Genesis 2:1  Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the hosts of them.

(Ver 1.1) This is “Part 1” in the series of lessons on the study of the verses of Genesis Chapter 2.  Today we will begin the series looking at only verse 1.  The first verse of Genesis 2 begins with a statement of completion that basically says God has “finished” or “ended” His works of creation both in the heavens and on the earth.  It is interesting to note that this verse says “finished”.  This is the Hebrew word H3615 that means “to end”.  What ended?  We should have learned in chapter 1 that God spoke ten times in order to return order back into the initial state of disorder found in Genesis 1:2 when the earth was fully covered by water.

What we are learning by this statement of completion the earth and the heavens have been restored to their originally created state of order.  This again affirm something major occurred between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2 to cause this chaos and I believe this chaos occurred during Satan’s initial rebellion described in Ezekiel 28:11-19.

This is a good time to confirm how God works.  We learn from reading John 6:29 that Jesus defines God’s work as Him doing something  that causes humans to believe in the sent Son of God, Jesus.  This would imply that someone was speaking right words about Jesus that cause someone to believe in Him.  Spoken Words are a major part of God’s work.   We also learn from reading John chapter 1:

Joh 1:1  In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
Joh 1:2  The same was in the beginning with God.
Joh 1:3  All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. 

This should be a review of things we learned from chapter 1.  But we can see again that the Word of God was With God in the beginning and we further confirm that this Word was God.  God teaches us that we cannot separate Him from His Word because they are the same.  When then learn more important information that His Word created everything that was created in the three dimensional realm of space and matter.  What we can conclude is that God speaking to create has ceased.  There is nothing else that needed to be spoken to be created in order to fulfill His plan for humanity.

Since we have discovered in this verse that God’s work has been fully completed and yet there are more works being described in this chapter, we must understand that everything else in this chapter after this statement has to be a detailed recap or explanation of things that have already occurred in chapter 1.  If you didn’t know, everything in the Bible is not sequential, or in ordered time sequence.  In other words from this point forward in the Bible (verse 1), God is done working and won’t be doing anything else to create anything else new in the natural realm.  That of course does not mean God doesn’t do anything to maintain, deliver, or work in the lives of his people.  It just means creation of the world system is complete.

It is very interesting to note that this verse ends with “and all the hosts of them”.  If you look up the Hebrew word for hosts, it refers to a military term for a group of people organized for war.  Isn’t that interesting?  We can see major prophetic implications here concerning the church.  The book of Genesis was not divided into chapters until much later, so what we see at the beginning of Chapter 2 is really the ending of Chapter 1 and could still be talking about day 6.  There are many places in the New Testament where Christians are instructed to put on armor, which includes shields, breastplates, even swords.  But then we are told that our enemy is not with flesh and blood but with the spiritual forces of darkness.  There are huge implications all over this verse if you can see it.