Adam Names the Animals

One of the biggest stumbling blocks surrounding the Genesis creation account exists because we believe we already fully understand it and have it down-pat. When we read through any familiar portion of scripture (Genesis in particular) as part of a personal Bible study, we tend to skim through these passages thinking there are not many new insights to glean. This is especially true of the first 2 chapters of Genesis and so we quickly zip through the creation story and move on to the stories of human events (those with which we can intimately relate).

We hurry past Genesis 1 & 2 and race on to the Fall of Adam and Eve. We then zip on to the stories of Cain & Able, Noah, the tower of Babel, Abram and all the other powerful human events of history as laid out in Genesis. Thus it is so common to hear someone say, “Wow, I never noticed that before!” when discussing the creation account in Genesis.

So typically, having already made up our minds regarding the events of creation (likely taught to us by well-meaning Sunday School teachers of our youth), it is sometimes hard to see past the surface as we quickly scan these first 2 chapters in our effort to “read-through-the-Bible-in-a-year” or when we just quickly read Genesis. Like many portions of scripture, we can easily err by not digging past the surface. Certainly scripture was meant to be taken at face value, but context is king and study is essential.

So my challenge is to dig-in and go just a bit deeper in order that we may find a few unexpected treasures hidden just beneath the surface, and perhaps mine a few gems which are easily overlooked as one casually reads the creation events which Moses has laid out for us. We must try to leave behind the children’s Golden Book version of creation which has been (at least to some extent) imprinted upon most everyone’s memory from childhood. Let’s take a fresh look at the Biblical account as if reading it again for the very first time.