The Mist in the Wasteland: Introducing the River of Life
Why do Genesis 1 and 2 both start with different versions of inhospitable chaos? (Genesis 2:4-6)
This is the sixth part of our series examining the image of water in the Bible. Over the next months, we’ll be looking at these verses to follow the image of water as it unfolds from Genesis to Revelation. This time we’re looking at the spring that rises in the wilderness and becomes the river of life.
Here are the verses we are thinking about next:
“This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made earth and heaven. Now no shrub of the field was yet on the earth, and no plant of the field had yet sprouted for the Lord God had not sent rain upon the earth, and there was no man to cultivate the ground. But a mist used to rise from the earth and water the whole surface of the ground.” (Genesis 2:4-6)
The Repetition in Genesis 1 and 2
This post marks the first time we move from Genesis 1 to Genesis 2, so we’ll start with a quick aside to help us get oriented to the new territory.
Modern readers sometimes get thrown off by the “two creation stories” in Genesis 1 and 2. It can seem at first that they are at odds with one another. After all, didn’t Genesis 1 just tell the story of the creation of the earth, the plants, the animals, and humanity? So why does Genesis 2 begin with “no plant of the field yet sprouted”? Why do we get a reprise of the creation of humanity? Didn’t we do that already?
When the Bible makes us uncomfortable like this, the first thing we should do is check whether we’re bringing modern assumptions into our reading of the text that do not belong there, in this case, the assumption that narratives should progress chronologically and not double back on themselves.
Repetition was a cornerstone of the way the writers of the Bible shaped their meanings into words. Doesn’t it make sense that the Bible would start as it means to go on? It isn’t an accident or an error that there are two tellings of creation (or four gospels, for that matter), nor do we need to assume that they were written by different people or that they come from different times.
What might we see if we start with the assumption that this is how God meant the story to the told? Perhaps there is more that meets the eye to the way these two stories inform and expand one another?
Eden Starts as Wilderness
One sign that Genesis 1 and 2 should be read as a repetition instead of a continuation is that both chapters begin in a similar place: the wasteland.
Wait. Didn’t I say that creation started as a chaotic ocean in Genesis 1?
Yes, I did. And it does. And it’s complicated.
In the first verses of Genesis 1, there are several descriptors that say “water” and several that say “wasteland!” In Genesis 1:2, you have the “abyss” (tehom) and the “waters” (mayim), both water words. We are also told that the earth was “formless” (tohu) and “void” (bohu), both wilderness/wasteland words.
Both tohu and bohu are used later in the Bible to describe places like the desert, or a battlefield, or a ruined city. (Click on the words above to see the references.)
Genesis 1 tells how God brought order to the chaos to create a good place for his creations to thrive. By the end of the first chapter of the Bible, it is all there: the dry land, the plants, the animals, and the humans. However, at the start of Genesis 2, we are back in the disordered, uncreated state, only this time it has different characteristics.
“Now no shrub of the field was yet on the earth, and no plant of the field had yet sprouted for the Lord God had not sent rain upon the earth, and there was no man to cultivate the ground.” (Genesis 2:5)
This is the introduction of the desert/wilderness theme, a theme that will run straight through the Bible from here to the book of Revelation. A whistle-stop tour of the wilderness would take us past Israel’s 40 years in the desert, the desolation of the land that came with the exile to Babylon, Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness, and finally the exile of evil from the new creation at the end of the Bible, and many other moments in the Bible.
A Mist (?) Rises in the Wilderness
So what it is that rises in the wilderness of Genesis 2? Is it a mist? A fog? Or a river? Or a what?
The word is אֵד (ed) and the NASB, the ESV, and the KJV translate it as “mist” in Genesis 2. The NIV calls it a stream.
The word only occurs twice in the whole Bible, in Genesis 2 and in Job 36:27. That makes it a rare word. Generally, it is harder to tell what rare biblical words mean relative to common biblical words since there are fewer passages that we can look at to round out our understanding of the way the biblical writers used a certain word. But in this case, two passages are better than one. Let’s look at the two passages where אֵד (ed) occurs and see what other translations have made of them.
Genesis 2:6 (NASB2020) "...But a mist used to rise from the earth and water the whole surface of the ground." (ESV) "...and a mist was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground— (NIV) "...but streams came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground. (KJVA) "...But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground." Job 36:27 (NASB2020) “For He draws up the drops of water; They distill rain from its celestial stream." (ESV) "For he draws up the drops of water; they distill his mist in rain." (NIV) "He draws up the drops of water, which distil as rain to the streams." (KJVA) "For he maketh small the drops of water: they pour down rain according to the vapour thereof."
Most modern translations use the word “mist” but some render אֵד (ed) as a “stream.” The NASB even calls it a “celestial stream" in Job 36.
Remember your Genesis 1 geography. Creation started as chaotic water that God divided. He created the “waters above” and then separated the remaining water to create a place for dry land by differentiating it from the “waters below.” This fits the lived experience of the ancient biblical writers. They knew they could get water from two places: the waters above (rain) or the waters below (wells or springs). Even rivers or lakes had their origins in one of these two sources.
We know that this is a lot of water since it is about to be the source of water for the whole garden in Eden. We know this water that is “watering the whole surface of the ground” (2:6) wasn’t from the waters above because “the Lord God had not sent rain upon the earth” (2:6). So this water must be from the waters below the earth.
What do we call water when it rises up from the ground? We call it a spring.
I don’t think that the biblical writer wants us to imagine that everything is cloaked in a dense fog or mist here at the start of Genesis 2. I think they want us to imagine a spring rising in the midst of a desert.
Introducing the River of Life
And what do springs make? Springs make rivers.
I do not think it is any accident that the mention of this spring is quickly followed by the description of the river that rises in Eden and splits into four rivers in the garden (Genesis 2:10-14).
So far in this study water has had a negative connotation. We have been looking at the sea of chaos and the way it relates to evil and death. It is where the sea monsters live. But water in the Bible isn’t all bad. It is a double-image with twin meanings. The spring that rises to water the whole surface of the ground is the introduction of a second type of water: the water of life—more specifically, the river of life.
What are the characteristics of this river of life? Where else does it show up in the Bible? What makes it the river of life? Why does this river split into four other rivers and what is going on with the other lands that are mentioned in Genesis 2:10-14?
All that is coming in the next few posts.
Catch up with previous posts on the theme of water:
More Substacks from Andy:
Photo by Brian Botos on Unsplash
Just a note: The NIV's rendering "streams came up from the earth" certainly evokes a spring. It gives the impression of a groundwater source. Indeed, a spring is what we call a stream that comes up from the earth. For what it's worth, the NIV also renders "vault" in Genesis 1 rather than "expanse" and I really appreciate that rendering. I'm guessing there was some serious discussion among the translation committee about that, and I bet it took some courage.
One more thing. For clarity, are you saying that the accounts in Ge 1 and 2 are literary retellings of the same basic story? In other words, it is not the case that Ge 2 simply zooms in on Day 6 from the previous chapter, but rather that both accounts "cover the same ground," so to speak, but using very different forms? Would this be something like Jesus's use of two very different images to illustrate the same thing, the growth of the Kingdom, in Mt 13:31-33? And if so, then is the critique "valid" that these two accounts are contradictory, if one supposes, as many modern evangelicals do (and I am an evangelical myself), that the two accounts are a literal, journalistic-type record of events?