Unlocking the Bible. David Pawson
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your days you will toil.
Thorns and thistles will grow
Among all that you sow.
With a brow running sweat
You will labour to eat;
Then return to the ground
In the state you were found.
From the clay you were made;
In the dust you’ll be laid.’
Adam gave his wife the name Eve (it means ‘life-giving’) because he now realized she would be the mother of all human beings who would ever live.
The God ‘Always’ made some new clothes from animal skins for Adam and his wife and got them properly dressed. Then the God ‘Always’ said to himself; ‘Now this man has become as conscious of good and evil things as we have been, how could we limit the damage if he is still able to eat from the other special tree and live as long as us?’ To prevent this happening, the God ‘Always’ banished the man from the Park of Delight and sent him back to cultivate the very same patch of ground from which he was originally moulded!
After he had been expelled, heavenly angels were stationed on the eastern border of the Park of Delight, guarding access to the tree of continuous life with sharp, scorching weapons.
THE RESULTS OF THE FALL
Chapter 3 is usually referred to as ‘the Fall’, when man fell from the beautiful state described in Chapter 2. It could all have been so different. If Adam had not tried to blame Eve, or even God, but had responded in repentance, God could have forgiven him on the spot. History might have been very different. Instead we have Adam’s pathetic attempt at cover-up with fig leaves to mirror his folly.
The nature of the punishment is well worthy of note. Adam is punished in relation to his work, and Eve in relation to the family. The reptile becomes a snake (even today there are very small legs on the underside of a snake).
Their former relationship with God is destroyed. Their relationship with each other is also affected: they hide from each other and God pronounces a curse over them. In Chapter 4 the first murder takes place within the family, as envy gives way to defiance against God’s warning.
Let us now focus on three areas in the subsequent story where God’s reactions to the situation are especially seen.
1. Cain
Somebody has pointed out that the sin committed by the first man caused the second man to kill the third. Here we have Adam’s own family. His eldest son kills his middle son, and for the same reason that they killed Jesus centuries later: envy. Envy was responsible for the first murder in history and the worst murder in history.
Cain means ‘gotten’ – when he was born, Eve said ‘I have gotten’ (in the King James translation) him from the Lord. Abel means ‘breath’ or ‘vapour’. God favoured Abel, the younger child of the two, because he did not want anybody ever to think they had a natural right to his gifts and inheritance. Often in Scripture we see God choose a younger person over an older one (e.g. Isaac over Ishmael, Jacob over Esau).
The problem that divided them was that God accepted Abel’s sacrifice and rejected Cain’s. Abel had learned from his parents that the only sacrifice worthy of God was a blood sacrifice – the result of a life being taken. God had already covered the sin and shame of his parents by killing animals and providing a covering for Adam and Eve from their skins. A principle was being established: blood was shed so that their shame could be covered (it began there and continues through to Calvary). So when Abel came to worship God he brought an animal sacrifice. Cain simply brought fruit and vegetables.
God was only pleased with Abel’s sacrifice, not with Cain’s offering. Cain was angered by this. In spite of God’s warning that he should master sin, Cain leads his brother away from his home on a false pretext, then murders him, buries him and totally disowns him (‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’ he asks).
A clear pattern emerges here: bad people hate good people, and the ungodly are envious of the godly. This is a division that goes all the way through human history.
So God’s perfect world is now a place where goodness is hated, and the evil people excuse their wickedness. Anyone who presents a challenge to the conscience is hated. We could say that Abel was the first martyr for righteousness’ sake. Jesus himself said that the ‘blood of the righteous has been spilled from Abel, right through to Zechariah’.
The narrative goes on to chart the line of Cain and it includes some interesting elements. Alongside the names of Cain’s descendants are listed their achievements, most notably the development of music and of metallurgy, including the first weapons. Urbanization also came from Cain’s line. It was Cain’s line that began to build cities, concentrating sinners in one place and therefore concentrating sin in one place. It could be said that cities became more sinful than the countryside because of this concentration.
Thus what we might see as ‘human progress’ is tainted. The ‘mark of Cain’, as it were, is on these ‘developments’, and that is the biblical interpretation of civilization: sinful activity is always at its heart. Polygamy also came through Cain’s line. Up to that point one man and one woman were married for life, but Cain’s descendants took many wives, and we know that even Abraham, Jacob and David were polygamists.
There was a third brother, however, Adam and Eve’s third son Seth. With him we see another line beginning, a Godly line. From the line of Seth, men began to ‘call on the name of the LORD’.
These two lines run right through human history and will continue to do so right to the end, when they will be separated for ever. We live in a world in which there is a line of Cain and a line of Seth, and we can choose which line we belong to and which kind of life we wish to live.
2. Noah
The next major event is the Flood and the building of Noah’s ark. The story is well known, both inside and outside the Bible. Many peoples have tales of a universal flood within their folklore. It has been questioned whether it was a real event and whether it literally covered the whole earth. The text does not indicate whether the Flood went right round the globe or just covered the then known world. Certainly the Middle Eastern basin, later called Mesopotamia, the huge plain through which the Tigris and the Euphrates flow, is the scene of all the early stories of Genesis and was definitely an area affected by flood.
The Bible’s focus is not so much on the material side of this story as on the moral side. Why did it happen? The answer is staggering. It happened because God regretted that he had made human beings. ‘His heart was filled with pain’. This is surely one of the saddest verses in the Bible. It communicates God’s feelings so clearly, and these led to his resolve to wipe out the human race.
What had happened to cause such a crisis in God’s emotions? To answer this we need to piece together the Genesis narrative with some parts of the New Testament and some extra-testamental material quoted in Jude and Peter.
We are told that between two and three hundred angels in the area of Mount Hermon sent to look after God’s people fell in love with women, seducing them and impregnating them. The offspring were a horrible hybrid, somewhere between men and angels – beings not in God’s order. These are the ‘Nephilim’ in Genesis 6 – the offspring of the union between the ‘sons of God’ and the ‘daughters of men’. The word is sometimes translated as ‘giants’ in English versions. We do not know exactly what is meant – it is just a new term for a new sort of creature. This horrible combination was also the beginning of occultism, because those angels taught the women witchcraft. There are no traces of occult practices before this event.
The immediate effect of this perverted sex was that violence filled the whole earth; the one leads to the other when people are treated as objects and not as persons. Genesis 6 tells us that God saw that ‘every imagination of man’s heart was only evil continually’. He felt that enough was enough.
But God did not judge immediately, he was very patient and gave them full warning. He called Enoch