Genesis 3
When I was a kid I used to spend part of every summer at the farm my uncle and aunt owned out in rural Western Pennsylvania. I usually went during the time to put up hay, especially because I was small enough to tuck the bales into the spaces at the top of the barn once we brought the wagon back in. Those were some great times – drinking ice cold whole milk straight from the dairy barn, riding the tractors, and taking a dip in the river when it got too hot.
My cousins liked an evening activity that I never quite understood, however, and that was hunting raccoons at night. If you’ve never been part of this activity, let me describe it to you succinctly—you run at top speed, chasing a barking dog through the woods while shining a flashlight until the dog stops at a tree and barks madly into the darkness where you see…nothing. We never bagged one. In fact, I’m certain I never saw a raccoon on those hunts (and I’m not sure to this day why we were hunting them in the first place, or what we would have done had we shot one). It was great fun for my country cousins, though, and completely pointless to me! Those dumb dogs were constantly barking up the wrong tree, and I think about those nights running through the woods every time someone uses that familiar idiom to describe a fruitless search.
I also think about it when I read Genesis 3—a story that is also about humans following an animal into the trees for an exercise in futility! This is, of course, one of the foundational stories of the whole Bible and of our whole human existence, but it’s also often the least understood. The reason, I think, is that we tend to externalize this story much like we do with Genesis 1 and 2. We turn it into a flat text that has theological or scientific implications without seeing what it’s actually telling us about us and about God. Questions about talking snakes and what fruit Adam and Eve actually chowed down on are exercises in missing the point. In the main, this is a story about humans barking up the wrong tree—something we’ve been doing from the beginning.
Before we go into the text, let’s do a quick review of where we’ve been so far. In Genesis 1 we learned that the six days of creation are about God building a temple to dwell with his human creations—a temple that he moves into on the seventh day. In Genesis 2 we learned a little more about those humans and their purpose—they were created to be priests in God’s temple, serving and protecting the creation and carrying the image of God within them. Here is God’s perfect scene: The people of God in the place of God dwelling in the presence of God.
That relationship between God and Adam is best defined as a covenant. We’ve talked about this before, but biblically speaking a covenant is when a patron offers a client protection, status, and land in exchange for obedience and faithfulness. A client can only have one patron at a time, and going after other patrons or violating the covenant has consequences for the client. This is the relational thread that runs all the way through the Bible—God makes a covenant with his people, gives them their identity and his love, but God’s people continually violate that covenant. It all begins here in Genesis 3 when the first people God makes covenant with take all of about 6 verses in order to break it by going up the wrong tree.
Back up to Genesis 2 beginning at verse 15 for a moment as we set the scene. “The Lord took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to till and keep it (serve and protect it).” That’s his God-given vocation—priestly stewardship. We always think of vocation as a “job” or something we have to do, but the work God gave Adam was that of a co-regent, the sub-ruler of God’s creation. Instead of a chore it was a joy. In fact, notice what’s next, God says, “You may freely eat of every three in the garden.” That’s permission. God isn’t just getting Adam to slog through and do all the work, he’s giving Adam the freedom to enjoy the fruits of his work! And one of those fruits is from the Tree of Life. Remember that Adam was created mortal, made from dust. It was the fruit of the Tree of Life that was not only good to eat, it gave him life. It was the antidote to death and Adam was free to eat as much as he wanted. But there was another tree, and God says, “but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day you eat of it, you shall die.” There’s a prohibition: one boundary for the man to observe and respect (thanks to Walter Brueggeman’s excellent commentary on Genesis for that framework!).
It’s interesting that when we read this text we mostly focus on the prohibition, the rule. Theological debates rage over whether on the one hand God predestined Adam’s rule breaking or, on the other hand, if God’s placement of the prohibition was really an act of love, offering Adam the choice of whether or not to love authentically love God rather than being coerced into doing so. That Calvinist vs. Wesleyan/Arminian debate is interesting, but it’s not a major concern of the text. Neither is the theological concept of original sin. We know that we are children of Adam, but the Bible doesn’t tell us precisely how that sin gets transferred to us. We only know that it does. Regardless of the nature of the choice these humans made (and we make), it’s the choice itself that is really the focus.
Why is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil forbidden to Adam? After all, it seems like that knowledge would be a good thing, right? I might help us in those morally ambiguous dilemmas to be able to munch on a piece that fruit and know what we ought to do. But it’s not the choice between good and evil that’s the focus here. The real choice is whether these humans will trust God or not. They were not to eat from this tree because, as Genesis 1 and 2 tell us, only God creates and thus only God, in his wisdom, gets to determine what is good and what is evil. This is a choice about whether they will trust God’s wisdom or their own, whether they want the world God gave them, or if they want a world of their own making.
This is the choice the snake holds us to Eve. Raccoons are pretty smart (and probably able to turn invisible, in my hunting experience) but the snake was “more crafty than any wild animal the Lord God had made.” And so he slides up to Eve out there in the forest one day and begins what we might call the first theological conversation in the Bible. We say that it’s a theological conversation because it’s a conversation about God instead of a conversation with God. It’s the first time in history that theology about God supplants obedience to God—but it will not be the last! It’s the choice between knowledge and trust. “You won’t die,” says the snake, “in fact, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. You won’t need to trust God anymore, you will be your own god and you will be able to find the answers within you.”
And so we know what happens. It seemed like a good deal to them, that maybe God was holding out on them, so they listened to the snake (or, better, listened to the desire of their own hearts) and they “ate.” God’s prohibition violated, God’s permission perverted, and God’s vocation neglected. They wanted knowledge rather than trust—and now they have it.
The result is nothing less than the unraveling of God’s created work. What was in order, what was “very good” will now begin to run backwards from the way God intended it and its been running that way ever since. A creation at rest will become a creation in chaos again; the people of God in the place of God dwelling in the presence of God will become a confused, homeless, wandering people running from place to place and tree to tree searching for God knows what. If Genesis 2 tells us who we were made to be, Genesis 3 tells us whom we have become. This story is our story.
Indeed this story reminds us of the way things are when humans choose to run the world on their own—it’s an exercise in barking up the wrong tree. The rest of the chapter is all about what happens to humans and to all of creation as a result. When Adam and Eve choose to violate the prohibition and break the covenant with God, the whole creation project starts to run backwards.
The first thing that runs backwards is human relationships. Genesis 3 tells us that when they ate, “their eyes were opened.” That’s exactly what the snake told them would happen, but they didn’t see what they expected. Rather than trusting God they were now on their own, facing the world with only their limited vision of good and evil instead of God’s worldview. They saw that they were naked, vulnerable, out of place, and they began comparing themselves to one another. The mutuality, equality, and partnership they were created for suddenly became competition. Instead of ruling together, (v. 16) God says to the woman, “your desire shall be for your husband and he will rule over you.” Instead of their sexuality being used as part of God’s creative plan, it will instead become bound up in self-seeking desire.
We don’t have to look too far to understand this curse. All of our relationships feel the shock of it to some degree: The man who spends hours searching his computer screen for the “perfect” woman to satisfy his desire; the woman whose desire is so strong for her husband that she allows him to rule over her with abuse. The blame and competition of divorce shatters families. People define themselves by their sexual preferences rather than by the image of God within them. Our relationships with each other become broken.
But so does our relationship with the creation. There’s an interesting word play here in Genesis 3 between Adam (the Hebrew word for “man”) and adamah (Hebrew for “cultivatable land”). God created Adamah for Adam, the land was to submit to his authority. Adam was designed to love his work with the adamah, and in working the land both the man and the creation would prosper. But when humans chose to run the world, the adamah rebelled against Adam. “Cursed is the ground because of you,” says God to Adam, “in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field.” Instead of work being a joyful vocation, it becomes a chore. Tilling turns to toil. According to a Forbes magazine poll, 71% of workers hate their jobs. Work was made to be fruitful, instead it has been cursed into fruitlessness. Says Sandra Richter, “We who are created in the image of God are designed so to love, create, and produce, but when that work is forced upon us or is fruitless, it becomes toil and our will is broken.” God made us to live for work, now we work to live.
Notice that next line (v. 19), “By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return to the ground.” Yes, there is sweat in toil, but there’s also something else meant by that phrase, “the sweat of your face.” This was actually an idiom in the ancient world which was less about labor than it was about anxiety—sweat-inducing fear. Because of human rebellion, humans now have an adversarial relationship with the world that causes us to fear that there will never be enough, that our labor will not meet our needs. What if the crop fails? What if the storm hits? What if there’s a fire? What about groceries this week? The car payment? The tuition bill? My retirement? What if I get sick or my kids get sick? We can have all the resources in the world and yet they do not insulate us from worry. “This is the curse of Adam—limited resources, an insecure future and a world that no longer responds to my command. Any Adams out there?” (Richter 111).
And then there is the devastating curse that we fear most—that we who are made of dust will become dust again. “Out of the ground you were taken; you are dust and to dust you shall return.” Death is the curse that stalks us all. The humans who were made in the image of God will now die like the beasts of the field. As Sandra Richter puts it, the curse of death means, “The ones made to rule the cultivatable earth will now become fertilizer for it. God’s perfect order has been turned upside down” ( The Epic of Eden, 112).
The last scene in Genesis 3 offers what is perhaps the most heartbreaking of all: God banishes them from the garden and from his presence. They have tried to become like gods, and God the patron cannot allow his client people to continue that rebellion forever. So they are exiled, cut off from the tree of life. The place that Adam and Eve were privileged to protect now has to be protected from them. Interestingly, the verb in verse 23 is the same one used to divorce a wife or disown a child. The humans were “sent forth,” but it was the result of their own choice. We’ve been separating ourselves from God ever since. Indeed, one of the primary motifs in the whole Bible is that of exile. It happens to God’s people, Israel, because of their sin. It happens to us because of ours.
We know, deep in our bones, that things aren’t right with us. We know that death isn’t supposed to be our destiny. We know that the world is broken by violence, pollution, disease, and enmity, but despite our attempts at human progress and the advancement of technology, we are still Adam’s offspring. We shouldn’t be surprised when children are kidnapped from their school in Nigeria; we shouldn’t be shocked when a loved one dies suddenly or a marriage goes bad. We should be more surprised when children go to school and learn, when our loved ones live to old age, or a marriage thrives. We celebrate mothers today, but we recognize that a good childhood is actually an anomaly in this world. If you had one, be extra thankful today.
There isn’t one of us who can’t resonate with this story. No matter how good we might believe we are, we are still in a mess. No matter who we are, we suffer. In comparison to what we were created for, we are a broken, twisted, evil race. We know inherently that we aren’t supposed to die. We were made to be the people of God in the place of God dwelling in the presence of God. But we are not as we should be. Our sin keeps us from being what we were made to be.
And it’s not just humanity that is broken. The whole creation is broken as well. In Romans 8 Paul says “the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it (Adam, that is).” We see it everywhere we look—pollution, extinction of species due to human action, the destruction of habitats, the overconsumption of energy and the overproduction of human refuse. All creation is “groaning” because of us, Paul says.
We are in a mess of our own making—a mess that we cannot fix on our own. The only way to stop this cycle of sin and death is to tear it down and build it again. The only way that can happen is if there is new Adam, who is fully obedient to God and faithful to the covenant; one who can offer us a very different human destiny than the one we’ve been living with since Genesis 3.
In a couple of weeks we will look at the story of Abraham, the man with whom God makes a new covenant—a promise of land and descendants, a promise that God will bless him so that through him all the people of the world will be blessed. Abraham’s descendants will struggle with that covenant, just like Adam. They will go into exile from their homeland, just like Adam. But in the midst of their despair, one of Abraham’s descendants will come and be the faithful Israelite, the one who doesn’t follow Adam’s script. This one will not be a son of Adam, but God’s own son, fully human and fully divine. He will be born like we are, live like we do, face the same temptations that we face. He will fulfill both sides of the covenant, the faithful human and the reigning God. He will die, just like we do, but he will be raised from the dead, breaking death’s curse once and for all. He will complete God’s great rescue plan for his creation, and usher in the signs of God’s new creation—new life for humans and creation.
He will be raised to from the dead in a Garden on the first day of the week, a sign of the new creation. He will meet a couple on the Emmaus Road whose eyes were opened when he broke bread with them. He will tell his disciples to not be afraid, to not worry with sweaty faces. He will announce the return from exile, God coming to dwell with his people again in spirit and truth. He will defeat the death that plagues us all. This is the new Adam, the new way to life that is abundant, fruitful, and eternal.
And the great news is that we can begin living the life of the new Adam today. The tree of life, formed in the shape of an instrument of death, is the way home. All we need do is bring ourselves to the foot of that tree, offer him our sin and brokenness, and then begin living the life for which he created us, knowing (as the apostle Paul said) that in the Lord our labor is not in vain. Our lives can be fruitful, not fruitless.
We know this story from Genesis 3, it’s our story. Many of us have spent most of our lives barking up the wrong tree, running after things that will never satisfy us. But today I want to invite you to hear the good news. Would you like to be free of Adam’s curse in your life? Would you like to experience the power and purpose, the forgiveness and restoration of life with the new Adam, Jesus Christ?
