The house of him that hath his shoe loosed (Ruth 4)

So Boaz goes to the gate of the city and waits. The purpose is twofold: he's expecting the nearer kinsman to come through the gate eventually, and in that location, the elders of the city will be present to act as witnesses to whatever comes to pass. (Important men of the city in those days tended to sit by the city gate and talk about civic matters.) The man comes along and Boaz flags him down.

Boaz informs the man that Naomi has returned, and a goel is needed to buy back her sold land. Boaz tells this man that he is willing to do it, but this man has first right to it. The man agrees to buy the field. Boaz points out that along with the field, the goel has to marry Ruth, a Moabite woman, and give her children. The kinsman doesn't like the sound of this, and refuses, giving his shoe to Boaz in apparent accordance with Deuteronomy 25:10.

This is exactly what Boaz wanted, and he declares to all assembled that he is buying the land back, paying off the debt of Elimelech, Naomi and Ruth, and marrying Ruth in order that he might reestablish the inheritance of Elimelech. The people pronounce blessings on Boaz, both a straightforward one ("The LORD make the woman that is come into thine house like Rachel and like Leah, which two did build the house of Israel.") and a very strange one ("And let thy house be like the house of Pharez, whom Tamar bare unto Judah"). This second blessing is odd, because it's a reference to what is probably one of the more shameful chapters in Israel's early history, but most likely, the reason for the blessing was twofold: First, Boaz and perhaps several others there were descendants of Pharez, and so it might be fitting to remember not just the founding of the tribes of Israel, but the founding of their own tribe within the nation. Secondly, there is an interesting similarity between the two stories, both involving a non-Israelite woman whose first husband died and had to be given a son by the second-closest living relative.

The story closes with a genealogy from Pharez to David through Obed, the son of Ruth, reminding us that despite the fact that Jewish men to the present pray daily thanks to God that they are Jews and not gentiles, men and not women, and free and not slaves, it was the work of a gentile woman under the enslavement of a debt that led to the establishment of Israel's greatest dynasty.

Allegorically, who is this nearer kinsman? Well, if we're taking a Christian approach to this, who had the first chance to redeem the nation of Israel, but was not able to do so? This first kinsman may represent the Mosaic Law, which does not have the ability to redeem, but has to be given the first opportunity to at least make an attempt. In the end, though, there was a need for a redeemer who was willing to give up everything to redeem. (Admittedly, this part of the allegory is a bit murky.)

Is there significance to the shoe thing? I think so. It's actually quite surprising how many times in the Bible there is talk of the removing of shoes at significant transitional points in history. Most people remember that Moses was asked to remove his shoes when he approached the burning bush (Exodus 3:5), but the point I like the best is a point from the New Testament that actually appears in all four Gospels:

Matthew 3:11 "he that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear:"
Mark 1:7 "There cometh one mightier than I after me, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to stoop down and unloose."
Luke 3:16 "one mightier than I cometh, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to unloose"
John 1:27 "He it is, who coming after me is preferred before me, whose shoe's latchet I am not worthy to unloose."

Why would John the Baptist be so concerned with Jesus' shoes? As we have seen, removing another person's shoes is symbolic of that person having failed to perform an important duty to you. I believe John is saying there is no portion of the Law that Jesus will fail to fulfill, and His redemption will be complete.

What is it in the allegory that is really being redeemed, though? Well, in the days of ancient Israel, when the land was sold, the title was written on a trust deed scroll which was sealed until someone should come to redeem it. Since it was sealed, information had to be written on the outside of the scroll so that people could remember what was inside it, and who had the right to open it. Because of the nature of scrolls, this was one of the few times that a scroll would be written on both sides. Suggestive?

And I saw in the right hand of him that sat on the throne a book written within and on the backside, sealed with seven seals. And I saw a strong angel proclaiming with a loud voice, Who is worthy to open the book, and to loose the seals thereof? (Revelation 5:1,2)

It has been suggested by some scholars of Apocalyptic literature that this "book" (a scroll), which by its format is clearly some sort of trust deed, may in fact be the trust deed to the earth, which in some esoteric manner was sold by Adam to Satan. Whatever the nature of the transaction that led to the earth being sold and needing to be redeemed, it does seem clear that Satan owns the land for the time being, as he offered to give it to Christ during His temptation in the wilderness. If the world were not Satan's to give, why would it be a temptation to offer it? But to get it the wrong way? That simply wouldn't do. Christ paid the full price for the earth with His blood on the cross, and in so doing redeemed us all from the debt that our ancestors left to us. Not out of a sense of power or acquisition, for He had all that He needed already, but out of a deep love that the love between a man and his new bride, however powerful that may be, can only be a mere shadow thereof.

And called their name Adam (Gen 5)

This is going to be fun, since despite the large number of notes in chapter 5 of the SAB, most of them are of the same nature, and so I think we can dispense of this whole chapter in one post. Let's see...

The first point that the SAB brings up is the verse I've used for the title here. "So the woman's name was Adam, too!" The SAB notes as an absurdity. Well, the answer is, "Yes." Sure, it's not something you get from a surface reading of the KJV, but most people know that "Adam" is the Hebrew word for "man", so in a symbolic sense and in a very real sense, we are all "Adam."

As I noted before, the Bible can admittedly be a bit sexist when it comes to details, and daughters are indeed very rarely mentioned. So while verse 4 contains the first mention of daughters, there may actually have been various children of both genders before Seth was born. I myself had often assumed that this genealogy was mentioning firstborns only, and that they were coincidentally only sons, but what's really very likely going on here is we're tracing the male lineage of Noah from Adam. Sons not in the lineage and all daughters are not worth mentioning by name apparently. Even Noah's wife and three daughters-in-law aren't named despite their apparent importance to the story that unfolds after this.

So the big repeated note throughout this chapter is essentially, "Man, these guys sure lived to be pretty old!" I've heard a lot of theories about why these guys had such extended lifespans, and suffice it to say that most of them boil down to simply being so soon after the fall. They were living in a world that was new and fresh, and there probably weren't all the modern problems of disease that we have in modern times. Most theologians do believe that Adam was created to be immortal, so it took some time before the system really broke down and people started dying of natural causes. Whatever it is going on here, we'll see a contrast in the next genealogy. While having no particular value, I nonetheless present a little diagram I threw together last week when I was looking ahead at this chapter:

Enoch is an odd one, isn't he? The SAB has a lot to say about him, and indeed, he's strange. Let me address the three questions raised by the SAB in response to Enoch's story.

(1) Must everyone die? I suppose the SAB ought to have included the references to the prophet Elijah that it did in the second question here. (And it might have considered even discussing some odd interpretations of John 21:22 that are out there.) Yes, there are in fact two people in the Bible that didn't die: Enoch and Elijah. This coming despite the two verses quoted in the right-hand column. While the verses on the left are in some cases misunderstood, I'm going to focus on those two right-hand verses. When the Bible says "...death passed upon all men," we have to realize that there is room for exceptions. If there are a bunch of people going to sea in a leaky boat, and you say to them, "Everyone in that boat is going to drown," that doesn't mean that they can't get out of the boat and be safe. For whatever reason, Enoch and Elijah were allowed to "get out of the boat" if you will. The second verse is another matter that, if indeed a skeptic were to reject my reasoning here, the SAB needs to add some more notes to passages like John 11. Not only do we have a couple folks (at least) who don't die at all, but contrary to being "appointed unto men once to die," we have about half a dozen people in the Bible that die more than once, Lazarus being simply the best-known of the bunch. The real sense of this verse, as taken by theologians and run-of-the-mill Christians, is that under normal circumstances, people have one physical death to look forward to. The Bible gives us less than ten people that have non-normal circumstances in regards to the matter of death, so that's well over 99.99% of the world conforming to a literal interpretation of Hebrews 9:27.

(2) Has anyone ever ascended into heaven? This is a simpler one. My take on this is that nobody has ascended into Heaven and thereafter given testimony of it on earth. We do know that two people ascended to Heaven, and in fact, a lot of others ascended after their death, but what Jesus is saying in John 3:13 is that if you're looking for someone to tell you what Heaven is like, you've got nobody other than Jesus with that firsthand knowledge. (Of course, the SAB could consider this verse next to 2Cor. 12, although it describes an event after Jesus left.)

(3) Was Enoch the seventh from Adam? Yes, if you count Adam as #1, which is not at all unreasonable to do.

As a last note for this chapter, I'd like to take a side trip into Hebrew and talk about the meaning of these names. Maybe you've heard this before, I find it all fascinating. We know from the text that "Seth" means "appointed", and "Noah" means "comfort". The other names all mean something as well. The most interesting name on the list is probably Methuselah, whose name some have said means "his death will bring it." Methuselah died the same year as the flood.

But if ye had known what this meaneth (Gen 4:1-7)

Genesis 4:1 marks the first instance of the SAB's use of the sex icon. I'd like to say to the SAB's credit that having such a category is actually a good idea, and would like to point the casual reader of the SAB to the FAQ page where its usage is explained, since it can be confusing as to why the category exists. After all, is there something wrong with sex per se? Even most Christians don't think so, although as is pointed out, we often believe there is an excess of it in our culture, and we ought to not forget that the Bible has some rather disturbing sexual content in several of its books.

That being said, I'm not 100% sure I agree that the usage of the icon is warranted here. If the point of the icon is to show that there is nasty sexual content going on in the Bible, this is not one of those places. A man simply having sex with his wife is not only acceptable, it's a positive thing, even if you are among those people who believe sex is for procreation only, as Adam and Eve end up having a child.

Now it's important to note something about what the text does not say, and make some inferred guesses regarding it in order to make sense of a lot of what comes. The Bible does not say that Cain is the first offspring of Adam and Eve, nor that Abel is the second and Seth is the third. Chalk it partly up to sexism, and partly up to a method of fairly condensed storytelling, but daughters and less significant sons are pretty much left unmentioned through much of the Old Testament. (An interesting thing to note is that while these genealogies almost always give the ages of the men, there is only one woman in the entire O.T. whose age is ever mentioned.) There may have been many other children before the story of Abel's murder unfolds, but for the purpose of telling the story, only these two men are important enough to mention. Since the people in the pre-flood days lived so long and seemed to have children well into their old age, some have assumed that Adam and Eve may have had several hundred children and probably lived to see millions of grandchildren and great-grandchildren. (Assuming most people are living hundreds of years, start having children at age 30 and produce offspring at a rate of one every other year, by the time Adam is 250 years old, the world population is already over 2 million, and the world's present population could have easily been reached by the time Adam was 400! Of course, this sort of growth would eventually have to top out, or the population would be in the sextillions by the time of the flood, a stretch of any imagination.). In fact, if we take the numbers in Genesis 5 at face value, Adam nearly lived to see the birth of Noah, his great⁷-grandson.

All of that said, the names of Cain and Abel do suggest that they may be the first two offspring for thematic reasons. She gives this first child the name "Cain", which is similar in sound to the Hebrew words for "gotten" or "made". Regarding the prophecy in Genesis 3:15, Eve may have thought literally that her very first offspring would be the one to defeat the serpent, seeing as she's so excited about him. Whether or not, she seems exceedingly excited to have made a baby, and as such I think it is fairly safe to assume Cain was the first child. She seems far less impressed with the birth of Abel, whose name means something like "meaningless" or "temporary". Most Bibles note that this may be a foreshadowing of the fact that his life isn't destined to be very long.

Now comes the point of tension: Cain and Abel each offer up sacrifices to the Lord, but He doesn't like Cain's offering of vegetables, and has higher respect for Abel's offering of animals. Cain gets jealous. The SAB brings up two good points about this lead-in, both of which come under the categories of "injustice" and "contradiction". I'll discuss each one, but my response to both is similar.

First of all, the point that is being made in this passage is apparently that animal sacrifices are necessary in worshipping God. This is true. Aside from the point I already made about Adam and Eve's fur coats, we see animal sacrifices in this story, in the story of Noah, in the story of Abraham, in the Exodus, and so on, up until the final ultimate sacrifice of Jesus. The theme persists that sin must be covered by blood, discussed in Hebrews 9 and beyond. Yet the SAB gives numerous verses in which God says He doesn't want animal sacrifices. Actually, there are many more than are listed on that page, but the theme of those verses, if taken in context, are usually quite clear. When a person sins, there is a necessity of offering up a sacrifice to cover the sin. The idea, however, is that offering up all these sacrifices is going to make you aware of the evil of sin, and stop sinning. Using my parent-child metaphor, imagine a home that has one of those little "swear jars"; I've never had one, but perhaps some of you have, and for those not familiar, the idea is that every time someone says a bad word, they have to put money in the jar to pay a sort of fine. (The concept was used rather humorously in the sci-fi movie "Demolition Man".) Anyway, imagine a child who is required to put a nickel in the jar for each swear word. One day, the child goes up to the jar in front of their parent, puts in a dollar and says, "Just covering myself for the rest of the day. I'm feeling @*$&# feisty today!" It's not going to float. The parent (if they're smart and serious about the issue) is going to stop the child and explain to them that they don't need the money nearly so much as they need their child to understand that swearing is unacceptable. The best, most succinct statement of this concept is in 1Samuel 15:22, where the prophet says to King Saul;

Hath the LORD as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the LORD? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams.

In any case, the issue here is that Cain is doing his sacrifices wrong. This parallels modern do-it-yourself religion, in which a person may claim to be a follower of a particular religion, but don't really follow its tenets. For a period of time before I consider myself to have truly become a Christian, I used to claim to be a "Christian", but I lived my life no different from any atheist. I never even went to church, even once! And it's not just Christianity where this happens; I had a girlfriend for a while who claimed to be a Buddhist, but she ate meat. It is my understanding that vegetarianism is an important part of "The Noble Eightfold Path". (Buddhism is one of the non-Christian religions I hold in high regard; there's a lot of wisdom in it.)

The second issue is concerning whether God "respects" anyone. Well, yes and no. I think the real point of the verses in question that say, "God is no respecter of persons," is to say that God is not prejudiced. Most people in the world (in fact, I suspect just about everyone) will accept a person they have just met for the first time based on preconceived notions about their race, gender, and physical appearance. It's not necessarily a wrong thing, it's just the way our brains work: we tend to guess on the details that we don't know about, and base it on past experiences or things we have been taught by our schooling and culture. God is in a special position, however, in that He knows what a person is really like deep in their heart and mind, and doesn't have to depend on surface impressions. Once again, there is a particular verse that best shows this concept, and in fact, it's on the page I linked to on the SAB at the top of this paragraph. 1Peter 1:17

And if ye call on the Father, who without respect of persons judgeth according to every man's work, pass the time of your sojourning here in fear:

Taking this apart, Peter is saying that He doesn't judge people for who they are, but for what they do, and the choices they make in life, so choose carefully. In the case of our passage here, Cain is making some poor choices, and we'll see throughout this chapter that He continues to make bad choices, as God warns him is likely to happen.

To die is gain (Gen 3:20-24)

The SAB takes issue with the statement that Eve is "the mother of all living", but for an odd reason. Well, at least I think it's odd. The issue is not with the concept that all humans are descended from a common female ancestor (and actually, I think biology may teach that to be the case, someone can correct me if I'm wrong) but that there was supposedly a man named Melchizedek who had no ancestry. I'm going to save discussion of Melchizedek for chapter 14, where he shows up in person. This guy is definitely an oddball in the Bible, and there are more than a few theories concerning his nature.

God makes some fur coats for Adam and Eve, which the SAB labels as an absurdity, but doesn't explain why. This is actually a much more significant event than most people get on a surface reading, and is worth noting. Previously, Adam and Eve had covered themselves with fig leaves, and before that, they ran around naked. This indicates to me that the issue of clothing was a matter of covering up nakedness, and not a matter of protecting against the cold. Yet God feels there is a need to give them furs to cover them. A pattern throughout the Bible is the idea that sin leads to death; but not always the death of the person who sins. In this case, while Adam's death is put off for at least another 800 years, God can't let it rest without the death of some animals. This is actually the beginning of the sacrificial system, and the idea that the only thing that can cover up the sin of the guilty is the blood of the innocent. Don't ask me why, I don't understand it well myself.

After giving them the skins, God expresses concern that Adam and Eve have access to the tree of life. (Comments on God using "us" are back here.) Apparently eating the fruit from the tree of life will make one immortal. I think the SAB has a bit of a clear misreading in its notes here, however*; God isn't afraid that mankind will become like God by eating the tree of life, He's grieved that they have already become like Him by eating the forbidden fruit. Note that the tree of life was not a tree they were banned from eating, but the situation has changed. As I said before, now the world is not a pleasant place to be in, and mankind has become separated from God. In order to fix both these situations, God decides that it will be an act of mercy to let mankind die. In dying, they will have the chance to be separated from their physical sinfulness and eventually brought back into a relationship with God in Heaven. Remember, in Christian theology, death is not a bad thing in and of itself. If you desire to be with God, then you will be. If you desire to have God leave you alone, then that will happen for you.

Adam and Eve are kicked out of the garden, and a guard is set to make sure that nobody goes back in and gets to the tree of life. It would be very tempting for someone to go and eat from that tree, but it would be wrong to do so, because it would make their life a living Hell.

I'm reminded of C.S. Lewis' book The Magician's Nephew, which Lewis clearly intended to be an allegory of a sort for the Genesis story. Near the end of the book, the main character, a boy named Digory discusses with Aslan (symbolic of Jesus) how he was tempted to steal a magic apple to take home to his sick mother. A witch had told him that the apple would have healed her sickness. Aslan responds to Digory:

"Understand, then, that it would have healed her; but not to your joy or hers. The day would have come when both you and she would have looked back and said it would have been better to die in that illness."

Like Digory's mother, we're all suffering from an illness known as sin, and to have eaten an apple that made us live forever would not so much cure the illness as treat one of the symptoms. We're all going to die someday, and it's something that everyone ought to know, but even Christians often forget, but dying is not a loss, it's just stepping into the next phase of our existence, and one that for many of us will be a much better one.

*SAB notes have been changed since the writing of this entry; see comments.

And so death passed upon all men (Gen 3:14-19)

I've always thought it was a little strange that God doesn't ask the serpent for his version of what happened. Maybe God was tired of hearing people pass the buck, or perhaps since the serpent is apparently Satanic, He's just not interested in hearing any lies at this point in time. Anyway, after asking questions of the man and the woman, He just goes straight to pronouncing the curse on the snake.

Now a part of this is definitely my own opinion, and I'm not sure whether more formal theologians share this viewpoint, but I don't think God has much of a choice in this matter. A lot of Christians seem to operate under the assumption that God makes up the moral law, and that apart from God creating moral law, it simply wouldn't exist. I tend to believe that there may be certain aspects of the rules of morality and spirituality that God has no control over. I know many skeptics would ask whether that means God is not omnipotent after all.

I think omnipotence, while still being omnipotence, is actually limited by logic. I believe there are certain things that are a part of the world that are that way simply because having them not be that way would be absurd. The concept of 1+1=2 is a concept so basic that I don't think even God can make it not be true, and I don't think it's reasonable to expect Him to have that sort of power. Mathematics, geometry, logic and certain aspects of physics are, I believe, beyond God's control: they simply are true. If that's the case (and I leave it without proof as such proof may be well beyond my ability) then might it not also be true that at least some aspects of moral and spiritual law are beyond God's ability to change?

God is a being that is entirely good. Interestingly enough, that creates a difficulty for God, as He is by His very nature repellant to evil. Once the fruit had been eaten, God was unable to have the same sort of relationship with mankind that He'd had before. As I said previously, Adam "died" to his relationship with God. This in itself was a curse, as having an intimate relationship with God is (so a Christian believes) the absolute best thing one can have. So part of the curse that now comes upon Adam, his wife, the serpent, and the whole world is actually not by God's choice, but simply the logical conclusion of God having to step back and let Adam live without Him. Some of it is by God's choice, either to punish, to fix the situation, or both.

The curse God gives the serpent in verse 14 seems to be clearly punitive. Essentially, as just about everyone reads this, God takes away the serpent's legs, forcing it to walk on its belly and "eat dust". I don't see any reason to take that latter concept more literally than the fact that, having its face always on the ground or mere inches from the ground, it probably does swallow a fair amount of dust on a regular basis. (Note that this serpent takes on a curse that eventually affects the roughly 3,000 modernly known species of snakes. Perhaps all those species evolved from this one and its mate?) The part of the curse in verse 15 is part natural and part, well, something else. Simply because of the role that the serpent played in all of this, and because of the form snakes took afterwards, they became despised by humanity. (In general, of course; I've owned pet snakes myself, and think they're quite nice.) But of course, many Christians have also taken this verse to be a prophecy of the crucifixion: that one day a man would come who would be injured by Satan, but would, in the injuring, cause Satan utter destruction.

God then turns to the woman, and tells her that she is to be cursed with painful childbirth and an apparently subordinate position under men. I once read an interesting analysis of this concept from an evolutionary point of view. Of all the animals, humans seem to have the most painful process of childbirth. Interestingly enough, this is due in part to the fact that the pelvis is shaped differently due to our being bipedal, and our infants having very large heads. Thus when we, as a species, were separated from other animals, it was when we walked upright and became intelligent which led to change in social structure, development of tools and language, changed sexual practice, and difficult childbirth. Whatever your views on this, I think it's true that being intelligent can be painful at times. The woman wanted to be smarter, and it cost her, whatever the reason was. The fact that she ends up in a subordinate position to men is, in my opinion, not because God wanted to push her down, but because men, in their fallen state, have a tendency to do this anyway, which doesn't make it right. Maybe I'm too much of a feminist to be a good Christian.

Then God turns to man and curses the ground. (The SAB notes that Adam is cursed for listening to his wife, but I don't this is a sexist thing; only that Adam should have listened to God rather than anyone else at all regardless of gender.) Adam now has to work to get his food, rather than having lovely fruits to eat in a beautiful garden. Whether new types of plants with thorns and such came about because of this curse, or that they simply didn't exist in the garden, and man had to deal with them when he was tossed out, I don't know. I think there was a bit of both. The garden was meant to be an ideal situation, and probably had only fruit trees, and perhaps soft grass underfoot. Outside, things were wilder, and work was needed to produce something edible for mankind. And of course, after working hard for years and years to make things comfortable for himself, in the end physical death would come.

Now, natural consequences or choice of God, why are these curses a good thing? As I said above, the assumption we work with here is that the relationship that mankind had with God before the fall is the highest good that man can enjoy, but eating the fruit has destroyed that good. If God is righteous, and by His very nature that He cannot change, demands righteousness, how can an unrighteous human being come to have a relationship with God? The answer is justice. Man must pay for his crimes against God, and the payment is death. God doesn't allow them to live forever separated from Him, but causes them to live in a world that is difficult and deadly, so that they will always remember that their aim is to make it through life to a better life with God after they pass away. The full details of this really come out in the life of Jesus, of course, but some of it will be in the rest of this chapter.

And the eyes of them both were opened (Gen 3:7-13)

I think many children go through a process like this at some point in their life: having their eyes opened, as it were. There comes a day when you realize that you have the freedom to act against your parents' will. This happens at different ages and in different ways, but whatever it is, you suddenly realize your own power as a free individual, and it changes the way you see the world around you. Oh my gosh, mommy and daddy don't know everything! Well, in this case, God is the parent, and He does know everything. But the fact that He knows everything and has the ability to control everything doesn't mean that it's something He's going to flaunt. Still, the man and woman had their outlook on God change.

The very first manifestation of this was noticing that they were naked. There's once again something literal and figurative in this. All throughout the Bible, there's a linkage between the themes of clothing and sin. In particular, I've always thought it was interesting to look at the parallel between this chapter and the story of the crucifixion. The man and the women sin against the will of God; Jesus becomes sin according to the will of God. The man and the women are separated from God's presence by guarding cherubim; the curtain of the Jewish temple which is embroidered with cherubim and separates man from God is torn open. God gives mankind clothing by killing an animal; mankind takes Jesus' clothing and kills Him on the cross. It's an interesting symbolic and literal reversal on many levels. In any case, they suddenly realize they've got something shameful to cover up.

The next thing that happens is that God "shows up". I put it in quotes because, as the SAB points out, there's some trouble you run into if you take verse 8 fully literally. Here's God in the garden, walking and talking like just some other guy, it almost seems. But we do know both from scripture and from commonly accepted doctrine that God has no body. A very likely possibility is of this passage being figurative; to some extent, it must be since God is also omnipresent. Then again, having no corporeal substance and being omnipresent at the same time is also a problem. I think it simply has to be accepted that God was literally there in the garden in some form, because even if he has no "body", He's everywhere, which includes the garden. So the sense of omnipresence is a spiritual rather than physical thing necessarily. (I hope this is making some sort of sense, I'm not feeling really well today for some reason.)

Another thing that is also often accepted, though, is that God does, at times, cause Himself to take on a physical human-like form (if not actually human). The man and woman perhaps experienced Him often in this form, visiting them in the garden. This time, when they heard Him coming, they hid. The fact that they hid from an omniscient being doesn't pose a conundrum, nor does the fact that God asks them where they are. My own children sometimes climb into my bed and pull the covers over their head to hide, completely missing the fact that the child-sized lump in the bed discloses their location. If I say, "Where are you?" I'm not admitting ignorance, but feigning it for the purpose of playing along in a little hide-and-seek. God's not playing, but throughout the Bible, God asks people questions He already knows the answer to in order to give them a chance to confess and seek forgiveness. I've heard some pastors muse that if Adam had only popped out and said, "Alright, I was hiding because I was ashamed that I ate the fruit, and now I'm afraid I'm going to die, please forgive me?" that things would have been, well not back to perfect, but better in any case.

God even gives Adam a second chance, hinting at the truth. Adam takes the chance to put the blame not only on his wife, but God Himself: "The woman (yeah, it was the woman, that's right, I was just standing here!) whom thou gavest (wait a minute, wasn't it God's idea that I had to have this trouble-maker with me? Yeah, I think this was His fault; I want my rib back!) to be with me..." The woman even tries to pass the buck as well. In the end, though, God's not buying any of it.

I think the Bible is a strong supporter of the idea that everyone is responsible for their own choices. I think it may sound odd coming in the middle of the story of original sin, and how this one act of eating a piece of fruit ended up changing the world for every human that ever lived, but it fits here. Yes, we are all stained by original sin, and have that sinful nature within us that we inherited from Adam, but at the same time, God will expect us to take responsibility for our own lives and our own destinies. In tomorrow's entry, I'll talk about the curse that came on the world, but I'll also talk a bit more about God's plan to take care of lifting the curse. God does His part, and we do ours. And it's not a meet me halfway deal, it's God coming 100% of the way, and only asking for your response.

An help meet for him (Gen 2:18-25)

After creating man, God decides there needs to be someone to give him special companionship and be a team with him. Don't get the Bible wrong, all the stuff about parading animals in front of man to check them out and name them at this point in the middle of the creation of woman isn't meant as a tangent, or even as some might like to suggest humorously a hint of bestiality (oh wait, the SAB does that, too, just farther down the page). Being omniscient, God is already intending to do everything that He eventually does from the moment the universe is created. Some people have suspected that God is showing man that animals all come in male and female varieties so that man will realize that a human female is missing. It's an interesting conjecture, but I think it lacks something, especially since some animals like bees have something more complex going on than simply male/female varieties among the species. I think the purpose is similar, though; man is seeing that there are a lot of different animals in the world, and yet none of them are quite like him.

The SAB notes that in the N.T., the Apostle Paul writes that it's better to be single. I don't think that it's a contradiction at all, though. To a large extent, this is Paul's personal opinion; although I don't think it's outright stated, I think most scholars believe that Paul was probably married early in life, and at the time he writes 1Corinthians, he's divorced. (Perhaps because his wife couldn't stand him once he became a Christian?) Paul is pointing out that one can give oneself wholeheartedly to ministry if one does not have to worry about supporting a family. Notice in verse 7:6, Paul in fact says that nothing in this chapter before verse 10 is a command. Most of what he says here is about sexual relations, and that people who are married should be having a healthy, active sex life to keep their marriage functioning properly. The reason Paul says not to marry is in verse 26 of that same chapter, where he says that there is a "present crisis" during which people should do their best to refrain from forming or breaking relationships. In other words, it's largely a temporary thing, whatever is bothering Paul about marriage here.

When man does spend time naming all the animals, a person who knows a bit about biology and puts two and two together would of course point out (as the SAB does), "There are millions of different species of animals in the world. Assuming man was to name one species per second without stopping to take a break even to sleep, it would take weeks to get through them all." This is actually an interesting point I'd not thought of before I read it in the SAB. The first thing to note is that this is not technically a problem. I believe theologians hold that man was essentially immortal while he was in the garden, and had nothing better to do but whatever God had for him to do, so even if this took years, it's pretty much okay. However, I'm inclined to say that man did not actually have to name each and every single species on the planet. Sure, there are lions, tigers, cheetahs, pumas, etc., but it might have sufficed for man to simply name them all "cat". For one thing, as I pointed out before, the ancient taxonomic systems weren't much like our modern one, and while yes, God knows more about science (biology in this case) than the ancients did, that doesn't mean that even He classifies animals the way that we do. For another thing, something that virtually no one seems to ever note about this story is that man is naming the animals in a language that we cannot identify. A large portion of the millions of species that we have classified today have only a Latin name, but it seems fairly safe to assume that Latin had not yet been invented. Realistically, the naming process here is unfathomable to us because whatever it was, it was a very foreign process to us.

On a side note, (this being a side note, those readers who complain about these tangents can skip this paragraph) some people have suggested that some limited evolutionary processes has caused there to be more species today than there were at the time of the creation. Well, the thought usually comes up in the context of discussing Noah's ark, actually, but wherever you bring it up, it has some problems that are a bit beyond my knowledge of biology. The short version is that theists seem to be arguing against evolution when it's not convenient, but then when it becomes convenient, they suddenly choose to imagine it being a much swifter process than any sane biologist would ever suggest. My personal thought on this particular story is that if God is bringing animals as potential companions to man, there's a lot of animals that simply aren't worth considering, including most if not all animals that live in the sea, and insects. "Okay, Adam, you don't like the 'dragonfly' as you called it? How about this little guy future generations will call pulex irritans? He might make a good companion...oops, looks like you don't get a choice, so what do you want to call him?"

In any case, when this parade is all done, man finds nothing suitable ("meet"). So God makes man fall asleep and fashions him a wife out of his rib. There are a number of interesting poetic things about this concept. I've heard in many sermons that the lesson we should take about God using a piece of the man's body rather than starting over is that a man's wife should truly be like a part of him (v. 23). Also, the fact that it was a part from the middle of his body rather than the top or the bottom indicates an essential equality between man and woman. Lastly, the fact that she was made from bone rather than clay (as man was) might say something about the nature of a woman. Bone is more delicate and lighter than clay, but when clay breaks, it shatters, while bones merely chip, so women therefore have a sort of delicate strength to them that is absent in men.

The last point that the SAB makes about this chapter is a question about the nature of polygamy in the Bible. (Note that if properly understood, the last three verses in the "Yes" column are really in the wrong place. The last two are clearly anti-polygamy, and the third to last is a misunderstanding of cultural context: these women are not brides, but bridesmaids.) Here, God apparently institutes marriage as being a monogamous thing (Jesus says so, at least), yet polygamy is found pretty commonly throughout the scriptures. There is an important distinction between what the Bible shows and what the Bible teaches. Yes, many of these men were polygamists, but God never says that it's okay; in fact, quite a few of them were personally told by God that they'd done a bad thing. The fact is, polygamy is never said to be a sin in the Bible, and frankly, I don't think it is, but it definitely is a problem. I was told by a pastor once that you will find no example of a polygamist in the Bible that didn't have trouble come about from his polygamy, and from what I have read, it's true. Also note that aside from requiring church leaders to be monogamous, God also required kings to be monogamous along with a lot of other rules about kings in Deuteronomy 17:14-20 that apparently David and Solomon never read. The SAB ought to have some notes on that passage, it's a doozy.

The tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Gen 2:15-17)

Frankly, if you've heard any apologetics concerning the first few chapters of the book of Genesis, you've probably heard a lot of what I have to say here. Clicking around the Internet in my spare time and looking at a few sites that are like the SAB, responses to the SAB and sites like it, and others still giving rebuttals to responses, I'm frankly finding it a bit depressing. In that middle category where my blog fits, there seem to be largely two types of folks: absolute geniuses and muddled hacks. I don't think I'm one of the former, but I fear it places me in jeopardy of being grouped with the latter. Hopefully my willingness to admit that I am not a genius in this area will lend me a certain air of credibility for my honesty at least. I'm not a theologian, I don't know all the answers, and admittedly very little of what I write here proves anything. The SAB suggests some problems with the Bible, I suggest some explanations for them, and the Bible is neither proven to be infallible nor utterly wrong, but only ambiguous. Even if I were a highly gifted apologist, the reader would still of course decide for themselves how to take the Bible's claims. It's nice to get that off of my chest.

Okay, it's finally time to get to the topic I'd mentioned twice before: the tree of "the knowledge of good and evil." What is it, and why does God put it in the garden? It seems like putting your children in the backyard to play and saying, "By the way, don't jump in the pit with the spikes lining the bottom that I dug in the back corner by the swing set, okay?" You'll find that my favorite metaphor to illustrate the relationship between mankind and God is the relationship between children and their parents, so expect a lot of this now that we're discussing humanity.

The tree itself is never said to be an apple as is often believed, and in fact, we don't know what kind of fruit it was (but see comments for interesting speculation!). The fact that we often think of it as an apple is interesting, as I think it does the job of my first point, which is that there was nothing particularly special about this tree. Apples are good and healthy; there's nothing deadly about them, nor particularly wisdom-imparting. I believe that this tree was a tree much like any other in the garden, with the singular exception that God points it out as special. In other words, the tree has nothing that intrinsically sets it apart, but God uses it as a symbol.

What is it a symbol of? Well, knowledge of good and evil, of course. God creates man with understanding, obviously, since God is talking with him. If man did not understand, God would have known, and made it clearer. God was giving a simple message to man: "Evil" is the things that you're not supposed to do, "good" is the things that you should do. The only thing you need to know about "evil" is don't eat from that tree. It's a completely arbitrary distinction between that tree and the others, but an important one. It's so important that man's very life is claimed to be dependent on it.

So why make that distinction? Why allow man to die over this arbitrary tree? The answer is "free will". God wants man to be devoted to his Creator; to love Him, follow Him, worship Him, have fellowship with Him, etc. But what does it really mean to say, "I want you to love me and do as I tell you, but I won't give you any choice in the matter, okay?" Is it meaningful for me to say that I know my daughter loves me because she's never tried to run away from home, when she's too small to reach the knob on the front door? Now, that doesn't mean that to be loving I have to leave the front door open and see if she walks out it and goes away, but for God being in this special position, He needs to create something that is an option for rebellion.

Free will to be able to choose or reject God is important to God apparently, and as a symbol of this choice, it is simultaneously more than a symbol, thence its name. While the tree indeed has no magical properties, the act of eating from the tree has a profound spiritual aspect to it. Why would a person need to eat from a "tree of the knowledge of good and evil" excepting that they wanted to know good and evil? Is that so wrong? Maybe, after all, what was there to know? As far as I know, conservative theologians are pretty much agreed that before chapter three, eating the fruit itself was the only evil that there was, and man already had been told by God that it was evil, and essentially that everything else was good. There was nothing else to know!

Eating the fruit of the tree embodied a profound statement; the statement of, "God, I know you say that you know best, and you claim to have told me everything I need to know, but I want to find out for myself." To eat from the tree would be to say that God was not trustworthy, and that's a serious accusation, especially at this point in history. Atheists and agnostics have raised time and again very thought-provoking points about the character of the Biblical God such as why He would allow suffering if He is supposedly good. That argument wouldn't hold water in the garden, as there was no suffering, no death, no Bible to write an SAB about, nothing but a man, a woman and some trees.

So was God lying when He said that man would die "in the day that thou eatest thereof"? I'm going to save that one for chapter three.

God formed man (Gen 2:4-14)

A lot of the objections that are raised in the SAB in chapter two are repeats of the ones raised in chapter one, this is because they're largely concerning the supposed discrepancies between the two accounts of the creation of mankind. My progress has been slow enough already; I trust that nobody bothering to read this will mind if I don't bother with a second response, but rather move on to new material.

So, from 2:5 until the end of the chapter, the story is about the creation of mankind. I don't know which part 2:4 goes with; it could be the epilogue of the previous account, or the introduction of this account. I think it doesn't really matter. One thing that should be noted however is that 2:4 says, "in the day". This phrase is one of a handful that's poetic/figurative/whatever that I hope people won't misconstrue, and I'm glad to see that the SAB doesn't make that mistake here, at least. (Oops, it did, it's just in chapter one for some reason!) Often, "day" refers not to a specific 24 hour period, but a general timeframe, like when someone says, "You'll rue the day you crossed me!" They're not saying that there's a specific date on the calendar that you'll mark down and say, "Wow, that was a bad one!" but rather you'll remember the time that you did whatever you did, whether it be a single moment, or even a series of events that stretched across several years. Other words that have a common figurative meaning are "name" which often means character or reputation, and "world" which can mean humanity as a whole, the social system you are a part of, or even perhaps an era of time. Context will often tell you, but I won't pretend it isn't confusing at times.

In verse five, it says there is no "plant of the field" because there is rain and (essentially) agriculture missing from the picture. Aside from the thoughts I gave on this before, it might be noteworthy to think about the implications of there needing to be "a man to till the ground" and that this is referring to plants "of the field". Perhaps what this is saying is that there are specifically no plants like wheat and barley and other grains growing in a useful fashion. I don't know, but it seems like a possibility.

Note also in verse six that it still doesn't "rain", but instead a "mist from the earth" waters the ground. That's interesting. If you remember my goofiness about water canopy theory, I think it's interesting to ponder that perhaps it never had rained before Noah's day. That's pure speculation on my part, I admit however. That might make no sense in other ways I'm not even thinking of.

God makes the first man out of the dust. I've heard it pointed out by some theologians that everything that makes up a human body can be found in dirt. Interesting, but not really conclusive from a creation/evolution standpoint, since one would expect a creature evolving naturally by chance from its environment to take on characteristics that were consistent with its environment, if you follow me. In other words, if the earth were completely free from silicon, you'd hardly expect creatures made largely from silicon to have evolved, would you? That's another tangent, though.

After creating man, God breathes into him, making him a "living soul". I think there's meant to be a special implication here, that more than breathing air, we're somehow figuratively breathing the spirit of God. It's interesting that in Hebrew, Greek and English, the words for these concepts are closely related. ("spirit" vs. "respiration")

Then God plants a garden with everything the man needs to physically survive, including two special trees: "the tree of life" and "the tree of knowledge of good and evil." We don't hear much about either of these trees, although the "tree of life" pops up again in the Book of Revelation, chapter 22, where it grows on both sides of a river in New Jerusalem. This is interesting to me, because it shows once again the problem with taking things too literal. I once read a Christian commentary on the book of Revelation that mused, "What sort of strange tree will this be? Will it have a trunk that splits in two so it's on both sides of the river at once?" It seems obvious to me that in that passage, the "tree of life" is not a singular tree, but a kind of tree, and there will be several of that kind of tree along both banks. Does that mean that the "tree of life" in this chapter is not a specific tree, but a species, which may have had several instances in the garden? I don't know, but it's entirely a possibility.

Of course the tree we're really interested in so often is the other special tree (trees?), the one that causes all the trouble in the next chapter. Why would God put such a dangerous tree right next to his special beloved children and let them eat from it if it was so dangerous? It's a very good question, perhaps one of the best. I'm going to give it an entire post tomorrow.

The only thing left to comment on here is all the geographical information in verses 10-14. Strangely, this is a mix of places and names that are known today and not known today. What are we supposed to make of them? I think most likely, these geographical names are of very little consequence to us today. I suspect strongly that whatever they referred to no longer exists. The fact that some of the names are still used today is simply either a holdover from those times (Noah and his family named some places after the places that used to be there before the flood), or modern people labeling places with names they got out of the Bible. Either way, it doesn't matter much.

These are the generations... (Genesis overview)

The first contradiction listed in the SAB is "The two contradictory creation stories." No surprise; this is usually the first point any list like this will bring up, because it's the first thing evident in a casual reading. In verse 1:1, God starts creating the world, in verse 2:1, He finishes, and after a breather, He seems to start over again in verse 2:4. What the heck?

First of all, it's quite right to notice this. A person who reads the book of Genesis and fails to notice two separate accounts of creation wasn't reading closely enough. It doesn't take a genius; I think I first noticed this when I was about 9 years old. Even at that age I noticed a lot of the repetitiveness between chapters 1 & 2. Didn't God already do all this?

On the other hand, if you think there's a real problem with this, I don't think you're reading as closely as you could. Yes, there are two stories, but I don't think they contradict, and having two stories serves a very specific purpose for the original writer/editor of the Bible.

The book of Genesis is odd for various reasons, and this particular oddity of the book shows up early: it's not a single story, but a collection of stories put together. Among skeptics of a more scholarly bent, there is a prevailing idea that the Torah (first 5 books of the Bible) was not written my Moses as is claimed by Bible believers, but rather "redacted" or edited together from several sources hundreds of years later. I'm not sure what that has to do with the validity of the content (and maybe they don't intend to impugn its validity anyway), but the concept doesn't bother me much, especially in the case of the book of Genesis. I seem to recall as a child (and as I was raised Jewish, it may be a belief among some Jewish sects) being told that the book of Genesis was not so much written by Moses but edited by him and committed to paper from oral history. This makes sense, since Moses wasn't there when all the events took place, nor were any of Moses' contemporaries.

So, the phrase "These are the generations" that appears in 2:4 is a key to the structure of the book as a whole. Every time you see those words, the indication is, "And now, another story." most of the time, these stories overlap time periods they represent:

Gen 2:4 These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth
Gen 6:9 These are the generations of Noah (cf. Gen 10:1)
Gen 11:10 These are the generations of Shem
Gen 11:27 Now these are the generations of Terah
Gen 25:12 Now these are the generations of Ishmael
Gen 25:19 And these are the generations of Isaac
Gen 36:1 Now these are the generations of Esau (cf. Gen 36:9)
Gen 37:2 These are the generations of Jacob

So, including chapter 1, there are nine main stories. The problem that one encounters with these stories is trying to make sense of them as a sequential whole when that key phrase is telling you, "Now I'm going to go back and tell you this other story." If you doubt that's what it means, sit down and read Genesis 25 and tell me that it makes any sense to read it as a single, continuous story. (V.1, Abraham gets married, has some children. V.5, Abraham gives everything he has to Isaac, a child from a previous marriage. Vv.8-9, Abraham dies, and "his sons Isaac and Ishmael buried him". V.12 Abraham sires Ishmael. V.18 Ishmael dies after having many children and grandchildren. V.19 Abraham sires Isaac. And so on... remember as you reconcile all of this that the Bible states plainly that Ishmael is only 13 years older than Isaac.)

If you want a more contemporary example of non-linear storytelling, check out the movie "Pulp Fiction". (Spoilers ahead: for those who haven't seen the movie but intend to, skip this paragraph.) One of the main characters in the movie is Vincent Vega. In the course of the movie, we see these things happen to Vincent, in order: 1) He enters apartment A, and we do not see him leave it. 2) He takes his boss' wife to dinner, same day, after dark. 3) He is shot to death in the early afternoon of day two. 4) He leaves apartment A, and it's still day one somehow. 5) He and his partner go get breakfast, same day, midmorning. Which do we conclude about Director and screenwriter Quentin Tarantino? A) He doesn't understand concepts like the linear flow of time, the order of meals in the day, and the finality of death. OR B) He's decided the story would be told better in three parts, each of which overlaps in time. I vote for B.

The story that we see in vv. 1:1-2:3 is concerned with the physical origins of the world. The following story, vv. 2:4-6:8 (roughly) is concerned with the spiritual origins of mankind. The time scale is different, the stories overlap, and the details are focused on in another manner. I'm going to focus on only the supposed differences in the order of events, and leave problems with the details in themselves for later.

The easiest one to refute is the assertion that Genesis 1:27 says both sexes of human being were created simultaneously. It doesn't. It says God created humans male and female, but the word "simultaneously" doesn't appear, nor am I aware of anything in the Hebrew grammar that points definitively to this interpretation of events. Nonetheless, on a genetic level, He did anyway, since in creating a man first, one might be fair to assume the presence of both an X and Y chromosome in the first human being. But that's another matter.

A little more involved is the problem of what order mankind, plants, and beasts were made (plants are for some reason omitted from the list on the page linked above, probably an oversight). I see mankind as being created last, definitively. Why does chapter two seem to contradict? In the case of plants, vv.2:5-9 do not say that God created them at this time, but rather that they were lying dormant in the ground, waiting for water. Whether this was upon all the earth, or perhaps only in the area of the garden He proceeded to plant is not clear.

Verse 19, where God seems to create animals all over again is trickier, but involves a translation subtlety. In the NIV, this passage is translated, "Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air." The question becomes whether God is creating animals all over again, if the stories contradict, or if we've translated in a way that makes it sound wrong. I believe that God had already done the process of creation at this time, and He's only taking a moment to bring the animals to Adam to let him give them names. Sure, it's not 100% clear, but that's not the same as outright contradiction and as a believer I'm certainly willing to give the Bible the benefit of the doubt.