Bible Synapse
Do Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 give two conflicting accounts of creation?
Hard question · Creation, the flood and the patriarchs · raised by 2 of the lists sceptics circulate
See the passages joined in the interactive mapThe passages
The six days of creation and the seventh day of rest: light, sky, land and plants, lights, sea creatures and birds, land animals, and last of all man and woman.
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day. And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. …
“These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth”: the forming of the man, the garden of Eden, the naming of the animals and the making of the woman.
These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew: for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground. But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground. And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. …
The objection
Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 seem to tell the creation twice, with different names for God and a different order. In chapter 1 plants come on the third day and animals before man; in chapter 2 there is no plant before the man (2:5), the animals are formed after him, and man and woman are made at different times rather than together.
The answer
Genesis 2 is not a second account of the making of the world but a closer look at one part of it: the making of man and woman and their home. Genesis is built around the heading ‘These are the generations (toledot) of …’, and 2:4 begins the first such section; like the later ‘generations of Noah’ or ‘of Terah’, it tells what came of the heavens and the earth once they were made. So chapter 1 gives the whole order of creation, with man as its crown, and chapter 2 returns to the sixth day to show how God formed the man, planted the garden, brought him the animals and made the woman.
Read this way, the details fit. Genesis 2:5 speaks of “every plant of the field” and “every herb of the field”, crops that need rain and a man “to till the ground”, not all vegetation; Keil and Delitzsch note that ‘field’ here means cultivated land. The animals of 2:19 are brought to the man there, not first made (see the question on that verse), and “male and female created he them” (1:27) sums up what 2:7 and 2:21–22 tell in detail. The change from ‘God’ (Elohim) to ‘the Lord God’ (YHWH Elohim) fits the change of focus from the Creator of all things to the Lord who walks with man in the garden. Jesus put the two chapters together: “he which made them at the beginning made them male and female” and “For this cause shall a man leave father and mother” (Matthew 19:4–5).
Other answers Christians give
Two sources
Most critical scholars since the nineteenth century assign Genesis 1:1–2:4a and 2:4b–25 to different sources, often called P and J, with different outlooks. Many Christians who allow that Genesis used earlier sources still read the two chapters, as the final author arranged them, as complementary rather than conflicting.
A literary framework
Some evangelical scholars take the six days of Genesis 1 as a framework arranged by topic rather than a strict sequence; on that view questions of order between the chapters matter less still.
Still open
Christians differ on how Genesis 1 is meant to be read (as ordinary days, long ages or a literary framework) and on what sources Genesis drew on; these questions are debated, but they do not decide whether the two chapters conflict.
From the classic commentators
The creation of the plants is not alluded to here at all, but simply the planting of the garden in Eden.Keil & Delitzsch, Commentary on Genesis 2
In no instance whatever is it the history of the birth or origin of the person named in the genitive, but always the account of his family and life.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
- Jamieson, Fausset and Brown, Commentary on Genesis 2, at Bible Hub