Below is the online edition of In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood,
by Dr. Walt Brown. Copyright © Center for Scientific Creation. All rights reserved.
Click here to order the hardbound 8th edition (2008) and other materials.
1. Translations of these verses raise frequent questions. Many believe that Genesis 2:5–6 contradicts Genesis 1. They dismiss Genesis as inaccurate or conclude that there are two creation accounts, Genesis 1 and Genesis 2. Item 3 on page 488 refutes those opinions.
Other objections include the following: The creation of vegetation was described in Genesis 1:11–12, but later, Genesis 2:5 says there was no vegetation. Man was created in Genesis 1:27, yet Genesis 2:5 says there was “no man.” Furthermore, these objectors assert that Genesis 2:5–6 says “‘there was no man to cultivate the ground,’ but man must be present before plants could grow, and in Genesis 1, plants came before man.”
These misunderstandings disappear when one realizes that “vegetation” in Genesis 1:11–12 is the Hebrew word deshe, meaning the plant kingdom. In Genesis 2:5, “shrub” (siach) and “plant” (eseb) are special kinds of cultivated plants. Following the latter two words with “of the field” implies cultivation or farming of specific plants—not vegetation in general. Likewise, “beasts of the field” (Genesis 2:19–20, II Samuel 21:10, Psalm 8:7) are domestic animals, while “beasts of the earth” (Genesis 1:24–25) are wild animals. “Plants of the field” (cultivated plants) were probably not eaten until after the fall (Genesis 3:18). My understanding of Genesis 2:5–6, although not a translation, is:
Crops were not yet growing on the newly created earth. The Lord God had not sent rain, and man did not yet toil for food. [Hard labor came after the fall.] Heavy fog watered the earth.
2. Earth’s preflood radius was about 180 miles larger than today, giving the earth’s surface about 18 million additional square miles. [See “Shrinking Earth” on page 158.]
3. Oceans and other large bodies of water change temperature more slowly than land. Today, large temperature contrasts between the two generate strong wind systems. With less surface water before the flood, these temperature contrasts, and the wind they generated, would have been weaker.
4. Forests retard winds much more than deserts. Before the flood, lush forests were extensive, so there were few, if any, deserts. Today, strong winds over such deserts as the Sahara lift dust (and bacteria) high into the stratosphere where they can drift for thousands of miles and, as nucleation sites, initiate rain.
5. Douglas Fox, “The Clouds are Alive,” Discover, April 2012, pp. 38–44.
6. See Endnote 10 on page 455.
7. Just how much rain becomes runoff, depends on soil and ground cover characteristics, the slope of the land and rate of rainfall, and how dry or wet the soil is beforehand.