Genesis 2

God rests on the seventh day of creation from all of his work and blesses the day, creating the Sabbath, which is Saturday for Jews and Sunday for Christians.  I assume the reason why Christians have a different holy day will be explained in the New Testament, but we are quite far from that.  The biggest question that springs to my mind is, God needs rest?  The omnipotent being that I was taught about in Sunday School did not seem to need rest.

The Bible then notes there was no rain in those days, but that a mist came up from the ground to water everything.  The notes in this version say this may be a throwback to other creation myths in which the Earth was on top of primordial waters.

God creates man, and the order of creation is different than the one just outlined in the previous chapter.  Man is created before vegetation, animals and woman.  For those that believe every word of the Bible is literally true, one of the accounts of the order of creation must be wrong.  Which is it and how do you reconcile that with the belief that every word is literally true?

God creates a garden from which a river flows, which become four rivers, including the Tigris and Euphrates.  Asimov has a long discussion about the four rivers in an attempt to place the garden.  In short, the four rivers do not split from a common source today.  Asimov says that is because we are working downstream and the author of Genesis 2 may have been working upstream, so that in ancient times, the four rivers may have converged at some point.  He gets pretty inside baseball with this, but makes a good case that the delta between the Tigris and Euphrates was not as extensive then as it is now and they may have indeed converged in the area that we place Sumeria.

God then tells man to till the Garden of Eden, but to not eat of the Tree of Knowledge, as it will cause man's death.  This is the first directive of God to man.  He then thinks it is not good for man to be alone, so creates and gives man dominion over all beasts and birds and allows him to name them all.

God also sees that man needs a helper, so puts man to sleep and takes a rib and creates woman.  In the previous chapter, both man and woman were created from dust at the same time, so why the rib?  The notes say this probably reflects the importance of marriage in this tradition, the creation of a family becomes of one flesh.  Man and woman are naked and unashamed, due to their guiltlessness.

God's first commandment:  Do not eat of the Tree of Knowledge
Mankind's ability to obey: Foreshadowing alert, Adam and Eve ruin it for all of us
My ability to obey: Ditto