Adam is the prototypical king who is called to conquer the Promised Land.
• Seth D. Postell
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Awhile back we did a post called “Fundamental Mistakes in Reading Genesis 1-2.” One of the points of that piece was that, when reading the creation story, people miss clues that show all was not right with the world. I believe that people have misinterpreted God saying “It is good,” making that mean “everything was perfect” at the beginning of the Bible. If you go back and read the article, you will see that I mention several aspects of the creation story which show a good but imperfect world — even a world in which there was enmity toward God and the presence of death. The world which God set in order was “good,” that is, habitable for life (in contrast to the dark, watery wasteland of Gen. 1-2), but it was not a pristine, perfect “paradise.”
One of the most important clues to this is found in Genesis 1:26-28 —
Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.”
So God created humankind in his image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.
God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.” [emphasis mine]
In his book Adam as Israel: Genesis 1-3 as the Introduction to the Torah and Tanakh, Seth D. Postell quotes Iain Proven who shows that the term “subdue” and the rest of the “creation mandate” in this text is “both royal and overtly militaristic.”
The second verb (in English “subdue”) is a translation of the Hebrew verb kabash. It is the language of conquest, usually military conquest. It reappears in passages like Numbers 32:22,29 and Joshua 18:1, where we read of the land being “subdued” before God and his people; or 2 Samuel 8:11, where we read of David “subduing” all the nations. Warfare therefore lurks in the background of this verb.
Humankind, then, according to Genesis 1, was introduced into a world that required “subduing.” It was not a paradise humans entered, but a battlefield!
Viewed in universal terms, this indicates that from the beginning God chose humans, those who carry his “image” in the world, to repair the world (the Jewish concept of tikkun olam). The original mandate for humans is that we should represent God in the world and to work with him to overcome evil and its effects on the world.
The story of “Adam and Eve” beginning in Genesis 2:4 shows what happened to this original mandate. Adam and Eve (representatives of all humankind) failed to exercise “dominion” and “subdue the earth” and thus lost access to the Tree of Life, subjecting themselves and the world to the domination of sin, evil, and death.
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Before this is a story about all people, however, it is first a story about Israel.
The first representative couple, Adam and Eve, like Israel, was chosen to dwell in a special land of abundant provision and to keep God’s commandments. They were given access to the Tree of Life, by which they might forever live in God’s blessing. However, they failed to “subdue” the inhabitants of the land (as represented by the serpent — which by the way was a common Canaanite fertility symbol), and were thus cast out into exile to the east of Eden (as Israel was exiled to Babylon).
We are used to thinking of Adam and Eve in terms of being first humans, first to sin. But if we read this in the light of the Hebrew Bible, we see that it is more specific than that.
- Genesis 1 and following introduces Israel’s story. It shows the beginning of God’s plan to repair the world through a chosen people.
- Adam represents the first Israelite, and the first “king” of Israel. Adam is the first in a long line of chosen representatives who are given the opportunity to “subdue” the inhabitants of the land and “exercise dominion,” yet who fail to do so completely. The rest of the Hebrew Bible is one long historical chronicle of those failed efforts.
The Hebrew Bible itself, most of it composed, edited, and put together during and after the Exile, was written to trace this history, to help Israel see why they had gone into exile, to help them see their true identity and calling as God’s chosen people, and to give them hope for the future — particularly by pointing them to a King who would not fail, the Messiah.
In this story, Adam is not so much the first sinner as he is the first failed savior.
By the way, I have an idea (not fully formed in my mind yet), that this understanding of Adam may help us see more clearly what Paul was getting at in passages like Romans 5.
Perhaps Paul is not saying that Adam introduced sin and death into a world in which it was previously absent, but rather that Adam allowed sin and death to begin “exercising dominion” (see Rom. 5:17) over the world in a greater way when he failed to exercise the dominion God called him to achieve. Jesus, however, did exercise that dominion, and made it possible for humankind to reign in a new creation (see Romans 5:17).