As the Deer, Part III

The Bible tells us that there is more to the story. The story of mankind seeking validation and finding it in the wrong places is a very old story, one that goes all the way back to the beginning of creation. Take a moment to pull out a Bible and refresh yourself with the first chapter of Genesis. As we look through this chapter – the six days of creation and the seventh day of rest – we see throughout “And God said…” or “And God spoke…” or “”And God saw that it was good,” and everywhere that God is mentioned in the first chapter of Genesis we always see “G-o-d”. In the original Hebrew the word translated as “God” is the word “Elohiym”, a general form of the word for God that in some cases is translated as “ruler,” “judge”, “angel,” or “god.” It implies a sense of power, a sense of majesty, a sense of divinity. And so we see throughout the story of creation the power of God and His majesty. But then something interesting happens when we move on to the second chapter; from the fourth verse to the end of the chapter all references to God use the words “LORD God”. In the Hebrew the word translated as “LORD” is “Jehovah”, which is the proper name of God, meaning “the Existing One.” We have a switch in chapter two verse four that says we are now not talking about a nameless god, an all-powerful God; we are now talking about One who has a Name – still an all-powerful God, but One who can relate to us. Now take a moment to consider how Hebrew writers often used parallelism in their writing, where a story or idea is told once, and then the same story or idea is told again in a slightly different way. We see this in the first two chapters of Genesis. The first time we see the creation story we see the power of God, the second time we see the creation story it focuses on the creation of man and woman and we see “Jehovah God”, a Name that we can relate to. We see throughout chapter two how God blesses Adam, He gives him everything in the world, He gives him dominion over the world. A little later on God sees that Adam can find no helper suitable for him, so He creates a woman, Eve, whom Adams declares to be “bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh.” Then down in verse 25 we find an interesting sentence: “The man and his wife were both naked, and they were not ashamed.” Often times I think we gloss over this verse as, perhaps, Sunday school felt board kind of lessons, but I think we may be missing something. In today’s society, to be naked is to be shamed. We are ashamed to be naked. But Adam and Eve were naked and felt no shame. This is before the fall when man still had that connection with God; they had nothing to hide from God. Everyday it was the two of them walking with God and talking with God in the garden. They didn’t need clothing to try to add a sense of “who I am”, another sense of identity, a separation, putting on a mask. Everything was shared between Adam and Eve and God.

But then the story continues in Chapter 3, and we see that “LORD God”, or “Jehovah God,” is used in some of the first verses, but then we have the serpent come in:

“Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the LORD [Jehovah] God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God [Did “Elohiym” God] actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” And the woman said 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, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’” But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God [“Elohiym”] knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God [“Elohiym”], knowing good and evil.”
- Genesis 3:1-5, bracketed items my own emphasis

I thought it was was interesting as we read through this that we have a transition from “Elohiym” God in the beginning, and then the story is retold with “Jehovah” God focusing on our creation and relationship with God in the beginning, and then what does the serpent say when he comes in? He says “Elohiym”. He bypasses the relationship, the name that Adam and Eve associated with God, and hints to Eve that by eating this fruit she would become just like God. It is a temptation aimed at our pride. Instead of submitting to the created role, we now want to reach beyond; we no longer feel that the relationship that we have with Jehovah God is worthy of our standing. We want to be just like Him. So Eve takes the fruit and gives some to Adam, and Adam takes the fruit and that relationship with God is severed. But one thing that is apparent throughout the entirety of those first few chapters is God’s love. He set us up with everything we needed to be prosperous, to have our needs met, and we had our validation at the time of Adam and Eve through God. But love requires one thing -- it requires a choice. Sometimes we may sit back and think, “Well, why did God have to throw that tree in the middle of the garden? Surely He could have just bypassed that and everything would have been alright.” But then its not love. For love to exist there has to be a choice, and unfortunately for us Adam and Eve chose their own way over the way God created things to be.