God blessed them and said, “Have many young ones and grow in number. Fill the water of the seas, and let the birds grow in number on the earth.”

God blessed them and said, “Have many children and grow in number. Fill the earth and be its master. Rule over the fish in the sea and over the birds in the sky. Rule over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

there were no plants on the earth. Nothing was growing in the fields. The Lord God had not yet made it rain on the land. And there was no man to care for the ground.

Then the Lord God took dust from the ground and formed man from it. The Lord breathed the breath of life into the man’s nose. And the man became a living person.

Then the Lord God planted a garden in the East, in a place called Eden. He put the man he had formed in that garden.

The Lord God put the man in the garden of Eden to care for it and work it.

The First Woman

Then the Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper who is right for him.”

From the ground God formed every wild animal and every bird in the sky. He brought them to the man so the man could name them. Whatever the man called each living thing, that became its name.

The man gave names to all the tame animals, to the birds in the sky and to all the wild animals. But Adam did not find a helper that was right for him.

So the Lord God caused the man to sleep very deeply. While the man was asleep, God took one of the ribs from the man’s body. Then God closed the man’s skin at the place where he took the rib.

The Lord God used the rib from the man to make a woman. Then the Lord brought the woman to the man.

And the man said, “Now, this is someone whose bones came from my bones. Her body came from my body. I will call her ‘woman,’ because she was taken out of man.”

So a man will leave his father and mother and be united with his wife. And the two people will become one body.

The man and his wife were naked, but they were not ashamed.

Then, it was as if the man’s and the woman’s eyes were opened. They realized they were naked. So they sewed fig leaves together and made something to cover themselves.

Then they heard the Lord God walking in the garden. This was during the cool part of the day. And the man and his wife hid from the Lord God among the trees in the garden.

But the Lord God called to the man. The Lord said, “Where are you?”

The man answered, “I heard you walking in the garden. I was afraid because I was naked. So I hid.”

God said to the man, “Who told you that you were naked? Did you eat fruit from that tree? I commanded you not to eat from that tree.”

The man said, “You gave this woman to me. She gave me fruit from the tree. So I ate it.”

Then God said to the man, “You listened to what your wife said. And you ate fruit from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from. “So I will put a curse on the ground. You will have to work very hard for food. In pain you will eat its food all the days of your life.

The man named his wife Eve. This is because she is the mother of everyone who ever lived.

The Lord God made clothes from animal skins for the man and his wife. And so the Lord dressed them.

Then the Lord God said, “Look, the man has become like one of us. He knows good and evil. And now we must keep him from eating some of the fruit from the tree of life. If he does, he will live forever.”

So the Lord God forced the man out of the garden of Eden. He had to work the ground he was taken from.