Reading: Genesis 2:1-3, 15-25

After God completed the creation He rested on the seventh day. He blessed and sanctified this Sabbath Day. God commands all people rest from their daily work and enjoy a day of rest and meditate on God’s great works. Later, in Exodus 20, God includes the day of rest as a commandment. In this we can see God’s care; a day of rest each week is good for us. Furthermore it gives us an entire day to thank and praise Him.

 

Chapter 2 provides more details about God’s work of creation, especially creation of man, and his task in the Garden of Eden. God puts man in the garden He says “Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die” (Genesis 2:16-17). Will man obey?

 

We also learn how the first woman was created. God put Adam into a deep sleep, took one of his ribs and carefully made it into a woman. This wonderful act is immediately followed by the institution holy marriage, also an act of God. Adam and Eve were the first married couple. It is a wonderful union. As Adam says:

 

“This is now bone of my bones

And flesh of my flesh;

She shall be called Woman,

Because she was taken out of Man” (vs 23).

 

This beautiful institution in not just a contract between a man and woman, but it is a very close spiritual union, so close that they become “one flesh” as Jesus Christ explains in Matthew 19:5. This teaches us that marriage ought to be only between a man and woman. Furthermore there should be no divorce; what God has put together, we should not take apart.

 

Key verse: Genesis 2:16, 17 “And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, “Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; 17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”

 

Question: Why is Genesis 2:16, 17 a key text?