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Chapter 1
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Genesis, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
God, Humanity, and Creation
Mistrust, Disobedience, and Death
Covenants and Faith in God’s Promises
The Role of Women
Summary
Analysis
Now that God has finished making the heavens, the earth, and everything in them, God spends the seventh day resting. Accordingly, he blesses the seventh day as a holy day.
God’s rest does not so much imply that God can be tired, but that God’s work is perfectly complete—there’s no further work to be done. The sacred seventh day became the basis of the Sabbath, a day dedicated to worship and rest from labor. In Judaism, the Sabbath is Saturday (more precisely from sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday); in Christianity, it’s on Sunday.
Themes
After the LORD God makes the earth and heavens, before it has yet rained to bring forth plants from the ground, the LORD God forms a man from the dust of the ground. He breathes the breath of life into the man’s nostrils, causing him to become a living being.
In this chapter, God begins to be referred to as the capitalized word “LORD.” In Hebrew, this appears as “YHWH,” which stands for God’s personal name, Yahweh, which ancient Jewish tradition did not spell out or pronounce. Modern scholarship has also suggested that the shift to the name “LORD God” (after the first chapter’s more generic “God”) indicates a separate strand of oral tradition underneath the biblical text. This second, less sweeping (and more intimate) creation account is also regarded as evidence for another layer of tradition.
Themes
The LORD God plants a garden in Eden and places the man there. The LORD God makes every kind of pleasant, fruitful tree to grow in Eden. The tree of life sits in the middle of the garden, as well as the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The garden is watered by a river. Beyond Eden, the river becomes four branches, and two of these are the Tigris and Euphrates.
God puts the first man into an environment that’s created just for him. Besides the trees from which the man can eat, two other special trees grow in the garden of Eden, though their role isn’t yet specified. The mention of the Tigris and Euphrates places Eden somewhere in Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq), though its purported location is vague.
Themes
The LORD God puts the man in the garden of Eden to tend it. He tells the man that he is allowed to eat from every tree, except for the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. If the man eats from that tree, he will die.
Scholars see the garden as a kind of holy sanctuary in which the man, guarding and tending it, acts as a priest. The forbidden tree gives moral knowledge in a way that God doesn’t intend for the man to experience.
Themes
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The LORD God decides that it’s not good for the man to be alone; he needs a companion. So the LORD God forms animals and birds and brings each of these to the man, who gives them names. However, none of these creatures is found to be a suitable partner for the man. So the LORD God puts the man into a deep sleep and removes one of the man’s ribs. From the rib he forms a woman.
So far, God has deemed everything in creation “very good,” but the man’s solitude is the first thing that is not good. The Hebrew word that’s used for partner is ezer, a word which implies that the man lacks some necessary companionship. Most scholars take issue with the common translation of the word ezer to the word “helper,” which has connotations of inferiority. But in Hebrew, the word ezer actually means perfect companionship and help that comes from a place of strength, more like a savior or a rescuer than an assistant. This suggests that the woman isn’t intended to serve the man, but to serve alongside him. Throughout the Old Testament, the word ezer appears 21 times, 16 of which refer to God himself, which scholars see as further proof that God intended the woman to be the man’s perfect match, like a puzzle piece, rather than his administrative assistant.
Themes
When the LORD God brings the woman to the man, the man calls her “Woman,” because she was taken out of the man. The man says that she is “bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.” (Because the woman was taken from the man, a man leaves his parents and “clings” to his wife, becoming one flesh with her.) The man and his wife are naked, and they are unashamed about this.
The Hebrew words used here for man and woman—ish and ishshah—are a play on words that the original audience would have recognized. The man’s joyful description of the newly made woman as “flesh of my flesh” shows that he recognizes her as his equal, belonging in the closest possible relationship with him. This closeness establishes the pattern for marriage.
Themes
