READ: Gen. 2:4-17: … And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life …
Genesis 2 is not a second creation story, but it describes how God interacted with humanity from their creation. It is the history (in Hebrew: toledoot) of heaven and earth (vs. 4) as the path that God takes with humans to carry out His world plan. Gen. 2 is connected to the content of the preceding chapter. The created man stands before God in a covenantal relationship as a covenant child to the Covenant God, the LORD, Yahweh (Luke 3:38). This is how God begins the history with humanity.
God forms the man from the dust, the earth of the ground, where he belongs. He breathes the breath of life into his nostrils, so that the man becomes a living soul (Eccl. 12:7). The exact process of how God does this is not mentioned. It is evident that the man being is different from an animal. The man being did not evolve from an animal but was made by God as a living soul to be an image of Him and to honor Him. The physical body will be transformed into a glorified body for believers on the last day (1 Cor.15:44-49).
At first, there is no garden or field for the man, nor is there visible growth of the created vegetation. But then the LORD God plants a garden, a paradise in the east, and places the man in it. He causes beautiful trees to grow in it, bearing fruits that the human may eat from, explicitly excluding the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. There are also rivers to water the garden.
The man is given the task of cultivating and caring for this garden. It is not a paradise of idleness for the man; they are equipped with all the resources and abilities, both physical and spiritual, to live with and for God and to carry out God’s command. In the same way, we also have the daily task of being an image of God and using our abilities to serve and honor Him.
How do you practically live out being made in the image of God?
Singing: Ps. 103:5