A number of contributors to this thread have speculated that there may have been a number of different stories that have been utilised and transformed into the present Genesis narrative. What I have been thinking about for quite a while now, is that the authors and the ones who actually finally put things together into something like the story that now unfolds for us, are really very smart people. They knew what they were doing. There was nothing mechanical about the welding together processes, nor about what resulted!

In Genesis 1, we have GOD, Elohim who speaks and in speaking calls forth and thus creates. God does this in successive and altogether logical stages. God acts decisively, and God acts masterfully, to accomplish everything that God sets out to do - and it is done, and it is good.

Then on the 6th day, God creates mankind, male and female in his image…gives mankind dominion, and then RESTS.

In Genesis 2 God (The LORD GOD) comes in a different guise altogether - perhaps as the absentee landlord, or occasional visitor. The garden has been left to mankind to enjoy and to tend. God does not know what is going on. God is not in control. God’s wiretapping services have also been turned off, there are no hidden monitors and there are no spies. After finding out what the situation is and the outline of the major events of significance, again, God acts, but not to take control! God instead acts to limit the damage, and apparently then leaves. When next we encounter God, it is in the story of the next generation…

Is it only us that see the drastic change between Elohim in Gen 1 and YHWH Elohim in Gen 2? Would not the original authors/redactors/editors have been as sensitive to the contrast? Could it even be deliberate?

A retiring God. A God who is "taking rest". An abdicating God. A self-limiting God. A God who believes in freedom and in allowing mankind to make mistakes. The apparently omnipotent God who voluntarily leaves, having delegated the authority to mankind - whatever be the consequences…

Live to serve : Serve to live