Genesis 2

Notes

1. Decision↩ Back to the text

   Expected: "all the host of them" (KJV) / "all the host of them" (RSV)

   Rulings 5, 57

   κόσμος is first order and adornment (1 Pet 3:3, "the outward adorning"), then the ordered whole. Here it stands for צְבָאָם, which the Masoretic version reads "their army": the ranks of sky and land set in order. The Greek cognate is printed (5, 57), as "kairos" and "logos" are, because English "cosmos" keeps the sense of an ordered whole; the spelling keeps the Greek k. The word returns at John 1:10 and 3:16.

2. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Rulings 52, 138

   Swete's text reads ἐν τῇ ἡμέρᾳ τῇ ἕκτῃ, "on the sixth day," where the Masoretic version reads "on the seventh day." The Samaritan Pentateuch and the Peshitta also read "sixth," and Jubilees 2:16 has God finish all his works on the sixth day. The Masoretic reading, a finishing on the day of rest, was itself a question for the rabbis (Genesis Rabbah 10:9; Rashi: what the world still lacked was rest). The Greek leaves no work on the seventh day.

3. Reading↩ Back to the text

   καταπαύω, "rest," where the Masoretic version reads "sabbathed." Heb 4:4 quotes this clause in the Greek ("And God rested on the seventh day from all his works"), and Heb 4:10 builds on it the argument of entering God's rest.

4. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Ruling 20

   ἤρξατο, the middle of ἄρχω, "began," a split by voice from the active "rule" (1:14–28). The Masoretic version reads "that Elohim had created to make"; the Greek has "began to make," so the account closes on the root of 1:1, ἀρχή.

5. Decision↩ Back to the text

   Expected: "These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth" (KJV) / "These are the generations of the heavens and the earth" (RSV)

   Rulings 5, 57

   βίβλος γενέσεως, "book of genesis": a coming into being, of γίνομαι "come to be," the verb that runs through ch. 1. The Greek cognate keeps its living English sense of origin (5, 57), and the phrase gave the book its name. Matt 1:1 opens the New Testament with the same words (Βίβλος γενέσεως Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ), and Matt 1:18 has "the genesis of Jesus Christos was thus." The Masoretic version reads "These are the producings"; the Greek turns the list into a book, and "the book" is marked as a plus.

6. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Rulings 53, 54, 137, 143

   The alignment marks the divine name as lacking here, but Swete's text, from Alexandrinus, prints Κύριος ὁ θεός, so nothing is lacking and no ‸ is set. The mark belongs to a Greek text that reads ὁ θεός alone, as Swete's does at vv. 5, 7, 9, 19 and 21, where the ‸ is set. The Masoretic version reads "ADONAI Elohim made land and skies"; the Greek also turns the order, "the sky and the land," as in 1:1.

7. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Rulings 52, 138

   The Masoretic version reads "now no shrub of the field was yet in the land, and no plant of the field had yet sprung up." The Greek has no negation in these clauses: it reads πρὸ τοῦ γενέσθαι … πρὸ τοῦ ἀνατεῖλαι, "before it came to be … before it sprang up," and the two objects continue the sentence of v. 4, so that God made the sky and the land and every green of the field before it came to be. The KJV follows this construction ("And every plant of the field before it was in the earth"). The negations of the verse are the Greek's two: God had not rained, and human there was not.

8. Reading↩ Back to the text

   The Masoretic version reads "blew into his nostrils"; the Greek has "breathed into his face." ἐμφυσάω comes once in the New Testament, at John 20:22, where the risen Jesus "breathed" (ἐνεφύσησεν) and said, "Take holy spirit": the verb of the making of the human.

9. Decision↩ Back to the text

   Expected: "a garden" (KJV, RSV)

   Rulings 5, 57

   παράδεισος, a Persian word for a walled park (Xenophon, Oeconomicus 4.13; Neh 2:8, the king's park; Song 4:13, "a paradise of pomegranates"), is the Greek's word for גַּן. English "paradise" keeps the sense of Eden's garden and of the place of the blessed (Luke 23:43; 2 Cor 12:4; Rev 2:7, "the wood of life, which is in the paradise of God"), so the cognate is printed (5, 57). The Masoretic version reads "garden."

10. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Ruling 18

    Eden is Ἔδεμ in the Greek; the familiar form is printed for the same place (18). The Greek forms of the chapter's names are in the table below.

11. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 6, 142

    The Greek varies the tree's name. Here it is τοῦ εἰδέναι γνωστὸν καλοῦ καὶ πονηροῦ, "of knowing what is known of beautiful and evil," with οἶδα and the adjective γνωστός as its object; the two words together render the one Hebrew infinitive, so γνωστόν is not set as an addition; at v. 17 it is τοῦ γινώσκειν καλὸν καὶ πονηρόν, "of coming to know beautiful and evil," with γινώσκω (142). The variation is kept (6). The Masoretic version reads "the tree of knowing good and bad" at both places. καλός keeps "beautiful" through the chain of the two chapters (2).

12. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "four heads" (KJV) / "four rivers" (RSV)

    Rulings 2, 37

    ἀρχή keeps its home sense, "beginning": the beginning of a river is its source, and the ἀρχαί are the four starts from which the streams go out. The chain from 1:1, "In beginning," holds (37). The Masoretic version reads "and becomes four heads"; the Greek lacks "becomes" (‸).

13. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "bdellium" (KJV, RSV)

    Ruling 2

    ἄνθραξ is a live coal (Prov 25:22; Rom 12:20, "coals of fire") and, by its glow, the red gem English calls a carbuncle, Latin carbunculus, "little coal" (Exod 28:18; Ezek 28:13). The home gloss "coal" would read as fuel in a list of treasures, a false sense (guide §9), so the gem's English name is printed here. The Masoretic version reads "the bdellium and the onyx stone"; the Greek has the carbuncle and the leek-green stone (πράσινος, of πράσον "leek").

14. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Ruling 18

    Αἰθιοπία is a different name from כּוּשׁ, not a spelling of it, and is printed as it sounds (18); the Masoretic version reads "Cush." The Greek identifies the land of Gihon with the Ethiopia of the Greeks, south of Egypt, as it renders כּוּשׁ elsewhere (Num 12:1; Isa 18:1; cf. Acts 8:27).

15. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "Adam" (KJV) / "the man" (RSV)

    Rulings 18, 52, 86

    From this verse the Greek reads a name, Ἀδάμ, indeclinable, with and without the article. The Masoretic version reads "the human" here and keeps the common noun until 5:3 (86); the Greek decides for its own version, so "Adam" is printed wherever the Greek has the name (vv. 16, 19–23), and ἄνθρωπος stays "human" (vv. 7, 8, 15, 18).

16. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Ruling 6

    βρώσει φάγῃ, "by eating you shall eat," and θανάτῳ ἀποθανεῖσθε, "by death you shall die" (v. 17): the Greek renders the doubled Hebrew verb with a dative of a noun, and both are kept (6). The Masoretic version reads "eating you may eat" and "dying you shall die." φάγῃ is a future, "you shall eat."

17. Reading↩ Back to the text

    The Greek turns to the plural in this verse: φάγεσθε, φάγησθε, ἀποθανεῖσθε, a "you" of more than one, where v. 16 has the singular φάγῃ and the Masoretic version keeps the singular throughout. The command given to Adam alone is widened, in its prohibition and its penalty, to include the woman not yet made (v. 22; 3:3).

18. Reading↩ Back to the text

    ποιήσωμεν, "let us make," plural, as at 1:26; the Masoretic version reads "I will make." The helper is κατ᾽ αὐτόν, "corresponding to him," where the Masoretic version reads "as one opposite him"; at v. 20 the Greek has ὅμοιος αὐτῷ, "like him."

19. Reading↩ Back to the text

    ἀνεπλήρωσεν σάρκα ἀντ᾽ αὐτῆς, "filled up flesh in its place": where the Masoretic version reads "shut flesh in its place," the Greek fills the gap.

20. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 17, 54, 141, 143

    The Greek reads ἐκ τοῦ ἀνδρὸς αὐτῆς, "from her man," where the Masoretic version reads "from Man"; the pronoun is a plus the alignment does not mark, and it is marked (54, 141). The Hebrew pun אִישׁ / אִשָּׁה, which the Masoretic version carries as "Man / Woman" (17), has no Greek counterpart: γυνή and ἀνήρ share no sound, so "Woman" and "man" are the Greek home glosses.

21. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Ruling 11

    ἄνθρωπος, "human" by default, is "man" here because a woman, "his woman," stands in the same verse (11), and ἀνήρ is not in the verse. The Masoretic version has אִישׁ, "a man." Matt 19:5, Mark 10:7–8 and Eph 5:31 quote the verse in the Greek.