In the Garden (Genesis 2)

If "In the beginning" is the perfect way to start a story of creation, why not have a flashback and tell the story again but with a close-up camera angle?  That's what Genesis 2 does, touching on some of the common themes already introduced, but advancing the plot and conflict further by zooming in on the human scale of things in a garden.   

In season five we're listening to Bible stories and learning to pray them.  They make up almost half of the Bible so it's important we learn how to read and pray this very common type of Scripture.

In our podcast we take time to listen to God's word, reflect on it and then pray it back to God as well as carry that word with us through the rest of the day.  We use the entire Bible to do that and not just the "uplifting" or inspirational parts of it.  On today's episode we listen to Genesis 2:4-25 and hear about God creating the world, but from a different perspective than Genesis 1.

Genesis 2 gives us a different view of the creation story, a ground level perspective that focuses on the human actors.  We're striving to let the story speak to us with its own logic and power as God teaches us about his purposes in creation.

Some of the themes of this chapter are goodness and relationship.  There is an interesting wordplay between the Hebrew word for man, adam, and ground, adamah.   It is repeated so many times it can't be just a coincidence.  Then at the end of chapter two the other word for man or person, ish, is used in contrast to the word for woman or wife, ishshah.  Listen to this fresh reading of Genesis 2 from an original translation from the Hebrew original and then ponder what it means before we pray a prayer to God shaped by this passage.

The first three episodes of season 5 focused on 1 Samuel 1-3, and Angela Oltmanns has written a month-long series of family devotions based on 1 Samuel.  Get a copy of the book 1 Samuel: How to Be a Child After God's Heart on Amazon (or the ebook).

The Action Bible is a great resource for visually engaging with Bible stories, both for older children and adults who are young at heart.  See our review of this book on our Youtube channel.

Want to go deeper into reading Genesis 2?  We emphasize reading the scripture as meditation literature, and we recommend a short video done by The Bible Project to get you further into practice: the Bible as Ancient Jewish Meditation Literature.

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