¹ Thus heaven and earth were completed with all their array.

² On the seventh day God had completed the work he had been doing. He rested on the seventh day after all the work he had been doing.

³ God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on that day he rested after all his work of creating.

⁴ Such was the story of heaven and earth as they were created. At the time when Yahweh God made earth and heaven

⁵ there was as yet no wild bush on the earth nor had any wild plant yet sprung up, for Yahweh God had not sent rain on the earth, nor was there any man to till the soil.

⁶ Instead, water flowed out of the ground and watered all the surface of the soil.

⁷ Yahweh God shaped man from the soil of the ground and blew the breath of life into his nostrils, and man became a living being.

⁸ Yahweh God planted a garden in Eden, which is in the east, and there he put the man he had fashioned.

⁹ From the soil, Yahweh God caused to grow every kind of tree, enticing to look at and good to eat, with the tree of life in the middle of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

¹⁰ A river flowed from Eden to water the garden, and from there it divided to make four streams.

¹¹ The first is named the Pishon, and this winds all through the land of Havilah where there is gold.

¹² The gold of this country is pure; bdellium and cornelian stone are found there.

¹³ The second river is named the Gihon, and this winds all through the land of Cush.

¹⁴ The third river is named the Tigris, and this flows to the east of Ashur. The fourth river is the Euphrates.

¹⁵ Yahweh God took the man and settled him in the garden of Eden to cultivate and take care of it.

¹⁶ Then Yahweh God gave the man this command, 'You are free to eat of all the trees in the garden.

¹⁷ But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you are not to eat; for, the day you eat of that, you are doomed to die.'

¹⁸ Yahweh God said, 'It is not right that the man should be alone. I shall make him a helper.'

¹⁹ So from the soil Yahweh God fashioned all the wild animals and all the birds of heaven. These he brought to the man to see what he would call them; each one was to bear the name the man would give it.

²⁰ The man gave names to all the cattle, all the birds of heaven and all the wild animals. But no helper suitable for the man was found for him.

²¹ Then, Yahweh God made the man fall into a deep sleep. And, while he was asleep, he took one of his ribs and closed the flesh up again forthwith.

²² Yahweh God fashioned the rib he had taken from the man into a woman, and brought her to the man.

²³ And the man said: This one at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh! She is to be called Woman, because she was taken from Man.

²⁴ This is why a man leaves his father and mother and becomes attached to his wife, and they become one flesh.

²⁵ Now, both of them were naked, the man and his wife, but they felt no shame before each other.

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The New Jerusalem Bible (NJB) is a Catholic translation of the Bible published in 1985. The New Jerusalem Bible (NJB) has become the most widely used Roman Catholic Bible outside of the United States. It has the imprimatur of Cardinal George Basil Hume.

Like its predecessor, the Jerusalem Bible, the New Jerusalem Bible (NJB) version is translated "directly from the Hebrew, Greek or Aramaic." The 1973 French translation, the Bible de Jerusalem, is followed only "where the text admits to more than one interpretation." Introductions and notes, with some modifications, are taken from the Bible de Jerusalem.

Source: The Very Reverend Dom (Joseph) Henry Wansbrough, OSB, MA (Oxon), STL (Fribourg), LSS (Rome), a monk of Ampleforth Abbey and a biblical scholar. He was General Editor of the New Jerusalem Bible. "New Jerusalem Bible, Regular Edition", pg. v.

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