THE GARDEN OF EDEN
CHAPTER TWO
Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all of their array.
God finished all He had been doing and rested on the seventh day.
And He blessed it and made it holy because it was that on
that day that He rested from His work of creation.
This is the story of the heavens and the earth in the day
that they were created when the Lord God worked His way.
There was not yet a shrub on earth nor fields of plant that sprung,
for the Lord God had sent no rain on earth nor had man to till begun;
but a mist rose up from the earth and watered all the ground.
Then the Lord God formed man from out the ground's dust
that he found.
and He breathed life into his nostrils, the breath of life instilled,
and man became a living being as his soul was filled.
The Lord God planted a garden in Eden to the east
and he put there the man he had formed, and caused to be increased
all kinds of trees pleasant to sight and good for food. To grow,
he placed in the midst of the garden the tree of life, and so
He also planted the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Where
also a river arose in Eden watering the garden, and from there
it separated into four branches. The name of the first was Phison
which encircles the land of Hevila where there is gold. And Gihon
is the name of the second river which surrounds all the land of Chus.
And the name of the third river which flows east of Assur is Tigris.
And the fourth river is the Euphrates. The Lord God took the man
and placed him in the garden of Eden to till and keep it. And,
the Lord God commanded the man thusly, "From every tree
of the garden you may eat;
but from the tree of the knowldege of good and evil, that fruit you
must delete
from your diet, for the day you eat of it, know that you must die."
The the Lord God said, "It is not good that the man is alone; I
will make him a helper like himself.When the Lord God had
formed out
of the ground all the beasts of the field and the birds of the air about,
He brought them to the man to see what he might call them; for
that which the man called each of them would be its name evermore.
And the man named all the cattle, and all the birds of the air,
and all the beasts of the field, but he found no helper for himself
anywhere.
The Lord God cast the man into a deep sleep, and while he slept,
He took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh,
and then he kept
His word and made the flesh into a woman; and He brought
her to him and told him, "This is the companion that you sought."
Then the man said, "She now is bone of my bone, and of my flesh,
she is flesh and shall be called woman, of man blessed."
For this reason, a man leaves his father and mother and clings
to his wife, and they leave behind all that for what life brings;
and the two together shall become one flesh and one name.
Both the man and woman were naked, but they felt no shame.
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