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GENESIS 1-4
GENESIS 1-4
1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
2 Now the earth was without shape and empty, and darkness was over the surface of the watery deep, but the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the water. 3 God said, “Let there be light.” And there was light! 4 God saw that the light was good, so God separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light “day” and the darkness “night.” There was evening, and there was morning, marking the first day.
moving
The verb attached to God’s breath-wind-spirit (ruaḥ) elsewhere describes a mother eagle fluttering over its young and so might have a connotation of birth or nurture as well as rapid back-and-forth movement.
6 God said, “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters and let it separate water from water.” 7 So God made the expanse and separated the water under the expanse from the water above it. It was so. 8 God called the expanse “sky.” There was evening, and there was morning, a second day.
9 God said, “Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place and let dry ground appear.” It was so. 10 God called the dry ground “Land” and the gathered waters he called “Seas.” God saw that it was good.
11 God said, “Let the land produce vegetation⧸Let green the earth green forth: plants yielding seeds⧸plants seeding seeds and trees on the land bearing fruit with seed in it, according to their kinds.” It was so. 12 The land produced vegetation—plants yielding seeds according to their kinds, and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. God saw that it was good. 13 There was evening, and there was morning, a third day.
14 God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them be signs to indicate seasons and days and years, 15 and let them serve as lights in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth.” It was so. 16 God made two great lights—the greater light to rule over the day and the lesser light to rule over the night. He made the stars also. 17 God placed the lights in the expanse of the sky to shine on the earth, 18 to preside over the day and the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. God saw that it was good. 19 There was evening, and there was morning, a fourth day.
20 God said, “Let the water swarm with swarms of living creatures and let birds fly⧸let the flyers fly above the earth across the expanse⧸face of the sky⧸dome.” 21 God created the great sea creatures and every living and moving thing with which the water swarmed, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. God saw that it was good. 22 God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the water in the seas, and let the birds multiply on the earth.” 23 There was evening, and there was morning, a fifth day.
24 God said, “Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: cattle, creeping things, and wild animals, each according to its kind.” It was so. 25 God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the cattle according to their kinds, and all the creatures that creep along the ground according to their kinds. God saw that it was good.
26 Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, after our likeness, so they may rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move on the earth.”
27 God created humankind in his own image,
in the image of God he created them,
male and female he created them.
28 God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply! Fill the earth and subdue it! Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and every creature that moves on the ground.” 29 Then God said, “I now give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the entire earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food.
30 And to all the animals of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to all the creatures that move on the ground – everything that has living breath in it – I give every green plant for food.” It was so.
31 God saw all that he had made—and it was very good! There was evening, and there was morning, the sixth day.
𖠫 CHAPTER 2 𖠫
The heavens and the earth were completed with everything that was in them. 2 By the seventh day God finished the work that he had been doing, and he ceased on the seventh day all the work that he had been doing. 3 God blessed the seventh day and made it holy because on it he ceased all the work that he had been doing in creation.
4 This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created—when the Lord God made the earth and heavens.
5 Now no shrub of the field had yet grown on the earth, and no plant of the field had yet sprouted, for the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the earth, and there was no man to cultivate the ground. 6 Springs would well up from the earth and water the whole surface of the ground. 7 The Lord God formed the man from the soil of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.
8 The Lord God planted an orchard in the east, in Eden; and there he placed the man he had formed. 9 The Lord God made all kinds of trees grow from the soil, every tree that was pleasing to look at and good for food. (Now the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil were in the middle of the orchard.)
10 Now a river flows from Eden to water the orchard, and from there it divides into four headstreams. 11 The name of the first is Pishon; it runs through the entire land of Havilah, where there is gold. 12 (The gold of that land is pure; pearls and lapis lazuli are also there). 13 The name of the second river is Gihon; it runs through the entire land of Cush. 14 The name of the third river is Tigris; it runs along the east side of Assyria. The fourth river is the Euphrates.
15 The Lord God took the man and placed him in the orchard in Eden to care for it and to maintain it. 16 Then the Lord God commanded the man, “You may freely eat fruit from every tree of the orchard, 17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will surely die.”
18 The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a companion for him who corresponds to him.” 19 The Lord God formed out of the ground every living animal of the field and every bird of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them, and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name.
20 So the man named all the animals, the birds of the air, and the living creatures of the field, but for Adam no companion who corresponded to him was found. 21 So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep, and while he was asleep, he took part of the man’s side and closed up the place with flesh. 22 Then the Lord God made a woman from the part he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man. 23 Then the man said, “This one at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; this one will be called ‘woman,’ for she was taken out of man.”
24 That is why a man leaves his father and mother and unites with his wife, and they become one family. 25 The man and his wife were both naked, but they were not ashamed.
𖠫 CHAPTER 3 𖠫
Now the serpent was shrewder than any of the wild animals that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Is it really true that God said, ‘You must not eat from any tree of the orchard’?” 2 The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit from the trees of the orchard; 3 but concerning the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the orchard God said, ‘You must not eat from it, and you must not touch it, or else you will die.’” 4 The serpent said to the woman, “Surely you will not die, 5 for God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will open and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
6 When the woman saw that the tree produced fruit that was good for food, was attractive to the eye, and was desirable for making one wise, she took some of its fruit and ate it. She also gave some of it to her husband who was with her, and he ate it. 7 Then the eyes of both of them opened, and they knew they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.
8 Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God moving about in the orchard at the breezy time of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the orchard. 9 But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?” 10 The man replied, “I heard you moving about in the orchard, and I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid.” 11 And the Lord God said, “Who told you that you were naked? Did you eat from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?” 12 The man said, “The woman whom you gave me, she gave me some fruit from the tree and I ate it.” 13 So the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?” And the woman replied, “The serpent tricked me, and I ate.
14 The Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, cursed are you above all the cattle and all the living creatures of the field! On your belly you will crawl and dust you will eat all the days of your life.
15 And I will put hostility between you and the woman and between your seed and her seed; he will strike you at the head, and you will strike him at the heel.”
16 To the woman he said, “I will greatly increase your birth pangs; with pain you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, but he will govern you.”
17 But to Adam he said, “Because you obeyed your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’ the ground is cursed because of you; with pangs you will eat of it all the days of your life.
18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you, but you will eat the grain of the field.
19 By the sweat of your brow you will eat food until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you will return.”
20 The man named his wife Eve, because she was the mother of all the living. 21 The Lord God made garments from skin for Adam and his wife, and clothed them. 22 And the Lord God said, “Now that the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil, he must not be allowed to stretch out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.”
23 So the Lord God expelled him from the orchard in Eden to cultivate the ground from which he had been taken. 24 When he drove the man out, he placed on the eastern side of the orchard in Eden angelic sentries who used the flame of a whirling sword to guard the way to the tree of life.
TEXT NOTES
TEXT NOTES
GEN 1: 2
The verb attached to God’s breath-wind-spirit (ruaḥ) elsewhere describes a mother eagle fluttering over its young and so might have a connotation of birth or nurture as well as rapid back-and-forth movement.
☀️ Let there be… And there was
יְהִי yehi ("yeh-HEE") and וַיְהִי vayehi ("vah-yeh-HEE") form a wordplay to express both the calling into existence and the complete fulfillment of the divine word.
GEN 1: 10
"Dry ground" (yabbashah, יַבָּשָׁה) is different from "earth"(erets אֶרֶץ) and "soil." It's the distinction of dry land vs. wet land = Order vs. Chaos.
Exodus 4 echoes this when, in trying to persuade Moses to go back to Pharaoh, God tells him to take water from the Nile and pour it on the dry ground, where it will turn to blood, showing God's authority over the chief economic life-blood of Egypt's economy – the imperial Chaos waters of the Nile River. This foreshadows the first plague in Egypt, when the Nile is turned to blood. This act's opposite will also occur on behalf of the Israelites when Moses divides the Red Sea so the Israelites can walk through Chaos on the dry land of Order to freedom.
GEN 1: 10
Affirms the consummate perfection of God’s creation, an idea that has important consequences for the religion of Israel. Reality is imbued with God’s goodness. The pagan notion of inherent, primordial evil is banished. Henceforth, evil is to be apprehended on the moral and not the mythological plane.
GEN 1: 11
🌱 bearing fruit with seed in it
This will be a theme in the Gospel of John, chapter 12, where Jesus says that a seed can't bear fruit unless it dies in the ground.
GEN 1: 18
➗ separate the light from the darkness
The verb “separate / divide” here explains how God used the light to dispel the darkness. It did not do away with the darkness completely, but made a separation. The light came alongside the darkness, but they are mutually exclusive—a theme that will be developed in the Gospel of John (cf. John 1:5). The idea of separation is critical to this chapter. The "separated" verb is important to the Law in general. In Leviticus God separates between clean and unclean, holy and profane (Lev 10:10; 11:47 and 20:24); in Exodus God separates the Holy Place from the Most Holy Place (Exod 26:33). There is a preference for the light over the darkness, just as there will be a preference for the upper waters, the rain water which is conducive to life, over the sea water.
GEN 1: 21
🐲 created the great sea creatures
For the first time since verse 1 the verb “create” (ארָ בָּ, baraʾ) appears again, a device used to underscore the deliberate interpretive point that even the Chaos ⇆ Dragons are to be understood as part of God’s creation.
GEN 1: 26
The plural "us" evokes the image of a heavenly court in which God is surrounded by His angelic host. Such a celestial scene is depicted in several biblical passages. This is an illusion to a more ancient, pre-monotheistic Israel that shared with its Canaanite neighbors a vision of heaven as an assembly of the divine pantheon, headed by Yahweh and his "sons of God," the angels that help him administer the universe. It is noteworthy that this plural form of divine address is employed in Genesis on only two other occasions, and they both involve the fate of humanity – in Genesis 3:22, regarding the expulsion from Eden; and in 11:7, on "confusing" the language of those building of the Tower of Babel.
The term ʾadam, afterward consistently with a definite article, which is used both here and in the second account of the origins of humankind, is a generic term for human beings, not a proper noun. It also does not automatically suggest maleness, especially not without the prefix ben, “son of,” and so the traditional rendering “man” is misleading, and an exclusively male ʾadam would make nonsense of the last clause of verse 27.
🗽 in our image, after our likeness
The “image of God” can be understood through the ancient practice of Near-Eastern kings setting up "images," or statues, of themselves throughout their realm. The image of God reflected in human persons is after the manner of a king who places his image to assert rule where the king himself cannot be present. Likewise human beings are to be the earthly counterpart of the heavenly king. There is a connection between “image of God” and the responsibility to rule.
It is notable that humans are given “dominion” over all the creatures of earth and sky, but not over each other. The verb radah is used elsewhere in the Bible to describe the dominion of kings (1 Kgs 5:4; Isa 14:6; Ezek 34:4; Pss 8:6; 72:8; 110:2), and both radah ("rule" or "govern") and kabash ("subdue") reflect similar terminology used in the court parlance of Egypt and Babylon to describe the king’s royal duties. It's use here can be understood as a polemical undermining of a role which is otherwise associated primarily with kings. In other words: the health of the created order does not depend on kings.
Prior to the Fall, this command has no hint of exploitation. Humans, who were created on the same day as animals (Gen 1:29), can't even eat them. We didn't get our own special day. Whereas in post-"fall" contexts the Hebrew verb radah ("rule" or "govern") can suggest the domination of kings and tribes, it doesn't by itself imply cruelty or harshness: additional expressions are added if severity is intended.
Crucially, radah is also used for priestly functions and shepherds caring for their sheep. The Hebrew-related Semitic languages of Syriac ("rada") and Akkadian ("radu") carry the meaning of “tending the flock,” “caring for,” and “being responsible for.” Thus it may have developed from a basic notion of accompaniment and leadership, particularly pastoral leadership of animals, which is also a favored metaphor for kingship in Israel.
The model of "rule" here is specifically Israelite, modeled by the shepherd king of Ezekiel 34, whose author underscores this by contrasting an anti-shepherd-king who misuses the imperative of the creator. From the account of Solomon’s reign, the word clearly implies maintaining peace (1 Kgs 4:24). The Israelite monarch explicitly doesn't possess unrestrained power and authority to dominate; the limits of his rule are carefully defined and circumscribed in the Torah to rule with a responsibility to the people that is subject to accountability (Deuteronomy 17:14-20; 1 Samuel 8). Humans are likewise not sovereign, but enjoy their "dominion" to the extent that they walk with God in a harmonious Garden of mutually benefiting interrelationships.
We also have to keep in mind that this verse's author (the "P" source) is writing when the Holiness Code of Leviticus was in effect, which required "ruling" masters to treat enslaved debtors humanely. All of this context is reiterated in the "ruling as serving" model that Jesus embodies as "the good shepherd" who "lays down his life for the sheep" (John 10:11).
"The creator is “humanized” as the one who cares in costly ways for the world. The creature is seen as the one who is entrusted with power and authority to rule. The text is revolutionary. It presents an inverted view of God, not as the one who reigns by fiat and remoteness, but as the one who governs by gracious self-giving. It also presents an inverted view of humanness. This man and woman are not the chattel and servants of God, but the agents of God to whom much is given and from whom much is expected."
⌯ Maurice Merleau-Ponty:
"God is not simply a principle of which we are the consequence, a will whose instruments we are…. There is sort of an impotence of God without us, and Christ attests that God would not be fully God without becoming fully man…. God is not above but beneath us — meaning that we do not find him as a suprasensible idea, but as another ourself which dwells in and authenticates our darkness. Transcendence no longer hangs over man; he becomes, strangely, its privileged bearer."
GEN 1: 27
The recurrent formula “of every kind” previously mentioned with the emergence of every other living thing, is here omitted: there is one humanity created in unity. The sages of the Mishnah, in Sanhedrin 4:5, observed that mankind was created as a single unit in order to inculcate the idea that God, in order to promote social harmony, intended that no person have claim to unique ancestry to justify asserting superiority over others.
GEN 1: 28
The difference between the formulation here and God’s blessing to the fish and birds is subtle but meaningful: God directly addresses man and woman. The transcendent God transforms into the immanent God – the personal God – who enters into unmediated communion with human beings.
GEN 2: 4
⌯ from Goldingay's Old Testament Theology, Vol. 1:
"God birthed the heavens and the earth. Genesis 2:4 itself describes creation as “the generations of the heavens and the earth,” suggesting that they came into being by something like giving birth. Psalm 90:2 makes that explicit: “Before mountains were birthed, or you labored with earth and world, even from age to age you were/are/will be God.” Any suggestion that the First Testament does not speak of God giving birth to the world, as some other creation accounts do, joins many other failed attempts to set the First Testament off from these other works… The text reads unequivocally “you labored with” (wattĕḥôlēl), using the verb ḥûl that can denote dancing or whirling but most often refers to the twisting and straining involved in giving birth."
GEN 2: 5-6
🌧️ God had not caused it to rain on the earth
In Genesis 1, the tannanim—often translated as great sea creatures—are introduced within a creation story framed around the theme of excessive waters. The focus is on God bringing order to a chaotic, watery world. By contrast, Genesis 2 retells creation from a different perspective: instead of a world overwhelmed by water, it describes a land that is overly dry and wild, in need of water so that a garden can be cultivated.
In Genesis 2, God is depicted not as a transcendent king but as an immanent, personal artisan. This narrative shift sets the stage for a story centered on relationship, human vocation, and covenantal responsibility.
The text explicitly gives two reasons for this state of non-productivity: the absence of rain from above and the absence of a human cultivator from below. This reframes the entire creative problem. The solution is no longer cosmic separation and boundary-setting, but human cultivation. God's first act in this narrative is to provide water, not by parting it, but by causing water to rise from the earth, and His second act is to create a human partner to "work and keep" the land that this water makes fertile.
This shift from a cosmic-scale problem (a world-ocean) to a human problem (a dry field) is a deliberate narrative device. It allows the author to move from the universal sovereignty of God to the specific, terrestrial arena where the drama of human existence will unfold. The chaos to be overcome is no longer an external, impersonal force, but a state of barrenness that requires a cooperative relationship between God and humanity to be transformed into a place of life and abundance.
Signaling this profound shift in focus is the change in the divine name. The majestic and universal Elohim of Genesis 1 is replaced by the personal and covenantal name YHWH Elohim, translated as "the LORD God". The name YHWH is the intimate, personal name by which God reveals Himself to Israel, the name associated with covenant and relationship. Its use here signals a move from God as the transcendent Creator of all things to God as the immanent Lord entering into a personal relationship with His human creatures.
This immanence is further emphasized by the strikingly anthropomorphic language used to describe God's creative acts. In contrast to the distant, speech-based creation of Genesis 1, Yahweh gets His hands dirty. The text says He "formed" (yatsar) the man from the dust of the ground, a word used to describe the work of a potter shaping clay. He then "breathes" into the man's nostrils the breath of life, an act of profound intimacy. Later, He "plants" a garden, "takes" the man and puts him in it, and "builds" (banah) the woman from the man's side, like a master architect. This portrayal is not of a distant monarch issuing decrees, but of a hands-on artisan deeply and personally involved in His work.
And it’s within this second setting of wilderness and cultivation and personal relationship that the serpent – an ambiguously half-way-land, half-way-"water" Chaos creature – first appears.
The Hebrew word אֵד (ʾed) was traditionally translated “mist” because of its use in Job 36:27. However, an Akkadian cognate edu in Babylonian texts refers to "subterranean springs." Such a spring would fit the description in this context, since this water “goes up” and waters the ground.
GEN 2: 17
"... not a threat but a candid acknowledgment of a boundary to life. But the boundary is altered [by the serpent] to become a threat… It is not God, but the serpent who has made death a primary human agenda" (Brueggemann).
GEN 3: 6-7
There is a long tradition of rendering the first term here, taʾawah, according to English idiom and local biblical context, as “delight” or something similar. But taʾawah means that which is intensely desired, appetite, and sometimes specifically lust. Eyes have just been mentioned in the serpent’s promise that they will be wondrously opened; now they are linked to intense desire. In the event, they will be opened chiefly to see nakedness.
To be ceremonially "girded / belted" (chagor) has a militaristic connotation to it as it is associated with a sword – it's where we get the phrase to "gird your loins." Israelite priests would be "girded" in this way to defend the Temple if needed, with their belt covering a sleeveless linen vest called an ephod. The fact that the verse mentions the "belting" but not the priestly garments may imply emphasis on Adam and Eve's fear and preparatory defense more than alluding to holy vestments.
GEN 3: 9
Ayekah is the kind of question you ask even when you know where something is supposed to be, but it isn't there. It's a sad, mournful word. As it happens, this Hebrew word is spelled with the same Hebrew letters as eichah, which means "lament." "Eichah... Look how she sits in solitude..." (Lamentations, 1:1), Jeremiah cries, looking upon a destroyed Jerusalem, pining for the bustling crowds who are no longer here, who have been exiled to Babylon. Adam and Eve, too, have been exiled. And perhaps, like Jeremiah's eichah, God's outcry ayekah, is less a question than a lament – a lament at the gulf that now exists between man and the Creator. God was not asking "where are you," requesting a location. Instead he was asking "where have you gone?" – "why are you not here?"
GEN 3: 10
The same answer that will be given by Abraham (20:11) and then by Isaac (26:9); by everyone who has trouble trusting the goodness of God. The speech is revealing, it is all “I”: “I heard, I was afraid, I was naked; I hid, I ate, I ate." Their preoccupation with God's vocation, permission and prohibition has been given up. Now the preoccupation is “I.” The fear and the hiding helped no more than the eating. Life is turned back on Self. The same thing happens in the speech of Jonah when he is alienated from God (Jonah 4:1–3).
GEN 3: 14
🐍 On your belly you will crawl
(a) There may be a play on words here between "belly" גָּחוֹן gachon – pronounced "gah-cone" – and one of the four rivers of Eden, the Gihon River, pronounced "ghee-cone." This is a suggestive connection between the serpent and this particular river, which has been associated by scholars both ancient and modern as the Nile River in Egypt. Gihon's root word also means to "burst forth" or "gush," which in itself is a strikingly similar concept to the etymological root of "desire" (teshukah ♥️) that sin has for Cain: to "overflow" (shuk).
(b) It was a popular notion, often represented in the art of the ancient Near-East, that the serpent originally walked erect,
(c) but modern commentators are divided on whether the story intended to indicate that the serpent once had feet.
Winged snake with legs on the Mythological Papyrus of Amenhotep, 1100-950 BC
Two of three snakes with legs holding a snake which tows a ceremonial boat on the Mythological Papyrus of Amenhotep, 1100-950 BC
If the serpent in this story was intended to be an Israelite śārāp (seraphim), then at least some were believed to have hands, feet, and wings (Isaiah 6:2–6; 14:29). Seraphim, symbolic of sacred sovereignty, were represented on inscribed Hebrew seals from 925–586 BC with variously four wings, two wings or no wings at all. In Isaiah's vision (~730 BC) they have six, and his description including feet may have been Egyptianized for reasons not yet apparent to contemporary scholarship. Sometimes seraphim were described as completely serpentine, sometimes as partially human.
GEN 3: 16-17
The noun ʿitsavon is the same used for the woman’s birth pangs, confirming the lot of painful labor that is to be shared by man and woman.
👩 Because you obeyed your wife
The problem isn't that Adam listened to his wife, but that Adam listened to and obeyed any voice other than God's. We know this because later in Gen 21:12, God tells Abraham to obey the voice of his wife, using similar Hebrew terms as in Gen 3:17.
GEN 3: 21-22
(1) Putting on animal skins is part of a ritual of rebirth in many cultures. Jacob dons a skin before he is blessed by Isaac (Gen 27).
(2) Origen interprets the skins as symbols for the mortal bodies God gives to previously incorporeal souls. He interprets Moses's sandals similarly – when God tells him to remove them before approaching the burning bush, because he is standing on "holy ground" (Ex 3:5). Origen interprets this as an instruction to first remove our earthly, mortal ways of thinking and being – our differentiating, dualistic consciousness too naked and afraid not to have protective layers against nature and presence – before approaching God's presence. Origen describes Eden as the restored pre-fallen unity of the mind's engrossing contemplation of God.
(3) Used in only one other place in Genesis, to refer to the special garment that Jacob made for his son, Joseph in Gen 37:3, 23, 31-33. In the Pentateuch after Genesis, it is only used to refer to part of the priestly garments. None of the common Hebrew terms for clothing or garments were selected for this text.
🙍🏽♂️👩🏽 "God said, “Now that the man"
Even after the "fall" God refers to ’ādām ("humanity") – not ish (Adam's self-designated "individual male"): the image of God is still the central distinction despite the ruptured communion.
The most common function in Scripture for the symbol of a powerful, outstretched arm is to describe the mighty actions of God intervening in the affairs of this world. To Moses God says “I will free you from slavery. I will rescue you with my nāṭâ ["powerful/outstretched"] arm” (Ex 6:6). The word powerful translates a Hebrew expression for “outstretched or reaching action,” conveying the ability to judge, defend, and act on behalf of others. It's range of definition is: "to stretch out, extend, spread out, pitch, turn, incline, bend, bow."
However, the word that is used here in Genesis for "stretch" – although conceptually similar to nāṭâ – is šālaḥ, whose range of definition is: "to send, cast out, let go, stretch out," and is the same word used when God "casts out" Adam and Eve from the Garden.
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