Why are there two different Creation accounts in Genesis chapters 1-2?

Now in Genesis 1 and 2 to the end of verse 3 we have the great fact that God created. It is simply this truth known to no heathen (not that Jehovah, God known under a particular name of relationship, but) that God created the universe, and creatures, and man, and rested the seventh day. This completes that all-important statement. We know it by faith; Heb. 11. Then begins a new subject, not a new account of creation. This is not so. It is barely and very briefly alluded to in connection with there being no man; and then the condition, nature, and moral position of man is detailed, where God put him, under what conditions, the place of animals, and the woman. It is not that God created, but the condition and status of man before Jehovah Elohim. That God who was the one true God with whom man had to do, but had revealed Himself as Jehovah to him who told the story of all His ways from the fall, and man without law, and a judged world, and restraint and promise and law, and indeed, the whole condition of man with God till grace came and the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour; though of course the historical details up to law are given afterwards, God having taken up a people by redemption so to try man. Every principle of the whole history is given us in Genesis, only on the basis of promise, not of law and redemption and God's presence on the earth, which is in Exodus and what follows. But he who learnt this plan at the first connects that name Jehovah — a God of judgment — with the origin of it all. The Elohim of chapter 1 is the Jehovah of Exodus 6, and the narrative of Jehovah recounts all the history, up to law, of the true Elohim who now reveals Himself as testing man under law. To say that there are two accounts of creation is utterly untrue; there is nothing of the kind, no trace of it, but a special statement of man's state and condition as to God and all the creation around him; let it be shown if there be.

Is it true then that the book of "Genesis is a compilation, and is stated so to be?" Is it the fact that these "generations" prove it to consist of so many separate documents, each beginning with this title? Let us see.

The first occurs in Gen. 2:4: "These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that Jehovah Elohim made earth and heavens." Now it is plain that this opening verse of a new section of the book, characterised by a very special employment of the divine names in the rest of Gen. 2 and in Gen. 3, also sums up the salient facts of Gen. 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, still less a different or discordant account, but the added revelation of man set in moral responsibility, tried by Jehovah Elohim; as he, and he only, is said here to become a living soul by His immediate communication of the breath of life. Hence here we have the park or garden planted by Jehovah Elohim; here the tree of life, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; here a simple test of obedience suited to innocence. Here too the relation of the man and the woman is given, and Adam's exercised authority over the lower creation, in contrast with his associate taken out of himself, his one meet companion, whose name he gave to mark the difference. Then in Gen. 3 under the same name of the Creator in moral relationship, the Temptation and the Fall, the present result in death and ruin, but with the revelation of the Deliverer in the woman's Seed: a wholly new presentation of the truth on the moral side, and grace too rising above sin, not the platform of creation as in what preceded (Gen. 1 - 2:3).

Another favourite argument against the infallible record of creation is that the first and second chapters are contradictory. A certain New York preacher stated some years ago in Appleton's Magazine this supposed difficulty. He said, "How can we trouble about reconciling Genesis and science" while the two accounts of the first two chapters "are so hopelessly at variance?" Criticism has used this alleged discrepancy as an argument for its infidel theories. There is, however, no contradiction between these two chapters. The second chapter in Genesis is not another history of creation nor does it contradict the account in the first chapter. The historical account of creation as a whole is found in Genesis 1-2:3. The division of chapters in the Authorized Version is unfortunate. From chapter 2:4 to the close of the chapter we have not a historical account of creation at all, but a divine statement of the relationships of creation, that is, man's place in it as its head. There are no contradictions in anything. Genesis 1:27 is said to clash with 2:21-22. Such a clash does not exist. Gen. 1:27 does not say that man and woman were created together, nor does it say that the woman was created directly and not formed as revealed in the second chapter.

Then, from Genesis 2:4, we have the subject from another point of view, — not a repetition of the account of creation, but what was even more necessary to be brought here before us, — the place of relationship in which God set the creation He had formed, not mutually alone, but above all, in reference to Himself. Hence it is here that Eden is first spoken of. We should not have known anything of paradise from the first chapter. The reason is evident. Eden was to be the scene of the moral trial of man.

In the first chapter it was the animal's place with God as Creator, and Adam before Him; the second chapter is not repetition, nor is it another contradictory report as alleged - one is creation, and every creature's place in it or over it; the other the whole moral place of man when God, the Lord God, set him up as such.

Because Genesis 1 throughout used the name of God (Elohim), and Genesis 2 employs the names, the LORD God (Jehovah Elohim), Jean Astruc (1753), a profligate French physician, started the theory that Genesis was composed by two authors. He did not grasp the plain fact that Genesis 1 gives us the story of the creation of the world, and, following a state of chaos into which the original creation had fallen, its reconstruction. Therefore the name of God (Elohim) was suitable. But when we come to Genesis 2, the narrative is centred on the creation of man and woman. It is not the story of creation in detail. Nothing is said of the six days of reconstruction. Verse 5 tells us of God's provision for the food of man; verse 6 how fertility was sustained by the watering of the earth with a mist; verse 7 gives us the creation of man; verses 8 to 15, the arrangement for his habitation; verses 21 to 25 the creation of Eve, the helpmeet for Adam. Now Jehovah is the name God takes in relation to His creatures. It is His covenant name. How fitting that the name Jehovah should be added to that of Elohim.

The real answer to our question only shows the wonderful inspiration of Holy Scripture. It is surely fitting that Genesis 1, that great chapter, describing the creation of the mighty universe, and how it was fashioned for man’s residence, before man, the topstone of God’s handiwork arrived, should use the word, Elohim, the name of the Creator God, of Trinity acting in unity. But in Genesis 2 we do not have a second story of the creation, but how everything was ordered when man arrived on the scene. How fitting surely that the name of Jehovah (God’s covenant name for man’s blessing) should appear, the name, Elohim, in conjunction with it. How wonderfully the stamp of divine inspiration is seen in the choice of the names of God, where Anstruc, completely blind to spiritual things, failed utterly to see any point or beauty at all.

Jehovah is His personal name, "The Name," and this in relationship with man on earth, especially with His people; the Self-existent and Eternal, always the proper name of the true God for those on earth, and in due time that by which He made Himself known as the covenant God of Israel, in Whose presence they were to walk El Shaddai, the Almighty God of their fathers, but the LORD God of their sons, His people. Ehyeh (I AM, Ex. 3:14) and Jah (LORD, Ex. 15:2, Ex. 17:16, etc.) are akin to Jehovah, but each used distinctively where a different author is untenable and sheer delusion. Neither is quite Jehovah God, the Governor of man; but as Jah is the absolutely existing One, so Ehyeh expresses His existence as the Everlasting Now consciously felt and asserted, therefore subjective, as Jah is objective.

Hence, in describing creation from first to last as in Gen. 1–2:3, God (Elohim) is the sole suited designation, as giving existence to every thing that is, heavens, earth, and all in them. With no less propriety Jehovah Elohim at once appears when He establishes moral relations here below. Hence in chap. 2 alone man is seen (not simply as a creature, whatever his singular honour as head and lord of all on earth) but formed in immediate association with Himself, though his body be of dust. In Gen. 2 only do we hear of the garden of delights, with its two mysterious trees, the scene of his trial. Here the lower creatures are "called" as man saw fit, having title from the Eternal God to name them. Here only we learn of the woman taken out of Adam and builded up divinely — she likewise "called" by her husband, yet as part of himself. Here have we no cosmogony as men say, but God, and the creature, in due relations. There is clear recognition of all in Gen. 1, but new and special information of the most important kind morally, peculiar to Gen. 2 and preparatory to Gen. 3. Inconsistency there is none: only prejudiced ignorance can talk so. Still less is there contradiction, save in the mind and mouth of an enemy of God's revelation. The solemn facts of the fall are the continuation, and the same name follows regularly.

The same principle applies still more manifestly to Gen. 1 - 2:3 as compared with Gen. 2:4-25. Let us consider it. The chapters are not two differing accounts, but two aspects of the same revelation; as to which historical investigation, no less than science, or this new and absurd pretension to "the science of literary and historical investigation," claims new light beyond our Lord and His apostles. Now chap. 2 has no reference to creation save in ver. 4, the transition link with the relations established among His creatures by Him, who therefore is spoken of accurately and necessarily, not as Elohim, but Jehovah Elohim. Accordingly we have none of the general details of creation, so minutely given in chap. 1, but new matter in chap. 2 of what bears on man for special relationship, morally rather than as head of creation. Here only we learn that Jehovah Elohim formed man of dust of the ground like other animals, but, unlike any, breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. Others had the breath of life by creative will physically; man alone by Jehovah Elohim's inbreathing, the cause of his soul's immortality (for good or for ill unspeakable), whilst life perished for others with their bodies. He only of earth has direct moral responsibility, and must in resurrection give account to God, as other scriptures prove.

But is there not what some foolishly call a "second account" in Gen. 2? The first chapter reveals simply that which Elohim "created to make," closing with the sabbath He blessed and hallowed (Gen. 2:1-3). Then follows from ver. 4 Jehovah Elohim presenting man, formed specially and in moral relationship to Himself, and so not merely (as in Gen. 1) the head of creation. Hence it is that here only, not before, we have the garden with every tree pleasant and good for food, and the trees of solemn import to humanity, life and responsibility — the last, a moral test applied to a condition of innocence; man exercising his lordship over all the lower creation, yet with no like helpmate; and then woman's peculiar formation out of man. These things and more pertain to God as moral governor (Jehovah Elohim), and therefore demand as they have a new section of scripture with a new and suited name of God.