Genesis 2:6

But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground.

There went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground - Hebrew х 'eed (H108)], 'vapour, mist, rising from the earth and forming clouds, so called because it surrounds the earth like a vail or covering' (Gesenius' 'Lexicon'). In the Septuagint version it is rendered by peegee (G4077), a fountain; and hence, many of the old commentators consider that the ground was watered by flowing streams. But our translators have given the proper sense of the original term.-It has been said that this passage contains a description of the primitive state of the earth directly opposite to that given Genesis 1:9-10, where the earth is said to have been completely inundated and consequently furnishes one of several proofs that the second chapter records a different and later cosmogony. But the objection is completely groundless, since the two passages do not refer to the same thing.

In the first chapter the dry land appeared, having just emerged from the ocean; in the second, it is not the earth at large that is spoken of in contradistinction to the waters, but "the field," the "ground," which required rain to refresh it, and the labour of man to till it, in order to foster the growth of its produce, the cereals and fruit trees, from which his subsistence was to be derived, and which, since they do not spring up wild, required the care of an intelligent power. Thus, the unity of the Mosaic account of the creation is fully established. Whatever relation we consider the second section as bearing to the first-whether we view both as originally composed by the sacred historian, or derived from separate and independent records previously existing (see Introduction) - they were blended by him, under the direction of the Spirit of inspiration, into one connected and consistent whole. The second narrative was not needed to complete the first, which was a perfect record in itself, as a general history of creation; but designed to relate some additional particulars on things interesting and important to be known in the primeval state of man. The objects contemplated in the two narratives are entirely different. The one is an account of creation, the other a history of created things. The one forms the pedestal on which the Bible history that commences at this new paragraph is raised; and while х towlªdowt (H8435)] "generations" would have been a most improper superscription to a cosmogony, record of creation, it was the most suitable title to a history which purposed to describe the earliest abode, the catastrophe that led to the fall, and the immediate descendants of the first pair.