If the above explanation be correct, there is a confusion of two points of view which throws an interesting light on the origin of the story. The rain is suggested by experience of a dry country, like Palestine. The flood, on the other hand, is a reminiscence of the entirely different state of things in an alluvial country like the Euphrates valley, where husbandry depends on artificial irrigation assisted by periodic inundations. While, therefore, there may be a Babylonian basis to the myth, it must have taken its present shape in some drier region, presumably in Palestine. To say that it "describes . . . the phenomena witnessed by the first colonists of Babylonia," involves more than 'mythic exaggeration' (Che. EB, 949).
7. Yahwe Elōhîm moulded man] The verb יָצַר (avoided by P) is used, in the ptcp., of the potter; and that figure underlies the representation. An Egyptian picture shows the god Chnum forming human beings on the potter's disc (ATLO2, 146).—The idea of man as made of clay or earth appears in Babylonian; but is indeed universal, and pervades the whole OT.—breath of life] Omit the art. The phrase recurs only 722 (J), where it denotes the animal life, and there is no reason for supposing another meaning here. "Subscribere eorum sententiæ non dubito qui de animali hominis vita locum hunc exponunt" (Calvin).—man became a living being] נֶפֶשׁ here is not a constituent of human nature, but denotes the personality as a whole.
The v. has commonly been treated as a locus classicus of OT anthropology, and as determining the relations of the three elements of human nature—flesh, soul, spirit—to one another. It is supposed to
see G-K. § 112 e; Dri. T. § 113, 4 (β).—7. אדמה . . . אדם] Both words are of uncertain etymology. The old derivation from the vb. 'be red' (. . . πυῤῥóν· ἐπειδήπερ ἀπὸ τῆς πυῤῥᾶς γῆς φυραθείσης ἐγεγόνει: Jos. Ant. i. 34) is generally abandoned, but none better has been found to replace it (recent theories in Di. 53 f.). According to Nöldeke (ZDMG, xl. 722), אדם appears in Arab. as ʾānām (cf. Haupt, ib. lxi. 194). Frd. Del.'s view, that both words embody the idea of tillage, seems (as Di. says) to rest on the ambiguity of the German bauen; but it is very near the thought of this passage: man is made from the soil, lives by its cultivation, and returns to it at death.—עפר] Acc. of material, G-K. § 117 hh. Gu. regards it as a variant to האדמה from Jj.—נפש חיה] This appears to be the only place where the phrase is applied to man; elsewhere to animals (120. 24 etc.). נ׳, primarily 'breath,' denotes usually the vital principle (with various mental connotations), and ultimately the whole being thus animated—the person. The last is the only sense consistent with the structure of the sentence here.
