No shame

Genesis 2: 5-25, “And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew: for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground. But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground. And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads. The name of the first is Pison: that is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold; And the gold of that land is good: there is bdellium and the onyx stone. And the name of the second river is Gihon: the same is it that compasseth the whole land of Ethiopia. And the name of the third river is Hiddekel: that is it which goeth toward the east of Assyria. And the fourth river is Euphrates. And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him. And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof. And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him. And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man. And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh. And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.”

This second document is Adam’s document (see Gen 5:1, “This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him;”). Adam wasn’t there for the first five days and only for part of the sixth day so he couldn’t write about them. This also means that there is no contradiction between the two accounts of creation. There is only one account of creation and then Adam’s account of what he saw. The next question we have to answer is, “How did we get these documents?” The Lord gave Adam the first document then Adam passed his document to his family and Noah took the documents on the ark with him. As time went by and the documents were written the were kept with Abraham’s family and Joseph finished Genesis. Joseph was trained in Egyptian ways and didn’t use Mesopotamian rules so there is no “these are the generations...” at the end of Genesis. Moses had access to these tablets when he left Egypt because they carried Joseph’s body with them when the Lord delivered them from slavery (Ex 13:19, “And Moses took the bones of Joseph with him: for he had straitly sworn the children of Israel, saying, God will surely visit you; and ye shall carry up my bones away hence with you.”) When Moses, inspired by God, put the documents together, he had a slightly different purpose that the original writers so the older documents don’t always agree with the current chapter divisions.

The first thing that we notice when we read this passage is that the writer believed that he was writing an historical narrative about his own life. The second is that it was written before the Flood because the writer makes statements that were current before the Flood but wouldn’t make sense if they were written after the Flood.

Adam started his account on the sixth day, when he was made out of the dust of the earth. However, he described the earth as he first found it. The plants had been created but there was no rain on the earth because there was no rain d until the Flood. The clouds were moist and the plants took their water from a mist that came up from the ground. The other issue that confronted Adam, when he was made, was that there was no one to act as custodian of the Lord’s creation. Even at that stage plants needed to be cared for.

Adam then came onto the scene when the Lord God formed him out of the dust of the earth and then breathed the breath of life into his nostrils and he became a living soul. This is the only example of the Lord God breathing the breath of life into a living creature. We can see from this that man is distinct from all the other living creatures. In chapter one we see that the Lord created man in His own image, and in this chapter we see that God used an extra process in creating mankind. The Bible doesn’t allow for man to have descended from any other animal because man came from the dust of the earth. There is no evidence that the other creatures came from the dust or that they are living souls.

The time frame isn’t specified here but it seems as though the Lord planted the garden eastward in Eden on the same day that He made Adam. This is because He put Adam in the garden that He had planted. The trees grew out of the ground but they were not made from the dust. The trees were both pleasant and good for food. There was one specific tree in the middle of the garden, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Even though there wasn’t rain, there was a river that sprung up in the garden. This river further divided into four rivers: the Pison, the Gihon, the Hiddekel and the Euphrates. Some of these names appear after the Flood as well. ( Pison only appears here, 2 Chron 32:30, “This same Hezekiah also stopped the upper watercourse of Gihon, and brought it straight down to the west side of the city of David. And Hezekiah prospered in all his works.” Dan 10:4, “And in the four and twentieth day of the first month, as I was by the side of the great river, which is Hiddekel;” and Gen 15:18, “In the same day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates:”) so do the names of some of the regions. This doesn’t mean that these places survived the Flood. After the Flood when Noah and his descendants confronted the new earth, they used familiar names.

This section must have been written before the Flood because it is written in the present as though all those place existed at the time that the document was written.

Verse 16 gives us the first recorded conversation between God and man and it defines the way that the Lord God will relate to man through the ages. The Lord gave Adam a command, as He had been doing all the way through the entire process of creation. God’s account of creation is one of activity. He speaks and things happen, according to the Lord’s word. The Lord gave Adam a commandment, in the same way as He had given previous commandments. Adam was not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Knowledge is generally considered to be good in the Bible but “Now as touching things offered unto idols, we know that we all have knowledge. Knowledge puffeth up, but charity edifieth.” (1 Cor 8:1) Knowledge can be used profitably but it can also cause problems when it leads to pride.

The Lord also painted a picture of two opposite forces, that of good and evil. When God does something it is good, “And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good:” (Gen 1:3–4) Evil is the converse of good, that is, it is the absence of God. The Lord made it clear to Adam that He alone is qualified to define what is good and what is evil and no one else.

This commandment differs from the rest of all the Lord’s commands during the first six days. The Lord told Adam that there would be consequences if he didn’t obey the commandment. This tells us that the Lord actually offered Adam a choice. The Lord allowed Adam to decide if he wanted to enjoy all the good things that the Lord had made or if he wanted to reject them.

When the Lord created Adam in His own image, He created him with the capacity to enjoy relationships but Adam was alone. Adam had a relationship with God but God wasn’t there all the time as He had other things to do as well. We know this by reading Gen 3:8, “And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God amongst the trees of the garden.” During the time that Adam and Eve sinned, the Lord knew what was happening but they knew that the Lord wasn’t in sight. The Lord understood that this could be a problem for Adam for it would be unpleasant for him to be alone at times. The Lord had also created all the other animals, fish and birds as male and female so they all had similar creatures to associate with.

In order to solve this issue before it became a problem, the Lord made someone for Adam who was complementary to him. The Lord made Adam sleep and took one of his ribs to form it into a woman. Adam and Eve now came from the same original material and they both had the breath of life that the Lord God breathed into Adam’s nostrils. They were both living souls.

While Adam came from the dust of the earth, the Lord God made the other creatures from the ground. This distinction reinforces the fact that the kinds of animals are distinct from each other and not related. The Lord gave Adam a role as His representative on the earth for He was holds all things together. (Col 1:17, “And he is before all things, and by him all things consist.” and  Heb 1:3, “Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high;”) The Lord gave Adam the dignity of having responsibilities.

Adam named all the creatures that the Lord had made and then he named the woman as well. Notice that both Adam and Eve were given responsibilities in their roles as the Lord’s representatives on the earth.

The Lord then defined marriage. There are some people who suggest that the Bible doesn’t actually command that people be married but this section proves that wrong. When a person is born they belong to their family but, at some stage in their lives, these people make a public and official proclamation that they are leaving the place they belong and are establishing a place of their own, then they enjoy the privileges of being together.

At that stage, there was no sin on the earth and, hence, there was no shame for shame is a consequence of sin.