MAN’S CREATION

13. What is the attitude of a true father toward a family that he produces?

¹³ A true father produces a family because he loves children. He has no desire to make fiends or devils out of them or to get any satisfaction out of torturing and tormenting them. He has their highest interests at heart. He wants to find pleasure in them because they reflect his image and are a credit to him and give him due respect and obedience. Long ago, under divine inspiration, a king who was himself a father of many children said: “A wise son is the one that makes a father rejoice.” “The father of a righteous one will without fail be joyful; the one becoming father to a wise one will also rejoice in him.”—Proverbs 10:1; 23:24.

14. How is Jehovah compared to a human father in dealing with sons?

¹⁴ As regards the attitude of the heavenly Father toward his intelligent creatures, the psalmist David said: “As a father shows mercy to his sons, Jehovah has shown mercy to those fearing him. For he himself well knows the formation of us, remembering that we are dust.” (Psalm 103:13, 14) What Jehovah expects of his sons, he indicates, saying: “A son, for his part, honors a father; and a servant, his grand master. So if I am a father, where is the honor to me? And if I am a grand master, where is the fear of me?” (Malachi 1:6) Jehovah the heavenly Father is not inferior to an earthly father in showing the right qualities toward His creatures, for He says: “And I will show compassion upon them, just as a man shows compassion upon his son who is serving him.”—Malachi 3:17.

15. What was God’s motive in creating children of a nature lower than that of heavenly sons, and what would thereby be displayed?

¹⁵ With nothing short of a loving motive, Jehovah God purposed to become father to children of a new nature. This signified that they would not be of the spirit nature, not of the heavenly nature. Theirs would be a nature less refined than that of the spirit nature and hence subjecting them to limitations and restrictions such as the heavenly “sons of God” do not have. However, this would work no hardship for them and would be perfectly enjoyable. Their nature was to be that of flesh and blood, or human nature. The creating of children of this lower nature was not because the heavenly Father had become dissatisfied with his vast family of spirit sons or needed something new and additional with which to provide new entertainment for himself. It was, rather, to display still further the greatly diversified wisdom of God as a Creator, and also to expand his love to still other creatures.

16. (a) For creating a family of human nature, what must God first produce? (b) What was his stated purpose for creating our earth?

¹⁶ First, however, He must provide the materials with which to create this family of the human nature and also a suitable place for this human family to live and occupy. With this in view, He created the earth, a planet belonging to the solar system that is a part of the great galaxy of stars now known as The Milky Way. At this point the Holy Bible opens up its marvelous story, saying: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” (Genesis 1:1) With loving care he prepared the conditions and environment on the cooled, hardened surface of the earth for its human inhabitants. His purpose for this earth he speaks of, saying:

“This is what Jehovah has said, the Creator of the heavens, He the true God, the Former of the earth and the Maker of it, He the One who firmly established it, who did not create it simply for nothing, who formed it even to be inhabited.”—Isaiah 45:18.

17. How did the Creator foresee the needs of his human family, and how did he provide for such needs?

¹⁷ His human family would have bodies that needed to breathe in order to sustain life, and so He provided an atmosphere about the earth. They would need water to drink, and so he provided plenty of that. They needed plant life and vegetation as food, and this He provided for them. They needed sunlight for health and for vision, and he removed any cosmic dust cloud that kept the sun’s rays from reaching the earth and later clarified the atmosphere to let the sunlight, moonlight and starlight penetrate to the earth’s surface. The human family needed regular periods of rest and sleep, and the great Designer of the earth caused it to revolve so that day alternated with night. He caused the waters to swarm with fish and other marine life, flying creatures to take winged flight through the air, and land animals in great variety, all to play their parts in the economy of earthly life. All of this the wise and loving Creator did during the course of six creative periods of time, which he himself called days.—Genesis 1:1-25.

18. When and on what creative “day” did God announce his purpose to make the climax of his earthly creation?

¹⁸ Toward the end of the sixth creative time period things had been prepared on and about the earth for the heavenly Father to proceed with starting the human family. Then it was that he announced what was to be the climax of his earthly creative work, as we read in Genesis 1:26: “And God went on to say: ‘Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness, and let them have in subjection the fish of the sea and the flying creatures of the heavens and the domestic animals and all the earth and every moving animal that is moving upon the earth.’”

19. How can we prove whether God was talking to himself in Genesis 1:26?

¹⁹ In the Hebrew text of this creation account the word for “God” is e·lo·himʹ, which is the plural form of e·loʹah, the plural form being used here in Genesis to denote excellence and grandeur, and not a number of gods, two, three or more. That is why the verbs that here go with E·lo·himʹ are in the singular number. And so when we read, “And God [E·lo·himʹ] went on to say: ‘Let us,’” it does not mean that God was talking to himself. He is not a trinity, a triune god, a god in three persons, so that one person of him was saying to the other two persons of him, “Let us.” In Genesis 2:4 this Creator is called Jehovah God, and later the writer, the prophet Moses, said: “Listen, O Israel: Jehovah our God is one Jehovah.” There are not two or three Jehovahs, only one! A so-called triune god or trinity is a pagan invention. It is a blasphemous falsehood.—Deuteronomy 6:4.

20. Most reasonably the words “Let us make man” were addressed to whom, and why so?

²⁰ Consequently, when God (E·lo·himʹ) said, “Let us,” he was speaking to at least someone else apart from himself in the invisible spirit heavens. It is hardly likely that Jehovah God would be here speaking to the 100,000,000 or more angels who minister to him and asking their cooperation with him in the creation of man. It is most reasonable that he would be speaking to his firstborn heavenly Son, the firstborn of all creation, the beginning of the creation by God. This one, as the firstborn of God’s heavenly family, would be the one to be given the preeminence and honor of being invited to work together with his heavenly Father in the creation of man on earth. This would simplify matters. Since this firstborn heavenly son bore the “image” of his heavenly Father and was according to His “likeness,” God could properly say to him, “Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness.” One’s being in the image of God and according to his likeness would never mean that one was the equal of Jehovah God. An “image” is not the real thing!

THE FIRST MAN IN PARADISE

21. Where does it say that the newly created man was put in Paradise?

²¹ Genesis, chapter two, goes into detail on man’s creation. Descriptively, Genesis 2:7, 8 tells us: “And Jehovah God proceeded to form the man out of dust from the ground and to blow into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man came to be a living soul. Further, Jehovah God planted a garden in Eden, toward the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed.” In the ancient Syriac Version of the Bible the word Paradise is used to stand for “garden”; the Douay Version of the Bible also uses the word Paradise and says: “And the Lord God had planted a paradise of pleasure from the beginning: wherein he placed man whom he had formed.”—Genesis 2:8, Dy.

22. What common religious idea do some try to read into what Genesis 2:7 actually says?

²² Let us note once again what Genesis 2:7 states about the creation of man. Does it say that Jehovah God put in man a soul separate and distinct from his body? That is what many religious people want to read into the text. In fact, the Spanish Bible translation by F. Torres Amat–S. L. Copello, of 1942 C.E., reads, when translated into English: “Then the Lord God formed the man of the slime of the earth, and breathed in his face a breath or spirit of life, and the man remained made living with a rational soul.”b This is very different from the Roman Catholic Douay Version, which says: “And man became a living soul.” Also, the version published by The Jewish Publication Society of America reads: “And man became a living soul.” In order that our readers may see the literal word-for-word reading (from right to left) of the Hebrew text we present below a photostatic copy of this part of Genesis 2:7 in The Interlinear Literal Translation of the Hebrew Old Testament, by G. R. Berry, copyright 1896-1897:

the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. 8 ¶ And the LORD God planted a garden

יְהוָֹה אֱלֹהִים אֶת־הָאָדָם עָפָר מִן־הָאֲדָמָה

,ground the from dust [of out] man (the) God Jehovah

וַיִּפַּח בְּאַפָּיו נִשְׁמַת חַיִּים וַיְהִי הָאָדָם

man (the) became and ;life of breath nostrils his in breathed and

8 לְנֶפֶשׁ חַיָּה וַיִּטַּע יְהוָֹה אֱלֹהִים גַּן בְּעֵדֶן

Eden in garden a God Jehovah planted And living soul a (for)

23. When the human body dies, what happens to the soul?

²³ Since God’s inspired Word plainly says, “Man became a living soul,” man is a soul. The Bible tells the truth! It is the authority on what the human soul is. The pagan philosophers of ancient time, who did not have God’s written Word, are the ones who say that man has inside him an invisible spiritual soul that departs into the spirit realm at the death of the human body. In the Hebrew text the word for “soul” is nephʹesh; in the Greek Septuagint Version of the Hebrew Scriptures it is psy·kheʹ. Hence, what happens to man’s body happens to the human soul. It is not just the human body that dies, but, as Jehovah God says in Ezekiel 18:4: “Look! All the souls—to me they belong. . . . The soul that is sinning—it itself will die.” (Also, verse 20)

24. Why is a “physical body” distinct from a “spiritual one”?

²⁴ Man is not of the spirit, spiritual. Man is of the earth, earthy: “Jehovah God proceeded to form the man out of dust from the ground.” (Genesis 2:7) The body that God created for man was made up of the elements taken from the earth and the atmosphere. It was not a spiritual body, and it cannot be spiritualized so as to become invisible and able to inhabit the spirit realm. It was a physical body, separate and distinct from a spiritual body such as the heavenly “sons of God” possess. Just as a Bible commentator of the first century C.E. said: “If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual one.” The two kinds of bodies must not be confused, and the Bible does not confuse them.—1 Corinthians 15:44.

25. What did God breathe into man’s nostrils to make him a “living soul,” in contrast with Greek philosophy?

²⁵ The naked human body that God formed out of dust from the ground there in the Paradise of Pleasure was perfect, none of its necessary parts or members missing. “Perfect is his activity, for all his ways are justice.” (Deuteronomy 32:4) “See! This only I have found,” said wise King Solomon, “that the true God made mankind upright.” (Ecclesiastes 7:29) To make that first human body alive and functioning perfectly, God did not take from heaven a bodyless “soul” (psy·kheʹ)c that, according to the pagan Greek idea, was flitting around like a butterfly, and breathe or insert it into the lifeless body. God breathed into the body not a mere current of air to expand the body’s lungs. It was nothing like mouth-to-mouth reviving as in the case of a drowned person. What God breathed into the nostrils of the body is called “the breath of life,” which not only filled the lungs with air but also imparted to the body the life-force that is sustained by breathing. In this way “the man came to be a living soul.”

26. Why was the first man named Adam, and how did God put real purpose in his life?

²⁶ Jehovah God became the Father, the Life-Giver, of this first human soul. Materials for forming the human body were taken from the ground, which, in Hebrew, is called a·da·mahʹ, and so this living soul was appropriately named Adam. (Genesis 5:1, 2) The heavenly Father had a purpose in putting his earthly son in the Paradise of Eden, and He put purpose into the life of Adam. To this effect we read, in Genesis 2:15: “And Jehovah God proceeded to take the man and settle him in the garden of Eden to cultivate it and to take care of it.” God assigned to Adam his work as that of a Paradise-keeper, a gardener. To give us some idea of what grew in that earthly Paradise, we are told: “Jehovah God planted a garden in Eden, toward the east, . . . Thus Jehovah God made to grow out of the ground [a·da·mahʹ] every tree desirable to one’s sight and good for food and also the tree of life in the middle of the garden and the tree of the knowledge of good and bad.” (Genesis 2:8, 9) Containing “every tree desirable to one’s sight,” the garden of Eden must have been a beautiful place. Among its trees “good for food” was the fig tree.

27. How did God see to it that Adam was not alone in the Paradise and that he got acquainted with things?

²⁷ Only a God of love could have given his earthly son the Paradise of Pleasure as his home, the very best that earth had to provide. Being perfect, Adam could have a perfect appreciation of this garden and of its beauty. He was not alone there. There were fish of various kinds in the river that issued out of the garden and that branched out to the regions beyond the boundary of the garden. (Genesis 2:10-14) There was also a varied birdlife, also land animals, domestic and wild. God saw to it that Adam got acquainted with these earthly creatures of a lower nature.

“Now Jehovah God was forming from the ground every wild beast of the field and every flying creature of the heavens, and he began bringing them to the man to see what he would call each one; and whatever the man would call it, each living soul [nephʹesh], that was its name. So the man was calling the names of all the domestic animals and of the flying creatures of the heavens and of every wild beast of the field, but for man there was found no helper as a complement of him.”—Genesis 2:19, 20.

28. On meeting the ape, why did Adam feel no kinship with it?

²⁸ As the wild animals were introduced to Adam, a long-armed hairy creature appeared. Adam named it qoph, which means “ape” to us today. (1 Kings 10:22; 2 Chronicles 9:21) When Adam saw this ape, he did not feel any kinship to it. He did not believe that he was a blood descendant of it. He did not cry out with pleasure: “This is at last bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.” The information that Adam received from God was that qoph (the ape) had been created earlier on the sixth creative “day,” and that he, Adam, was created separately by God with no flesh connection with the ape or any other of the lower earthly creatures. Adam knew that there are four kinds of flesh. As it was stated nineteen centuries ago, in harmony with the latest findings of science: “Not all flesh is the same flesh, but there is one of mankind, and there is another flesh of cattle, and another flesh of birds, and another of fish.” (1 Corinthians 15:39) No, even though God’s Word spoke of the qoph (ape) as a “living soul,” the ape was not found to be a “complement” of Adam and suitable as a companion of him.—Genesis 2:20.

29. Why did Adam not converse with the serpent or worship any animal?

²⁹ As Adam observed all the wild beasts of the field, there on the ground or on a tree a long scaly animal glided along, without limbs. Adam called it na·hhashʹ, which to us means “serpent” or “snake.” It did not strike up a conversation with Adam, and he, for his part, did not talk with it. It was a speechless creature, making only a hissing sound. Adam had no fear of it or of other wild animals. He did not worship any of them as sacred, not even the cow. His God had put them in subjection to him, for he was an earthly son of God, made in God’s image and according to God’s likeness. So he worshiped only his heavenly Father, “the true God,” Jehovah.