Chapter 2

¹ Thus the sky and the land were brought to completion, along with the vast, ordered host that populated them.

² And by The All-Powerful, Almighty One’s design, He concluded this phase of His master craftsmanship on The Seventh Day; and He ceased all His labor on The Seventh Day from all the work He had executed.

³ Then The All-Powerful, Almighty One endowed The Seventh Day with the power of life and set it apart as sacred, because on it He ceased all His master craftsmanship—the design that The All-Powerful, Almighty One had shaped and executed.

⁴ This is the historical lineage of the sky and the land when they were created, in the day that The Sovereign, The Self-Existent, The All-Powerful, Almighty One fashioned the land and the sky.

⁵ Now, no shrub of the field had yet emerged upon the land, and no plant of the field had yet sprouted, for The Sovereign, The Self-Existent, The All-Powerful, Almighty One had not caused rain to fall upon the land, and there was no man to cultivate the soil.

⁶ But a surging subterranean mist would ascend from the land, watering the entire face of the ground.

⁷ Then The Sovereign, The Self-Existent, The All-Powerful, Almighty One formed the man from the raw dust of the ground, and He breathed into his nostrils the breath of active life; and the man became a living, breathing soul.

⁸ Then The Sovereign, The Self-Existent, The All-Powerful, Almighty One planted a garden in Eden, eastward; and there He placed the man whom He had formed.

⁹ And out of the ground The Sovereign, The Self-Existent, The All-Powerful, Almighty One caused to grow every tree that is beautiful to look at and good for food; the tree of life was also in the middle of the garden, along with the tree of the knowledge of what is good and what is harmful.

¹⁰ Now, a river flowed out from Eden to water the garden, and from there it divided and became four distinct headwaters.

¹¹ The name of the first is Pishon; it flows around the entire land of Havilah, where there is gold.

¹² And the gold of that land is exceptionally good; bdellium resin and onyx stone are found there as well.

¹³ The name of the second river is Gihon; it flows around the entire land of Cush.

¹⁴ The name of the third river is Tigris; it flows along the east side of Assyria. And the fourth river is the Euphrates.

¹⁵ Then The Sovereign, The Self-Existent, The All-Powerful, Almighty One took the man and settled him within the garden of Eden to cultivate it and to protect it.

¹⁶ And The Sovereign, The Self-Existent, The All-Powerful, Almighty One commanded the man, saying, “From every tree of the garden you may eat freely;

¹⁷ but from the tree of the knowledge of what is good and what is harmful you must not eat, for in the day you eat from it, dying, you will surely die.”

¹⁸ Then The Sovereign, The Self-Existent, The All-Powerful, Almighty One said, “It is not good for the man to be isolated; I will make for him a partner who matches him perfectly.”

¹⁹ Now, out of the ground The Sovereign, The Self-Existent, The All-Powerful, Almighty One had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the sky, and He brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called each living soul, that was its name.

²⁰ So the man gave names to all the livestock, to the birds of the sky, and to every beast of the field; but for the man there was not found a partner who matched him perfectly.

²¹ Then The Sovereign, The Self-Existent, The All-Powerful, Almighty One caused a supernatural, deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept, He took one of his sides and closed up the flesh in its place.

²² And from the side that The Sovereign, The Self-Existent, The All-Powerful, Almighty One had taken from the man, He built a woman and brought her directly to the man.

²³ Then the man said:

“This, at last, is bone of my bones

and flesh of my flesh;

she shall be called Woman (Ishah),

because she was taken out of Man (Ish).”

²⁴ For this reason, a man shall leave his father and his mother and shall cleave to his woman, and they shall become a single, unified flesh.

²⁵ Now, the man and his woman were both naked, and they felt no mutual shame.