Genesis 2:7
New International Version
Then the LORD God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.

New Living Translation
Then the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground. He breathed the breath of life into the man’s nostrils, and the man became a living person.

English Standard Version
then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.

Berean Standard Bible
Then the LORD God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed the breath of life into his nostrils, and the man became a living being.

King James Bible
And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

New King James Version
And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.

New American Standard Bible
Then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living person.

NASB 1995
Then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.

NASB 1977
Then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.

Legacy Standard Bible
Then Yahweh God formed man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and so the man became a living being.

Amplified Bible
then the LORD God formed [that is, created the body of] man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being [an individual complete in body and spirit].

Christian Standard Bible
Then the LORD God formed the man out of the dust from the ground and breathed the breath of life into his nostrils, and the man became a living being.

Holman Christian Standard Bible
Then the LORD God formed the man out of the dust from the ground and breathed the breath of life into his nostrils, and the man became a living being.

American Standard Version
And Jehovah God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

Aramaic Bible in Plain English
And LORD JEHOVAH God formed Adam of the dust from the soil, and breathed into his face the breath of life, and Adam was a living soul.

Brenton Septuagint Translation
And God formed the man of dust of the earth, and breathed upon his face the breath of life, and the man became a living soul.

Contemporary English Version
The LORD God took some soil from the ground and made a man. God breathed life into the man, and the man started breathing.

Douay-Rheims Bible
And the Lord God formed man of the slime of the earth: and breathed into his face the breath of life, and man became a living soul.

English Revised Version
And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

GOD'S WORD® Translation
Then the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the earth and blew the breath of life into his nostrils. The man became a living being.

Good News Translation
Then the LORD God took some soil from the ground and formed a man out of it; he breathed life-giving breath into his nostrils and the man began to live.

International Standard Version
So the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground, breathed life into his lungs, and the man became a living being.

JPS Tanakh 1917
Then the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

Literal Standard Version
And YHWH God forms the man—dust from the ground, and breathes into his nostrils breath of life, and the man becomes a living creature.

Majority Standard Bible
Then the LORD God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed the breath of life into his nostrils, and the man became a living being.

New American Bible
then the LORD God formed the man out of the dust of the ground and blew into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.

NET Bible
The LORD God formed the man from the soil of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.

New Revised Standard Version
then the LORD God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being.

New Heart English Bible
And God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

Webster's Bible Translation
And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

World English Bible
Yahweh God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

Young's Literal Translation
And Jehovah God formeth the man -- dust from the ground, and breatheth into his nostrils breath of life, and the man becometh a living creature.

Additional Translations ...
Audio Bible



Context
Man and Woman in the Garden
6But springs welled up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground. 7Then the LORD God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed the breath of life into his nostrils, and the man became a living being. 8And the LORD God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, where He placed the man He had formed.…

Cross References
1 Corinthians 15:45
So it is written: "The first man Adam became a living being;" the last Adam a life-giving spirit.

1 Corinthians 15:47
The first man was of the dust of the earth, the second man from heaven.

1 Timothy 2:13
For Adam was formed first, and then Eve.

Genesis 2:6
But springs welled up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground.

Genesis 3:19
By the sweat of your brow you will eat your bread, until you return to the ground--because out of it were you taken. For dust you are, and to dust you shall return."

Genesis 7:22
Of all that was on dry land, everything that had the breath of life in its nostrils died.

Job 4:19
how much more those who dwell in houses of clay, whose foundations are in the dust, who can be crushed like a moth!


Treasury of Scripture

And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

formed man.

Psalm 100:3
Know ye that the LORD he is God: it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.

Psalm 139:14,15
I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well…

Isaiah 64:8
But now, O LORD, thou art our father; we are the clay, and thou our potter; and we all are the work of thy hand.

of the dust.

Genesis 3:19,23
In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return…

Job 4:19
How much less in them that dwell in houses of clay, whose foundation is in the dust, which are crushed before the moth?

Job 33:6
Behold, I am according to thy wish in God's stead: I also am formed out of the clay.

and breathed.

Job 27:3
All the while my breath is in me, and the spirit of God is in my nostrils;

Job 33:4
The Spirit of God hath made me, and the breath of the Almighty hath given me life.

John 20:22
And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost:

nostrils.

Genesis 7:22
All in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died.

Ecclesiastes 3:21
Who knoweth the spirit of man that goeth upward, and the spirit of the beast that goeth downward to the earth?

Isaiah 2:22
Cease ye from man, whose breath is in his nostrils: for wherein is he to be accounted of?

a living.

Numbers 16:22
And they fell upon their faces, and said, O God, the God of the spirits of all flesh, shall one man sin, and wilt thou be wroth with all the congregation?

Numbers 27:16
Let the LORD, the God of the spirits of all flesh, set a man over the congregation,

Proverbs 20:27
The spirit of man is the candle of the LORD, searching all the inward parts of the belly.

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Genesis 2
1. The first Sabbath.
4. Further details concerning the manner of creation.
8. The planting of the garden of Eden, and its situation;
15. man is placed in it; and the tree of knowledge forbidden.
18. The animals are named by Adam.
21. The making of woman, and the institution of marriage.














(7) And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground.--Literally, formed the man (adam) dust from the ground. In this section the prominent idea is not that of producing out of nothing, but of forming, that is, shaping and moulding. So in Genesis 2:19 Jehovah forms the animals, and in Genesis 2:8 He plants a garden. As Elohim is almighty power, so Jehovah is wisdom and skill, and His works are full of contrivance and design. As regards man's body, Jehovah forms it dust from the ground: the adamah, or fruitful arable soil, so called from Adam, for whose use it was specially fitted, and by whom it was first tilled. But the main intention of the words is to point out man's feebleness. He is made not from the rocks, nor from ores of metal, but from the light, shifting particles of the surface, blown about by every wind. Yet, frail as is man's body, God--

. . . breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.--The life came not as the result of man's bodily organisation, nor as derived by evolution from any other animal, but as a gift direct from God.

And man became a living soul.--The word translated "soul" contains no idea of a spiritual existence. For in Genesis 1:20, "creature that hath life," and in Genesis 1:24, "the living creature," are literally, living soul. Really the word refers to the natural life of animals and men, maintained by breathing, or in some way extracting oxygen from the atmospheric air. And whatever superiority over other animals may be possessed by man comes from the manner in which this living breath was bestowed upon him, and not from his being "a living soul;" for that is common to all alike.

The whole of this second narrative is pre-eminently anthropomorphic. In the previous history Elohim commands, and it is done. Here He forms, and builds, and plants, and breathes into His work, and is the companion and friend of the creature He has made. It thus sets before us the love and tenderness of Jehovah, who provides for man a home, fashions for him a wife to be his partner and helpmate, rejoices in his intellect, and brings the lower world to him to see what he will call them, and even after the fall provides the poor outcasts with clothing. It is a picture fitted for the infancy of mankind, and speaking the language of primaeval simplicity. But its lesson is for all times. For it proclaims the love of God to man, his special pre-eminence in the scale of being, and that Elohim, the Almighty Creator, is Jehovah-Elohim, the friend and counsellor of the creature whom He has endowed with reason and free-will. . . .

Verse 7. - And the Lord God (Jehovah Elohim) formed man of the dust of the ground. Literally, dust from the ground. Here, again, Bleek, Kalisch, and the theologians of their school discover contrariety between this account of man's creation and that which has been given in the preceding chapter. In that man is represented as having been created by the Divine word, in the Divine image, and male and female simultaneously; whereas in this his creation is exhibited as a painful process of elaboration from the clay by the hand of God, who works it like a potter (asah; LXX., πλάσσω), and, after having first constructed man, by a subsequent operation forms woman. But the first account does not assert that Adam and Eve were created together, and gives no details of the formation of either. These are supplied by the present narrative, which, beginning with the construction of his body from the fine dust of the ground, designedly represents it as an evolution or development of the material universe, and ends by setting it before us as animated by the breath of God, reserving for later treatment the mode of Eve's production, when the circumstances that led to it have been described. And (the Lord God) breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. Literally, the breath of lives. "The formation of man from the dust and the breathing of the breath of life must not be understood in a mechanical sense, as if God first of all constructed a human figure from the dust" (still less does it admit of the idea that man's physical nature was evolved from the lower animals), "and then, by breathing his breath of life into the clod of earth which he had shaped into the form of a man, made it into a living being. The words are to be understood θεοπρεπῶς. By an act of Divine omnipotence man arose from the dust; and in the same moment in which the dust, by virtue of creative omnipotence, shaped itself into a human form, it was pervaded by the Divine breath of life, and created a living being, so that we cannot say the body was earlier than the soul" (Delitzsch). And man became a living soul. Nephesh chayyah, in Genesis 1:21, 80, is employed to designate the lower animals. Describing a being animated by a ψυχή or life principle, it does not necessarily imply that the basis of the life principle in man and the inferior animals is the same. The distinction between the two appears from the difference in the mode of their creations. The beasts arose at the almighty fiat completed beings, every one a nephesh chayyah. "The origin of their soul was coincident with that of their corporeality, and their life was merely the individualization of the universal life with which all matter was filled at the beginning by the Spirit of God" (Delitzsch). Man received his life from a distinct act of Divine inbreathing; certainly not an in-breathing of atmospheric air, but an inflatus from the Ruach Elohim, or Spirit of God, a communication from the whole personality of the Godhead. In effect man was thereby constituted a nephesh chayyah, like the lower animals; but in him the life principle conferred a personality which was wanting in them. Thus there is no real contradiction, scarcely even an "apparent dissonance," between the two accounts of man's creation. The second exhibits the foundation of that likeness to God and world-dominion ascribed to him in the first.



Parallel Commentaries ...


Hebrew
Then the LORD
יְהוָ֨ה (Yah·weh)
Noun - proper - masculine singular
Strong's 3068: LORD -- the proper name of the God of Israel

God
אֱלֹהִ֜ים (’ĕ·lō·hîm)
Noun - masculine plural
Strong's 430: gods -- the supreme God, magistrates, a superlative

formed
וַיִּיצֶר֩ (way·yî·ṣer)
Conjunctive waw | Verb - Qal - Consecutive imperfect - third person masculine singular
Strong's 3335: To mould into a, form, as a, potter, to determine

man
הָֽאָדָ֗ם (hā·’ā·ḏām)
Article | Noun - masculine singular
Strong's 120: Ruddy, a human being

[from] the dust
עָפָר֙ (‘ā·p̄ār)
Noun - masculine singular
Strong's 6083: Dust, clay, earth, mud

of
מִן־ (min-)
Preposition
Strong's 4480: A part of, from, out of

the ground
הָ֣אֲדָמָ֔ה (hā·’ă·ḏā·māh)
Article | Noun - feminine singular
Strong's 127: Ground, land

and breathed
וַיִּפַּ֥ח (way·yip·paḥ)
Conjunctive waw | Verb - Qal - Consecutive imperfect - third person masculine singular
Strong's 5301: To breathe, blow

the breath
נִשְׁמַ֣ת (niš·maṯ)
Noun - feminine singular construct
Strong's 5397: A puff, wind, angry, vital breath, divine inspiration, intellect, an animal

of life
חַיִּ֑ים (ḥay·yîm)
Noun - masculine plural
Strong's 2416: Alive, raw, fresh, strong, life

into his nostrils,
בְּאַפָּ֖יו (bə·’ap·pāw)
Preposition-b | Noun - mdc | third person masculine singular
Strong's 639: The nose, nostril, the face, a person, ire

and the man
הָֽאָדָ֖ם (hā·’ā·ḏām)
Article | Noun - masculine singular
Strong's 120: Ruddy, a human being

became
וַֽיְהִ֥י (way·hî)
Conjunctive waw | Verb - Qal - Consecutive imperfect - third person masculine singular
Strong's 1961: To fall out, come to pass, become, be

a living
חַיָּֽה׃ (ḥay·yāh)
Adjective - feminine singular
Strong's 2416: Alive, raw, fresh, strong, life

being.
לְנֶ֥פֶשׁ (lə·ne·p̄eš)
Preposition-l | Noun - feminine singular
Strong's 5315: A soul, living being, life, self, person, desire, passion, appetite, emotion


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OT Law: Genesis 2:7 Yahweh God formed man from the dust (Gen. Ge Gn)
Genesis 2:6
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