And on that Farm He had A…

Excerpt from Gen. 2:19-20 (NIV)

¹⁹ Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. ²⁰ So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field. But for Adam no suitable helper was found.

So Adam named them all? That explains a lot. No, seriously, think about it. Adam's the first man on earth to be tasked with, well, the first task. God sends along all these animals to promenade before Adam and receive their naming. This is a big deal. Adam's going to name ALL the creatures. Being that God has asked Adam specifically to accomplish this feat, he must trust that he has the imagination to muster up all those names and such. Well, the imagination of God would likely suffice, don't you think?

Can you possibly comprehend the scope of a task like this? I certainly can't, but even though Adam is the one on this assignment and he doesn't really have anyone to relate to (aside from God himself); I expect he tackled it like any other man. He probably started out headstrong with fancy, $5 names like: Altiplano Chinchilla Mouse, Banded Butterflyfish, Golden Mantled Ground Squirrel, Plate-Billed Mountain Toucan, Purple-Throated Mountain Gem Hummingbird, Redfront Long-Winged Planthopper and Yokohama Braconid Wasp to name just a few. Perhaps, somewhere along the middle of the line he started to wear down and came out with Alligator snapping turtle and an Adam's Stag-Horned Beetle. Is it an alligator or a turtle? Was it really necessary to name a beetle after himself? As the end of the line draws near there are only a handful of creatures left. He's probably been at this naming business for days at this point. The best he can drum up is: cat, rat, bat, dog, pig, fly. Poor guy. He started out so strong.

Now I know that many of these names probably were developed long after this epic event in the Garden of Eden, but nonetheless, I think I've proved the point that the naming of the creatures was no small feat. If you're interested to know where and what the creatures above happen to be please check them out here.