CHAPTER 2

1. Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. (NOTE 1: Only the heavens and the earth were finished. God was apparently still working on the waters, the darkness, light, the sun, the moon and the stars. I’ve combed the bible many times and can’t find any reference to him being finished with these things, so he’s probably still working on them. Although this kind of open-ended finish date is unusual for God, it is typical of any kind of construction project, particularly a home remodel.)

2. And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. (NOTE 2: This is the first recorded instance of anyone being fed up with work. It is pretty clear from the repetition of the words, “his work which he had made” that God was a little ticked off at having started such a big project on such a tight schedule. The consensus is that he had substantially underestimated how much work was actually going to be involved in creating everything and was kind of worn out by the seventh day. Most bibologists feel that this verse is about God assuming responsibility for the whole mess because there’s not really anyone else he can blame it on, but there are some scholars, myself included, who believe that there was actually someone with God when he was making the world and that this verse is really focused on making it really clear that God had done all the work by himself and consequently deserved to take a whole day off no matter what the other being still expected him to do. It is generally assumed that this other being was probably God’s wife.)

3. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made. (NOTE 3: This verse is God really laying it on pretty thick about having done an awful lot of work without any help and deserving to sit back and enjoy himself. He actually goes so far as to sanctify the day.)

4. 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, (NOTE 4: So this is an interesting verse that deserves some study. First, and despite clearly having taken six days to build everything, God is now claiming that he built everything in a single day. This is the first ever instance of someone misremembering something in order to make himself look better.

Next, and this is important, apparently God made more than one heaven. In Chapter 1, Verse 1, it clearly says that God made “the heaven” and here it clearly says “the heavens”. Heavens? Some people have suggested that this is just a typo. If God made more than one heaven, he would have mentioned that right off. But there are no typos in the bible because God never makes mistakes unless he makes them on purpose. The only conclusion we can draw is that God is trying to sneak some extra heavens past the reader (or someone else) without calling too much attention to it. How many extra heavens did God make and what are the additional ones for?  I think there are a couple of possibilities:

A. The extra heavens are just spare heavens in case something happened to the original heaven. Having just built the first heaven ever, God may not have had a good idea how durable it was. Or, he might have just been being overcautious. This argument is kind of undermined by the fact that God is all-knowing, so I think we can dismiss it.

B. The extra heavens were intended to store stuff. I’ve never built anything much larger than a shed in the back yard, but I can tell you, whenever you build something you can expect to have lots of left over materials and tools that will need storing somewhere. The bigger the thing you are building, the more extra stuff you are going to have to find a place to store. Think about it.

C. God built a second heaven for Whales and their ilk, who are special and not under the dominion of man. Obviously, this second heaven would be where the souls of whales and other water dwelling mammals go when they die. They can’t share a heaven with people because it would have to be underwater and human souls get shriveled if they are in the water too long. Especially if it is warm water. It’s also possible that God built additional heavens for dogs and other beloved pets. Probably one for each major kind of pet and then maybe another one for cases of weird animal pairings—like when a baby rabbit gets nursed in infancy by a cat, or when a dog raises an orphaned weasel with her pups, or when a human adopts a baby squirrel and raises it as a pet even though squirrels aren’t really supposed to be pets. While God could clearly just make these animals go live in their respective heavens, I think he knew they’d be unhappy if they couldn’t stay with their loved ones. And it wouldn’t be heaven if anyone was unhappy. Unhappy heaven is an oxymoron.

D. God built secret heavens that he didn’t want his wife (or others) to know about. If this is the case, there’s really no telling what’s in them because if God doesn’t want you to know about something, well, good luck finding out about it.

There is one other point worth noting about this verse. This is the first place in which God calls himself the LORD God. This could be because God just thought of it at this point, it could be that God was starting to put on airs now that he’d built a whole planet to be God of, it could be that LORD is actually God’s first name, or it could be God trying to distinguish himself from other Gods. This could also be a holy trinity issue. We shall speak more on this later.)

5. 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. (NOTE 5: This is really interesting and gives us to understand that, until after the seventh day, the whole of the world was kind of like an unsprouted Chia Pet. You know about Chia Pets? Chia Pets are animal-shaped terracotta figurines used to sprout chia, where the chia sprouts resemble the animal's fur. When you first set them up, they’re just the chia seeds on the clay figure. They don’t really come to life and start to look like anything until you water them. What God is telling us in Chapter 2, verse 5 is that the whole world was ready to go but that he still had to add water. So, at this point, the place would have just been a big dry ball with a lot of animals creeping around on it, probably wondering what the heck they were going to eat.)   

6. But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground. (NOTE 6: This, like the original mix up with the cycles of light and darkness, is another instance of God doing things ass backward the first time. Here, he has the water come up from the ground instead of falling from the sky as rain. Several key figures in bibology have disputed my stance on this and suggested that the “mist” had to go up from the earth in the first place in order to make the first clouds so that rain could fall later on—kind of like priming a new pump—or that he had to teach the water about the whole cycle of evaporation and precipitation before it understood how to do it on its own, but I don’t see why God would have set up a system that needed to be primed or taught. It just doesn’t make any sense.)

7. And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, (NOTE 7: What with all the watering that just happened, dust would probably have been pretty hard to come by, which is why God only made one man. The original intention was probably to make a handful of men, or at least to make the woman at the same time, but then everything got wet and God could only scrape together enough dust to make one guy. Apparently, he wasn’t interested in making man out of mud.)

7a… and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. (NOTE 8: It is important that God originally breathed life into man through his nostrils. It doesn’t say whether God put his mouth over man’s nose, or whether he actually breathed life out of his own nostrils into man’s nostrils as a sort of nose-to-nose suscitation. It wouldn’t have been resuscitation yet as man had not yet been suscitated in the first place. But, it’s clearly important to God that the breathing of life happened through the nostrils. God frowns on breathing through the mouth except when you have a cold because it makes you look dimwitted.)

8. And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden; (NOTE 9: Despite the fact that the whole planet is brand new and bursting with green and growing things at this point and that God just finished laying the whole thing out less than a day ago, he suddenly goes to the length of planting a “garden” eastward in Eden. If this is not proof that God had a wife telling him what to do, I don’t know what would qualify. The other interesting thing to note in this verse is that there is a place called Eden. This is only odd because there is no record of God naming it and man hasn’t been asked to name anything yet. Who named Eden? Did God do it and the bible writers just forgot to mention it, or is something more sinister going on? More on this later.)

8a… and there he put the man whom he had formed. (NOTE 10: This is key wording. The writers of the bible could simply have said, “and there he put the man.” There should have been no need to identify the man as the one God had formed if there was only one man. This is proof that there was more than one man, but that the other man was built by someone other than God! You really have to read between the lines in the bible because God and the Bible writers frequently try to sneak secret stuff past casual readers. The general consensus is that this other man was named Rick.)

9. And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; (NOTE 9: At this point, God doesn’t care at all what plants smell like. This might be an indication that God thinks that smell is irrelevant, but that seems strange for someone with such a nostril fixation. In the end, you just have to remember that some of the ways of God are just flat out unfathomable.)

9a... the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. (It is pretty unclear why God thought it would be a good idea to put these trees in the Garden with man. That's like putting a bottle of prescription pills that look a lot like M&M candies in your child's playroom. He could have at least made the trees a thousand feet tall or something--like the equivalent of a child-proof safety cap.)