (roughly around August) and Bul (roughly around October)—they set apart the 7th, 14th, 19th, 21st, and 28th days of the month. On these days the kings, priests, and witch doctors had to be particularly careful to not enrage their head god, Enlil. No eating cooked food, no dressing in nice clothes, no riding in chariots, and so forth. Now like I said, they had a five-day week, but y’notice they were careful to observe every seventh day. Plus the 19th day—which was the 49th day after the previous month began, so seven sevens.

In contrast, the Hebrews didn’t only observe seventh days for two months a year: This was all year long. Their week had seven days, not five. And the special behavior the Hebrews had to practice was not because it’d anger God and he’d start a-smiting them. It’s because he wanted his people to stop working. To take a day off, same as he took a day off. It’s not a warning; it’s for our benefit. Like Jesus put it, “Sabbath is made for people, not people for sabbath.” Mk 2.27

Introducing death.

Humans die. Here’s why.

The first time we read about death in the bible, it’s in the Adam and Eve story. God tasks the first adám/“human” with taking care of a garden. Which is described as edén/“delightful,” but we tend to treat that adjective as a proper name, Eden, same as we do the word for human, Adam.

Unlike fast-food jobs, Adam was given free rein to eat anything he found growing there. Well, almost anything. One particular tree, you remember, was off limits.

Genesis 2.15-17 KWL

15 The LORD God took the human

and set him in a delightful garden to work it and watch over it.

16 The LORD God commanded the human, saying, “Eat, eat, from every tree of the garden.

17 From the knowing-good-and-evil tree: Don’t eat from it.

For on the day you eat from it, you’ll die, die.”

Ancient Hebrew repeated itself for emphasis. “Eat, eat” meant God was serious about Adam eating whatever he wished; “Die, die” meant God was serious about the knowing-good-and-evil tree being toxic.

No doubt you also know the rest of the story: God’s warnings notwithstanding, the first humans did eat from that tree. That’s the risk inherent in free will: Sometimes people exercise it to do profoundly stupid things. Satan used its free will to go wrong; Adam and Eve did too. And since actions have consequences, they were gonna die, die.

Genesis 3.17-19 KWL

17 God told the human, “When you heard your woman’s voice,

you ate from the tree I commanded you about, and said not to eat from it.

The ground—what you produce from it—is cursed.

All the days of your life, you’ll eat of in in pain: 18 Thorns and thistles will grow from it.

You’ll eat the grass of the fields, 19 and eat bread by the sweat of your nose

till you go back to the ground that you were taken out of:

You’re dust, and you’ll go back to being dust.”

Humans were meant to live forever. Now we don’t.

Sin is why. Apparently Adam could’ve got hold of the tree of life, eaten of it, and lived forever despite this curse. Which is why God had to boot the humans out of the garden and post angelic guards around it. Ge 3.22-24 God doesn’t want sin to live forever; he wants to put an end to it. That’s why we’re gonna die. Why, frankly, we gotta die: Our sins die with us.

That is, till Jesus died for us, and our sins died with him—and now we can go back to living forever.

Same-gender marriage in the United States.

Depending on your politics, same-gender marriage is either a done deal or a huge issue.

I think we can figure out which camp you’re in, based on what you call it. I’m gonna describe it as same-gender marriage, ’cause that’s what it is. Conservatives seem to prefer “same-sex marriage” and “gay marriage,” and of course cruder terms. Progressives frequently use the term “marriage equality,” ’cause they’re trying to emphasize how, as they see it, it’s no more nor less than marriage—so why add adjectives?

Me, I know a lot of conservatives. To their minds, same-gender marriage is gonna be the ruin of the United States.

Mostly that’s because their beliefs consist of a combination of replacement theology and civic idolatry. Replacement theology presumes Christianity has taken the place of ancient Israel, and all the LORD’s promises to Moses and the Hebrews in the wilderness, now apply to us present-day Christians and our nations. Civic idolatry presumes this is especially true of the United States; that because of our Christian forebears, and indicated by God’s blessings of abundant wealth and military supremacy, America is God’s primary Christian nation. Americans will grudgingly accept some other nations are sorta Christian… but nobody’s as Christian as we are. (Now cue the chants of “U-S-A! U-S-A!”)

The catch: If the United States has superseded Israel, and likewise has a special covenant with the LORD, when Americans violate his will, the cycle’s gonna kick in and God’ll let our enemies smite us. Or he’ll personally smite us himself with hurricanes. Either way.

I should point out if replacement theology were in any way not rubbish, God would’ve started smiting Americans long before we declared our independence. ’Cause slavery. True, there’s slavery in the bible, and God even had commands about how the Hebrews were to make and treat slaves. But by those commands’ metric, American slavery was a ghastly abomination. It wasn’t a penitentiary system. It was kidnapping, dehumanization, and torture. If the Civil War was, as Abraham Lincoln believed, God’s judgment upon American slavery, we got off so lightly.

Need I mention all the other violations of God’s covenant with the Hebrews which Americans—including “good Christians”—violate hourly? We’d be here a while.

Same-gender marriage zeroes in on only one command of the 613: The command prohibiting male-on-male sexual activity. Lv 18.22 It’s not one of the 10 commandments, nor one of Jesus’s top two, but conservative Christians have elevated it to maybe number 13. To them, it offends God like no other.

The real problem? It offends them like no other. They personally find homosexuality distasteful. That’s why they can’t “live and let live,” like they do with all the other commands they ignore. Or even themselves commit, like coveting and Sabbath-breaking. This one captures their attention because it creeps ’em out. Hence their quickness to condemn it, and everything relating to it… as they look the other way at snobbery, lying, injustice, evil schemes, and all the stuff God’s truly outraged by. Pr 6.16-19 Their priorities take precedence.

What’s a soul?

SOUL soʊl noun. Lifeforce.

2. [in popular culture] The immaterial, spiritual essence of a human; considered immortal.

SOULISH 'soʊl.ɪʃ adjective. Having to do with one’s lifeforce.

2. [in popular Christian culture] Fleshly.

One of the vexing problems of Christianity is we have certain words we use which nobody ever bothers to define. As a result, people guess—and guess wrong. Our word “soul” is probably the most obvious example.

Years ago, a newbie Christian asked his pastor what a “soul” was, to which the pastor replied, “Oh, you shouldn’t even try to define it.” The pastor figured a soul is a mystery, a concept way beyond human understanding. Best to leave mysteries alone, and not waste our time—or make ourselves nuts—trying to understand ’em.

I admit it’s kinda western of me, but I can’t agree: If you use a word and don’t know what it means, it’s foolish. If you don’t wanna know its meaning, you’re a fool. It might be a concept that’s too vast for our tiny little minds—but all the more reason we should tackle it. We learn a lot this way.

Christians don’t entirely understand the immaterial parts of ourselves. So we mix up the soul and spirit all the time. Popular culture is no help: It confounds spirit with emotion, and it confounds soul with sensitivity and creativity. If “you’ve got soul,” you’re either emotionally intense, or intellectually intense. Or you like Motown.

But some of the culture’s uses of “soul” give hints to its proper biblical meaning. The “soul” of a movement or endeavor is the person who inspires it, embodies it, gives it that spark of life. To “bare one’s soul” means to share every part of one’s life. A “soulmate” is someone you share your life with. And when a disaster happens and “souls were lost,” it means lives.

So what’s a soul then? It’s a lifeforce.

The bible’s words for soul are nefésh in Hebrew, psyhí in Greek. Both of them literally mean “breath.” ’Cause when we’re alive, we breathe, right? And when we no longer are, we don’t.

When God made the first human—

Genesis 2.7 KWL

The LORD God sculpted the human of dust from the ground.

God breathed into his nose the breath of life, giving the human a living soul.

The KJV says the human “became a living soul,” which is another valid way to translate it. Though most bibles nowadays simply translate nefésh and psyhí as “life.”

So yes, everything that’s alive has a soul. ’Cause it breathes. When it stops breathing, its soul has gone out. That’s right: Souls aren’t immortal. In humans they were meant to be; Adam and Eve were meant to live forever. But they lost access to the Tree of Life, so they died… ’cause now humans die.