Garden and Gold
September 5, 2007 by Steven W
Genesis 2: 8-15
The LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there He put the man whom He had formed. And out of the ground the LORD God made every tree grow that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Now a river went out of Eden to water the garden, and from there it parted and became four riverheads. The name of the first is Pishon; it is the one which skirts the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold. And the gold of that land is good. Bdellium and the onyx stone are there. The name of the second river is Gihon; it is the one which goes around the whole land of Cush. The name of the third river is Hiddekel; it is the one which goes toward the east of Assyria. The fourth river is the Euphrates.
Then the LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it.
Those last verbs “tend” and “keep” could perhaps be simply translated “serve” and “guard.” Adam was a garden servant and guard. This is a priestly calling.
We’ve already seen that man is created in the image of God. He also matches the luminaries, since he is given “rule,” and the chiasm of Genesis 1 also leads us to suppose that man parallels the firmament in some way. Numbers 4:16 shows that the priest is in charge of the lamp-light, as well as the tabernacle, and thus man is liturgically in charge of the firmament. The priest unites heaven and earth.
The priests also had to guard the holy things. Phineas is the most famous of these, as he impales an abominable Israelite upon his spear at Baal Peor. Like the priests, Adam was called to protect the garden-sanctuary.
Adam was a temple servant and a temple guard, and Eden was the place where God walked on Earth. The picture is laid out at the beginning. If we continue on we can connect the river in Eden with the water in the Solomonic temple and the rivers in the New Temple of Revelation.
In the great commission, the Church as the new Israel and living temple is instructed to go out and water all of the earth.
A detail that is often passed over too quickly is the gold in Havilah, as well as the bdellium and onyx. These fine minerals and jewels are outside of the garden-sanctuary, and thus associated with the laity. The gentiles will retain this association throughout the rest of the Bible. Hiram of Tyre will be the Gentile sponsor in Solomon’s day, providing the wood, and Israel will provide the food. This cash/crop relationship is illustrative of the Israel/nations and Priest/laity relationship.
Now this is not a simple sacred/secular relationship, at least not as we know it today, because Hiram loves David. He is, by all accounts, a lover of David’s God, and He is helping to build the temple of Yahweh. The same goes for Eden. Man is instructed to fill the earth in Genesis 1:28. We can easily imagine Adam going outside of the garden and building altars and memorial stones across the earth. This is what Abraham and Jacob do. This is essentially what the Pharisees have been doing up until Jesus’ day, as he says they travel land and sea to make converts. When Paul arrives in the various cities along his missionary journey, the worshiping communities are already built. The great commission is the recapitulated cultural mandate of Genesis 1:28.
The Church provides the food, the bread of life, in the sacraments. The laity responds with the tithe. Jew/Gentile issues can also be traced back to Genesis 2, and thus we should read Paul through the lens of Moses, just as we read Moses through the lens of Paul. We don’t need 2nd Temple Rabbinic writings any more than we need Egyptian folklore or Hittite political treaties.
It’s all here folks.
Joyful to see you’re not falling into that klinean framework rubbish. The usual pattern is from not really days, to not really ages, to not really created. RTS and WTS seem to be following the way of the previous Princeton. Trying to find a hermeneutic that can cure a plague of doubt.
Neiswonger
The problem with framework is not with the pattern itself (which is pretty sound), but with the assumption that goes along with it that because the structure is poetic, it must not be literal. That assumption, not the biblical theological construct that Kline expounded from Genesis 1.
Having just preached through this a few months ago, my own translation of the “tend and guard” would be “worship and obey.” Of course, the translation has to do with the object. If the object is the guarden, “worship” makes no sense. But i’m convinced that the garden is not what the text intends as the object. Rather, Jehovah himself is the object. God put Adam in the garden to worship and obey him. He gave him the sanctuary and all privileges and gifts, and all he asked was for man to fulfill the purpose for which he was created.
Of course, this just shows that, even in the idealest circumstances, man wouldn’t do what he was called to do, which was the heart of the sin–failure to worship Jehovah only and obey what he said. Rather, man chose to abandon the one who had created him and given him all that there was to give to follow Jehovah’s enemy and the piddly promise gaining “wisdom.” Man showed that he would not worship as God called him to (i.e., he’s an ingrate), and that he would not obey (i.e., that he’s a rebel).
This pattern is repeated in Genesis 6, when, just like in Genesis 3, the men who had been called to worship (through sacrifice) and obey God (living out the cultural mandate) refused to do so, but rather followed the “sons of God” (i.e., like the being behind the serpent, an angel who, in the words of Jude, left their proper abode in order to seek out carnal lusts). The men of Noah’s day (even the descendants of Seth, who, by the way, were not the “sons of God”
chose to give their daughters in marriage to “men” who showed no restraint or godliness, and they also chose to honor and revere the children of these unnatural marriages (i.e., they were the great ones and men of repute) rather than cherishing what was honoring to God in what he instituted was good and proper.
I actually do think the Framework pattern is wrong. You can compare my newer outline of Gen. 1 to my first one, both of which are a few posts down from this one. John Barach appropriately shredded my first try, which was pretty dependent on the framework’s layout of Days 1-3 paralleling Days 4-6.
Day 5 does not match Day 2. It matches Day 3. The fish swim in the waters alright, but it is the waters between the lands, and not simply the primordial deep. The fowl of the air are considered land animals though. They are told to fill the earth, not the firmament. Neither fish nor fowl are called “rulers” either, and thus the Kingdom and Kings setup fails.
With this in mind we see that the days (all 7 of them) make a chiasm, with Day five working as the center, paralleling both first and last.
As you already know, Steven, my longer comments on this blog entry are on your Xanga blog.
But in response to Trey, I’d want to point out that the verbs for “serve” and “guard” have feminine suffixes indicating the object or person being served and guarded. While the word I’ve translated “serve” may have something to do with worship in other places in Scripture, here the feminine suffix indicates that it’s not God who is being “served.” Now I grant that the word for “garden” here is normally masculine, so that’s a bit mysterious, but if I remember my research correctly, it does appear to be feminine in at least one passage in Scripture.
Moreover, later on, when Adam is driven out of the garden, he is sent out to “serve” the ground. It’s the same word and it’s likely that the word is being used in the same sense here.
As for “guard,” I wonder if you can point to any passage where the word means “obey.” Perhaps you’re thinking of the passages that say, “Keep the commandments.” But even if I grant that the word means “obey” there, which itself is something that needs proof, that usage isn’t an absolute use of the verb. There’s an addition (”the commandments”). Can you find a place where the word all by itself means simply “obey”?
I’m satisifed that these words mean “serve and guard” and that their object is the Garden, which, of course, includes the Woman who is (and is in) the Garden.
Actually, John, it is precisely because the same word is used to refer to the ground that it must not be referring to it in the Garden. The point is that he’s doing something different when he is cast out than when he was in the garden. It’s not just that now his “work” is hard; his curse *IS* the work (i.e., “by the sweat of his brow”).
I think the solution is to understand the implied object as (Jehovah’s) commandment or law (which is always femanine). He is to “obey it” (the command) and to “fulfill it” (the commandment). The obvious purpose of man in the Garden is not simply to do what he would do after he sinned only “enjoying” it. The point is that his purpose in the Garden (as the temple sanctuary) is to live a God-ward life. The Garden itself is only a means to his fellowship and communion with God, and it is the place where God has provided everything that he could need or enjoy to live. In the Garden, he is a worshiper, not a worker.
So, yes, i agree that Adam is the High Priest of God in the Garden-temple. But my point is, simply, that such a role is best described in terms of worship and fulfillment of God’s commandment than in terms of being the Garden sexton, even if in a pre-fall state.
Trey, I’m afraid I don’t find your argument convincing. I’ve come across it before, notably in Scott Hafeman. You might find this article by Gordon Hugenberger helpful in this connection, though unlike Hugenberger, I don’t exclude the cultic from “serve and guard,” since that is precisely a priestly description.
I especially don’t find your argument in the second paragraph convincing, where you posit that Jehovah’s commandment or law is the “implied object.” That seems fishy to me.
The Garden was for man a “training ground,” getting him ready for his work outside the Garden. Man is in the Garden as a priest, and a priest is a a worker in the Garden-sanctuary. Priests in Scripture “serve” and “guard.”
Furthermore, worship would take place only on one day. God left Adam alone at the end of the sixth day. We know that because He came back the next day, in Genesis 3. There’s only one day in the week in which God is present “as the Spirit of the Day,” contrary to those who claim that God used to walk with Adam in the breezy evening (”the cool of the day,” which is an impossible translation). What was Adam to do on Sunday through Friday, when God wasn’t present?
[...] given what we know of Eden’s sanctuary imagery (see here and here) it should not surprise us to find that Adam was a priest. His major sin was not so much a failure [...]