Attempts to Harmonize Genesis 1 and 2 and Why They Don't Work

Another attempt to harmonize Genesis 1 and 2 consists of making the assertion that the plants, animals, and birds that are created in each account are different from one another. If they are the same plants, animals, or birds then a literalistic reading of these texts would contradict one another. We’ll first start with the plants, then move on to the land animals, and then to the birds.

So, in Genesis 1:11, the text states:

¹¹ And God said, “Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, on the earth.” And it was so. ¹² The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed according to their own kinds, and trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. ¹³ And there was evening and there was morning, the third day.

The plants are made on the third day, three days before the creation of man in Genesis 1:26-27. However, in Genesis 2:5-9, the text states:

⁵ When no bush of the field was yet on the earth and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up—for the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the earth, and there was no man to work the ground, ⁶ and a mist was going up from the earth and was watering the whole face of the ground— ⁷ then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature. ⁸ And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed. ⁹ And out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

What some will argue, then, is that the plants made in Genesis 1 are different plants than in Genesis 2. They argue this a couple of different ways.

1.     The plants are simply different kinds of plants.

The problem with this harmonization is that the plants made in Genesis 1 and 2 are the same types of plants. The plants in 1:11 are referred to as עֵ֫שֶׂב and  פְּרִ֞י

 עֵ֣ץ and as עֵ֫שֶׂב in 2:5 and fruit trees, although not with the same terminology, are referred to as having been created in 2:9 by calling them “all the trees that are nice to look at and are good to eat.”

One might object by saying that the fruit trees created in 2:9 are not just all of the fruit trees, but are all of the fruit trees that are nice to look at too, leaving out all of the ugly fruit trees I guess.

2.     The plants are simply different plants because they are the plants of the world outside the garden in Genesis 1 but the plants in Genesis 2 are just talking about plants inside the garden.

The problem, however, is still twofold:

1.     The plants described in Genesis 2 are more than just the plants of the garden because they are referred to as the “plants of the field.” The field is not the garden in the early chapters of Genesis as indicated by a few reasons:

a.     The field exists before the garden.

b.     The field refers to uncultivated land that is filled with thorns and thistles outside of the garden (3:14, 18, 23).

2.     The text seems to go out of its way to state that this is referring to all plants. Genesis 2:5 states that וְכֹ֣ל שִׂ֣יחַ הַשָּׂדֶ֗ה טֶ֚רֶם יִֽהְיֶ֣ה בָאָ֔רֶץ וְכָל־עֵ֥שֶׂב הַשָּׂדֶ֖ה טֶ֣רֶם יִצְמָ֑ח “Now, before YHWH had planted on the earth any of the larger plants or any of the smaller plants. The text is phrased in such a way as to give distance between the two plants created, which is a way Hebrew creates a disjunction, which means it should be translated as YHWH had not planted either any of the larger plants (trees, bushes, etc.) or any of the smaller plants  (grass, weeds, herbs, etc.). This creates a merism that communicates that no vegetation whatsoever had yet been created outside of the garden, i.e., in the uncultivated earth. So these do not refer to the plants of the garden.

 

3.     The third harmonization might then argue that the Hebrew word for “earth,” i.e., אֶ֫רֶץ, also means “land,” and so this may just refer to a situation where the entire earth outside of this area has vegetation but this area does not yet, so this creation is separate from that of Genesis 1.

 

The problems with this attempted harmonization of the literalistic reading is threefold:

1.     The reasons given for the fact that none of these plants exist in 2:5 is because God had not yet caused it to rain and there is no human being to cultivate the ground. This seems to indicate that rain does not exist upon the earth, not just the land. Are we to believe that this text is arguing that there is rain everywhere else on earth except this huge piece of land that is described as the entire Near Eastern world in 2:10-14. Furthermore, if the conditions needed for vegetation to exist in an area are rain and a human, did God make a bunch of other humans for all of the vegetation He made in 1:11? This might create more problems for the literalist than he realizes.

2.     Although אֶ֫רֶץ can be translated “land” to convey that it doesn’t mean the whole world sometimes, the word really does just mean “earth.” When it is local rather than general, it usually refers to a specific part of the earth, like the אֶ֫רֶץ of Israel would mean “the part of the earth belonging to Israel,” etc. When it is not specified in the text, what is called the unmarked meaning, i.e., the meaning without referential specification in the context, it should  be taken as “the whole earth.” The context itself would limit the term, although it is still possible to argue that here, it is not the most natural rendering since no specific land has yet been referenced, no construct form connects the word to a specified land following, and the previous discussions of the earth in Genesis 1-2:4 have been universal.

3.     The universal language of the animals and birds in 2:19-20 would give the reader an indication that the אֶ֫רֶץ here is universal and not merely local.

 

This brings us to the second created contradiction by the literalistic reading: animals. In Genesis 1:24-26, the text states:

²⁴ And God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds—livestock and creeping things and beasts of the earth according to their kinds.” And it was so. ²⁵ And God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds and the livestock according to their kinds, and everything that creeps on the ground according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. ²⁶ Then 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 birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

But in Genesis 2:19-20, the text states:

¹⁸ Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” ¹⁹ So out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. ²⁰ The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field.

The order of the creation of the land animals on the sixth day is land animals first and then the man is made, but in Genesis 2, the man is made first and then the land animals. The same claim is made as with the plants so I will address them again in a similar manner.

1.     The first claim is that the animals that God makes in Genesis 2 are simply different kinds of animals from those in Genesis 1.

The problem with this attempted harmonization is that the terms used for both state that they are the same types of animals. In Genesis 1, the text says that וַיַּ֣עַשׂ אֱלֹהִים֩ אֶת־חַיַּ֨ת הָאָ֜רֶץ לְמִינָ֗הּ וְאֶת־הַבְּהֵמָה֙ לְמִינָ֔הּ וְאֵ֛ת כָּל־רֶ֥מֶשׂ הָֽאֲדָמָ֖ה לְמִינֵ֑ה “And God made the animals of the earth belonging to their groups and the domesticated animals belonging to their groups and the lower animals of the ground belonging to their groups. The words for animals and domesticated animals are used both in Genesis 1 and in Genesis 2 (חַיָּה and בְּהֵמָה); and since Genesis 1 says that God made not just the animals, including domesticated animals, generically but also those that belong to their group, there are no more animals belonging to the group of חַיָּה or בְּהֵמָה to be made.

Furthermore, the text of Genesis 2:19 states that God formed from the ground “all the animals of the field” and “brought them to Adam to see what he would name them,” and then in v. 20, Adam named all of these animals that God had just formed from the ground, including “all of the בְּהֵמָה ‘domesticated animals’.” This means that all of the domesticated animals were formed from the ground and brought to Adam to name them here in Genesis 2 after the man was created, even though Genesis 1 presents them as being created before the man ever existed.

 

2.     The animals in Genesis 2 are just the animals inside the garden.

As discussed before, the plants that are made are described as the plants of the field. The field is also synonymous with the ground here that is outside the garden. The things that are formed are formed from the ground and then brought to the garden. Likewise, the animals are called the animals of the field and so this refers to animals outside the garden, not animals made within it.

Likewise, both Genesis 1 and 2 indicate that the animals made are the same animals of the earth by stating in Genesis 1 that God made, not only one kind of animal of a group but the other animals that belong to that group of animals, i.e., all the animals of that group, before the man was created and in Genesis 2 that God made all of the animals of the field that included all of the domesticated animals, not just some of them whose creation are also described in Genesis 1. If not just one kind of the בְּהֵמָה but the rest of the group of בְּהֵמָה are made in Genesis 1 and “all of the "בְּהֵמָה”are made in Genesis 2, then there are no בְּהֵמָה that can be made in Genesis 1 or there are no more בְּהֵמָה that can be made in Genesis 2.  All of them have been made already in one account or the other.

 

3.     These are just the animals in the localized area of the land.

 

This is the same case made from the localized land as before. The problem is that the objections noted above refute this idea. There are no more kinds of בְּהֵמָה that can be made on the earth anywhere because they have already been made in Genesis 1.

Furthermore, the term אֶ֫רֶץ does not appear here as a qualification for the animals, especially for the בְּהֵמָה. Remember, the animals that Adam names are specifically the animals that God forms and brings to the man to see what he would call them. There is no indication in the text that God brings him animals he previously made.

This brings us to our final contradiction between the plants and animals: Birds.

In Genesis 1:20-21, the text states:

²⁰ And God said, “Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the heavens.” ²¹ So God created the great sea creatures and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarm, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind.

But in Genesis 2:19-20, the text states:

¹⁹ So out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. ²⁰ The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field.

As one can probably tell without much ado, the previous harmonizations applied to the phrases “every winged bird” in Genesis 1:21 and “all the birds of the heavens” in Genesis 2:19 shows itself to be untenable. One cannot argue that these are different birds since each text says that they are all the birds. One cannot argue that these are just the birds of a specific land or the garden since the more localized text in this case actually specifies that it is talking about “all the birds of the heavens,” not merely some of them that belong to another land or garden. Again, these are made outside the garden, they are not described as birds of the land or even of the field, but rather of the heavens/skies. So all the birds that are flying in the skies are made on the fifth day before the man was made in Genesis 1, but in Genesis 2, all of the birds that are flying in the skies are made after the man, who Genesis 1 presents as having been made on the sixth day.

One might say to the literalistic reading, “Bye, bye, Birdie.” For there is a better way to read the genre of ancient Near Eastern Primeval History than an Enlightenment, atheistic worldview that is completely bereft of such a genre and an imagination that would see that Genesis is real history presented for theological and ethical purposes rather than to describe the uninterpreted event for merely the base purposes of feeding an already arrogant culture more knowledge about empty details that have no religious or moral impact upon its readers. Genesis 1 and 2 were never meant to be read literalistically and the author indicates this to his readers by presenting two accounts that have a massive amount of theological and ethical import to our lives by telling us that God made everything and why God made everything but very little confirmation concerning how and when God made everything as this does not help one’s knowledge of Him, humanity, or their relationship to one another.