What composes this likely on-the-spot number of 00.1%?
Would you argue that it is better to assume that the cardinal number ordering of the periods of time in Genesis 1 is easier to bend than to assume the form of the verbs in Genesis 2:18,19 could in fact be pluperfect, as found in Numbers 1:48 and in the NIV translation of Genesis 2, given the fact that Hebrew does not have a particular way of expressing the pluperfect (though they do occur) and such interpretation is reliant on certain assumptions about the timing of specific events?
In Numbers 1:47, Moses does not number the Levites.
In Numbers 1:48, we are told why: because God had said not to. It is the same verb form found in Genesis 2:8,19.
Did Moses choose to not number the Levites on a whim, and then receive the command or had God given the command earlier?
I think this is the reason you get bible translators using the pluperfect, not because of the grammar but the passage raises this question. But if you look at the beginning of the chapter, when God tells Moses to do the census, he gives him assistants to carry out the task, not just random dogs bodies to do the bean counting and scribble the numbers down on clay tablets, the assistants were the leaders of each tribe, men with the authority to carry out the census of their tribe. Num 1:4
And there shall be with you a man from each tribe, each man being the head of the house of his fathers. The leader of every tribe, except Levi. That is why Moses didn't count the tribe of Levi. And it was after Moses carried out the census of al the other tribes that God explained his plans for the tribe of Levi.
Num 1:48 JPS
And the LORD spoke unto Moses, saying: 49 'Howbeit the tribe of Levi thou shalt not number, neither shalt thou take the sum of them among the children of Israel; 50 but appoint thou the Levites over the tabernacle of the testimony.
The Jewish Publication society translation translates the passage properly.
I had I look for the Hebrew word used
[FONT="]וַ[/FONT][FONT="]יְדַבֵּ֥ר[/FONT] it occurs 87 times in the AV every other time it is translated as a proper waw consecutive, and God spake, and God talked, and Pharaoh said, only in Num 1:48 is it translated as a pluperfect. This is a bad translation ignoring the plain meaning of the text to try to solve a non existent problem.
It is also very bad exegesis for Creationists to scour scripture for obscure passages like this to avoid the plain meaning of Genesis. You should base your interpretation of scripture on what it says, not change what it says to fit your interpretation.
Genesis 1 and 2 both use ELOHIM as the name for God. I just checked it to confirm. Is there something else I am missing?
Genesis 1:1-2:3 uses Elohiym, God, but from Genesis 2:4 the term used is Yahweh Elohiym, L
ORD God
Correction: 5And 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.
The author does not declare that there were no plants yet, just that there were no plants of the field. He could have wrote 'plants on the earth' or 'plants of the earth' but instead used 'of the field', leaving open the possibility for a garden.
This is another difference in vocabulary between Gen 1 & 2.
Genesis 1 uses 'beasts of the earth' 'fish of the sea' and 'birds of the heavens'.
Genesis 2&3 uses the 'bush' of the field', 'plant of the field', 'beast of the field', though it also uses 'birds of the heavens'.
It is best not to read too much into a simple difference in vocabulary.
It is worth looking at what Genesis 2 says. It is more than a string of unconnected events.
Gen 2:5
When no bush of the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up--for the LORD God had not caused it to rain on the land, and there was no man to work the ground,
Notice that there are two reasons given for there not being any plants. Not just that there wasn't any rain, there were no plants of the field because the ground was dry and there wasn't a man to till the ground
Before we see God planting vegetation, we see two events happening, perhaps you can see them as unrelated, but they provide the answer to the reasons we are told there were no plants: there is water for the ground and God making a farmer to till it.
6 and a mist was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground--
7 then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.
Then God plants the garden.
8
And the LORD God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed.
Now, is God going to create Adam, the first man, and make him wait years for the trees in the garden to grow?
If you want to go for a literal interpretation, then go for God creating an instant miracle, the problem is the order in which God created plants.
As an aside, is the geographic description of the rivers, including Euphrates, running off from the garden just there to elaborate upon a myth or parable, or are the descriptions of the riverheads there for the understanding of the garden of Eden as a literal place?
Given the one of the rivers goes around Cush, in Africa, I would say this is a metaphorical landscape, but one that is declaring the creation account to be relevant for the whole world, not just a local Mesopotamian myth.
Correction: God formed the animals. He made the woman.
18And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him. 19And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof. 20And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him. 21And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; 22And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.
God didn't say he would 'form' an help meet for Adam. Likewise, God 'made' and did not 'form' the woman. Why is this? God formed every living creature and Adam from the dust of the earth, but Eve was made from Adam's rib, not the dust.
3And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.
Gen 1:25
And God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds and the livestock according to their kinds.
But I guess I really just want to stray from the "Do Genesis 1 and 2 align chronologically" debate and get into "Is Genesis 2 a true historic account as evidenced by verse 4?"
It is certainly one of the implication of Gen 1 & 2 having different orders of creation. It means either the creation accounts are wrong, or they are not meant literally. But the question of the order should be based on what the text actually says, not our desires to take them literally or metaphorically.
Incidentally with reference to Gen 2:4, as I pointed out in another thread this means a genealogy who begat whom, which cannot be taken literally for the genealogy of the heavens and the earth. Moses seems to pick up on this in his highly allegorical interpretation of Genesis in Psalm 90.
Psalm 90:2
Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world... Brought forth is the word 'beget'.