Fugitive

4:12 When thou tillest the ground, it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength; a fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be in the earth.

More tough farming.  And: fugitive and vagabond.

I can't say I understand either of those two.  To me, a fugitive is someone who is running from punishment, not as punishment.  And vagabond means either that you choose to keep moving around (and choice isn't a punishment); or that you can't find a job (or food) where you are, so you keep moving around.  Not being able to get enough food farming might be what's going on.  But I don't see how moving around is going to help if you're cursed by God.

Mouth

4:11 And now art thou cursed from the earth, which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother's blood from thy hand;

This cuts straight at his livelihood.  Of course, he's a murderer, so perhaps that's ok.

Again, this is clearly not literal: "opened her mouth".

Blood

4:10 And he said, What hast thou done? the voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground.

Is God still unclear on what happened, despite hearing the blood?  Or is this more chastising?

The last half is pretty awesome, especially if you imagine it spoken by Dracula.

Keeper

4:9 And the LORD said unto Cain, Where is Abel thy brother? And he said, I know not: Am I my brother's keeper?

I can't tell if God actually doesn't know what happened, or if he's still taunting Cain.

Cain doesn't seem like a good person: he's a murderer and a liar.  It's a wonder God doesn't get along better with him.

Talked

4:8 And Cain talked with Abel his brother: and it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him.

Basic storytelling seems to be breaking down here.  What did they talk about?  Did Abel say something incredibly obnoxious (that is, God-like)?  I thought you were supposed to talk to people to work out your issues, not as a prelude to violence.  Does this have anything to do with the desire bit from the last verse?

So, God incited the first murder.  First, by demanding offerings for no reason.  Second, for insulting some of the offerings for no reason, while praising others.  Third, by mocking the one whose offering had been rejected; and by blaming him.  This seems all crafty and subtil and evil of God.  Also, sort of pointless.

Lieth

4:7 If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door. And unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him.

This apparently is God talking.  And, to clarify our doubt from the last verse, he pretty clearly seems to be taunting Cain.  Specifically, he is blaming Cain because God didn't like the offering Cain made, which was pretty much what Cain had to offer.  So how was that Cain's fault?  He should have chosen a different profession, because he should have better offerings.

I have no clue what the last sentence means.  This sounds like the bit from 3:17, where Eve's desire was to Adam and he ruled over her, only inverted.  He's talking to Cain, so it seems like Cain should be doing the ruling.  But it doesn't really make much sense.  Who is the other person?  Abel?  Abel's desire is unto Cain?  That's pretty bizarre, but perhaps it's par for the course for this warped God.

Fallen

4:6 And the LORD said unto Cain, Why art thou wroth? and why is thy countenance fallen? 

There are two options here.  One: God has no idea what happened.  This would make him at least insensitive, if not outright stupid.  Two: God is further mocking and provoking Cain.  This would make him downright mean and childish.

Wroth

4:5 But unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect. And Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell. 

I'd be wroth, too; wouldn't you?  I think that wroth means "pissed off".  And "his countenance fell" means "he looked sad."

Ok, Cain grew fruit and Abel grew sheep.  And Cain offered up to God some fruit and Abel some sheep.  Why they made offerings to someone who so badly mistreated their parents is one question.  Regardless, they clearly offered what they had to offer.

God, that day, was apparently not in the mood for fruit.  And he was rude about it.  No explanation is given; the only option we have is simply assuming that God was being a jerk or a troublemaker.  And he mistreated Cain, which seriously bummed Cain out.

Firstlings

4:4 And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof. And the LORD had respect unto Abel and to his offering:

Because who wouldn't want some young sheep fat?

Offering

4:3 And in process of time it came to pass, that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the LORD.

I don't understand the whole concept of offerings to God.  Apparently I'm not alone; the practice seems to have died out.  Cain's giving God food because God's hungry?  Because God is wildly insecure and needs gifts to feel good about himself?

And Cain is grateful to God because God made farming difficult?  Because God made snakes bite Cain's heels?

The open phrase is a very windy version of "eventually".  But it wasn't necessary to point out the passage of time between Cain and Abel being born and them getting occupations.

Tiller

4:2 And she again bare his brother Abel. And Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground. 

What, no computer programmers?  Did Cain start tilling when he was an infant?

Anyway, still agricultural.

Gotten

Ok, before we move onto chapter 4, let's summarize all the evil things God did during the course of the garden of Eden story.

1. Making people naked.  Clearly the author viewed nudity as fundamentally wrong, but God created Adam and Eve naked and placed them naked in the garden, without the knowledge that they should dress themselves.  That's straight-out evil from the author's viewpoint.
2. Keeping the knowledge of good and evil from Adam and Eve.  This not only kept them from getting dressed, but also from being able to do good or avoid evil, at least intentionally.  Aside from being generally sneaky, I think this is evil because it prevented good and encouraged evil.
3. Lying to them.  God claimed the fruit of the tree of knowledge was poisonous, when he knew it was not.
4. Punishing them and the serpent unjustly.  It was unjust because (1) they didn't know right from wrong when they ate and (2) because he never even said it was wrong to eat, just that they shouldn't because it was dangerous, which wasn't even true.  Not to mention (3) that eating was in fact good because it is good to know right from wrong.  And the serpent didn't even eat, he just told them the truth.  So punishing them was unfair.  And just to guarantee that it was unjust, God also punished their children, which makes no sense.
5. Killing some animals for no reason but to make coats for the people wearing aprons.  It's not entirely clear that God killed the animals; perhaps they just happened to die conveniently.  Anyway, the animals had done nothing to deserve becoming clothing.
6. Throwing the people out of the garden just to preserve God's power.  God was afraid that if they ate from the tree of life and lived forever it would somehow be bad for him.
7. Various sexual perversions: trying to get Adam to mate with every animal under the sun, and keeping naked children locked in his walled garden where he walked around watching them.
   

All in all, this Lord God seems to be morally bankrupt at best.  The garden story goes from 2:4 to 3:24, for a total of 46 verses.  And in that short span, God racked up a pretty impressive list of sins.  Yet somehow, people interpret this as God is good.  In contrast, the serpent's entire little part in the story was telling the truth and getting punished; and people interpret this as the serpent is evil.  Two conclusions completely unsupported by the text.

4:1 And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from the LORD. 

The first phrase suggests that Adam and Eve did not have sex in the garden.  That would be consistent with them being children, or just with them being innocent.

With her punishment in mind, I'd expect Eve to say, "I have gotten great pain from the Lord."  This phrasing suggests that the God is as likely as Adam to have impregnated Eve.

Note that this use of the word "man" clearly means "male infant".  So back when God first created Adam, calling him a man told us nothing about his age.

Cain is apparently the first person to be born.  That's an accomplishment of sorts.

Have I mentioned that the author has a bit of an obsession with procreation?

Flaming sword

3:24 So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.

I like the fact that we are given directions to Eden earlier, and it should just be somewhere with some Cherubs guarding it and a cool spinny flaming sword.  And there's only one way in.

A Cherub is a kind of angel.  The word "Cherubim" is the plural.  I'm not sure what "Cherubims" is supposed to be, exactly.

All this trouble explicitly because God is afraid that man might live forever.  How does that threaten him?

Forth

3:23 Therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken. 

Again, the woman is not mentioned here.

This is strongly agricultural.  The punishment is being sent from a garden to a farm.  One way to interpret this is as being about the start of agriculture.  It started in a place where you didn't have to know much about agriculture to farm; it was easy.  That's fairly obvious, because nobody had any technical agricultural knowledge before they engaged in agriculture.  But as they gradually ruined the soil with bad technique, they also learned better technique.  Still, agriculture became more and more difficult.  Where once they could grow things easily, as in a garden, later it was hard, as on a farm.

Iraq is a desert today.  That is the result of one of mankind's worst environmental disasters.  Before we started farming there, it was one of the most fertile places on earth.

One of us

3:22 And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever:

You may recall that back in 3:5, the serpent asserted that God had lied to Adam and Eve about the tree of knowledge being deadly because God was afraid that they would eat from it and become like gods, knowing good and evil.  And this verse is basically God admitting that the serpent was exactly right.

So, in summary.  God lies.  Serpent tells the truth and explains God's motives in lying.  God gets mad and punishes everyone.  No wonder we commonly consider the serpent evil.

Now God is afraid again about man, specifically that Adam will eat from the tree of life and live forever.  He doesn't here seem particularly concerned about Eve, despite the fact that she ate first from the tree of knowledge.

Here's a question: to whom is God speaking?  He says "One of us".  This implies that the "gods" the serpent hinted at are real; that God is not a lonely being, but one of a class.

Skins

3:21 Unto Adam also and to his wife did the LORD God make coats of skins, and clothed them.

This is several levels of strange. 

First, God takes a break for punishing Adam and his wife, and instead gives them gifts.

Second, it presents a particularly odd image of God sitting on a log, sewing coats.

Third, it suggests that some random animals were slaughtered at this point, but doesn't mention them.

Fourth, it again ignores the leaf aprons; they apparently don't count as clothing.

Fifth, it refers to Eve as "his wife" immediately after she got her name.

Eve

3:20 And Adam called his wife's name Eve; because she was the mother of all living.

This verse is placed completely at random.  It makes no sense with what went before; nor with what immediately follows.  This would have made sense towards the end of chapter 2, but it's very strange here.

Adam, if you recall, wasn't named.  His name just suddenly appeared and is not explained.  All through this chapter, Eve is referred to as "the wife" or "the woman".  Except for this verse, her name is never used.  Not to give away the ending, from what I can tell, it is used once more at the very beginning of chapter 4, and then never again.

Sweat

3:19 In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.


Your name is mud.

Beyond agricultural to completely obsessed with dirt.

Thistles

3:18 Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field;

More details on the agricultural punishment.

Cursed

3:17 And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life;

God's punishment for Adam is that it's going to be hard work farming.  Very agricultural.

Sorrow

3:16 Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.

The woman gets it as bad as the serpent, or worse.  Her crime, of course, is eating good food, and sharing it with her husband.  Her punishment is pain and oppression.

Enmity

3:15 And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.

God is clearly awfully angry at the serpent.

And the translator is referring to some imaginary child of the woman first as "it" and later as "his".

Again, there's no real way to take this all that literally.

Dust

3:14 And the LORD God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life:

The serpent doesn't get a chance to defend itself, blame the truth, or anything.

Do people who take this literally believe that serpents eat dust?

Oddly enough, God fails to take away the serpent's ability to speak.

So what exactly is the serpent being punished for?  For speaking the truth when God had lied.

Beguiled

3:13 And the LORD God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.

This is a lovely pass the buck.  Did he do it? No, she did it.  No, it did it.

The tricky point here is that what Adam said was technically true, while what the woman says here isn't quite.  The serpent didn't beguile her; it didn't lie to her or mislead her in any way.  Instead, the serpent simply told her the truth.  And she ate, which was the right thing to do.  So what's the problem?

The problem, of course, is that God didn't want her to do the right thing.

Gave

3:12 And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat. 

On the one hand, this is passing blame.  He had the choice to eat or not.  On the other hand, it's strictly honest, at least in the sense of being consistent with what we were told before.

It's interesting that he seems to think of his wife as a literal gift from God.

I have to note that Adam's dialogue, aside from the convoluted sentence structures which I'll attribute to the author and translator, reads like a guileless child.

Eaten

3:11 And he said, Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat?

In context, it is clear that the speaker ("he") is God.

Again, he seems not to know what happened, although he does guess that Adam knew it was wrong to be naked because Adam knew right from wrong because Adam had eaten of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Even better, he clearly isn't surprised about what happened when Adam ate from the tree.  He doesn't expect Adam to be dead.  In other words, God knowingly lied to Adam.  God knew that eating from the tree would cause Adam to realize he was naked; but God told Adam that he would die if he ate from the tree.  God didn't want Adam to know he was naked, and essentially threatened him to try to keep him from finding out.

The first question (Who told you that you were naked?) is an interesting one.  First, it probably doesn't literally mean that.  When it said earlier that "they knew that they were naked", that also wasn't literally true.  They presumably knew they were naked all along; that's a basic factual issue.  It's not like they were hallucinating clothes.  It just means that they realized it was wrong to be naked.  So the question is really "Who told you it's wrong to be naked?"  And that is what God didn't want Adam to know: that it's wrong to be naked.  And presumably God didn't want this for fear that Adam would get dressed.  That is, God wanted Adam to be naked, which is wrong; and to stay naked, which is wrong.  And God knew good from evil, so God knew that he wanted something which was wrong.  But he did it anyway.  In short, God is clearly acting evil here.

It's also interesting that the first question doesn't really have an answer.  It's just God's first guess.  Adam knows he's naked (or rather, that it's wrong to be naked) because ... someone told him.  But that's not true.  Second guess: because he ate of the tree.  Ok, right the second time.  But this certainly isn't describing a God that's infallible or all-knowing, or perhaps even the most subtil of creatures.

The clause in the second question is also telling: "that I commanded you not to eat", not "that I said you'd die if you ate".  This phrasing is because God knows that the lie is no longer convincing.  (I mean "God knows" rather literally here, of course, not as emphasis.)

So this tells us (1) that God needs to guess about what happened, and (2) that God knowingly and deliberately lied to Adam, and (3) that God specifically lied to prevent Adam from finding out it was wrong to be naked.

Also, this tells us that the serpent was correct when he said, "For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." in 3:5.  So not only did God lie, and the serpent tell the truth about the fruit, the serpent also nailed God's motivation for lying.  Although it's not clear here that "knowing good and evil" is quite the same as "as gods".

This leaves us again wondering about the usual interpretation of this story.  Why is it so backwards?  Alternately, why is the story so weird?

Afraid

3:10 And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.

Adam seems brutally honest here.

But I think the correct interpretation is a little subtle.  What exactly does "Because I was naked" mean?  We know that when he hid, he wasn't naked; he was wearing a fig leaf apron.  But he was naked before that, when God put him in the garden.  He's saying, "Because I realized that I was naked, that you put me here naked."  "I was afraid of you, because you wanted me to be naked" is more or less what he means.

God likes naked little boys and makes them afraid.  This is one weird story we're reading.

Where

3:9 And the LORD God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou?

More information about God.  It's apparently possible to successfully hide from him.  At this point, God clearly doesn't know yet what has happened.

Hid

3:8 And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God amongst the trees of the garden.

This certainly tells us a lot about the God of this chapter.  First, he has a voice, and thus one would presume a mouth.  Second, he walks, and thus presumably has legs.  Third, it is at least implied that he sweats, or why would he wait for evening ("the cool of the day") to go for a walk in the garden?  This suggests a God who is more a wealthy landowner than some supernatural being.

It also tells us one more thing about God, what Adam and his wife thought of him.  Imagine that today is the first day you know good from evil.  You hear someone coming, and you know that they're good.  Do you hide?  You hear someone coming, and you know that they're evil.  Do you hide?

Right after taking up sewing, the way Adam and his wife demonstrate their knowledge of good and evil is to hide from God.  Because they are afraid of God.  Because they know that God is the sort of person who lies to a couple young children.  The sort of person who locks naked children in his garden.  The sort of person who tries to persuade a young boy to take a goat as a mate.  In short, they now know that God is evil.

I know, you're thinking I've got some wacky agenda, saying things like that.  But those are the words; you can look them up yourself.  I didn't write the Bible; I'm just reading it carefully, without preconceptions.  I think this all means that the source of the preconceptions must be people with some sort of agenda of their own.  But I honestly can't say I really understand why the actual text is at such variance with the common interpretation.

Fig

3:7 And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.

I know, you've always been taught that God is good, so he must be honest, so you were figuring that he was telling the truth and the serpent was lying.  So, you figured this verse would say "And the mouths of them both were opened, and they knew that they were coughing up blood; and they convulsed on the ground together, and made themselves dead."  Or something like that.

But the serpent was telling the truth: their eyes were opened, and they knew right from wrong, at least as the author's culture saw it, with the whole nudity=bad thing.  They also quickly figured out how to sew.  And no one fell over dead that day, as God said they surely would.

Let's just suppose for a minute that God, who we know lies, isn't necessarily good.  Then we can ask these question: if it's wrong for people to be naked, why did he put naked people in the garden?  And if the fruit was just symbolic of coming of age, what sort of Lord locks a couple of naked children in a walled garden?  And if the serpent was aware of this, was he not helping the children?  And if the third chapter of the first book of the Bible suggests that God is some lying pervert, why is nobody aware of it?

Wise

3:6 And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.

The woman doesn't believe the serpent just because.  She examines the tree, considers the evidence, and find that it supports the serpent more than it supports God.  The serpent didn't force her; the serpent didn't even persuade her; the serpent just let her judge for herself.

Maybe her husband just ate because she gave him some fruit; or maybe he also saw that it was good, etc.

So, the suspense is killing me.  Do they both die on that very day, proving God right?  Or do they become wise, like gods, knowing good and evil, proving the serpent and their own judgment right?

I'm disappointed that it says nothing about what the fruit tasted like.

As gods

3:5 For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.

The serpent is not only asserting that God is lying about the fruit being poisonous, but that God is doing so for petty motives.  Either God is trying to maintain power, or God is afraid of people,  or perhaps God just enjoys watching people living in ignorance.

Further, the serpent is ascribing impressive magic powers to the fruit; the tree, according to the serpent, lives up to its name.

This strongly suggests that God is not alone, not single, but one of gods, a group who know good and evil.

If this is all a metaphor or a story of childhood, then "gods" are adults, and God is an adult who doesn't want these children to grow up.  So God lies to keep the children from the fruit, which presumably represents experience.

The phrase "your eyes shall be opened" is clearly metaphorical.  This again means that it really isn't possible to take the Bible entirely literally.

One interesting note is that the phrase "in the day ye eat thereof" here parallels
"for in the day that thou eatest thereof" from God's admonition in 2:17.  Again, this suggests that the serpent was somehow aware of that.

Ok, we all know that lying is wrong, that honesty is the best policy.  And either God is lying or the serpent is (or perhaps both), so clearly one of them is bad.

Not surely

3:4 And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:

Another verse ending in a colon.  I'd tack on a second verse here, but I have dinner plans.

First, she didn't say "Surely" in 3:3, although God did back in 2:17.  This suggests that the serpent already knew what the response would be (and knew it more accurately than the actual response).  Of course, it could just be the author getting sloppy.

The serpent is outright contradicting God.  In 2:17, God said, "In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die."  Now, if Adam eats and dies, it's not clear, since "not surely" isn't quite as strong as "surely not".  But, should he survive, the only way to interpret it is that the serpent was right and God was wrong.  Or that the serpent was honest, and God was lying.

Touch

3:3 But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.

The second half of the woman's response, however, does not correspond to earlier verses at all.

First, Adam was commanded not to eat of the tree of knowledge (in 2:16), while in 2:9 the tree of life is "in the midst of the garden".  As it soon becomes clear that we're still talking about the tree of knowledge, apparently it has changed places with the tree of life.  If we are still talking about knowledge, I want to emphasize that there is then no prohibition against eating the tree of life.

Second, there was no prohibition against touching it in 2:16.  Lots of possibilities here.  (1) There was a warning about touching back in the scene recounted in 2:16, but the author chose to leave it out. (2) God added it later.  (3) Adam added it when telling the woman.  (4) The woman added it when telling the serpent. (5) The author added it here for his own reasons.

Why are there discrepancies?  Do they have any significance?  I have no idea.

Woman said

3:2 And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden:

I like the fact that she doesn't even seem to think it's strange that a snake is asking her questions.  Ah, to be freshly created.

She answers with "We".  It is not clear if she means herself and Adam, or herself and the serpent, or something else.

This faithfully matches verse 2:16 "Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat:", right down to the colon.

Shall not eat

3:1 Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?

Hey!  We made it to the third chapter.  And there's a talking snake here.

I'm sure everyone immediately recognizes "subtil" as the archaic spelling of "subtle".  It's not clear if that means "tricky" or "manipulative" here or just "smart".

I should mention that there's a sense of lost time here.    I would think that there was some period where Adam and his woman were living happily and more or less uneventfully in the garden before this, although that's never mentioned.

It's interesting that the serpent doesn't use the title "LORD" when referring to God.  There's also a possible subtle (heh!) hint that God did not create the serpent;  it does not say "than any other beast".


There are many ways of interpreting this question.  The serpent could just be making conversation.  He could be curious about contrasting the rules he has with the ones the woman has.  He could want clarification on what he's supposed to eat.  He could be trying to learn more about the woman.  He could be trying to learn more about God.

Note that the story jumps from having random excessive detail about the rivers to being so sparse that: there are four characters (God, Adam, the woman, the serpent); that God has given one commandment (don't eat the knowledge fruit) to Adam; and the serpent is asking the woman about that one commandment.  It's like there used to be more to the story, but it was stripped out.

Was the one commandment mentioned early only because it matters later; were there lots of commandments which didn't come up?  Don't bathe in the Pison; bathe in the Euphrates.  Don't ride the donkeys before noon.  Bring me a pie made from the tree of life every evening at 7.  If there was only one rule, how did the serpent know which one it was?

For that matter, it's not even explained how the woman knows the commandment.  It was given to Adam before she was created, even before the animals were created.  So, if God created the serpent, it was before the serpent was created.  But, maybe God didn't create the serpent.

Or maybe that rule was one of the mainstays of conversations between Adam and the woman, and the serpent had subtly overheard them talking once.

Naked

2:25 And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.

Let me pose a strange question.  How old were Adam and his as-yet-unnamed wife at this point?

It sounds like a trick question.  Of course, his wife was freshly created from a rib, and he'd been molded from mud just a few days ago, give or take.

But that's not what I mean.  How old did they appear?  I usually picture them being around 22 years old, young but full-grown.  And, you know, naked.  But, from what we've read so far, they could be pretty nearly any age.

We can rule out old and decrepit.  Perhaps not so much from what we've had so far, but they've got work to do later on, an entire planet to populate.

But they could easily be 42, like me.  Or 14, like Romeo and Juliet.  Or, and this is where it gets weird, 4 years old.  Adam is referred to as 'the man' rather than 'the boy', which you wouldn't normally do for a 4 year old.  But, if the 4 year old were the only male of its species, perhaps.  Adam can talk and make decisions, but so can 4 year olds.  Four year olds don't usually get married, but there's no discussion of passionate sex right here.

I know, the 4 year old thing is pretty weird, but this is what half-sells it for me: 4 year olds are not ashamed to wander around naked.  That's something it takes a while for us to teach them.

Now, there's a strong sense in this passage that it's obviously fundamentally evil to be naked.  Or at least to be naked and unashamed.  I don't want to get bogged down in a discussion of whether that's valid, so I'll just go with it, except to note that it's another insight into the author's culture.  But little kids don't have that sense of shame because they're too young and innocent to know better.

Which brings us around to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  We generally accept that young children are lacking in their ability to distinguish right from wrong, good from evil.  If we want to go all metaphorical, as you grow up, society (your parents, teachers, etc.) feeds you the fruit of the tree, by teaching you right from wrong, the commonly accepted social values, and so on.  Maybe the whole Garden of Eden is just a metaphor for childhood.

Or maybe Adam and his wife were naked little children whom some wealthy landowner had locked into a large walled garden for his own amusement.

Cleave

2:24 Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.

Apparently this whole rib story is some sort of justification for a son abandoning his parents when he gets married.

But this interpretation (the one offered by this verse) is not really justified by the preceding verses.  If Adam had no parents, how can we read anything from his story into a relationship between a son and his parents?  If this verse starts "Therefore" and draws a conclusion from the last few verses, it should be: "Therefore shall a man refuse a nice goat, so as to marry his elbow."

If we look past the parts about marrying your rib, we can perhaps learn something here of the author's culture.  This verse suggests monogamy, family homes, children leaving to marry.

Some people claim that they believe the Bible is literally true.  Apparently their experience of marriage involves actually fusing together the flesh of spouses; that is the literal interpretation of this verse.

By the way, "cleave" is one of those bizarre English words which is its own opposite; it can mean either "split apart" or "join together".  So, a son will cleave himself from his parents before cleaving to his wife.

Bones, and flesh

2:23 And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.

Ok, so here's Adam, all excited about meeting his rib.  And, so he names her Woman, rather than Eve, and calls himself Man.

Why is she flesh of his flesh?  Verse 2:21 specifies the rib, not the flesh.

The word "now" makes it seem like he was impatient, meeting all the animals, to find something made out of his bones.

He a woman

2:22 And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.

So, rather than making a woman out of mud, God makes a woman out of a man's rib.  This explains why a typical woman is roughly the height and shape of a typical man's rib.  Or it explains why women cause so much heartache.  Or maybe Adam just was the sort of guy who was attracted to his own bones.  Wait, that's not even a fetish.

I have no idea what to say.  This is completely surreal.

Were all the female animals made from ribs from the male animals?  Was God only bringing male animals to Adam before?  What about animals without ribs; where did the females come from then?

Ribs

2:21 And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof;

Having failed to mold any animals out of mud that met Adam's high standards for a mate, God next tried ... one of Adam's ribs.  And he used general anesthesia for the surgery.

I'm sorry, I have no idea what this is about.  It makes no sense to me whatsoever.  Why not a big toe?  Or, more rationally, why not just make another person out of mud?

Could this possibly be any more random?

Beast

2:19 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.

Rashomon wins, hands down.  This chapter is simply not the same story as the previous one.  Similar in some ways, but not compatible.  They simply don't belong together.  In the first chapter, plants were created on the third day, birds on the fifth, and on the sixth day, first animals and then man.  In this chapter, man was created, and then plants, and then animals and birds.  And there's no real way to attribute that to a lack of clarity; the first chapter was obsessed with what happened on which day.  In this chapter, that's gone, but the order is integral to the story here: God made the animals after deciding Adam was lonely.

Let me just repeat that point.  There is no way that chapter one and chapter two are both correctly describing the same events; they are fundamentally incompatible.  If someone wants to talk about when man was created in Genesis, you have to ask, "Which version?  The chapter 1 version or the chapter 2 version?"

Now, this is a bit of a setback for us.  Part of my goal in this blog was to understand what Genesis said about the God character in the story.  But we can't honestly draw conclusions about God from chapter 1 being the same as Lord God in chapter 2, since they seem to be creators of different worlds.

Moving on....

The name Adam pops up out of nowhere.  We're kind of guessing at this point that he's the man God made from mud and dropped in Eden.  That's not too wild a speculation, since there's only one person on earth at this point in the story.

God, the busybody aunt, wants Adam to find a mate.  So, naturally, he makes a cow (apparently also out of mud, like he made the man), and brings it to Adam.  And after the cow, a turkey and rat and raven and elephant and dove and beaver and so on.

This is utterly bizarre.  The only conclusion I can draw from this is either (1) God is really into bestiality and desperately wanted Adam to mate with some animal, any animal or (2) God is an idiot who honestly thought, "I bet what Adam is looking for in a mate is a rat with nice whiskers and a long tail.  No, maybe a raven with sleek black feathers.  No?  How surprising."  Other options: (3) both, (4) God has a weird sense of humor and was laughing hysterically the whole time, (5) I'm completely misreading this passage.

In fact, let's go wild and include the next verse for clarification.

2:20 And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him.

So, they are definitely and explicitly looking for a "help meet" for Adam.  So, Adam is definitely the man who needed a help meet, and God is definitely bringing him lots of animals for that purpose.  Maybe "help meet" doesn't mean mate.  Maybe.  Anyone have another suggestion?

Anyway, Adam said, "That's a cow.  Not gonna marry me no cow.  That's a turkey.  Not gonna marry me no turkey, no sir.  That's a rat.  Oh Lord, I ain't gonna marry no rat, no way, no how.  Good God, that's a raven.  I'll marry a raven ... nevermore!  Muhahahaha.  That's an elephant.  What time are we breaking for lunch?  No, of course I'm not interested in the elephant in that way.  I am getting a little hungry, though.  Ok, that's a dove.  No dove for me."

You know all those annoying homophobes who say "God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve."?  Next time you're chatting with them, tell them, "Actually, God made Adam and Bessie the cow.  Genesis 2:18-20."

Help meet

2:18 And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.

Sometimes God is like your old aunt, always trying to get you hitched.

In case it wasn't absolutely clear that there was only one man before, we're reminded of that here.

"Help meet" isn't a common or clear term.  It sounds more like "swap meet", but apparently just means "mate".  Both in the British sense and not.

As I said, "It is not good that the man should be alone" kind of sounds like your aunt or grandmother.  But the "not good" is a little interesting since we've been talking about the knowledge of good and evil.  So, does it just mean, "I feel like interfering", or does it mean "fundamentally evil" or "could be better" or "I'm obsessed with reproduction" like the authors of the previous chapter?  It is not clear.

Surely

2:17 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

Ok, here's the commanding part.

First, this differs sharply from the first chapter, where man was given every tree without restriction.  Here we have a clear "don't eat this one".  Definite push for Rashomon.

But a reason is given.  The "for" after the colon clearly means "because".  You shouldn't eat it, because you will die if you do.  And it's unambiguous: "surely" means definitely, absolutely, without doubt or wriggle room.  And it's quick: on the same day.

Now, that sure sounds to me like it's poisonous.  But it's not entirely clear.  It could be a threat rather than a warning, more like, "Don't touch my stuff, or I'll kill you."

This is a restriction from eating from one of the special trees mentioned; it seems that the tree of life is still fair game.

Note that God is warning the one man that he sculpted from mud.  No other people or animals have been mentioned in this chapter, so presumably no one else is around yet.

One more point, which seems almost too obvious to bother with, but I've heard people quibble over it.  If someone says to you, "Don't eat the little red berries; if you do, you'll be dead within the hour", and you trust them and don't think that they're insanely possessive of their berries or deliberately trying to mislead you or spectacularly bad at communicating, the only way to interpret that is "Poison!"  It's not a warning that you might get your face permanently stained red, thereby killing your good looks.  It's not a suggestion that the speaker might be disappointed if you eat them.  It's not abstract or vague.  It's not, "It could interfere with your immune system, leaving you slightly more vulnerable to various illness and decreasing your life expectancy from 78 years to 74 years."

So, should someone get around to eating the fruit, we now expect that they'll get stomach cramps, fall over, convulse wildly, and kick it.  Of course, there's always the possibility that God is wildly mistaken.  "I think there was some sort of warning label on one of the seed packets I got for the garden.  Maybe that tree over there?  Ah, whatever."

Freely

2:16 And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: 

Ah, those verses that end in colons.

This is similar to, but contrasts a bit with the first chapter.  As always, we have the 'Lord' thing.  But this is parallel to 1:29, "I have given you every herb ... and every tree ... it shall be for meat".  In this case, it's the trees in the garden; in the previous case, all the plants on earth.

This part doesn't sound much like a command, but that hints at what follows the colon.

Dress it

2:15 And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. 

Back in 2:8, God put man in the garden.  Seven verses later, he did it again.  Maybe man ran away.  Anyway, this time there's a purpose: the garden needs a gardener.

Consistent with this chapter, and inconsistent with the first, we have "LORD God".

Note that there's a continuum between gardener and farmer.  In fact, I'm not sure I can define the distinction between a garden and a farm.

Four heads

2:10 And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads.

The first part doesn't sound like it makes much sense.  If the garden is in Eden, the river should go into Eden to water the garden.  If the garden isn't in Eden, why did you just tell us it was there?

But there's a way around this.  First, assume that the author is lousy at communication.  Second, read it thus: And a spring came up in Eden to water the garden, and from that spring a river went out of Eden.

This is written to sound like "God created a river", but it doesn't really say that.  The normal thing is that you find a water source and put the garden there.  But this could be interpreted that way.  The "And" wouldn't be so much sequential in time as "And, by the way, there was a river there."

Then the river split into four parts.  I don't have much to say about that.  I'm going to break with tradition and add 4 more verses here which I also don't have much to say about.

2:11 The name of the first is Pison: that is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold; 
2:12 And the gold of that land is good: there is bdellium and the onyx stone.
2:13  And the name of the second river is Gihon: the same is it that compasseth the whole land of Ethiopia. 
2:14  And the name of the third river is Hiddekel: that is it which goeth toward the east of Assyria. And the fourth river is Euphrates.

My usual comments apply: the verses are grouped oddly.  The whole thing is inconsistent; why no information about Euphrates, but so much about Havilah?

Beyond that, what is notable is that there is a startling amount of geographic detail.  This sounds like the authors are really making an effort to provide directions to locate a real place.  It's a pretty odd way to make up a creation myth, since it's practically begging for someone to verify it (or disprove it).  If you lived in that area a few thousand years ago, all it would take would be the willingness to go an a hike up to the source of whichever river was nearest, and locate the garden.  So, wouldn't people have done that, and kept track of the location?  Why isn't the garden a tourist destination today?

Midst

2:9 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.

In the last verse, "God planted a garden" and "put the man" there.  Here he's making the plants grow in the garden.  So, "plant" in the last verse really seems specifically to mean "plant seeds", which grow in this verse.  Still, "made ... to grow" is an odd construct.  That's pretty much what happens after you plant seeds in good soil; you don't usually make much effort.

As a computer programmer, I'm tempted to interpret this as: Consider all species of trees.  Some are good looking and have nutritional fruit; some are one or the other; and some are neither.  What grew in the garden were both.  In addition to those, there were (at least) two species that were not both: the tree of life and the tree of knowledge.

Of course, I know that nobody speaks English (or any real language) the way we program computers, so the interpretation is more like:  Consider all species of trees.  Some are good for gardens because they look good; others are convenient to have around because they have nutritional fruit.  (And there may be some overlap betweeen those two sets.)  Most of these species were in the garden.  Also, there were two particularly important trees in the garden that I want to mention, Life and Knowledge.

The "every tree..." business makes this really sound like the fantasy of a farmer.

It's not entirely clear here what the two special trees are about, the tree of life, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.  But one thing is clear is that it's not "knowledge of mathematics" or "knowledge of sports trivia" or "knowledge of farming techniques" but "knowledge of good and evil".  It's not clear whether that means knowing the difference, or knowing lots of stories about each.

Technically the "in the midst" means close to the middle; in practice, it at least means "not on the edge".  Here it only clearly applies to Life; Knowledge may or may not be near an edge.

Oh, another "LORD God".  This chapter uses that very consistently.

Eastward

2:8 And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed.

Again, this chapter uses "LORD God"; point to Rashomon.  Also, the last chapter talks of plants, but not a garden.

God plants a garden.  This God is a farmer.  It doesn't say "God made the earth grow a garden", or "God waved his hand and a garden appeared".  It says "planted", like God one by one stuck seeds into the mud.

"Eastward" is interesting.  In some ways it's very specific.  But, east of where man was created?  East of where the storyteller is?

"Formed" is a reference to the mud-sculpting from the last verse.

"Put" is interesting.  It's very vague.  Did God stick the man in a wheelbarrow and move him?

Dust

2:7 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.

Again, this chapter uses "LORD God" where the first just said "God".  One point to Rashomon.

Also, in this chapter, man is created before plants.  In fact, man is created before anything else.  In the other chapter, man was pretty much created last.  Major points to Rashomon.

"Dust" is clearly the wrong word right after a mist watered the earth.  Dust is dry.  The correct word would be "mud".  Or I suppose perhaps "clay".

What does it mean that man is made of mud?  Well, clearly the ground is important.  Another hint that the author is a farmer.  Besides that, maybe it also indicates an interest in, and familiarity with pottery.  And an active imagination.

This God is a sculptor, and breathes.  Apparently he breathes into his sculpture's nostrils.  To each his own.

This suggests a pretty clear understanding of the relationship between breathing and being alive.  Of course, that's none too subtle.

Up a mist

2:6 But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground.

Come to think of it, if the dry land was just separated from the water, why would it desperately need watering?  I'll count that in favor of Rashomon.

Aside from this rather bizarre description of the first rain, there's not a whole lot to this verse.

Ok, the mist went up from the earth, and then went back down to the earth, watering it.  Makes little sense.  Why didn't the water just stay in the earth where it was needed?

Anyway, one interesting point is that God isn't implicated in this mist.  This just happened.  In fact, the "But" almost sounds like "despite God".  "God hadn't made it rain, but it rained anyway."

Before it grew

2:5 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.

This is a bit of a low point.  I can't quite figure out how to make grammatic sense out of this.  It seems to be saying that there were no plants, or that all of the plants were just seeds in the ground.  But it doesn't quite actually say that.

"And every plant of the field before it was in the earth."  Let's simplify that down.  First, we can drop the leading "And" with impunity.  The phrase "of the field" describes the plants, and doesn't seem that important.  Let's just use "there" instead of "in the earth" for now.  Then the phrase becomes "every plant before it was there".  There are two ways to interpret "before" in English.  One, it can mean "in front of", as in "all the papers before you".  Two, it can mean prior to, earlier in time.  If "before" means "in front of", then what is "it" referring to?  "Every plant in front of it was there."

The last verse ended in a comma, but going back to it doesn't help.  There's simply no referent for "it", if we interpret "before" as "in front of".  That leaves us with the temporal meaning of "before", and "it" refers to the plant.  So the phrase is something like "every plant, before arriving and every herb before growing".  But then we get to a colon, and don't have a real sentence yet.

The part after the colon seems like it's trying to explain the part before the colon.  It starts with "for" as in "because".  "Because no rain and no tilling."  (I'm being brief here; at least the actual phrase after the colon is grammatical.) Now, rain and tilling help plants grow.  So, the part before the colon should say "The plants hadn't grown yet".  Or, in the inimitable repetitive style we're getting used to "The plants before growing hadn't yet grown."  But just "The plants before growing" seems like not quite enough.

Let's just assume that the first part is supposed to say "At this time (ie, on the day that God made the earth and the heavens), the plants of the fields were still just seeds in the ground, as were the herbs of the field; and they had not yet grown."

Moving on.  There's a second "LORD God", so this verse is sounding like the previous one.  No real shock there, since the previous one ended in a comma.  But we'll count it as another small hint that this chapter has a different author than the first one.  That is, that the Rashomon Interpretation is true.

It sounds kind of like it's saying that you need two things to grow plants: rain and tilling.  This is pretty odd, since everyone knows that plants grow on untilled soil, although they don't take root as readily.  It does seem to be referencing some agriculture knowledge, and is farmer-oriented.  This gives it something in common with the first chapter.  This chapter also seems to be written by a farmer.  That would tend to undermine the Rashomon Interpretation and support the Repetition Interpretation.

Another way to read the "rain and tilling" is that you need either one or the other to get plants to grow.  Perhaps wild plants grow from rain, and domesticated one from tilling.  But tilling is no substitute for watering, and I'd think even early farmers would know that.  However, this interpretation puts man and God as equals, which is interesting.

It reads like God is the cause of rain.  I'd go with large bodies of water evaporating, temperature gradients in the atmosphere changing the ability of the air to hold water, and so on.  But that's just me.

If the Repetition Interpretation is true, this is specifying when exactly we're talking about.  This is after the dry land was separated from the water, but before the earth brought forth grass.  That's specifically part of the way through the third day.  In the first chapter, earth and seas were separated on the first part of the third day (1:9-1:10), and the earth brought forth grains and fruit trees on the second part (1:11-1:12).

The third day, then is "the day that the LORD God made the earth".  However, it's not the day God made the heavens; heaven was created on the second day, filled with stars on the fourth, and with birds on the fifth.  That's a strike against Repetition and in favor of Rashomon.

In the day

2:4 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,

Another verse ending in a comma.  Sigh.

This is another introductory verse; it could easily be 1:1, but here it is at 2:4.  There are four possibilities that I see.  One: we are going completely nonlinear, circling back to tell the same story again, perhaps to fill in missing details.  Two: we are telling a different story, although a similar one, maybe like Rashomon.  Three: someone simply shuffled all the verses around randomly.  Four: this isn't introductory, but is yet another summarizing of what went before.

Three would likely lead to an even less coherent story than we've had.  Four will quickly be shown to be wrong.  So only the first two options are contenders.  Similarities between the stories will point toward the first, which I'll call Repetition Interpretation; differences and inconsistencies will point toward the second, which I'll call the Rashomon Interpretation.

These chapters are wildly inconsistent about whether it's "heaven" or "heavens".

This is the first "Lord God".  And it's "LORD", but I'm assigning no significance to the capitalization.

It's not really clear what "generations" means.

It's interesting that it says "in the day" to refer to when God created heaven and earth.  In the previous chapter, heaven was created on the second day, and earth on the third.  So that would be two days; and in the previous chapter counting the days seemed very important.  But this reads more like "back in the day", just some vague time long ago.

By the way, when I say "the first chapter", I mean verses 1:1 through 2:3; it seems obvious that what are technically the first three verses of the second chapter are actually the last three verses of the first.

The use of "Lord" and the lack of interest in counting days already suggests that the Rashomon Interpretation is the right one.  These points are distinctly different from the previous story, and we have barely started telling the second one.  We're telling the creation story again, but this time it's a different creation story, even told by a different author, who uses different words and has different interests.

But that's just a suggestion.  More conclusive evidence will have to wait.

Had rested

2:3 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.

Not only does God need to rest, he likes resting so much he makes the day when he rested holy.  He must have been seriously worn out.

Ok, this is the last of 4 verses saying that the creation is over.  So, it's time to go back and summarize.  Here are the days in shorthand, after the introductory first verse.

1. 4 verses, 1:2-1:5.  Let light; light.  Divide from dark.  Good.  Name: Day, Night.
2. 3 verses, 1:6-1:8.  Let firmament with purpose; made firmament; so.  Name: Heaven.
3. 5 verses, 1:9-1:13.  Let dry land separated from water; so.  Name: Earth, Seas.  Good.  Let plants from earth, reproducing; so; plants.  Good.
4. 6 verses, 1:14-1:19.  Let lights with purposes; so; made sun, moon, stars to rule. Good.
5. 4 verses, 1:20-1:23.  Let fish, birds from seas; made fish, birds, reproducing.  Good.  Bless: reproduce.
6. 8 verses, 1:24-1:31.  Let animals from earth, reproducing; so; made animals.  Good.  Let people with dominion; made people, reproducing.  Bless: reproduce, farm, have dominion.  People eat plants.  Animals eat plants. Very good.
7. 3 verses, 2:1-2:3.  Rest, bless, sanctify.

Looking this over, it's really clear that plants should be created on a different day from the earth.  And people on a different day from the animals.  And possibly birds on a different day from fish.  What was his hurry?  Was God trying to meet a deadline?

So, what have we learned about God from this tale?  He existed when the story began, when the earth was covered in water.  He's leading a committee, or is a committee.  He's a hard worker, or a group of hard workers who can accomplish impressive things.  He's insecure, and is always checking if his work is any good.  He can't do everything at once, and he gets tired.  He looks like people.  He talks and sees.  He's obsessed with reproduction.  He wants people and animals to eat plants.  He wants the sun to rule the day, and people to have dominion over animals.  He doesn't create something from nothing so much as he shapes and organizes.  He supports farming.

And of the universe?  Well, at the bottom is the earth on one side and the seas on the other.  Above them is heaven, which is apparently the atmosphere, containing birds, and the sun, moon and stars.  Above that is another ocean which makes the sky look blue.  One of the purposes of the sun and moon is to divide day from night, although there were a couple of days and nights before they existed.  The main goal of the plants and fish and birds and animals and people is to reproduce like crazy.

Here's the really crazy part: there are people who say they think this story is literally true.  That's bizarre enough, but odder still is that they believe hardly anything that I've written here.  And we haven't even gotten to the warped and twisted parts yets.

Rested

2:2 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.

In 1:31 it implies that God was done creating things.  In 2:1 it says everything was finished.  And here it says that he's ended his work.  So, maybe he's done creating things.

This verse tells us something else about God.  In addition to looking like a person, he is like a person in that after working hard for six days, he's tired and needs a day off to rest.  I picture him all sweaty, sprawled in a field, and wishing that he'd invented couches and air conditioning, beer and television already.

The phrasing of the first half of the verse is odd.  It suggests that on the 7th day he was still finishing up somehow.  But that could just be awkward phrasing.

Finished

2:1 Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.

Gee, somehow we're into the second chapter, but we're still summarizing the first.  The numbering fails again.

It's not entirely clear, but by "host" I think it means everything living in them.

I have no idea why heaven is plural this time.

The sixth

1:31 And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

This is a pretty nice sort of summary.  He saw "every thing", and, even though each thing indivually was good, together it was "very good".  And the "behold" makes it sound like he was particularly surprised to find this, and therefore delighted.

Herb for meat

1:30 And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.

So birds and animals also get to eat plants.

This makes people feel not so special.

This also makes carnivorous animals feel left out.  And hungry.

Also, in case you wondered, the bible is clearly pro-legalization.

Meat

1:29 And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.

I think in context it's clear that "meat" means "food".

So, God has given people the grains and fruit trees for them to eat, but animals aren't mentioned here.  This suggests to me that the authors were vegetarians.

Subdue

1:28 And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

Oddly enough, people are blessed much like fish.

This repeats the dominion, but it leaves out cattle and "all the earth".  I don't know about the cattle, but this makes me lean toward interpreting "all the earth" as just meaning all the animals.

The phrase "replenish the earth" is parallel to the fish's "fill the waters".  I think it's just a third way of saying "reproduce".  So "Be fruitful" = "Reproduce" and "multiply" = "reproduce".  Which makes the blessing start "Reproduce, reproduce, reproduce."  Perhaps that was considered important.

But the "subdue it" phrase is new and very interesting.  People are charged with subduing the earth.  I get two pieces of information from this.  First is "There's no such thing as a free lunch"; God will give the earth to people, but they still have to work to control it.  Second, this can basically be read as people being commanded to develop agriculture.  That surely sounds like a fundamental purpose for a group of farmers.

Female created

1:27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

This is a significant milestone here.  It's the first time we start a sentence with a word other than "and" since the very first verse which started "In".  In verse 16, there was an independent clause which started "he".  By my count, we had 50 independent clauses starting "and".  My English teachers would have covered this in red and screamed that it was essentially one massive run-on sentence.  But now we have three clauses, and not one starts with "and".

So what does "so" mean?  Informally, at least in modern English, it doesn't have to mean anything.  "So, anyway, ..."  More formally, it means "Because of what preceded."  There was the cause; so there was the effect.  That's a little interesting, because it's applied to God.  That suggests that God, like all things we're familiar with, is subject to laws of cause and effect.  But, that's not really the meaning here, exactly.  This seems more like the "so" following a rationale for acting, the basis for a decision.  God decided to create man because ... well, in this case, because God had said they should.  This is strong committee talk, really.  The creation subcommittee created man because the planning subcommittee said to do so.

Except that there's only one guy in the creation subcommittee; the "us/our" from the last verse has turned into "he/his".

We get into equally convoluted details understanding what got created.  We have three phrases: in the first God created "man"; in the second God created "him"; in the third God created "them" (male and female).  There seems to be a lot of leeway in how we could interpret this.

One extreme would be a sequential individual interpretation.  God made one male person; then another male person; then a third male and a female.  The "individual" part of this interpretation conflicts with our interpretation of the earlier verse, where we read "them" as indicating that "man" was the whole species.

The sequential species interpretation doesn't really make much sense.  God made the species, then God made the species, then God made both genders of the species.

The fully parallel species interpretation is wildly repetitive, but makes sense.  God made the species, which involved God making the species, specifically both genders of the species.  I'm going to go with this one, but there are several others options which are possible; this is a verse rich in multiguity.

Let's note that when trees and grains and fish and birds and animals were created, there was the "after his kind" explanation.  We don't get that here.  But we can interpret the "male and female" bit as standing in for a discussion of the reproduction of people, just as "after his kind" referred to the reproduction of the other species.

This brings up the point that people are very distinct here from land animals.  Created on the same day, sure, but (1) people look like God, which apparently land animals don't; and (2) people's reproduction is discussed differently; and (3) people have dominion over everything.

This verse has the repetitive "in his own image, in the image of God"; that's clearly an important point.  That point isn't emphasized in the third phrase, the one which hints at reproduction by mentioning sexes.  The pronoun "he", used for God, suggests that God is male.  However, the interpretation of "man" as describing the species, male and female, suggests that both are made in the image of God; or at least in the image of the committee members.  This hints that perhaps the committee members were of both sexes.


It's interesting that land animals aren't supposed to look like God, while people do.  To my eyes, people look like land animals.  There isn't really that much diversity in land animals; two (back) legs, and either two front legs or two arms.  One head with two eyes, two ears, a nose with two nostrils and a mouth with a tongue and a bunch of teeth.  That describes people, horses, apes, cats, lizards, elephants.  Also consider that people don't look that much like each other; is it obvious at a glance that a 4'10" skinny white woman with blue eyes and straight blonde hair is the same species as a 6'10" fat black man with brown eyes and curly dark hair?  Yet both of those are presumably in the range of the first group of people created, in God's image.

Breaking news!

This just in ....

http://www.dailyglobal.com/2009/10/god-is-not-the-creator-claims-academic/

Turns out that we're not the only ones trying to figure this thing out.  So is Ellen J. van Wolde, and she's doing in Hebrew and Dutch.  Apparently, she thinks the first line should be read as "In the beginning, God separated the heaven from the earth".  She seems to think this is radical because it implies that the earth was already there, so God didn't create it.  Of course, this is pretty much what I wrote a few weeks ago when I got to the eighth verse:

http://beret-sheet.blogspot.com/2009/09/second-day.html

The short form is that the only way to make sense of the description of God creating heaven in verses 6 - 8 was to interpret the first verse as introductory, which makes the second verse really the beginning of the story.  And the second verse describes the earth as "formless, empty, dark, watery" (in my words).  So, "In the beginning" just means the beginning of the story.  And God comes off more like a talented builder than a magical creator.

But it's nice to see that someone who is actually qualified is sorting this out the same way.

Our likeness

1:26 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.

This passage is about the creation of man, but it tells us a lot about God.  First, it is almost impossible not to read this as God heading a committee of some sort; how else to interpret the plural "us ... our"?  And since the committee interpretation also explains the planning out loud, the checking if it was good, and so on, it's starting to seem inevitable.

Next, man is in the image and likeness of the committee members.  This strongly suggests a physical similarity; that is, the committee members had two legs, ten fingers, two armpits, body hair, teeth, one head, and so on.  It also suggests that there are differences, although it's not clear what they are.  If there were no differences, surely this would be "after our kind", not "after our likeness", identical not similar.  Since man looks like a committee member, this suggests that the differences were other than appearance.

It's pretty clear here than "man" refers to the species, not a particular man.  For instance, it says "let them have dominion", which does not seem to refer to a particular individual.

Man is given "dominion" over all of the animals created earlier today and yesterday.  Oddly, though, it says "fish" here after avoiding that word in verses 20 - 22.  Man is also given dominion "over all the earth", although it's not really clear if that's supposed to mean "over all the animals of the earth" or "over all the dry land" or what.  Nothing is mentioned here of plants, or of sun, moon and stars, or of heaven, or of the waters above heaven, or of day and night.

It's not clear if man being given dominion over animals is parallel to the sun's purpose to rule the day.  It's harder to read this as man being a deity, as you can interpret the sun ruling over the day.  Perhaps this is because man is a species here, not an individual like the sun.  However, in English (and, I guess, in French and Latin and other languages), the word "lord" means something like "landowner"; the land owned is the "domain" of the lord, and the ownership of the land is "dominion".  But "lord" also has religious overtones of being a deity, so there is something of that connotation here as well.

Creepeth

1:25 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.

Here there's no mention of "the living creature after his kind".  That means either our one interpretation where that referred to the others was correct; or that they have simply been forgotten.

The order here is different.  In the last verse it was cattle, creeps, beast.  Here it is beast, cattle, creeps.  And, as is common here, the phrasing is slightly different.  There seems to be no significance to this.

Beyond that, I don't think there's anything new to say about this.

Creeping thing

1:24 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.

 In context, I'd guess that this is the creation of land animals.  But the text here is pretty unclear.  In verse 21, "every living creature that moveth ... after their kind" was brought forth from the sea.  Now we have "the living creature after his kind" from the earth; is that obviously different other than the place of origin?  Then we have the phrase "cattle, and creeping thing"; are those two more things being created, after living creatures, or are those an exhaustive list of the kinds of living creatures that are being created?  Finally we have "beast of the earth after his kind"; that seems distinct. That makes either 4 or 2 kinds of things being created, one of which isn't clearly described as being different from something created earlier.

It is clear that the earth is bringing these forth; that seems to make this verse directly parallel to verse 20.  But verse 20 doesn't have the "and it was so".  Why the subtle change?

Fifth

1:23 And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.

I'm itching to put in a summary, but I'm going to try to wait until my 34th post.

I don't seem to have anything to say here.

Multiply

1:22 And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth. 

 After all that dividing, we now get some multiplying.

"Them" is apparently "every living creature that moveth"; but now that seems to refer only to sea animals.  The phrasing is repeatedly very strange: living creatures excludes land animals, birds, and sometimes whales.

This passage may clarify the previous one.  It seems that the multiplying is still in the future, so the earlier "after their kind" was misplaced.  Also, "abundantly" is less than filling the waters.

The phrase "in the earth" I'll take just to mean "on dry land", not underground.  Although the phrase "fowl multiply in the earth" does make me picture chickens in a cave doing math homework.

For no particular reason, the fish are supposed to be fruitful, but not the birds.  But both should multiply.  More strange is that the fruit trees and grains, despite having their reproductive cycle described, are not even instructed to multiply.  Maybe God thought that telling the fruit trees to be fruitful would be too obvious.

God's blessing for fish and birds is instructions to have lots of descendants.  That's very Darwinian of him.  Anyway, this is the first blessing.  Apparently the stars, moon, sun, plants, heaven, earth and light didn't get blessed.

Whales

1:21 And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

Here whales are distinguished from "every living creature that moveth", as opposed to last verse's "moving creature that hath life".  Is it because whales don't move?  Aren't alive?  Birds, too.

Other translations say "sea monsters" instead of "great whales".

Unlike the previous verse, this one says "after their/his kind".  This phrase was used to describe seeds of trees and grains before: an apple tree has apples containing apples seeds which grow into apple trees, etc.  It doesn't seem to make much sense here, but by analogy, it's talking about birds having bird babies and creatures having creature babies.  Maybe.

That would almost call for a very odd interpretation of this, in which multiple generations of creatures are being described here.  Which raises the issue of whether the abundance is the water creating lots of creatures; or whether it's the creatures, once created, breeding abundantly.  Grammatically, abundantly is modifying "bringing forth", which the water is doing; but we've seen enough not to entirely trust the grammar.

May fly

1:20 And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.

Ok, we've got exciting new stuff here.  Two creations, and more information about heaven.

In verse 11, God asked the earth to bring forth plants.  Here he's asking the water to bring forth animals.  The first is "the moving creature that hath life"; that's pretty broad.  It's not clear here whether it means a single animal, or one species, or pretty much all animals.  Well, maybe "abundantly" rules out a single animal.  The second is "fowl", or birds.  If this were limited to sea animals, it would perhaps make sense for the water to bring them forth.  But, it definitely includes birds, so it's rather odd that they come from the water.

Of course, all animals coming from the ocean agrees with modern evolutionary theory, at least to some degree.  As does the plants predating the animals.  But the plants not coming from the ocean would be a conflict; not to mention the plants predating the stars.  I think it's safe to say the two viewpoints are fairly independent.

We know that God placed the sun, moon and stars in heaven.  But here we get more.  First, heaven is described as "open"; this is a bit startling for two reasons.  One, it's full of stars.  Two, it's dividing the waters above from those below.  Beyond that, heaven here is where birds fly.

So this clarifies the layout of the world as viewed by the author.  At the bottom we have earth and sea, with the earth now covered in plants, and birds and animals coming from the sea.  Above that we have heaven, which is full of air and flying birds.  In heaven, presumably toward the top, are the sun and moon and stars.  And above that, more water.

This reminds me somehow of pictures drawn before perspective, but this is perhaps more before gravity.

What does it mean that fowl are not considered moving creatures that have life?  Just some more random inconsistency.

Fourth day

1:19 And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.

The fourth day is the first with a sun.  Days here are clearly tied to cycles of light and darkness: evening and morning.  But evening and morning in my worldview come from the rotation of the earth bringing the sun (the main light source) into or out of view in a particular area.  The worldview described here is clearly distinct from mine; the first three days in particular don't even have a sun.

The geocentric worldview ("the sun orbits the earth; the sun being up causes day, and the sun being down causes night") predates the heliocentric one ("the earth rotates relative to the sun; the sun being in view causes day").  But the view here seems to even predate the geocentric one.  Here it says something more like, "When it happens to be day, the sun comes out to rule the day."  Of course, it also says the purpose of the sun is to light the earth, which seems to conflict.

And the writing and the posting were the nineteenth entry.

Day and over

1:18 And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good.

At least now God is seeing by light coming from a light source.

I promise, tomorrow is the last of the six verses on sun moon stars.

Give light upon

1:17 And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth,

This verse ends in a comma.  That's even worse than a colon.

Apparently God made the sun, moon and stars somewhere else, and then put them in heaven.  Maybe he had a workshop on earth.

Between the repetition and the bad numbering of verse, I've got nothing else new to say here.

Lesser light

1:16 And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.

 This is more specific than just lights in heaven.  They're not explicitly named here, but it's clearly the sun and the moon.  And the stars are named.

The first point I want to make is this: the moon is radically different from the sun and stars.  The sun and stars are actually light sources; the moon just reflects sunlight.  The moon is technically not a light.

I mentioned before that this tells us something about heaven: it contains the sun, the moon, and the stars.

The most interesting bits here are the new purposes.  The purpose of the sun here is "to rule the day"; the purpose of the moon is "to rule the night".  This is pretty strange if taken literally; it makes the sun and moon sound like kings or gods.  I think this is one of the hints that this story is older than monotheism.

The other thing about this is: the moon isn't always out during the night, and isn't always visible during the night.  It doesn't rule the night the same way the sun rules the day.  And the moon is sometimes visible during the day, although never nearly as bright as the sun.  But, during total solar eclipses, the moon passes in front of the sun, blocking it out.  At that moment, you could say that the moon rules the day.  Ironically, that is also when the sun seems most kingly, as that is when you can most clearly see its crown.

It notable that the only purpose (ruling) given here for the sun and the moon is not even listed among the six purposes previously mentioned for the lights.

For lights

1:15 And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.

If you recall, the last verse ended in a colon.  So, let me summarize to better understand the first phrase.  "Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven ... And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven ...".  In other words, God is explaining that he's creating lights, and that the purpose of those lights is to be lights.  In fact, this is apparently the sixth purpose, after the five listed in the previous verse.   "I'm making lights, and they're going to do all this stuff, and they're going to be lights."  It's just plain silly.

He does go on to say "to give light upon the earth".  That is, he views lights as I do, as a source of light.  And this light has not just a source, but a target; and that target is the earth.  It suggests that these lights aren't just supposed to shine any which way, but to shine earthwards.  This is clearly geocentric thinking.

This purpose for these lights makes the earlier creation of light even stranger; that light wasn't made to illuminate the earth, but just to illuminate God's workspace for the first few days until he got around to making lights.  Or something.

Of course, "and it was so" sounds like the end of it.  But, we've seen this phrase used redundantly before, so we shouldn't be surprised when the next couple of verses effective repeat it, albeit with elaboration.

Let me discuss something that continues to surprise me.  Most of us grew up with this story, to some degree or another.  We kind of knew it, we heard it in bits and pieces, we may even have read it.  And it seemed fine; dramatic and progressing forward, if a little heavy in lists.  God made this one day, and God made that the next, and in the end God made everything.  But when we actually read it carefully like this, think about it line for line, it borders on incoherent at times.  The purpose of the lights is to be lights?  Light was created three days before lights?  What is going on here? 

Not to mention that at times it sounds the way teenagers talk: "We thought maybe we'd go to the mall, so that we could, you know, be at the mall.  So we went.  And we got in a car and drove to the mall, and then we got to the mall.  And it was cool being at the mall.  That's where we went. to the mall."

There are probably lots of explanations for why it's as badly written as it is.  It was probably passed along orally without being written down for thousands of years, and mangled a bit along the way.  It probably predates people thinking seriously about how to tell stories, also by thousands of years. 

More interesting is why no one comments on how incoherent is.  It's not common to hear things like "The Bible reads like it was written by someone with attention deficit disorder."  There's some societal force at work, preventing basic criticisms, no matter how obvious they are.  There's also some issue about becoming familiarized with something since childhood, before we could reason clearly.  We've been brainwashed.

Signs

1:14 And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:

Having created light back in verse 3, God is now getting around to creating lights.  I understand "lights" to be what I might call "light sources", such as light bulbs or fireflies.  In this context, I would guess neither, but rather stars.  "Light" is what I think of as coming from light sources; so having it around first is strange.  The obvious way for me to create light is to start a fire.  But apparently these are the first light sources; the other light was just there.

The phrase "the firmament of the heaven" is an odd, redundant construct.  The firmament is named Heaven; the heaven is the firmament.

But this tells us a little about the firmament, about heaven.  The lights are in it.  These lights, therefore, are below the waters above the heaven, but are above earth and sea.

This is a very interesting "divide" phrase.  The purpose of the lights being created in heaven is "to divide the day from the night."  But, this is very confusing.  Recall that God divided light from darkness in verse 4.  After that, he named the light Day and the darkness Night.  So, God divided day from night in verse 4.  Now in verse 14, he is planning lights to divide day from night again.

When we first got to verse 8, it read like heaven was being created for the second time.  We used that to reinterpret the earlier structure, and conclude it was not as sequential as it seemed.  In particular, we now interpret the first verse as introductory.

So, now that it seems like day is going to be separated from night for a second time, can we go back to verse 4 and find a non-sequential interpretation?  Unfortunately, no.  Verse 5 identifies the separation of day and night as the first day.  Verse 8 marks a second day, and verse 13 marks a third day.  I don't want to jump ahead too much, but we seem to be clearly on the fourth day at this point.  That all seems starkly sequential to me.

That leaves us with this question: Was day divided from night on the first day or the fourth?  The rather unsatisfying answer is that the text pretty clearly says: Both.

The idea of lights somehow dividing day from night is a bizarre one.  I can picture heaven as a big (horizontal) dam, dividing water from water.  But I don't really get how lights are supposed to divide day from night, divide light from darkness.  But that is the first purpose of the lights God is here creating in heaven.

And the lights have other purposes: they are for signs, seasons, days, years.  At first glance, it seems like one of these things is not like the others: the last three are all time periods, while "signs" are not.  An annoyance about the three time periods is that they are not in order; it should be days, seasons, years; or years, seasons, days.

But there is an interpretation of "signs" which makes it related to time periods, and particularly to seasons.  It can be considered a sign, or indication, of when to plant various crops.  This is a bit of a stretch; crops aren't explicitly mentioned, but let me elaborate on this a bit.

Like the "seed after his kind" earlier, this would be considered important technology to an early farmer.  Understanding how to recognize the seasons in the stars to clearly identify from year to year the best time to plant would be useful.

We can use the stars for navigation: to determine where we are on earth; to determine which direction is which.  But this is not the purpose stated here.  The authors did not care about navigating; or did not know about navigating.  They were not navigators.

We can use the stars to understand physics, gravity, special and general relativity.  But this is not the purpose stated here.  The authors were not physicists.

If the lights being created in heaven include the sun (suggested by the "for days" purpose), we can use that as an energy source, to power cars, to burn ants; as a light source to read by, to paint by, and so on.  But the authors did not care about these uses.  They cared about marking times of the year, about when to plant, and when to harvest.

I like the fact that this verse ends in a colon.  The traditional division into verses is completely insane.  So why is my blog verse-oriented?  I have no response to that.

Third day

1:13 And the evening and the morning were the third day.

Day one: light.
Day two: heaven.
Day three: dry land, grass and trees.

I was complaining that the parallels weren't quite parallel, but the evening/morning sentences are exactly the same.  The only difference here is that someone decided this one should be a verse by itself, unlike the first two.  And that decision leaves me with pretty much nothing to write about on this, the thirteenth day.

Seed after his kind

1:12 And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw it was good.

There's not much new here, but let me point out that, for all the repetition, the verses rarely perfectly parallel one another.  Here, for instance, the "it happened" follows the "and it was so" from the previous verse, while verse 7 reads "it happened: and it was so."  Here, as with light and dry land, God saw it was good.  But that didn't happen with the creation of heaven.

Also, there's a subtle difference between the repeated parts of this verse and the previous.  In the previous verse we had "grass, the herb yielding seed"; now we have "grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind".  Before we had "the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself"; now we have "the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind".  The distinctions seem too subtle to be important, and apparently God thought it was good enough; but the distinctions are there nonetheless.

This version is a slight improvement technically, since it clarifies that you can't grow barley from wheat seeds.  Other than that, what's the point or the differences?

It just makes me want to take a red pen, scribble notes, and get the author to fix the inconsistencies.  Or perhaps I should just do the rewrite myself.

Seed

1:11 And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.

Now that the earth has been formed, it's time to fill the void.  If I'm parsing this correctly, two things are being created: "grass" and "the fruit tree".  The grass is then described or defined, for no immediately obvious reason as "the herb yielding seed".  Similar the fruit tree is described as "yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself". 

This leaves "Let the earth bring forth grass and the fruit tree upon the earth."  I'm not sure at all the significance of the final "upon the earth".  I don't see the earth bringing grass forth upon the seas as being a reasonable alternative.

Interesting is that this reads as if God is instructing the earth to do the work,  But, since we've already been let down on the magic bits, I can just as easily see a bunch of guys scurrying around, first creating some plant RNA in a lab, then using that to make a few plant cells, which they cultured, and then ran around the dry land planting, watering, fertilizing, lighting.

Going back to the descriptions, there's a couple of points of interest.  One interesting phrase is "after his kind."  The author had noticed that apple seeds grow into apple trees which bear apples; that fig seeds don't grow into apple trees; that apple trees don't grow figs.  We pretty much take this for granted, but this is perhaps the key insight that led to the invention of agriculture.  And it's something the author didn't take for granted, but thought was significant.

There's a focus on seeds in both descriptions.   Seeds, of course, are important for the plants to reproduce themselves.  And they're important for agriculture.

Also, it's striking that "fruit trees" are being created, not just "trees".  In fact, based on the "herb yielding seed," I'd suggest that "grass" includes or means grains, wheat and so on.  Grains and fruits, the very products of agriculture.

In short, this verse seems to be completely focused on agriculture; specifically on early agriculture.  So at this point I'm ready to speculate that this may have been written by a relatively early farmer.

Not much else to say on this verse.  It has the same structure as verse 9, "And God said, Let the ...: and it was so."  But it has more detailed description than any previous verse.  And there's no reason for the descriptions.  They make no sense actually being spoken by God as part of a command; they were just very important to the author.

Mildly off track, I can't help but observing that "grass, the herb yielding seed" today sounds like marijuana.  It's tough writing something that's going to be read for hundreds of years.