Bible Synapse
Were the animals created before or after the first man?
Hard question · Creation, the flood and the patriarchs · raised by 4 of the lists sceptics circulate
See the passages joined in the interactive mapThe passages
On the sixth day God makes the land animals, and after them man, male and female, in his image.
And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so. And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good. And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
God says the man should not be alone; out of the ground he “formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air” and brings them to Adam to name.
And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him. 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.
The objection
Genesis 1 has God make the animals on the sixth day before he makes man. But Genesis 2:18–19 seems to have God make the man first, and then form the animals out of the ground and bring them to him, as if in search of a companion for him.
The answer
Genesis 2:19 is not telling us when the animals were made but why they were brought to Adam. The Hebrew verb (wayyitser, ‘and he formed’) is the ordinary narrative form, and Hebrew writers sometimes used it to bring in something that had happened earlier, where English would say ‘had formed’. Keil and Delitzsch give 1 Kings 7:13 as a parallel: Solomon is said to send for Hiram after the temple has been described as finished, though Hiram had of course been fetched before, to make its furnishings. So the NIV and ESV translate Genesis 2:19 ‘had formed’, and Keil puts the sense in modern style as ‘God brought to Adam the beasts which He had formed’.
Genesis 2 is also arranged by subject, not as a day-by-day timeline. Chapter 1 gives the order of creation; chapter 2 comes back to the sixth day and to the man in the garden. The point of bringing the animals is that among them all there “was not found an help meet for him” (2:20), which leads to the making of the woman.
Other answers Christians give
A fresh act in the garden
Some scholars, such as Cassuto and Hamilton (as Apologetics Press notes), suggest that God formed particular animals in the garden at this point, for Adam to name, beside those made earlier on the sixth day. The text does not say that no animal was made after Adam.
Two sources
Many critical scholars hold that chapters 1 and 2 come from different sources with different orders of creation. Even on that view, the editor who set them side by side saw no conflict, and Jesus quoted both chapters together (Matthew 19:4–5).
Still open
Hebrew scholars differ on how readily the narrative verb form can carry a pluperfect (‘had formed’) sense; those who doubt it usually prefer the topical or ‘fresh act’ readings, which also remove the conflict.
From the classic commentators
went back to their creation, in the simple method of the early Semitic historians, and placed this first instead of making it subordinate; so that our modern style of expressing the same thought would be simply this: "God brought to Adam the beasts which He had formed."Keil & Delitzsch, Commentary on Genesis 2
Sources
- Keil & Delitzsch, Commentary on Genesis 2, at Bible Hub
- John Gill, Exposition of the Bible: Genesis 2, at Bible Hub