Last week, as we took a look at Genesis 1, we noted the humility with which we must approach these stories about primordial history. That is true if we are scientists, looking at the data and trying to make sense of it all. And it is true if we are Bible students, too. We look at the data, and we try to make sense of what these stories are meant to tell us. With this humility in place, we will learn a lot about how to read and study the Bible.

‌The Bible is an ancient text, and when you read something that is very, very old and quite removed from our current culture, there are all kinds of things that can be easily misunderstood. Reading something from just a generation or two ago will prove the point readily enough. How much more when it comes to an ancient text like this.‌ We need a lot of humility as we approach the text. We're reading an ancient document. It's been translated for us. We're reading it from a very different culture.

This morning, we’re looking at Genesis chapter 2 and the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. You have a picture in your head? Are you imagining the scene? Now just consider that that image is a bit off. Maybe what we thought Genesis is trying to tell us has caused us to miss the main point all along. Now, some of you came up to me after last week's sermon and said, “I'm not sure about some of that.” That's totally fine! We're reading a story. We're reading an ancient story, and we're trying to determine what kinds of things we should learn from a story like this, right? There's room here for us to have conversations about this, to ponder what else would we see in the story that make us think that way. So, let's set a little humility in place as we come to the story in Genesis chapter two which tells us about a special place, a special person, and a special purpose.

A Special Place

First, the story will now center on a special place within the creation that God has established.

A Sequel to the Story

Before we talk about this special place, we have to take note of how we view Genesis 2 and its relation to Genesis 1. At the end of verse 5, we are told “there was no man to work the ground,” and in verse 7 we read about God forming “the man of dust from the ground,” and in verse 15 we see God giving the man directions to work. It is quite common for readers of the Bible to assume that Genesis 2 is something of a re-telling of day 6 of the creation account in Genesis 1. Remember that on day 6 God created human beings in his image. So, it makes sense that we might think Genesis 2 is giving us more detail about that sixth day of creation.

But that’s not the only way to take this chapter, and I’ve been persuaded that we should not read it that way. Instead, Genesis 2 ought to be read as a sequel to the creation story of chapter 1.[1]

One reason for reading it that way is because of Genesis 2:4. “These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens.” This is the first of 11 section dividers we will find throughout Genesis. ‌This verse is a transitional statement, taking us from the account of God’s creation in chapter one to the next section which will run through chapter 4. Genesis 2:4, then, is a heading for this section.[2] We are about to find out what happens to the “heaven and earth” that God created in chapter 1. So, chapter 2 is a sequel to chapter 1, not a re-telling of it.

But how can that be when verse 5 says that “there was no man” if chapter 1 told us that God has made man already? Well, a similar problem is raised by the first part of verse 5 which says there was no bush of the field and no small plant of the field. But according to Genesis 1:11, God had already created vegetation back on day 3. If Genesis 2 is a retelling of the same story as Genesis 1, why do human beings precede vegetation this time around?

These problems go away if we simply read the story as a sequel to chapter one and let it take our attention to a different place. In fact, our attention may have been on the wrong place all along.

The Significance of the Land

Here’s what I mean. The first verse of the Bible says, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” Now, when we hear the word earth, what picture is in our mind? I’m guessing that for many of us we see a big blue sphere. But we have that picture in our heads thanks to modern photography, and because we have the ability to look back at ourselves from outside our earth’s atmosphere.

Of course, that would not be the picture in the mind of the first readers of Genesis. The word translated earth in Genesis 1:1 is translated “land” in the ESV in Genesis 2:5. In fact, the ESV translates this same Hebrew word as “earth” from Genesis 1:1-2:4, and then translated it as “land” from Genesis 2:5 onward through chapter 2. And when the first readers of Genesis, ancient Israel after their exodus from Egypt, heard the word land, what image would come to mind? What “land” would they be thinking of? The land we call “the Promised Land.”

The Land of Eden

This land goes by a different name in chapter 2. Here it is called “Eden,” a word that means “delight.” Now, where is Eden?

We are given some clues. In verses 10-14 we are told that there is a river that flowed out of Eden and eventually divided into four rivers. Two of those rivers are quite well-known: the Tigris and the Euphrates. But the other two, the Pishon and the Gihon, are not so easily identified. What is strange, however, is that much more is said about these two rivers than the more well-known ones. The Pishon “flowed around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold” and other precious stones. The Gihon “flowed around the whole land of Cush,” a description which has long suggested that the Nile River is in view.[3] Everything here is pointing our attention to a “land” that is quite similar to the land promised to Abraham in Genesis 15.[4]

At any rate, here in chapter 2 the focus is not so much on Eden as it is on a garden that God planted in the eastern part of Eden. I take it that Eden is symbolic of the Promised Land, but the storyteller here takes our attention to a more specific place within Eden where God planted a garden.

Now, why does God plant a garden? In the Ancient Near East, kings would construct gardens next to their own palaces to receive visitors and to impress them with the glory of their kingdoms.[5] So also here: Eden is the place where God dwells. The Promised Land is to be viewed as God’s palace, a giant temple, where God has moved in. The garden is the center of this sacred space, the holy of holies, a very special place indeed.

A Special Person

And it is in this special place that God puts a special person.

The Man Named Adam

We call him Adam, but that’s just a transliteration of the Hebrew word for human being. In the ESV, the name “Adam” doesn’t show up until verse 20 of chapter 2.

Clearly, a lot is happening with this Hebrew word. What is most important is what the name represents. In the first five chapters of Genesis, there are 34 occurrences of the word adam, with at least 22 of those clearly not being a proper name.[6] Here’s the point: the emphasis in these chapters is not on giving us the biographical story of a man named Adam. It is this person’s representative role that is far more important than his own individual life story.[7] That’s not to say that there was no real Adam, only that what the story is here wanting us to see is what this person represents, what he means in the story. So much debate today is centered on whether Adam and Eve are real persons and whether or not the Bible insists that all human beings are biological descendants of this original pair. That’s a fine conversation to have, but it is not the point of this story.

The Creation of Adam

So when we read about the creation of “the man” in Genesis 2:7, let’s not forget that what may be more important is what this creation account means for you and me than what it meant for one particular individual.

In chapter one, we were already told that God made human beings. If chapter two is a sequel to chapter one, then what we are being told here is the creation of a special human being. Again the word “create” should not be taken to mean “bring into material existence.” In fact, the verb used in verse 7 is different. It is the verb used to describe how a potter “creates” something by shaping matter into a particular form. God here takes “dust from the ground” to form this special person, then breathes “into his nostrils the breath of life” and this person then becomes “a living creature.”

The image in many of our minds is of God scooping up some dirt and blowing into it. But God doesn’t have lungs, so we shouldn’t read this with a view toward how it would have looked had a videographer been on the scene at the time. The emphasis is on what this origin story means more than on precisely how it happened.

What does it mean that Adam was formed out of dust? It does not mean that this is the material component of his body. In Genesis 3:19, God says to Adam that he is “dust” and “to dust you shall return.” To be made of dust, then, simply means that this special person is mortal.[8] He does not have life in himself. He is a creature, dependent upon God’s sustenance to keep him alive. Adam, it turns out, is in this way very much like you and me. As the Psalmist says, God “knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust” (Psa 103:14).

The Creation of Eve

What about Eve? Her significance is found in this story more in what she represents than in who she historically was. Her name, which is “Woman” here in chapter 2, but we find out in the next chapter is “Eve,” means “Living.” Taken together, Adam and Eve are “Human” and “Living” and are meant to tell us a lot about ourselves and our relationship to God. They represent us. That doesn’t mean they aren’t real persons; it does mean that that is not the crucial part of the Genesis story.

You know the story of Eve’s creation, and we don’t have time here to go into the details. I’ll only point out that the word “rib” in verse 21, found 40 times in the Hebrew Bible, is only translated that way in this verse and the next in the ESV. The usual English translation is “side,” referring to the opposite side of something. In other words, a “literal” reading of the creation of Eve would have us understand that God did not just take out one of Adam’s ribs; rather, he cut Adam in half and made the woman out of one of those sides.[9]

As in the creation of Adam, then, what is important is not so much the step-by-step description of “how it actually happened” but what it all signifies for all of us. Verse 24 proves that point well enough, as the storyteller breaks in to tell us that this story signifies something quite important about marriage. That becomes significant for Jesus as well as for the Apostle Paul for their own theological purposes in the New Testament.

But what might be the point that the author of Genesis is trying to make? God has created a special place, a garden in Eden, and there he has put a special person, “the human,” which he has split into two persons that are meant to go together. But for what purpose? For a very special purpose.

A Special Purpose

God had a special purpose for this couple to perform in the Garden of Eden. A particular vocation that he made them for.

Work and Keep the Garden

That particular vocation, that special calling, is found in verse 15. Again, we're familiar with this verse, but take a look at it. “The Lord God took the man, and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and to keep it.” Do you have a picture in your head? Are you imagining the story? It sounds as if, to most of us modern readers, God made Adam and Eve and gave them the particular vocation of being gardeners. You see them? They’ve got their gloves on and their special tools that look just like the ones you use when you tend to the gardens around your house.

It's not wrong to have that picture in your head, but it's probably misleading as to the point that’s being made. Hebrew scholars will point out that the pronoun “it” following “work” and “keep” do not match the gender of the noun garden. Not to get too technical here; I’m just saying that if you are reading this as Adam and Eve’s commission to work and keep a garden, then you have a problem with the Hebrew text. It seems better to understand the pronoun “it” to be referring to God’s commandment which he gives in the next verse (v. 16). “Just as in the rest of the Torah, enjoyment of God's good land is made contingent on ‘keeping’ God's commandments.”[10] You want to prosper? You want to flourish? Then you must do as God instructs. For this reason, work and keep may not be the best translations for the words that are used here. One scholar suggests a better understanding would be to translate them to worship and obey.[11]

These stories can tell us about work. You can make use of it that way, but they tell us more about what work means. These verses are not there just to say, “When you go to work tomorrow, remember Adam and Eve. You’re going to work just like they did.” Rather, we need to remember why they work so that we remember why we work, what our various vocations are all about. They are about worship and obedience to God because work apart from relationship with God is incomplete and futile and will not last.

The Royal Priesthood

These words, work and keep, could also be translated serve, guard or protect. They're used most frequently in the Old Testament to convey human service to God rather than agricultural tasks.[12] So again, the picture in our mind probably should not be Adam and Eve as gardeners; rather, we need to see them as priests. Old Testament scholar John Walton writes, “In ancient thinking, caring for sacred space was a way of upholding creation. By preserving order, non-order was held at bay.”[13] Adam and Eve were put in this sacred space to serve like priests, participating with God, working with God, serving God, if you will, in order to thereby mediate the benefits of God and His creation to the rest of humanity.

Now you and I are much more likely to connect to a gardener than we are to a priest. But you need to get this picture in your mind because it's important not just for understanding the Old Testament but the New Testament as well. The book of Hebrews, for example, makes much of the fact that Jesus is for you and me our great high priest who has ascended into the heavens. And then we have Peter saying this:

As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ (1 Pet 2:4-5).

So if you don't get priesthood language and imagery into your mind, you're going to miss not just what Genesis is about, but what the New Testament is all about, what the Christian story is all about as the climax to the Old Testament story. This is a story that tell you and me, Gentiles though we are, that we, too, can be counted as members of the “chosen race” and the “royal priesthood” and the “holy nation” who have been chosen to “proclaim the excellencies of him who called [us] out of darkness into his marvelous light” (1 Pet 2:9).

The Privilege of Election

And now all kinds of theological terms and meanings come rushing together. Verse 15 says that God “took the man and put him in the garden of Eden.” The verb put indicates purpose. Adam was put in the garden for a reason, to serve as a priest, to mediate the benefits of God and His creation to all humanity. This is what would later be said about ancient Israel, chosen by God, put into the promised land to be a light to the nations around them.

This is also what is said about you and me, chosen to be citizens of the kingdom of God. Our task, our calling, our vocation is priestly, to maintain equilibrium in God's world. To be counted among the elect is an enormous privilege, especially for us Gentiles who are by nature separated from the covenant of grace. But in Christ, we’ve been chosen to be priests, standing in sacred space, mediating the benefits of God and his new creation to the world.

God doesn't need us. That goes without saying. But he chooses to do his work through his people. This is our sacred duty. This is our sacred calling, a calling that we should take with the utmost seriousness. You see, election is not primarily about who gets in and who doesn't. It's about who is called to participate with God. God chooses, and his choice is decisive, but at the same time, the doors are open. If you want to be a part of the royal priesthood, you certainly can. Just come to Jesus.

You must come into the royal family through Jesus. That is the only way. You must worship and obey him, you must work and keep his commandments. Try to go some other way, and the results will be devastating, as we’ll find out in the next chapter of Genesis.

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[1] John H. Walton, The Lost World of Adam and Eve: Genesis 2–3 and the Human Origins Debate (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2015), 63ff.

[2] Gordon J. Wenham, Genesis 1–15, Word Biblical Commentary, vol. 1, ed. Bruce M. Metzger, David A. Hubbard, and Glenn W. Barker (Dallas: Word Books, 1987), 49. The second part of verse 4 should not be taken to mean that God created everything in one day. “In the day” is a Hebrew idiom that can simply be translated “when.” See William David Reyburn and Euan McG. Fry, A Handbook on Genesis, UBS Handbook Series (New York: United Bible Societies, 1998), 59.

[3] Wenham, Genesis 1–15, 65.

[4] John Sailhamer, Genesis Unbound: A Provocative New Look at the Creation Account (Sisters, Or: Multnomah Books, 1996), 72.

[5] Walton, Lost World of Adam and Eve, 117.

[6] In these 22 occurrences, the Hebrew word comes with the definite article, and Hebrew never uses the definite article with a proper name. See Walton, Lost World of Adam and Eve, 59.

[7] Walton, Lost World of Adam and Eve, 61.

[8] Walton, Lost World of Adam and Eve, 73.

[9] Walton, Lost World of Adam and Eve, 78.

[10] Sailhamer, Genesis Unbound, 76.

[11] Sailhamer, Genesis Unbound, 76.

[12] Walton, Lost World of Adam and Eve, 105.

[13] Walton, Lost World of Adam and Eve, 106.