Lonang Commentary on Genesis 2

Gen. 2:1-3 Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation.

The Seventh Day

Here we have the account of God resting on the seventh day of the creation week, and then consecrating (or blessing) it as a holy day of rest. The implication, because this is included in the first week of world history, is that God is here establishing a pattern for people to follow. And this pattern has two parts: 1) for timekeeping purposes, days will be counted and time measured by heptads of days, that is, a series of seven consecutive days to be called a week; and 2) the seventh day of each week is designated by the Creator as a day of rest, typically referred to as a Sabbath. There is no indication here, or elsewhere in scripture, that the seventh day was intended by God to be a day of worship.

Of course, following the divine calendar, this means each day begins at sunset, the first day of each week begins at sunset on Saturday, and the seventh day begins at sunset on Friday. And thus weeks have been observed since the beginning of time, and Sabbaths observed on the seventh day. This is the law of nature and nature’s God, and since it is rooted in the creation of the world, like all laws of nature, it is eternal and unchanging, and nothing that has happened since has altered this pattern. This is true notwithstanding the deviation from this pattern introduced by the Roman Catholic Church of observing the Sabbath on the first day of each week. This principle is reiterated in the original statement of the Ten Commandments.

“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.” Exo. 20:8-11.

This Fourth Commandment, like all of the Ten Commandments, did not impose a new rule beginning at Mt. Sinai, but merely stated verbally for the first time principles derived from the laws of nature which had been in place since the creation. For all of the prohibitions in the Ten Commandments – adultery, stealing, murder, the Sabbath, etc. can be traced to the foundation of the world, and cannot be said to arise only with Moses. Thus, it is commonly acknowledged that the Ten Commandments are a statement of universal moral principles, not limited to the Jews.

Later in Exo. 31:12-17, the Lord told Moses that observance of the Sabbath was not merely optional or a matter of conscience with the Jews, but that it was an integral part of their national covenant with God, and a violation of the Sabbath was a criminal offense punishable by death. However, these provisions are Israel specific – that is, applicable to the Jews only, not to all people. This is because: 1) the covenant between God and Israel by its terms only ever applied to the Jews and not to any other people; and 2) all criminal punishments in the Mosaic laws are Israel specific only. The law of nature, per se, only says what is right and wrong, but includes no punishments, no enforcement mechanisms, and authorizes no one to enforce the law.

Thus, no punishments, no enforcement authority, and no criminal aspects peculiar to the way Israel observed the Sabbath, are to be imported into Gen. 2:1-3. To the extent this text imposes a universal obligation on humanity to observe a Sabbath rest, it is moral only (not legally enforceable) and is to be determined by each person according to their conscience before God, just like any other merely moral rule.

This is confirmed in the New Testament. “Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath.” Col. 2:16. In other words, Sabbath observance is a matter of individual conscience only. Sunday Blue Laws (legally prohibiting certain business or consumer transactions on Sundays) are a misguided attempt to exercise civil jurisdiction over a merely moral matter.

Consequently, all people are under a universal moral obligation to observe a Sabbath rest, but neither Gentiles nor Christians are under the covenant sign or the legal requirements of the Jewish Sabbath. Sabbath-keeping is a matter of individual conscience only.

None of which alters or affects the fact that as descendants of Adam, the general principle of the Sabbath (one day of rest per week) still applies per the law of nature. And, the one day of rest is on the last day of the week starting at sunset on Friday, not Sunday (Jesus never changed the Sabbath). But in observing this, we have liberty and are free from the judgment of others as well as any penalties for “violations.” So if the good Lord gives you a job where you are required to work on a day other people observe as the Sabbath, whatever it may be, that is a matter between you and God that no one else can judge.

Gen. 2:4-7 These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens. When no bush of the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up for the LORD God had not caused it to rain on the land, and there was no man to work the ground, and a mist was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.

A Living Being

With verse 3, the first seven days of the world have now been concluded. But before moving the narrative to subsequent events, verse 4 takes us back to the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens, or in other words, we’re going to reexamine the creation week – particularly the sixth day – in more detail. Thus making the events of chapter 2 part of the creation account as much as chapter 1. I’ll defer comments on the mist and lack of rain until chapter 7, some 1,650 years later, when God eventually sends rain upon the earth. For the present, I want to focus on verse 7 and the creation of Man.

The creation of Man is expressed in a single verse, which can be reduced even further to a very simple equation, as it were: Dust + Breath = Living Being. The two elements of man’s being were recognized by the Preacher (king Solomon) when talking about death: “and the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it.” Ecc. 12:7. Or, as philosophers would say, the dust and breath merely symbolize the body and spirit of mankind. Let’s take a look at each of these things in turn.

Dust (of the earth). God could have created Man from nothing – so-call ex nihilo – like the earth itself was created from nothing. Or, God could have created Man from space dust, swirling in the heavens or in outer space, and then sent man down to the earth once formed. But no, God did neither of these. Strongly indicating that Man was made on the earth, from the earth, for the earth. It is not our destiny, calling, or really even an opportunity, for people to scatter among the stars, inhabit other worlds, or conquer the galaxy. God put us here, to live and work here, and to fulfill our callings here. Everything we need to be fully satisfied in life can be found here.

Even when time ends, we enter into an eternal state, and we “go to heaven,” what that means is that God will remake the world – the earth – and put us on it to live for eternity. Rev. 21:1. No space hopping from star to star, no interplanetary travel, no scattering of the human seed to other worlds. Man is an earthbound creature, and tough if you don’t like it. All these people who want to colonize other worlds, travel to the stars and such – there is an age-old expression that directly applies to them: they are so heavenly minded as to be of no earthly good.

Breath (of God). There is a strong correlation in scripture, here in Gen. 2:7 and elsewhere, between breath, life and the spirit of mankind.

Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to the breath, Thus says the Lord God: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe on these slain, that they may live.” … And I will put my Spirit within you, and you shall live. (Eze. 37:9, 14).

Also, a universal sign of when a person died in scripture is when he breathed his last. So scripture everywhere affirms, from Genesis to Revelation, that life is in the breath, and both life and breath come from God. Everywhere breath is lacking (such as with idols), it means there is no life. Every time breath is found, it means there is life. However, the presence of the breath of God in man does not merely signify life, it also signifies the presence of an eternal spirit, which is a direct connection to the image of God in man.

There is also a correlation in scripture between the words breath, spirit, and wind. The Greek word in the New Testament primarily translated as spirit can also be translated as breath or wind, and sometimes is. The Greek word primarily translated as breath can also be translated as spirit, and sometimes is. The same exact situation occurs with respect to the Hebrew words for breath and spirit used in the Old Testament.

The clear implication, when the same word is used for both breath and spirit in the scriptures, is that a person’s eternal spirit is linked to having the breath of life. Now it is true that there is a sense in which both mankind and animals have a spirit or breath of life from God.

For what happens to the children of man and what happens to the beasts is the same; as one dies, so dies the other. They all have the same breath, and man has no advantage over the beasts, for all is vanity. All go to one place. All are from the dust, and to dust all return. Who knows whether the spirit of man goes upward and the spirit of the beast goes down into the earth?” Ecc. 3:19-21.

But notice the clear difference: the bodies of both men and animals returns to the dust of the ground, but not so their spirits. Man’s spirit goes up at death (i.e., to God, or to heaven), whereas the animal’s spirit goes down (to the grave) – a strong indication that the spirit of animals is not eternal. However, for the spirit of man, there is an expectation of something more after physical death.

Now it is also true that life is connected to the blood. “For the life of every creature is its blood: its blood is its life.” (Lev. 17:14). And three verses earlier, “the life of the flesh is in the blood.” (Lev. 17:11). Once again, we come to the distinction between science and law, or the physical and the spiritual. The point is quite simple. The physical life of every creature – human or non-human – is in its blood. That’s science. But the spirit of every creature – human or non-human – is in its breath from God. That’s God’s law.

And God’s breath in people means that the spirit of mankind is eternal.

A Living Being. Thus, the phrase rendered in the ESV as living creature, is translated as a living being (NKJV and NASB), or a living soul in the KJV. I stress the fact God made mankind a living being because this expression is contrasted with the way God referred to the animal kingdom just a few verses earlier (Gen. 1:28), that is, animals are living things.

Thus, the term human being reflects the difference in legal status between people and animals. People are beings, not things. Animals, as things, do not have the image of God, and they may be property that people can own, use and dispose of as they see fit. People, as beings, are made in God’s image, and cannot lawfully be made the property of another person. And the chief difference between people and animals is this: people have an eternal spirit, and animals do not. From which difference a number of legal consequences flow.

Animals have no legal rights – they have no right to life, to liberty, or to the pursuit of happiness. Animals are not capable of sin, and have no moral accountability. They are not governed by rules of right and wrong behavior, will not stand for judgment before God, and will neither be rewarded or punished for eternity. Animals have no earthly dominion, which means they cannot own anything, and have no authority to dominate anything. It most certainly means that animals have no rights to the earth, to possess it as a habitat, and no dominion which is superior to the rights of people. Animals were not “here first,” since all land creatures and people were created on the same day.

If there is one single idea that is most clearly expressed in Gen. 2:7, it is that people and animals are not the same.

Gen. 2:8-15 And the LORD God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground the LORD God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden, and there it divided and became four rivers. The name of the first is the Pishon. It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold. And the gold of that land is good; bdellium and onyx stone are there. The name of the second river is the Gihon. It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Cush. And the name of the third river is the Tigris, which flows east of Assyria. And the fourth river is the Euphrates. The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.

The Prime Directive

After making Man a living being, God gave him both a purpose and a home. This home was the Garden of Eden, a place of beauty and many good things to eat. We have some geographical descriptors here which indicate that Eden was a real place, not merely allegorical, that very much physically existed in the world. The extent to which these geographical markers still exist or can be traced, I leave to others to determine. One thing we can say is that a key results of Noah’s flood would have been to scramble or obscure all the original markers, making it difficult or impossible to determine at present. Many people have spent their lives trying to locate Eden. Eden’s location may have archeological significance, and I admit to being a little curious about it, but it matters not with regard to the laws of nature or nature’s God, for it has no behavioral or moral significance.

But we see that even in this idyllic state – for there was at this time no sin yet in the world – God put the Man to work right away, which is to say, He gave the Man a job. The job, consistent with the Dominion Mandate to subdue the earth and rule over the animals, was initially to work the garden and keep it, that is, to tend the plants. Which job also apparently included naming the animals as the first step in dominating them, which we will see in a few verses. Now, I won’t be so crass as to say that it was Adam’s job, either as an occupation or as a service for hire, but it was certainly his pleasurable duty to also begin the procreation process with his wife in order to fulfill the command to be fruitful and multiply.

In other words, everything the Man did, both before and after the Fall, was done in order to satisfy and fulfill the Dominion Mandate – what we might call his prime directive. This is the reason God made mankind and put him – and us – on the earth. Take charge of a patch of earth, find an honest and productive job or occupation worthy of pursuit, dominate some wildlife, get a wife and start a family, and build something worthwhile. Call it cliche if you want, mock it as a white picket fence, a wife, two kids and a dog, if you must. But this is the real deal.

I note with a little irony, that there are no religious duties, practices, or rituals that Adam and Eve were commanded to observe. There are no verbal commands to glorify God, enjoy God, praise God, love God, or to worship God. Now, we can fairly infer that Adam and Eve were in daily fellowship with God – conversationally – since the Lord was apparently in the habit of walking in the garden in the cool of the day. Gen. 3:8. We can also infer, since the Ten Commandments are part of the eternal moral law built into the world at the creation, that God expected Adam and Eve to acknowledge Him as the sole and exclusive God, not to make any idols, and to observe the Sabbath.

But beyond these things, there is little direct evidence of any religious observances that God required of the people He had made. I am making a couple of assumptions here. First, that God made no secret commands or requirements that are not expressed in the scriptures. He never whispered rules in Adam and Eve’s ears, and then said, “but don’t write this down. Keep it just between us.” Yes, God told John the Revelator not to write some things down (Rev. 10:4), but then John wrote down that God had told him that. So, as part of my assumption, I assume that since the Genesis account lacks a disclosure regarding things not supposed to be written, there were no such things.

Second, that whatever additional requirements there may have been, could only have come from the law of nature (like the Ten Commandments). Which, at the time, would not have ever been verbally expressed, and at the same time, would have been known to everyone as a self-evident truth. Things like, don’t steal, don’t murder, etc. Not stated, but understood by everyone.

With the end result being that beyond the express statements of the Dominion Mandate, there was nothing else God expected people to do. This is why we are all here in the world, people. Fulfill the Dominion Mandate, acknowledge God for who He truly is, and establish fellowship with Him. That’s it. That is humanity’s prime directive – our main purpose. It’s not that complicated.

Gen. 2:16-17 And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”

One Little Prohibition

God could very easily have omitted making this little prohibition of eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but what would that have proved? That people would gladly acknowledge and serve God so long as that was their only option? No, clearly God wanted to put a test before man, to see if he would choose God or not, and thereby divide all of humanity forever into two groups – those who choose to serve God, and those who do not.

Theoretically, I suppose, since the law of nature fully existed when Adam and Eve were still innocent, they could have violated one of the Ten Commandments and sinned. But who would Adam be able to steal from? Who could he commit adultery with? Yes, he could have committed murder, or broken the Sabbath. But the law of nature, as such, contains no punishments for offenses, so just because it was possible for Adam and Eve to sin against nature, the punishment would not necessarily be death. Plus, until they had first eaten the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they would not necessarily have known that stealing, murder, adultery and breaking the Sabbath were even wrong to begin with. How can a person who has no knowledge of good and evil, know that something is either good or evil? They cannot.

Thus, merely leaving Adam and Eve to their own devices with respect to the law of nature would be an inadequate test of their obedience. Plus, it would not have put death at stake. God had to devise a test of obedience that was more overt – verbally expressed, not merely inferred from creation, with death at stake instead of an uncertain consequence. Plus, a test that was more likely to be put into play immediately, instead of perhaps much later. And one that was more likely to attract the attention of the devil. Can you imagine the serpent trying to explain the laws of nature to Eve before being able to tempt her? No, God’s test was designed to be quick and decisive.

So there they are, Adam and Eve, living in the garden before the Fall. God told them there were all these things they could do, and that God wanted them to do, except this one, teeny, tiny little prohibition. What were they supposed to do? They were supposed to obey God – to conform their lives to God’s laws and commandments – to do His will. For God’s laws are nothing more, really, than an expression of God’s will for all people. God’s laws and God’s general will are one and the same.

And even though Adam and Eve failed their test – they failed to obey God – we know that God made them capable of obedience. And we further know that each and every one of their descendants is also capable of obedience. Not capable of perfection, or perfect obedience. Not capable of innocence or a sinless state. Not incapable of discerning good and evil, for every person is born with a pre-loaded (a priori) partial knowledge of good and evil we call a conscience. But nonetheless capable of choosing between right and wrong, which necessitates that everyone is capable of choosing to do good, and act lawfully. Not that this capability justifies or redeems anyone, for we are all born condemned, but not doomed to only ever choosing wrong for the rest of our lives.

Doing God’s will, or obeying His laws, is something everyone can do – not merely redeemed people. Being fruitful and multiplying is something all people can do, not just Christians, and even unsaved people can do so lawfully, in conformity with God’s will. When God gave mankind the Dominion Mandate in Genesis 1, there was no part of it whatsoever dedicated to “Christian families.” Christ had not yet come – there were no Christians for another 4,000 years. There were just families, and people everywhere were capable of carrying that out lawfully.

At present, and presumably ever since Noah’s flood, the Garden of Eden and its special trees, including the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, no longer exists. As far as we know, ever since mankind was driven out of the garden, what with an angel with a flaming sword guarding its entrance (Gen. 3:24), no one other than Adam and Eve were ever given the opportunity to eat the fruit of that tree. Nevertheless, God still gives every person today ample opportunities to choose to obey Him, or to choose to rebel. And so the choice remains ever the same – obey and live, or disobey and die.

Gen. 2:19-20 Now out of the ground the LORD God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him.

Dominion Over Animals

In v. 19, we see right off the bat that the animals, like man, had been formed from the dust of the ground, consistent with Ecc. 3:19-20, as I mentioned before. Next we see that God brings all the birds and beasts of the field to Adam – what I call the parade of the animals – to see what he will call them. Why does God do this? Two reasons: first, for man to begin to put into practice the dominion over animals that God had given him. For naming the animals signifies who has authority over the other – the one who does the naming is the one who has the authority. Second, God wants the man to clearly understand his situation – that none of the animals present a suitable companion for him.

No dumb ape man is Adam, communicating only with grunts and pointing, or dragging a large club around with him. Nor is he the product of a fish-lizard dragging himself out of the primordial ooze. Rather he is alert, perceptive, and articulate, with a firm grasp of language. He easily converses with God, he has a mind facile enough to give names to all the animals God brings before him – no small task, he understands what it is he must do, and he accomplishes it efficiently.

We should remember that this is taking place in a time of innocence, when sin had not yet entered the world. But it is also happening before Noah’s flood, when God had not yet put the fear and dread of men within the animals. Gen. 9:2. Thus, all the animals are perfectly tame and harmless – there is no fear of the man, and there is no hostility between them. At this time, neither man nor animal has ever taken the life of another, nor has there been any need to, so far. Which I’m sure made the task at hand much easier than it would be today.

Now, while man is exercising dominion via the parade of the animals, God has already said that He has another purpose being worked out at the same time, which from the perspective of history we can say was actually the primary purpose for the parade of animals. Namely, the purpose of making a helper fit for man. Verse 18 doesn’t say who God said these words to – was it Adam, or merely another discussion among the Godhead? In any event, the parade of animals is a very striking demonstration, or object lesson, that would have been impossible for Adam to miss.

For Adam could plainly see that all the animals had partners fit for them, whereas he had none. And any man with Adam’s mental acuity would realize this was not a desirable situation. Which would then put Adam and God on the same page, as it were, seeing the desirability – and the necessity – of fixing this problem. But God already had a plan, and in order to ensure that all mankind would stand on an equal footing with respect to the creation, it was implemented the very same day that Adam himself was created. So that when the day was done, God could rightly say that everything He had made was “very good.”

Gen. 2:18 Then the LORD God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.”

Gen. 2:21-23a So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh …”

And God Created Woman

Whenever I read that it is not good that the man should be alone, I can’t help but think that never a truer statement was ever made. For all of the events in chapter 2 from verse 4 to the end, ostensibly occur on day 6 of the creation week. Thus, sin had not yet entered into the world, and man was in his most perfect state – ever. And yet, even in his state of sinless perfection, something was amiss – there was something he lacked that he needed. Not the perfect woman, per se, but a woman who would be the perfect fit for him as a companion and helper.

Thus it has ever been for men and women. Nothing about the nature of men and women has changed since creation. I think it a fair reading to understand the scripture to mean that it is not good for a man, or any man, to be alone. A man needs a woman. The Fall into sin changed nothing about this, except to make it more difficult for any man to find the woman who is a perfect fit for him. What a joy it would have been for Adam to instantly recognize the woman who was his perfect fit, never to have to embark on a lengthy search, to take an extensive time to see if she was the right one, and never to wonder if he made the right choice, or whether there was someone else for him. For these things have all been adversely affected by the Fall.

Adam, of course, recognized Eve for who she was immediately. The text doesn’t say it, but I have to believe Adam, upon seeing the woman, saw that she was “very good.” And Eve, for her part, was fully on board with this. Love at first sight, one might say. If only it were that easy for everyone.

The details provided in verses 21-22 give us essential information missing from the earlier statement that “in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.” For it is now evident that man and woman, though both created on day 6, were made in separate ways and at separate times on that day. For instance, Eve apparently was not present for the whole parade of animals thing. Plus, more importantly, the woman was not made from the dust of the ground, like Adam was. Rather, she was made from Adam himself, making Adam her parent, as it were, instead of God. This will become extremely significant later on.

But there is more significance to the order of creation still. Namely, that there is a direct relationship between the order of creation and the relative authority between a husband and wife.

For a man should not have his head covered, since he is the image and glory of God; but the woman is the glory of man. For man does not originate from woman, but woman from man; for indeed man was not created for the woman’s sake, but woman for the man’s sake. Therefore the woman should have a symbol of authority on her head, because of the angels. 1 Cor. 11:7-10.

I am not at this point going to try to fully unpack all of the nuances of the relative authority between a husband and wife. I merely note that Paul is here making an argument from the law of nature. This has absolutely nothing to do with Jewish, Greek or Roman culture, or any other human culture. He goes straight to the creation account as recorded in Gen. 2, which makes this a part of human nature, and a part of the law of nature. This is not a new rule originating with Paul, the Church, or the New Testament. It is Paul saying to each one of us, “you should already have figured this out, if you had been paying attention to the true origin story of the human race, and not succumbed to heathen or merely naturalistic explanations.”

And the bottom line is, there is a difference between the authority of a husband and the authority of a wife, which is built into the world and us. We can perhaps discuss what those precise differences are in another place. Let us, for now, just acknowledge that there is a difference. This is confirmed in another place, as well. “But I do not allow a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet. For it was Adam who was first created, and then Eve.” 1 Tim. 2:12-13. Again, to the same effect, the order of creation way back when, makes a difference in the relative authority between a husband and wife in the here and now.

This is not a popular teaching today, but it doesn’t matter. We’re still talking about events occurring on day 6 of the creation week, which things are embedded into the nature of human beings, the nature of the world, and are part of the immutable and eternal law of nature. Consequently, this is part of God’s will which does not change. So, everyone might as well get used to it.

[Gen. 2:23b is discussed together with Gen. 3:20.]

Gen 2:24 Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.

Marriage and Family

Here we have the very brief account of the institution of marriage and the family. The institution of marriage essentially deriving from God making a woman for the man, then presenting her to him, and his response of recognizing and accepting her (all of this in verse 22). And the institution of the family consisting of man’s response, which is to leave his parents (even though Adam had no parents himself, but is a model for the rest of us), to join with and cling to his wife, and to become one flesh. Indeed, by the old common law in England and America, no marriage was deemed completed for legal purposes until it had been consummated by sexual union.

In doing this, each married couple separates from the families of their parents, gets prepared to bring new descendants into the world, and becomes a new self-governing unit, which history teaches is the foundational social unit of every human society. As a new self-governing unit, each family is co-equal with all other families. There never was in ancient times, nor is there now, any God-ordained or divinely established hierarchy among the families of the world.

Once a couple is married, they step out of the authority and jurisdiction of their parents. Older generations of families have no intrinsic right to rule over younger generations of families. No family group, tribe or clan has any intrinsic right to rule families from other groups, tribes or clans. Each family is accountable solely to God for the manner and extent to which they take dominion, that is, how many children they have, how they raise their children, the extent of property owned or cared for by them, etc. The unfortunate extent to which families throughout history have dominated other families is a testament to the sinfulness of mankind.

In establishing marriage and the family, God set out the basic parameters for the lawful exercise of dominion. Marriage is exclusively between one man and one woman, devoted to and set apart for each other for the rest of their joint lives. For as confirmed by Rom. 7:1-2, upon the death of either spouse the marriage immediately ends. Same-sex unions and homosexual behavior in general is contrary to nature and unlawful. God did not fashion another man for Adam to be his companion, two men do not “fit” together as a man and woman, and it is impossible for two men or two women to become “one flesh,” just as it is impossible for two men or two women to procreate, to be fruitful and multiply. Which is why in Western Civilization, homosexuality was always historically regarded as “the crime against nature.”

Other false relationships, such as sexual cohabitation without benefit of marriage, do not a family make. By the law of nature, such a relationship is merely serial fornication. There is no suggestion either textually or by example that polygamy (multiple wives) or polyandry (multiple husbands) are anticipated or allowed in God’s institution of marriage. Certainly polyandry is the worse aberration, since man was not made for a woman, but woman was made for a man (1 Cor. 11:9), and the husband is the head of a wife, not vice versa (Eph. 5:23).

I note with some wistfulness that marriage will not exist in the afterlife, as Jesus clearly told us. “For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.” Mat. 22:30. Obviously, when the present earth is destroyed and time is no more, there can be no opportunity for either the righteous or the unrighteous to procreate any further, and bring new lives into existence, for the time of sin and free will are past. But more than that, if you believe in an earthly Millennial kingdom of Christ as I do, then there will at that time be both ordinary mortal human beings and resurrected saints inhabiting the earth together. The mortals will marry and procreate as per usual, but all saints entering the kingdom post-resurrection will have received new bodies, and during the entire Millennium will not marry or procreate.

Which creates a strong link between marriage and procreation – to the point that whenever there is no longer any need for procreation, there is no longer any need for marriage. Sorry to say there will not be endless sex with 70 virgins in eternity for us guys. I don’t want to read too much into it, but from a law of nature standpoint it seems that marriage merely for companionship (i.e., without propagation) is not really a thing with God. So it would seem that not merely marriage as an institution, but sexual relations in general, won’t exist for anyone post-resurrection.

[Gen. 2:25 is discussed along with Gen. 3:7-11.]