Chapter three is one that I really struggle within the Bible for a few reasons. I ask myself why the serpent chose to attack Eve in the first place. Was it random? Did it matter?
He makes Eve doubt the word of God with a “But did he REALLY say…” Eve reiterates what she has been told here – and accurately so.
He makes him doubt again by saying that SURELY you won’t actually die. Then she looks at the fruit and makes a bad call. She sees that the fruit would allow her to gain wisdom. Wisdom is the knowledge of what is good and what is evil. Here’s the real kicker for me: ADAM WAS WITH HER THE WHOLE TIME. Men like to say that the fall was completely on the woman, but Adam was with her and remained silent. He did not participate in the conversation or acknowledge what was going on. He remained silent in the face of evil. Which allowed Eve to face the serpent alone and fall into doubt. It is not the fault of one, but the fault of both that allowed the world to fall into sin. Not to mention that Adam ate the apple anyway. He was silently persuaded as well.
The first consequence that Adam and Eve experience regarding their disobedience is Shame. This is still in accordance with what we experience today when we disobey. We feel ashamed. Shame is the weight of Sin on the human Soul.
When Adam and Ever hear God walking through the garden, their first instinct is to hide their shame. I find God’s response here very interesting because the question He asks is revealing to what is going on in Adam and Eve’s individual souls at this point in time. The question he asks is, “Where are you?”
Sin drags us away from God and shadows us from communion and relationship with him. God knows where we are, but Sin makes our Souls less recognizable.
The second consequence that Adam and Eve bring upon themselves is blame. They try to pass the blame around. Adam hands it to Eve and Eve hands it to the serpent. They are trying to play Hot Potato with the sin they have just conceived within their lives. This is something that we see small children do. They LOVE to blame a fault or trouble on someone else. This is instinctive. You can watch a 2-year old child blame the dog for something you SAW them do two seconds ago. And the situation is laughably frustration for parents – I think that this is what God was experiencing at this time. He SAW these two idiots eat from the tree. He SAW them run to hide their nakedness. Yet, just like a parent who is trying to coax their child out of hiding, he asks “Where are you?” Even though He can plainly see them. Because of the basic principle of parenting. You want your children to come to you. You want them to own up to whatever it was they did on their own. You want them to simply tell the truth. We know that when we tell the truth the consequences are generally less severe.
This makes me wonder about our punishment:
Woman’s being that we will suffer during childbirth, “desire” her husband and that he will rule over you.
Man’s being that he will have to toil the earth for sustenance and the earth will resist being farmed, and that death will be introduced unto man.
Then, of course, we are banished from the Garden.
I wonder about the punishment of woman because what does it mean for her desire to be for her husband and that he will rule over us??? Man’s consequences seem so straight forward, but women’s punishment is unclear.
From some light reading, it seems that many people believe that the desire spoke of here is some kind of sexual desire – but others believe that it is the desire to dominate the man and see herself as more powerful or above the man. I can understand that because I am seeing some of that today where women believe that they are better than men. God sees this as a consequence of our sin of not consulting with our partner on certain decisions. God also says that man will rule over us. Now, this could be interpreted in a couple of ways. That Man was always meant to rule over Woman and thereby validating a patriarchal society. OR you could see it for what it is. The man’s desire will be to rule and dominate over the woman creating a power struggle between the two that would negate each other and create a nonfunctioning society.
The way that I see it: Men and women were made to be equal parts of a functioning society. We were to consult with each other about major decisions and reinforce within one another the goodness the positive choices. We cannot act alone or try to dominate one another. This attempt to dominate is a consequence of our sin. We should strive to act as partners as ONE FLESH. One body and become the people we were meant to be.
Genesis Chapter 4
So this is the Cain and Abel story. Abel brings fat portions of the first slaughter of his flock while Cain brings some fruits of the soil. Now, there isn’t any clarification on this part here. We are not told why exactly God chooses to reject Cain’s offering. I can infer there that it might be because Cain’s offering was half-hearted. He did not bring “first-fruits” which would be the first harvest and normally those are the best fruits. In contrast, Abel does bring the best of the best from his flock.
Instead of taking this admonishment from God and choosing to become better through this, he opts for jealousy and rage. God tells him to let go of these feelings because Sin is crouching outside his door waiting for the opportunity to strike. Cain does not listen and allows this rage to fester and eventually straight up murders his brother in a field.
God ask Cain, “Where is your brother?” And Cain, like his mother and father before him chooses to hide his sin. Even through God had given him multiple chances to change his ways and even to own up to this horrible deed. Cain literally SASSES God and says, “IDK. What am I The keeper of my brother?”
Like he actually thinks that he can fool God into just LETTING HIM GET AWAY WITH LITERAL MURDER.
God basically curses Cain for this – he will no longer be able to farm the land and he is forced to restlessly wander the earth. He even says that no one will kill Cain because he will place a mark on him. (This, again, implies that there are other people out there in the world. NOT JUST ADAM AND EVE). In the “Antiquities of the Jews”, it does happen to mention that Adam and Eve had daughters, but we have no idea what their names were.
Even Cain’s descendants murder people. His great-great-great grandson Lamech was a murderer too.
Cain’s descendants were some pretty industrious people through. They fathered some interesting industries: livestock, music, and blacksmithing. Kinda interesting.
Ooh – Cain apparently didn’t stop the sinning with murder. He just went and robbed/raped people and created the idea of property and weights and measures for selling things, and that he was “intolerable in war”. (Capitalism begins!) IN the “Antiquities of the Jews”, it even says that these people were innocent of these things until Cain came and corrupted them.
Cain’s descendants live in the land of Nod East of Eden.
Genesis Chapter 5
This just seems like a historical account of the first sons and their lineage. The only interesting piece of this for me is that one of Seth’s descendants was named Enoch (weird that it is the same name as Cain’s first son) who walked with God and didn’t die but was instead taken away by God.
I come to this book of the Bible wondering. There is so much debate about this single book as if discrediting the first book makes the rest of the story invalid.
Gen 1:2 ; What is the deep? It says that darkness was over the surface of the deep. That implies that there was something to be the surface of. The Spirit of God was over the waters. From this, I can infer that water was where the beginnings of life have to come from and originate which is true of all life on our planet. Water is the basis of our lives. So after a bit of research, I have learned that the beginnings of space was about 67 billion years ago. Our solar system wasn’t beginning to form until about 13.6 billion years ago. There is not a given about of time for how long the darkness was over the surface of the deep, this could be billions of years.
Gen 1:3 ; The First day was an evening and morning. God does not differentiate the TIME as in 24 hours here. He simply says that there was an evening and a morning. Earth as we recognize it didn’t exist until about 4.5 billion years ago. We had an atmosphere at around 3.8 billion years ago. Our atmosphere could be the Spirit of God upon the deep.
Gen 1:9 ; Here we have God saying that the waters were gathered to ONE place and land was in another. This sounds much like Pangea to me, as it was originally one land mass rather than multiple landmasses. 2.5 billion years ago we have earth’s landmasses beginning to form.
Gen 1:14 ; Okay, so this is where I am getting confused. The first day has God making day and night. Now, I am on to the fourth day and it is talking about a greater light (SUN) and a lesser light (MOON). How could we have day and night up till this point without the Sun?? Okay so the moon was created about 6.5 billion years ago. According to research, the moon has been moving steadily away from us throughout this time, and at its beginning, it was much closer. Days at this point in time were about 4-6 hours long. We didn’t have more regular days until about 1 billion years ago. Life originated when our days were about 12 hours in length – 3.5 billion years ago. Plants had to arise before sea creatures at about 2.5 billion years ago with the rise of the photosynthetic cell. Multicellular life arose 1.2 billion years ago when the day was about 23 hours long.
Gen 1:20 ; Sea creatures are made first and then birds are created. Note to self – find out about the fossil record and how birds came into being. WAIT. Birds are very similar to dinosaurs according to the fossil record they are our current dinosaurs, right? I think this is talking about dinosaurs. So, sea creatures and “birds” were about 246 to 66 million years ago.
Gen 1:24 ; This is when God makes mammals, but in a completely SEPARATE paragraph, which so far Genesis has used paragraphs to designate a shift in TIME, it mentions the creation of man. This has me wondering how long from the start of the sixth day did God create man? Human ancestors started to arise about 4 million years ago when our day was about 24 hour long.
Gen 2:4 ; This account starts out as a little bit confusing to me. It is almost as if the person who wrote chapter one was like – wait, I skipped some stuff. Let me go back and explain a bit more in depth!!! It rewinds and starts talking about the third day again, where God made land and sea + veggies and now he is adding in that streams were part of this whole action sequence of creation. Now it sounds like the writer is saying that God created man on the third day separately from the sixth day.
Gen 2:6 ; Okay, so maybe this is making more sense than I thought. Maybe here is it saying that God created his original man (Adam and Eve) on the third day, separate from the rest of “man-kind” maybe these were our early apes or homo sapiens?
Gen 2:7 ; According to this account, human beings are god-breathed. We carry his spark of life in our lungs. Yet, we come from the dust. We are lowly just as the dirt beneath our feet is lowly, yet God saw us as worthy enough to consume his breath and be given life.
Gen 2:8 ; Question: Why is it referred to as the East? The East of Pangea at this time? How come we never understand what the tree of LIFE is all about. We only hear about the tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. God has already displayed that he knows the difference between good and evil because he denotes at the end of each day – it was good. And on the end of the sixth day, the day that he makes man – it was very good. This also implies that evil already exists. For one to know of something, it means it must have had a previous origin or existence. This is a reference to Satan whose original sin was PRIDE.
Gen 2:10 ; Here we are just talking about the 4 rivers – Pishon, Gihon, Tigris, and Euphrates. These four rivers would be the basis of all life on land. These rivers were the heads of our civilizations. All of our ancient cultures were birthed near rivers.
Gen 2:15 ; “The Lord God took the man and PUT him in the Garden of Eden” HOLD UP! This means that man did not ORIGINATE in the garden. He was born somewhere else and then placed in the garden after a certain time. God also gives the first man instructions not to eat from the tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil because if he does he will die. God does not specify what TYPE of death this could be. To those of us who have had our brushes with evil (read: abuse, greed, pride…etc), we know that there are many deaths one human being can suffer other than our final death where our heart stops beating and our brain ceases to send out electrical pulses.
Gen 2: 18 -19 ; Okay here we get to where Adam needs a “suitable helper”. To accomplish this, God makes animals – animals are great helpers! I mean, look at all of our wonderful service animals. They are so full of love and wonder. Precious babes. But, Adam isn’t HAPPY with just animals. He has gone through and named all of them at this point and doesn’t see any of them as a suitable helper/companion.
Gen 2: 23 ; Finally, we have WOMAN appearing here. She is created from the rib of Adam. Pulled from his side = an equal, a companion, and close to his vital organs making her a vital protector of life. Later on, it talks about how they were naked and felt no shame. How a man leaves his mother and father to be united with his wife to be one flesh. Now, Adam and Eve had no idea about husband and wife – they just existed. So this must be some authors’ note inserting himself into the story.
To me, it seems that God’s “days” don’t match up with our current days because the “world” at that time didn’t look like the world we have today. We can’t classify a day as 24 hour according to what it says here because those types of days didn’t exist yet. As a human being, I have to accept that the person who wrote the book of Genesis – many people say Moses wrote Genesis – would have to write this in the most human terms possible to make it make sense to those who would read it. I almost must accept that the Lord my God understands the limitations of the human mind and would want to make himself understood to those who seek him. This means that he would want his scribe to use words that are comprehensible to the human being.
For the past year, I have struggled intensely with my depression and anxiety. I have long desired to have a more personal relationship with my God. I find that at the root of many of my troubles is my difficulty in relying on Him due to the number of questions that I have about Him. This is not to say that I doubt His existence. This is more to say that I wonder a lot. I mean A LOT.
I know and have to believe that there are other people out there who believe the same things and who have the same questions that I have. In order to address my issues and struggles with faith, I have decided that over the summer I have off from teaching middle school, apart from my professional development and planning for next year’s students, I will take time out of every day to invest in this journey. I am going to read and record my experiences and questions as well as any research that I do to help answer my questions.
Since I was a little girl, I wondered what love felt like. When I finally had it in my hands and in my heart, I was bursting with joy and excitement. But learning what loss feels like...I never thought about how important that would be too. Now that I know what loss feels like, I cherish everything. Nothing can be so bittersweet and beautiful as that.
You can look at the face of an abuser, manipulator and liar and call it beautiful. You can look at the face of the abused and call them broken, crazy, and lost. The world's gone senseless and we are holding onto it's coattails.
The house is doused in gasoline;
you're holding a match,
looking at me.
"Run, run and save yourself."
Our house is doused in gasoline
and I can't seem to move my feet.
I don't want you to hurt anymore. You can do it. You'll get past it.
Thank you for your beautiful words. <3 I am doing much better than I ever dreamed. People that love me are constantly reminding me of life's beauty. I am blessed by your encouragement. :)
