Genesis 2

reviewed Worded for an eighth-grade reader; the reading is the Translation's. Read the Translation with its notes.

1 So the sky and the earth were finished, with all their army. 2 On the seventh day God finished the work he had done. On the seventh day he stopped all the work he had done. 3 God blessed the seventh day and made it holy. He did so because on that day he stopped all the work that God had created to make.

4 This is the family history of the sky and the earth when they were created. On the day the LORD God made the earth and the sky— 5 when no shrub of the field was in the land yet, and no plant of the field had sprung up yet, because the LORD God had not sent rain on the land, and there was no human to work the ground; 6 and an upwelling would rise from the land and water the whole face of the ground— 7 then the LORD God shaped the human from the dust of the ground. He blew the breath of life into his nostrils, and the human became a living soul. 8 The LORD God planted a garden in Eden, in the east. There he put the human he had shaped. 9 The LORD God made every tree spring up from the ground, trees that were desirable to look at and good for food. He also made the tree of life spring up in the middle of the garden, and the tree of knowing good and bad. 10 A river flows out of Eden to water the garden. From there it divides and becomes four branches. 11 The first river is named Pishon. It flows around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold.

12 The gold of that land is good. Sweet-smelling resin and onyx stone are there too. 13 The second river is named Gihon. It flows around the whole land of Cush. 14 The third river is named Tigris. It flows east of Assyria. The fourth river is the Euphrates. 15 The LORD God took the human and settled him in the garden of Eden, to work it and take care of it. 16 The LORD God gave the human this command: "You may freely eat from every tree in the garden. 17 But you must not eat from the tree of knowing good and bad. On the day you eat from it, you will surely die." 18 Then the LORD God said, "It is not good for the human to be alone. I will make him a helper to stand opposite him." 19 Then the LORD God shaped from the ground every wild animal and every flying creature of the sky. He brought them to the human to see what he would call them. Whatever the human called it—living soul—that was its name.

20 The human gave names to all the livestock, to the flying creatures of the sky, and to every wild animal. But for the human he found no helper to stand opposite him. 21 So the LORD God made a trance fall on the human, and he slept. Then he took one of the human's sides and closed up the flesh in its place. 22 The LORD God built the side he had taken from the man into a woman, and he brought her to the man. 23 Then the human said, "At last! This one is bone from my bones and flesh from my flesh. She will be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man." 24 That is why a man leaves behind his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh. 25 The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.