Fear No Fear

(All scripture from the World English Bible, ebible.org, all rights reserved)

“Out of the ground Yahweh God formed every animal of the field, and every bird of the sky, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. Whatever the man called every living creature became its name.“
Genesis 2:19

God knew that Adam (the human, both male and female) needed a suitable helper. We saw that yesterday that it was His idea, and not just His idea but the original design. But how to show humanity that it was the good and perfect idea? By showing the human all the other options so that he could see that they were NOT suitable for partnership. This is the same way the Law points out sexual laws (Leviticus 18) to show us all the unacceptable pairings there are because none of them could be our suitable mate. As the sage Radak teaches: ‘The name Adam assigned to each creature described the body, contours of the animal in question. The expression נפש חיה in our verse includes every creature that moves. This expression is the Torah’s way of telling us that Adam realised that no creature is really a “living” creature unless it consists of a male and a female of its species, ensuring that they can reproduce and keep the species alive. This brought home to him the full meaning of his having no female partner. He realised that G’d had done this in his own interest, to show the world that he was not on the same level.’

This verse also showcases the intelligence of humanity. The ability to look at a form, see its nature and purpose, and then name it. I often wonder whether when God refers to a particular living creature if He is using the name Adam gave it, not the name it has become known by. For example, in one passage God speaks of the ostrich, yet references behaviour that the ostrich today does not exhibit – is this an example of God referring to a particular creature by the name Adam gave it instead of what WE think of as the ostrich? I wonder.

The creation here is the creation mentioned in chapter one of Genesis. This is a further look into that creation. A highlight of what happened after they were made, when they were brought to Adam for observation and naming. In this way Adam became familiar with all living creatures and all living creatures were subdued beneath Adam’s authority. This inevitably would have taken some TIME – although how much, we don’t know. Are we dealing with time by human counting (days, seasons, years) or by God’s counting (Psalm 90:4; 2 Peter 3:8; Isaiah 9:6)? Did Adam live months, weeks, days, or years before coming to the garden? Did months or weeks go by while he was naming things? It isn’t important, so we are not shown. The important thing is that it was only after naming ALL the land-based creatures could Adam have known that there needed to be a unique living creature worth infinitely more than any other living creature in order to be suitable as an equal partner and helper.

The sages teach that it was only land-bound living creatures that were brought before Adam. The landfowl, domestic, and wild beasts. The fish and waterfowl were not brought forward, as Adam would rarely interact with them and in some cases have no way of interacting with them on a regular basis (the deep-sea fish, for example). Though, I suppose it could have been a planned future stage that Adam never graduated to.