I am persuaded, then, that these erudite writers have never gone below the surface of the wonderful introduction of Genesis, and that their speculations are not only idle, but ignorant. They tell us that the author of Genesis 1 was a man that knew, and only knew, Elohim; and consequently they call this the Elohistic document. Then, from Genesis 2:3, because Jehovah-Elohim occurs, they will have this to be the Jehovistic portion, or a sort of mingling of the two – the Elohistic – Jehovistic. The fact is, that up to Genesis 2:3 we have God (Elohim), and from Genesis 2:4 we have the Lord God (Jehovah-Elohim). But that there were two different and inconsistent writers is gratuitous and false. It was one and the same writer throughout; and, so far from inconsistency, each feature is perfection for its own object. Why, then, the difference? The reason is plain, sure, and instructive. When God presents Himself in contrast with man, or the creature, as the originator of all, the invariable term is God (Elohim). It is the proper word, and always so used throughout the scripture. Consequently, if the term “Elohim” had not been used by Moses in the first chapter of Genesis, it would have gone to prove that Moses could not be inspired. Exactness of thought requires that the Creator should be presented thus in the broadest form of contrast with the creature. On the other hand, besides being the self-existing originator, the Mighty One that caused to be what was not, God is pleased to enter into relationship with man, and indeed with creation. Now the special term in the Old Testament for relationship is Jehovah.
Besides, there was something peculiar in the manner in which God was pleased to enter into relationship then with man and creation, because all was unfallen. The consequence is that it is neither Elohim alone nor Jehovah alone in Genesis 2:3, but Jehovah-Elohim. Proofs will appear presently (and they might be increased) that this is precisely what it ought to be, and that any other form of presentation would not so exactly have suited the context. If we suppose (what the chapters themselves assert) that the God of creation was pleased to enter into relationship with man, and this at first in an exceptional way before sin entered the world, the writer ought to have adopted one title in Genesis 1 (and none other than Jehovah-Elohim). No doubt a revolution is stated to have come soon afterward, when God accordingly changes His name in order to suit that altered state. After the fall He simply calls Himself Jehovah. Thus the writer, being inspired (and probably far beyond his own measure of understanding the force of all he wrote), does not present the combined form in the way that is found in Genesis 2 and 3 where we have first the relationship and then the test and fall.
Consequently it is evident that the true key to the use of these terms is not the supposition of two or three different writers or documents, followed by a stupid compiler who did not perceive their mutual inconsistency. The very reverse is the truth; Moses – wise as he was – had an infinitely higher than human or Egyptian wisdom to guide him in all he wrote. None but God could have so furnished and so guided him. With all the advantages of observed facts on every side, with the incomparably greater privilege of the fullest subsequent revelation, we are but learning better in our own age the unspeakable value of what Moses wrote in that early day. I do not believe that this is because Moses rose in stature so highly above all men, from his day to ours, but because the only true God inspired Moses and all the other writers of the Bible.
The truth, then, is that in this chapter, Genesis 2, you will find everything savors of, or chimes in with, the establishment of relationships. “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” (Gen. 2:4) Observe that there is creation, and also making. This is precisely right, creation having the first rank, and making the subsequent place. “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. But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground. 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” (Gen. 2:5-7) Why is this introduced in chapter 2 rather than in chapter 1? For I affirm that you could not transplant this into the first chapter and that the true cause depends, not upon a different writer, but upon quite another object and line of truth. The design here is not to show man made a creature, though at the head of creation. This is the subject-matter of the first chapter; and there his dominion is fixed by God, and pointed out by the sacred historian. But in the second chapter the aim is not merely to bring out that God made man, as He made every other creature, out of the dust of the ground (reminding him of the humility of his origin), but that he had that which came direct from God in a way no other animal had.
(To be continued.)