---
title: Genesis 2:4
url: https://jw-apologetics.app/verses/genesis-2-4/
markdown: https://jw-apologetics.app/verses/genesis-2-4.md
type: verse
perspective: Protestant (historic Nicene) response to Jehovah's Witness teaching
reference: Genesis 2:4
testament: OT
section: Law
index: https://jw-apologetics.app/llms.txt
---

# Genesis 2:4

## Text (Berean Standard Bible)

> This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made them.

## NWT Wording of the Key Phrase

- NWT (1984 edition): "This is a history of the heavens and the earth in the time of their being created, in the day that Jehovah God made earth and heaven."
- NWT (2013 revision): "This is a history of the heavens and the earth in the time they were created, in the day that Jehovah God made earth and heaven."

## JW Usage

Genesis 2:4 is one of the verses Fred Franz was asked to translate from Hebrew under oath at the 1954 Walsh Trial in Scotland. He could not produce a rendering. The Watchtower's answer to the resulting credibility problem has been to redirect attention to other qualities of the NWT — restoration of the divine name, use of the oldest manuscripts — rather than defend the translation committee's competence.

## Protestant Usage

Genesis 2:4's use as a primary evidence verse is not about its content; it is about what the translation committee could do with it. Hebrew here is not obscure — the toledoth ("these are the generations of") is a well-known structural heading repeated ten times through Genesis. A committee that could not handle Genesis 2:4 orally under oath is not a committee qualified to revise every rendering of kyrios and theos in the New Testament. Pair with John 1:1 and Colossians 1:16 to show the pattern: the committee produced distinctive christological renderings without the scholarly training that would normally underwrite them.

## NWT Issue

Both the 1984 and 2013 NWT render Hebrew toledoth here as "this is a history" rather than the traditional "these are the generations." Standard English translations (ESV, NASB, KJV, NIV) preserve "generations" because toledoth is a recognised structural marker that divides Genesis into ten sections, each introduced by the same formula. The NWT's "history" flattens the structural function and obscures the way Genesis has been read by Jewish and Christian commentators for two millennia.

## Arguments Using This Verse

- [The New World Translation — Anonymous and Unqualified](https://jw-apologetics.app/arguments/nwt-reliability.md) — Can you trust a Bible translated by unnamed, untrained scholars? [NWT Translation]