God’s Word for You
Genesis 2:5-6 Water rising up from the land
by Pastor Timothy Smith on Tuesday, August 18, 2026
5 No bushes of the field were yet in the land and no plants of the field had yet sprung up, for the LORD God had not caused it to rain on the land, and there was not yet a man to till the soil, 6 but water was rising up from the land and was watering the whole surface of the ground.
In this chapter, Moses expands on the creation of man in the sixth day of creation, but in these verses he revisits the third day to show how God prepared the stage. God held everything together while it was being formed. Consider the time, Moses says, when so much that we take for granted simply did not yet exist. Probably thinking of the third creation day, he removes four things from our imaginations in order to put them back again in their proper context.
First: It was a time when no bushes of the field were yet in the land. This is the first of two plants in this verse. Usually siach (שִׂיחַ) is a wild shrub or growth in a wasteland. It was under such a bush that Hagar found a little shade for her son Ishmael when she thought they were dying in the wilderness (Genesis 21:15). Job also pictures homeless wanderers finding bad food in such brush, and huddling beneath them for shelter (Job 30:4,7).
Second: It was a time when no plants of the field had yet sprung up. Here the meaning is crops; things grown by man specifically for food. This is what was harmed by the hail during the seventh plague in Egypt: “On everything growing in the fields of Egypt” (Exodus 9:22).
Third: It was a time before there had even been any rain. This doesn’t mean that there was no water or moisture, but that the world had simply not yet seen any rain. This could either apply to the week of creation by itself, or to Eden prior to the flood, or even to the whole world before the flood. This is something we will revisit with Genesis 7:10-12. For the moment, we only need to consider the week of creation.
Fourth: It was a time before there was any human to work or till the soil. The primary cause for there being no cultivated plants as yet was that this was the will of God. The secondary cause was the absence of any human hands to work the ground, to plow or till the soil, and to sow, plant, or scatter seed.
The mention of the two kinds of plants might be comparative: “no large or small plants,” or it might be synecdoche (stating the part for the whole): “all of the plants, from useless to useful.” Or as Derek Kidner put it, “Not even the wild growth existed on earth, still less the cultivated crops.”
Moses says that some kind of “water was rising up from the land and was watering the whole surface of the ground” (2:6). This “water” is, in Hebrew, “ed” (אֵד). In the King James Version, this was translated “mist,” but it is described as rising up from the ground. In ancient Sumerian, the “Id” is a word for an underground water source (sometimes a water-god) thought to be the source of all rivers. But another word, “edu” (in Akkadian) means a surge or flood of high water. It may be, then, that the water that would rise up to water the land was a regular flood of water such as they have in Mesopotamia, where the Tigris and Euphrates flood every spring on account of the volume of melting snow upstream. Some rivers in northwestern China receive much of their volume from snowmelt in similar flooding. All of this, Luther says, “belongs properly to the third day (of creation).”
The very next thing God will do is fashion man from the soil. In these verses, he is showing that even the soil itself is a miracle that he, God himself, held together for the sake of mankind. The fragile and delicate framework of human life depended and still depends entirely upon God. Through his good and gracious favor, life is possible. The plants that were called into being by God on the third day were created to be dependent on the work of the sun, which was not created until the fourth day. Then, after populating the world with fish, birds, and animals of all kinds, the world was ready to receive the crown of the creation: Man. God sustains all things even today so that mankind may live, survive, thrive, and reach out to God. “I believe that God has given and constantly sustains my body, soul, and life… Besides, he makes all creation provide the comforts and necessities of life” (Large Catechism II:13,14). So as God sustained everything with a miraculous method of watering, so also he sustains our spirits today with a miraculous method of watering, through his Word and his Sacraments. We are sustained by this, which is what Jesus was talking about when he said to the Samaritan woman, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water” (John 4:10).
This passage reminds us then, that our heavenly Father sustains us continuously, just as he sustained the world as he created it, and that all of his good creation was brought about so that we would be brought into being and redeemed to enter into everlasting life through the saving work of our loving God.
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in New Ulm, Minnesota. To receive God’s Word for You via e-mail, please visit the St. Paul’s Lutheran Church website.