Becoming a Living Soul

I started re-reading the first chapters of the book of Bereishit in preparation for the next week's women class on Knowledge, speaking about the knowledge of good and evil in light of Rav S. R. Hirsch's brilliant commentary on Chumash.  Predictably, the very first verses in Chapter 2 struck me with what seemed like a logical inconsistency.  It starts with the declaration that on the seventh day G-d completed all His work that He did. 

2:1 Now the heavens and the earth were completed and all their host

But then in verse 5 it says that there was no man to work the soil:

2:5  Now no tree of the field was yet on the earth, neither did any herb of the field yet grow, because the Lord God had not brought rain upon the earth, and there was no man to work the soil.

Was not the creation completed on the seventh day?  Was not the man already created on the sixth day? 

1:26-27 And G-d said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and they shall rule over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the heaven and over the animals and over all the earth and over all the creeping things that creep upon the earth."  And G-d created man in His image; in the image of G-d He created him; male and female He created them.

Is this a contradiction?  Here at the end of Chapter 1 the man was created in the image of G-d, on the sixth day, but then in the beginning of Chapter 2, after the seventh day, we read that "there was no man to work the soil." 

The original man, Adam 1.0, was created to "rule over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the sky and over all the beasts that tread upon the earth" - to rule, not to work the soil! 

In Chapter 2, after Hashem blessed the Shabbos day, He "formed man of dust from the ground, and He breathed into his nostrils the soul of life, and man became a living soul."  A living soul, capable of love and longing, suffering and pain, ridden with doubt and searching for truth, is the one who can work the soil, one whom Hashem "placed  in the Garden of Eden to work it and to guard it."

A man is born to rule and reborn to work.  The transition from an admired child to a responsible adult is painful, tragic, unclear, full of confusion and despair, triumph and fall, and many failures, but these are all growing pains on the path to greatness.  

One recurrent motive in Torah is a story of a matriarch as a barren woman, who waits and prays for many years to conceive a child.  Patriarchs and prophets were born to such women.  Why could not life go smoothly, according to a normal human timetable, for Sarah, Rivkah, Rachel, Hannah? Things that come easy are often less appreciated.  Young parents get annoyed by little children, spouses get tired of each other, inherited fortunes get squandered, but what comes to a sensitive adult as a result of hard work, after much struggle and failure, is valued and rises to greatness. 
 

 י. לֹא בִגְבוּרַת הַסּוּס יֶחְפָּץ לֹא בְשׁוֹקֵי הָאִישׁ יִרְצֶה
 רוֹצֶה יְהֹוָה אֶת יְרֵאָיו אֶת הַמְיַחֲלִים לְחַסְדּוֹ: