Genesis 2

The Garden of Eden

God rests on the seventh day and sanctifies it. Then the LORD God forms the man from the ground, plants a garden for him, gives him work and a commandment, and builds the woman, and the two become one flesh.

Genesis chaptersChapter 2 of 50

The beginning, before the Fall. The scriptures “do not provide details about how or when the earth was created,” so no date is given. Read with footnotes in Gospel Library

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Background

Chapter 2 finishes one account of the Creation and begins another. Its first three verses close the six days of chapter 1 with the seventh, the day God rested, blessed, and…

Chapter 2 finishes one account of the Creation and begins another. Its first three verses close the six days of chapter 1 with the seventh, the day God rested, blessed, and sanctified, and the Sabbath commandment rests on them (Ex. 20:11). Verse 4 opens with “These are the generations,” the formula that begins each new section of Genesis, and the story narrows from the whole earth to one garden, one man, and one woman.

The Lord's words to Moses retell the chapter verse for verse in Moses 3, in the first person and with additions that answer some of a reader's questions (see the notes on verses 5 and 9). Abr. 5 tells it as the work of the Gods, and in a different order: the woman is made before the man names the animals.

Later scripture leans on this chapter. Asked whether a man may put away his wife, Jesus answers with verse 24 (Matt. 19:3–6). Paul quotes verse 7 of Adam and Christ (1 Cor. 15:45) and verse 24 of Christ and the Church (Eph. 5:31–32). Lehi explains why the two trees stood in the garden (2 Ne. 2:15–16). The Fall follows directly in Gen. 3, and the garden, the trees, and the commandment of this chapter are its setting.

The thread through the chapter

Genesis 2 is the story of God supplying what is lacking. Verse 5 lists what the earth does not yet have: no plant has sprung up, for “the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon…

Genesis 2 is the story of God supplying what is lacking. Verse 5 lists what the earth does not yet have: no plant has sprung up, for “the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground.” Then each lack is met. A mist waters the ground (verse 6). The LORD God forms a man from the ground and breathes life into him (verse 7), plants a garden (verse 8), and puts the man in it “to dress it and to keep it” (verse 15). “Dress” is the same Hebrew verb as “till” in verse 5: now there is a man to work the ground.

One lack remains, and God names it Himself. In chapter 1 everything God made was good; here, for the first time, He says, “It is not good” (verse 18). The man alone is incomplete, and “it is not enough for God to pronounce that Adam alone is ‘not good,’ Adam himself needs to know and recognize his incompleteness.” So the animals pass before him to be named, and none is a help fit for him. Only then does the LORD God build the woman and bring her to him, and Adam's first recorded words are a cry of recognition. The chapter ends with the two as “one flesh,” naked and not ashamed. What they do not yet know is the subject of chapter 3.

Tap any highlighted phrase to open a note beneath its versein the margin.

Verses 1–3

The seventh day

In plain words

So the heavens and the earth were finished, with everything in them. On the seventh day God ended the work He had been doing, and on the seventh day He rested from all His work. God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it He rested from all the work He had done in creating.

1 Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.

2 And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.

Language #

Why God rested

God rests because the work is finished, not because He is tired. Isaiah says the Creator “fainteth not, neither is weary” (Isa. 40:28).

God rests because the work is finished, not because He is tired. Isaiah says the Creator “fainteth not, neither is weary” (Isa. 40:28). The Hebrew verb is shavat, “cease, desist, rest,” used here of God desisting from labor, and the chapter's first verse gives the reason: “Thus the heavens and the earth were finished.”

Verse 2 raises a small puzzle. God “ended his work” on the seventh day: did He work on it? The Septuagint, the ancient Greek translation, avoids the question by reading “And God finished on the sixth day his works,” and the Samaritan and Syriac texts do the same. The Hebrew has “seventh,” and the Lord's words to Moses keep it: “on the seventh day I, God, ended my work… and all things which I had made were finished” (Moses 3:2). One answer is that the seventh day's work was of another kind: God's rest is “not so much a cessation of work as… a change in the type of work or purpose of the work as God now blesses and sanctifies.”

Sources: The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906. Westminster Leningrad Codex (the Masoretic Hebrew text), Read in the Hebrew–English interlinear on Bible Hub. The Septuagint (Rahlfs Greek text, with Brenton’s English translation), Elpenor Bilingual Septuagint. Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament: Genesis, In Keil and Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament, online at Bible Hub. Daniel L. Belnap, “In the Beginning: Genesis 1–3 and Its Significance to the Latter-day Saints”, in From Creation to Sinai: The Old Testament through the Lens of the Restoration, ed. Daniel L. Belnap and Aaron P. Schade (Religious Studies Center, BYU; Deseret Book, 2021), 1–42.

3 And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.

Language #

A day made holy

To sanctify is to set something apart for God. The Hebrew qiddesh means to “set apart as sacred, consecrate, dedicate,” and the law uses it for setting apart Mount Sinai, the…

To sanctify is to set something apart for God. The Hebrew qiddesh means to “set apart as sacred, consecrate, dedicate,” and the law uses it for setting apart Mount Sinai, the altar, and the tabernacle, and for consecrating priests. Here its object is a day, and this is the verb's first appearance in the Bible; it does not occur again until Exodus. Before any place or person is made holy, a span of time is.

Sanctifying is “the moving of an object or item to a divine state.” Read that way, “the Creation was not truly complete until it had been sanctified, a process similar to that of a temple dedication.”

Sources: Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906. Daniel L. Belnap, “In the Beginning: Genesis 1–3 and Its Significance to the Latter-day Saints”, in From Creation to Sinai: The Old Testament through the Lens of the Restoration, ed. Daniel L. Belnap and Aaron P. Schade (Religious Studies Center, BYU; Deseret Book, 2021), 1–42.

Verses 4–7

The man formed from the ground

In plain words

This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day the LORD God made the earth and the heavens. Before any plant of the field was in the earth, and before any herb of the field had sprung up (for the LORD God had not yet sent rain on the earth, and there was no man to work the ground), a mist rose from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground. Then the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living soul.

4 These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens,

Context #

Why the Creation is told again

Verse 4 begins a second account. “The first Creation account runs from Genesis 1:1 through 2:3.

Verse 4 begins a second account. “The first Creation account runs from Genesis 1:1 through 2:3. The second begins at 2:4.” The two differ. Chapter 1 counts days and makes man and woman together at the end; chapter 2 “has no mention of the number of days” and “reports that man was created first, then Eden, plants, animals, and finally woman.”

The heading may account for part of the difference. Toledot, “generations,” is an “account of a man and his descendants,” and in one reading the heading introduces not the origin of heaven and earth but “what happened to the heavens and the earth after their creation”: the history that follows, beginning with man in the garden.

Many scholars explain the differences by sources. On this view, the Documentary Hypothesis, Genesis 1 comes from a priestly writer who “calls God Elohim,” and Genesis 2 from one who “calls God Jehovah.” Others point out that “ancient people read the Torah as a unified whole for thousands of years,” and that “the two chapters can be read as a unity to teach the reader something about God.” The Latter-day Saint position makes room for sources without giving up Moses: he “used several documentary sources from which he compiled the book of Genesis, besides a divine revelation to him.” The Book of Moses adds an answer of its own in the next verse.

Sources: Avram R. Shannon, “The Genesis Creation Account in Its Ancient Context”, BYU Studies 64, no. 3, 173. Scripture Central, “Why Do We Have Three Different Accounts of the Creation?”, KnoWhy #400, Aug. 21, 2019. Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906. Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament: Genesis, In Keil and Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament, online at Bible Hub. Scripture Central, “Why do Parts of Old Testament Stories Seem to Contradict Themselves?”, KnoWhy #850, Apr. 28, 2026. “Pentateuch”, Bible Dictionary.

Language #

The LORD God

From verse 4 on, God is called “the LORD God,” Hebrew YHWH Elohim: the divine name joined to the title used throughout chapter 1.

From verse 4 on, God is called “the LORD God,” Hebrew YHWH Elohim: the divine name joined to the title used throughout chapter 1. The double name “occurs here twenty times though rarely met with elsewhere”; it runs through chapters 2 and 3, the story of Eden. In the King James Bible “LORD” in small capitals stands for the name Jehovah, and “Jehovah is the premortal Jesus Christ” (see the note on Gen. 1:1).

The change of name is one of the differences that source theories rest on. Latter-day Saints, whose theology “considers Elohim and Jehovah to be separate,” may read it differently: “the creative actions of Elohim in Genesis 1, followed by the creative actions of Jehovah in Genesis 2, could provide other insight.” The text does not explain the change, and that reading is offered as a possibility, not a teaching.

Sources: Westminster Leningrad Codex (the Masoretic Hebrew text), Read in the Hebrew–English interlinear on Bible Hub. Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament: Genesis, In Keil and Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament, online at Bible Hub. “Jehovah”, Bible Dictionary. Scripture Central, “Why do Parts of Old Testament Stories Seem to Contradict Themselves?”, KnoWhy #850, Apr. 28, 2026.

5 And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew: for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground.

Related Scriptures #

Created spiritually first

The Hebrew of verse 5 describes a bare land: the word rendered “before,” terem, means “not yet,” and a modern translation reads “when no plant of the field was yet in the earth…

The Hebrew of verse 5 describes a bare land: the word rendered “before,” terem, means “not yet,” and a modern translation reads “when no plant of the field was yet in the earth and no vegetation of the field had yet sprung up.” No rain had fallen, and there was no one to work the ground.

The King James wording, though, can be read to say that the plants existed before they were in the earth, and the Lord's words to Moses say exactly that: “For I, the Lord God, created all things, of which I have spoken, spiritually, before they were naturally upon the face of the earth… for in heaven created I them” (Moses 3:5). Two verses later He says it again of the man: “nevertheless, all things were before created; but spiritually were they created and made according to my word” (Moses 3:7). Here the Joseph Smith Translation answers the question a reader asks of a strangely worded verse.

The addition is a comment on the account, not a second story. In President Joseph Fielding Smith's words, Moses 3:5 and Genesis 2:5 “are interpolations… thrown into the account of the physical creation, explaining that all things were first created in the spirit existence in heaven before they were placed upon this earth.” Neither Genesis nor Moses narrates the spirit creation itself: “There is just the simple statement that they were so created before the physical creation.”

Sources: Westminster Leningrad Codex (the Masoretic Hebrew text), Read in the Hebrew–English interlinear on Bible Hub. New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition, National Council of Churches, 2021; on BibleGateway. The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Moses 3:1–25, Pearl of Great Price Student Manual (Church Educational System, 2017).

6 But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground.

7 And 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.

Language #

The potter and the clay

“Formed” is a potter's word. The Hebrew yatsar is used “of a potter who forms out of clay a vessel,” and here of God “(as a potter) forming Adam.”

“Formed” is a potter's word. The Hebrew yatsar is used “of a potter who forms out of clay a vessel,” and here of God “(as a potter) forming Adam.” It is the verb behind Jeremiah's visit to the potter's house: “as the clay is in the potter's hand, so are ye in mine hand, O house of Israel” (Jer. 18:6).

The man (ha-adam) is formed from the dust of the ground (ha-adamah), and the two words sound alike. Adamah is the ground “as tilled, yielding sustenance,” the ground the man is made to work (verses 5 and 15). The tie comes back in the sentence on Adam after the Fall: “till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return” (Gen. 3:19).

How Adam's and Eve's bodies were made is not revealed. “Though the details of what happened on earth before Adam and Eve, including how their bodies were created, have not been revealed, our teachings regarding man's origin are clear and come from revelation.” What the Church teaches and does not teach about evolution is in the note on Gen. 1:5.

Sources: Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906. Westminster Leningrad Codex (the Masoretic Hebrew text), Read in the Hebrew–English interlinear on Bible Hub. The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. “What does the Church believe about evolution?”, New Era, Oct. 2016, 41.

Related Scriptures #

The breath of life and a living soul

The breath God breathes is neshamah, “breath,” and “as breathed in by God it is God's breath in man.”

The breath God breathes is neshamah, “breath,” and “as breathed in by God it is God's breath in man.” What the man becomes, a “living soul” (nephesh chayyah), is the same Hebrew phrase Genesis uses for the animals: it designates them as “living creatures” in chapter 1 (Gen. 1:24) and in verse 19. Animals share the breath as well. In the Flood, “All in whose nostrils was the breath of life… died” (Gen. 7:22), and the Lord's words to Moses say of the animals, “I, God, breathed into them the breath of life” (Moses 3:19).

Restoration scripture says what Genesis leaves out. Abraham's account puts the man's own spirit into the body: “the Gods formed man from the dust of the ground, and took his spirit (that is, the man's spirit), and put it into him; and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul” (Abr. 5:7). The verse “helps us understand that the breath of life was ‘the man's spirit,’” a spirit created first, “in heaven” (Moses 3:5). Revelation defines the result of the union: “the spirit and the body are the soul of man” (D&C 88:15).

Sources: Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906. Westminster Leningrad Codex (the Masoretic Hebrew text), Read in the Hebrew–English interlinear on Bible Hub. Dana M. Pike, “The Latter-day Saint Reimaging of “the Breath of Life” (Genesis 2:7)”, BYU Studies Quarterly 56, no. 2. The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Facsimiles 2–3; Abraham 4–5, Pearl of Great Price Student Manual (Church Educational System, 2017).

Verses 8–17

The garden and the commandment

In plain words

The LORD God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and put there the man He had formed. Out of the ground He made every tree grow that is beautiful to look at and good for food, with the tree of life in the middle of the garden and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden, and from there it divided into four branches. The first is the Pison, which winds around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold; the gold of that land is good, and bdellium and onyx are there. The second river is the Gihon, which winds around the whole land of Cush. The third is the Hiddekel, the Tigris, which flows east of Assyria, and the fourth is the Euphrates.

The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and to keep it. And the LORD God commanded the man, “You may eat freely from every tree of the garden, but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for on the day you eat from it you will surely die.”

8 And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed.

Language #

Eden, the garden of delight

Eden is the name of a region, and the garden was planted in it, toward the east.

Eden is the name of a region, and the garden was planted in it, toward the east. Hebrew speakers probably heard in the name the word ‘eden, “luxury, dainty, delight,” and the Septuagint, translating verse 15, calls it “the garden of Delight.”

The prophets made Eden the picture of a land restored, “all simile of fertility.” Isaiah promises that the Lord “will make her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the Lord” (Isa. 51:3), and Ezekiel calls it “Eden the garden of God” (Ezek. 28:13).

Sources: Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906. The Septuagint (Rahlfs Greek text, with Brenton’s English translation), Elpenor Bilingual Septuagint. The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

9 And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

Related Scriptures #

Two trees

Genesis puts two trees in the middle of the garden and does not say why.

Genesis puts two trees in the middle of the garden and does not say why. Lehi does: “it must needs be that there was an opposition; even the forbidden fruit in opposition to the tree of life; the one being sweet and the other bitter. Wherefore, the Lord God gave unto man that he should act for himself” (2 Ne. 2:15–16). The sweetness and the bitterness are among the “additional details about the Garden of Eden story that are not mentioned in the Genesis account.”

The commandment of verse 17 makes the same point in Genesis' own way, since it tells Adam what will follow if he eats; it is “our first indication that humankind possesses individual agency.” The Lord's words to Moses say it outright: “nevertheless, thou mayest choose for thyself, for it is given unto thee; but, remember that I forbid it” (Moses 3:17).

Sources: The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Scripture Central, “Why Do We Have Three Different Accounts of the Creation?”, KnoWhy #400, Aug. 21, 2019. Daniel L. Belnap, “In the Beginning: Genesis 1–3 and Its Significance to the Latter-day Saints”, in From Creation to Sinai: The Old Testament through the Lens of the Restoration, ed. Daniel L. Belnap and Aaron P. Schade (Religious Studies Center, BYU; Deseret Book, 2021), 1–42.

10 And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads.

Context #

Where was Eden?

Genesis locates Eden by four rivers, and two of them are known: Hiddekel is the Tigris, and the fourth river is the Euphrates.

Genesis locates Eden by four rivers, and two of them are known: Hiddekel is the Tigris, and the fourth river is the Euphrates. The Pison and the Gihon have not been identified with certainty; for each there are only “theories of identification.” The land the King James Bible calls “Ethiopia” is Hebrew Cush, the “land and people of southern Nile-valley,” and Gihon is also the name of a spring at Jerusalem (1 Kgs. 1:33).

Latter-day Saint leaders have placed Eden in America. President Brigham Young taught that “the Lord commenced his work upon what is now called the American continent, where the Garden of Eden was made,” and President Heber C. Kimball named the place: “Jackson County, in the State of Missouri.” Revelation places Adam's last gathering of his righteous posterity at Adam-ondi-Ahman (D&C 107:53; D&C 116:1), in what is now Daviess County, Missouri. To reconcile this with the rivers, one suggestion is that “the descendants of Noah evidently named some rivers, and perhaps other landmarks, after places they had known before the Flood”; it is offered as a “theory.”

Sources: Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906. The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Moses 3:1–25, Pearl of Great Price Student Manual (Church Educational System, 2017). Genesis 1–2: The Creation, Old Testament Student Manual: Genesis–2 Samuel (Church Educational System, 2003).

11 The name of the first is Pison: that is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold;

12 And the gold of that land is good: there is bdellium and the onyx stone.

13 And the name of the second river is Gihon: the same is it that compasseth the whole land of Ethiopia.

14 And the name of the third river is Hiddekel: that is it which goeth toward the east of Assyria. And the fourth river is Euphrates.

15 And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.

Language #

Work in the garden

Adam had work to do before the Fall. The two Hebrew verbs are ‘avad, “work, serve,” the verb translated “till the ground” in verse 5, and shamar, “keep, have charge of,” used here…

Adam had work to do before the Fall. The two Hebrew verbs are ‘avad, “work, serve,” the verb translated “till the ground” in verse 5, and shamar, “keep, have charge of,” used here of the garden. Verse 5 said there was “not a man to till the ground”; now there is, and paradise is a place of labor.

Both verbs return at the end of chapter 3. The LORD God sends the man out “to till the ground from whence he was taken” (Gen. 3:23), and sets cherubim “to keep the way of the tree of life” (Gen. 3:24), where “keep” is shamar again, now in the sense “keep, guard.” The man put in the garden to keep it ends outside it, while others keep the way back.

16 And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat:

17 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

Related Scriptures #

Why Adam did not die that day

The Hebrew doubles the verb, mot tamut, “dying you shall die,” which the King James Bible renders “surely die.”

The Hebrew doubles the verb, mot tamut, “dying you shall die,” which the King James Bible renders “surely die.” Yet “all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years” (Moses 6:12). Restoration scripture gives two answers.

The first concerns the “day.” Abraham's account adds, “Now I, Abraham, saw that it was after the Lord's time, which was after the time of Kolob; for as yet the Gods had not appointed unto Adam his reckoning” (Abr. 5:13), and one day of the Lord's time is “one thousand years according to the time appointed unto that whereon thou standest” (Abr. 3:4). So Adam and Eve “did not die physically within a twenty-four hour period, as we now measure a day,” but Adam did “die within the period of one Kolob day.”

The second is that another kind of death came with the transgression itself. The Lord told Joseph Smith that He “caused that he should be cast out from the Garden of Eden, from my presence, because of his transgression, wherein he became spiritually dead, which is the first death” (D&C 29:41). Separation from God's presence came with the transgression; the death of the body came later.

Sources: Westminster Leningrad Codex (the Masoretic Hebrew text), Read in the Hebrew–English interlinear on Bible Hub. The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Facsimiles 2–3; Abraham 4–5, Pearl of Great Price Student Manual (Church Educational System, 2017).

Verses 18–25

The woman and the first marriage

In plain words

Then the LORD God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper corresponding to him.” Out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. Adam gave names to all the cattle, the birds, and the beasts of the field, but for Adam no helper corresponding to him was found.

So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall on Adam, and while he slept He took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh in its place. From the rib He had taken from the man, the LORD God built a woman and brought her to the man. Adam said, “At last! This is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.” That is why a man leaves his father and mother and holds fast to his wife, and they become one flesh. The man and his wife were both naked, and they were not ashamed.

18 And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.

Language #

A help meet

“Help meet” is two words, not one: a help that is “meet,” fit, for him.

“Help meet” is two words, not one: a help that is “meet,” fit, for him. In 1828 English meet meant “Fit; suitable; proper; qualified.” The Hebrew ‘ezer kenegdo means “a help corresponding to him i.e. equal and adequate to himself,” and the Septuagint renders it “a help suitable to him” and, in verse 20, “a help like to himself.”

‘Ezer, help, is not a servant's word. It is used of God Himself: “he is our help and our shield” (Ps. 33:20); Moses named a son Eliezer, “for the God of my father, said he, was mine help” (Ex. 18:4). Together the two Hebrew words “mean helper, ally, or rescuer in an equal relation or role,” and “the term does not suggest that the helper is inferior.”

Sources: Noah Webster, An American Dictionary of the English Language, 1828. Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906. The Septuagint (Rahlfs Greek text, with Brenton’s English translation), Elpenor Bilingual Septuagint. The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Genesis 1–2; Moses 2–3; Abraham 4–5, Scripture Helps: Old Testament (2025).

19 And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.

20 And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him.

21 And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof;

Language #

The rib

The Hebrew tsela‘ means “rib” here, but elsewhere it is a “side”: the ridge of a hill, the side chambers of the temple, the side of the ark of the covenant, of the tabernacle, and…

The Hebrew tsela‘ means “rib” here, but elsewhere it is a “side”: the ridge of a hill, the side chambers of the temple, the side of the ark of the covenant, of the tabernacle, and of the altar. The next verse uses an unexpected verb as well: the LORD God “built” (vayyiven) the side He had taken into a woman.

The rib is to be read as a figure. President Spencer W. Kimball said, “The story of the rib, of course, is figurative.” President Russell M. Nelson explained the figure: “the rib, coming as it does from the side, seems to denote partnership. The rib signifies neither dominion nor subservience, but a lateral relationship as partners, to work and to live, side by side.”

22 And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.

23 And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.

Language #

Bone of my bones

Adam's first recorded words are a cry of recognition: in Hebrew, “This at last.”

Adam's first recorded words are a cry of recognition: in Hebrew, “This at last.” The Book of Moses gives them as knowledge: “This I know now is bone of my bones” (Moses 3:23).

“Bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh” is also a formula of kinship and loyalty. Laban greets Jacob, his future son-in-law, with “Surely thou art my bone and my flesh” (Gen. 29:14), and the tribes come to make David king saying, “Behold, we are thy bone and thy flesh” (2 Sam. 5:1). In such cases the words “establish or maintain a legitimately recognized relationship.” Read that way, Adam's words recognize “the covenantal relationship between himself and the woman, a relationship institutionalized in marriage.”

The name he gives her carries the same recognition. She is ishshah, woman, “because she was taken out of” ish, man: the two words sound alike, as the two people are alike.

Sources: Westminster Leningrad Codex (the Masoretic Hebrew text), Read in the Hebrew–English interlinear on Bible Hub. The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Daniel L. Belnap, “In the Beginning: Genesis 1–3 and Its Significance to the Latter-day Saints”, in From Creation to Sinai: The Old Testament through the Lens of the Restoration, ed. Daniel L. Belnap and Aaron P. Schade (Religious Studies Center, BYU; Deseret Book, 2021), 1–42.

24 Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.

Related Scriptures #

One flesh

Genesis does not mark who speaks verse 24, Adam or the narrator. Jesus attributes it to God: “he which made them at the beginning made them male and female, And said, For this…

Genesis does not mark who speaks verse 24, Adam or the narrator. Jesus attributes it to God: “he which made them at the beginning made them male and female, And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh?” Then He draws the conclusion: “What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder” (Matt. 19:4–6). His “they twain” follows the Septuagint's “they two shall be one flesh”; the Hebrew says only “they shall become one flesh.”

“Cleave” (davaq) means “cling, cleave, keep close,” and it is the word for Israel's bond with God: “him shalt thou serve, and to him shalt thou cleave” (Deut. 10:20). Latter-day prophets read the verse as the first marriage, performed by God: “the Lord set the norm himself by bringing together Adam and Eve, his first male and first female on this earth, and performing a holy marriage ceremony to make them husband and wife.” Revelation repeats the words, “they twain shall be one flesh,” and adds that this is so “that the earth might answer the end of its creation” (D&C 49:16). “One flesh” means “the complete merger of a man and a woman—their hearts, hopes, lives, love, family, future, everything.”

Sources: The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The Septuagint (Rahlfs Greek text, with Brenton’s English translation), Elpenor Bilingual Septuagint. Westminster Leningrad Codex (the Masoretic Hebrew text), Read in the Hebrew–English interlinear on Bible Hub. Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906. Chapter 18: Honorable, Happy, Successful Marriage, Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Spencer W. Kimball (2006). Jeffrey R. Holland, “Personal Purity”, general conference, Oct. 1998.

25 And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.

Language #

Naked and not ashamed

The chapter's last word sets up the next chapter. “Naked” is ‘arummim; the next verse calls the serpent “more subtil” (Gen. 3:1), ‘arum, “crafty, shrewd.”

The chapter's last word sets up the next chapter. “Naked” is ‘arummim; the next verse calls the serpent “more subtil” (Gen. 3:1), ‘arum, “crafty, shrewd.” The two words sound almost alike, “a pun long recognized in the Garden of Eden narrative.”

In scripture nakedness “is often associated with the social experiences of shame and humiliation,” and “this is the only place in the scriptures where nakedness does not bring about negative social consequences.” Lehi describes the state they were in: had they stayed in the garden, “they would have remained in a state of innocence, having no joy, for they knew no misery; doing no good, for they knew no sin” (2 Ne. 2:23). It ends when “the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked” (Gen. 3:7).

Seeing Christ in Genesis 2

Paul reads verse 7 as a figure of Christ: “The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit” (1 Cor. 15:45). The first Adam received life when the LORD God breathed into him; the last Adam is “quickening,” in older English “giving life.”

Paul reads verse 24 the same way. After quoting it he writes, “This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church” (Eph. 5:31–32).

Lehi saw a tree in vision, and Nephi calls it “a representation of the tree of life” (1 Ne. 15:22). When Nephi asked its meaning, the angel showed him the virgin with her child and said, “Behold the Lamb of God, yea, even the Son of the Eternal Father! Knowest thou the meaning of the tree which thy father saw?” Nephi answered, “it is the love of God” (1 Ne. 11:21–22). At the end of the Bible the tree stands again beside the river that flows “out of the throne of God and of the Lamb” (Rev. 22:1–2).

And the day God sanctified when the Creation was finished, Jesus claimed as His own: “the Son of man is Lord also of the sabbath” (Mark 2:28).

Worth exploring next

The same chapter in Restoration scripture. Read Moses 3 and Abr. 5 beside this chapter; Moses 3:5–9 tells of the spiritual creation.
Lehi on the garden. 2 Ne. 2:14–26, with Alma 42:2–15 on the cherubim and the tree of life.
The chapter in the New Testament. Matt. 19:3–9; 1 Cor. 15:45–49; Eph. 5:25–33; Rev. 22:1–5.
The help meet. KnoWhy #833 (Scripture Central), “What Does it Mean that Eve is a ‘Help Meet’ for Adam?”, follows the Hebrew ‘ezer kenegdo further.

This chapter elsewhere in scripture

Moses 3:1–25 — The same account, verse for verse, as the Lord's words to Moses, with additions on the spiritual creation (3:5, 7, 9) and on agency (3:17).
Abr. 5:1–21 — The account as the work of the Gods; the woman is made before the animals are named.

Sources & further reading

The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
“Genesis”, Bible Dictionary.
“Pentateuch”, Bible Dictionary.
“Jehovah”, Bible Dictionary.
Genesis 1–2; Moses 2–3; Abraham 4–5, Scripture Helps: Old Testament (2025).
“What does the Church believe about evolution?”, New Era, Oct. 2016, 41.
Moses 3:1–25, Pearl of Great Price Student Manual (Church Educational System, 2017).
Facsimiles 2–3; Abraham 4–5, Pearl of Great Price Student Manual (Church Educational System, 2017).
Genesis 1–2: The Creation, Old Testament Student Manual: Genesis–2 Samuel (Church Educational System, 2003).
Spencer W. Kimball, “The Blessings and Responsibilities of Womanhood”, Ensign, Mar. 1976.
Russell M. Nelson, “Lessons from Eve”, general conference, Oct. 1987.
Chapter 18: Honorable, Happy, Successful Marriage, Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Spencer W. Kimball (2006).
Jeffrey R. Holland, “Personal Purity”, general conference, Oct. 1998.
Daniel L. Belnap, “In the Beginning: Genesis 1–3 and Its Significance to the Latter-day Saints”, in From Creation to Sinai: The Old Testament through the Lens of the Restoration, ed. Daniel L. Belnap and Aaron P. Schade (Religious Studies Center, BYU; Deseret Book, 2021), 1–42.
Avram R. Shannon, “The Genesis Creation Account in Its Ancient Context”, BYU Studies 64, no. 3, 173.
Dana M. Pike, “The Latter-day Saint Reimaging of “the Breath of Life” (Genesis 2:7)”, BYU Studies Quarterly 56, no. 2.
Scripture Central, “Why Do We Have Three Different Accounts of the Creation?”, KnoWhy #400, Aug. 21, 2019.
Scripture Central, “Why do Parts of Old Testament Stories Seem to Contradict Themselves?”, KnoWhy #850, Apr. 28, 2026.
Scripture Central, “What Does it Mean that Eve is a “Help Meet” for Adam?”, KnoWhy #833, Jan. 6, 2026.
Westminster Leningrad Codex (the Masoretic Hebrew text), Read in the Hebrew–English interlinear on Bible Hub.
Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906.
The Septuagint (Rahlfs Greek text, with Brenton’s English translation), Elpenor Bilingual Septuagint.
New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition, National Council of Churches, 2021; on BibleGateway.
Noah Webster, An American Dictionary of the English Language, 1828.
Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament: Genesis, In Keil and Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament, online at Bible Hub.

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