Genesis 3:24

Genesis EDEN LOST AND RESTOREDGenesis 3:24 . - Revelation 22:14 . Better is the end of a thing than the beginning.’ Eden was fair, but the heavenly city shall be fairer. The Paradise regained is an advance on the Paradise that was lost. These are the two ends of the history of man, separated by who knows how many millenniums. Heaven lay about him in his infancy, but as he journeyed westwards its morning blush faded into the light of common day-and only at eventide shall the sky glow again with glory and colour, and the western heaven at last outshine the eastern, with a light that shall never die. A fall, and a rise-a rise that reverses the fall, a rise that transcends the glory from which he fell,-that is the Bible’s notion of the history of the world, and I, for my part, believe it to be true, and feel it to be the one satisfactory explanation of what I see round about me and am conscious of within me. 1. Man had an Eden and lost it. I take the Fall to be a historical fact. To all who accept the authority of Scripture, no words are needed beyond the simple statement before us, but we may just gather up the signs that there are on the wide field of the world’s history, and in the narrower experience of individuals, that such a fall has been. Look at the condition of the world: its degradation, its savagery-all its pining myriads, all its untold millions who sit in darkness and the shadow of death.

Will any man try to bring before him the actual state of the heathen world, and, retaining his belief in a God, profess that these men are what God meant men to be? It seems to me that the present condition of the world is not congruous with the idea that men are in their primitive state, and if this is what God meant men for, then I see not how the dark clouds which rest on His wisdom and His love are to be lifted off. Then, again-if the world has not a Fall in its history, then we must take the lowest condition as the one from which all have come; and is that idea capable of defence? Do we see anywhere signs of an upward process going on now? Have we any experience of a tribe raising itself? Can you catch anywhere a race in the act of struggling up, outside of the pale of Christianity? Is not the history of all a history of decadence, except only where the Gospel has come in to reverse the process? But passing from this: What mean the experiences of the individual-these longings; this hard toil; these sorrows? How comes it that man alone on earth, manifestly meant to be leader, lord, etc., seems but cursed with a higher nature that he may know greater sorrows, and raised above the beasts in capacity that he may sink below them in woe, this capacity only leading to a more exquisite susceptibility, to a more various as well as more poignant misery? Whence come the contrarieties and discordance in his nature?

Genesis 3:24 . So he drove out the man — This signified the exclusion of him and his guilty race from that communion with God which was the bliss and glory of paradise. But whither did he send him when he turned him out of Eden? He might justly have chased him out of the world, Job 18:18 ; but he only chased him out of the garden: he might justly have cast him down to hell, as the angels that sinned were, when they were shut out from the heavenly paradise, 2 Peter 2:4 ; but man was only sent to till the ground out of which he was taken. He was only sent to a place of toil, not to a place of torment. He was sent to the ground, not to the grave; to the workhouse, not to the dungeon, not to the prison-house; to hold the plough, not to drag the chain: his tilling the ground would be recompensed by his eating its fruits; and his converse with the earth, whence he was taken, was improvable to good purposes, to keep him humble, and to remind him of his latter end. Observe, then, that though our first parents were excluded from the privileges of their state of innocence, yet they were not abandoned to despair; God’s thoughts of love designed them for a second state of probation upon new terms.

And he placed at the east of the garden of Eden, a detachment of cherubim, armed with a dreadful and irresistible power, represented by flaming swords which turned every way — On that side the garden which lay next to the place whither Adam was sent, to keep the way that led to the tree of life.

(24) So he drove out the man. —This implies displeasure and compulsion. Adam departed unwillingly from his happy home, and with the consciousness that he had incurred the Divine anger. It was the consequence of his sin, and was a punishment, even if necessary for his good under the changed circumstances produced by his disobedience. On the duration of Adam’s stay in Paradise, see Excursus at end of this book. He placed.—Literally, caused to dwell. The return to Paradise was closed for ever. At the east of the garden of Eden.—Adam still had his habitation in the land of Eden, and probably in the immediate neighbourhood of Paradise. (Comp. Genesis 4:16.) Cherubims.—The cherub was a symbolical figure, representing strength and majesty. The ordinary derivation, from a root signifying to carve, grave, and especially to plough, compared with Exodus 25:20, suggests that the cherubim were winged bulls, probably with human heads, like those brought from Nineveh. We must not confound them with the four living creatures of Ezekiel’s vision (Ezekiel 1:5), which are the “beasts” of the Revelation of St. John. The office of the cherub here is to guard the Paradise, lest man should try to force an entrance back; and so too the office of the cherubs upon the mercy-seat was to protect it, lest any one should impiously approach it, except the high-priest on the Day of Atonement. The four living creatures of the Apocalypse have a far different office and signification.

24 . So he drove out ] The expulsion from the garden is repeated in this verse in stronger terms. In Genesis 3:23 , it was “sent him forth” (LXX ἐξαπέστειλεν , Lat. emisit ): here, it is “drove out” (LXX ἐξέβαλε , Lat. ejecit ). Though there is a repetition which may possibly imply different narratives combined together, the milder tone of Genesis 3:23 is connected with, the description of man’s vocation to work, the sterner tone of Genesis 3:24 expresses the exclusion of sinful beings from the privileges of the Divine presence. at the east ] Implying that the entrance was on the east side. Man is driven out eastward, in accordance with the prevalent belief that the cradle of human civilization was to be sought for in the east. Assyrian Winged Bull . the Cherubim ] Mentioned here without explanation, as if their character must be well known to the readers. The O.T. contains two representations of the Cherubim: (1) they are beings who uphold the throne of God, cf. 1 Samuel 4:4 , 2 Samuel 6:2 , 2 Kings 19:15 , Psalm 80:2 ; Psalm 99:1 ; possibly, in this aspect, they were originally the personification of the thunder clouds, cf.

Psalm 18:10 . “And he (Jehovah), rode upon a cherub, and did fly,” where the passage is describing the Majesty of Jehovah in the thunderstorm: (2) they are symbols of the Divine Presence, e.g. two small golden cherubim upon the Ark of the Covenant, Exodus 25:18 ff.; two large-winged creatures made of olive wood, sheltering the Ark in the Holy of Holies, 1 Kings 6:23 . They were represented in the works of sacred art in the Tabernacle, Exodus 25:18 ff.: and on the walls and furniture of the Temple, 1 Kings 6:29 ; 1 Kings 6:35 ; 1 Kings 7:29 ; 1 Kings 7:36 , cf. Ezekiel 41:18 ff. The description of the four living creatures in Ezekiel 1:5 ff; Ezekiel 10:20 ff., gives us the Prophet’s conception of the Cherubim, each one with four faces (of a man, a lion, an ox, and an eagle), and each one with four wings. But in Ezekiel 41:18-19 the Cherubim have two faces, one of a man, and one of a lion. It is natural to compare the Assyrian composite figures, winged bulls, and lions with men’s heads, and the Greek γρύψ , or “gryphon.” In the present passage, the Cherubim are placed as sentinels at the approach to the Tree of Life, and, therefore, we are probably intended to understand that they stood, one on either side of the entrance to the garden, like the two winged figures at the entrance of an Assyrian temple.