The author has established God as the Lord of all the universe in 1:1-2:4b. It is easy to imagine how idyllic life can be in the world of that account. If there was any conflict in that world, it could only be surmised in the use of the verb kabash, "subdue" in 1:26. The real world, the author knew, is not like that. How then did the world come to what it is? In the present account the author takes up this issue. That it should span two chapters out of only eleven that he had devoted to the story of the world apart from the patriarchs suggests how importantly he felt that the fundamental principle of we is often called "the Fall" must be grasped. As it turns out, the cause of our discordant world had nothing to do with what he had to subdue out there; it had, and has, to do with what is closest to us: ourself, that we are our greatest enemy. To tell the story the author threads his story through, as we have seen, the motif of food & eating (see Introduction to Gen 1-3).
The cause of our discordant world
had nothing to do with
what he had to subdue.
It had, and has, to do with the one thing that most humans still forget, i.e.,
We are Our Greatest Enemy.
It used once to be thought that Gen 2 presents a "second creation account," presented by a different author or source who had a different preference for the name of God from the account in Gen 1. This is a view now much abandoned. The first two (three) chapters present rather a diptych view of the early days of the world as we know it. This account (Chap 2) has, e.g., no interest in the cosmic dimension at all; "the heavens"—once introduced tangentially in v4—makes no appearance again.1 Instead the focus of this account are the events in the garden of Eden that God had established and in which He set the first human pair. Furthermore, the order in which things came into being narrated here differs from that given in Gen 1. The most obvious of these differences is that, here, the first human is formed from the ground (v7) before plants were made to grow (v9) (in Gen 1, plants appeared on Day 3 and humans on Day 6). Surely no author would have put together a book with these glaringly contrasting chapters side by side unless he knew what he was doing because he had a clear purpose in mind or he was incomprehensibly incompetent. It is doubtful if he was the latter his work would have found its way into the canon. In Chap 1 the author had presented Humans as the pinnacle of God's creation. Here the author sets him in the centre of a circle, and shows him for what he is.2
Furthermore, Gen 2 is not an independent narrative but is bound clearly with Gen 3, so that the two chapters together form a seamless account. This is clearly evident in the chiastic structure that, together, portrays the great reversal of all that God intended that occurred in the garden and resulted in the great enmity between the seed of the woman and the serpent. At its fulcrum is their act of disobedience together eating "the poisonous fruit":3
A. Narrative: God is active, Man is passive, 2:4-17.
B. Narrative: God is active, Man in minor role (giving the woman
a name), Woman and animals passive, 2:18-25.
C. Dialogue: Serpent & Woman active, 3:1-5.
D. Narrative: Woman & Man active, 3:6-7.
C'. Dialogue: God, Man & Woman active, 3:8-13.
B'. Narrative: God is active, Man in a minor role (giving the woman
a name), Woman & Serpent passive, 3:14-20.
A'. Narrative: God is active, Man is passive, 3:21-24.
Within this larger chiasmus, smaller units are bound together by other intricate arrangments.
Low Chai Hok
©Alberith, 2016