Or, A Garden of Life, Labor, and a Limitation
Scripture: Genesis 2:4-17
Date: May 10, 2015
Speaker: Sean Higgins
After Genesis 1 there is one more chapter of good, pure thoughts and things. Once we get to Genesis 3, sin and unrighteousness and death won’t be forgotten through the rest of eternity.
God made man in His image and gives him the breath of life. God will present man with all He’s made for man to have and do and enjoy, all of which shows off God’s love for man. All of God’s gracious gifts in chapter 2 contrast with how man disobeys God in chapter 3. There was no good reason for him not to trust the Lord.
Genesis 2 is another look at the creation story but not a second story of creation. Men who want the Bible to be wrong try to use Genesis 2 to show contradictions with Genesis 1. There must be different authors, with different vocabulary, all written from a different perspective. But instead, we should understand this chapter as it zooms in on (think pinching out on a mobile device to enlarge a portion of the picture) day 6. It does not contradict chapter 1; it is a literary flashback highlighting the creation of Adam.
Ironically, those who believe that chapter 2 is a second creation story are the same sort of men who believe that Moses was not the final author, but also they do not believe that their proposed later editor fixed their alleged contradictions. But if you edited a story, wouldn’t you want to clear up any confusion? There are no contradictions between the chapters and understanding chapter 2 as a flashback fits.
Genesis 2:4 is the first use of the Hebrew word toledot translated “generations” or the “account of” or the “story of.” Here, These are the generations of the heavens and the earth which covers the story through the end of chapter 4 (5:1 is the next time toledot occurs). Moses uses this keyword (rather than chapter divisions as we have in our copies) ten times in Genesis and the generation formula always begins a section, it never concludes or summarizes. Therefore the phrase in 2:4 does not describe the process by which the heavens and earth are generated, but rather that which is generated by the heavens and the earth. Genesis 1:1-2:3 is the prologue, the introduction to the main body of the book. This is the first main heading, the first “Book.”
The first “generation” section (Genesis 2:4-4:26) includes three Acts or movements:
2:4-25 The Creation Man
3:1-24 The Fall of Man
4:1-26 The Sons of Man: Cain and Abel (and Seth)
It is quite a drama: a idyllic setting, divine breath, supernatural deceit, unthinkable disobedience, envious murder, and the first rap song celebrating violence. It doesn’t take much time for sin to make a mess.
The events that take place in these chapters are no less foundational than the seven days in Genesis 1:1-2:3. Human disobedience becomes the norm and dominates the earth by the end of this section. Chapter 2 is the last time we’ll have to celebrate paradise, so we should try to do so.
Verse 4 is the Superscription of the story of the earth and the heavens. In it we meet the LORD God . It is the first time in Scripture that the name LORD is used, and it is used in combination, LORD God , 19 times in chapters 2 and 3 (while only used one more time in the entire Pentateuch, Exodus 9:30). LORD is the tetragrammaton (four Hebrew consonants: YHWH), which Jews refused to pronounce in fear of breaking the Third Commandment. It is a personal name (not a title), so the Jews would read “Adonai.” It is translated “LORD” because of the Septuagint (kurios) instead of Yahweh.
Why does Moses us LORD God here? Elohim (“God”) emphasizes the majestic, transcendent, Creator God. God made everything in Genesis 1 including mankind. Yahweh is the personal, close, covenant-making Lord. God deals with persons in Genesis 2, and we learn man’s name: Adam.
In these verses we learn about the plot in and of the LORD God’s paradise.
Adam’s being, his very breath was given by God. These three verses are one sentence in Hebrew with four “when” circumstances in verses 5-6 followed by one “then” statement in verse 7.
When no bush of the field was yet in the land and [when] no small plant of the field had yet sprung up—for the LORD God had not caused it to rain on the land, and [when] there was no man to work the ground, and [when] a mist was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground— then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature. (Genesis 2:5–7)
The setting in verses 5-6 regarding the ground and vegetation can’t be in contradiction with chapter 1. In Genesis 1 plants were created on the third day (verses 11-12) and man was created on the sixth day. Plants in chapter 1 seem to be those that grow wild, whereas the plants in Genesis 2 are those that grow as a result of human cultivation through planting and irrigation.
Some of these plants weren’t around yet because “thorns and thistles” didn’t come until 3:18 and others of these plants weren’t around yet because God made some to need tending and watering (perhaps wheat, barley, other grains). That’s why the following description is so significant: God had not caused it to rain on the land, and there was no man to work the ground .
Then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground . God as “potter,” fashioned man out of the dust. The word formed is the Hebrew yatsar typically used of the potter’s profession, sometimes of a metallurgist. Shaping requires skill. Chapter 1 God created by His word, chapter 2 God created with material.
Man is the Hebrew word adam, dust is the Hebrew word adamah, a play on words. We are made of the same basic components, man is an “earthling from the earth” (Hamilton).
Other ancient accounts of man’s origin riff on this idea such as The Epic of Gilgamesh:
Thou, Aruru, didst create [the man];
Create now his double, …
When Aruru heard this,
A double of Anu she conceived within her.
Aruru washed her hands,
Pinched off clay and cast it on the steppe.
[On the step]pe she created valiant Enkidu.
Yet man is more than his physical parts.
Suppose we were going to make a human body. We would need fifty-eight pounds of oxygen and fifty quarts of water, two ounces of salt, three pounds of calcium, twenty-four pounds of carbon, and some chlorine, phosphorous, fat, iron, sulphur and glycerine. We bring the items home—so much dust and some water. There it is, our do-it-yourself kit for making a human body. (John Philipps, Exploring Genesis, 49)
We’re dust. That’s humbling. We can break a body down into its base components and list them, but we can’t give them life. God Himself breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature (not from some pre-human two-legged breathing animal). Because we were made in God’s image we are also given dignity beyond the dust.
God gave breath to Adam and the place where he lived was given to Adam by God. Out of all the places in the world and on the planet, this is where God put Adam. Verse 8 summarizes what verses 9-14 expand.
And the LORD God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground the LORD God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. (Genesis 2:8–9)
Verses 8-9 describe the garden (Hebrew = gan), a place enclosed or fenced off, a park. Adam and Eve are eventually kicked out and an angel guarded the gate back in. The garden was a place of beauty every tree that is pleasant to the sight and enjoyment good for food . It was a place fertile and pleasant place, a gift for Adam.
It is often called “paradise” because the Greek translation of garden is παράδεισον (and paradisum in the Latin Vulgate) and our English word paradise is a derivative.
Verse 9 refers to two trees. First is the tree of life , with the implication that if eaten regularly, could have enabled men to live forever (foreshadowing, see also Genesis 3:22). Was man not living forever at this point? Man was allowed to eat from this tree, and why wouldn’t Adam have tasted? The “tree of life” is found again at the end of the Bible in Revelation 2:7 and 22:2, 14.
The second tree is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil which is mentioned again in verses 16 and 17, and has a central position in Genesis 3. Certainly Adam was made to know what was good because he could not otherwise praise God as good or give thanks for good gifts. The result of this tree would be a knowledge that comes in self-acquiring, a determination apart from God’s definition. Disobedience is a grab at godlikeness with deadly consequences. “In preferring human wisdom to divine law, Adam and Eve found death, not life” (Wenham).
The next verses refer to four rivers as well as other features about the land.
A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden, and there it divided and became four rivers. The name of the first is the Pishon. It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold. And the gold of that land is good; bdellium and onyx stone are there. The name of the second river is the Gihon. It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Cush. And the name of the third river is the Tigris, which flows east of Assyria. And the fourth river is the Euphrates. (Genesis 2:10–14)
Verses 10-14 provide the geographical location and the geological description of the lands adjacent to the garden of Eden, corroborating the historicity of the story and spotlighting the fertile, beautiful setting. The focus is on rivers: one river through Eden and four rivers into which it divided outside of the garden.
Eden might be at the top of the Tigris and Euphrates or below (consider this map). There is some question as to whether the four rivers flow out of the one river or flow into the one river that went through Eden. Are they headwaters?
All of the geographical features Moses describes in Genesis do not exist in the present world. When God caused the flood and when the flood waters receded it is possible that some of these paths moved.
The commission to work, a vocational purpose, was given to Adam by God.
The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. (Genesis 2:15)
The word work is abad, the usual Hebrew word for “serve.” The word keep is samar, used in chapter 3 when the angel guards access to the garden (3:24). Adam was to make and manage, serve and steward, cultivate and keep.
Work was given before sin and the curse. Work was a gift, not a punishment. The curse makes work difficult, it did not bring work into existence. Work is a gift, following a six-on/one-off cycle. The work and keep was protection, perhaps even a foreshadow of the sneaky serpent.
Paradise is not “idleness and frolic” (Morris, 92), it is not about lounge chairs and margaritas. It is not a place “in which man passes his time in idyllic and uninterrupted bliss with absolutely no demands on his daily schedule” (Hamilton, 171). Work is good, work is human, work is divine. Joy does not come from getting out of the process. Rest at night, rest one day a week, and enjoy working the rest of the time.
Adam was to start in the garden and work out from there, filling and subduing the whole earth.
One one prohibition was given to Adam by God.
And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” (Genesis 2:16–17)
God establishes moral jurisdiction by giving man just one command to obey. (Note the breadth of options and freedom God gives man compared to the serpent’s slant in 3:1). NAS: “from any tree of the garden you may eat freely.” The motive for obedience is the consequence, which could not be more drastic.
What it would have been like for Adam to hear the word death ? Where would that idea fit in his paradigm still somewhat early on day six? Perhaps man may have not lived on earth forever, but he could have been taken to heaven with no separation, no painful division of body and soul.
What does the tree of the knowledge of good and evil refer to? What is that knowledge ? (see also 3:22)
What is forbidden to man is the power to decide for himself what is in his best interests and what is not. This is a decision God has not delegated to the earthling…When man attempts to act autonomously he is indeed attempting to be godlike. (Hamilton, 166).
God not only establishes moral jurisdiction, God is writing the story of His glory. If God had not created the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, or if God had not prohibited them to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, then there would be no eating from the tree, no possibility of disobedience, and so no sin, curse, or death. Based on His foreknowledge alone, didn’t He know what Adam would do? So, why did God create the tree and point it out and forbid them from it? Why did not create the possibility of failure? Is He just mean?
Verses 8-14, God gives man an ideal home. Verse 15, God gives man an ideal job. In 18-25 God gives man an ideal woman. Still, living in paradise with all these great gifts, man falls. There is NO reason man had to disobey the prohibition in verses 16-17.
Apart from the tree there would be no sin and death, but there would also not be a full display of God. The tree and the prohibition glorify God as the righteous Authority and Lawgiver. And even when men disobeyed the prohibition, it provides a theatre for the glory of God’s mercy, love, sacrifice, and forgiveness. The ultimate reason for the tree is that this is part of God revealing Himself truly and inviting man to know Him in a relationship that he would not have had otherwise. There is no amazing love of God for rebels if there is no rebellion. God is at work showing His righteousness He will show His grace through the fall of man. We’ll see more about this as we go through Genesis.
The paragraph emphasizes “life,” as God “breathed into [man’s] nostrils the breath of life” and the man became a “living creature.” Then also God made trees to produce food to sustain life. Then also “the tree of life” was in the midst of the garden.
If we want to live as God intended, then we must live in obedience to God. Man cannot live without receiving the definitions and limitations that God has given. Man dies when he rejects God’s authority. There is a way to be godlike that is life, obeying Him and reflecting Him through dependent industry. There is a way to be godlike that is death, rejecting Him by independent self-determination.