Fr. Mike Schmitz

And day six, you have all the things on the land, including human beings.

What the author is pointing out is, okay, day one is light.

And day three is what rules the light and darkness.

Day two is the water and the sky.

And day five is what rules the water and the sky, the flying things and the swimming things.

Day three is what's on land, is the lands made.

And day six is what rules the land.

It's not only the wild beasts, but the men, the humanity, male and female that has dominion has been given dominion over all that's on the land.

And so you see that is not meant to be taken literally, but made to be taken truthfully and poetically.

As I said, the macro perspective of Genesis 1 also meets the micro perspective of Genesis 2.

That God made human beings for labor, for leisure, and then in Genesis 2 we see for love.

As God says, it's not good for the man to be alone.

And just recognizing how deeply profound this is.

The term helpmate that God uses is the term ezerkenegdo.

And it does not mean that the woman is lower, just a helpmate, you know, that sense of give me a sandwich, kind of that joke that's floating around there.

But it means something more profound.

In fact, I believe something like this, that the term ezer, or the helper, is used 21 times in the Old Testament, and 19 of those times, it's used in reference to God, that God is my helper.

And so when God creates Eve, he's not creating someone who's substandard or beneath Adam.

In fact,

I've shared this poem before many, many times, but at one point when I was growing up, we had an Atari, you know, the gaming system, and I had older siblings, so I never got to play the Atari.