Genesis 1:26–2:7

God has finished creation as creation. Now He begins to take counsel, in the most solemn way, saying that He will make man in His image and give him rule. So the creation is complete as the setting and the scene. Then God makes man in His own image and sets him over it all. Man stands entirely alone. Everything is finished, and then he is given rule over it.

One thing set man apart from every other creature. God took counsel about him before He made him. What was coming was not a new animal. It was a moral being with wonderful gifts and possibilities.

That God should say, "Let US," is worthy of note. Elohim is, as we have said, a plural Name. The Old Testament does not reveal the three Persons in the Godhead. But now that God has revealed Them, we can see that the language of our chapter, given by God, fits that truth. In verse 26 it is "Our image". In verse 27 it is "His image". There is no clash here, because the eternal "Three in One" is the One speaking.

Think of the plural form of the word and how it goes with singular verbs. Would it not be close to the truth to say this? We cannot treat it as a revelation of the Trinity. Yet it is a way of speaking that shows the Spirit had that truth in mind. He is the third Person there, and He used words whose full force we could only grasp once that teaching had been revealed.

"Image" represents. "Likeness" resembles. An image does not have to look like the thing or person it stands for. The coin they showed the Lord Jesus in Matthew 22:20 may not have carried a "likeness" of Caesar, but it did carry an "image" of him. Man is made in the "image" of God. So God places him in this world to represent Him to the lower creatures, in rule and in blessing. That word is about man's position. "Likeness" points to his moral being. He can enter into relationships and carry responsibilities.

Scripture never says the Son is in the likeness of the invisible God. He is God. To call Him like God might suggest He is not truly God. Still, the Son is "the image of the invisible God". In His own Person He represents God in His character and moral attributes, before the whole universe.

This is man as the head of creation… He was to represent God here below. Besides that, he was to be like God. He was to have a mind, a spirit able to know God, with no evil in him at all.

God creates the man and the woman. Then He gives them rule "over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth". Move on to Genesis 3, and there Satan has come in. He has gained this headship for himself through the man who had fallen.

Man is in the image of God, now as always, fallen or not. But sin cost him the likeness of God. When the question is the guilt of taking a man's life, the reason given is that God made him in His own image. This, it is plain, was never lost; it abides, whatever man's state.

God created Adam in His own image and set him to rule over the works of His hands. Adam stood at the centre of a vast system placed under him. He was, the apostle says, a picture of the One who was to come. The rule of the Second Adam reaches much further than the rule of the first. He created all things Himself, so He is to inherit all He has created.

To be true to the image, there must be moral likeness. For us that means a new creation. So Colossians 3:10 says we "have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator".

God did not create man as He had done in every previous case, by a simple order from His lips. The creation of man was the subject of divine counsel. "Let us make man," etc. Notice here that man was to be, and was, made in the image and likeness of God. This is his first great difference from everything God had created before. The second is that he was to rule over all of it.

How the Bible uses the word, in both the Old and New Testaments, seems to show that "image" represents, while "likeness" resembles… In the New Testament, the coin our Lord asked for had the image and inscription of Caesar on its face. It might have been a poor likeness, but it was an unmistakable image of the Roman emperor. It expressed his authority and represented his claim.

God made man, then, to represent Him to the lower creation that He put under him. But he was also made after the likeness of God; that is, he was really like God in certain important respects. Not in all respects of course, for God is infinitely holy and man was merely innocent. Still, man was God's "offspring" (Acts 17:28-29). He is a spirit being, though dressed in a body of flesh and blood. So he has intelligence and a moral sense, and these reflect what exists on an infinite scale in God Himself.

How far this is from the brute finally evolving into man, a theory suggested by Satan to brutalise the race! Here is the simple yet wonderful truth. No one brought God down to the human level; God created man, and man alone, after a divine pattern.

Man is no longer in the likeness of God, but he is always in the image of God. For man, now as ever, fallen or not, is in the image of God; but the likeness of God was lost through sin. Seth therefore was born in Adam's own likeness, not in God's. He was like Adam fallen, not only his representative.

The fall has not cost man either the image or the likeness of God (Gen. 9:6; James 3:9).

The murderer does more than meddle with man and injure him to the worst degree. By killing a man he also defaces God's image, and God sentences him to die. Murder seizes what belongs to God, and no man has that right.

Verse 27 says that man is twofold… the few words here show us how closely Scripture ties male and female together. The word "man" covers both, and jointly they were to have the dominion.

Christ brings out God's glory in these things, and He shows how it was at the beginning. God did not make one man and two women, but "male and female he created them." So from the very forming of man, God's mind was clear.

God created man in His own image and likeness. But no one could call Christ, "who is God over all, blessed forever," the likeness of God, since He is God. But He can be the image of God, for "image" is what represents another, and Christ did this for God perfectly.

To be true to the image, there must be moral likeness. For us that means a new creation. So Col. 3:10 says the new self "is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its Creator."

"To every beast of the earth I have given every green plant for food." This would imply that animals were not carnivorous. There is a difference between cattle and beasts; but in that statement the cattle are left out; the "beasts" are what we call wild beasts. It is perfectly within God's power to have restricted them for the time, or to have changed them.

Man still has his distinctive place in God's commission and plan; but it is in the state of innocence. After the fall came corruption and violence. Animal food was not permitted to man till after the flood. Herbs and fruit were given at first to man, and to the subject creation every green plant. Death was not in the Adamic earth till sin. True, Romans 5:12-21 goes no further than the human race, fallen under death through sin. But Romans 8:19-22 looks at "all the creation" as ruined through the fall of its head.

So I conclude that death was not in the creation of which man was the head until his fall. But scripture says nothing about what may have happened between the creation of the heavens and the earth and the forming of the present world out of chaos... So geologists may find as many fossil giants and sea reptiles as they please. They do not touch the statements of scripture one way or another, because scripture makes none about it. Death entered only into the creation connected with man, and by man's sin. Scripture states that, though it does not deal with what it meant for the beasts. Genesis 1:30 confirms it, for it gives the green grass to the beasts of the earth.

Scripture states plainly that herbs were given for food to the beasts of the field. This was not written out of ignorance, for lions were eating men in Moses' time. Moses wrote it with the deliberate intention of claiming a revelation, and so he contradicts the whole existing order of facts about animals... He declares that at first they were given the green plant for food. Scripture gives us to understand they ate that in the ark... It is a direct contradiction of universal experience, and claims to be a revelation. To say that it cannot be true is absurd.

The beast also is, and has, a living soul. Genesis 1:30 describes every beast of the earth, every bird of the air and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth as "everything in which there is a living soul." "Likeness" to God cannot be said of such a one as this, for God is not "soul," but "spirit," and the "Father of spirits." So man stands alone in relationship to God, because he has not only soul but also spirit.

God now first gave every moving thing that lives to be food for man (Genesis 9:3), as freely as He had first given green plants to beast and bird and reptile (Genesis 1:30). But He put a marked restriction on the blood... It was the life, and this God reserved for Himself.

Creation at large will be restored. No longer will the strong prey upon the weak. Even the wolf will dwell with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the kid, and the lion will eat straw like the ox (Isaiah 11:6-7)... When the sons of God are revealed, that will be the signal for the complete deliverance of all from the bondage of corruption (Romans 8:19-21).

With the creation of man, God's work had reached its high point. Up to now we have read the same words four times over: "And God saw that it was good." That covered all the rebuilding and creating, apart from the creation of man. But on the sixth day God surveys the whole scene, including man and woman in their ordered place with dominion over it all. Then we read, "And God saw everything that He had made, and behold, it was VERY good."

Take note of this, for it destroys at one blow the whole system of error wrongly called "Christian Science." One of its most basic teachings is the idea that matter is evil and only spirit is good. The truth is the exact opposite, for when evil entered it came in by way of spirit, not matter.

Here experience must fail us. Only the Bible could give us the truth about the first condition of man and the creatures around him. But once it is revealed, it proves itself at once. It is the only state we can imagine in which the Creator could have placed creation and its head in a way that fits His own goodness. That is the force and moral beauty of His final survey in the last verse. With the one exception of the second day, He had called each thing "good"; now, as a whole, it was good in the highest degree in His eyes.

It is illogical, and unbelieving too, to assume that the present state is the normal one, or that God made men sinful, vain, proud and selfish… Clearly the state of the world is offensive to God, and it has been so as far back as man's records reach. This is a fact, Bible or no Bible.

This led to creation rest, with its two marks. First, God was satisfied with all that He had made, as we read, "And God saw everything that He had made, and behold, it was very good." Second, He stopped all His creation work completely, as it is written, "he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done." (Gen. 1:31; Gen. 2:2).

Sin broke God's Sabbath, His rest in creation. From then on the verdict He had just pronounced had to change from "very good" to very bad. Man, the masterpiece, fell, and dragged down with him the creation God had placed him over. The beautiful work of God's hand was spoiled, as it were, in a moment.

It pleased God to make that first creation dependent on its head, the first Adam. He listened to a voice which he ought not to have listened to; sin came in by him, and by sin death, and now the whole creation groans in bondage. (Rom. 5 and Rom. 8)

Sin has marred the fair creation, so that now the whole creation groans and suffers pain. But the saints in heaven share the mind of the Lord, and they can see that all the evil will be dealt with in judgment. Then God can take pleasure in His creation once again, just as He did long ago, when the creation work was finished: "And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good" (Gen. 1:31).

He declared the work of His hand to be very good, but in the anguish of His soul He will find satisfaction. The first creation, for all its beauty, was quickly marred by sin.

These verses really complete and close chapter 1, if we divide the text into chapters on a sound principle. Such a division has no authority, except in the Psalms and the like, and it is often wrong.

"All the host of them" evidently refers to the innumerable host of stars and planets which God has set in the heavens for the benefit of man on earth.

Moses does not teach the creation of angels, but he teaches the creation of all things — the heavens and the earth, and all the hosts of them. The account describes the whole creation in relation to man; other scriptures state this clearly. "He makes his angels winds." (Older translations, which the writer used, read: "He makes his angels spirits.")

Until the days introduced Adam and his world, no one could say that the heavens and the earth, still less "all their host," were finished. Previous states of the creation had their importance. But until man came, with the animals and plants made alongside him, there was a great lack. Neither on earth nor even in the heavens was there a creature made in God's image or after His likeness.

After God formed the world and created man in His own image and likeness, His creation works were finished. This led to creation rest with its two distinctive marks: first, God's satisfaction in all that He had made; second, the entire cessation from all His creation work. So we learn the two great truths that mark God's rest: the absolute delight in the result of the labour; and satisfaction being reached, the absolute end of all toil.

In this earth, thus prepared and furnished, man, made after the image of God, is placed as lord of all that was in it. Its fruits are given him for food; and God rests from His work, and marks with His blessing the day that saw His labours closed. Man enjoyed the fruit of God's work rather than entered into the rest; for in nothing had he taken part in the work.

The seventh day was a day of rest for God. His work had involved both creating and making, but all was now complete. Since that time He has plainly not set His hand to work of that order. Sin entered, and that made it necessary for Him to take up work of another order. The Lord Jesus referred to this when He said, "My Father is working until now, and I am working" (John 5:17).

Here God alone appears, and the work being ended, all being according to His mind, He sanctifies the day of His rest. How significant this is of the day that will never give place to another! Then redemption will be fully accomplished, and all things brought to the pattern proposed in the eternal counsels. He will indeed put the seal of His perfect delight upon the whole new creation, set apart to Himself forever. How could God rest short of this?

Here the work and the rest of God stand in clear view of the human race, and the seventh day — the sabbath — has immense importance. The first time it is mentioned, it clearly witnesses to God's rest: His rest — not from weariness, of course, but from the work of creating and making. That work was now finished for the life we live now. And just as the six days before it were literal days, so the seventh is the closing day of the week.

This led to creation rest, and it has two marks. First, God was satisfied with all that He had made. As we read, "And God saw everything that He had made, and behold, it was very good." Second, He stopped all His creation work completely. As it is written, "He rested on the seventh day from all His work that He had done." So we learn the two great truths that mark God's rest: complete delight in the result of the work; and, once He was satisfied, the complete end of all toil.

In the chapter before us there is no command given to man at all. There is simply the record that God rested on the seventh day. … We are simply told that God enjoyed His rest, because everything was done, as far as creation itself went. There was nothing more to do. So the One who had worked for six days stopped working and enjoyed His rest.

In Genesis 2:2 the Samaritan text agrees with the Septuagint, the Syriac and others in reading "sixth." Here we see the tendency to adopt readings that are easier and seem less troubling.

He would say, "Well, I thought God rested when He created the world…" Oh yes, says the writer, "God rested from all His works." And so He did. But sin broke through His rest. He rested only from creating; He never rested in the works of His hands. Sin came in at once and disturbed His rest. It left Him with three choices: 1. to destroy everything by judgment; or 2. to leave everything in its ruined state, fallen along with the man He had set over it; or 3. to begin working again. He refuses to destroy them by judgment, and He will not let things stay ruined. So we find Him working again, making coats of skins for Adam and his wife. And He has never rested since that day.

In the first six days we read of the evening and the morning. But there is no mention of this on the seventh day, because there is no reckoning of time in eternity. … One day He will rest with a rest that no morning or evening breaks. Adam's sin broke His rest after the six days of work on the first creation. Since then God has worked, and He will work until sin is gone from His creation, as the Lord Jesus said, "My Father is working until now, and I am working."

Three things are mentioned. First, God ended His work — the dawning of the seventh day brought with it the end of His labour. Second, God rested; this is what the day brought in for Him — rest. Third, God blessed and sanctified it. The blessing of the day can only consist in God's delight and satisfaction over the finished work. That finished work is what makes rest possible. It is sanctified — set apart for the enjoyment of this delight and satisfaction.

How touching the testimony of God's delight in the creation, as yet unspoiled! He rested on the seventh day. He did not rest in the sense in which we use the word, as the opposite of being tired. He rested as the opposite of the six days' work.

The first mention of sanctification in the Bible is connected with creation. God sanctified the seventh day in which He rested (Gen. 2:3). The second is connected with redemption, when He brought Israel out of Egypt.

There is no mention here of man at all. We are not told that man rested on the seventh day. People may infer, conclude or imagine that he did; but the second chapter of Genesis says nothing about it. We also look in vain for any reference to the sabbath in the whole book of Genesis. The very first mention of the sabbath in connection with man is in Exodus 16 … There we see clearly that God gave it to Israel, a people in recognised covenant relationship with the LORD.

So God blessed the seventh day in a special way and set it apart. We may say that a seventh day of rest after six days of work is a thought that dates back to the very beginning of man's history. The word "sabbath" does not appear until Exodus 16:23 … After that God gave the law, and this "sabbath" — this "ceasing," as the word means — became a legal institution for Israel.

This is the only sabbath which God ever celebrated, as far as the inspired record tells us. After this we read of God commanding man to keep the sabbath, and man failing completely to do it. But we never read the words "God rested" again. On the contrary, the word is, "My Father is working until now, and I am working" (John 5:17). God could celebrate the sabbath, in the strict and proper sense of the word, only when there was nothing to be done. He could celebrate it only in an undefiled creation — a creation with no spot of sin on it.

In the first six days we read of the evening and the morning. On the seventh day there is no mention of this, for there is no reckoning of time in eternity. God has worked and will work until the thousand years of peace end and the judgment of the great white throne takes place. Then He will rest with a rest unbroken by morning or evening.

Here God alone appears, and the work being ended, all being according to His mind, He sanctifies the day of His rest. How significant this is of that day, which will never give place to another! When redemption is fully accomplished … He will indeed put the seal of His perfect delight upon the whole new creation, made holy to Himself for ever. How could God rest short of this?

This verse opens a new section of the book. The rest of Genesis 2 and Genesis 3 use the divine names in a very special way. This verse also sums up the main facts of Genesis 1. What went before gave creation completely. The new section does not speak of the creation of the heavens and earth. It is not a second account, and still less a different or contradictory one. It is the added revelation of man set in moral responsibility, tested by Jehovah Elohim.

From Genesis 2:4 we see the subject from another point of view. This is not a repetition of the account of creation. It is something even more necessary to bring before us here: the place of relationship in which God set the creation He had formed — not only among themselves, but above all towards Himself. That is why Eden is first spoken of here. We would not have known anything of paradise from the first chapter. The reason is clear. Eden was to be the scene of the moral trial of man.

The word translated "generations" occurs only sparingly in the Old Testament... and it seems to have the force of "births" or "origins." If this is so, "the generations of the heavens and the earth" would mean their origins. The generations of Adam, Noah and others would mean those who by birth found their origin in these fathers.

"The generations of the heavens and of the earth" (Gen. 2:4) include Adam unfallen. Next, man was tested with no restraint up to the flood, and "the book of the generations of Adam" [fallen] (Gen. 5:1) brings us up to the flood and Noah.

I doubt that the order in verse 4, eretz v'shamayim (earth and heavens), is changed without design. Here we have come down to the present ordering of the earth and the heavens around it — yet it still hangs on the original creation.

No one can honestly deny that Scripture, like other speech, uses "day" in a general or figurative sense where needed. That sense may cover a long stretch of time. But this need never trouble a careful reader: as always, the context gives the clue.

Jehovah is His personal name, "The Name." He bears it in relationship with man on earth, and above all with His people. He is the Self-existent and Eternal One. This is always the proper name of the true God for those on earth. In time it became the name by which He made Himself known as the covenant God of Israel.

"Jehovah" is His title of relationship. It is wonderful that He should stoop to enter into relationship with His lowly creature man. So all through Genesis 2, from verse 4, we read "the LORD God," that is, "Jehovah Elohim." Note the various relationships in that chapter: vv. 4-6, the heavens and the earth in relation to Him. He created them... vv. 7-15, man in relation to Him. The special inbreathing. vv. 16-20, man in relation to the lower orders. Their lord. vv. 21-25, man in relation to woman. Her head.

Suppose there was only one writer of the book of Genesis, as I am persuaded there was. Then the book would not have borne the stamp of a divine communication if he had used the name Jehovah-Elohim in 1–2:3, or the name "Elohim" only in 2:4-25. The change of name springs from distinct truths. It does not come from different storytellers, or from a poor compiler who could not even blend them.

It is wrong to say that the second account brings the whole present world into being at once. The creation history runs from Genesis 1 to Genesis 2:3. From verse 4 to the end of Genesis 2 we have not so much a history of creation as a statement of the relations of creation, and especially of man, its centre and head. Genesis 2 assumes Genesis 1, but adds moral elements of the utmost importance and interest.

Here we meet the solemn truth that God is Jehovah-God: He is not merely a Creator, but sets the creature, man, in relationship with Himself. So He is not only the Absolute One; the One who is absolute chooses to form relationships between the creature and Himself.

Verse 5 stresses that the plant world came straight from the hand of God. Natural causes such as rain did not produce it, and neither did man's skill at cultivating. Verse 6 shows that a mist rising from the earth itself kept it alive, with no water coming down from above. Some think that the watering of the earth by mist and not rain lasted until the time of the flood. It may have been so.

This describes the plants and herbs produced on the third day, before man, the head of creation, appeared. Like man, they were full-grown, and not from seed as ever since. The account names them as the food the living creatures would need when God called them into existence on earth; and there they were, in suitable maturity, by God's ordering — in contrast with everything since.

This is another evidence of God's authorship of the Bible, for it is something that man would never have imagined. Though there were "waters above," God did not use them as rainfall. How the earth produced the mist we do not know.

If divine power separated the earth from the waters, why should the earth stay soaked? Genesis 1 says God called the dry land Earth. These verses say that though no rain had yet fallen, a mist went up. What could be more consistent?

All things were here in their own order as creatures of God, connected with the earth. But man's work was not what made them grow and bear fruit. Nor did rain from heaven supply fruitfulness from above. The mist that watered the ground rose from the earth, drawn up by power and blessing, but not coming down. Yet man's own place was a special one in relation to God.

Scripture does not say that there was no "work" before his fall. God placed man in the garden "to work it and keep it," which shows that it was not God's will for His creature to be idle. But there was no "toil" or "sorrow" in that occupation. Now thorns and thistles would appear, and man would eat bread by the sweat of his face.

In Genesis 1, and in chapter 2 down to the end of verse 3, we have the great fact that God created... Then a new subject begins, not a new account of creation. That is simply not the case. Creation is mentioned only briefly here, and only in connection with there being no man. What follows sets out the condition, nature, and moral position of man: where God put him, under what conditions, the place of the animals, and the woman.

Verse 5 stresses that plant life came straight from the hand of God. Natural causes such as rain did not produce it, and neither did man's skill in farming. Verse 6 shows what kept it alive: a mist that rose from the earth itself, with no water coming down from above. There were waters "above the expanse" (Genesis 1:7), but they had not yet fallen on the earth as showers. We do not read of rain until Genesis 7:4.

Here everything stood in its own order as God's creatures on the earth. But man's work was not what made them grow and bear fruit. Nor did rain from heaven supply that fruitfulness from above. The mist that watered the ground rose from the earth, drawn up by power and blessing, but not coming down. Yet man's place before God was a special one. Man did not live in heaven; God did not live on earth. But God had formed a place of special blessing and delight for man to live in, and there He visited him.

Creation did not come into being merely as a display of God's power. It came as a sphere in which God's tender interest in man is wonderfully clear... Then, even after He had brought in plant life, there was no rainfall. Instead a mist went up from the earth to water the face of the ground (v. 6). This is another evidence that God is the author of the Bible, because it is something man would never have imagined. Though there were "waters above," God did not use them as rain. How the earth produced the mist, we do not know.

The words "I have set My bow in the cloud" imply that no one had ever seen a rainbow before. That supports the thought mentioned on Genesis 2:5-6: until the flood no rain had fallen on the earth, and a mist watered it instead.

Some have claimed that there was no rain until the flood, and that these waters came down then. It may be so. I see no proof of it.

Some say Genesis 2:5-6 does not fit with Genesis 1:9-10. If divine power separated the earth from the waters, why should the earth stay soaked? Genesis 1 says God called "the dry land" earth; the later verses say that no rain had yet fallen, but a mist went up. What can be more consistent?