This post was originally written in December 2016.
These are twldwt of the sky and the land when they were created, on the day when Yahweh God made land and sky . . .
Pace Dillmann, 2:4 Belongs with Genesis 2
I think it’s fairly easy to demonstrate that Genesis 2:4 belongs with what follows, and not with what precedes it. It all hinges on the word twldwt, pronounced tol-DOT, and specifically on the fixed expression elleh toldot, which appears repeatedly in Genesis and elsewhere.
This phrase can be found here and in Genesis 6:9; 10:1; 11:10, 27; 25:12, 19; 36:1, 9; 37:2. A similar phrase ze seper toldot, appears in Genesis 5:1. Outside of Genesis, you can find elleh toldot formula in Numbers 3:1, Ruth 4:18, and 1 Chronicles 1:29. There are also scads of other places where toldot, but not in the phrase elleh toldot, is used in describing genealogical information.
The phrases elleh toldot (“These are the toldot”) and ze seper toldot (“This is the record of the toldot”) serve to introduce information that immediately follows the phrase. This information usually includes, but is not limited to, a formal genealogy. It does not always introduce a genealogy, though. In Genesis 37:2, it introduces a story, with just a smidge of genealogical data in the first verse.
The formula’s format is This is the toldot of X, where X is in most cases the name of a person or persons. It signals to the reader that what follows will give important information about X, often but not exclusively genealogical in nature.
Dillmann (you can find a link to his commentary here) was of the opinion that the toldot formula in verse 4 belongs with chapter 1. However, his opinion about this is based on a conjectural reconstruction of the first creation story, in which the words of 2:4a, elleh toldot hashamayim wehaarets behibraam are emended to elleh toldot hashamayim wehaarets bebraam elohim, and then moved to the front of Genesis 1. A conjectural reshuffling of that magnitude seems to me unnecessary. Not impossible, but unecessary. I think the text can make sense as it is. The various arguments Dillmann makes don’t strike me as strong enough to support such a drastic emendation, but who knows? Clearly the text of Genesis has been through quite a bit.
Joel Hoffman discusses Genesis 2:4’s word toldot here.
Other Stuff
Where the Hebrew text has elleh toldot, “These are toldot of” the Septuagint’s reading suggests a possible Hebrew text that once read instead ze seper toldot “This is the record of toldot of.”
Now, in verse 4, we arrive at a peculiarity in the word bhbrʾm, meaning, when they were created, literally, in their being created. In that word, the h is written extra-small. Dillmann’s theory is that this is a scribal hint that the letter h was added to the word. If he is right, then the word was originally bbrʾm, meaning, when he created them. In Dillmann’s reconstruction, 2:4a, displaced from its original location in 1:1, once read These are the toldot of the sky and the land when God created them.
The notes in BHK partially agree. Although BHK does not go so far as to suggest moving any words to 1:1, it does suggest that instead of reading bhbrʾm ‘when they were created’ one should perhaps read bbrʾm ʾlhym, ‘when God created them.’ As far as I can tell, this is a conjectural emendation, without manuscript support.
As for on the day, that is a literal translation of the Hebrew bywm. The KJV translates this phrase as when. If taken literally, it could be read as claiming a one-day creation as opposed to six. This is nothing to worry about, because there are many points on which the Genesis 1 and 2 accounts disagree. Adding one more point does not significantly alter the situation. Regardless of whether the author of the Genesis 2 account pictured the creation as a one-day affair, the fact second creation story shows no traces of the six-day scheme of the first story, and in fact contradicts it in several places.
In Genesis 2:4, the narrator refers to the creator as Yahweh God, as opposed to all the preceding verses, in which the narrator refers to the creator simply as God. This new form of address, Yahweh God, will continue from 2:4 all the way to the end of chapter 4. This switch, and other features of the second creation story, have caused source-critics to associate Genesis 2-3 with the Yahwist.
Where the Hebrew text reads Yahweh God, the Septuagint reads simply God.