What Does Genesis 1:19 Mean?

Before rain falls, a mist or stream rises from the earth to water the whole face of the ground. The provision for plant growth comes from below before it comes from above, a detail that distinguishes the conditions of the pre-agricultural garden from the rain-dependent agriculture of later experience. God waters the ground in the way natural to the garden's particular environment, not by the means familiar to the reader. The provision is specific to the place and the time.

The rising of the mist/stream is often read as the precursor to the rivers mentioned later in 2:10-14. The garden that God plants is watered by a system that rises from the earth itself, the upwelling springs and rivers that form the primal geography of Eden. The garden is not in an arid place given irrigation by human ingenuity; it is in a well-watered environment made by God's own ordering of the underground waters.

The detail of how the ground is watered before rain existed is part of the account's care to distinguish the garden world from the post-fall agricultural world. The garden is provision without toil; the rain-dependent agriculture of the cursed ground will require the sweat of the face (3:19). The pre-fall creation is not simply an older version of the world we know; it is a qualitatively different state in which God's provision was immediate and abundant, before the conditions of the fall changed the terms of the relationship.