Genesis 2 - The Garden of Eden

In the Beyond the Basics Bible Study Podcast, Dan Snyder discusses Genesis chapter two. The chapter recounts the creation story from a more personal perspective, emphasizing the importance of rest on the seventh day and God's creation of Adam and Eve. Snyder highlights various themes, such as rest in Christ, the role of men and women in marriage, and the significance of vulnerability before God and others. He also provides reflection questions for listeners.

Transcription:

Welcome to the Beyond the Basics Bible Study Podcast. My name is Dan Snyder and I am your host. Thank you so much for joining me for this episode on Genesis 3.

As many of you know, Genesis 3 is about the fall of man, the introduction of evil into the world, and the curse that is brought onto the planet because of Adam's sin. So we'll go through an overview here of the chapter. First of all, we see the serpent introduced. The serpent deceives Eve by convincing her to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Then Eve gives the fruit to Adam, and Adam eats of the fruit. And they both notice they're naked. So they sew fig leaves together to cover themselves, and then they hide from God as they hear him walking through the garden. At this point, God finds Adam and Eve. He interrogates them. He finds out what happened, as if God didn't know already. He then curses the serpent. He curses the woman. He curses the man. And then God removes them from the garden and places an angel with a flaming sword to guard the entrance.

So getting into the chapter.

First, some observations about this chapter. I don't know about you, but I seem to notice that there seems to be less separation between the physical and the spiritual world at this time. That is, in the Garden of Eden pre-fall of man. Of course we have a talking serpent, we have God walking through the garden as if God is a man, God personally makes clothes for Adam and Eve, and then we see a cherubim with a flaming sword guarding that entrance to the garden. That Sherebim is clearly seen by people.

And I think what we notice is, and what we're gonna see as we go through the rest of the Bible, is this is a picture of the New Jerusalem. This is a picture of one day when God is going to dwell with humans once again. There's gonna be no separation between the physical and the spiritual realm. Right now we see a very distinct separation between the physical and the spiritual realm, or at least it appears that way to our Western mindset.

Now, you ask somebody in the Eastern hemisphere, if that's the case, and they may not quite agree with that. But here, here in the Western world, where we have been influenced by Greek thought over the last several thousand years, there is a separation between the physical world and the spiritual world, but it was not always that way and will not always be that way. One day there will be a merging of the physical and spiritual world just like there was in Eden.

So who is the serpent? That is the question. The serpent, as we know throughout the rest of the scripture, reveals to us that the serpent is Satan. If this is your first time reading through the Bible, that's not so clear. Revelation 12:9 says: And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world, he was thrown down to the earth and his angels were thrown down with him.

So the question is, how did the serpent talk? And the answer is, I have no idea. Nobody knows. We do know that later on in the book of Numbers there is a donkey that talks. And off the top of my head, that's about the only two examples that I can think of of animals talking in the Bible. So clearly this isn't just any animal. We know that Jesus at one point cast demons into a herd of pigs. And so we know that demons can inhabit animal bodies. So this serpent could have been inhabited by Satan himself, which animated the serpent and gave it a voice. But we have no idea.

So let's move on to the deception of the serpent. First of all, he twists God's words. He said, "Did God actually say you shall not eat of any tree in the garden?"

Now, Eve did not know God's word. Eve says to the serpent, "We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, 'You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden.'"

The tree that is in the midst of the garden actually describes the tree of life. If you go back to chapter 2 verse 9 it says the tree of life was in the midst of the garden and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. So it was the tree of life that was in the midst of the garden. So Eve didn't know God's word. Then she says, "Neither shall you touch it."

There's another problem here, God didn't actually say this. God