Driven Out

We read in Genesis 3 that after disobedience, God “drove out” the man from the garden. It feels like we’ve been kicked out. Banished. Hell?

The word is used again later in a story linked to something important: it’s the word used when Sarah drives out Hagar.

And she said to Abraham, “Get rid of that slave woman and her son, for that woman’s son will never share in the inheritance with my son Isaac.”
Genesis 21:10 (NIV)

While we wrestle with Sarah’s unkindness and Abe’s foolishness and Hagar’s slave-status, there’s something that Paul says later about this story that we have to understand. These characters represent something.

For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by the slave woman and the other by the free woman. His son by the slave woman was born according to the flesh, but his son by the free woman was born as the result of a divine promise.
Galations 4:22-23 (NIV)

There’s so much talk about “works” and “faith,” and Paul links these concepts to slavery and freedom as it relates to God’s promise to us.

When Sarah demands that Abe “get rid of” Hagar and the boy, she is using this same word of “banishing” as Genesis 3.

The link should be viewed through an eternal lens: God is banishing the slavery of works and our own attempts at attaining status and relationship from the garden. The Garden is Holy.

He’s not kicking US out. He’s kicking out the works of the flesh.

How do we know this?

Because if you read the text closely, God only banishes Adam from the garden, and not Eve, who represents Life. The spirit. The one through whom God promises to bring redemption. Not through through One born of the flesh, but born of the spirit.

And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.
Genesis 3:22-24 (NIV)

Separated from Life

Genesis 2 and 3 mention a Tree of Life.

Adam calls his wife the “Mother of Life.”

Genesis 3 seems to separate the man and his wife and put them at odds with each other, right after God brought the together in the previous chapter.

We read that Adam is cursed to die, and that a flaming sword blocks Adam from the Tree of Life.

From Eve? Is Adam separated from both Life and from his wife?

There is so much being said here.

Connected by Dust

Dust connects the serpent and the man in the weirdest way.

Then the Lord God said to the serpent,

“Because you have done this,
Cursed are you more than all the livestock,
And more than any animal of the field;
On your belly you shall go,
And dust you shall eat
All the days of your life
;

Genesis 3:14 (NASB)

By the sweat of your face
You shall eat bread,
Until you return to the ground,
Because from it you were taken;
For you are dust,
And to dust you shall return
.

Genesis 3:19 (NASB)

Who was Kicked out of the Garden?

The text says that Adam was kicked out. “The man.” It doesn’t say the woman was kicked out.

Isn’t that interesting?

After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.

Genesis 3:24 (NIV)

Returning to the Ground

God tells Adam: “cursed is the ground because of you,” and this word “ground” is the same place that Adam came from. It’s the same word that Adam came from.

And then God tells Adam that he will RETURN to the ground.

This “return” is also repentance. Dying… to self.

to return, turn back
to turn back (to God), repent
H7725: שׁוּב

By the sweat of your brow
you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
and to dust you will return.
Genesis 3:19 (NIV)