Wednesday, January 23, 2019

Dialogue on Genesis 3 and 4


Genesis 3.  One would hope that Adam and Eve spent many years in the Garden of Eden before Eve fell for the temptation to eat the fruit which was on the tree in the middle of the Garden.  Like a good wife she shared the fruit with Adam, damning mankind to the life we have today on Earth.  Whatever this fruit was (maybe some is still on Earth) it appears to have taken away immediately the innocence that Adam and Eve had.  God quickly moved Adam and Eve out of the rent free caretaker role to the role of workers who had to work the land outside the Garden of Eden to sustain them.  The fun times of life were gone.  Banished from the Garden, Adam and Eve also became the first de facto Immigrants.  Genesis 3 references the Garden being guarded by cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth that guards the way to the tree of life.  Are the cherubim and flaming sword still there today awaiting some curious explorer?

It is clear that God did not want His creation to live forever which the tree of life apparently would do for Adam.  It seems that one bite of the fruit wasn’t enough to place man in the “living forever” category.

Genesis 4.  The first parents!  Another role for Adam and Eve.  Again, it is not clear if the fall from Grace gave Adam the desire to procreate with Eve.  If they were not sexually active before the Fall Genesis 4 shows they were now and the result was Eve becoming pregnant.  Adam and Eve as the first parents must have been trial by error.  They were not prepared to become parents.  Outside of God, who was there to instruct them on how to be good parents?  If God left them on their own to figure it out that established the cycle of parents being unprepared for fatherhood and mother hood. 

How did Adam and Eve teach Abel and Cain to be good children and brothers?  What was the relationship between Abel and Cain as they grew up?  How did Adam and Eve create good family dynamics?  The results tend to speak for themselves.  Adam winds up being killed by his brother Cain.  Did God expect people to behave based on the fact that He created them and thus they would be perfect?  The first parents, the first children, and then the first murder.  The creation of human beings was not going well.

Adam and Eve are said to have had other children.  The sequence of all those births is not covered in Genesis.  Those children apparently married one another to help populate the Earth.  Genesis infers that Cain married one of those descendants of Adam and Eve’s other children.  From there other generations of people developed.  Genesis 4 does not address how Adam and Eve’s descendants were taught about God.  After making the biggest mistake in Earthly history one would think that Adam and Eve would have made sure to pass on the tale of how they ruined their lives via one act of disobedience.  If not, why didn’t they share the story with their children?

Genesis 4 closes with the statement that Adam made love to Eve again and she gave birth to a son they named Seth.  It is stated that Seth was granted to Adam in place of the murdered/deceased Abel.  The close of Genesis 4 recounts that Seth had a son named Enosh.  Then all of a sudden people began to call on the name of the Lord?  Why not before then?  What role did the punished Adam and Eve have in people not calling on the Lord before then?  What were Adam and Eve’s descendants taught about God and the creation of mankind?

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