> >I am teaching a college class next week and I have a specific question
> >regarding
> >Genesis 2:4-7:
> >
> > "In the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens, when no
> >plant
> >of the field had yet sprung up -- ... (7) then the LORD God formed man ...
> >(RSV)
> >
> > This passage clearly seems to imply that there was a short time between
> >the
> >creation of the plants on day 3, and the creation of man on day 6, because the
> >plants had not yet had time to sprout. Is that reasonable?
> >
> > OR perhaps it could be construed that man was made potentially from the
> >ground before the plants even evolved. Could that fit?
> >
> > OR it may mean something else. But the connection of Gen. 1 and Gen. 2
> >narratives are linked by this passage. It's talking about "when". So it
> >seems
> >to suggest some kind of natural history, rather than an ahistorical framework.
> >Any comments?
> >
>
> Meredith Kline's article addresses this passage: "Because It Had Not
> Rained," The Westminster Theological Journal 20 (1958): 146-157.
>
>
> Note: the phrase "in the day" (Hebrew: "yom", singular) is the best
> Biblical evidence I know of that "day" does not _have_ to always be 24
> hours. Since the Bible just finished talking about 6 "days", it now talks
> about "day"? Obviously, there is more flexibility in the term.
>
> A warning: don't place too much emphasis on the "when", that's a "waw"
> conjunctive in the Hebrew which can mean almost anything from "and" to
> "but" to "when" to "errr... uhhh..., oh yeah, that's what I was talking
> about...".
>
> -Larry Martin, PhD, Associate Professor of Physics
> martin@npcts.edu http://www.npcts.edu/~martin/
> (312) 244-5668 fax (312) 244-4952 home: (312) 478-0679
> North Park College, box 30, 3225 W. Foster Ave., Chicago, IL 60625
>
I am not an expert in Hebrew, but my commentaries indicate that the
word translated as "made" in some of our translations (such as King
James) could be just as well translated as "had made" or even "made to
appear" since the Hebrew does not have a clear linguistic way of denoting a
simple past tense (imperfect) from the perfect past tense. Notice that the
NIV uses "had made" in some places where the KJV uses "made". This could
clear up a lot of confusion and supposed contradiction with science. For
example, on the fourth day, the sun and the stars were "made to appear", and
in Genesis 2, when the chronology seems out of sequence with something being
made after something else which seems to be out of line with Genesis 1,
if the word should be "had made" rather than made, then this puts the
time of creation of the object further back in time and solves the
discrepancy.
(Larry, I know that you are saying that you do not think there is a
chronology in Gen. 1 and 2 and so I apologize for "hitchhiking" on your
message, but my thoughts springboard off of your explanation of the Hebrew
conjunction waw.)
Jeff