Strengthen your faith in God's word

In Genesis 1 the beasts of the earth are made on the sixth day, and then man (Genesis 1:24–27). In Genesis 2, after man is formed and God says “It is not good that the man should be alone,” we read, “And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam” (Genesis 2:18–19). Critics say the second account has the animals made after man, and call it a second creation story.

Genesis 2 isn’t a second account of the six days. It opens, “These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth” (Genesis 2:4), the first of the “generations” that divide the book (5:1; 6:9; 10:1), each taking up what came of what went before. It doesn’t number days or retell the making of light, sea, or stars; it tells of the man and the woman on the sixth day, the garden, and the command.

Genesis 2:19 doesn’t say the beasts were then made. It says the beasts God formed out of the ground were brought to Adam, to be named, and that among them “there was not found an help meet for him” (2:20). The verse looks back to their forming in order to show the man’s lordship over them and his need. Gill, after Drusius, reads it “had formed them,” and the Hebrew verb allows it; the KJV’s “formed” is a plain past, and says nothing of when.