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God’s Temple and Evil
Now the serpent was more subtle than any other wild creature that the Lord God had made. Gen. 3:1 We have seen that God created His great temple from the very chaotic elements of the watery deep, formless earth, and darkness. The great paradox is that He created something so firm and enduring on something…
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The Faces of Adam, Eve, and Evil
The story of Adam and Eve with the snake is disarmingly simple. We may dismiss it outright as ridiculously unscientific and impossible to believe or to take seriously. However, it refuses to go away. In fact, it demands to be taken at face value. The human race most certainly had an origin, and even though…
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Snaky Words
Did God say …? You will not die…! Gen 3:1, 4-5 God “spoke” all creation into being through “words.” The snake, who we have previously identified as a “demonophany,” the “dark side” of the Theophany motif in the Garden, attempts to undo creation by deceitful words. Since evil has no necessary existence independent of God’s…
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The Nakedness Motif and the Fall
Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew they were naked; and the sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons. Gen 3:7 The concept of nakedness is too deep for the human mind to unravel. What it was before the fall can only be guessed at. What it is now, both dark…
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The Divine Incantation
Because you have done all this, cursed … Gen. 3:14-19 God is the first blesser. When something is blessed, like the original creation, it is empowered to function as God intended it to function. As surprising as it may seem, God is also the first curser. What we have in Genesis 3: 14-19 is a…
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The Haunted House: “…I was afraid…”
Cursed is the ground because of you … thorns and thistles it shall bring forth to you. (Gen. 3:14-19) As we have seen, when Adam the priest sinned, the cosmic temple was immediately affected, for there is a necessary link between humanity and creation. In the Bible, there is always a symbiosis between human morality…
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Light from the Clerestory
I will put enmity between you [serpent] and the woman, and between your seed and her seed. (Gen.3: 15). When Adam had lived a hundred and thirty years, he became the father of a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named him Seth. (Gen. 5:3). The picture painted in the last post…
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Cain’s Alternative Culture
Then Cain went away from the presence of the Lord, and dwelt in the land of Nod, east of Eden. Gen. 4:16 God cursed Cain (4:11)! Nothing could be more serious! As we said previously, God did not curse Adam or Eve, for then the whole human race would be under divine curse. Cain was…
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Seth’s Line: Winning When It Feels Like Losing!
And the earth was corrupt in God’s sight, and the earth was filled with violence. Gen. 6:11. The Garden in Eden, as we have established, was a Holy of Holies, and Adam was its priest made in the image of God, to “cultivate and keep/guard” it in the splendor of the seventh day with Eve…
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Noah’s Ark as Temple
And God said to Noah … Make yourself an ark of gopher wood … For behold, I will bring a flood of waters upon the earth … (Gen. 6:13-17) Adam with Eve was to expand the borders of the Garden to the whole earth, filling it with offspring, subduing the wild regions as well as…