We are God’s image-bearers, and carers of creation according to Genesis Chapter 1. (See previous post here.) Genesis 2 zooms in to give us a close-up of humanity’s early days, filling out this picture of who we are in more detail. When we read this part of the creation story we usually focus on the garden of Eden, on the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and on how God provided the woman as a partner for the man.

However, something of humanity’s relationship with the rest of creation and with God Himself can also be gleaned from this chapter. Firstly, we consider afresh the words in verse 7 where we are told that ‘the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.’ This statement is powerful, humbling, helping us to realise that we are intimately connected with this planet that we inhabit. We are made from the same stuff as all biological life. For emphasis we are told that the man was made from the dust ‘of the ground’ and not just the dust. The reader is meant to be arrested by this assertion. Maybe we needed, and still need, to hear of and accept our creatureliness. Likewise, when later in the chapter we are told how God operated on the man to take out a rib from which He made the woman, this is meant to impress on us the intimacy of this relationship as opposed to the less personal relationships the man has with the animals.

Next, we learn about the garden itself with its trees and its river and how it is connected with the rest of the world, outside the garden. The one river flowing out of the garden becomes four headstreams when it leaves the garden. These are named and one, the Pishon, flows through a land where ‘good’ gold, aromatic resin and onyx are to be found (vv.10-14). Are we told about these as part of the scene-setting for human creativity and endeavour using these resources? Possibly, given that this chapter along with the whole of Genesis Chapters 1-11 give a context for the rest of the Bible. All of the creation is included within God’s knowledge and sovereignty. There’s nothing we can discover and learn about how our planet works, even down to sub-atomic particles, and about the earliest moments and farthest reaches of this universe that God doesn’t already know about, love, and care for.

Back to the garden and we learn that God took the man and put him in the garden ‘to work it and take care of it’ (v15). The man was intentionally placed in the garden, where God had provided everything he needed to thrive – water to make plants grow, trees to provide pleasure as well as food, and resources to develop civilisation as we expressed our creativity. God delegated the man to ‘work it and take care of it’, not either working it or taking care of it, but both! God expected, even wanted, humanity to change the garden, but it also needed care and that too was included in the man’s responsibilities. Might both these human interventions in the natural world be what ruling and subduing means in Genesis 1:26 & 28? Gardens quickly become unkempt if they are not tended and managed. Plants will not flourish if they are not fed and watered, so we work and take care of them.

Have you ever wondered why this part of the creation, where God put the man, is described as a garden? Maybe because a garden implies someone gardening, with all the knowledge, care, and intimacy that this suggests. Maybe we are meant to transfer the idea of the garden to the whole planet and seek to know and care for it as intimately as we would a garden?

Genesis 2 then goes on to describe how God involved the man in finding both a companion and a suitable helper for him. None of the man’s fellow creatures were found to fit the bill but before God’s solution is revealed, we learn about what God had him do in the process of learning about his relationship with the woman. God brought all the living creatures to the man ‘to see what he would name them’ and these names were what they would be called (v19-20). Names and naming are themes running through the Bible, whether it is Moses asking God for His name to tell the people of Israel (Exodus 3:13-14), or Joseph being told to call Mary’s baby boy Jesus (Matthew 1:21). To name involves “knowing”, the man had to come into contact with the creatures in order to name them. For me, this is unmistakably God’s commission to do science. As we discover more about this amazing world, through doing science, we have named, and are naming, its creatures, its processes, everything animate and inanimate. We are getting to know the universe that God has created. What is even more amazing is that God is watching to see what we are doing. He is interested; He is absorbed in our endeavours. When God set up the world He ‘saw all that He had made, and it was very good’, and now He was keen to see how humanity would explore and develop it.

Genesis 2 begins with God taking time to rest on the seventh day, which became the Sabbath. The rest of the chapter is bookended by the man and the woman being created. In between we learn about what God wants humanity to do. Helpfully, some detail is given about what working and taking care of the garden involve. It begins with naming, and therefore knowing, all the creatures. We are not just meant to relate to God and to each other. Genesis 2 is clear that we are also meant to know and care for the whole creation. Humanity was gifted a beautiful planet and God commissioned us to learn about it, to use it and to look after it.

Might our response be to marvel at and be humbled by the responsibility, the privilege, and the identity we have been given! And if, or when, we do some gardening maybe we can reflect on and rejoice in some of these truths!

Ethel White is a retired crop scientist having worked with the Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute in Northern Ireland. She edits a monthly Creation Care e-zine and is keen to explore how faith and farming are connected.

Please note that the statements and views expressed in this article of those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Contemporary Christianity.