1 Then heaven and earth were finished, and all of them adorned. 2 And God finished his work which he had made on the seventh day: and he rested on the seventh day from the whole work which he had brought about. 3 And he blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it, which he in himself ceased from all his work which God created just as he made it.
4 Those are the begettings of heaven and earth, when they were created on the day which the Lord God made heaven and earth, 5 and before every plant of the field rose up and before every herb of the region sprouted, for the Lord God had not rained over the earth, and man had not worked the earth. 6 But a spring rose up out of the earth irrigating everything on the surface of the earth.
7 Therefore the Lord God shaped a man out of the mud of the earth and breathed into his face the breath of life, and the man was made into a living soul. 8 But the Lord God had planted a paradise of pleasure from the beginning in which he put the man whom he had formed. 9 And the Lord God drew out of the earth every beautiful tree seen, and to eat sweetly; and also the tree of life in the middle of paradise, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
10 And a river went out from a place of pleasure to irrigate paradise, which thence divided in four sources. 11 The name of one is Phison; the very one which encompassed all the land of Hevilath where gold is born; 12 and the gold of that land is best; in that place is found bdellium and onyx marble stone. 13 And the name of the second is Gehon; the very one which encompasses all the land of Ethiopia. 14 The name of the third is Tigris; the very one which goes opposite Assyria. While the fourth river, this is Euphrates.
15 Therefore the Lord God took the man and put him in the paradise of pleasure so that he might work and care for it; 16 and he directed him saying: eat from every tree of paradise; 17 but from the tree of knowledge of good and evil do not eat; in a day whenever you eat from it truly, you will die.
18 Also the Lord God said: it is not goood for the man to be alone; let us make for him a help similar to himself. 19 Therefore the Lord God brought to Adam from out of the soil every living thing of the earth, and from all flying things of heaven so that he might see what to call them; so each which Adam called of everything of life its own name. 20 And Adam called by their own names every living thing, and all flying things of heaven, and all beasts of the land. But Adam did not find a helper similar to him.
21 Then the Lord God sent sleep into Adam and when he fell asleep, he took one of his ribs and he filled the flesh for him. 22 And the Lord God framed the rib, which he took from Adam into a woman; and he brought her to Adam. 23 And Adam said: Now this is bone from my bone, and flesh from my flesh; she shall be called Woman since from man she was taken. 24 For this reason a man leaves his father and mother, and will cleave to his wife; and they will be two in one flesh.
25 But they were both nude, to wit Adam and his wife; and they were not ashamed.
Linguistic Notes
St Jerome renders “she shall be called Woman since from man she was taken” as vocabitur Virago quoniam de viro sumpta est. Which allows him to keep the pun in the original Hebrew (אִשָּׁ֔ה-אִ֖ישׁ) which translates more smoothly in English (woman-man). I have to imagine that a lot of bad theology of gender has resulted from Jerome’s word choice here: Virago is translated as “a warlike woman” in my dictionary and as the word has been adopted into other languages has come to mean a belligerent, scolding, domineering or highly opinionated. Wiktionary points readers at the thesaurus entry for shrew.
Theological Notes
Those familiar with Biblical scholarship will doubtless be aware of the fact that we transition into a second creation story here, marked by the shift in the naming of God from the Hebrew elohim to the holy name, Yahweh which St Jerome renders as Dominus Deus following the lead of the Septuagint. The transition happens here with vs 4 as we realize that having created man and women in his image (1:27), he repeats the process here. Literalists will find ways to smooth out the difficulty here (e.g., the people of Genesis 1 were those who lived outside of paradise while Adam and his wife were created specifically to dwell in Paradise although this interpretation makes other glosses on the creation story, particularly the common descent of all humanity from Adam, and the original sin of eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, difficult or untenable), but it’s probably best to accept the readings of the textual critics and understand that the Pentateuch is the blending of at least four traditional narratives of the origins of the people of Israel.