Bible Study: Genesis

Lesson 3: Genesis 2: A Far Glory

Applications of Genesis Two

A. Ideal Relationships

1. The creation stories of the ANE are not only descriptive, they are also normative. In other words, they not only tell how things were but also how things ought to be.

2. An important theme running through the garden narrative in chapter two is the theme of intimacy: intimacy between man and God, man and woman and man and creation.

a. man and God

i. The verb used to describe the making of man is yasar which means to form or to mold.

ii. The culmination of the creation of man is the breathing of life into the man. Again, the significance is not in the breath of life itself, but in the way it is imparted to man.

iii. The garden is provided as a place where man and God can meet.

iv. God's benevolent concern for Adam is expressed in his search for a suitable helper to alleviate man's loneliness.

b. man and woman

i. The intimacy between the man and the woman is suggested first by the description of Adam before Eve was created, he was incomplete.

ii. The depiction of the prolonged effort to find a helper suitable for Adam highlights the appropriateness of Eve and her closeness to Adam.

iii. That Eve is formed from the very substance of man is perhaps the most powerful indication of their resultant intimacy.

iv. Adam's joyful exuberance at the reception of his wife is a poetic statement of the perfection of the match.

v. Man's name for the woman, again a play on words, ish/isha.

vi. Man and woman are naked with each other and are perfectly comfortable in that most intimate situation. c. man and creation

i. There is a play of words in the name of Adam and the ground: adama and adam. The similarity of sounds would communicate the interrelatedness of the objects signified by the words.

ii. The trees are created from the ground, as was man. Man was to live from and enjoy the produce of the ground. The animals, likewise, are formed from the ground.

iii. The scenic depiction of the naming of the animals displays the idyllic state that exists between man and the animals.

3. Following the entrance of sin into the world the intimacy so intricately depicted in chapter two will be entirely disrupted.

B. What is the Garden

1. When the aspects of the garden narrative which may appear to be the most unusual or out of place as well as the more common features of the story can both be subsumed under the category of sanctuary imagery.

a. Cherubim are present guarding the entrance of the garden. They also reappear on the Ark of the Covenant, carved in the temple walls, and depicted on the tabernacle curtains (Ex. 26:31; 1 Kngs. 6:29). Also, the cherubim are placed at the east of Eden presumably because that is where the entrance was, the tabernacle and the temple would later also be entered from the east.

b. The menorah in the tabernacle and temple is stylized as a tree and on the basis of the description in Exod. 25:31-35 it has been argued that it intended to depict the tree of life.

c. The description of Adam's job, "till and keep," recurs in the context of Levitical duties of serving and guarding the tabernacle (Num. 3:7-8). d. The rivers which flow out of Eden to water the earth recur in the temple imagery of Ezekiel 47.

e. The "gold of Havilah" is significant when we consider that gold was a primary component of the tabernacle and temple furniture. In addition, the "aromatic resin" (bedolah) occurs elsewhere only in a description of manna which was stored in the Ark of the Covenant; and "onyx" (soham) was widely used in decorating the tabernacle (Ex. 25:7).

2. The Garden then is a prototype of the meeting places where God and man would commune. Not surprisingly then, it is this very imagery that is taken up in the prophets to describe the restoration of the kingdom and then by John in Revelation to describe the consummation.

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