²⁴ Then God said, “Let the earth be filled with animals. And let each produce more of its own kind. Let there be tame animals and small crawling animals and wild animals. And let each produce more of its kind.” And it happened.

²⁵ So God made the wild animals, the tame animals and all the small crawling animals to produce more of their own kind. God saw that this was good.

²⁶ Then God said, “Let us make human beings in our image and likeness. And let them rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky. Let them rule over the tame animals, over all the earth and over all the small crawling animals on the earth.”

²⁷ So God created human beings in his image. In the image of God he created them. He created them male and female.

⁷ 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.

The First Woman

¹⁸ 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.”

¹⁹ 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. ²⁰ The man gave names to all the tame animals, to the birds in the sky and to all the wild animals. But Adam^[a] did not find a helper that was right for him. ²¹ 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. ²² The Lord God used the rib from the man to make a woman. Then the Lord brought the woman to the man.

²³ And the man said,

²⁴ So a man will leave his father and mother and be united with his wife. And the two people will become one body.

²⁵ The man and his wife were naked, but they were not ashamed.