Real Restoration: The Garden and Genesis 2

Caring for the Garden

(Gen 2:15 ESV) 15 The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.

Before the creation of Eve, God gave man a job. You see, even in a perfect world, man is not at leisure. There is the absurd Western notion that the goal of mankind is leisure — laying around and doing nothing. But God wants what’s best for man, and man is happiest at work. Indeed, after Jesus returns,

(Rev 22:3 NIV) 3 No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him.

Our eternal destiny is to serve God — not to spend eternity playing golf and lawn bowling. I have no idea just what form this service will take, but we won’t be bored — which is very important to me. I mean, to me, being bored would be hell (and way too much like high school to be heaven).

God made man to be happiest when serving, but only doing the right kind of service. Being served may please some, but the greatest joy should be in serving others — as this is also the nature of God (as I’ll better explain in future posts).

The particular form of service given to Adam was to “work” the Garden, that is, to make it productive, and to “keep” the Garden, that is, to guard it. The Garden would not produce fruit entirely on its own. It had to be worked. And the Garden had to be protected (kept, watched, preserved). You see, before sin entered the world, man’s job was to guard the Garden and yet to make it productive. He wasn’t to worship nature and keep it unchanged from its pristine state, but neither was he to waste the Garden and make it worthless to the next generation. Rather, man was to make the Garden productive while protecting it.

And here we see the foundation for Christian environmentalism. We Christians can’t let ourselves be caught up in partisan politics. Rather, our environmental concerns come from the text of God’s word, not the press releases of the Democratic or Republican parties and their mouthpieces. Neither the Sierra Club nor Rush Limbaugh sets the agenda. Because God created the earth and gave us rule over it, we are tasked to care of it and to work it — both — in a way that is responsible and sensible.

It is a bit astonishing, if you think about it, that the church has been silent on so many environmental issues. I don’t think we should reflexively agree with everything the environmental lobby puts out, but neither should we reflexively disagree. And we should certainly care. Indeed, one problem with the environmental lobby today is that the church has fled the scene, leaving environmental concerns to non-Christians. We then complain about their agenda — all the while refusing to get involved.

Yes, we can let issues like global warming and drilling in the Gulf become a distraction if we’re not careful. Yes, we might disagree about those things, but do we disagree about keeping the creeks in our hometowns clean? Why not participate in community clean up efforts? Why not adopt a mile of the highway near your church in the name of Jesus? Why not at least get involved on those matters where we’re in agreement? Sadly, because we aren’t in the habit of thinking that the church has any reason to care about the planet.

Woman

(Gen 2:18 ESV) 18 Then the LORD God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.”

The male without the female is declared by God to be “not good.” Indeed, it’s the only thing he made that wasn’t good. Man is not complete without the female.

“Helper” is a poor translation. The Hebrew word, ‘ezer, is most commonly used of God as Israel’s helper. In English, “helper” implies inferiority. But in Hebrew, there is no such implication. Indeed, the “helper” may well be as superior to the person being helped as God is to Israel. The next use of ‘ezer is found in —

(Gen 49:25 ESV) 25 by the God of your father who will help you, by the Almighty who will bless you with blessings of heaven above, blessings of the deep that crouches beneath, blessings of the breasts and of the womb.

Countless commentaries and books have argued for women to have a subordinate or inferior role to man because of this implication of “helper,” and it’s just wrong. A better translation would be “complement,” meaning someone who makes up what’s lacking. But some theologians have adopted “complementarian” for the view that women have a God-given subordinate role, and thereby have robbed us of what would otherwise be a really good translation.

(Gen 2:19-20 ESV) 19 Now out of the ground the LORD God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. 20 The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him.

God himself was not a suitable helper/complement to Adam — even though God walked in the Garden and talked with him. Neither were the animals. A helper could not be superior or inferior and still be suitable.

After all, the goal here is to make man “in our image.” And the Trinity is made up of equals.

(Gen 2:21-22 ESV) 21 So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. 22 And the rib that the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man.

The rabbis taught that God did not use a bone from his head, so they she would not rule over him, and did not use a bone from his feet, so that she would not be tread upon by him. Rather, God chose a rib so that she’d be by his side and in his embrace. In fact, this is such excellent commentary that it’s routinely used in our weddings. But for some reason, it hasn’t made it into our sermons.

(Gen 2:23 ESV) 23 Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.”

Eve was “bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” — clearly indicating a deep sense of equality. “We are made of the same stuff!” Eve was not made of inferior materials, but was made out the man. Thus, Adam announces an ontological equality. Obviously, the male and female are not identical, but their essential equality vis-a-vis each other is declared most clearly. They are, Adam says, deep down the same because they are made of the same material by the same God.

Notice also that Adam announces that she is bone of my bone “at last.” He’d been waiting for a companion superior to the animals and inferior to God. He needed not just a helper but a suitable helper.

The word translated “suitable” is made up of two Hebrew words meaning “like” and “in front of” or “in sight of.” The Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon translates “corresponding to.” A Concise Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament translates “like his counterpart.” The emphasis is on the similarity of the male and female.

(Gen 2:24 ESV) 24 Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.

“One flesh” refers most literally to the sex act, but Moses has a deeper meaning in mind. After all, Adam had just announced that Eve is “flesh of my flesh.” The sex act thus represents the unity of the husband and wife. Moses speaks of “a man,” not just Adam, and so even though a wife will not have her husband’s identical DNA, she will nonetheless be “one flesh” with her husband because that’s the nature of the marriage relationship.

Hence, marriage becomes like the Trinity — two and one, all at the same time — a relationship that creates a unity between two beings so that they are in fact a single being.