Read with Me
Genesis 2:10-17 (HCSB)
A river went out from Eden to water the garden. From there it divided and became the source of four rivers. The name of the first is Pishon, which flows through the entire land of Havilah, where there is gold. Gold from that land is pure; bdellium and onyx are also there. The name of the second river is Gihon, which flows through the entire land of Cush. The name of the third river is the Tigris, which runs east of Assyria. And the fourth river is the Euphrates.
The LORD God took the man and placed him in the garden of Eden to work it and watch over it. And the LORD God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree of the garden, but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for on the day you eat from it, you will certainly die.”
Listen with Me
The geography of these four rivers, especially the Pishon and Gihon, have been much debated by scholars over the years, especially since there is no conceivable way that all four of the rivers currently bearing those names could come from the same source with the modern geography. But it is vital to understand that the geography of the ancient world was so drastically changed by the global flood of Noah’s day that the former identities and courses of these rivers are lost to us.
God had Moses move on to explain why the garden God had planted was so important. It was to be the home of the first human beings. He would not merely leave them to fend for themselves in the jungles, plains, and scrublands He had created on day three. Instead, God had made a place where all their physical needs could be easily met, and where they could have fellowship with Him.
The man wasn’t just to grow fat and lazy with too much leisure time. He was tasked with working in the garden to maintain it, and to do it according to God’s divine rhythm of six days of work followed by one of rest.
The man was given a lot of freedom. Of the hundreds of fruit trees in the garden, including the tree of life, only one was off limits: the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which was in the middle of the garden, near the tree of life. That one restriction would provide the basis for testing the man’s obedience to God, and thus his commitment to him and his ability to continue living in His manifested presence.
This commandment was so important to the man’s physical and spiritual wellbeing that God made it very clear that to eat the fruit would be punishable by death. It’s not that the fruit itself was poisonous. It was the fact that disobedience would cut Adam off from God, that source of both his physical and spiritual life.
Some have wondered if Adam really could have understood the concept of death enough to understand what was at stake. But God created Adam with a complete vocabulary and grammar precisely so that He and the man could communicate and so that the man would fully understand everything He told him.
One important point is that this restriction was given to Adam before God created Eve, his mate. That added another layer to the test. The man would be responsible for communicating that restriction to Eve, and for ensuring that she was able to obey that commandment herself.
Pray with Me
Father, we have been so immersed in the evolutionary idea that the first people were little more than apes, that it is often hard for us to see what the first people were really like. You created them in Your own image and likeness, physically, mentally, and intellectually perfect. That mean that they were vastly superior to our own current state wrought by the pervasive and erosive effects of sin. Not only could Adam and Eve understand what sin and death were, they could very likely understand it better then than we can today. Thank You, Lord, for bringing clarity even in this. Amen.