The Garden

Ten times in the book of Genesis we hear this phrase: “These are the generations of…”

When you read the scriptures, you should be on the lookout for things like this. The biblical authors did not follow modern literary conventions and styles, so we need to be observant of their way of writing. Modern authors try to make sure that their chapters are fairly similar in length – and whoever divided Genesis into 50 chapters followed that approach. But the author of Genesis divided his work into 10 “chapters” of very uneven length.

Genesis 2:4-4:26 is “chapter 1” of Genesis – the “generations” of the heavens and the earth.

In the other 9 usages of this word “toledoth” (the generations of) it speaks of the generations of a person. But here it is the generations of the heavens and the earth. The story of Abraham will be told in the chapter starting, “these are the generations of Terah” (Abraham's father). In the same way the story of Adam and Eve will be told as “the generations of the heavens and the earth” because the story of Adam and Eve proceeds from the creation narrative of Genesis 1.

So the phrase “these are the generations of the heavens and the earth” focuses our attention on what the LORD God did in the creation of man.

And for this, we go back to an earlier point in the history of creation.