Genesis 2:4-7 - Moses Recorded the Evolution of Man (Part 1)
4 This is the history of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens, 5 before any plant of the field was in the earth and before any herb of the field had grown. For the LORD God had not caused it to rain on the earth, and there was no man to till the ground; 6 but a mist went up 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 being.
As I wrote in Genesis 1:11 to 13 - Creation of Plant Life, Day 3 of Creation was the removal of an insurmountable hindrance to plant evolution… the creation of dry land via plate tectonics, about 2.4 billion years ago. However, why was there no land before this point? The reason is because the entire world was covered with water, as Moses recorded in Genesis 1:2…
2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.
Later, on Day 3…
9 And God said, “Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear.” And it was so. 10 God called the dry ground “land,” and the gathered waters he called “seas.” And God saw that it was good.
Therefore, biblically we know that there was a time before land and plants, when the world was covered in water; scientifically, we know this was about 2.4 billion years ago.
But, exactly how did all that water get there in the first place?
As I previously wrote in “Let”, it is thought that water came from “out-gassing”, a process where water vapor escape through fissures in the newly solidifying earth. As I wrote in Effect of Zircon Discovery on other Early-Earth Theories, water outgassed as a mist, which then covered the earth. A mist covering the earth? Isn’t that what Genesis 2:6 says happened before there was rain? That mist would rise from the ground to cover it? How surprisingly scientific!
Later, as the earth cooled, the mist started gathering around the new earth, covering the ground in water (Genesis 2:6). There were no mountains yet, and so the entire earth was covered. These were the waters that God hovered over in Genesis 1:2; waters that were created by the mist of Genesis 2:4.
According to most people, verse 5’s reference to God making it rain is a reference to the flood that was to come. Many believe because of Genesis 2:5, that the flood was the first time it ever rained. Well, the verse does not actually say that! All it says is that this mist was before there was rain. Knowing scientifically that there was first out-gassing, then rain much later, verses 4 to 6 are surprisingly scientific! Let us read these verses again…
4 This is the history of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens,
Scientifically, this was about 4.5 billion years ago.
5 before any plant of the field was in the earth and before any herb of the field had grown. For the LORD God had not caused it to rain on the earth,
And there would not be rain until 3.9 billion years ago, and no plant evolution until 2.4 billion years ago.
and there was no man to till the ground;
And the evolution of humanoids does not appear until at least as recently as 5.5 million years ago.
6 but a mist went up from the earth and watered the whole face of the ground.
Exactly.
Now, I must qualify that I seriously doubt Moses realized the scientific basis for what he wrote here. After all, he was not trying to write a scientific treatise, but a historical record of what he believed happened. Therefore, the language of these verses reflects his own belief and impression… which was based partially on what he learned from Egyptian upbringing, and partially from those discussions with God (Jesus IMHO) in his tent. God however breathed the truth into what Moses wrote. This prevented the scriptures from being a stumbling block to those who were not ready to understand the true development of the earth; but those details have been sitting there in scripture all along, just waiting to be discovered.
What scientists have discovered by diligent study, it would seem God had recorded all along!