Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadLange Commentary - Genesis 2:4 - 2:25
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
Man—Paradise—the Paradisaical Pair and the Paradisaical Institutions,—Theocratic—Jehovistic.
Gen_2:4-25.
A.—The Earth waiting for Man.
2. Gen_2:4. The construction of De Wette is to this effect: “At the time when God Jehovah made earth and heaven, there was no shrub of the field,” etc. Still harsher and more difficult is the construction of Bunsen: “At the time when God the Ever lasting made heaven and earth, and there was not yet any shrub of the field upon the earth, and no herb of the field had yet sprouted (for Jehovah God had not yet made it to rain upon the earth, etc.), then did God the Everlasting form man,” etc. Both of these are untenable and opposed to the simple expression of the text. (See also Delitzsch and Keil.) Gen_2:4 is indeed not altogether easy. On the day in which the Lord made the earth and the heavens, that is, on the one great day, in which here the hexaëmeron is included (with special reference, indeed, to its closing period), there commenced the history of the heavens and the earth in their becoming created—that is, in the same period in which they became created. Out of the paradisaical history: Earth and heaven, arose the converse history: Heaven and earth, in a religious sense, just as in a genetic sense there was the same order from the beginning.
3. Gen_2:5-6. And every plant of the field.—The word ëֹּì with the negative particle is equivalent to the German gar nichts, not at all. The Hebrew conjunction å leaves it at first view undecided, whether the superscription goes on so as to take in the words, and every herb, etc. And yet, on that view, there would be a failure of any concluding sense. The most probable view, therefore, is that which regards the conjunction as merely a transition particle, and passes it over in the translation. According to Knobel and others this narration is actually at variance with that of Genesis 1, as, for example, in its view of the dryness of the earth before the introduction of the plants, etc. (see Gen_2:22), and, therefore, we must conclude that it belongs to another narrator. In regard to this assumption of different documents, we may refer to the Introduction (for the modes of representation in the Jehovistic portions, see Knobel, p. 23; likewise the head Literature, p. 24). The designed unity of both representations appears from the manner and way in which, even according to Knobel, the second of these narrations, in many of its references, presupposes the first. The full explanation of this unity becomes obvious from the harmonic contrast which arises when the universal creation of the world is regarded from the ideal stand-point of the Jehovah belief (see Joh_17:5; Eph_1:4). The author carries us back to the time of the hexaëmeron, when no herb of the field had yet grown. Nevertheless there is not meant by this the beginning of the third creative day, but the time of the sixth. The apparent contradiction, however, disappears, when we lay the emphasis upon the expression “of the field,” and by the herbs and plants of the field that are here meant, understand the nobler species of herbs that are the growth of culture. In opposition to Delitzsch, Keil correctly distinguishes between ùãä and àøõ . Delitzsch has not sufficiently removed the difficulty that arises when we carry back the date of this to the time before vegetation existed. There would be (apparent) contradiction (he admits) between the two narratives, but not an inexplicable one—then it is no contradiction at all. It is the paradisaical plants, therefore; these did not yet exist; for they presuppose man. See other interpretations in Lange’s “Positive Dogmatic,” p. 242. Keil connects our interpretation with that of Baumgarten: “By the being of the plant is denoted its growth and germination.” This is ever wont to follow very soon after the planting of the germ. By assuming, indeed, a certain emphasis on the verbs éäéä and éöîç , we may get the sense: the herbs of the field were not yet rightly grown, the plant was not yet come to its perfection of form or feature, because the conditions of culture were as yet wanting. But this thought connects itself more or less with that of plants produced by cultivation, which, as such, presuppose the existence of man.—Had not caused it to rain.—To the human cultivation of the world belong two distinct things: first the rain from heaven together with sunshine, and secondly the labor and care of man. Both conditions fail as yet, but now, for the first time, comes in the first mode of nurture. The fog-vapor that arose from the earth (ha-aretz, including the sea) waters the earth-soil (the adamah). It is rightly inferred from Gen_2:6 that the vapor which arose from the earth indicates the first rain. If it means that the mist then first arose from the earth, there would seem to be indicated thereby the form of rain, or, at all events, of some extraordinary fall of the dew. From this place, and from the history of the flood (especially the appearance of the rainbow), it was formerly inferred that until the time of the deluge no rain had actually fallen. But from the fact that the rainbow was first made a sign of the covenant for Noah, it does not at all follow that it had not actually existed before; just as little as it follows from the sign of the starry night which Abraham received (Genesis 15), that there had been no starry night before, or from the institution of the covenant-sign of circumcision, that circumcision had not earlier existed as a popular usage (two points which the Epistle of Barnabas has well distinguished, although the critics have partially failed in understanding it. Epistle of Barnabas ix.). A similar view must be taken of the previous natural history of the paschal lamb, of the dove, and of the eucharistic supper; they were ever earlier than the sacramental appointment. In fact, there is in this place no express mention made of rain proper, and it may well suggest here one of those heavy falls of dew that take place in the warmer climates. Our text may fairly mean, not that the rain was a mere elementary phenomenon, but that it belonged to the divinely ordered economy of human cultivation in its interchange with the labor of man. The most we can say is, that the watering of the soil was a precondition to the creation of man himself. Just as cultivation after this, so must also, primarily, the cultivator of the soil come into existence under the dew of heaven. Moreover, the earthly organization of man consists, in good part, of water. The words Adam and adamah are used here, as we may well believe, to denote a close relationship of kin. As Adam, however, is not simply from the earth (ha-aretz), so the adamah is not simply the theocratic earth-soil prepared by the God who created man. Adam is the man in his relation to the earth, and so is adamah the earth in its relation to man.
[Note on the Summary of the First Creative Account in the Second.—Knobel has to admit the internal evidence showing that this second account recognizes the first and is grounded upon it, thereby disproving the probability of a contrariety either intended or unseen. The attempt, however, of Lange, and of others cited, to reconcile the seeming difficulties, can hardly be regarded as giving full satisfaction. Another method, therefore, may be proposed, which we think is the one that would most obviously commend itself to the ordinary reader who believed in the absolute truthfulness of the account, and knew nothing of any documentary theory. The two narratives are a continuation of the same story. The second is by the same author as the first, or by one in perfect harmony with him, and evidently referring to all that had been previously said as the ground-work of what is now to be more particularly added respecting man, and which may be called the special subject of this second part. Hence the preparatory recapitulation, just as Xenophon in each book of the Anabasis presents a brief summary of the one preceding. This reference to the previous account thus commences: “These are the generations of the heavens and the earth”—that is, as has been already told. That úìãåú refers to the creative growths, births, evolutions, or whatever else we might call them, would be the first and most obvious thought. When told that they mean the generations of Adam, as subsequently given, and this because “Paradise is heaven and earth together,” or “Adam with his Paradise is the microcosmic centre of the world,” we admit the justness and beauty of the thoughts, but find it difficult to be satisfied with the exposition. Again, whoever will examine the uses of àìä (these) in Noldius’ “Concordance,” will find that it refers as often, and perhaps oftener, to what precedes than to what follows. The context alone determines, and here it decidedly points to the first chapter. There is, however, no difficulty in taking it both ways, as a subscription to the first passage, or as a superscription to the second, at the same time. That “the generations of the heavens and the earth” means the previous creative account, and not that which comes after, would seem to be decided by the words immediately added, áְּäִáָּøְàָí , “in their being created”—“in the day (that is, the time or period taken as a whole) of the Lord God’s making the earth and heavens.” To seek for mysteries here in the transposition of the words “earth and heavens,” would be like a similar search by the Jewish Masorites of something occult in the little ( ä× æòéøà ) ä of the word áäáøàí . Either the whole previous time is referred to, or, as is more probable, the earliest part of it, before not only man but vegetation also. Or, in the day, may mean, as some have thought, the first day, when the material of the earth and heavens had been created, but all was yet unformed. Now this seems to be very much what is meant by what follows in Gen_2:5-6. In the day when God made the earth and heavens; here the writer might have stopped, so far as his main design was concerned, and gone on immediately to give the intended more particular account of man; but he is led to enlarge his recapitulating summary by an addition that may be regarded either as parenthetical or exegetical—“the earth and heavens, and every shrub of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb before it grew,” etc. He puts the greatest and the smallest things together to denote totality. All was made before man. And then, to make the language more emphatic in the assertion of its being a divine work, and that it was before man, who is excluded from all agency in its production, it is further declared that this first appearance of the vegetable world was not, in its origin, an ordinary production of nature (such as growth produced by rain), and was wholly independent of human cultivation. It had not yet rained in the ordinary way, that is, the regular production and reproduction of the seasons had not yet taken place, and there was no man to till the ground. It was after this first supernatural vegetation that the irrigating processes commenced, when God made “a law for the rain ( çֹ÷ ìַîָּèָø , legem pluviis, Job_28:26), and caused the mist to go up (the evaporation and condensation) that watered the whole face of the àãîä , the earth’s soil. This assertion of supernatural growths being premised as antecedent summary, the writer immediately proceeds to the main and direct subject of this second section: åַéִּéöֶø , and after this (as is demanded by the å conversive denoting sequence of event) the Lord God formed man.”
The language is irregular and parenthetical, but artless and clear, at least in its general design. The terms employed are those that a writer with those primitive conceptions would use in impressing the idea of the supernatural. The first plants were made to grow without that help of rain and of human cultivation which they now require. A striking difference between this and the first account is that it is wholly unchronological, just as would be expected in a summary of a recapitulation. It is an introduction to man, as showing briefly what was done for him before he is brought into the world, and then what follows is wholly confined to him. Thus viewed, there is the strongest internal evidence that the two accounts are from one and the same author, who has neither desire nor motive to enlarge upon what he had previously said. It is the style of one who understands himself, and who has no fear of being misunderstood, or taken for another, by his reader.
Perhaps the best view of the whole case would be gained by making a fair paraphrase, which is only putting it into a more modern style of language and conception: ‘Such were the generations of the heavens and the earth in that early day when God made not only the great earth and heavens, but even the lowly shrub and plant—made them by His own divine word—made them when they yet were not (as Raschi gives the sense of èøí , without preceding causality) without the aid of rain—before the rain and before any human cultivation. For it was after this early day ( å in åàã being grammatically both illative and denoting sequence) that the mists began to go up ( éòìä , the unconnected future form here denoting series, habit, or continuance, see Job_1:5; Jdg_14:10; Psa_32:4), from which come the descending rains that now water the earth. And it was after all this that the Lord God made man, his body from the earth (from nature), his spirit from His own divine inspiration; and thus it was that man became a living soul.’
The àã or mist here that went up can mean nothing but the rain itself. It is the same process, and that the word is to be so regarded is evident from its use, Job_36:27 : “For He maketh small the drops of water, when they pour down the rain of its vapor,” éæ÷å îèø ìàãå . It may be a question whether ëì ùéç (Gen_2:4) is to be taken as the object of òùåú , Gen_2:3, as it commonly is, or is to be regarded as connected with what follows, so as to be the subject of the verbal force that is in èøí . This word is not well rendered before, as though a thing could be before it was, unless in an ideal sense, which we cannot suppose to be the writer’s meaning here. The being in the earth was essential to its being a plant; otherwise it is but the idolon or imago of a plant, according to the crude and untenable view that would represent God as outwardly or mechanically making it and then putting it in the earth to be brought forth (see Introduction to the First Chapter, p.—). The word èøí , says Raschi, is equivalent to òã ìà , until not, or, not yet, and contains averbal assertive force. So the Targum of Onkelos renders it, and the Syriac by a similar idiom, ܐܐܒܝܠ܂ܠܝ̣. It would then read: And as for the shrub, it (was) not yet in the earth, the herb had not yet begun to grow; thus giving to èֶøֶí the force of a negative verb, like àéï , only with the idea of time. And then, with this negative force in èøí , the ëì , according to the Hebrew idiom, makes a universal negative of the strongest kind, being equivalent to gar nichts, as Lange says—nothing at all. Thus the expression: every shrub was not, etc., which with us would be a particular or partial negative equivalent to not every, is the widest universal in the Hebrew: In the day of God’s making the earth and the heavens, when (as å may well be rendered) there was not the least sign of shrub or plant growing in the earth. See Lud. de Dieu: Critica Sacra, in loc.
This is, in the main, the view of Delitzsch, though he still seems to have some perplexities about the time. We get clear, however, of the difficulties of Lange and others. There is no need of bringing this vegetation down to the sixth day, and referring it to the growth of cultivated plants from the adamah. The language will not bear it. In like manner there is disposed of the explanation of some of the Jewish Rabbis, that the plants barely came to the surface on the third day, but for the want of rain did not come forth and reach their perfection until the sixth. Maimonides says justly, that this is against the positive declaration that the “earth did bring them forth” (Gen_1:12). In refuting it, however, he lays the emphasis on ùãä , the field, in distinction from the earth generally, and so regards it as spoken of cultivated plants. But this seems forced, and there stands in the way of it the word ùéç , which is especially used of uncultivated growths, as of the desert, Job_30:4; Job_30:7, or of the wild bushes in the wilderness of Beer-Sheba, Gen_21:15.
See the attempts to reconcile the two accounts in Wordsworth, Murphy, and Jacobus. The trouble springs from the assuming of a chronology, and endeavoring to find it, when the chief feature of this second narrative, or of the summary that precedes it, is its wholly unchronological character. There is no time in it. The near and the remote are brought together: In the day when God made the heavens and the earth, from the firmament down to the shrub—or, when there was not a sign of a plant in the earth—made them by His divine word, before there was any rain (compare Pro_8:24, áàéï îòéðåú ðëáãé îéí , when there were no fountains full of water), though afterwards “He made a law for the rain,” and the mists went up and descended to fertilize the earth, etc. This absence of rain was somewhere in this summed-up day of creation; its place, however, is not fixed in the series, and it is alluded to not for its own sake, but in connection with the plants as originating from a higher causality.—T. L.]
4. Gen_2:7. The Lord God formed man.—Knobel: “As the principal creation of the earth the author has him created before all his fellow-creatures.” This is incorrect, inasmuch as the representation evidently has in view no genealogical or chronological order. It only presents him as the chief divine thought, at the head of the Paradise-creation. “In respect to the mode of origin of the divine-formed man the first chapter says nothing; it only indicates that man is of a higher, and, at the same time, of an earthly nature, without being a product of the earth. But now, on the threshold of a history rising and revealing its purposes, there is need to know something more particular in respect to his mode of origin, so that, along with the fact of his existence, we may understand his established relation to God, to the surrounding vegetable and animal world, and to the earth in general.” Delitzsch. The spirit of the Old Testament, with all correctness, represents the nature of man, in respect to his bodily substance, as earthly; and just so does physiology determine. In the matter of his body man consists of earthly elements; in a wider sense he is out of the earth (Gen_18:27; Psa_103:14), and at his death he goes back to his mother-earth (Gen_3:19; Gen_3:23; Job_10:9; Job_34:15; Psa_146:4; Ecc_3:20; Ecc_12:7). “According to the classical myth Prometheus formed the first man of earthy and watery material (Apollodorus, Ovid, Juvenal), and in the same manner Vulcan made the first woman (Pandora) out of earth (Hesiod). In other places the ancients represent man as generated out of the earth (Plato in the Kritias, and others, Virgil) as well as the beasts.” Knobel. The name Adam does not denote precisely one taken from the earth ( àøõ , ãçãåíÞò ), but one formed from the adamah, the soil of cultivation in its paradisaical state; just as the Latin homo from humus, and the Greek ÷ïúêüò from ÷ïüò , do not refer back to the earth-matter generally, but to the earth-soil as adapted to cultivation. This derivation from adamah is adopted by most (Kimchi, Rosenmüller, and others). On the contrary, others, after Josephus, derive the word from the verb àãí , to be red, with reference to the ruddy color of man, or the reddish soil of Palestine. Knobel, again, explains it, with Ludolf, from the Æthiopian àãí , to be pleasant, agreeable, according to which it would denote something of comely form. One Jewish Doctor, and after him Eichhorn and Richers, would make the word ãí (Eze_19:10 = ãîåú ) the etymological ground, and would, therefore, give it pre-eminently the meaning of image or likeness. The two first explanations are in so far one as the primitive contemplation saw the reflection of the reddish earth in the glow of the ruddy cheek or in the color of the blood. In this it must be maintained that the earthly lowliness of man, as thereby expressed, becomes modified by the superior excellence of the primitive paradisaical earth. First after the fall does it thus properly become the lowliness of this lower earth. As, therefore, in respect to one half, the lower descent of the outward human nature is expressed by the name Adam, so also, on the other side, there is the hidden nobleness of the adamah, and the destiny of man to draw the adamah along with it in its development to a higher life. In respect to the Greek word for man, ἄíèñùðïò (= ὁ ἄíù ἀèñῶí , the upward looking), compare Delitzsch, p. 141, and Knobel, p. 25. So also for the Indo-Germanic Mensch, in the Sanscrit manu (from mna, to think, related to manas, spirit), see the notes in Delitzsch, p. 619. The translations of òôø , dust, also clay, soil (Lev_14:42; Lev_14:45; English Version, mortar), are exegetical; Vulgate: De limo terrœ; Luther: Out of the earth-clod; Symmachus and Theodolion: ÷ïῦí ἀðὸ ôῆò ἀäáìᾶ , God formed him out of the dust of the earth. The verb éöø must certainly have its emphatic distinction here from áøà and òùç . It denotes the curious structure of man according to his idea, as an act of the divine conscious wisdom (Psa_139:13; Pro_8:31).—And breathed into his nostrils.—“The inbreathing takes place through the nostrils; for this is the organ of the breath, but the breath itself is the expression and sign of the inward existing life. From the breath of God comes the life of man (Job_33:4; Isa_42:5), and the breath in the nostrils of man is the divine breathing (Job_27:3). In a similar manner does the Challaic myth make the creature to be formed of earthy matter and the divine blood; the blood is taken for the seat of life (see Gen_9:4).” Knobel. The expression evidently presents the formative agency of God in an anthropomorphic form. There is the mouth of God and the nostrils of the man as he comes into existence; it is as though He had waked him into life with a kiss (compare 1Ki_17:21). It evidently means the impartation of the divine life, on which depends the divine kinsmanship of man (Act_17:28-29). ðùîä (from ðùí ), breath, spirit, breath of the spirit, breath of man, life of the spirit, is more specific than øåç , more universal than ðôù , but may be interchanged with both, as something that stands between them; yet only in relation to man. Here it evidently denotes something which is common both to God and man, something which goes forth from God and enters into man—God’s “breath of life,” that is, the spirit of God in its active self-motion, as in man it calls out the spiritual principle, the spirit of his life, but none the less as the spirit in its actual personality. The ðùîä , or breath of God, has the predicate çééí (life or lives) from the adjective çַéָּä (Genesis 1), in order to distinguish primarily the living subject, and, in the next place, the life itself. The life, in its most intensive sense, is the unity of the life in all living persons, and in any living thing;—it is the personality. ðֶôֶùׁ (from ðָôַùׁ , to breathe), the life’s breath, the soul of life, anima, øõ÷Þ , the principle of the animal vitality, and, in this respect, the life itself; in a wider sense it is animus, the personal spiritual soul, the psychical affection, the man himself. In our text it denotes the man in his totality as living soul. In consequence of the formation of the human figure out of dust from the earth-soil, and the animation of this figure through the impartation of the life from God, does man become a living soul. For the psychology of the passage, see the Fundamental Ideas.
5. Gen_2:8. Planted a garden in Eden.—As Jehovah-God (farther on, Gen_2:15-16) is named as the establisher of the order of life, of natural science, or of the human knowledge of it (Gen_2:19), of marriage and the law of the family (Gen_2:21; Gen_2:24), as the judge and founder of the religion of the promise and of the moral conflict on the earth, of the earthly state of sorrow and discipline (Gen_3:7), and, finally, as the immediate director of human chastity and the author of the human clothing (Gen_2:21), so also here, in the beginning, is He represented as the first Planter, the Founder of human culture, which is as yet identical with the human cultus or worship. Delitzsch transfers this planting to the time of the first vegetable creation (p. 146); but this is not agreeable to the sense of the text, which does not relate things chronologically, and presupposes the creation of man. In consequence of the previous preparation for the future of man in the bedewing of the earth, an Eden is already originated. The name Eden (enjoyment, pleasure, delight), as the region of Paradise, would denote, according to Delitzsch, a land determinate but no longer ascertainable by us; since the Assyrian Eden, he thinks, which is vocalized by the doubled segol and mentioned Isa_37:12, and the Cœlo-Syriac Eden mentioned Amos 15, are altogether different. But if the garden in Eden had its name from a determinate boundary and enclosure, and if the paradisaical streams went forth in all the world, then it becomes a very serious question whether the author had in view any distinct boundary of Eden itself, as any determinate land. It appears, at all events, to have been his intention to represent the whole paradisaical adamah as an Eden in respect to its nature and laying out, although he meant by it, primarily, the undetermined wide environs that surrounded man, whilst, at the same time, supposing a distinction between Eden and the earth generally. There is also the passage, Gen_4:16, which seems to presuppose a limitation of Eden to one determinate region; still it must be noticed, in the mean time, that the soil becomes cursed for man’s sake. According to the representation, it is a view that takes the form of three spheres: the earth, the Paradise, the garden. At all events, the best supposition in regard to man is that he was created in Eden, although by a new act of God he is early transferred to the centre of Eden, that is, of the Paradise. Besides this place, the name Eden occurs Gen_2:10; Gen_2:15; Gen_3:23; Gen_4:16; Gen_13:10; Joe_2:3; Eze_31:16; Eze_31:18.—A garden, âַּï . The Septuagint translates it ðáñÜäåéóïò ; the Vulgate: Paradisus. “Spiegel explains this word (Avesta, i. p. 293) according to the Zend: Païri daéza, is a heaping round, an enclosing, with which the Hebrew âï (properly, something covered or sheltered) well agrees. It is carried out of the Indo-Germanic into the Shemitic, and is found in the Hebrew, where it has the pronunciation ôַøְãֵí (Par-dhes), Cantic. Gen_4:13; Neh_2:8; Ecc_2:5.” Knobel. An explanation, now set aside, is that which derives it from the Sanscrit paradîça (alien, foreign, wondrous land). The conceptions—Garden of Eden, Eden Garden, Garden of God—by reason of the symbolical significance of these expressions, play into each other. By the garden, according to Knobel, is to be understood “a garden of trees.” Thus much is clear, that the garden of the paradisaical nature was distinguished for its trees. The garden lay in the eastern district of the Eden region ( î÷ãí ); there is probably indicated along with this the stand-point of the reporter. The Eastern land is the home-land of humanity.—There He put the man.—As the creation of Eve is transferred to Paradise, it is as well not to lay stress upon the fact of Adam’s having been created outside of Paradise; the fundamental idea consists in this, that Adam was immediately transferred from his state of nature (or his universal relation to the adamah) into the state of culture, or his particular relation to Paradise. “Both facts are announced before in a summary way, but are unfolded in what follows; just as the facts summarily announced in the first verse of Genesis 1 receive afterwards a wider explanation.” Delitzsch.
6. Gen_2:9-14. And out of the ground made the Lord to grow.—We must not regard this act as a chronological following of the preceding. Man finds himself well-cared for in Paradise by means of its abundance. This consists in fruit-trees of every kind. It may fairly be regarded here as an indication of the spirituality of the human enjoyment, that the lovely aspect of the trees is named first, then the good that is given along with it—that is, agreeable and healthsome food—but this spiritual side of the human enjoyment comes out, in its perfection, with the mention of the two trees that form a contrast in the midst of the garden; for, according to Gen_3:3, the tree of knowledge stands likewise in the midst of the garden. The significance and efficacy of the tree of life are more particularly given Gen_3:22; it could have procured for Adam the power of living on forever. That this efficacy is not to be regarded as something purely physical appears from the contrast of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, whose efficacy, again, on its own side, is not to be regarded as purely spiritual (see Gen_3:22). The spiritual side of the tree of life is also supposed Rev_2:7; Rev_22:2. It is, therefore, just a false contrast when Knobel tells us that “the narrator supposes in Paradise two trees, of which the fruits of the one strengthen the physical power of life and sustain the life itself, whilst that of the other arouses and advances the spiritual power, and thereby induces a higher knowledge.” (!) Truly, the garden appears a “region of wonder, on account of this tree not only, but as the place of God’s personal presence, the place of the vocal utterance of a spiritual voice by the serpent, and on account of the cherubim. The wonderful consists, in the first place, in this, that here is the region of innocence, of the integrity both of the human spirit and of the surrounding nature, and that, consequently, here the spiritual and the natural are embraced in perfect union; whilst therefore it is, that outward things become of typical and symbolical significance in their potential measure. It belongs now to the perfection of the garden, not merely that it is watered with its own Paradise rivers, but also, that by means of the four streams that go out from its one united stream it stands in close connection with the whole earth, and sends forth to it its own peculiar blessings. From the reading of the text: a stream went out, instead of, a stream goes out, Delitzsch finds proof that the author speaks of Paradise as of a thing purely past. Much rather, however, does he speak of Paradise after the fall, as of a place at least still existing, but closely shut up by means of the cherubim. That is, the representation is not now purely geographical; it is also, at the same time, throughout symbolic. According to our representation, the stream originates, not in Paradise itself, but outside of it, in the land of Eden; and so here, too, as in the case of Adam, must we distinguish between the origin in nature, and the destiny that was to have its development in culture. In Paradise itself, therefore, does this one stream, on its going out of the garden, divide itself into four ( øàùéí ) flood-heads (not “rain-streams,” nor “brooks”), which as four rivers part themselves in all the world, the stream-heads become head-streams.—The name of the first is Pishon: The free-flowing (Fürst); the full-flowing (Gesenius). By the name Pishon has been understood 1. the Phasis, 2. the Phasis-Araxes of Xenophon, 3. the Bisynga or Fradatti (Buttmann), 4. the Indus (Schulthess), 5. the Ganges (Josephus, Eusebius, Bertheau), 6. the Hyphasis (Haneberg), 7. the Nile (the Midrash), 8. the Goschah (C. Ritter). See the Doctrinal and Ethical.—That is it which encompasses the whole land of Havilah.—According to Fürst, it is the same with circuit, region. (This is what Havilah probably signifies; according to Delitzsch it means sandy land.) The word ñáá (primarily, to surround) may be interpreted of a circuitous flowing round, though it also occurs in the sense of surrounding on one side. The verb may also denote a winding passage through (Isa_23:16, ñáé òéø , “Go round about through the city”), and here it may be better conceived of as a winding through than as an encompassing. We choose an expression that at the same time calls to mind a region of streams.—Where there is gold.—That is, especially or abundantly—the mother-country of gold, not only in respect to quantity, but also in respect to quality.—The gold of that land is good.—Besides its fine gold, Havilah is also famous for its spices, such as Bdolach (Num_11:7), similar to manna, or according to Josephus Bdellion, and, similarly named (see Knobel), “an odoriferous and very costly gum, which is indigenous in India and Arabia, in Babylonia and Media, and especially in Bactriana. It must have been well known to the Hebrews.” To this is added, in the third place, the precious stone ùֹׁäַí , schoham. According to most interpreters it is an onyx stone, sardonyx, or sardius, which belong together to the species chalcedon. The Targumists and others would understand by schoham the sea-green beryl. The onyx, on the contrary, has the color of the human finger-nails, and that is denoted by the name. With this agrees ùֹׁäַí as “signifying something thin, delicate, pale” (Knobel). In respect to the geography, see further on.—The name of the second river is Gihon.—“According to Josephus, Ant. i. 1, 3, Kimchi, and others, also as might be inferred from the Septuagint translation of Jer_2:18, Ben Lira 24, 27, there was understood by it the Nile, which flows through all the south-lands ( ëåù ) that fell within the circuit of the narrator’s view” (Fürst). Under the Gihon, moreover, according to the Shemitic use of the word, there have been understood the Oxus, the Pyramus, and the Ganges. ëåù , the dark-colored (?), is a proper name for the oldest son of Ham, the ancestor of the Æthiopians. Thence it is given to the south-land, especially Meroe, and, thereupon, to Æthiopia and the south-region generally. And yet under the like name may be understood a dark-colored people that dwelt in southern India, in Upper Egypt, and in South Arabia (Ktesias and Arrian). In like manner are there different geographical districts under this name (see Fürst: Lexicon).—The name of the third river is Hiddekel.—The Tigris, the rushing, so named from its violent flowing. Dan_10:4, it is called the great river—so also the Euphrates. The Zend form is tigra, tigr, tigira, swift, raging.—Toward the east of Assyria (Lange: Before or in front of Assyria). The word ÷ãîú before Assyria can also mean to the east, but as a preposition it has the more common sense before, frontward. The latter sense, taken freely, is here to be preferred; since the Tigris, in fact, forms the western boundary of Assyria. According to some, Assyria is to be taken here in a wider sense.—The fourth river is Euphrates.—The outbreaking, the violent. It is the greatest river of Western Asia, and, therefore, called the great river, or the river, without anything more. The origin of the Greek form ÅὐöñÜôçò is explained either from ôְøָú = àֶôְøָú , or from the Persian Ifrat, Ufrat. For the different derivations, see Fürst.
7. Gen_2:15-17. Took the man and put him in the garden.—The author takes up again what is said in the 8th verse about the transfer of Adam to Paradise, but adds to it, at the same time, the purpose for which it was done, namely, to dress it and to keep it. According to Delitzsch man was created outside of Paradise; since he must first see the extra-paradisaical earth, in order that he might have a worthy estimation of the glory of Paradise, and of his own vocation as extending thence over the whole world. Such an assignment of a purpose is altogether too didactic. The garden is the place of the human vocation, and of the human enjoyment in its undivided unity. This enjoyment has two sides, to eat and to refrain. In like manner the vocation has two sides, to dress and to keep. The first thing is to dress it; for nature, which grows wild or rank without the care of man, becomes ennobled under the human hand (Delitzsch). Says the same writer, this work was as widely different from agriculture proper, as Paradise itself differed from the later cultivated land, but it was still work; “and work was so far from being unparadisaical, that, according to Gen_2:1-3, even the creation is regarded as a work of God.” We must distinguish, however, work in its narrower sense, as it stands under the burden of vanity (made subject to vanity, Rom_8:20) from the paradisaical work, or activity. Even of the later Israel is it said: There is no toil in Zion. According to Delitzsch, the whole earth, from Paradise out, was to become a Paradise: “The garden is the most holy (or the holy of holies), Eden is the holy place, whilst the whole earth around is its porch and court.” The comparison is not wholly applicable; since where there are no spiritual orders, there could be no proper mention of court and sanctuary.—And to keep it.—The garden, as such, is uninclosed and unwalled; still must Adam watch and protect it. This is, in fact, a very significant addition, and seems to give a strong indication of danger as threatening man and Paradise from the side of an already existing power of evil (Delitzsch and others), although, even in that case, the guarding of the garden belonged to man’s vocation; since against the misuse of his freedom, he had only to take care of his own free will, and, with it, the possession and the integrity of Paradise. Knobel refers the care with which Adam was charged, to the task appointed him of guarding Paradise against the mischief of the wild beasts.—Of every tree of the garden.—Says Knobel: “The author clearly assumes that in the early period men lived alone from the fruit of trees, and at a later period first advanced to the use of herbs and grain (Gen_3:17), whilst the Elohist, in the very beginning, assigns both to men (Gen_1:29). According to the classical writers, such as Plato (Polit. 272), Strabo, and others, men in the beginning ate herbs, berries, bark, and fruit of trees, especially acorns; the raising of grain came in later.” That the paradisaical man did not eat herbs is nowhere said; but the fruit of the trees is prominently presented because of its symbolic relation to the two mysterious trees in the midst of the garden. The free enjoyment of all trees is strongly expressed by the intensive idiom, àָëֹì úֹּàëֵì . So much the more precise, therefore, is the limitation of the freedom.—But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.—According to Hoffmann and Richers, èåá åøò means good and bad simply. Delitzsch denies this, and rightly. “The good,” says he, “is obedience with its good, the bad is disobedience with its evil consequences. Here it must be remarked, that the conception of physical evil can be, at the most, only as a consequence of moral evil, and that, therefore, the ethical contrast is the main thing, though not to the exclusion of the physical side. The tree, in any case, was a tree that might produce this knowledge; that is, it was the tree of probation, through which Adam might come to a conscious distinction of good and evil, and, thereby, to a moral transition from the state of innocent simplicity into a state of conscious, religious virtue. Did he not sin, then he learned, in a normal way, to know the distinction between good and evil—the good as the actuality of believing obedience towards God, which was, at the same time, the maintaining of his own life in its self-command and freedom—the evil, as the possibility of an unbelieving and disobedient behavior towards God, which must have for its consequent, slavish desire and death. The opinion of Hilarius cannot be sustained (Spicilegium Solesmense, i. 162): Arbor futuri de se mendacii nomen accepit. For, ‘not to know good and evil,’ is the sign of the infantile childishness (Deu_1:39) or of senile obtuseness (2Sa_19:36); the conscious free choice of the one or the other indicates the most mature period of life (or that of the so-named anni discretionis, Isa_7:15; Heb_5:14). So to know good and evil, and to distinguish between them, is called the charisma or gift of a king (1Ki_3:9), the wisdom of the angel (2Sa_14:17), and, in its higher exercise, of God Himself (Gen_3:5; Gen_3:22). By the tree of knowledge of good and evil man is to attain to a consciousness and to a confirmation of his freedom of choice, and, in fact (according to God’s purpose in his determination for good), to a freedom of power—that is, to a true freedom available for the choice of good or its opposite. It was designed to bring out the necessary self-determination of a creature choosing freely, either for or against God, either for the God-willed good or the possible evil—and so to make perfect its independence. The very idea of a free personal being carries with it the necessity that its relation to God be a relation of free love” (Delitzsch). It is an entire perversion of the meaning of this probation-tree to teach, as the Gnostic Ophites did, that, only through the eating of this tree, is man enabled to attain to his self-conscious free development, or, as Hegel and his school have taught in modern times, that sin is a necessary transition-point to good. The victory of Christ in the temptation shows us how it is for man to come to the knowledge of good and evil in a normal, and not in an abnormal, way. The knowledge of the distinction which Adam obtained in this way, was in him from the beginning, though dark and confused. Along with his freedom of choice, heretofore undeveloped, there was established, not only his capability of probation, but also his need of such probation. This probation does, indeed, suppose the previous existence of a divine íüìïò , or law (Delitzsch, p. 154); but we err when we confound this paradisaical íüìïò with the law of Moses as it was given to sinners. Moreover, the Mosaic commands are not mere positive instructions; they are, to the extent of the ten commandments, moral laws of nature precisely adapted to the human state, but because of their having become foreign and objective to the consciousness of the sinner, they are, therefore, placed before him in the way of positive revelation. In the íüìïé , or institutions of Paradise, however, must the abiding laws of life constitute the ground of that revelation-form which is adapted to the commands. That is, in relation to the tree of probation, God could not have made it to be a tree of probation in the exercise merely of an arbitrary positiveness; there must lie in the tree itself an innate efficacy; and a natural speech, that may serve as a warning to man against its use. The sign-word of the tree (or the designating name) would, through the divine interpretation, become to man a positive paradisaical prohibition. Even granting, moreover, that the tree was not properly a poison-tree, still the explanation that belongs to it has been too lightly treated, since it might have led us upon the proper track; but that its tendency must have been to produce a change in the human spiritual frame, is a doctrine to be firmly held (see Lange’s “Dogmatics,” p. 409). It becomes important as an elucidation of this mysterious fact, when we are told that the sin of Noah, the second head of our race, became manifest through the enjoyment of wine. To say nothing of the coarse conceptions of Böhme and others as lately taken in a mythical sense by Sörensen, we must decidedly protest against the theosophical dualistic representation of the probation-tree as we find it in Baumgarten (p. 43), and still later in Delitzsch. “When we remember,” says Delitzsch, “that the paradisaical vocation and destiny of man had for its aim the overcoming of evil that had intruded into the creation, we cannot wonder at there being a tree in Paradise itself, created indeed by God, but whose mysterious background was a dark ground of death and evil placed by God in ward; which tree, in order that man might not fall into the participation of evil, and thereby of death, is hedged around by the divine prohibition, not as by an arbitrary sentence, but as by a warning rather of holy love” (p. 155). We may not resort to the myths of the Thibetans, Hindus, etc. (p. 155), in support of an assertion of such a nature that, according to it, we cannot think of anything determinate or ordained, without setting forth under it, in opposition both to the Scriptures and to the monotheistic consciousness, a material evil (or an evil inherent in matter). According to Delitzsch, the tree actually carried in it “the power of death.” The question arises: What is meant by the threatening: “In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” Knobel holds the sense to be, that he should die immediately; because the infinitive absolute before the finite verb, he says, expresses the undoubted, the certain, the actual. But notwithstanding this, Adam must have lived quite a long time after the fall. In vain is it attempted to set aside this difficulty either by the rendering to become mortal (Targum, Symmachus, Hieronymus, and others), or by making it that introduction of pain and sorrow into life which goes before death in our conception of it (Calvin, Gerhard, and others). Still l