NOTES for Gen 2:15

It is impossible to understand of what God's plan for man consists of, why God created us without this biblical verse. We can enumerate a big quantity of more or less pious hypotheses, but they will all be only our appreciations, besides conjectural. Trust in God's Word allows us not to be engaged with this infertile pastime. Indeed, who can know why God created us? Only God. Is this knowledge important for us? Of course, without it we can’t participate in the fulfillment of God's will on us. So this knowledge must be transmitted to us through God's Word.

What is thus said here, if we translate these words from the symbolic language into the common (certainly, with such translation the beauty, the terseness, the aphoristic aspect and the polysemy are lost, but - we have no choice)? Thus, God planted a garden in Eden, and besides there is all that is necessary for a man’s life in this garden: the ground, abundance of water (four rivers watering all the earth), plants useful for meal and even the tree of life. This means God created such a world, wherein man does not have to fight to survive. What can man then do in a garden, where there is already everything? "To cultivate and keep it ". Here such paradoxical order is given to man. Why paradoxical? Because “to cultivate” means changing, and “to keep” means changing nothing. God proposes to man to take part in His creation of the world (the following scene with animals illustrates this idea), and not its destruction. Keeping and supporting in our activities the same motive, as the one which is in God - the love of the world, - applying all the creative capacities given to man by God for exaltation towards the Creator of all the Creation (including oneself). A worthy occupation, isn’t it!