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Hi! I’m Miss Tyler and welcome to another episode of Context for Kids where I teach you guys stuff most adults don’t even know. If this is your first time hearing and you missed the six episodes about the Creation story, you can find those archived at contextforkids.podbean.com, which has the old episodes downloadable, or at contextforkids.com, where I have transcripts for readers or on my Context for Kids YouTube channel. But now, this week, we are moving forward starting in Genesis 2, verse 4:
4 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.
Do you remember what the Bible is? The Bible is God’s story where God tells us about who He is and why we can trust Him and why He deserves our absolute loyalty. Although the Bible talks about people and countries and events, the Bible isn’t about them but about God Himself. One of the ways God tells us who He is by how He deals with people. We learn about who God is by how He interacts with people and by seeing how patient and loving He is, and when people do what is wrong, that teaches us a lot about God too. Well, there is this Hebrew word that we are going to talk about today and that word is toledot. It’s a word that means “account” or “generations”—which means the ongoing story of something or someone. In Genesis, the first book of the Bible, toledot shows up eleven times and it usually tells us the story of a family. These are the generations of Adam. These are the generations of Noah. These are the generations of the sons of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japeth. These are the generations of Shem, and Terah, and Ishmael, and Isaac, and Esau and Jacob. Goodness, in Genesis 4, we even read about the generations of Cain, who was cursed and a murderer. God cares about the people He made. All of them in all the countries on earth and not just the people who became the children of Israel. If He only cared about the children of Israel, we would only know the family history of Adam, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. “Generations” is about family.
But not this time—this time toledot tells us the story of the earth after the Creation week when everything was new and God planted a special Garden for Himself and two special people were brought to live and work in it.
Why is it important to talk about the story of, the history of, the earth after the Creation week? Well, because it is important for us to know that God never stops caring about His creation. God never stops paying attention. He doesn’t go off on vacation. He doesn’t forget. The earth was created and good but that doesn’t mean that God was done with it. Some religions, and especially Greek philosophy, said that if there was a god that he obviously created the world and then lost interest in it. And today people act like that is true, but the Bible tells us that nothing could be further from the truth. You need to know that God never has and never will lose interest in you or your family or any of His creation. He will never go away no matter how bad things seem. That’s what toledot, generations, teaches us. Toledot teaches us to trust that God never leaves and that He is faithful and trustworthy even when we are just acting like total gooberheads. He is always waiting for us to come to our senses, even when he has to let us suffer the consequences for what we have done. And of course, you know what consequences are. When your mom or dad or teacher tells you not to do something and you do it, there are consequences. If they tell you not to touch something hot and you don’t listen, you might get badly burned. If you take something that belongs to someone else, which is stealing, or break something you will get in big trouble and you have to be punished. If your dad tells you not to cut your meat with a chainsaw, and you do it, well there ain’t no good gonna come from that! And when we do things like that, our burned hand or having to pay for what we broke or go to jail or whatever, that’s our fault. But those bad things don’t mean that God isn’t interested in us anymore or has given up on us. He wants us to do right again. We’ll be talking about Adam and Eve for a lot of weeks and you will totally see what I am talking about here. And then we’ll be talking about Cain and Abel and you will see it again. In fact, we’ll see it over and over and over again because the Bible is true and the truth is that we just keep disobeying and messing up and God keeps blessing us anyway. But we always need to get right back up and do what is good again.
God didn’t just create the universe and then leave. God didn’t forget about Ishmael or Esau either, or Cain. Or Ham or Japheth. All of those people are mentioned in the Scriptures and some of them for bad reasons, but they were important enough to God to mention their family history even when the Bible wasn’t going to talk about them anymore. Why? Because God pays attention to what is going on with everyone. He isn’t like us where He can only keep track of a few people. Right now there are like 7 billion people on this planet and God knows all of their toledot, their family stories. If He can keep track of that many people all at the same time, even people who don’t believe in Him or obey Him, what kind of attention do you think He pays to you when you love Him and obey Him? He knows your toledot, your generations of family history, and nothing is hidden from Him. That means you can tell Him everything and don’t have to hide anything from Him. What did Jesus tell us about this?
One day, when Jesus was talking to His disciples, He told them this, “29 When birds are sold, two small birds cost only a penny. But not even one of the little birds can die without your Father’s knowing it. 30 God even knows how many hairs are on your head. 31 So don’t be afraid. You are worth much more than many birds.” (ICB, Matt 10:29-31)
Today we are going to talk about the toledot of the heavens and the earth and you may say, “Wait a cotton-pickin minute, Miss Tyler! The Heavens and the earth don’t have a family, they can’t have children or parents so how can they have any generations??” Well, that’s a good question. It kinda is still about family because just as you and I came out of our mothers, plants come up out of the earth, right? So, in a way, all the plant life on the planet can be called the generations of the earth! But toledot also means “a record” like if you are running a science experiment and you keep records of what happens, meaning you write down all the changes. Our story starts in a place that is not so nice. The Bible tells us that there is no rain and there were no humans to work the land—and so there weren’t a lot of the plants that require a lot of water to grow and there were no crops because crops are hard to grow and that takes humans. Have you ever tried to grow your own food? It’s a lot easier now than it used to be. We just drive to Home Depot and buy extra special gardening soil and dump it in a container or on the ground and we water it with hoses, but way back when, unless you lived near a river, you were out of luck unless it rained or the river flooded in the early summer, like the Nile in Egypt always did. Bibles usually say that a mist went up but the reason they say that is because they are trying to translate a word that is absolutely dead. It appears only two times in the Bible and we don’t know for sure what it means. So, does it really mean that the surface of the earth was watered by a mist, or is it talking about the first rainclouds, or is it talking about underground springs or about a river that flooded and watered the land around it? We just don’t know—all we do know is that water was getting on the ground somehow. It doesn’t really matter though, remember that we can spend our time thinking about these things just as long as we don’t stop focusing on the important things—like how the Bible tells us we can absolutely trust God.
So that solved the water problem but what about the rest of the problem? There is no one to work to make the earth a better place to live in. Next week we’ll talk about the creation of the man and the woman but not this week. This week we are going to talk about the special Garden that God planted for Himself in a place called Eden. Later He will put the people there but since that’s when all the ruckus starts we’ll just talk about the Garden right now.
Sometimes we think that the whole earth was beautiful with fruit trees and plants everywhere, but that wasn’t the case. The Bible says that’s what His Garden was like because He planted it special that way:
8 And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed. 9 And out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. 10 A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden, and there it divided and became four rivers. 11 The name of the first is the Pishon. It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold. 12 And the gold of that land is good; bdellium and onyx stone are there. 13 The name of the second river is the Gihon. It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Cush. 14 And the name of the third river is the Tigris, which flows east of Assyria. And the fourth river is the Euphrates.
So as Moses is telling this story to the children of Israel, in the middle of the wilderness in modern-day Saudi Arabia, this must sound so wonderful! And what do I mean when I say wilderness? Better yet, what does the Bible mean? Sometimes people think that a wilderness means there are no plants or water for hundreds of miles but that’s not what it means. In America, when we talk about the wilderness, we mean a forest far from the cities and that is closer but still not exactly right. In the Bible, the wilderness is everywhere that civilization is not. If there is no city and people aren’t working the land and planting crops there, it counts as the wilderness. The wilderness, therefore, can be a forest or a desert or something in between. The wilderness is a place that man has not subdued yet and made useful. People aren’t living there and building homes and growing things.
So, we see that there was a place called Eden and it was to the east of where He told the story, probably in Mesopotamia where we know the first people lived from archaeology. And God planted a garden next to Eden. We know it is next to Eden because the Bible says that there was a river that flowed out of Eden and it watered the Garden, so the Garden must be next to Eden. Now, this isn’t a vegetable or flower garden. When Moses told this story, he used the word gan, which doesn’t mean vegetable garden but more like a park or what we would call a Botanical Garden with many different types of trees and shrubs and grasses and flowers. But not just a botanical garden (which only has plants) because these sorts of parks were also filled with animals—like sheep and cattle but also more exotic animals like peacocks and tigers. That was how kings lived, in a palace surrounded by a beautiful garden which was also the home to different exotic animals—they called such a place a menagerie. In fact, kings in the ancient world were often gardeners! When they would conquer another country, they would take back plants and animals to put in their own garden! Isn’t that funny? One day they were fighting and the next day they were picking out plants to take home.
Of course, God didn’t have to fight any wars because all the plants were his, and the Bible says that He caused every beautiful tree and every tree that was good for food to grow! That must have been one big garden, big and very beautiful. Just close your eyes and imagine it—cherries and apples and pears and mulberries and peaches and oranges, and, and…! Did I miss your favorite? And next week we will see that He also brought animals into the garden, all the different types. And they weren’t eating each other yet so it was peaceful. Verse ten says that a river flowed out of Eden and watered the Garden. In the Garden, things were perfect but outside, not so much! Remember what the Bible said, that outside the garden there wasn’t a ton of plant life because it wasn’t raining yet and there weren’t people working the land—which means building irrigation ditches and preparing farmland and planting seeds. No one was subduing the land yet the way God created us to do.
But why did God create the Garden? That’s the big question. He didn’t create it for people. He created it for Himself but He doesn’t need fruit because He doesn’t eat. Hmmm…let me ask you something. If you were having a birthday and you bought a cake and put up streamers and made a bunch of hamburgers and hot dogs, would they all be for you? Or would you be doing those things so that you could celebrate your special day with other people? Of course, you would be preparing all that food for other people. You don’t need that much food, right? Well, in the same way, God was preparing the Garden so that He could enjoy it with something—His Creation. Next week, we will see God fill His garden with humans and animals—to be with those humans. The Garden tells us so much about who God is and why we can trust Him.
He didn’t need those trees, but the humans would need them. And the Garden was created as a place where He could be with them—not a place where they could be alone together and ignore Him and do whatever they wanted. God put them there so that they could work with Him to turn all the earth into a beautiful garden. God could do it Himself, He can always do things Himself. He can do absolutely everything Himself. But He created us with a purpose and a meaning. The earth doesn’t get better unless we make it better. He created it with perfect potential but we do the work to make it wonderful—or terrible. That’s our choice. But the Garden was a blueprint to what the earth could be like if only humans would cooperate and obey. He made it a lot easier. He gave them a starting place and all they had to do was make the garden bigger and bigger. But we aren’t there yet. We’ll talk about Adam and Eve starting next week.
What God planted, the Garden, was the very first Temple—the beginning of civilization and His Kingdom. If you remember the lesson about the ziggurats, Temples were created so that gods could live among the people who served and worshiped them—or that’s what people thought, anyway. The idol of the god lived in the Temple and the priests treated it better than a real person. They woke it up in the morning, gave it a bath, put perfumed oil on its head and feet, put clothing on it, fed it, and put it to bed at night. Of course, our God, the only God, doesn’t need any of that. God doesn’t need priests to feed Him and put His jammies on Him. God wants to be close to His people in order to get His important work done. His work is to make the whole earth know Him, to love one another, and to serve Him and one another. God wants our loyalty and our allegiance. That means we serve Him and no one else. In the Garden, people learned that there was only one God and they learned what was and was not allowed. His home, so His rules. I suppose that if the people had made the heavens and the earth and everything in them that they could decide what was right and what was wrong and they wouldn’t have to be loyal to God, but they didn’t so it doesn’t matter.
The story of the Bible is the story about God wanting to be close to His Creation, at any cost. No matter what He has to do, He is committed to being with us. When we learn about Jesus and the Gospel at the end of the Adam and Eve stories, you will see just how much He was willing to do in order to be with us forever. Because he was willing to pay so high of a price to be with us, we know that we can trust Him no matter what happens and when He asks us to do something, we know we can do it.
The Garden was the first place that God tried to be with us. It was a holy place because God was there. But you probably know that it isn’t going to end well. The next place He tried to be with people was in the Tabernacle in the wilderness but when the sons of the High Priest Eli became wicked, that went wrong too. King Solomon built a huge Temple and God even provided the blueprints, in writing, according to David. But when they began to worship false gods there, God had to leave and He let that Temple be destroyed by the Babylonians. God told the prophet Haggai to build the Temple again, but the spirit of God was never there like He was in the Garden, the Tabernacle, and the first Temple. God was waiting for His Spirit to be with His people in a brand new way—in Jesus while He lived on earth and later, when He sent His Holy Spirit to live inside everyone who is loyal to Him and puts their trust in Jesus as the victorious King ruling over all the universe. But that would take thousands of years. Right now we are learning about the very first Temple, the Garden of Eden, where God made everything beautiful and perfect for the two people He has chosen to live there with Him.
Have you ever thought of what it would be like in that Garden? What do you think you would do? Would you talk to God when He walked there in the cool of the day? What would you ask Him about? Would you be scared? Would you trust Him? Would you do whatever He said to do? Would you not do what He told you not to do?
Now what haven’t I talked about yet? Oh yeah! Two special trees that we will have to have a whole separate teaching about. In the middle of the huge garden is the Tree of Life. And there was also another tree, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. But at the end of this passage—all we have is a Garden on the border of Eden, a river running through the Garden that waters it, every tree that is beautiful or provides food is in the Garden, one man is currently in the Garden, and two special trees. Sometimes it is good to really see what the Bible does and does not say.
I love you. I am praying for you. I pray you have a wonderful week studying the Bible with the people who love you.