Genesis 2:16-20

Commentary:

2:16- “Whenever God engages humans after the Garden of Eden, the relationship is always formalized by a covenant (Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, the nation of Israel, etc). All of these covenants have to do with drawing up formal terms that both God and the human(s) in question agree to. While the word covenant is not used in the Eden story, all the elements of a covenant are present.

[Some scholars believe] that the absence of the word covenant from the Eden narrative is intentional and meant to convey that after the flood, relationship necessarily had to get more formal between God and humans. There’s an agreement made between God and Adam and Eve in the garden based solely on taking each other’s words––humans agree to take God at his word, and God takes them at their word that they will adhere to his parameters. This is more like how the prophets and New Testament writers describe the new covenant forged between Jesus and his followers––it’s intimate, based on something internal that takes place in and through God’s Spirit.

Because the covenant in the Eden story was less formal (i.e. Adam and Eve got to enjoy God’s blessing, but no curses were outlined for them), the curse fell upon the ground and the snake.” -The Bible Project

The end of the verse literally reads “from every tree of the garden, to eat you will eat.” Both this and “thou shalt surely die” in the next verse utilize a uniquely emphatic aspect of Hebrew grammar called an infinitive absolute. It’s when the same verb is put twice back to back in only slightly different forms. It’s a way of intensifying the meaning of the verb.

Normally the plants in a garden like this would be considered by the ancients to be food for the gods, but here they are food for God’s images. In this telling of the Creation account, it’s God who feeds His representatives in His garden-temple.

2:17- We focus so much on the tree and why the fruit was there and whether or not God was trying to get us to fail that we miss the choice that’s been there all along. Simply by giving humanity the directive to work in the land, God was giving us a choice to follow Him or forge our own path. Humanity could have chosen not to subdue the earth and rule it for Yahweh. The tree is not the issue. It’s just a symbol of the bigger discussion regarding free will.

Here we have the infinitive absolute construction again, this time with the word die. “The general effect of this repetition is to add emphasis to the verb, but because in the case of the verb ‘to die’ it is the pattern regularly used in the Bible for the issuing of death sentences, ‘doomed to die’ is an appropriate equivalent.” -Robert Alter

Notice that God never says He will kill the humans if they eat from the tree. He says it will kill them. He’s not threatening with punishment; He’s warning them of effects. It’s like if I said, “Eat that mushroom, and you’ll die.” I’m not threatening to kill you; I’m warning you that your human form can’t handle ingesting that mushroom. We tend to read in our ideas of an angry, vengeful God, but the first death in the Bible is not someone God kills. It comes 4 chapters in when a human kills his own brother because he chose to define good and not good on his own terms.

In our discussions on the supernatural realm, we’ve mentioned the theory that a buffer substance is needed for humans to exist in the same plane as a supernatural being. Thus, God’s warnings not to do x lest you die are not threats but rather statements of fact. Imagine you’re touring a nuclear plant. Most of us wouldn’t have the first clue how to run the place. So, if the person who is in charge of the plant says, “Don’t touch that button if you want to live,” you’re probably not thinking, “Well isn’t that a little heavy handed to threaten me like that?” You’d understand that he’s just stating facts about the effects of pressing the button. I think it’s the same general idea here. Something about the tree was actually fatal to humans if they ate from it. Defining good and not good is the role of a god. If a human takes on that responsibility, it’s too much for their mortal frame to support. When you worry about things that you can’t control, it starts to break down your body. You feel the physical effects in the form of a stomachache, headache, acid reflux, etc. Perhaps that is because worrying is a form of trying to control circumstances—something only a god can do. Human bodies aren’t intended to contain that level of godlike responsibility. It’s essentially the same as eating from the tree. You’re taking on the role of a god, and that will kill anyone who isn’t a god. When someone asks you if you’re a god, the right answer is actually no. (Sorry, Zeddemore.)

And now we arrive at the age-old question—what was the fruit from the tree? I can definitively say we will never know. I’m pretty confident it was not a normal fruit of any kind but rather a specific one-of-a-kind fruit. It was almost certainly not an apple or any kind of fruit that still exists today.

Supposedly Rashi (Rabbi Shlomo Yitzhaki, a medieval French rabbi) said that the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. In other words, don’t get hung up on what type of fruit tree it was. It was likely its own thing.

We tend to imagine the garden as a perfect paradise where no bad thing could exist, but I find it intriguing that the human understood the danger of death. If death meant nothing to him, God wouldn’t have mentioned it. Therefore, the human must have had some concept of what death was. Does that mean he’d already witnessed some form of death? Perhaps he’d seen animals die? (If animals were immortal, the earth pretty quickly wouldn’t have been able to handle that many animals.) If you take the evolutionary perspective mentioned previously where God took a human from among the already existing humans, then maybe the human had experienced death that way. Or maybe God just explained it to him previously or gave him the knowledge up front. Either way, I think a good application is that protecting people from the harsh reality of life by not sharing information is not the way to go. Even with children in an innocent state like the first human was in, it’s better to be honest and up front about the realities of life than to keep them in the dark for fear of harming them. All that does is make them too naive to handle reality when it hits.

Another question that arises is “What exactly is this death?” Spoiler alert, Adam and Eve didn’t physically drop dead after eating the fruit. So, to what death was God referring? Some say it was death in the sense that now they were mortal. Their immortality died, starting a countdown to death. Others say it was relational death between each other and between them and God. Others have suggested the tree of life is what provided humans immortality, so death was being cut off from the tree of life. Still others have posited that Adam and Eve were literally supposed to die that day, but God was merciful to them and lightened the sentence.

A less popular but still notable view is that the Creation story is a form of commentary on the later exile. The prophets spoke of exile from the land as a form of death. And surely enough, the consequence of Adam and Eve’s failure is not physical death but exile from their land. It’s definitely worth keeping in the back of your mind when reading Genesis.

2:18- Through all of chapter 1, we have been hearing from God that His creation is good. This is the first time we hear Him say something is not good.

Note though that God never says the human’s situation is bad. It’s called not good. It’s not anti-tov. It’s just not tov (good). Singleness isn’t evil. Marriage does not complete a person or make them more human. Every human being on their own simply by virtue of being human is good and complete as a person. We benefit from and even need the companionship of other humans to thrive, but no one needs another person to be a full person. In this particular instance, this human needed a partner if humanity was to continue. Not all humans need spouses. But all humans do need companionship.

And remember that this is still the word for human. It’s not saying that men need women to keep them in line. It means that all humans need other humans. We need partners in life, be they spouses or best friends.

Let us not forget that the man here had God (and a garden paradise in which to live), and yet God said that it still wasn’t enough. The human needed another human to connect with. Apparently, our frequent assurances that “If you have God, you have all you need” are not something God would agree with. Just a thought. . . .

“The Mishnah [an ancient Jewish commentary] states, ‘Why was the human being created alone? ... To teach you that every person must say: For me the world was created.’ This world, as well as all of the spiritual realms leading to it, was created for each and every person individually. As Maimonides [a popular medieval Jewish philosopher] teaches, ‘A person should always view himself and the entire world as if it is exactly balanced. If he does one mitzvah, he is meritorious, for he has weighed himself and the entire world to the side of merit, and he has caused for himself and for all, salvation and redemption.’” -https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/1269629/jewish/Why-Are-Torah-Punishments-So-Harsh.htm

Despite how many in our circles have presented this passage, helpmeet is not a word. The phrasing in the text is of a “help meet” (עֵ֖זֶר כְּנֶגְדּֽוֹ) for the human, a help (who is) meet. (Meet is an Early Modern English way of saying appropriate, fitting, good, corresponding to.) This is not help in the sense of sidekick. Most of the remaining times this word is used are of God’s being a help (עֵ֖זֶר) to His people. When we use the English word “help” today, we’re implying that someone else is doing the main work and I’m just there to assist. But the Hebrew word is closer to an equal partner or even someone without whom you wouldn’t be able to do your job. Thus, the verse does not read, “There was not found a helpmeet for Adam,” but rather, “There was no partner appropriate for him.”

2:19- Notice the difference between this account and the one in chapter 1 where the animals were spoken into existence. And here, humanity was created first.

Some have suggested that the natural progression of verses 18 and 19 imply that God was testing out different partners (עֵ֫זֶר) for Adam. As the animals walked by, Adam was supposed to be looking for a partner among all the animals, and then, not finding one, he would partner with the newly formed female human. This view can sound a little weird at first, but it is a very old tradition and one that seems to fit the flow of the narrative. Picking up the theistic evolution perspective discussed previously, this would be the pivot point for homo sapiens. The human is no longer compatible with the animals.

Can you think of any other time in the Biblical story where animals come up to a human because God sent them to him? The next time it happens is in the Noah story. There, we’re told specifically that it’s one male and one female from each of the clean animals. I think we’re meant to read these two stories in parallel, implying perhaps that God was bringing pairs of animals to Adam to show him his need for a companion. That concept becomes important in the next chapter. Adam passed up a partner from the animal kingdom in favor of a late-comer second human.

Naming was very significant in the Ancient Near East. It was a way of assigning purpose and identity to a person, place, or thing. It could also be a way of establishing ownership over something. Whatever significance you choose to focus on, the main point here is that humanity is now doing what God alone did in chapter 1. Throughout chapter 1, God named light, darkness, the firmament, dry land, and water. Now, He has deputized humanity to do the same moving forward.