JY: Welcome to GearTalk, a podcast on biblical theology. Today, Jason and Tom go through the second half of Genesis 2. Topics include a look at the man’s job description given in this chapter. He’s called to do far more than just work as a gardener. We also focus on the creation of the helper for the man. What do we learn about marriage from this text?

TK: Welcome to GearTalk. Jason and Tom here, and we’re going to be talking about Genesis 2 for the second time. Genesis 2, verses 15 through 25 today. Jason, glad you’re here.

JD: I’m glad I’m here too. Looking forward to this.

TK: So when we got through, Genesis 2, we talked about some differences between Genesis 1 and 2. We started in verse 4. We’re not going to go back over that. I just encourage you to listen to that if you didn’t catch it. But we got through verse 14 with all the rivers and everything, and now we’re to verse 15, where we’re going to talk about the man. The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and keep it. Do you have any thoughts about that verse, Jason?

JD: Well, it’s really extremely foundational for our understanding of the role of humanity, specifically the role of the head of the household, what God calls this man. In contrast, there’s not a woman there yet—she’s going to be on the scene shortly—but what God calls this man to do and to be in relation to the whole world. So this man created outside the garden, put into this garden, and he’s called to do two things: to work it and to keep it. Now these are two verbs that show up together outside of Genesis 2 and 3 in a very restricted context. We only see them together in Leviticus and Numbers, and in Ezekiel, and in every instance it’s in relation to the role that the Levites would play either in the Tabernacle or in the temple. They were to be servants and they were to be guardians, guardians of proper worship. So this verb rendered “to keep” is actually, I believe, what we need to be thinking about when it says “keep it”—we need to be thinking about guarding it. We see this very clearly—

TK: Keep it safe and secure.

JD: Keep it safe and secure. Exactly. And we see it used—the ESV renders it that exact way in chapter 3, and I wish they would have recognized and given it consistency. But in chapter 3 at the very end we find these two words used side by side. The Lord God sent the man out from the Garden of Eden to do this: to work the ground from which he was taken. Then it says God drove out the man, and at the east of the Garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to do this: to guard the way to the Tree of Life. So these heavenly beings are standing at the gate of the garden and guarding, guarding the way to the tree of life, protecting it. And this is exactly what Adam was commissioned to do from the beginning—that God was setting up sacred space and a broader world that Adam bore a responsibility both to work and to guard. This implies that there’s going to be something to guard it from. That is, like we had already seen in the distinction between the Tree of Life and the tree pertaining to the knowledge of good and evil in verse 9. Even before there’s evil on the scene, God is anticipating its presence, and here God is anticipating the need for humanity as his king-priests. King language, remember from chapter one—humanity is created in God’s image and called to fill the earth, multiply, subdue, and have dominion. That subdue language and have dominion is royal language. So Adam is commissioned as a king, but here the language of working and guarding, providing, protecting—that’s priestly language. So Adam is like God’s image in God’s sanctuary. And he’s not only the image, he is the king-priest representing God’s rule and mediating God’s presence.

TK: This is a big shift I think for a lot of us, if our primary thought has been Adam as gardener and so we think about us working in our gardens or other people. But it doesn’t—that thought doesn’t connect us, for instance, to what you just said to chapter 3 and the coming of the serpent. But right away I start thinking of that when I hear he’s supposed to guard the garden because I know what’s coming next in the story. As a priest, he has a job to do and it makes his silence all the more stunning.

JD: The fact that he is a priest also sets the context of what humans are about in God’s world as worship.

TK: That’s really good.

JD: The priest is in the context where God is exalted over all, and his responsibility is to ensure that worship is happening rightly in God’s world. Now there’s another key feature I just want to draw attention to, and I think what I’m about to say is true. And that is that when the text says God put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and to keep it, automatically in English, we might think that it is the garden he’s supposed to work and keep—the garden, provide for the garden, protect the garden. But this would be the only place in the entire Hebrew Old Testament where garden, which is a masculine, grammatically masculine noun, would take a feminine pronoun as its referent.

TK: As it’s referent, and because normally they match—a masculine noun would get a masculine pronoun.

JD: They match. Yeah, the pronoun—that’s right. The pronoun and the noun it refers to should be the same grammatical. But in this instance the “it” is feminine in both instances. And within the context, the only clear feminine noun present actually reaches all the way back to verse 6, where it says that there was a mist going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground. Land is grammatically feminine. And the land is broader than the garden. The garden is within the land, but the land is filling the whole earth. And it suggests to me that here we’re getting one more signal of what we already read in Genesis 1:28—fill the earth, multiply, subdue it, have dominion. The vision from the beginning was that a man and a woman would come together as images of God, and that they would create a kingdom family that would then produce a kingdom community, and that this community would be ever expanding until God’s image, displaying his glory, would fill the earth like the waters cover the sea. Here we have the picture of this priest in the sanctuary of God, in God’s garden, on top of his mountain, from which are flowing the rivers of life to the four corners of the planet. And the vision is that humans would follow those rivers out, but they would do so in a way that is taking that which is still a land of waste, a land that hasn’t been cultivated yet, and they would begin to cultivate it. In the process they would be guarding it, that this Garden Paradise would be ever expanding until God’s sanctuary would not be part of the planet, but would be the whole planet and it would be filled with his image displaying his glory throughout the world. So I think that’s what this verse is hinting at. His responsibility was not garden-specific, but to be one who was expanding the garden and therefore working the land and guarding the land in which the garden was found. But in all the while, seeing that garden expanding, planting flowers, planting trees, taking control of the animals and all the while, worship—worship was the guiding thrust.

TK: I think the picture we have here of a man and his charge, first of all, it’s similar to the charge given to elders. Paul does with the Ephesian elders on the beach, saying to them, “You have a job to do. Pay careful attention to yourselves and to the flock you’ve been put in charge of.” It also reminds me of the Lord Jesus that he perfectly does this and this is why at the end of Revelation we have a place where the gates can be left wide open because he’s accomplished it and done it. Yes, and the picture of the perfect Adam who grew it, who worked it, and who also kept it, guarded it.

JD: Yes, the new heavens and new Earth is nothing less than a new Eden on a global scale without a distinction. No gradations of sacred space where there are parts that were more holy than others. As we’ll talk about at some other point, I’m sure, in Revelation 21 the city is portrayed as a cube, and there’s only one other cube in all the Bible, and that is the Holy of Holies. And the reason there is no temple in the New Jerusalem is because there’s only the temple. By its nature, even distinguished gradations of sacred space. And here in Genesis 2 you have the garden which is within Eden, which is within the broader land. And that’s not what we’re going to have. In the escalated new creation, when all things are said and done, all there will be is the garden. All there will be is the sanctuary. God’s presence will fill all. His image will be displayed perfectly through his people and God and the Lamb will reign and along with him, all those he has redeemed.

TK: So we have Adam. And we’re not just thinking of a gardener now. We are thinking of a king and a priest, but a king and a priest under a higher king. And we see that right away in verse 16. It says, “And the Lord God commanded the man, saying you may surely eat of every tree of the garden. But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat. For in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die.” He is under another king whose word rules over him, or whose word is to rule over him.

JD: That’s right. That’s right. And here we have God setting up this man with what seems to be a probation, a test. We’ve already heard about the Tree of Life and the tree of the knowledge pertaining to good and evil. But here in this verse, everything focuses in on this tree of knowledge. And it seems to me that God desired Adam and Eve to gain this knowledge. But ideally they would have gained it through obedience rather than through disobedience. What is striking, as God says, “On the day that you eat of it, you will die.” Now all that Adam has known is life. He hasn’t even experienced any sign of death. And yet, just like God can talk about evil, he can warn of death and Adam will experience it. He will learn it through experience. Sadly, he will fail this test. The language of death stands in contrast to the Tree of Life. The implication is that Adam is able to enjoy the tree of life, and as long as he is honoring God, obeying God, staying away from this other tree—that is the probationary tree, the testing tree—he would enjoy life and ultimately most—it seems to me that had he passed the test, had he obeyed, then he would have entered into a glorious future of lasting life in the presence of God. And yet he dies and it says “on the day you eat of it, you will die.” And what we have to wrestle there—ponder with me, Tom, how do you think about that language of “the day, the day that you eat of it, you will die”? Because when we read the story we find out that Adam actually didn’t physically die during the 24 hour period that he ate of the fruit.

TK: Right. And we read further and we find out actually people lived very long lives—over 900 years in Adam’s case. And so you could have a thought—nothing happened actually. But we don’t just use “day” in that way referring to what happens within the span of a 24-hour period. We use “day” to talk about—well, the day of the Lord, for instance, a whole period of time. And it would have a beginning time, but it’s not one 24-hour period. It’s going to be a very long undefined period of time. That’s just saying it. So I would say in this spot that in one sense, we’re talking about a period, a period of time, but in another sense, I shouldn’t just think of death physically. I think his body began to die physically, but spiritually—spiritual death happened on that day. It’s a disconnection. So if I’m going to say no, it didn’t happen, we have to argue based on the text, no.

JD: Yes, and—

TK: Actually, what we read and what mankind starts doing, something changed massively on that day. Even his behavior, the moment after he sins and God says, “Where are you?” he instantly accuses God of giving him the woman. And he instantly blames things on Eve, so blames God, blames Eve. You can tell something heart-wise has just disastrously changed in Adam.

JD: That’s right.

TK: So I would say we see spiritual death being played out, right there.

JD: That’s right. And on that very day, even within that 24-hour window, he is exiled from the life-giving presence of God. Separated from the presence of God. Yeah, you’re absolutely right. We see “day” used in numerous ways in Genesis 1. You can have “he called the light day and the darkness he called night.” So day is the time of light, but we also have “there was evening, there was morning, day one; evening and morning day two”—that’s that 24-hour period. But then we come to 2:4, and we see, “These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created in the day that Yahweh God made the Earth and the heavens.” This is a much broader day. So you’re absolutely right. We’re talking not as much about an extent of time, but an event in time. And on the very day that they ate of the tree, that sin entered into the world, they died and with them—with Adam as representative of all humanity, all of the rest of humanity that were bound up in him died—separated from God from conception onward they would become sinners who sin. And that sin is the very reality that separates us from God, and that even the New Testament—I’m thinking like Ephesians, chapter 2. What does it call all the children of men? “They were dead in their trespasses and sins.” And that’s where we start.

TK: And following the devil.

JD: Following the devil, who in this text—and well, in chapter 3, which we’ll get to in due course—the devil has offspring. And again, that’s a spiritual offspring and everyone is born as an offspring of the serpent. And yet God can make them born again and make them become offspring of the Messiah.

TK: I want to ask you a question at this point. John Sailhamer, I think, is the one who made a comment and obviously in this story later on the man and the woman are naked. It’s that point is made and then clothing becomes a theme in chapter 3. Adam clothes himself. Then God clothes him. And what Sailhamer said was he thinks that the nakedness is a state of innocence, but untested innocence, and Adam and Eve will be clothed with clothing fitting their actions. So if they conquer, they will be clothed like kings and priests. And if not something else will happen. Give me your thoughts about that.

JD: I actually think that is part of this text, that the nakedness is not simply a shamelessness that is part of what we’re going to see as the first marriage. But it’s also the innocence of a child. Those are the only two contexts where nakedness is celebrated. A baby that is born that needs to grow up and be clothed, and the nakedness that’s enjoyed between one man and one woman within marriage.

TK: And we’d be getting both then in this text.

JD: And within this text we get we get both, we get both of them in this text, that Adam and Eve are being portrayed as a couple that’s going to need to be clothed and they will be endowed with the clothing that is indeed in alignment with their actions and the New Testament uses the exact same language of what we are enjoying having been clothed with the righteousness of Christ, clothed with light, clothed with glory. It’s a new endowment that we, as God’s children, enjoy because of what the ultimate image bearer Christ has secured for us. So there is a movement here.

TK: Yep, yep.

JD: And that’s related to that language of probation. Had Adam passed the test, he would have been clothed with something far different than sacrificial skins.

TK: Right.

JD: And yet it sets us up for recognizing that a new Adam could come and obey where the first Adam failed, and by that secure a new level of clothing, a new level of glory.

TK: Right. That’s really beautiful. So much of this changes thoughts or even questions I’ve had about the text before. Thoughts about a king and a priest and just thinking, is he going to at this point if you didn’t know chapter 3, is he going to listen? Is he going to pass the test? How is this garden going to grow? How is God’s image going to fill the Earth? Well, he’s going to need help and that brings us to verse 18. Then the Lord God said it is not good that the man should be alone. I will make him a helper fit for him. Not good, Jason. We haven’t seen that yet, have we?

JD: No, we haven’t. It’s really a stark change from having seen in chapter one, “It was good, it was good, it was good, it was very good” in 1:31, after humanity was made. And now starting the story over again, we hear something that is not good. And what is not good is that the man, as in the male human on the planet, that he would be alone. It’s not good because God has a greater mission of filling the whole earth, and this cannot be accomplished without a partner, not only because you need a male and a female to produce new kin, but because the very mission of operating as a royal priest could not be fulfilled effectively without a partner. Adam did not have all the strengths that he needed to accomplish the tasks that God had set before him. He needed—and it’s just so beautiful—a helper fit for him. That is, someone who is perfectly compatible, perfectly suitable, who would stand along his side and complement him. Someone who would have strengths that he did not have, have wisdom that he needed.

TK: And what would you say, Jason? What would you say to somebody if they said the word helper is demeaning of women?

JD: Oh, what’s amazing is this term is used of God more than any other person in Scripture. This is a term of support, of complementing, of strength. And so it’s really a beautiful role that this woman is now playing alongside of her head. What’s really, it’s also glorious—what Paul says in First Corinthians 11:4, when he thinks of the role of the man he calls him the head, this authority figure. When he thinks about the role of the woman, he calls her his glory. She is a radiant reflector, support. Someone whose very strengths magnify his strengths. And he becomes better because of her. So his function is to lead in providing, lead in protecting—that’s that language of working and keeping. But he’s to do it alongside of his queen. In chapter one, both the man and the woman are created equally in God’s image, equal in the opportunity to relate to one another and to God, equal in responsibility to subdue and have dominion. Both of them are rulers and yet in a complementary way. And here we see the distinction between the head and his glory. And yet it’s a glory that is absolutely necessary, helping the man fulfill what God has called humanity to do.

TK: It’s really beautiful. Would you say we live post-fall and we’re going to get there at the end of—so we live after the sin of Adam and Eve. Would you say this has changed in any way? That because of sin the world has changed and marriage has changed? And therefore because people are sinners that we can’t get what God is talking about here?

JD: From the original time of commission, what has changed is that the Fall happened and sin is now infecting and affecting every man, every woman and every human marriage. But what’s also clear is that in Christ there is new power to be and do what we couldn’t be and do on our own. And this is why Jesus in Matthew 19, when talking about marriage reaches back to this very text and lays it out as the paradigm, the model, the pattern for how every husband and every wife to this day are supposed to be thinking. Or Paul in Ephesians 5, he’s going to quote this very text and say, “This is how the husband is to think about his wife and this is how the wife is to be engaging her husband and this mutual interrelationship that is perfectly complementary, distinct in roles, equal in so many facets, yet nevertheless still distinct, with the chief responsibility before God falling on the head, the husband, and yet his absolute recognition that he needs his wife to fulfill what he has been called to do.” The New Testament does not hesitate in the least to call husbands and wives to live out this type of relationship today and ultimately it’s with the power of the Spirit.

TK: We’re going to get there. Moses draws from this as well, so we’ll get there at the end of the chapter. Let’s move forward, Jason. Because this next section, I think just writing-wise is really fun because we’re expecting a helper to come, and now we’re going to get a parade of potential helpers, but none of them are the helpers. So we expect, OK, we’re going to get a helper. Who’s it going to be? And then all of a sudden, we get a bunch of, not them, not them, not them, not them. So what do you make of this little section about the animals?

JD: Yes, they’re called beasts, and throughout Scripture the beast is highly significant. I think about the book of Daniel, where the kingdoms of men are portrayed as beasts, in contrast to the Kingdom of the son of man or the son of Adam. We’re not supposed to be beastly. This language of beast of the field—that’s exactly what the serpent in chapter 1 is going to be associated with. “The serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field.” We’re not supposed to be like the serpent. The point is humans are different and the text is highlighting that there is no other creature on the planet that can stand as a complement to the man. And it doesn’t—it’s ultimately going to say this complement can’t—is not another man. It’s not Adam and Steve, it’s Adam and Eve and it’s supposed to be that the distinctions are real and the only one who will fit in this complementary role, standing as the glory of the head is this woman. So that’s what I’m understanding is going on here.

TK: I think the poem at the end where Adam says in the ESV it says “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man.” I think the—and I have it in our preacher’s guide—a note there that in the Hebrew the word “this” is really highlighted here, so whether you’re talking about animals, whether you’re talking about same-sex marriage, so a man marrying a man in—in what we would in America, at least, say that’s a legal marriage. Christians wouldn’t, but the thought here is in this verse it says “this, this time bone from my bones.” This one—like he’s pointing to a specific one, not an animal, not someone of the same sex. This one is different, and this one’s my helper. That’s—this one came from me.

JD: That’s right. That’s right.

TK: So it’s almost like that one—all the animals are like, not that one, not that one, not that one, not that one. And we could obviously go beyond that. But then you look and you say, “Yes, this one, this is what it looks like.”

JD: That’s right.

TK: All right. So Jason, real quick thought, Adam gets to name the animals. What—any thoughts about that?

JD: Well, in naming he is taking on a role of authority in the same way that in—and in doing so he is reflecting God. In naming, he’s actually carrying out his role as an imager of the living God. Think about in chapter one it was God who called the light day. It was God who called the darkness night. God is the namer, and he calls the dry land—the dry land Earth and he—he’s the one who gets to distinguish such things. But now in Genesis chapter 2, the man imaging God, reflecting, resembling, representing God, now begins to name, and in doing so clarifies his role as head of creation and then—

TK: It’s interesting. The end of 19, it says “he”, so he Yahweh Elohim, “formed the beasts, brought them to the man to see what he would call them.” That’s a real job. He’s given people—not a fake job and it says “and whatever the man called every living creature that was its name.” But you see the real authority of Adam here, yes.

JD: Yes, he is the overseer of all creation and…

TK: At God’s delight.

JD: At God’s delight. And he is influencing all creation in a substantive way. So he gives names to all the livestock and to the birds of the heavens and the beasts of the field. But then it says, “But for the man there was not found a helper for him.” So God begins to act. And it says that Yahweh Elohim caused a deep sleep to fall on the man. This Hebrew term tardemah—we see it again in Genesis 15 and it sets the stage in Genesis 15 for God—he puts Abraham to sleep and then through it God makes his covenant with Abraham. Here, this deep sleep is also preceding what I believe is a covenant that God is now going to make between the man and the woman. Marriage is a covenant. And while he slept, he took one of his ribs. God took one of the man’s ribs, closed up its place with flesh—and the rib that Yahweh God had taken from the man, he shaped it into the woman and brought her to the man. Any reflections Tom on the process of sleep, taking a rib and shaping it into this woman?

TK: Sometimes I think of—I’m looking at my bookshelf with books here and thinking about like people living, especially after the age of the apostles and how quick they would get from this passage to the Lord Jesus and the birth of the church, his bride. That you, over and over they would see in this passage a picture of Christ and the church, and the picture here that you would hear is the woman is not coming from beneath him, like down by his feet. She is not coming from his head. She’s coming right from his—the closest part of his side, like a helper fit for him. So this thought of saying—if you would say about your wife, you are nothing like me. There’s one way to say she is fit for you, but another way to say, “No. I am the closest thing to you.” I was not taken from some alien planet that men are from Mars, women are from Venus or whatever the book is. No, women are actually that—Adam’s wife was from his side. And then just extending the thought out, the church comes from Christ himself, his deep sleep really did produce the church.

JD: Hmm hmm.

TK: But the church—so the church fathers, though, that’s where they would have gone. You’d read it over and over again. They would go from marriage to Christ and the church.

JD: There is, I mean within the Pentateuch itself, we don’t have to jump to Paul in order to first see that God is portraying his relationship with his people as through the lens of marriage. He’s going to talk about Israel’s idolatry with the golden calf as an adultery, as an immoral act. That’s the language, it’s the picture and…

TK: With book of Hosea—Book of Hosea goes the same place.

JD: Yes, absolutely. So there’s plenty of Old Testament grounding for already seeing this link between what God is setting up here between this head and his glory as reflecting, imaging an even greater relationship that God himself is having with his people. You were talking about this, the closeness of the woman with the man, and it’s declared so beautifully in verse 23. God brings the woman to the man and the man said “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.” I’m just going to stop there. The woman is standing before Adam in all of her beauty, in all of her form and shape, which is different than his own, and he says “This is at last bone of my bone.” He doesn’t say “You are at last bone of my bone.” In doing so…

TK: Saying he’s not talking to her.

JD: He’s not talking to her. But there’s only one other person on the scene and it suggests to me that he is making a declaration in the presence of God about his relationship to this girl. And the language that he’s using—“bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh”—we see something similar in the book of Samuel when those of Israel come to David and say “we are your bone and flesh.” And by that they were declaring their covenantal loyalty to David in order to make him king. There, this is a covenantal vow that he is declaring over this woman and he’s identifying the closeness that she is with him. “You are my bone and flesh. You are part of me.” Or in Paul’s language in Ephesians 5 citing this very text, he says, “Husbands, love your wives as your own body.” Now, Tom, I just gotta pause and just recognize—I’m thinking for example, if we were to bite our cheek, I don’t know of anyone who has ever, because they’ve bitten their cheek, took out a chisel with a hammer and said, “Tooth, this is the last time you’re going to do that to me” and just smashed it and took it out. And yet we live in a culture where so many husbands, when they are offended by their wife or when their wife does something that is uncomfortable to them, disapproving to them, they cut them off and say, “OK, we’re done. No more.” That is not the portrait here. In this chapter, the husband, the man is elevated as a provider and as a protector, and now he is elevated as one who is going to serve his spouse as he will serve himself. This—there is nothing abusive in the biblical portrait of headship. There is nothing passive in this biblical portrait of headship. What you have is a highly intentional leader who is here to serve, here to love, here to cherish, and that’s the exact language that Paul uses in Ephesians 5. When the man sees this girl just as he named the animals, now he declares in his headship over her, her title. She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man. Now it’s beautiful. We see this in English. But there’s a word play in Hebrew. The man here being taken out of man—it’s ish and woman is isha, isha. You can almost feel the wonder that he is expressing here. In the same way that we have man and when you see this girl, his declaration is “whoa, man”—this is awesome. Here she is. She is mine. I am hers. And before the living God, he is declaring his commitment to her, a covenantal commitment. We even see this covenantal commitment used in the very next line where Moses just comes in and says “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast or cleave to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” This language of leaving and cleaving elsewhere is also covenantal language, so we have the image of the deep sleep that introduces covenant. We have the bone and flesh that is covenantal language, and now we get leaving and cleaving. That cleaving language is this deep covenantal commitment that makes up what marriage is.

TK: You’re saying these—this is your people. If you if you identified primarily as, “Hey, this is my family, my mom, my dad, me, my brothers, sisters.” Then you get married and say, “No. This is your people.”

JD: The primary level of commitment has to shift from parents to your new spouse, and it’s led by the man in this text.

TK: Jason, what do you think about Moses—you already just said it—Moses not been jumping in and teaching, if you want to say it, but he does in this verse. He makes a point and he’s—we’ve said it in previous podcasts, but his first audience is living on the other side of Genesis 3. They’re in the wilderness, but he’s teaching them about marriage from this Genesis 2 spot. Why does he do it right here? What’s his point?

JD: Well, yes, I mean, yeah, we have to think about the fact that the first man probably didn’t have a belly button, meaning he didn’t have a parent other than God himself. Adam, the very son of God.

TK: Yeah. So he’s not leaving his mom.

JD: He’s not leaving his father and mother, but right here, we already see evidence that what’s going on here in the garden is not just a story of what was. It’s a story of what should be. And Moses is applying the declaration of verse 23, “this at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. I will love her, God, as my own body.” He is taking that application and showing this is one of the implications of that people. That you need to as a husband—you’re not an abuser. You’re not passive—you are intentional and your highest level earthly commitment in relationship with other humans is to your spouse.

TK: Not your job, not your parents.

JD: Not your job, not your parents. And that’s highly significant. There’s so many examples within the law—Moses’s first five books—that clarify he was over and over again during the time in the wilderness having to battle abusive heads. Passive heads. Those heads of households who were not fulfilling their responsibilities to care for those underneath their care. They were portraying themselves as the center to whom everyone was to serve, rather than at the center in order to serve all those around them. And yet that is the biblical pattern of headship: it’s a provider, it’s a protector. It’s one who loves sacrificially, and we’re seeing Moses even in the way that he jumps in here and adds a comment and applies it. We’re seeing Moses read the passage that way.

TK: Alright. So we need to wrap up. We’re right at the end here. We get one final verse and the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. Obviously something is coming up, an event of massive significance. But what do you make of this last verse before that event that just—where are we at right now?

JD: We are in a period of innocence. And we are in a period of fresh marital bliss. Even the fact that you have one flesh. There is no act that displays the one flesh relationship more than sexual intimacy. The reality is we have a head and when that head is joined with his glory, they become one flesh, just as Christ, who is the head, when he’s joined with his bride, the church, they become one body. And in this instance, we have—yes, it’s setting us up for the story and Moses as the commentator, he’s helping people think, look back and consider the shame of nakedness in so many other spheres. And yet within this context, in this context alone is there no shame. It’s also setting us up for the reality that innocence is about to be lost in the very next chapter, and it’s even going to be recognized by Adam when he recognizes his own nakedness. Like, “I shouldn’t—I need to be dressed.” He has matured in chapter 3, but sadly he’s matured through disobedience, so this verse is setting us up for what is to come.

TK: This goes back to an earlier comment about “the day you eat of it, you will die.” He’s matured in chapter three in a death-like sort of way, because no longer is he looking to God to provide for his needs. He says I need to make clothes for myself. Things have massively changed for him at that point.

JD: They have. But we’ll get to that.

TK: Alright. Alright. Well, great, Jason, great. Going through this, final comment. You’re preaching through this chapter—give me your one sentence, like main point here of what we covered verses 14 to 25? What would you tell the church? I know—I know what I would—what’s standing out to me?

JD: What’s standing out to you?

TK: That thought of the man being put in the garden to work it and to keep it. The massiveness of the job we’ve been given. But the fact that we’ve been given the strongest help possible. Like this chapter puts a weight on us, but it should also deeply encourage us.

JD: Yes, so, so much. That’s a good last word.

TK: Alright. Well, I asked you for one, and I jumped in and gave it myself.

JD: That is alright.

TK: Alright. Well, you guys have a great night. Great talking to you. Bye.

JY: Thanks for joining us for GearTalk. We’ve included a link to our preacher’s guide to the book of Genesis in our show notes. If you have any questions about biblical theology you’d like us to address on future episodes, e-mail us at [email protected]. Also check out handstotheplow.org for resources designed to help you understand the Bible and its teachings.