NOTES for Gen 2:15-17

Without this biblical verse it is impossible to understand what God's design for the human being consists in, why God created us. One can build a huge number of more or less pious hypotheses, but all of them will be our own judgments, and guesswork at that. Trust in the Word of God allows us not to engage in this fruitless pastime. In truth, who can know why God created us? Only God. Is this knowledge important for us? Of course; without it we cannot participate in the fulfillment of God's will for us. Then this knowledge must be handed on to us by the Word of God.

What, then, is said here, if these words are translated from symbolic language into ordinary language? Of course, with such a translation the beauty, concision, aphoristic quality, and many-layered meaning will be lost, but what can be done? So: God planted the garden of Eden, and in this garden there is everything needed for human life: land, an abundance of water (four rivers watering the whole earth), plants suitable for food, and even the tree of life. That is, God created a world in which the human being does not need to fight for survival.

What, then, is the human being to do in such a garden, where everything already exists? "To cultivate it and keep it." This is the paradoxical assignment given to the human being. Why paradoxical? Because to cultivate means to change, while to keep means not to change.

God offers the human being a share in His creation of the world (the following scene with the animals illustrates this thought), but not in its destruction. By preserving and sustaining in his activity the same motive that exists in God, love for the world, the human being is to apply all the creative abilities given to him by God in order to raise all Creation to the Creator, including himself. Is that not a worthy occupation?

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!

On careful reading of the account of the creation of the human being that we find in the second chapter of Genesis, it is not hard to notice that it is a kind of commentary and explanation of the description of the sixth "day of creation" as we see it in the first chapter. Indeed, the very appearance of the Garden of Eden (vv. 8-14) on the site of what had previously been a barren wilderness (vv. 4-6) reminds us that on the same day as the human being God created for him an entire world in which he was to live, including domestic animals (Gen. 1:24-25; in the Hebrew text the matter is not simply "cattle" as animals, but "cattle" precisely as domestic animals, originally intended for the human being). These, obviously, are the very animals to which the human being later gives "names," that is, designations (vv. 19-20). And the story of the creation of woman, or more precisely of man and woman (vv. 21-25), only unfolds the meaning of the short phrase ("male and female He created them") that we find in the account of the creation of the world (Gen. 1:27). Before us is a description of a whole sequence of events that took place simultaneously or almost simultaneously, in biblical language, "in one day." And at the center of these events stands the human being (v. 7). Here, above all, what stands out is that the human being created by God is not distinguished by some special nature. In this respect the human being does not stand out at all; like everything else, he is created from dust. And "dust" in the Bible denotes the primary elements of which the universe consists (Prov. 8:26), so here the human being is not unique. His "soul" is not unique either; animals have the same "soul" (v. 19; compare Gen. 1:20-21; 9:4, 5, 10, 12, 15-16), which is not surprising, because the corresponding Hebrew word simply means "life," in the sense of the life principle or life force present in every living being. If "dust" connects the human being with all nature in general, then "soul" connects him with all living nature. The uniqueness of the human being as a creature made "in the image and likeness of God" (Gen. 1:24-25) lies in the "breath of life" given to him by God (v. 7). But this "breath" does not belong to the human being; it is not part of human nature. It is given to him while remaining at the same time something completely unlike his own nature. Strictly speaking, it is not nature at all, because it is from God, from the One who, having created all nature, is Himself not nature. In a certain sense, the human being was created from the very beginning as a "supernatural" being, that is, one who goes beyond the limits of nature. And only by going beyond its limits can he remain himself, as God intended him to be. The will that makes a person free and gives him the possibility of choosing; reason and the creative principle that raise him above natural instincts; and even simply self-awareness, which allows a person to say of himself, "I exist" - all these are gifts given by God to everyone who comes into the world. And this is the most wonderful gift: God gives the human being his humanity.

What stands behind the description of a wondrous garden where unheard-of fruits grow, where great rivers flow, where birds and animals bow their heads before the human being and receive new names from him, acknowledging his authority over the whole earth? Human language can speak about paradise only in symbols, painting a picture of the harmony and joyful stillness of nature, which knows that it was created for the sake of the human being. Perhaps harmony is the key word in this picture: nothing yet darkens the relationship between man and woman, who have not yet forgotten how to love; nothing stands between the human being and the fruits of Eden. God and the human being still live in one garden, open to one another, and this is paradise.

What is the human being? And what is the Garden of Eden? At first glance it may appear that the issue is a completely real, earthly geography. Yet every people has such a sacred geography. Every people has its own sacred land, its own mythological ancestral homeland, usually where that people's historical memory awoke, where its own history began for it. The Jews remember themselves from the time of Abraham, and that means Harran, Northern Mesopotamia, where the Garden of Eden is located. There was something else as well: the memory of the times the Greeks called the "golden age," when the human being lived in full harmony with the world, with other people, with the gods, and with himself as well. The Garden of Eden in the Book of Genesis combines features of the mythological ancestral homeland of the Jewish people with a description of the world in the times of the "golden age"; in this way the sacred writer wants to tell us that those times are not merely myth, that at one time the human being really did live in full harmony with God, with the world, with himself, and with other people.

What, then, was the perfect human being like? In the Poem of Creation it is said of him that he, alone of all the living beings created by God in our world, was created in the image and likeness of God. All the animals are created, each according to its "kind," or, as we would say today, according to its prototype. Only the human being has no prototype: every human being is created according to the image of God, and God Himself becomes the human being's "prototype." How is such a thing possible? From the point of view of his nature, the human being does not differ from other living beings; he is created by God from the "dust of the earth," and the whole universe, as people thought in the times when the account of the creation of the human being was written, consists of the tiniest specks of dust. There is nothing unique in human nature as such. The human being's uniqueness lies elsewhere: in that "breath of life" through which he becomes a "living soul." In the Bible, "soul" is not a static structure, but a process, the stream of life in which both the spiritual and the natural component are present: here are lofty spiritual movements, and simple physiology too, such as breathing or blood circulation.

A modern philosopher would probably call this stream existence. Such is the human soul in the biblical sense of the word. And the stream of human life exists in the quality in which it exists thanks to that very "breath of life," God's breath, God's presence at the very center of our own personhood, which makes that personhood's very existence possible. If there were no divine "breath of life," there would be no human being as the image of God; there would simply be another species of primates. That is why there is no human being without continuous communion with God: after all, breathing is not a one-time act, but a process that must continue without interruption. The human being was conceived and created by God for continuous communion with God, outside of which, spiritually speaking, he simply cannot remain himself. And yet God leaves the human being freedom: he can live as God proposes to him, or choose his own version of existence, under his full responsibility for all the consequences of his choice.

Today we read that the Lord gave the human being the right to give names to every living creature. And about the first prohibition, concerning the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. About how the Lord warned that if one ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, one would die. And how He watched as the human being gave names to the animals and birds.

When the human being was in his Father's house, and He showed him the world, spoke with him, and rejoiced in his achievements. And although today we do not read about the breaking of the first law, not to eat the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, we know that this was how the fall took place. And having become proud, the human being began his rule on earth by the sweat of his brow.

And in the words of the prophet Isaiah we know that on the day of the Second Coming God will restore in us the memory of who created everything we manage. He will restore it through our fear. He will take away our strength and abilities, and once again we will become speechless. And our works will condemn us.

In the Proverbs of Solomon we read a remembrance and an indication that fulfilling the Lord's commandments is the fulfillment of the Father's will by His children. When the Lord entrusts something to us, we, as His children, carry out these requests and assignments. We need wisdom and understanding, humility, and the will to be with Him. Now we have to accomplish much labor in order to meet Him again. Almost impossible labor, were it not for His desire to meet us. Not only by His will, but by our love for Him.