Translating Genesis 2:19 (An Exploration)

There have been questions raised about Genesis 2:19, and how it should be rendered:

"And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was its name" (KJV 2000).

"And Jehovah God formeth from the ground every beast of the field, and every fowl of the heavens, and bringeth in unto the man, to see what he doth call it; and whatever the man calleth a living creature, that is its name" (YLT).

"And out of the ground Jehovah Elohim had formed every animal of the field and all fowl of the heavens, and brought [them] to Man, to see what he would call them; and whatever Man called each living soul, that was its name" (Darby BT).

Should one translate the Hebrew with the English "formed" or "had formed"?

There is certainly not unanimous consent on this issue, although many translations choose "formed" to convey the thought in 2:19.

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament: "The arrangement may be explained on the supposition, that the writer, who was about to describe the relation of man to the beasts, went back to their creation, in the simple method of the early Semitic historians, and placed this first instead of making it subordinate; so that our modern style of expressing the same thought would be simply this: 'God brought to Adam the beasts which He had formed.'"

Coffman's Commentaries on the Bible:

"And out of the ground Jehovah formed every beast of the field, and every bird of the heavens; and brought them unto the man to see what he would call them: and whatsoever the man called every living creature, that was the name thereof."

"God formed every beast ..." The proper way to translate this is "God had formed,"[26] etc. This is not the record of another creation, or a contradictory account of that given in Genesis 1, but a sub-section evidently given to reveal the intelligent genius of Adam, thus demonstrating the necessity of finding a mate for him who would partake in every way of his genius and ability, a problem that God solved by creating woman out of Adam himself. "Whatsoever the man called every living creature..." As Whitelaw commented:

"In this it is implied that man was created with the faculty of speech, the distinct gift of articulate and rational utterance, and the capacity of attaching words to ideas ... Already man had received from God his first lesson in the exercise of speech in the naming of the trees (in Eden) and the imposing of the prohibition."[27]

The NET Bible uses "formed," and here is the note provided (note 58):

tn Or “fashioned.” To harmonize the order of events with the chronology of chapter one, some translate the prefixed verb form with vav (ו) consecutive as a past perfect (“had formed,” cf. NIV) here. (In chapter one the creation of the animals preceded the creation of man; here the animals are created after the man.) However, it is unlikely that the Hebrew construction can be translated in this way in the middle of this pericope, for the criteria for unmarked temporal overlay are not present here. See S. R. Driver, A Treatise on the Use of the Tenses in Hebrew, 84-88, and especially R. Buth, “Methodological Collision between Source Criticism and Discourse Analysis,” Biblical Hebrew and Discourse Linguistics, 138-54. For a contrary viewpoint see IBHS 552-53 §33.2.3 and C. J. Collins, “The Wayyiqtol as ‘Pluperfect’: When and Why,” TynBul 46 (1995): 117-40.

See https://faculty.gordon.edu/hu/bi/ted_hildebrandt/otesources/01-genesis/text/articles-books/collins_gen2discourse_wtj.pdf

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