So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.
24. So he drove out ] The expulsion from the garden is repeated in this verse in stronger terms. In Gen 3:23, it was “sent him forth” (LXX , Lat. emisit): here, it is “drove out” (LXX , Lat. ejecit). Though there is a repetition which may possibly imply different narratives combined together, the milder tone of Gen 3:23 is connected with, the description of man’s vocation to work, the sterner tone of Gen 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. 1Sa 4:4, 2Sa 6:2, 2Ki 19:15, Psa 80:2; Psa 99:1; possibly, in this aspect, they were originally the personification of the thunder clouds, cf. Psa 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, Exo 25:18 ff.; two large-winged creatures made of olive wood, sheltering the Ark in the Holy of Holies, 1Ki 6:23. They were represented in the works of sacred art in the Tabernacle, Exo 25:18 ff.: and on the walls and furniture of the Temple, 1Ki 6:29 ; 1Ki 6:35; 1Ki 7:29 ; 1Ki 7:36, cf. Eze 41:18 ff.
The description of the four living creatures in Eze 1:5 ff; Eze 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 Eze 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 , 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. They are emblematical of the presence of the Almighty: they are the guardians of His abode.
the flame of a sword ] It is not usually noticed that we have in these words a protection for the Tree of Life quite distinct from the Cherubim. The hasty reader supposes that the “sword” is a weapon carried by the Cherubim. In pictures, the sword with the flame turning every way is put into the hand of a watching Angel. But this misrepresents the language of the original Hebrew, which states that God placed, at the east of the garden, not only the Cherubim, but also “the flame of a sword which turned every way.” What the writer intended to convey we can only conjecture. Very probably it was a representation of the lightnings which went forth from the Divine Presence, and were symbolical of unapproachable purity and might.
The student should refer to the description of the Cherub, in Eze 28:11-19, and note particularly the words, Gen 3:13, “thou wast in Eden, the garden of God,” Gen 3:14, “thou wast the anointed Cherub that covereth: and I set thee, so that thou wast upon the holy mountain of God; thou hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire.” (See Davidson’s Notes, in loc. in Cambridge Bible.)
The LXX , and Lat. flammeum gladium atque versatilem, give a good rendering of the original.
to keep the way of the tree of life ] That is to “keep,” or “protect,” “the way that led to the tree of life,” so that man should not set foot upon it.
In the N.T. “the tree of life” is mentioned Rev 2:7, “to him that overcometh, to him will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the Paradise of God,” cf. Gen 22:2.
NOTE ON THE FALL
I. The following illustrations of the Story of the Fall are from Jeremias ( O.T. in the Light of the Ancient East, E.T.).
( a) In Mexican mythology the first woman is called “the woman with the serpent,” or “the woman of our flesh,” and she has twin sons. In the same way the Indians have a divine first mother of the race of man, who dwells in Paradise (the Indian Meru). Also in the beginning the evil demon Mahishasura fought with the serpent, trod upon and cut off his head; a victory to be repeated at the end of the world, when Brahma will give back to Indra the rulership over all. The Chinese have a myth according to which Fo-hi, the first man, discovered the wisdom of Yang and Yin, masculine and feminine principle (heaven and earth). A dragon rose from the deep and taught him. “The woman,” it is said in an explanatory gloss, “is the first source and the root of all evil” (p. 231).
( b) Legend of Eabani. The [Babylonian] epic of Gilgamesh tells about a friend of the hero, reminiscent of Pan and Priapus, Eabani, whose whole body was covered with hair. He is the creation of Aruru when she “broke off clay” and “made an image of Anu.” He is a being of a gigantic strength. “With the gazelles he eats green plants, with the cattle he satisfies himself (?) with drink, with the fish (properly crowd) he is happy in the water. He spoils the hunting of the ‘hunter.’ Out of love to the animals he destroys snares and nets (?), so that the wild beasts escape. Then by the craft of the hunter, who feared him, a woman is brought to him, who seduces him, and keeps him from his companions the beasts, for six days and seven nights. When he came back, all beasts of the field fled from him. Then Eabani followed the woman, and let himself be led into the city of Erech. In the following passages of the epic the woman appears as the cause of his troubles and sorrows. A later passage records that Eabani cursed her. The First Man is not in question here, but a certain relationship of idea in this description to the story of the happy primeval state of Adam must be granted” (p. 232 f.).
( c) Legend of Adapa. Adapa, the son of a, was one day fishing when “the south wind suddenly overturned his boat and he fell into the sea. Adapa in revenge broke the wings of the south wind (the bird Zu), so that he could not fly for seven days. Anu, God of Heaven, called him to account, saying, ‘No mercy!’ but at the prayer of Tammuz and Gishzida, Watchers of the Gate, Anu softened his anger, and commanded that a banquet should be prepared, and a festival garment presented to him, and oil for his anointing: garment and oil he accepted, but food and drink he refused. a had warned him: ‘When thou appearest before Anu, they will offer thee food of Death: eat not thereof! Water of Death will they offer thee: drink not thereof! They will present thee with a garment: put it on! They will offer thee oil: anoint thyself with it!’ But, behold, it was Bread of Life and Water of Life! Anu breaks forth in wonder. Upon the man who has been permitted by his creator to gaze into the secrets of heaven and earth , he (Anu) has desired to bestow also immortality. And by the envy of the God the man has been deceived” (p. 183 f.).
Jastrow remarks upon this legend: “Adam, it will be recalled, after eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, makes a garment for himself. There can be no doubt that there is a close connection between this tradition and the feature in the Adapa legend, where Adapa, who has been shown the ‘secrets of heaven and earth,’ that is, has acquired knowledge is commanded by a to put on the garment that is offered him. The anointing oneself with oil, though an essential part of the toilet in the ancient and modern Orient, was discarded in the Hebrew tale as a superfluous feature. The idea conveyed by the use of oil was the same as the one indicated in clothing one’s nakedness. Both are symbols of civilization which man is permitted to attain, but his development stops there. He cannot secure eternal life” ( Religion of B. and A., p. 552 f.).
In this legend, the man Adapa who has acquired “knowledge,” is prevented by the deceit of a, the creator of man, from acquiring immortality. There is therefore a striking parallelism of idea with the narrative of Genesis 3, but there is no resemblance in its general features.
Hitherto there has not been discovered any Babylonian story of the Fall. But, when we observe the occurrence of such features as “the garden,” “the tree of life,” “the serpent,” “the Cherubim,” it is clear that the symbolism employed is that which is quite common in the records and representations of Assyrian and Babylonian myths.
II. The Story of the Fall does not offer an explanation for the origin of sin. But (1) it gives a description of the first sin; and (2) it presents an explanation of ( a) the sense of shame ( Gen 3:7), ( b) the toil of man ( Gen 3:17-19), ( c) the birth-pangs of woman ( Gen 3:16), ( d) the use of clothing ( Gen 3:21). Whether it offers an explanation of the origin of death, is doubtful. The penalty of death, threatened in Gen 2:17, was not carried out. In Gen 3:19 it is assumed that man will die, if he does not eat of the tree of life. He is not, therefore, created immortal; yet immortality is not impossible for him.
The story turns upon man’s eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. What is this “knowledge of good and evil”? Four answers have been given. (1) Initiation into the mysteries of magical knowledge. (2) Transition to the physical maturity of which the sense of shame is the natural symptom (Gen 3:7). (3) Acquisition of the knowledge of the secrets of nature and the gifts of civilization, e.g. clothing (Gen 3:21), arts, industries, &c. (Gen 4:17 ff.). (4) Arrival at the moral sense of discernment between right and wrong.
Of these, (1) the first may at once be dismissed as quite alien to the general tenour of the story.
(2) The second emphasizes one feature in the story (Gen 3:7; Gen 3:10; Gen 3:21), the sense of shame on account of nakedness. But this new consciousness of sex is only one symptom of the results of disobedience. As an explanation, though possibly adequate for some earlier version of the story, it fails to satisfy the requirements of its present religious character.
(3) The third explanation goes further. It supposes that the knowledge is of that type which afterwards characterizes the descendants of Cain (Gen 4:17 ff.). It implies the expansion of culture with deliberate defiance of God’s will. It means, then, simply the intellectual knowledge of “everything,” or, in the Babylonian phrase, of the “secrets of heaven and earth.” Cf. Jastrow, p. 553 n.
(4) The fourth explanation has been objected to on the ground that God could not originally have wished to exclude man from the power of discerning between good and evil. Notwithstanding, it seems to be the one most in harmony with the general religious character of the story, which turns upon the act of disobedience to God’s command, and upon the assertion of man’s will against the Divine. It may, of course, fairly be asked whether the fact of prohibition did not assume the existence of a consciousness of the difference between right and wrong. We need not expect the story to be psychologically scientific. But the prohibition was laid down in man’s condition of existence previous to temptation. It was possible to receive a Divine command without realizing the moral effect of disobedience. The idea of violating that command had not presented itself before the Serpent suggested it. Conscience was not created, but its faculties were instantaneously aroused into activity, by disobedience. “It is not the thought of the opposition and difference between good and evil , but it is the experience of evil, that knowledge of good and evil which arises from man having taken evil into his very being, which brings death with it. Man, therefore, ought to know evil only as a possibility that he has overcome; he ought only to see the forbidden fruit; but if he eats it, his death is in the act.” (Martensen, Christian Dogmatics, p. 156.)
III. ( a) It does not appear that the Story of the Fall is elsewhere alluded to in the Old Testament. The passages in Job 31:33, “If like Adam I covered my transgressions,” Hos 6:7, “But they like Adam have transgressed the covenant,” are doubtful exceptions. But, in all probability, in both cases the rendering of adam, not as a proper name, but as “man” or “men,” is to be preferred. There is, indeed, a reference to the “garden of Eden” tradition in Eze 28:1 [8] But there is no instance, either in the prophetical or sapiential writings, in which the Story of the Fall is made the basis for instruction upon the subject of sin and its consequences. “The Old Testament,” as Mr Tennant says 2 [9] , “supplies no trace of the existence, among the sacred writers, of any interpretation of the Fall-story comparable to the later doctrine of the Fall.” At the same time, there is no ancient literature comparable to the writings of the O.T. for the deep consciousness of the sinfulness of man in God’s sight.
[8] Mic 7:17, “to lick the dust like a serpent,” is an illustration of Gen 3:14 rather than an allusion to the story.
[9] The Fall and Original Sin, p. 93.
The later Jewish literature shews how prominently the subject of the first sin and of man’s depravity entered into the thought and discussions of the Jews in the last century b.c. and in the first century a.d.
( b) The most notable of the passages referring to the Fall, which illustrate the theology of St Paul, are as follows:
Rom 5:12-14, “Therefore, as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin; and so death passed unto all men, for that all sinned: for until the law sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed when there is no law. Nevertheless death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the likeness of Adam’s transgression, who is a figure of him that was to come.” Gen 3:18, “For as through the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the one shall the many be made righteous.” 1Co 15:21-22, “For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.” 2Co 11:3, “The serpent beguiled Eve in his craftiness.” 1Ti 2:14, “Adam was not beguiled, but the woman being beguiled hath fallen into transgression.”
In Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15 St Paul compares the consequences of the Fall of Adam with the consequences of the redemptive work of Christ. Adam’s Fall brought with it sin and death: Christ’s justifying Act brought righteousness and life. The effects of Adam’s sin were transmitted to his descendants. Sin, the tendency to sin, and death, became in consequence universal. But the effect of Adam’s Fall has been cancelled by the work of Grace, by the Death and Resurrection of Christ.
For a full discussion of St Paul’s treatment of the Fall, see Sanday and Headlam’s Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans (chap. v.), Bishop Gore’s Lectures on the Romans (vol. i. pp. 185 ff.), Thackeray’s St Paul and Jewish Thought (chap. ii.), Tennant’s The Fall and Original Sin (chap. xi.), Bernard’s article Fall in Hastings’ D.B. (vol. i.).
( c) The following passages, quoted from Charles’ Apocrypha, will illustrate Jewish religious thought upon the subject of the Fall and its consequences:
Wis 2:23-24 , “Because God created man for incorruption, and made him an image of his own proper being; But by the envy of the devil death entered into the world, and they that belong to his realm; experience it.”
Sir 25:24 , “From a woman did sin originate, and because of her we must all die.”
4 Ezra 3:21, “And to him [Adam] thou commandedst only one observance of thine, but he transgressed it. Forthwith thou appointedst death for him and for his generations.”
4 Ezra 3:21, “For the first Adam, clothing himself with the evil heart, transgressed and was overcome; and likewise also all who were born of him. Thus the infirmity became inveterate; the Law indeed was in the heart of the people, but (in conjunction) with the evil germ; so what was good departed.” Cf. 4:30, 31.
4 Ezra 7:118, “O thou Adam, what hast thou done! For though it was thou that sinned, the fall was not thine alone, but ours also who are thy descendants!”
2 Baruch xvii. 2, 3, “For what did it profit Adam that he lived nine hundred and thirty years, and transgressed that which he was commanded? Therefore the multitude of time that he lived did not profit him, but brought death, and cut off the years of those who were born from him.”
2 Baruch xxiii. 4, “When Adam sinned and death was decreed against those who should be born.”
2 Baruch xlviii. 42, “O Adam, what hast thou done to all those who are born from thee? And what will be said to the first Eve who hearkened to the Serpent?”
2 Baruch liv. 15, 19, “Though Adam first sinned and brought untimely death upon all, yet of those who were born from him each one of them has prepared for his own soul torment to come. Adam is therefore not the cause, save only of his own soul, But each of us has been the Adam of his own soul.”
2 Baruch lvi. 6, “For when he [Adam] transgressed, untimely death came into being.”
It will be observed that in some of these passages, e.g. 2 Baruch liv. 15, 19, the spiritual consequences of Adam’s Fall are in the main limited to Adam himself. Jewish thought was not agreed upon the question whether all men inherited from Adam a tendency to sin, or whether each man enjoyed freedom of choice and responsibility. Both views could be supported from St Paul’s words, “Through the disobedience of the one the many were made sinners,” “And so death passed unto all men, for that all sinned.”
( d) The teaching of the Talmud is summed up by Weber: “Free will remained to man after the Fall. There is such a thing as transmission of guilt, but not a transmission of sin ( es gibt eine Erbschuld, aber keine Erbsnde); the fall of Adam occasioned death to the whole race, but not sinfulness in the sense of a necessity to sin. Sin is the result of the decision of each individual; as experience shows it is universal, but in itself even after the Fall it was not absolutely necessary” (quoted by Thackeray, ut supra, p. 38). Compare the Midrash Bemidbar Rabba, chap. xiii.; “When Adam transgressed the command of the Holy One, and ate of the tree, the Holy One demanded of him penitence, thereby revealing to him the means of freedom (i.e. from the result of his sin), but Adam would not show penitence.”
( e) Christian doctrine has been much influenced by the teaching of the Fall. But it is not too much to say that speculation upon Original Sin and the effects of the Fall of Adam has too often been carried into subtleties that have no warrant either in Holy Scripture or in reason. “Speaking broadly, the Greek view was simply that ‘the original righteousness’ of the race was lost; the effect of Adam’s sin was a privatio, an impoverishment of human nature which left the power of the will unimpaired. But the Latin writers who followed Augustine took a darker view of the consequences of the Fall. It is for them a depravatio naturae; the human will is disabled; there is left a bias towards evil which can be conquered only by grace.” (Bernard, art. Fall, D.B.)
According to St Augustine, Adam’s sin was the abandonment of God, and his punishment was abandonment by God. Adam forfeited the adjutorium of grace. His will was no longer capable of good. In virtue of the “corporate personality” of Adam, all in Adam sinned voluntarily in him. All shared his guilt. This idea of the whole race being tainted with Adam’s act of sin, rests partly upon the exaggerated emphasis laid upon the Roman legal phrase of “imputation,” partly upon the mistranslation, “in quo,” of St Paul’s words , as if it were “in whom all sinned,” instead of “in that all sinned.”
The Fathers very generally held that original righteousness, which combined natural innocence and the grace of God granted to Adam, was lost at the Fall: and that man, therefore, lost primaeval innocence and the Divine Spirit simultaneously.
( f) Thomas Aquinas went still further in the systematization of the doctrine. Mr Wheeler Robinson gives the following summary: “The immediate result of the Fall was the loss of man’s original righteousness, that is, of the harmonious inter-relation of his nature, through the complete withdrawal of the gift of grace and the decrease of his inclination to virtue (I. b, Q. lxxxv. 1). The disorder of his nature, when uncontrolled by grace, shews itself materially in concupiscentia and formally in the want of original righteousness (I. b, Q. lxxxii. 3), these two elements constituting the ‘original sin’ which passed to Adam’s descendants with the accompanying ‘guilt’ (I. b, lxxxi. 3). all men are one, through the common nature they receive from Adam. As in the individual the will moves the several members, so in the race the will of Adam moves those sprung from him” (I. b, lxxxi. 1). ( The Christian Doctrine of Man, p. 206 f.)
The Council of Trent, Sessio Quinta 2, 3, June 17, 1546, in the “Decree concerning Original Sin,” laid down the following dogma: “If any one asserts that the prevarication of Adam injured himself alone, and not his posterity; and that the holiness and justice, received of God, which he lost, he lost for himself alone, and not for us also; or that he, being defiled by the sin of disobedience, has only transfused death and pains of the body into the human race, but not sin also, which is the death of the soul; let him be anathema: whereas he contradicts the apostle who says: By one man sin entered into the world, and by sin death, and so death passed upon all men, in whom (in quo) all have sinned ” “this sin of Adam, which in its origin is one, and being transfused into all by propagation, not by imitation, is in each one as his own.” (Schaff’s Creeds of the Gr. and Lat. Churches, p. 85.)
( g) XXXIX Articles. “Original sin standeth not in the following of Adam (as the Pelagians do vainly talk), but it is the fault and corruption ( vitium et depravatio) of the nature of every man, that naturally is engendered of the offspring of Adam, whereby man is very far gone ( quam longissime distet) from original righteousness, and is of his own nature inclined to do evil, so that the flesh lusteth always contrary to the spirit, and therefore in every person born into this world, it deserveth God’s wrath and damnation. And this infection ( depravatio) of nature doth remain, yea in them that are regenerated ( in renatis).” (Art. ix. Of original or Birth Sin.)
“The condition of man after the fall of Adam ( post lapsum Adae) is such that he cannot turn and prepare himself by his own natural strength and good works, to faith and calling upon God.” (Art. x. Free Will.)
For a valuable series of discussions, in which traditional Christian doctrine respecting “Original Sin” and the “Fall of Adam” is criticized, see The Origin and Propagation of Sin (1909), The Sources of the Doctrines of the Fall and Original Sin (1903), The Concept of Sin (1912) by the Rev. F. R. Tennant, D.D., B.Sc., Cambridge University Press.
The problem has very largely been modified by modern enquiry, both as regards the origin of the race and the character of the Scripture narrative. Christian doctrine is no longer fettered by the methods of the Schoolmen. Modern philosophy of religion, assisted by the newer studies of sociology, anthropology, and comparative religion, is beginning to revise our conceptions both of personality and of sin. It is inevitable, that, in the larger horizon which has opened up, the attempt should be made to restate Christian thought in reference to the nature of “sin,” of “guilt,” and of “personal freedom.”
In conclusion, the following extract from Sanday and Headlam’s Note on Rom 5:12-21 (p. 146 f.) will repay the student’s careful consideration:
“The tendency to sin is present in every man who is born into the world. But the tendency does not become actual sin until it takes effect in defiance of an express command, in deliberate disregard of a known distinction between right and wrong. How men came to be possessed of such a command, by what process they arrived at the conscious distinction of right and wrong, we can but vaguely speculate. Whatever it was, we may be sure that it could not have been presented to the imagination of primitive peoples otherwise than in such simple forms as the narrative assumes in the Book of Genesis. The really essential truths all come out in that narrative the recognition of the Divine Will, the act of disobedience to the Will so recognised, the perpetuation of the tendency to such disobedience; and we may add perhaps, though here we get into a region of surmises, the connexion between moral evil and physical decay, for the surest pledge of immortality is the relation of the highest part of us, the soul, through righteousness to God. These salient principles, which may have been due in fact to a process of gradual accretion through long periods, are naturally and inevitably summed up as a group of single incidents. Their essential character is not altered, and in the interpretation of primitive beliefs we may safely remember that ‘a thousand years in the sight of God are but as one day.’ We who believe in Providence and who believe in the active influence of the Spirit of God upon man, may well also believe that the tentative gropings of the primaeval savage were assisted and guided and so led up to definite issues, to which he himself perhaps at the time could hardly give a name but which he learnt to call ‘sin’ and ‘disobedience,’ and the tendency to which later ages also saw to have been handed on from generation to generation in a way which we now describe as ‘heredity.’ It would be absurd to expect the language of modern science in the prophet who first incorporated the traditions of his race in the Sacred Books of the Hebrews. He uses the only kind of language available to his own intelligence and that of his contemporaries. But if the language which he does use is from that point of view abundantly justified, then the application which St Paul makes of it is equally justified. He, too, expresses truth through symbols, and in the days when men can dispense with symbols his teaching may be obsolete, but not before.”
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Gen 3:24
So He drove out the man
Mans expulsion from Eden
Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Eden teaches–
I.
THAT WHEN COMFORTS ARE LIKELY TO BE ABUSED, GOD SENDS MEN FROM THEM. There was danger lest Adam should put forth his hand and eat of the tree of life and live forever. The fallen man must not be allowed to eat of the tree of life in this world. It can only be tasted by him in the resurrection; to live forever in a frail body would be an unmitigated woe. There are many trees of life in the world from which God has to drive men, because they are not in a proper condition to make the designed use of them. Government and law must be preventive as well as punitive, they must regard the future as well as the past. It is better for a man to be driven from a mental, moral, or social good than that he should make a bad use of it. Many a soul has lost its Eden by making a bad use of good things.
II. THAT IT IS NOT WELL THAT A SINNER SHOULD LIVE AND RESIDE IN THE HABITATION OF INNOCENCE. Adam and Eve were out of harmony with the purity and beauty of Eden. Such an innocent abode would not furnish them with the toil rendered necessary by their new condition of life. Men ought to have a sympathy with the place in which they reside. Only pure men should live in Eden. Society should drive out the impure from its sacred garden. Commerce should expel the dishonest from its benevolent enclosure. Let the wicked go to their own place in this life. A wicked soul will be far happier out of Eden than in it. Heaven will only allow the good to dwell within its wails.
III. THAT SIN ALWAYS CAUSES MEN TO BE EXPELLED FROM THEIR TRUEST ENJOYMENTS. Sin expels men from their Edens. It expels from the Eden of a pure and noble manhood. It drives the monarch from his palace into exile. It exchanges innocence for shame; plenty for want; the blessing of God into a curse; and fertility into barrenness. It makes the world into a prison house. It often happens when men want to gain more than they legitimately can, that they lose that which they already possess. In trying to become gods, men often lose their Edens. Satan robs men of their choicest possessions and of their sweetest comforts. This expulsion was–
1. Deserved.
2. Preventive.
3. Pitiable.
IV. THAT THOUGH EXPELLED FROM EDEN MANS LIFE IS YET BESET WITH BLESSINGS. Though the cherubim and the flaming sword closed up the way to paradise, Christ had opened a new and living way into the holy place. Christ is now the way of man–to purity–to true enjoyment–to heaven. Heaven substitutes one blessing for another. (J. S. Exell, M. A.)
The plan of redemption exhibited at Eden
I. THE EVENT HERE RECORDED.
1. The expulsion was not forcible. We may infer from the entire narrative that Adam had by this time been brought to penitence.
2. Neither are we to suppose that this event occurred merely as a carrying out of the curse which had been pronounced. The principal reason was, that access to the tree of life might be barred. By this man was taught the full consequence of sin.
II. THE TRANSACTION THAT FOLLOWED.
1. Cherubim (see Eze 1:22; Eze 10:1; Rev 4:6).
2. Flaming sword, Turning every way–literally back on itself: the fire of wrath, kindled by transgression, instead of burning out to consume man, would turn back and expend itself on God manifest in the flesh.
III. THE DESIGN OF THIS TRANSACTION.
1. To teach the principles of redemption.
2. To keep the divinely appointed way to eternal life in remembrance.
3. That it might serve as a temple of worship. (Sketches of Sermons.)
Fallen, yet redeemed
I. MANS FALLEN LIFE.
1. Externally. Condemned to toll and sorrow, no longer fed by sacramental food of the tree of life, exiled from garden, etc.
2. Internally. Strange and terrible possibilities of sin lurking within. Two wills, and two men, in each of us.
II. MANS REDEEMED LIFE. In Christ we have–
1. Forgiveness.
2. An emancipated will. (Bishop W. Alexander.)
The irretraceability of human life
Adam could not go back. True of all men. They cannot retrace their steps.
I. We cannot go back into the past PERIODS OF LIFE.
II. We cannot go back into past CONDITIONS OF LIFE.
1. Physical.
2. Social.
3. Mental.
4. Moral. Conclusion:
1. How great is human life.
2. How obvious our duty.
To make the best of the stage in which we find ourselves. Take care of the Eden, for when we leave it, the flaming sword will render return impossible. (D. Thomas, D. D.)
Mans banishment
I. WHENCE DID HE DRIVE HIM? From Eden.
1. It was a garden of pleasure.
2. A scene of wholesome occupation.
3. A temple of blissful communion. And out of all this he was driven.
II. WHEREFORE DID HE DRIVE HIM?
1. The act of mans disobedience was the ground of this expulsion.
2. This act of disobedience, if properly considered, will be found to be an act of high demerit and aggravated criminality.
3. The awful indications of Divine displeasure that have followed this act, plainly demonstrate to every considerate mind what must have been its malignant nature. Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?
III. WHITHER DID HE DRIVE HIM? He drove him into this blighted wilderness of our present abode; He drove him without the precincts of the garden that was formed for him, and in which he was first placed–He drove out the man–sent him forth to till the ground, and He placed at the east of the garden of Eden cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life. This world is a wilderness, because–
1. So inferior to Eden.
2. A scene of labour.
3. A scene of vicissitude.
4. A scene of vexation.
IV. WHETHER THERE IS ANY DOOR OF HOPE AND ESCAPE?
1. It is my delightful task and happiness to announce to you that the gospel reveals Him who is the second Adam. The first Adam was a figure of Him that was to come–in Adam all died, in Christ all are made alive. What the first Adam destroyed, the second Adam repaired.
2. By His perfect obedience, and meritorious sacrifice for sin, He has actually declared the right and title of reinstatement to this inheritance in behalf of all His people.
3. Faith in our Lord Jesus Christ is the appointed means of our personal restoration to Gods favour, and the pleasure and delight of communion with Him.
4. Regeneration and sanctification are the feet by which we are to retrace our steps to celestial felicity.
5. There is a blessed certainty in all this–a certainty upon which you may depend, and upon which you may venture your immortal souls without scruple or hesitation, and which the second Adam has secured by His all-perfect obedience, atonement, and death. (G. Clayton, M. A.)
Redemption typically seen at the gate of paradise
I. THE REAL CAUSE OF MANS EXPULSION FROM THE EARTHLY PARADISE (see Gen 3:22-23).
II. THE SINGULAR MANIFESTATION THAT NOW SUCCEEDED. It was not a flaming guard of angels that was placed, but the Shechina, or Divine presence of Him who dwelt between the cherubim.
III. THE IMPORTANT AND CONSOLATORY DOCTRINE WHICH THIS APPEARANCE TAUGHT. O cheering object to the eye of faith! O glorious hope, and balmy consolation to dry the tears of penitence, and wake the harp of joy! O hallowed spot, where God vouchsafed to dwell! O blissful seat, where mercy smiled on man. Yes, for there he looked and lived; there he learnt that in due time the sword should awake (that very sword), and smite the man who was Jehovahs fellow; should turn from the sinner upon the surety; and, as was here seen, should be revolvable upon itself! Yes, and there he first saw the cherubims! now first revealed as the covenanting three in the mysterious one. Each conditionally bound to their sacred office; emblems of those great ones, as should hereafter be more particularly unfolded to the captive prophet, as he mourned and wept for Israels sons, beside the banks of Chebar! Captives of every clime and race! here behold the dispensations of Providence, and the design of mercy, grace, and peace! Yes, and with the cheering vision, the very place where it was seen would impart instruction, and might assuage their grief; for see, like the star of Bethlehem, it appeared in the East, emblematic of another sun than they saw; even the Sun of Righteousness, who should hereafter arise to heal, to fructify, to irradiate, guide, and cheer His Church; and who should keep, preserve, and show the way of everlasting life! Yes, here Christ was preached in type and figure as the way, the truth, and the life. For He whom the tree of life represented, was still seen as the same source of being and blessedness to their souls; for though, as has been repeatedly enforced, our first parents could no longer approach as heretofore, and when clad in innocence, yet the blessings it prefigured were still preserved, though shown in another, and even in a superior way. Here, then, was a standing type of redemption; and to this they did approach; for here profoundest wisdom was discovered, and covenanting mercy was displayed. And here, too (for where else?), was that presence of the Lord, from which Cain afterwards departed, while it long continued as the place before which Abel and every pious worshipper would delight to bring his sacrifice, to pay his adoration, and to perform his vows. (W. B.Williams, M. A.)
The closed Eden, the opened heaven
You remember the old legend of Greek mythology, of one to whom, when he had pleased the gods, they said: Ask what you will, and we will give it. And he said, Give me immortality. They did so, and he lived on and on, and could not die. He had immortality, but it was immortality with mortal woes. How wretched was his lot! How wearily did he go along his way of weakness and distress! How he prayed for the revoking of the favour that was only a curse! The woes of man are such that the only immortal who can bear them must be God. It is therefore Gods infinite pity and tenderness, that when man had taken of the tree of knowledge, he is forbidden the tree of life. The very form of the words is striking. It is an unfinished sentence. God says, Behold, the man is become as one of Us, to know good and evil, and now, lest he should put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever– The sentence is unfinished. God did not conclude the awful hypothesis. Man had sinned, and were he now to put out his hand and take of the tree of life and live forever–the eternal. One drops a veil on that dread scene of sorrow into which the immortal sinner would be plunged. It is not only judgment that puts the tree of life beyond mans reach; it is an act of pitifulness, an act of divinest grace. The punishment of sin further involved the labour of reducing the earth by tillage and toil expended upon it to supply mans need. He sent him forth from the garden of Eden to till the ground from whence he was taken. He had been put into the garden to keep it. Now he is set to till the earth. Is there not here also a gracious mitigation of mans suffering? We find ever the traces of mercy blended with the righteous indignation of the offended law. The cloud has always its silver lining. Suppose God had not only permitted the gift of immortality to remain with man after his sin, but had left him also without toil. Suppose everything had been ready to his hand, and he needed only to put out his hand and take the fruit of the garden, the fruit of the tree! No labour! no death! A world of sin, a world of immortality, and a world without work. Can you conceive of a more awful judgment than that? Labour is the mitigation of our woe. Labour is in many cases the cure of the evil. Work will often wean you from sorrow, which comes from sin. Work, good wholesome toil–the hand, the brain–will heal the wounds that sin has made. It was not in wrath, but in pity; it was not with wrath but with grace, that God sent forth the man to till the ground whence he came God finally pronounces the sentence that the way of the tree of life was to be kept by a flaming sword. Man was not willing to go. We will not leave our Eden unless we are driven forth. God had to drive man out of the garden which he had spoiled, and then keep the way to the tree of life by the flaming sword and the burning cherubim. Now, it suggests in the first place that the man had the desire to return upon his past. If man had not wanted to remain in Eden, he would not have been driven out at all. If he had not wanted to return, it would not have been kept by the cherubim. Man always seeks again his past. We always are returning to it. How we dwell in the reminiscences of life! How we look back upon childhoods days with a certain longing! Who has not, again and again, called up in memorys affection those who were with us in the years that have departed? Who is there that would not recall the past? If I could only begin life again! If I could only have back those hours I wasted–those childhoods impressions I allowed to vanish! When I was a child, how tender the heart–how quick the conscience–how pure the life! Oh! give it back to me. Let me inherit the Eden from which I have been driven! My friends, it is vain. Eden is closed. The cherubim are at the gate; them is always the flaming sword to keep the way of the tree of life. Old friendships! Who would not return to these? Friends we have lost, whose hearts we have broken–whom we neglected–whom we injuriously treated–who would not give his right hand to get them back again, that we might undo the wrong we did, that we might increase the little service we had rendered? It is impossible! The cherubim are keeping the gate: you cannot go back. Oh! the lost opportunities of life! Who has used every chance? Who, even in the things of time and sense, has always been watchful? That golden hour in life, you only had it once. You had it then, you lost it then. The time of the flood, the prosperous breeze, the chance that was given you; it is gone. You look back with regret. The cherubim keep the gate; you cannot go back. The wasted lives. The injury that cannot be undone. It may be you wrecked forever the peace of some soul, and in the wreck destroyed your own. Oh! to have had the day before that fatal hour! Oh! to be able to pause again before that false step! It is done! it is done! and the tree of life is guarded by the flaming sword of the cherubim. And this is so, not only with the individual, but with the entire race. All men look back. It is a poor nation that has no history. It is a very savage tribe that has no tradition. The men who have forgotten the golden age are scarcely worthy of the name. All nations recall it. The poets sing of it, and the philosophers meditate upon it, and all mankind look back upon it, and still remember the Eden that was lost. When Adam and Eve went out, they went out with unwilling steps, and ever gazing at the vanished paradise. Mans life is a reminiscence. Mans life is a longing regret. And it illustrates also the impossibility of return. If that past be so delightful, let us go back to it. Let us be to friends whom we have lost, what we were once to them. No, never! The cherubim are there. What were these cherubim? I do not know. There are many orders of being in the service of God; but whatever they were, they stand between the departing man and woman, and forever bar the way of their return. And whatever were the cherubim, the poet is right, that between us and the past there stands ourselves, our former selves. For what is it that really stands between us and the past, towards which we would move if it were possible? What but ourselves? It needs no angel from heaven, no flaming sword to bar the way. We are our own barriers. It is ourselves who stop the way to the tree of life. It is our deed. We lost the chance, we threw away our opportunity, we sacrificed innocence, we destroyed the soul of our friend, and well-nigh have destroyed our own–
Our former selves, wielding a two-edged sword.
Is that all? Are we come to this? Is the promise to the woman, is the voice of the serpent, is the word to Adam, is the command to labour, all to be gathered up in this, and is this the end? Combine the longings for return, combine the obstacles that lie between man and his past, but surely with these we may blend the ever-recurring tone of the story. Does it not point to another gospel? Is there no restoration of life in the future? Is God, who has given to man original life, is He to be stayed in His purpose by human sin? He may have closed the way back to Eden, because there is another way which shall be opened, He may have said to Adam, No step backward to the Eden thou hast lost, because every step forward, perpetually forward, would bring him round again to that Eden into which he would enter. Ah, yes! We must go forward; backward thou canst not go. Go forward. Is time lost? Time is still ours; and though the past has vanished, and though the present is slipping from our grasp, the future is our own. That we still possess. You cannot go back, says God. You have lost innocence; you cannot be innocent again. But, better than innocent, you can be sanctified. Is life lost? Has it wholly perished? Yes, wholly. But life lies beyond. The moment we were born we began to die, and the first cry of the child is but the prelude to the groan with which the man shall pass away. But he dies only to live in the nobler life; there alone, in that great future, shall the restoration be. Eden is closed behind you, but all the world and all the heaven lie before you. Here is the gospel–the gospel of the barred tree of life, the guarded Eden, barred and guarded that we may seek the eternal life, the Eden that our God has given. (L. D. Bevan, D. D.)
Lessons
1. Sin alone puts God upon separating souls from their comforts, antecedent and consequent.
2. When comforts are like to be abused, God prevents it by sending them from them.
3. The habitation of innocency is no place for sinners.
4. Jehovah is the disposer of all places and conditions, He puts in and sends out.
5. A cursed earth is the sinners place of correction; or his bride-well, as we may say.
6. Sin hath brought a sentence for miserable toil on men in this place.
7. Mans base original corrupted with sin, fits him for a base servile condition (Gen 3:23).
8. God hath actually separated sin from the place of pleasure. From the first Adam until now, sin is out of paradise.
9. God doth not only throw out sinners from Eden or the place of pleasure, but keeps them out.
10. God hath His guard of angels to resist sinners, and drive them from rest.
11. Terrible are the means and active by which God drives off sinners from their pleasures.
12. No life can be recovered by man in looking to the former means of life in innocency. Therefore we must to Christ (Gen 3:24). (G. Hughes, B. D.)
The expulsion–its character and lessons
I. First, it is a word this OF SOLEMN DIVINE JUDGMENT. He drove out the man. It was a Divine expulsion from the primeval paradise. Nor was this Divine expulsion one from the delights merely, the endlessly varied beauties and satisfactions, of that choicest part of a world which, everywhere, God had Himself pronounced to be very good. It was this, indeed; and in this judgment of course appeared. But there was a great deal more of judgment in the expulsion than this. Principally it was judgment, in that it was the final shutting out of the man, and in him, as we are too well assured of man, our whole race fallen, from all possibility of life by the law–by the first covenant of the law.
II. But now, if there was judgment thus, many ways in the driving out of the man, there was also GLORIOUS MERCY in it–not simply notwithstanding of it, but in it–mercy along with the judgment, and divinely rejoicing against the judgment.
1. For, first, what was it but the gracious shutting of him out from now delusive, vain, and ruinous hopes of life by the way of the law–a thing this of the very last moment in reference to any possibility of his being saved by grace.
2. I observe, secondly, that the driving out of the man was rich mercy, in that it was in effect the shutting of him now also in to Christ, the one name given under heaven among men fallen whereby we must be saved.
3. But we have not yet reached by any means the full mercy which was in the driving out of the man. So far we have seen its gracious design and tendency more doctrinally, as it were, under the grace of the Holy Ghost to shut out from delusive hopes of life, and shut in to Him who is the eternal life–the way, and the truth, and the life. And this truly was of unspeakable importance. How very large a portion of the Bible bears one way or other towards this double design! It might be said to be the grand scope and drift of it, doctrinally, from first to last. But then, the text opens up at least another class of means altogether for effecting the design. For, practically, what is it that to a very large extent holds us back from Christ, and prevails with us to leave Him and His salvation neglected and despised? Is it not some dream of finding a portion, a good, a happiness, in this world–in the lust of the flesh, or the lust of the eye, or the pride of life–for the sake of which we are prepared to run the risk of losing our never-dying souls? But now behold the still further import of the driving out of the man. See how it was just a kind of summary, in effect, of that whole providential discipline which the Lord is administering from age to age in our fallen world, in connection with His Word, towards the same great end of driving us out from our vain delusive hopes of life and blessedness, on the one side, and shutting us in to the faith and love and obedience and enjoyment of the Lord Jesus Christ, upon the other. For observe, first, what it was the Lord drove out the man from. It was from the paradise of earth, as from a scene now no longer suited to his state–which, however profitable as well as pleasant before, when all earthly comforts did but raise his soul in love and thankfulness to God, could now have proved but a deadly snare to him. Hence, in rich mercy as well as judgment, He drove out the man–as if He should say, Outside that paradise of earth, away from its delights, now unfit for thee, thou mayest be shut in to desire a better country, even an heavenly. And just thus it is that the Lord is driving forth His children still from their Edens of earth, withering their gourds, teaching them painfully that–
They build too low who build beneath the skies,
in driving them out, only shutting them in to Him who is their alone life, and in whom they are yet to reach a better Eden than the primeval one. But what, further, did God drive out the man to? To till the ground now by the hard toil of his hands and the sweat of his brow–In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground. And, in addition, to endure many a hardship and profound sorrows–Cursed is the ground for thy sake, in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life: thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee. And unto the woman He said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children. Ah, it is judgment, indeed, but at least as much, mercy. Driven out thus we are to a lot of toil and sorrow. But it is a lot only the more in keeping, because sorrowful, with our state here, as at the best sorrowfully sinful–ever ready we, even after having tasted that the Lord is gracious, to depart from the living God, and take up our rest here, and put some idol in the place of God, and worship the creature more than the Creator, and prefer the things which are seen and temporal to the things unseen and eternal, How merciful the driving out of the man! (C. G. Brown, D. D.)
Paradise shut, guarded, and reopened
I. PARADISE SHUT. What did man lose when shut out of paradise?
1. He lost the happiness of his external condition.
2. When man was excluded from paradise, he lost, too, the uprightness and purity of his moral nature.
3. Man then lost his approving conscience.
4. When paradise was lost, intercourse with God was lost.
II. PARADISE GUARDED. The subject is not unprofitable to us in the present day. Paradise is guarded, as to you, by all the awful, all the terrible perfections of God; so that, except by the dispensation which I shall have occasion to mention, if man is left to himself, it is impossible for him, in any instance, to regain the favour of God. As for Adam, the verse says, there were flaming swords, and bands of flaming cherubim, to prevent his entering that state of blessedness from which he was driven. From the contemplation of Gods perfections, revealed under aspects so terrific, no sinner can find the least hope of regaining the Divine favour. Not from any single perfection of the Divine character, or from all His perfections together, can the transgressor derive the least hope of pardon, purity, or happiness.
III. PARADISE REOPENED. The Redeemer appears, removing these guards, and throwing open the gate of heaven to the tree of life itself. (R. Watson.)
Paradise lost
I. THE PLACE OUT OF WHICH MAN WAS DRIVEN. Eden, the fairest spot in the new-made world, and frequently referred to, in the Christian Scriptures, as an emblem of that paradise which God has planted in the skies.
1. Every object which it contained, was intended and calculated to afford him the sweetest gratification, and to remind him of the benevolence and holiness of his great Creator.
2. This garden was not merely a place of residence and contemplation, but also of wholesome and pleasurable employment.
3. And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make a help meet for him. And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept. And it was during that deep sleep, that she passed through his side, and smiled upon his slumbers, who was destined, when he woke, to be to him another paradise, far beyond the first in beauty and in loveliness.
4. But the crowning joy of paradise was the presence and the friendship of Jehovah. It was a temple, illumined and blessed with the Divine glory, as well as a fruitful and a fragrant garden. There God descended, not as afterward on Mount Sinai, amidst tempest, and fire, and frowning clouds, but with all His glories softened, so that man might see His face, and feel safe and happy in His society.
II. THE REASON WHY HE WAS DRIVEN OUT. The sole reason was his disobedience to God.
1. The law which he transgressed had been distinctly and authoritatively declared to him.
2. The law which he transgressed was peculiarly adapted to his condition. He was allowed to pursue the knowledge of good in all its varieties, but he was prohibited from seeking an acquaintance with any degree of evil.
3. The law which he transgressed was enforced by most powerful motives. God, who had graciously given him existence, had provided ample and various supplies of food for his necessities and for his gratification, to all of which he had free access, so that every temptation arising from scarcity, or even from want of variety, was utterly prevented by his bountiful Creator. As obedience was his duty, he had been divinely created with a disposition to obey, and with a capacity to increase his happiness and his spiritual strength by obedience, so that he was in no danger from any deficiency of moral ability. His Almighty Creator was always at hand, ready to assist him whenever temptation offered, and to furnish him with grace to help in time of need, whenever he requested it, so that he might successfully wrestle even with principalities and powers. He had the means and the prospect of increasing and confirming every holy principle, and of rendering himself less and less liable to fall, by resisting temptation when it appeared, and by making God his refuge whenever he was exposed to danger.
III. THE CONDITION, IN WHICH HE WAS PLACED BY HIS EXPULSION.
1. He was driven out of the garden to spend the remainder of his days amidst the condemned and uncultivated parts of the earth.
2. He was driven out in a state of depravity and guilt, and exposed to all their awful consequences.
3. He was driven out accompanied with the promise of a Redeemer. The time when this promise was given, as well as the promise itself, affords an interesting evidence that, in the midst of wrath, the Lord remembers mercy; for it was repeated whilst He was pronouncing sentence upon the serpent, and before He had pronounced the sentence upon man. (J. Alexander.)
Observations
I. GOD OFTENTIMES WITHHOLDS FROM US, OR DEPRIVES US OF MANY BLESSINGS FOR OUR GOOD.
II. WHEN MEN HAVE ONCE BROKEN OUT INTO ONE SIN, THEY ARE IN DANGER TO FALL INTO ANY OTHER.
III. GOD, AS HE ALWAYS FORESEES, SO OFTENTIMES HE PREVENTS MENS FALLING INTO SIN.
IV. THE SUREST WAY TO PREVENT MANS FALLING INTO SIN, IS TO BE FAR FROM THE ALLUREMENTS THAT MIGHT ENTICE HIM UNTO SIN.
V. MEN ARE NATURALLY APT TO THINK THEMSELVES SAFE IN THE PERFORMANCE OF OUTWARD ACTS OF HOLY DUTIES.
VI. GOD CANNOT ENDURE THE DEFILING OF HIS ORDINANCES BY SUCH AS HAVE NO RIGHT TO THEM. (J. White, M. A.)
Observations
I. THERE IS NO BLESSING SO FIRMLY ASSURED UNTO US, WHEREOF SIN MAY NOT DEPRIVE US.
II. MENS DWELLINGS AND EMPLOYMENTS ARE BOTH ASSIGNED BY GOD.
III. GOD EVERYWHERE LEAVES REMEMBRANCES, TO MIND US WHAT AND HOW BASE WE ARE. (J. White, M. A.)
Observations
I. GODS JUDGMENTS ARE NOT TO BE PASSED OVER SLIGHTLY, BUT TO BE CONSIDERED SERIOUSLY, AND OBSERVED AND REMEMBERED CAREFULLY.
II. GOD LOVES TO LEAVE MONUMENTS, BOTH OF HIS MERCIES AND JUDGMENTS, FOR THE JUSTIFYING OF HIMSELF, AND THE CONVINCING OF MEN OF THEIR UNWORTHY CONDUCT TOWARDS HIM.
III. IN SEARCHING INTO GODS JUDGMENTS, OUR SPECIAL CARE MUST BE TO OBSERVE THE PRECEDENTS AND CAUSE OF THEM.
IV. THE REST OF GODS SERVANTS HAVE NEED OF THE TERRORS OF HIS JUDGMENTS TO RESTRAIN THEM FROM SIN.
V. IT IS A GREAT HELP TO BE INFORMED BY SENSE OF THOSE THINGS THAT ARE TO WORK EFFECTUALLY UPON OUR HEARTS.
VI. THE ANGELS THEMSELVES ARE MINISTERING SPIRITS FOR THE GOOD OF THE SAINTS.
VII. THERE IS NO MEANS TO ESCAPE THE HAND OF GODS JUSTICE, IF MEN WALK ON IN A COURSE OF REBELLION AGAINST HIM. (J. White, M. A.)
Mans banishment
There is unspeakable mercy here in every respect for the erring race. The present life in the flesh was now tainted with sin and impregnated with the seeds of the curse, about to spring forth into an awful growth of moral and physical evil. It is not worth preserving for itself. It is not in any way desirable that such a dark confusion of life and death in one nature should be perpetuated. Hence there is mercy as well as judgment in the exclusion of man from that tree which could have only continued the carnal, earthly, sensual, and even devilish state of his being. Let it remain for a season until it be seen whether the seed of spiritual life will come to birth and growth, and then let death come and put a final end to the old man. But still farther, God does not annihilate the garden or its tree of life. Annihilation does not seem to be His way. It is not the way of that Omniscient One who sees the end from the beginning, of that infinite wisdom that can devise and create a self-working, self-adjusting universe of things and events. On the other hand. He sets His cherubim to keep the way of the tree of life. This paradise, then, and its tree of life are in safe keeping. They are in reserve for those who will become entitled to them after an intervening period of trial and victory, and they will reappear in all their pristine glory, and in all their beautiful adaptedness to the high-born and newborn perfection of man. The slough of that serpent nature which has been infused into man will fall off, at least from the chosen number, who take refuge in the mercy of God; and in all the freshness and freedom of a heaven-born nature will they enter into all the originally congenial enjoyments that were shadowed forth in their pristine bloom in that first scene of human bliss. (Prof. J. G. Murphy.)
The banishment
Behold man exiled from Eden! Behold the most heart-rending banishment that was ever denounced against any of the human race! We understand your grief and your tears, O unhappy beings, whom an inexorable arrest of the law snatches from all the endearments of a beloved land, where the hours of childhood have been spent, from all the joys of a family and friends tenderly beloved, from all the indescribable charms of the place where you learned to feel and to love, and removes you to some inhospitable clime, where the severest privations are the least of your evils, and where you languish, rather than love. But what are your afflictions, compared with those of our first father, when he went out of Eden at the voice of his Judge, to wander with his unhappy companion in the desert countries of an accursed earth! O delights of Eden, life of innocence and love, blissful retreats where the Lord revealed Himself to the soul, where everything was ravishing beauty without, and harmony and peace within, favours of Gods happiness of His love and of His presence; you are lost forever! Bitter regret! profound misery! Oh, could Adam find again the way to Eden! Oh that the flaming sword of eternal justice no longer glittered! But no, it is not so, my brethren; Adam can no longer even desire the abode in Eden; and this is the completion of his misery! To fallen man, Eden has no more attractions, no more glory, no more happiness. What avail the beauties of mans first abode? his heart, deprived of innocence and peace, could no longer enjoy them. What does it avail that the glorious majesty of the Lord still shines forth in all His works? man is despoiled and ashamed. What does it avail that he still beholds over his head the azure firmament of heaven, and the brightness with which it sparkles, while darkness reigns in his soul, and gloomy clouds hide from him the glory of the Most High? What does it avail that all created beings unite to send up on high one melodious hymn of praise? there is nothing now in the heart of man but discord, anguish, and grief. What does it avail what riches and abundance replenish Eden? man is poor, miserable, and naked. What avails the tree of knowledge? man sees in it an accusing witness of his crime. What avails the tree of life? man reads in it the sentence of death against himself. What avails even the presence of God! man now only sees in Him a Judge; he feels in His presence only the fear of a slave, the shame of a criminal, the terror of a condemned malefactor. He has fled at the voice of God; he has gone to hide his disgrace among the trees of Eden. Flee, Adam, flee far from thy God, far from Eden, which sin has made an abode of misery to thee; flee, and let the gates of Eden be closed upon thy footsteps, let the flaming sword forever guard its entrance against thee! O my beloved brethren! how hateful is sin in the sight of God! how bitter are its fruits! how disastrous its effects! Let the expulsion of Adam explain to us the incomprehensible mystery of a world sunk in evil, a world whose sufferings seem to fling an accusation against Providence; a world full of sin, crimes, injustice, animosities, war, and murders. Let this fact explain to us the contradictions, the continual afflictions of a life whose sources sin has poisoned, and whose relations with God it has destroyed! Let this fact explain the grief which has invaded the whole human race, and the numberless sufferings which result from mans want of harmony with himself and with his God! Let this fact explain to us disease and death–death, that mystery inscrutable to human wisdom, that abyss which has yawned beneath the feet of man, ever since he was banished from Eden! Ah! my brethren, deny it not, we also have been banished from Eden, or rather, we are born in this land of exile; Adams lot has become ours; he has bequeathed unto us this sad heritage of sin, corruption, misery, and death! (L. Bonnet.)
Expulsion from Paradise, but not from Eden
His expulsion is not to be viewed, as is generally done, as mere ejection from a happy dwelling, his own special home, as if this were his punishment. No, it is banishment from God and from His presence, that is the true idea which the passage presents to us. Paradise was not so much Adams home as Jehovahs dwelling. Man is banished from paradise, yet he is left within sight of it; he is allowed to remain in Eden. He is not driven into some desert, as if there were nothing for him bat wrath. There is favour for him in spite of his sin; and the expulsion does not cancel the pardon he has received, or intimate that God has begun to frown. It merely showed that before the full consequences of that favour could reach man, time must elapse, and barriers be thrown down. It is not the outer darkness, neither is it the full sunshine, into which he is brought. It is the twilight that surrounds him; and that twilight assures him of the coming noon. He is left to linger at the gate, or wander round the sacred fences of that forbidden ground. For paradise is not swept off nor swallowed up. It is left as Gods temple, now shut up and empty, but still within sight of man. Probably it shared the common blight of creation; though, like primeval man, it took long to wither; till, having waxed old and being ready to vanish away, the deluge came and swept it from the earth. It remained as a specimen of Gods original handiwork, reminding man of the glory which he had lost. It stood as a monument of what sin had done in blighting Gods perfect creation, and turning man into an exile. It showed how God estimates the material creation, and that matter is not the defiling and hateful thing which some conceive it to be. It proclaimed that God had not wholly left the earth, and that in His own set time He would return to it; nay, that man, though for a season dethroned and banished, should yet repossess earth as king and lord. (H. Bonar, D. D.)
The garden of Eden left
I. THE TREE OF LIFE GUARDED. When mankind were driven out of paradise, the tree of life was not removed nor destroyed, but still left there: to show that there was still immortal life left for man, though out of his reach. To this our own nature bears witness; for there lies at the bottom of the heart of man the inextinguishable desire for happiness and immortality; and that desire still implanted within us proves that it is not altogether lost. Thus Aristotle inferred from this universal desire in the very constitution of mans nature, that there is a happiness for which he is born; and that though it be never attained, yet it must in some way be attainable by man. The principle must exist, though every access to that life is closed to mankind; or, in other words, is guarded by the sword which turns every way.
II. THE CHERUBIM OF SCRIPTURE. Of the different figures we may observe, that in the holy of holies they are at rest; in Ezekiel in motion; in St. John in adoration. Over the ark they seem to indicate inquiry; in the prophetic vision judgment; in the Church of the redeemed thanksgiving. In the holy place they seem as if inquiring of each other, and at the same time as if the subject of their inquiry was the propitiation or mercy seat. Thus it is said to Moses, their faces shall look one to another, toward the mercy seat shall the faces of the cherubims be. To which St. Peter is supposed to allude when he says that the angels desire to look into the things of our salvation. And thus the two angels were seen by Mary Magdalene, the one at the head and the other at the feet where the body of Jesus had lain, which is the true mercy seat. But the four cherubims afterwards are described as full of eyes, instinct with knowledge, and adoring wonder. Again, in the holy of holies not only are they entirely withdrawn from sight by the veil, but even when the High Priest entered once a year within that veil, they are hid from view by the smoke and the cloud of incense; but in the Apocalypse all is open, and they are glorifying God, for the gospel is then manifested. It appears then from all these passages, that by the term cherubims we must understand some symbols or representation of the incarnation. So was it in the holy of holies; so was it in the prophet Ezekiel, and in the Apocalypse; and therefore we may conclude that the same is meant in this place in the garden of Eden.
III. THEIR FORM AND CHARACTER. We may further infer, that not only did those cherubims which appeared in the beginning in Eden bear the same kind of significance with those which are introduced in the rest of Scripture, and at the close in the Apocalypse, but also are of a similar form and character. Now these in the latter instances were expressly composite forms of animal life, or creature combinations, and in all probability those in the temple were likewise of the same kind. The compound figures keeping the entrances of Assyrian and Egyptian temples or palaces, so utterly inexplicable on any other grounds, were probably derived from some tradition of the cherubims that kept the gate of paradise. To these might be added mythological fables, as that of the brazen-footed bulls breathing fire, that kept the golden fleece. And what was that golden fleece but some record of that clothing of God, some memory of that mystery of great price, in Eden guarded by cherubim?
IV. SIGNIFICATION OF CHERUBIMS. It will then be granted that by the cherubims were signified some manifestation of Christ. And it has always been considered that the four cherubims of Ezekiel and St. John had reference to the four Gospels or Evangelists; for it is they that bear the manifestation or knowledge of Christ throughout the world; they may be said to bear His throne as seen by the prophet Ezekiel, or to encompass it as by St. John. In like manner the two cherubims in the Temple have been considered by St. Augustine to mean the two Testaments. We may therefore infer that the cherubims in Eden had the like intent. But though they may have been afterwards seen and partially fulfilled in four Evangelists, yet this does not explain the meaning of such appearances; they must have some peculiar signification in themselves in addition to, or independently of, the four Gospels. For we may ask, Why should figures of this kind be chosen? And what do their curious shapes imply? What are they? They are in some sense angelic, inasmuch as they bear messages of God, and the only way we can represent angels is by some form of human youth in a spiritual body; yet they are not angelic, for they are human and animal. They are not human, because there are among them the countenances of animals; they are not animal, for they are full of knowledge; the very name implies multitude of knowledge, as also do their many eyes; and they bear in their hand a sword; they are human as well as animal; they are spiritual as well as human, as their spiritual movement indicates. They are called by the prophet and by the evangelist the living creatures,–not, as improperly translated, beasts, but living creatures–creatures gifted with excessive life, the living ones. But we mayobserve, that though that which is animal and spiritual he mixed up with these appearances, yet the prevailing character is man; the basis, so to speak, of all these symbolic figures is man. They seem to represent the perfection of animal life, yet gifted with a spiritual body, as to be found in the new man, the last Adam, who shall reinstate again in paradise; man by the manhood of Christ reconciled unto God, and admitted into union and fellowship with God, wherein is eternal life. It is therefore the pledge and covenant of the seed that should come, admitting again to immortality, by union of God with man, the life of life, spiritual life, in the perfection of the creature united with the Creator.
V. THE ANIMAL CREATION RESTORED. See Rom 8:19; Rom 8:21-22; Col 1:15; 2Co 5:17; Rev 3:14; Rev 5:13; Isa 11:5-6; Isa 65:25. The animals partake of the sentence passed on man of labour; they labour and suffer for us and with us, sharing our toil and relieving it in their lives, and in their deaths sustaining our frail bodies, setting forth the atonement, and thereby our deliverance from death. Thus they are connected both with our death by sin, and with the promise of that better life which is in God. It is then through animals that God clothes fallen man; it is through animals slain that He receives a sacrifice in Abel; and both these as setting forth Christ;–the secret of the Lord which is with them that fear Him. It is not therefore inconsistent with this that something of an animal character should also be found in these cherubims, which kept the way of the tree of life, and which must in some sense be symbols of Christs incarnation. (I. Williams, B. D.)
The cherubim
1. The cherubim are real creatures and not mere symbols. In the narrative of the Fall they are introduced as real into the scenes of reality. Their existence is assumed as known. For God is said to place or station the cherubim at the east of the garden of Eden. The representation of a cherub too in vision as part of a symbolic figure implies a corresponding reality Eze 10:14). A symbol itself points to a reality.
2. They are afterwards described as living creatures, especially in the visions of Ezekiel (1:10). This seems to arise, not from their standing at the highest stage of life, which the term does not denote, but from the members of the various animals, which enter into their variously described figure. Among these appear the faces of the man, the lion, the ox, and the eagle, of which a cherubic form had one, two or four (Exo 25:20; Eze 41:18; Eze 1:16). They had besides wings in number two or four Exo 25:20; 1Ki 6:27; Eze 1:6). And they had the hands of a man under their wings on their four sides (Eze 1:8; Eze 10:8). Ezekiel also describes their feet as being straight, and having the soul like that of a calf. They sometimes appear too with their bodies, hands, wings, and even accompanying wheels full of eyes (Eze 1:18; Eze 10:12). The variety in the figuration of the cherubim is owing to the variety of aspects in which they stand, and of offices or services they have to perform in the varying posture of affairs.
3. The cherubim are intelligent beings. This is indicated by their form, movement, and conduct. In their visible appearance the human form predominates. They had the likeness of a man (Eze 1:5). The human face is in front, and has therefore the principal place. The hands of a man determine the erect posture, and therefore the human form of the body. The parts of other animal forms are only accessory.
4. Their special office seems to be intellectual and potential rather than moral. The hand symbolizes intelligent agency. The multiplicity of eyes denotes many-sided intelligence. The number four is evidently normal and characteristic. It marks their relation to the Kosmos, universe or system of created things.
5. Their place of ministry is about the throne, and in the presence of the Almighty. Accordingly, where He manifests Himself in a stated place, and with all the solemnity of a court, there they generally appear.
6. Their special functions correspond with these indications of their nature and place. They are figured in the most holy place, which was appropriated to the Divine presence, and constructed after the pattern seen in the mount. They stand on the mercy seat, where God sits to rule His people, and they look down with intelligent wonder on the mysteries of redemption. In the vision of the likeness of the glory of God vouchsafed to Ezekiel, they appear under the expanse on which rests the throne of God, and beside the wheels which move as they move. And when God is represented as in movement for the execution of His judgments, the physical elements and the spiritual essences are alike described as the vehicles of His irresistible progress (Psa 18:11). All these movements are mysteries to us, while we are in the world of sense. We cannot comprehend the relation of the spiritual and the physical. But of this we may be assured, that material things are at bottom centres of multiform forces, or fixed springs of power, to which the Everlasting Potentate has given a local habitation and a name, and therefore cognate with spiritual beings of free power, and consequently manageable by them.
7. The cherubim seem to be officially distinct from angels or messengers who go upon special errands to a distance, from the presence chamber of the Almighty. It is possible that they are also to be distinguished in function from the seraphim and the living beings of the Apocalypse, who like them appear among the attendants in the court of heaven. (Prof. J. G. Murphy.)
The way of life and its guardian forces
Let us try to analyse the spiritual ideas represented by these words of the text: Life, Tree, Way, Cherubims, Flaming Sword.
1. What is life? The true life of man is to partake of the Divine life of God. This is life eternal, that they might know Thee the only true God.
2. The power of the Divine life in its relation to the being of man is here represented by a tree. A tree represents a germ, a growth, and a fruitfulness. So the Divine life, implanted in the being of humanity as a hidden germ, grows, casting forth branches in the formation of habits and tendencies of character, and brings forth fruits in the energies of a spiritual being reflecting the image of God; that is, the fruits of the Spirit.
3. Alienation from the life of God, and reconciliation to it, imply a departure and a return. These ideas are here represented by the word way. The way would seem to represent those means of grace, and that mediatorial system, by the power of which alone man is able to reach the realization of the Divine presence.
4. This way is subject to conditions. The cherubims keep the way. The winged forms of the cherubims would seem to represent the spiritual supernatural forces which elevate the soul of man out of the earthly, lower life, into the communion of the Most High. The wings of the cherubims alone can waft the soul of man into the presence of The Most High.
5. There is another guardian force represented by the flaming sword. What is the spiritual power symbolized by the sword? The knife, or sword, is the symbol of sacrifice. Our love of any object may be measured by the sacrifices which we are willing to make for it. Now, the life of man stands in the reflection of the attributes of God. The one all-comprehensive attribute of God is love. Therefore the one all-comprehensive duty of man is sacrifice. Sacrifice is the reflection by humanity on earth of the Divine love in heaven. The sword keeps the way of life. But it is the flaming sword. The flame would seem to represent the motive spirit of true sacrifice. The cold sacrifice, which is not prompted by the ardour of burning love, is not the power that keeps the way, but the unquenched spirit of fervent love, symbolized by the flame. In all the ages of the Churchs life, the access of the human soul to the secret place, in which dwells the eternal life, has been by the same way, and subject to the same conditions. Let us, then, endeavour to trace the same verities, as they are presented under various forms, in successive ages.
I. Where did THE PATRIARCHS, who lived on earth before the flood, find the source of spiritual, undecaying life? In the presence of God. Their souls drew near to realize the image of the eternal life, in order that, gazing on its glory, they might be changed into the same image. In the motions of his consciousness Enoch walked with God, and Noah walked with God. On the other hand, when Cain by transgression lost the higher life of his being, that perdition is described as departure from the presence of God: Cain went out from the presence of the Lord. In that alienation the tree of life ceased to grow within the reach of his soul, and its spiritual fruits no longer strengthened and gladdened his being. What, then, constituted the way of access for these patriarchs? The means of grace which God had ordained. The forms in which the means of grace consisted in those ages are not revealed to us. The spiritual forces which encircled that way, as the conditions of approach, were essentially the same as in our own and in every age of the Church. The human consciousness cannot realize the presence of God without the revealed knowledge of God and the ordained exercises of devotion. The wings of the eternal cherubims, then as now, in the shadowing power of reverence, and in the elevating power of spiritual aspiration, were the guardian forces, without whose activity the soul could not draw near to the Most High. The other force which keeps the way was also present in the antediluvian Church. The sword of sacrifice appears in an early page of religious history. In the religion of Cain and Abel sacrifice is seen. The sword was not wanting in the religion of Cain. Why, then, did he lose the respect of the Divine presence? His was the cold sword of a heartless, formal sacrifice, which cost him no self-denial. On the other hand, the soul of Abel had seen dimly the mighty truth of the Cross. In the progress of his soul the sword of sacrifice is seen baptized with the flames of the tongues of fire, kindled by the one eternal Spirit of God.
II. In the Church of THE POSTDILUVIAN PATRIARCHS THE SPIRITUAL LIFE OF MAN WAS QUICKENED AND FROM TIME TO TIME REVIVED BY THE REALIZATION OF THE PRESENCE OF GOD. Again and again in the religious history of the patriarchs we read of remarkable spiritual epochs in their lives. How are these epochs described? In the oft repeated phrase: God appeared unto Abraham–Isaac–Jacob. These appearances of God, that is, realizations of His presence, are marked as the points of spiritual illumination and spiritual revival. In each of those manifestations, the tree of the Divine life casts forth branches, and brings forth new spiritual fruit in the patriarchs soul. But, let us ask, how were the souls of these patriarchs entitled to draw near, so that God manifested His countenance to the inward eye of faith in their spiritual consciousness? By the diligent use of the Divinely appointed means. The system of Divine doctrine and worship, as far as its forms are concerned, which prevailed in the Church of the patriarchs, is very dimly revealed to us. But there are many expressions which clearly show that such a system existed. Special seasons, and special places, were evidently consecrated to the pursuit of illumination and the exercises of worship. In that system the soul found the way of the tree of life. The spiritual forces, which come forth from the eternal throne to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation, were ever surrounding the way of the tree of life in the history of the patriarchs. In the elevating powers which came in response to meditation, prayer, and praise, the cherubic wings made their presence felt during the waking and dreaming hours of the patriarchs. In the most remarkable passage in the life of Abraham, we also behold the guardian agency of the flaming sword. As in the New Testament, the incarnate God has taught us that we cannot reach His presence except upon the condition of entire self-sacrifice, in the forsaking of all, so this mighty principle appears in the trial of Abraham. In the ascent of Mount Moriah he rose to the height of self-sacrifice, and there won the richest promises of life. By the mighty faith of that act he won the smile of the eternal countenance, and inherited the highest blessing vouchsafed to man. His self-surrender proved that burning love of God had absorbed his entire being.
III. IN THE MOSAIC ECONOMY OF THE JEWISH CHURCH, the presence of the Lord is ever represented as the source of the Churchs life. The promise of that abiding sacramental presence was given in the words, There I will meet with thee, and I will commune with thee, from above the mercy seat, from between the two cherubims, which are upon the ark of the testimony. This Divine presence was also realized by the Church in the days of Solomon. At the opening of the Temple, The glory of the Lord had filled the house of the Lord. That central presence was the life of the Church. The far-extending and fructifying influences of that mysterious presence in the Church were as the branches of the tree of life. That presence first manifested to Moses in the burning brightness of the tree on Horeb continued to abide in the growing Church, the increase of which the Psalmist sang in these words: Thou preparedst room before it, and didst cause it to take deep root, and it filled the land She sent out her boughs unto the sea, and her branches unto the river. The way of the tree of life was sacramentally represented in the entrance into the holy of holies on the great day of the Atonement. On that day the high priest drew near into the presence of the eternal Life according to the appointed order of access. That order represented the way. As in the patriarchal Church, the way was kept by the guardian forces. The golden cherubims, resting upon the ark of the testimony, cast their shadow over the way of approach. Those golden figures, with wings out stretched, as if for mounting into the realms of the Eternal Life of the Most High, and resting upon the ark of the testimony, symbolized the truth that the elevating forces of spiritual worship and aspiration must have as their basis the solid ground of Church witness and dogmatic truth. Thus we find that in the Jewish Church the way of access to the Presence was kept by the cherubims. Was the power of the flaming sword also represented in the typical teaching of the Tabernacle? Yes. As a condition of entrance, the high priest was commanded to bear the sword and the fire. Into the second tabernacle went the high priest alone, not without blood, which he offered for himself and for the errors of the people.
IV. So likewise in the INCARNATION. When the fulness of time was come, the everlasting Son, who is the eternal Word and fountain of life, entered our humanity: The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us In Him was life. In Jesus Christ was embodied the image of the eternal life, for the participation of which man was created. The tidings of His mission are, The glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God. If we regard the progressive manifestation of the Divine life in the manhood of Jesus Christ, He is also the tree of life. The hidden Godhead dwelt bodily in the ungrown form at Bethlehem. The manifestation of the Godhead, according to the conditions of humanity, was gradual: Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man. Of His earthly course John the Baptist said: He must increase. In that increase He appears as the tree of life. The holy nativity was the germ, containing within itself the tree, the leaves of which are for the healing of the nations. The successive glories, or manifestations, of His Divinity were as the branches which the growing tree put forth. By the power of these man is saved. In the ascension the tree of life reached the fulness of its height; and in the coming of the Holy Ghost began to shed upon human nature the fruits of the everlasting life. In His mediatorial power, as opening the Divine life to the human nature, Jesus Christ is the way of the tree of life: For through Him we both have access by one spirit unto the Father. His flesh and blood are the media of access to the invisible eternal life. Therefore Jesus Christ is also the way of the tree of life for man, Jesus saith unto him, I am the way . . . no man cometh unto the Father but by Me. In the history of the incarnation we also behold the presence and agency of the ministering spirits that were appointed to keep the way. In the temptation the power of the ministering spirits is seen keeping the way: Behold, angels came and ministered unto Him. In Jesus Christ we behold also the spiritual powers represented by the flaming sword. From Bethlehem onwards every act of Jesus was a sacrifice. But the crowning act, which gathered into itself the significance of all His previous acts, was His self-surrender unto the death of the cross. The original life of the unfallen man flowed from the image of the one eternal Life, whose name is Love. The mighty power that redeems man from that unloving self-will, which is the law of sin and death, is the manifestation of the infinite love. The expression of love is sacrifice, and all love may be measured by the value of the victim sacrificed. Blood is the true exponent of love. In the eternal Being of God, love holds a place analogous to that of blood in the physical being of man. Love permeates the infinite system of Gods eternal Being, giving motion and vitality, as it were, to all the other attributes. Power, justice, wisdom, holiness, and all the other attributes of the Eternal, are quickened by His all-circulating love. On Calvary we see the flaming sword, under the strokes of which humanity in Christ found entrance into the secret recesses of the eternal life. Christ by His own blood entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us.
V. The eternal life, lost by man in nature, is brought near in that ONE CATHOLIC AND APOSTOLIC CHURCH, which is the Body of Christ. Wherein does that life dwell? Where is the throne upon which He is seated? The Presence dwells sacramentally in the holy mysteries. The Divine life, communicated from Christ to the being of man, is a life that grows. The tree of life in the soul of the young communicant may be but a weak and tender plant. As the outward form of flesh and blood in which the eternal Word chose to come into humanity was lowly and feeble to the eye of man, so the sacramental way in which the eternal life is communicated to us hath no form or splendour that our natural hearts would desire. The sacramental way to the Presence is also guarded by the cherubims. Unless you have sought the influence of the ministering spirits that elevate and waft the soul from its earthliness into the light and air of the higher life, you cannot realize the presence of Christ. The other condition of access that keeps the way is the mighty power of sacrifice. That flaming sword must be known in our personal being, before we can reach the presence of the Life. When you draw near along the sacramental way, you are commanded to acknowledge and bewail your manifold sins and wickednesses. If that confession be a genuine act of the soul, then you are willing to sacrifice the dearest sins, and, taking the sword, to cut off the right hand, and to cut out the right eye, in order to enter into the hidden life. On that condition alone can you worthily draw near. But whence can we draw the power to wield this sword? We have no sufficient motive power in our own nature. We must draw inspiration by a living faith from the one omnipotent sacrifice on Calvary. (H. T. Edwards, M. A.)
The guarded way
Observe, the tree of life was not cut down; nor was it withdrawn from the trees of the field–no, the tabernacle of God was left with men upon the earth. Well was the way watched until the time should come for approach: strait is the gate and narrow is the way that leadeth unto life, yet men may travel now up to the blessed tree and take the fruit of immortality! God has never taught us to set little store by life. He has always watched it and guarded it as with hosts of armed angels. It is not to be wantonly plucked. It is Gods choice gift. He has, too, alway kept the line very distinct between Himself and His creatures the man is become as one of Us, to know good and evil; not really as one of Us, but imaginatively so; he thinks he now knows all that there is to be known, but this imagination must be corrected by the imposition of high discipline: he thinks he has discovered the sham and failure of things and found out the scheme of God; he must be undeceived; throw a skin upon his back, drive him out of the garden, keep the tree of life, and let him learn by long and bitter experience that there is no short road to dominion and immortality. (J. Parker, D. D.)
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Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 24. So he drove out the man] Three things are noted here:
1. God’s displeasure against sinful man, evidenced by his expelling him from this place of blessedness;
2. Man’s unfitness for the place, of which he had rendered himself unworthy by his ingratitude and transgression; and,
3. His reluctance to leave this place of happiness. He was, as we may naturally conclude, unwilling to depart, and God drove him out.
He placed at the east] mikkedem, or before the garden of Eden, before what may be conceived its gate or entrance; Cherubims, hakkerubim, THE cherubim. Hebrew plurals in the masculine end in general in im: to add an s to this when we introduce such words into English, is very improper; therefore the word should be written cherubim, not cherubims. But what were these? They are utterly unknown. Conjectures and guesses relative to their nature and properties are endless. Several think them to have been emblematical representations of the sacred Trinity, and bring reasons and scriptures in support of their opinion; but as I am not satisfied that this opinion is correct, I will not trouble the reader with it. From the description in Ex 26:1; Ex 26:31; 1Kg 6:29; 1Kg 6:32; 2Ch 3:14, it appears that the cherubs were sometimes represented with two faces, namely, those of a lion and of a man; but from Eze 1:5, c. Eze 10:20-21, we find that they had four faces and four wings; the faces were those of a man, a lion, an ox, and an eagle; but it seems there was but one body to these heads. The two-faced cherubs were such as were represented on the curtains and veil of the tabernacle, and on the wall, doors, and veil of the temple; those with four faces appeared only in the holy of holies.
The word or kerub never appears as a verb in the Hebrew Bible, and therefore is justly supposed to be a word compounded of ke a particle of resemblance, like to, like as, and rab, he was great, powerful, c. Hence it is very likely that the cherubs, to whatever order of beings they belonged, were emblems of the ALL-MIGHTY, and were those creatures by whom he produced the great effects of his power. The word rab is a character of the Most High, Pr 26:10: The great God who formed all and again in Ps 48:2, where he is called the Great King, melech rab. But though this is rarely applied as a character of the Supreme Being in the Hebrew Bible, yet it is a common appellative of the Deity in the Arabic language. [Arabic] rab, and [Arabic] rab’ulalameen Lord of both worlds, or, Lord of the universe, are expressions repeatedly used to point out the almighty energy and supremacy of God. On this ground, I suppose, the cherubim were emblematical representations of the eternal power and Godhead of the Almighty. These angelic beings were for a time employed in guarding the entrance to Paradise, and keeping the way of or road to the tree of life. This, I say, for a time; for it is very probable that God soon removed the tree of life, and abolished the garden, so that its situation could never after be positively ascertained.
By the flaming sword turning every way, or flame folding back upon itself, we may understand the formidable appearances which these cherubim assumed, in order to render the passage to the tree of life inaccessible.
Thus terminates this most awful tragedy; a tragedy in which all the actors are slain, in which the most awful murders are committed, and the whole universe ruined! The serpent, so called, is degraded; the woman cursed with pains, miseries, and a subjection to the will of her husband, which was never originally designed; the man, the lord of this lower world, doomed to incessant labour and toil; and the earth itself cursed with comparative barrenness! To complete all, the garden of pleasure is interdicted, and this man, who was made after the image of God, and who would be like him, shamefully expelled from a place where pure spirits alone could dwell. Yet in the midst of wrath God remembers mercy, and a promise of redemption from this degraded and cursed state is made to them through HIM who, in the fulness of time, is to be made flesh, and who, by dying for the sin of the world, shall destroy the power of Satan, and deliver all who trust in the merit of his sacrifice from the power, guilt, and nature of sin, and thus prepare them for the celestial Paradise at the right hand of God. Reader, hast thou repented of thy sin? for often hast thou sinned after the similitude of thy ancestor’s transgression. Hast thou sought and found redemption in the blood of the Lamb? Art thou saved from a disposition which led thy first parents to transgress? Art thou living a life of dependence on thy Creator, and of faith and loving obedience to him who died for thee? Wilt thou live under the curse, and die eternally? God forbid! Return to him with all thy soul, and receive this exhortation as a call from his mercy.
To what has already been said on the awful contents of this chapter, I can add little that can either set it in a clearer light, or make its solemn subject more impressive. We see here that by the subtlety and envy of the devil sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and we find that death reigned, not only from Adam to Moses, but from Moses to the present day. Flow abominable must sin be in the sight of God, when it has not only defaced his own image from the soul of man, but has also become a source of natural and moral evil throughout every part of the globe! Disruption and violence appear in every part of nature; vice, profligacy, and misery, through all the tribes of men and orders of society. It is true that where sin hath abounded, there grace doth much more abound; but men shut their eyes against the light, and harden their hearts against the truth. Sin, which becomes propagated into the world by natural generation, growing with the growth and strengthening with the strength of man, would be as endless in its duration, as unlimited in its influence, did not God check and restrain it by his grace, and cut off its extending influence in the incorrigibly wicked by means of death. How wonderful is the economy of God! That which entered into the world as one of the prime fruits and effects of sin, is now an instrument in his hands to prevent the extension of its contagion.
If men, now so greatly multiplied on the earth, and fertile in mischievous inventions, were permitted to live nearly a thousand years, as in the ancient world, to mature and perfect their infectious and destructive counsels, what a sum of iniquity and ruin would the face of the earth present! Even while they are laying plans to extend the empire of death, God, by the very means of death itself, prevents the completion of their pernicious and diabolic designs. Thus what man, by his wilful obstinacy does not permit grace to correct and restrain, God, by his sovereign power, brings in death to control. It is on this ground that wicked and blood-thirsty men live not out half their days; and what a mercy to the world that it is so! They who will not submit to the sceptre of mercy shall be broken in pieces by the rod of iron. Reader, provoke not the Lord to displeasure; thou art not stronger than he. Grieve not his Spirit, provoke him not to destroy thee; why shouldst thou die before thy time? Thou hast sinned much, and needest every moment of thy short life to make thy calling and election sure. Shouldst thou provoke God, by thy perseverance in iniquity, to cut thee off by death before this great work is done, better for thee thou hadst never been born!
How vain are all attempts to attain immortality here! For some thousands of years men have been labouring to find out means to prevent death; and some have even boasted that they had found out a medicine capable of preserving life for ever, by resisting all the attacks of disease, and incessantly repairing all the wastes of the human machine. That is, the alchymistic philosophers would have the world to believe that they had found out a private passage to the tree of immortality; but their own deaths, in the common order of nature, as well as the deaths of the millions which make no such pretensions, are not only a sufficient confutation of their baseless systems, but also a continual proof that the cherubim, with their flaming swords, are turning every way to keep the passage of the tree of life. Life and immortality are, however, brought to light by the Gospel; and he only who keepeth the sayings of the Son of God shall live for ever. Though the body is dead – consigned to death, because of sin, yet the spirit is life because of righteousness; and on those who are influenced by this Spirit of righteousness, the second death shall have no power!
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
The east of the garden, where the entrance into it was, the other sides of it being enclosed or secured by God to preserve it from the entrance and annoyance of wild beasts. Or, before the garden, i.e. near to the garden; before any man could come at the garden any way.
Cherubims, i.e. angels, so called from their exquisite knowledge, and therefore fitly here used for the punishment of man, who sinned by affecting Divine knowledge.
And a flaming sword in the cherubims hands, as it was upon other occasions, Num 22:23; Jos 5:13; 1Ch 21:16,27. And this was either a material sword, bright, and being brandished, shining and glittering like a flame of fire; or flaming fire, in the shape of a sword. Or, flaming swords, because there were divers cherubims, and each of them had a sword; the singular number for the plural. Or, a two-edged sword,
which turned every way, was brandished and nimbly whirled about by the cherubims; which posture was fittest for the present service,
to keep the way that leads to Paradise, and so to the tree of life, that man might be deterred and kept from coming thither.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
24. placed . . . cherbimThepassage should be rendered thus: “And he dwelt between thecherubim at the East of the Garden of Eden and a fierce fire, orShekinah, unfolding itself to preserve the way of the tree of life.”This was the mode of worship now established to show God’s anger atsin and teach the mediation of a promised Saviour as the way of life,as well as of access to God. They were the same figures as wereafterwards in the tabernacle and temple; and now, as then, God said,”I will commune with thee from above the mercy seat, frombetween the two cherubims” (Ex25:22).
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
So he drove out the man,…. Being unwilling to go out upon the orders given, some degree of force was used, or power exerted, in some way or other, to oblige him to depart; the word it is expressed by is used of divorces: there was a conjugal relation between God and man, the covenant between them had the nature of a matrimonial contract; which covenant man broke, though he was an husband to him, by committing idolatry, that is, spiritual adultery, not giving credit to him, but believing the devil before him; wherefore he wrote him a bill of divorce, and sent him away; drove him from his presence and communion with him, from his house and habitation, from his seat of pleasure, and garden of delight, and from all the comfortable enjoyments of life; an emblem of that separation and distance which sin makes between God and his creature, and of that loss which is sustained thereby:
and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden, cherubims; the Septuagint version is,
“and he placed him, or caused him (Adam) to dwell over against the paradise of pleasure, and he ordered the cherubim”
But the words are not to be understood either of placing man, or placing the cherubim, but of Jehovah’s placing himself, or taking up his habitation and residence before the garden of Eden, or at the east of it: while man abode in a state of innocence, the place of the divine Presence, or where God more gloriously manifested himself to him, was in the garden; but now he having sinned, and being driven out of it, he fixes his abode in a very awful manner at the entrance of the garden, to keep man out of it; for so the words may be rendered, “and he inhabited the cherubim, or dwelt over, or between the cherubim, before or at the east of the garden of Eden” q; so the Jerusalem Targum,
“and he made the glory of his Shechinah, or glorious Majesty, to dwell of old at the east of the garden of Eden, over or above the two cherubim;”
or between them, as the Targum of Jonathan; and very frequently is Jehovah described as sitting and dwelling between the cherubim, 1Sa 4:4 by which are meant not flying animals or fowls, whose form no man ever saw, as Josephus r; nor angels, which is the more generally received opinion; for these were not real living creatures of any sort, but forms and representations, such as were made afterwards in the tabernacle of Moses, and temple of Solomon; and which Ezekiel and John saw in a visionary way, and from whom we learn what figures they were: and these were hieroglyphics, not of a trinity of persons, as some of late have stupidly imagined; for these were the seat of the divine Majesty, and between which he dwelt: and besides, as these had four faces, they would rather represent a quaternity than a trinity, and would give a similitude of the divine Being, which cannot be done, and be contrary to the second command; to which may be added, that the word is sometimes singular as well as plural: but these were hieroglyphics of the ministers of the word, whose understanding, humility, and tenderness, are signified by the face of a man; their strength, courage, and boldness, by that of a lion; their labour and diligence by that of an ox; and their quick sight and penetration into divine things by that of an eagle, which are the forms and figures of the cherubim;
[See comments on Eze 1:10]. Among these Jehovah is; with these he grants his presence, and by them signifies his mind and will to men; and these he makes use of to show them the vanity of all self-confidence, and to beat them off of seeking for life and righteousness by their own works, and to direct them alone to Christ, and point him out as the alone way of salvation; and of this use the hieroglyphic might be to fallen Adam, now driven out of Eden:
and a flaming sword, which turned every way; a drawn sword, brandished, and which being very quick in its motion, as it was turned to and fro, glittered and looked like a flame of fire: this is not to be understood as by itself, and as of itself, turning about every way without a hand to move it, nor as with the cherubim, or as in the hands of angels, as in 1Ch 21:16 or as being they themselves, which are made as flames of fire; but as in the hand of the Lord God, that dwelt between the cherubim; for so it may be rendered, “he inhabited the cherubim and that with a flaming sword” s; that is, with one in his hand, an emblem of the fiery law of God now broken, and of the fire of divine wrath on the account of that, and of the flaming justice of God, which required satisfaction; and this turning on all sides,
to keep the way of the tree of life; showing, that life and salvation were not to be had, unless the law and justice of God were satisfied; and that they were not to be expected on the foot of men’s works, but only through Christ, the way, the truth, and the life; that no happiness was to be looked for from the covenant of works, now broke, nothing but wrath and vengeance; and that there must be another way opened, or there could be no enjoyment of the heavenly paradise.
q –Nkvyw “et habitavit super `seu’ cum cherubim”, Texelii Phoenix, p. 256. So sometimes signifies “upon”, “above”, or “with”. See Nold. Ebr. part. Concord. p. 116, 121. r Antiqu. l. 3. c. 6. sect. 6. s “idque cum gladio evaginato”, Texelius, ib.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
(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 Adams 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. Gen. 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 Exo. 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 Ezekiels vision (Eze. 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.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
24. Cherubim, and a flaming sword More accurately the Revised Version: the cherubim, and the flame of a sword . There is nothing in this narrative to assure us that these cherubim were “real creatures, and not mere symbols . ” ( Murphy .) Their introduction into a history of what was real does not prove that they, any more than the flaming sword, were real creatures . Rather, both cherubim and sword were significant symbols placed at the east of the garden of Eden, in sight of our first parents, (as Moses lifted up a brazen serpent in view of penitent Israel, Num 21:9,) and adapted to inculcate some important fact or lesson of divine revelation, The flame of the sword probably a flame of fire in the form of a sword would have served as a symbol of divine justice to intensify the certainty of retributive judgment on every transgressor. Such a spectacle, turning to and fro before the eyes of the first man, was a significant “object lesson” to inspire holy fear of God, the righteous Judge. In connexion with the words of promise (Gen 3:15) and the doctrine of sacrifice and atonement, (Gen 3:21, note,) it was necessary to impress the lesson that the Justifier must himself be just. See Rom 3:26. But what was the appearance of the cherubim, and what did they signify? In Eze 1:5-14, they are represented as “living creatures,” combining the four highest types of animal life, namely, man, lion, ox, and eagle, and moving in closest connexion with the mystic wheels of divine providence and judgment . Eze 1:15-21. Over their heads was enthroned the appearance of the likeness of the glory of Jehovah . Eze 1:26-28. In Rev 4:6-8, they appear also as living creatures “in the midst of the throne, and round about the throne,” and the New Testament seer combines with them some features peculiar to the seraphim of Isa 6:2-3. These latter seem to have been the same in the heavenly temple as the cherubim were in the temple and tabernacle. Moses was commanded to make two cherubim of gold, and place them in the holy of holies, one at each end of the mercy-seat, with their faces toward each other, and their wings spread out over the mercy-seat. Exo 25:18-20. Hence Jehovah was thought of as dwelling with, or sitting upon, the cherubim . 1Sa 4:4; 2Sa 6:2; Psa 80:1; Psa 99:1; Isa 37:16. Whatever the various import of these composite figures, we should observe that they everywhere appear in most intimate relation to the glory of God, and to be filled with intensity of life. As now the flaming sword symbolized the righteous judgment of God and proclaimed his fearful justice, so, on the other hand, the cherubim were suggestive symbols of the eternal life and heavenly glory to be secured to man through the mystery of redemption. Their composite form would serve to illustrate the immanence and intense activity of God in all created life an incarnation or embodiment of divine life in earthly form, by which all that was lost in Eden might be restored to heavenly places in Christ. Thus the Edenic symbols were a grand apocalypse, revealing the glorious truth that man, redeemed and filled with the Spirit, shall again have power over the tree of life which is in the midst of the Paradise of God. Comp. Rev 2:7; Rev 22:14. Though of composite form, and representing the highest kinds of creature-life on earth, those symbols had pre-eminently the likeness of a man. Eze 1:5. Jehovah is the God of the living, and has about the throne of his glory the highest symbols of life . So at the gate of Eden and in the holy of holies, the cherubim were signs and pledges that in the ages to come, having made peace through the blood of the cross, God would “reconcile all things unto himself,” whether things upon the earth or things in the heavens, (Col 1:20,) and sanctify them in his glory . Exo 29:43. The redeemed are to “reign in life” through Jesus Christ . Rom 5:17. It is significant, therefore, that these prophetic symbols were set to keep the way of the tree of life. That way was not to be closed up forever . It was guarded both by justice and love, and will be until the work of redemption becomes complete, and “there shall be no more curse . ” Rev 22:3. Then the redeemed of Adam’s race, having washed their robes, shall have the right to come to the tree of life, and shall “enter through the gates into the city.”
Rev 22:14. The New Testament vision of new heavens and new earth, and New Jerusalem, are but a fuller revelation of what was shown in symbol at the east of the garden of Eden . The whole earth shall become a blessed Eden, (comp . Mic 4:1-5,) the holy city shall, like the happy garden, become its holy of holies, into which fallen man, having washed his robes, shall freely enter, for then, in the highest reality, “the tabernacle of God” shall be “with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God . And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.” Rev 21:3-4.
It is significant, that in the New Testament Apocalypse no cherubim appear about the throne of God and the Lamb. For the mere symbols of redeemed humanity are supplanted by the innumerable multitude in blood-washed robes, (comp. Rev 7:9-17,) from whom the curse has been removed, and who take the places of the cherubim and seraphim about the throne, behold the glory of Christ, (comp . Joh 17:24,) look upon the face of God and the Lamb, act as his servants, and have his name upon their foreheads . Rev 22:3-4. So the New Testament Apocalypse completes what the one at the garden of Eden but dimly foreshadowed .
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
‘So he drove out the man, and at the east of the plain of Eden he placed the cherubim, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to guard the way to the tree of life.’
The verb is forceful – ‘He drove out’. This suggests some powerful catastrophe that made it impossible for man to stay where he was. The mention of the cherubim takes us by surprise, and indeed this is the first time that heavenly beings are suggested as playing any part in God’s activity. The fact that they do so is a further indication of the barriers that have grown between man and God. What tragedy. The guardians of God are set to keep out the one who had been set to guard. reaching out’ — and ‘he drove him out’.
In Psa 18:10 the idea of the cherub is paralleled with the ‘wings of the wind’, and in Eze 1:4-5 with a stormy wind, and it may thus be that originally the cherubim were seen as directly connected with powerful, stormy winds. The cherubim and their parallels are regularly seen as the guardians of sacred places, and even, as an escort, of God Himself.
“The flaming sword” almost certainly refers to lightning, continually flashing down and hitting the ground. Certainly in Ezekiel the cherubim are associated with both stormy wind and lightning (Eze 1:4-5). So we have here the idea of stormy winds and the continual flash of lightning. We are thus left to visualise for ourselves the destructive forces which forced man to leave and ‘guarded the way to the tree of life’. Heavenly powers combine with earthly powers to exclude man from what was once his hope and delight. No doubt at some later stage the plain of Eden was so devastated that neither guard was further necessary.
But we note that God did not there and then destroy the tree of life. The fact of its continued existence left hope for the future.
The Facts behind the Story.
In dealing with the above account we have deliberately stuck to the plan and pattern of the writer. We have thus avoided reading in what later teaching would reveal. His account was written so as to lay the emphasis where it belonged, on the man, his failure and his destiny. But we, of course, are aware of the background which would push the man into the background, the activities of ‘that old snake, the Devil and Satan’ (Rev 12:9), the coming of Jesus Christ, the Messiah, to defeat him, the final victory of God. But this was the beginning, the low point, and we must not lose its impact. The remainder of the story will be revealed later.
The Mythological ‘Background’.
Much has been made of the myths that are said to lie behind the stories of Creation, the Garden of Eden and the Fall and for the sake of completeness we attach details of some of these myths and our view of them. But Genesis 1-3 are remarkably free of mythical elements, and, although briefly mentioning such myths as we went on, we were loath to clutter up the narrative with detailed discussion. Those, however, who may be interested should go to Mythology.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
Gen 3:24. Cherubims By these the generality of commentators understand angels. A modern writer has endeavoured to prove that they were hieroglyphical, or emblematical representations of the Trinity and the Incarnation. We shall have occasion to consider this opinion more distinctly hereafter, when we come to the cherubims in the temple.
A flaming sword which turned every way The peculiarity of this description has led commentators to a thousand imaginations. Our translation certainly leads to strange ideas, or rather to no ideas; for what can we conceive of a sword, which turned every way, by itself, for it is not said to be in the hands of any: and we may reasonably conclude, that did the cherubims mean angels, and had they swords in their hands, it would have been said, cherubims with flaming swords: but it is singular, a flaming sword, and it is mentioned disjunctively, cherubims AND a flaming sword; the Hebrew may be rendered, and a flame of burning matter, fire, &c. See Psa 104:4. hamithapechet, rendered turning every way, signifies, after the manner of flame, or fire, rolling about, as it were, and turning upon, and into itself. Whence it seems plainly to follow, that it was a flaming fire which was placed here. For my own part, I cannot help being of opinion, that not a flaming guard of angels was placed here; but that this was the Divine Shechinah, or Presence, corresponding to that which was afterwards placed in the Holy of Holies. And the attentive reader will remark, that every thing seems to correspond: for, in the first place, the Hebrew word, which we render placed, is ishchon, the word whence Shechinah is derived, and which is always used for the Divine Presence of inhabitation in the tabernacle, or temple: that Presence was manifested between the Cherubims, whatever these cherubims were; and a perpetual holy fire was kept up before the mercy-seat, the place of the inhabitation of the Deity. See Prideaux, vol. 1: p. 223. Now these particulars seem to prove that this apparatus, placed at the garden of Eden, was something corresponding to the ark and mercy-seat: and it is observable that the author of the book of Wisdom, ch. Gen 9:8. speaks, under the character of Solomon, of a tabernacle, &c. prepared from the beginning, of which that made by him was a resemblance: and from Exo 7:9 it is evident, that the Israelites had a tabernacle before that which was erected by Moses. And if from the fall, a religious worship adapted to fallen man was necessary, as is indisputable, is it not reasonable to conclude, that God instituted such a mode of religion from the very time when it became necessary? If so, we may well conclude, that this was the Adamic, or Patriarchal church, tabernacle, Shechinah, Presence, or whatever you will call it. The Jerusalem Targum has it here, “He made the glory of his Shechinah, or glorious Majesty, to dwell of old at the east of the garden of Eden, over, or above, the two cherubims.” See 1Sa 4:4. 2Sa 6:2. 2Ki 19:15. Psa 80:1. Isa 37:16.
Thus we are informed how our first parents fell, and were driven out of Paradise: but after how long a continuance there, is a question no less debated, than it is difficult to be determined.
GENERAL REFLECTIONS. on Chap. III.
Though it may be difficult to understand every minute particular in this account of our first parents’ transgression; yet the main fact is sufficiently plain, that they fell from a state of perfect tranquillity and life, into a state of sin and death: that by these means sin entered into the world, and death by sin! Such were the consequences of their abuse of that liberty wherewith they were invested, wherewith it was indispensably necessary they should be invested to make them moral and accountable agents: and such is the original of that evil, which we too sensibly feel, and universally deplore!
Deep and mysterious are the ways of God: and the utmost humility becomes us in every inquiry which we make concerning them, circumscribed as is our knowledge, and confined as is our view of the great plan of the Deity’s designs. But certainly we are bound for ever to adore his unutterable goodness, who, in the midst of judgment, remembered mercy; who raised the drooping spirits of our desponding parents by the gracious promise of a future Deliverer; and who, by the completion of that promise, hath sufficiently remedied all the evils of the fall! His amazing condescension in the great work of redemption ought to silence every murmur, and to answer every objection, which the busy thoughts of men would raise from the circumstances of the event before us!
Our first parents give us a sufficient admonition, how dangerous it is not to believe what God has declared; to give ear to temptations, and to follow the desires of the flesh: as well as how cautious we should be to watch over ourselves, and to obey in all things the laws of our God. They clearly inform us, that the divine threatenings are never in vain, and that God cannot suffer man’s disobedience to pass unpunished. And there is the less reason to expect it, as our kind and heavenly Father cannot, does not, ever propose any end in his laws to us, but our present and everlasting good. Assured, therefore, that what he dehorts us from practising, will issue in our misery; what he incites us to perform, will tend to our highest good; let us ever serve him with a filial spirit, and, as children, love and obey Him, whose tender mercy is over all his works.
In our first parents we see the dreadful consequences of sinshame and condition of soul! And such will the consequences of all sin be found; for sin is a turning away from Him, who alone can give life and peace. If therefore, led on by the lust or presumption, the credulity or weakness of Eve, we listen to the voice of the tempter, we shall assuredly find the event equally distressful to our souls, which will tremble with conscious shame; and seek, though in vain, to fly from him, whom, in a state of acceptance and holiness, we shall always meet with joy!
Convinced, therefore, O man! that thou hast, though fallen, even now, through Divine Grace, a freedom to choose good or evil, life or death, which are set before thee; convinced that thou hast a God, ready to crown thy proper choice with inestimable rewards through the infinite merit of thy great Intercessor; use the grace offered to thee, resolutely maintain thy integrity, and give not way to the insinuations of thy spiritual enemy, to the temptations of the world or the flesh: fight the good fight; and perseveringly elect the better part. So when thy trial and conflict are over, the great Redeemer will welcome thee to the glories of that paradise, which, lost by the first, was recovered by him the second Adam; a better Adam, and a better paradise, as purchased by an inestimable price, even the death of his mortal nature who was God as well as man, who, through death, destroyed him that had the power of death, and thus hath opened the kingdom of heaven to all believers!
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
Gen 3:24 So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.
Ver. 24. So he drove out the man. ] The Hebrews say, God led Adam gently by the hand, till he came to the porch of Paradise, and then thrust him out violently, who hung back, and played loath to depart. That he went out unwillingly, as I wonder not, so that he should strive with God about his going out, I believe not. This garden, planted merely for his pleasure, and all the benefits created for his use and service in six days, he lost in six hours, say some; in nine, say others; the same day he was made, say all, almost. What cause then have all his sinful posterity to distrust themselves! And how little cause had that blasphemous pope a to set his mouth against heaven, when – being in a great rage at his steward for a cold peacock not brought to table according to his appointment, and desired by one of his cardinals not to be so much moved at a matter of so small moment, – he answered: If God were so angry for an apple, that he cast our first parents out of Paradise for the same; why may not I, being his vicar, be angry then for a peacock, since it is a greater matter than an apple? b Is not this that mouth of the beast that “speaketh great things and blasphemies?” Rev 13:5
a Julius III
b Act. and Mon ., fol. 1417.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Genesis
EDEN LOST AND RESTORED
Gen 3:24
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.
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?
It seems to me that all this is best explained as the Bible explains it by saying: 1 Sin has done it; 2 Sin is not part of God’s original design, but man has fallen; 3 Sin had a personal beginning. There have been men who were pure, able to stand but free to fall.
It seems to me that that explanation is more in harmony with the facts of the case, finds more response in the unsophisticated instinct of man, than any other. It seems to me that, though it leaves many dark and sorrowful mysteries all unsolved, yet that it alleviates the blackest of them, and flings some rays of hope on them all. It seems to me that it relieves the character and administration of God from the darkest dishonour; that it delivers man’s position and destiny from the most hopeless despair; that though it leaves the mystery of the origin of evil, it brings out into clearest relief the central truths that evil is evil, and sin and sorrow are not God’s will; that it vindicates as something better than fond imaginings the vague aspirations of the soul for a fair and holy state; that it establishes, as nothing else will, at once the love of God and the dignity of man; that it leaves open the possibility of the final overthrow of that Sin which it treats as an intrusion and stigmatises as a fall; that it therefore braces for more vigorous, hopeful conflict against it, and that while but for it the answer to the despairing question, Hast Thou made all men in vain? must be either the wailing echo ‘In vain,’ or the denial that He has made them at all, there is hope and there is power, and there is brightness thrown on the character of God and on the fate of man, by the old belief that God made man upright, and that man made himself a sinner.
2. Heaven restores the lost Eden .
The highest conception we can form of heaven is the reversal of all the evil of earth, and the completion of its incomplete good: the sinless purity-the blessed presence of God-the fulfilment of all desires-the service which is blessed , not toil-the changelessness which is progress, not stagnation.
3. Heaven surpasses the lost Eden .
The perfection of association-the nations of the saved. Here ‘we mortal millions live alone,’ even when united with dearest. Like Egyptian monks of old, each dwelling in his own cave, though all were a community.
2 The richer experience.
The memory of past sorrows which are understood at last.
Heaven’s bliss in contrast with earthly joys.
Sinlessness of those who have been sinners will be more intensely lustrous for its dark background in the past. Redeemed men will be brighter than angels.
The impossibility of a fall.
Death behind us.
The former things shall no more come to mind, being lost in blaze of present transcendent experience, but yet shall be remembered as having led to that perfect state.
Christ not only repairs the ‘tabernacle which was fallen,’ but builds a fairer temple. He brings ‘a statelier Eden,’ and makes us dwell for ever in a Garden City.
Fuente: Expositions Of Holy Scripture by Alexander MacLaren
drove out. Note the failure of man under every dispensation.
placed. Heb shakan, to place in a tabernacle, hence to dwell. The Cherubim placed later in the tents of Shem, Gen 9:26, Gen 9:27. Compare Gen 4:3, Gen 4:7, Gen 4:14, Gen 4:16.
Cherubim. See App-41. 1Sa 4:4. Psa 80:1; Psa 99:1.
a = should be “the”.
every way, not natah (aside), savav (about), sug (back), panah (toward), but haphak (every way), effectually preserving the way.
keep. See note on Gen 2:15 = preserve, so that man should not “live for ever” in his fallen condition, but only in Christ, 1Jn 5:11, 1Jn 5:12.
tree of life. See note on Gen 2:9.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Cherubims
See note, (See Scofield “Eze 1:5”)
Fuente: Scofield Reference Bible Notes
The Tree of Life
So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden the Cherubim, and the flame of a sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.Gen 3:24.
1. The recent discussions about, and criticisms of, the first chapters of the Book of Genesis have left a certain vague and uncomfortable feeling in the minds of many men. Not a few people, probably, think in a dim sort of way that geology, or something else, has made those chapters of very doubtful worth. The worst part of this feeling is that it robs the early story of our race of the Spiritual power that it possesses. Apart from the question of its historic character, the account of mans origin which is given in Genesis is profoundly true to mans spiritual experience, and its imagery is representative of perpetual and universal truth.
2. Let us briefly recall the story. In the garden where God first placed man, the scene of his earliest experiences, it is said that God, his Creator, planted two trees. There are many others, but these two are noticeable and distinct. One of them is the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and the other is the Tree of Life. There they stand side by side, both beautiful, both tempting. But on one of themthe most temptinga prohibition is laid. Of the tree of knowledge man must not taste. But man rebels, wilfully, independently, against Gods word, and does eat of this tree. The consequence is that he is not allowed to eat of the other tree. He is driven out of the garden where it Stands, and is forbidden to return; and his return is made impossible by Cherubim, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.
3. Thus begins the long career of humanity. Man is forced to undertake the work and drudgery of living. The centuries, laden with wars and pains and hopes and fears and disappointments and successes, start on their slow procession. But no more is heard of the tree of life. It is not mentioned again in the course of the Bible. It is left behind the closed gate and the flaming sword, until we are surprised, at the extreme other end of the Bible, the New Testament, to see it suddenly reappear. In the Book of Revelation, where the promises of the worlds final glory are gathered, this promise stands among the brightest: To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the Paradise of God. The long-lost tree is not lost after all. God has only been keeping it out of sight; and at last He brings man to it, and invites him to eat. In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month; and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. Into this glory the angels of God are to bring His people at the last.
It is interesting, I think, to turn to the New Testament and see how, when Jesus Christ came, the story which He had to tell of mans condition and prospects was just the same with this old story of the tree of Genesis. Take the parable of the Prodigal Sonhow different it is! how quiet and domestic and familiar! how homely in its quaint details! But if you look at it, you will see that the meaning is the same. There, too, there is a first native possibility, the place in the fathers house to which the boy was born. There, too, that possibility ceases to be actual because of the wilfulness of him to whom it was offered. Give me the portion of goods that falleth to me; it is exactly Adam and Eve over again. There, too, the possibility is not destroyed, but stands waiting, out of sight of the wanderer, but always expecting his return; the fathers house from which the son goes out, and which stands with its door open when long afterwards he comes struggling back. There, too, the instant that Submission is completeI will arise and go to my fatherthe lost possibility is found again, for, When he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him. The story of the tree of life and the story of the prodigal son are the same story. Drawn with such different touch, coloured in such different hues, they set before us still the same picture of the life of Man 1:1 [Note: Phillips Brooks.]
Therefore in sight of man bereft
The happy garden still was left,
The fiery sword that guarded showd it too,
Turning all ways, the world to teach,
That though as yet beyond our reach,
Still in its place the tree of life and glory grew.1 [Note: John Keble, The Christian Year, Sexagesima Sunday.]
Let us consider
I.The Loss of the Tree of Life.
II.The Guardians of the Tree of Life.
III.The Recovery of the Tree of Life.
I
The Loss of the Tree of Life
1. The tree of life signifies the fulness of human existencethat complete exercise of every power, that roundness and perfectness of being which was in Gods mind when He made man in His own image. It represents not mere endurance, not merely an existence which is going to last for ever. It represents quality more than quantity, or quantity only as it is the result of quality. To eat of the tree of life is to enter into and occupy the fulness of human existence, to enjoy and exercise a life absolute and perfect, to live in the full completeness of our powers. We can feel how this luxuriousness and fulness are naturally embodied under the figure of a tree. In many myths of many races, the tree has seemed the fittest symbol of the life of man; and the tree perfect in Gods garden is the truest picture of mans whole nature complete under His care.
2. Man was banished from the Garden of Eden. The tree of life which was in the midst of the Garden of Eden was the one thing that was now going to be safeguarded by the presence of the Cherubim and by the flaming sword. We must not suppose that there was anything undesirable now in the tree of life as suchthat is to say, we must not imagine that there was a change in the character of its value. Sometimes we are inclined to read the story as though it meant that it was no longer desirable that man should take of the tree of life. What the narrative really does mean is that it was no longer desirable that man should take of the tree of life on the old conditions. The old conditions were conditions of ease.
That which we have is never the tree of life to us. The tree of life is always the thing which we must reach forward to attain; and if our condition of life is that we are satisfied to take these fruits which grow upon the tree of life, what is according to the ordinary conventional acceptation the best thing, the correct thing, the most important thing, let us not be satisfied with that. Let us look over once more where the protecting rampart of fire and of sword stands between us and some more desirable object.1 [Note: W. Boyd Carpenter.]
Old man, old man, God never closed a door
Unless one opened. I am desolate,
For a most sad resolve wakes in my heart;
But always I have faith. Old men and women
Be silent; He does not forsake the world,
But Stands before it modelling in the clay
And moulding there His image. Age by age
The clay wars with His fingers and pleads hard
For its old heavy, dull, and shapeless ease.2 [Note: W. B. Yeats.]
3. He drove out the man means that the pleasantness, and ease, and safety, of the Garden were taken from him: that he had forfeited, and was made to feel he had forfeited, the delightful sense of a constant nearness to God, and of unrestrained intercourse with Him; that he had to go out into the comparative desolation of the common unblessed world to fight for his own hand, and to make the best he could of things. Well, of course everybody knows that this was, in a very true sense, the best thing that could have happened to him, since he fell. Mankind has risen slowly to its present state of power and progress just because it had to fight its way up against a multitude of difficulties and obstacles, which gradually called out and educated its powers and faculties of body and of mind. The struggle with wild beasts; the struggle with harsh climates and unkindly soils; the struggle with what seemed the inveterate hostility, or the incurable caprice, of nature: these and such-like things have made man what he is in position and resource. Go the world over, and you will find that exactly those races which might seem to have been most effectually driven out, and left furthest off from the earthly paradise, have been the races which have attained the highest civilization.
It is remarkable that in so many great wars it is the defeated who have won. The people who were left worst at the end of the war were generally the people who were left best at the end of the whole business. For instance, the Crusades ended in the defeat of the Christians. But they did not end in the decline of the Christians; they ended in the decline of the Saracens. That huge prophetic wave of Moslem power which had hung in the very heavens above the towns of Christendom: that wave was broken, and never came on again. The Crusades had saved Paris in the act of losing Jerusalem. The same applies to that epic of Republican war in the eighteenth century to which we Liberals owe our political creed. The French Revolution ended in defeat; the kings came back across a carpet of dead at Waterloo. The Revolution had lost its last battle, but it had gained its first object. It had cut a chasm. The world has never been the same since.1 [Note: G. K. Chesterton, Tremendous Trifles.]
4. What was the occasion of the expulsion? The blessing of the Divine Presence was conditional upon obedience to the Divine will. Paradise was forfeited by the preference of selfish appetites over the command of God. The expulsion from Paradise was the inevitable consequence of sin; the desire of man for the lower life was granted. He who asserted his own against the Divine will had no place in the Paradise of God.
Take the meanest and most sordid face that passes you, the face most brutalized by vice, most pinched and strained by business;that man has his tree of life, his own separate possibility of being, luxuriant and vital, fresh, free, original. How terribly he has missed it, you say. Indeed he has. A poor, misguided thing he is, as wretched as poor Adam when he had been driven from his tree of life, and stood naked and shivering outside the Garden, with the beasts that used to be his subjects snarling at him, and the ground beginning to mock him with its thorns and thistles. That poor man evidently has been cast out of his garden, and has lost his tree of life. And is it not evident enough how he lost it? Must it not have been that he was wilful? Must it not have been that, at the very beginning, he had no idea but for himself, no notion of living in obedience to God?
What makes the scholars life a failure? What makes him sigh when at last the books grow dim before his eyes, and the treacherous memory begins to break and lose the treasures it has held? He has been studying for himself, wilfully, not humbly, taking the fruit from the tree of knowledge. What makes the workman turn into a machine? What makes us feel so often, the more his special skill develops, that he is growing less and not more a man? What shuts the merchant up to his drudgery, making it absolutely ridiculous and blasphemous to say of him, as we watch the way he lives and the things he does from the time he rises till the time he goes to bed, That is what God made that man for? What makes every one of us sigh when we think what we might have been? Why is every one of us missing his highest? Why are we all shut out from our trees of life? There is one word, one universal word, that tells the sad story for us all. It is selfishnessselfishness from the beginning. If we had not been selfish, if we had lived for God from the beginning, if we had been consecrated, we know it would have been different; we should have had our Eden inside and not outside; we should have eaten in Gods due time of our tree of life; and have come to what He made us for,our fullest and our best life.1 [Note: Phillips Brooks.]
II
The Guardians of the Tree of Life
Adam and Eve being driven out from the tree of life, who were the guards that stood to hinder their return? Cherubim, and a flaming sword which turned every way.
i. The Cherubim
1. The essential idea of the Cherubim seems to have been that they represented the forces of nature as the servants of God. The Lord sitteth between the cherubims, be the earth never so unquiet, says David, and in another psalm, He rode upon a cherub, and did fly. These forces of nature, these things of the world about us, these objects and circumstances, made by God to assist in the pleasure and culture of mankind,these same things are they which, when man is rebellious and selfish, stand between him and his fullest life. Those objects and circumstances which, if a man were docile and humble, and lived his life with and under God, would all be developing and perfecting him, making him stronger, making him happier,all those things, just as soon as a man cuts himself off from God and insists on getting knowledge and doing work by himself, become his enemies. They hinder him instead of helping him; they are always pulling him down instead of lifting him up; making him a worse and smaller instead of a better and larger man.
2. In the symbolism of Scripture the Cherubim are everywhere the supporters of the Divine Majesty. For this reason they are admitted into the Tabernacle and the Temple in the very teeth of the second commandment; two veritable and undeniable graven images (of Cherubim) spread their wings over the Mercy Seat on which the Divine Glory was believed to appear. For this reason the Chariot of God in Ezekiel is composed of Cherubim, and in the Apocalypse the same symbolic beings (under the name of the four living creatures) are seen in the midst of the throne, and round about the throne. They belong in some way to the Presence of God: they mean that He is there, very really and truly. Secondly, they represent also nature in her manifold forms and types. The graven images in Tabernacle and Temple were evidently composite creature-forms, something like those so common in Assyria. They resemble no one type of creature life, but several blended together so as to suggest them all. The Cherubim of Ezekiels vision and the living creatures of the Apocalypse are essentially the same. The sin and degradation of the old world was creature-worship; therefore, in the sacred writings, Jewish or Christian, the symbolic representatives of all nature, in all her types and kinds, are made the supporters of His Throne who is eternally above nature, who manifests Himself for ever through nature. There is a tremendous truth in that; the only right place, the only safe place, for the Cherubimfor naturefor natural scienceis in immediate connection with, in immediate subordination to, the One living and true God. It is the place of honour; it is the place of safety. Bring the Cherubim out of the Temple and away from God; instantly they become monuments of idolatry, which the servants of the Most High must break and burn. Let them remain His supporters and His Throne; they are glorified and we are safe.
3. The Cherubim at the entrance to forfeited and forbidden Paradise meant that Gods presence was there, that God Himself barred the way: God who fulfils Himself in nature, who rules and reigns in and through the laws of nature. Is there any riddle there? Does it not explain itself? Is it not obviously true that natural law eternally forbids our getting into Paradise, and that we have no power to evade or to defy that law? People may be as lucky or as successful as you like; they may be (as we say) the spoilt children of fortune; they may have every advantage on their side; but they cannot make their way into the garden of delight. No happiness for man which has not its drawbacks, its penalties; at best, its tormenting fear of loss! That is not a pious platitude; it is an inexorable law of nature, with which most of us have made acquaintance to our costand those who have not, will. Nature itself bars our way to bliss, the bliss we cannot but desire: and nature stands for God.1 [Note: Rayner Winterbotham.]
If you should meet with one who strays
Beyond the walls of peace,
Who spends the passion of his days
In dreams that never cease,
Oh, tell him that the outcast ways
Find no release.
If you should look into his eyes,
And see the shadow there
Of his dear Citys towers and skies,
Where once his heart lay bare,
Oh, tell him those who are most wise
Their vision spare.
If you should see him turn and wait,
Fast bound by his desire,
Beyond the walls disconsolate,
In dreams that never tire,
Oh, tell him that the City gate
Is barred by fire.
No other torches shall divide
The road for his release,
Oh, tell him they stretch dark and wide,
Long roads that never cease
If you should meet with one outside
The walls of peace.1 [Note: Dollie Radford.]
ii. The Flaming Sword
There is something else, besides the Cherubim, that bars the way: something more subtle, more inexplicable, more versatile even, and even more formidable. The flame of a sword which turned every way. See how the words themselves irresistibly suggest an allegory. Not a flaming sword; that was a poor prosaic watering down of the original; but the flame of a sword. As though some magic sword bathed in heaven, and wielded by some invisible angelic virtue, were leaving its scorch and radiance upon the yielding air as it played hither and thither with the velocity of lightning.
1. The flame of a sword; something living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword; something everywhere perceived, but nowhere dwelt upon, subtle, inscrutable, inexplicable, but meeting one at every turn, and hopelessly barring approach from any sidenot by any solid obstacle, but by the sense of dread; dread of the unknown and awful. What does that flame of a sword turning every way stand for? Is it not the sense of guilt? the conscience of sin? which is so subtle and fleeting and intangible, and yet keeps a man out of the Paradise of peace and happiness as effectually as though he were shut up within prison bars.
Try to get into Paradise! try to be perfectly calm, and happy, and at rest! try to return to the Garden where, in the cool of the day, you may hear the voice of God the Father speaking to you! to that primal state of which your heart whispers to you, when you were in His sight naked and yet unashamed. Forget for a moment the unsurmountable difficulties which nature has placed in your wayits bereavements, its limitations, its illusionsand you will be instantly aware of this subtler and more formidable foe, the lambent flame which plays around you and through you, more quick and incessant than the lightning, piercing at once and scorching, a force which you cannot seize or grapple with, a force against which the intellect and the will are alike helpless, the subtle irresistible sense of sin whereby you know and feel that you are a sinner, that you are out of harmony with God, that you can be at peace neither with Him nor without Him, that you must either dwell in an eternal unrest or become very different from what you are.
2. Are there people who have no sense of sin? Very likely. The flame of a sword played and turned at the gate of Paradise, at the east of the garden of Eden. Whilst you are ranging about the wilderness, whilst you are pressing west and north and south, it is only the far-off glare and glitter of the sword that you will see at times, like the reflected brilliance from the electric lighthouse which leaps upon the clouds from below the horizon. It; is only when you set your face eastwards and homewards, towards the home of light and the birthplace of the dawn; only when with weary heart and tired thoughts you seek for peace and satisfaction where alone it can be found; only then that you really encounter the sternness of the brandished flame.
There is not anything more subtle and unsubstantial than the sense of sinfulness. If you try to set it down in black and white, if you try to fix it in the language of theology, it is bound to evade you: you have got your definition, your terminology, your religious phraseology, but your sense of sin has vanished. You prove to a man that we are all by nature children of wrath, that the Scripture hath concluded us all under sin, that all have sinned and fallen short, that there is none righteous, no, not one, that the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, that all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags. What is the use? The man you address assents, or dissents; but in either case he feels nothing: the flame of the sword is playing in some other direction at that moment. You cannot fix it; you cannot say, lo, here, or lo, there; for even as you speak it is gone. Nothing is more clumsy, more ineffective, more useless, than arguments and statements about the sense of sin. And yet nothing is more real, more inexorable, more impossible to overpass.1 [Note: Rayner Winterbotham.]
Strange powers unused like poison burn in me:
Cruel quicksilver thro my veins they creep.
What hour will bring mine infelicity
Some drowsy cup from the mild founts of sleep?
Tired sieges of high castles never taken,
Desires like great king-falcons never cast,
Beautiful quests all wearily forsaken,
Figure the fiery arras of the Past.
The pale Dreams walk on the horizons grey:
Like stars they tread the dawn with flaming feet:
Their eyes for evermore are turned away.
I heard their silver trumpets once entreat:
Low sighed the caitiff Voice: They sound in vain.
Let them go by. It is not worth the Pain.1 [Note: Rachel Annand Taylor.]
III
The Recovery of the Tree of Life
Although, by reason of his transgression, man was driven out of Paradise, and debarred from access to the tree of life, he was not to be for ever excluded from the one or the other. Both are reserved in safe keeping until the time of the end, and in the restored Paradise the faithful shall eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God (Rev 2:7), and the leaves of the tree shall be for the healing of the nations (Rev 22:2).
1. Man is driven out of the garden where it stands, but immediately the education begins which, if he will submit to it, is to bring him back at last to the Paradise of God where the tree of life will be restored to him. And all the training that comes in between is of one sort. Everything from Genesis to Revelation has one purpose,to teach man the hopelessness, the folly, the unsatisfactoriness, of a merely wilful and selfish life; to bring men by every discipline of sorrow or joy to see the nobleness and fruitfulness of obedience and consecration. When that is learned, then the lost tree reappears. Hidden through all the lingering centuries, there it is, when man is ready for it, blooming in the Paradise of God.
2. If man is to take of the tree of life he can take of it only by facing the flaming sword which guards its place. If man is to eat of the produce of the ground he is no longer to eat it as it springs forth of itself, but thorns and thistles are springing out of the ground at the same time, and in the sweat of his brow he is to take the fair and necessary fruits of the earth. The fruits of the earth are no less desirable and necessary than before, but now they are to be taken under a new condition. The same is true of the tree of life; it is still as desirable as ever. Man may still dream of the joy and the glory of partaking of that tree of life; indeed he does so. If you turn to the other books of the Bible you will find that more than once the dream of that tree of life rises as a fair vision before the eyes of man. When the wise man would speak of the highest benefit which can be conferred upon man, even the participation of the quality and the power of wisdom, he says, She is a tree of life to them that lay hold upon her. The tree of life is as desirable for men as ever it was, but it can no longer be taken under the old conditions of ease. Now man must face danger in order to win it. Now it must be purchased at the risk of life. If man is to take the tree of life he must front the sword which turns every way to safeguard it from those who would approach.
It is interesting and stimulating to observe how the Bible begins and ends with this figure of the tree of life. It has a prominent place in the first book, and it has a prominent place in the last book. And the whole of the intervening story, although the tree is not named, is one long commentary upon the text, one long dramatic exposition of the principle.
(1) You see the children of Israel led by the visible presence of Moses, and guided by the invisible hand of God, marching our of Egypt, and following a devious, perplexed, and harassed way through the wilderness towards Canaan. What are they doing? They are marching up the path against the flaming sword and the cherubim that they may eat of the fruit of the tree of life.
(2) You see the minority in Israel who are faithful to Jehovah, sensitive to His dignity, loyal to His control; a minority whose attitude, alike towards the sin of the people and towards the great national ideals and hopes, is expressed over and over again in the words of the prophets; you see them there, denouncing wickedness, protesting might and main against idolatry, suffering persecution; in the time when enemies are threatening the nation with destruction, calling the people to repentance, summoning up their courage, leading them against the foe, steadying them on God, and amid disaster and catastrophe keeping the torch of hope aflame; enduring all the pain and the shame of exile, and amid the allurements of foreign faiths and worship keeping firm their belief in Jehovah, and their hearts pure before Him, in order that still, even at the last hour, Israel may be preserved, and restored to its own; and what are these doing? They are pressing up against the sword and the cherubim that keep the way to the tree of life, that the nation may eat thereof and live.
(3) You see Jesus; you follow His footsteps, and watch His way; you see Him tempted in the Wilderness; you see Him harassed and opposed by Scribes and Pharisees; you see the Herodians intriguing against Him; you see Him unrecognized and unsupported by His own people; you see Him laying upon His heart the sorrows and the burdens of the multitude; you see Him patient under persecution, faithful to the truth against opposition, obedient to the Higher Will even unto death; you see Him moving solitary and alone because of the misconceptions and the misunderstandings of His followers; you see Him pass within the deep shadow of Gethsemane, and then, utterly forsaken, ascending the way of sorrow, bearing His cross to the place of death; and what is He doing? He is moving upwards against the flaming sword and the Cherubim that He may win to the tree of life; and this not for Himself alone, but for us; that we might know how to come off conquerors, that we might know that there is a way to rise and to arrive, that we might have life in Him:
And in the garden secretly,
And on the cross on high,
Might teach His brethren, and inspire
To suffer and to die.
(4) And then you watch the early beginnings of the Christian Church; you see Peter boldly standing up in Jerusalem to preach the new faith, and to declare the glad tidings; you see Paul, himself a persecutor, suffering persecution for the Cross of Christ; you see him at the risk of offending his fellow-apostles, crossing the boundaries of Judaism, and carrying the gospel to the Gentiles throughout Asia Minor and into Europe; and always against resistance, always in the teeth of opposition; always amid great difficulties, and with infinite labour; and you see the Churches, set as a light in the midst of the people, treasuring the sacred deposit of the faith against the threatenings of heathen idolatry, and heathen philosophy, and their own weakness, mistakes, and infidelity; and always trying amid bafflements, and always fighting amid seeming failure, and always aspiring; and these, what are they doing? They too are on the pathway that leads to the tree of life, and they are measuring themselves, to the top of their power, against the sword and against the guardian Cherubim.1 [Note: E. W. Lewis.]
The benefactors of men have always been compelled to confront that sword. In the smallest thing it is true. The man who makes a new discovery, the man who has invented something which will be a benefit to his fellow-menhow truly has he to encounter the sword and the flame of criticism. The sword and the flame distress all his fellows. Why does Roger Bacon fly for his life except that an ignorant public cannot understand the benefits that he is prepared to confer upon them? Why should men like Galileo be put to shame, but that the world stands with its sword and says, We refuse to let you confer these blessings unless you pass the sword which we hold in the way of all? There is the one profound illustration of all. When eager, ambitious souls that saw things only after a worldly fashion were ready to come and take Him by force and make Him a king, He stood amongst His disciples and said, The crown, that is, the power of conferring benefit upon menthe crown, that is, the capacity of helping My brother man, can be won only through the Cross.2 [Note: W. Boyd Carpenter.]
3. So true is the beginning of the Bible to our continual life. So in our own experience we find the everlasting warrant of that much-disputed tale of Genesis. But, thank God, the end of the Bible is just as true. As true as this universal fact of all mens failure is the other fact, that no mans failure is final or necessarily fatal; that every mans lost tree of life is kept by God, and that he may find it again in Gods Paradise if he comes there in humble consecration.
Let us put figures and allegories aside for a moment. The truth of Christianity is this: that however a man has failed by his selfishness of the fulness of life for which God made him, the moment that, led by the love of Christ, he casts his selfishness aside and consecrates himself to God, that lost possibility reappears; he begins to realize and attempt again in hope the highest idea of his life: the faded colours brighten; the crowding walls open and disappear. This is the deepest, noblest Christian consciousness. Very far off, very dimly seen as yet, hoped-for not by any struggle of its own but by the gift of the Mercy and Power to which it is now given, the soul that is in God believes in its own perfectibility, and dares to set itself perfection as the mark of life, short of which it cannot rest satisfied.
And when this change has come, when a soul has dared again to realize and desire the life for which God made it, then also comes the other change. The hindrances change back again to their true purpose and are once more the helpers. That, too, is a most noble part of the Christians experience, and one which every Christian recognizes. You prayed to God when you became His servant that He would take your enemies away, that He would free you from those circumstances which had hindered you from living a good life. But He did something better than what you prayed for. As you looked at your old enemies they did not disappear, but their old faces altered. You saw them still, but you saw them now changed into His servants. The business that had made you worldly stretched out new hands, all heavy with the gifts of charity. The nature which had stood like a wall between you and the truth of a Personal Creator opened now a hundred voices all declaring Him. The men who had tempted you to pride and passion, all came with their opportunities of humility and patience. Everything was altered when you were altered. The Cherubim had left their hostile guard above the gate, and now stood inviting you to let them lead you to the tree of life. This is the Fall supplanted by the Redemption. This completes the whole Bible of a human life.1 [Note: Phillips Brooks.]
The Tree of Life in Eden stood
With mystic Fruits of Heavenly Food,
Which endless life afford,
That Life, by mans transgression lost:
Cast out is man by Angel-host:
Until by Man restored.
In vain the lambs poured forth their blood;
In vain the smoking altars stood;
All unatoned was sin:
Must greater be the sacrifice
Before the gate of Paradise
Can let the fallen in?
The Lord of Life His Life must give
That man an endless Life may live,
And deaths dark doom reverse.
The Cross is made the mystic Tree,
The Blood that flowed on Calvary
Hath washed away the curse.
Now Edens gate is oped once more;
The guardian Angels watch is oer,
And sheathed the flaming sword:
The Tree of Life now blooms afresh,
Its precious Fruit the very Flesh
Of the Incarnate Word.1 [Note: Edwin L. Blenkinsopp]
Literature
Brooks (P.), Seeking Life, 161.
Brown (J. B.), The Divine Life in Man 1:1.
Lewis (E. W.), The Unescapeable Christ, 214.
Matheson (G.), Leaves for Quiet Hours, 165.
Vaughan (C. J.), The Two Great Temptations, 44.
Vaughan (J.), Sermons (Brighton Pulpit), ii. No. 325; ix. No. 759.
Winterbotham (R.), Sermons in Holy Trinity Church, 76.
Christian World Pulpit, lii. 101 (Boyd Carpenter); lvii. 109 (Maver); lxiii. 259 (Ralph).
Fuente: The Great Texts of the Bible
east: Gen 2:8
Cherubims: Exo 25:2, Exo 25:20, Exo 25:22, 1Sa 4:4, 1Ki 6:25-35, Psa 80:1, Psa 99:1, Psa 104:4, Eze 10:2-22, Heb 1:7
a flaming: Num 22:23, Jos 5:13, 1Ch 21:16, 1Ch 21:17, Heb 1:7
to keep: Joh 14:6, Heb 10:18-22
Reciprocal: Exo 25:18 – two cherubims of gold Exo 36:8 – cherubims Exo 37:9 – cherubims spread 2Sa 22:11 – a cherub 1Ki 6:23 – two cherubims 1Ki 7:29 – cherubims Eze 10:18 – and stood Eze 28:13 – in Eden Eze 28:16 – therefore Nah 3:3 – bright sword and the glittering spear 2Th 1:8 – flaming
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
DRIVEN INTO EXILE
So be drove out the man.
Gen 3:24
The results of the Fall! If one were to catalogue them one might spend hours. We are not concerned to-day so much with those results such as sorrow, suffering, and death. These are patent to everyone. What we are to think about is more that banishment from God which brings sorrow to the soul. Think for a moment of mans position before the Fall. There was then nothing between man and Godin a word, Gods Holy Spirit dwelt in his heart. The Fall reversed that. By the Fall man lost the Holy Ghost. There was no longer that freedom of intercourse between man and God.
I. Results of the Fall.There are three great results of the Fall:
(a) The first of them is ignorance. Man has lost his knowledge of God. I know there are some people who persist in saying that there is no God; but you will never find a body of men, a tribe, or nation, who say, There is no God, who have not some idea of God, who do not believe somehow in the existence of God. Nature tells us of a God, and there is something left in us still to tell us that there is a God. Positivism as against God has utterly failed to retain in its grasp any large number of people. Man has an instinct within himlet alone the evidence of naturethat there is a God. God has written the fact of His existence in nature, but He has not written His character. That is what Adam lost. When man had lost his hold on God things went all wrong, and so we find him beginning to build a tower from the earth, which should have its top in heaven, that man might reach to God. God has written the fact of His existence on our consciences, and He has also written it in the revelations of the Old Testament. There are the Jews; they have their Biblethe Old Testament. They were quite sure they knew the character of God, and yet, when God came, what did they do? They crucified Him.
(b) Then there was what may be called weakness. Man had been made by God that God might take care of him. Gods one desire was to wrap His arms around that feeble creature man, and when man cast that protection off he found out his own weakness. Soon we find the heathen poet saying: I know what is right, and yet I do what is wrong. While St. Paul even says: Wretched man that I am. I would I do not. That weakness has fallen upon us as the second result of the Fall.
(c) The third result is turbulencethe want of control over the faculties of mans nature. When we are born into the world we are born double. On the one side we crave for Godevery man is made for God; on the other side we soon tire of religionwe begin to hate it. Once we can grasp the fact that in us we have both the image of God in which we were made, and what the Church calls original sin, both together, side by side, then we see why we are such a mass of contradiction. I know right, but I do wrong. Some of us know, of coursemost of us knowhow difficult it is to keep our lower nature under control. Most of us know that miserable struggle which is constantly going on between the right and the wrong in us. It was not so at first. Before man fell he was entirely in the Will of God. Now mans will is at variance with that of God, and it was the Fall that brought this turbulence into our nature.
II. Seven Deadly Sins.That turbulence expresses itself in seven great ways. They are sometimes known as the seven deadly sins.
(1) The first of them is pride. Pride is a knowledge of self apart from God. Man lost touch with God, and all he can see is himself. And so his whole horizon is full of himself. That is pride. Pride is the root sin; rather pride is the soil in which every other sin drops. If you take away the soil from the plant it withers and dies. So if you can root out pride there will be no other sin in the world.
(2) The second is covetousnessthat evil feeling of displeasure at anothers good. Look at the harm which covetousness has wrought in the world. Half of the hatred, half of the sordid crimes one reads of, are the result of covetousnessthat covetousness which drove man away from God.
(3) The third is lust. Pray God that you may be saved from the sin of worldly lust. The body is the temple of God, and yet people allow it to be defiled. Any man defiling the temple of God, him shall God destroy. If there is one sin more than another that is killing people at present it is the sin of sensuality.
(4) The fourth is anger. Think of our Lord Jesus Christwhile nails were driven through His Hands and Feet, and while the crown of thorns was pressed on His browwhat did He say? Father, forgive them. And yet we have anger which springs up in a second.
(5) The fifth is gluttony or drunkenness. No one can fail to see the harm that is wrought by this sin in its worst form. You do not have to go far to see it.
(6) The sixth is envy. This sin it was which led to the first murder.
(7) Then, lastly, there is sloth, which shows itself in the general torpor of the spiritual life. Men cease to make an effort, and then they go down fast. Pray God to be delivered from that torpor. Pray God you may be saved from the dulling of your conscience.
III. Salvation from the Results of the Fall.What is going to save us from the results of the Fall? There is none other way under heaven but the Name of Gods Son, Jesus Christ. He, the sinless OneHis is the perfect human life. He stands in our midst; He hangs on the Cross, and as He hangs there He teaches us two great revelations. The first is the revelation of the justice of God; the second is the revelation of the hideousness of sin. If we would reckon rightly with ourselves we must look at ourselves in the light of the Cross. You will then pray to be filled more and more with the knowledge of Him, with the knowledge of His life, and with a hatred of sin.
SECOND OUTLINE
I. Mans fallen life, viewed externally and internally
(a) Externally. Man was condemned to toil and sorrow, no longer fed by the sacramental fruit of the tree of life, exiled from the garden and debarred from entering the gate, which was closed against him by mysterious shapes and by points of flickering fire. The echoes of sin and sorrow, of care and business and pleasure, that are wakened up for us in the fourth chapter, are the beginning of the moral and physical history of man as he now is.
(b) Internally. Strange and terrible possibilities of sin lurk in this human nature of ours. Who can measure the possible distance between himself now and himself twenty years hence? There seem evermore to be two wills in the mystery of the one will. There seem to be two men in the one man,the two wills and two men of whom the apostle speaks in our text.
II. The redeemed life. As we have placed Adam at the head of the fallen life, we place Christ at the head of the redeemed life. Christ is here in these opening chapters of Genesis. Dim and indistinct the promise must be admitted to be; just as on some pale winter morning we see a shape dimly in the mirror, and yet recognise it because we have known it before, so in that dim winter morning of prophecy we can see Christ in that first promise, because we have met Him before in the Gospel and the Church.
The redeemed life includes: (a) forgiveness; (b) an emancipated will. In Christ Jesus the fallen life may pass into the redeemed life; in Him, exiles as we are, we may win a right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates and pass into the city which is our home.
Archbp. Alexander.
Illustration
See how one sin may alter everything. It would be difficult to picture a greater contrast than between the beginning and the ending of our Lesson. The gladness of the sunlight has departed, and the heavens are overcast with cloud. Instead of quiet assurance before God, there is the guilty desire to escape Him. Instead of happy possession of the garden, there is banishment into the wide world beyond. All things are changed; it is a different world; it is as if every bird had ceased to sing; and one act of disobedience has done it all. Remember, then, that a single act or deed may change the current of a mans whole life. One choice, made in a moment, often lightlyand the life will never be the same again. Let a man do one noble deed, and play the hero only for one hour, and the world will be noble to him ever after, and he will have the comradeship of noble souls. But let a man play the coward or the cheat, not twice but once, not openly but secretly, and life will be meaner and the world a poorer place until the threescore years and ten are run. There are great joys that meet us in an instant, but the light of them shall shine on till the grave. And there are choices we are called to make whichmade in a momentwill determine everything.
Fuente: Church Pulpit Commentary
Gen 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, 2Pe 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; Gods 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.