CHAPTER II

FROM THE CREATION TO THE FLOOD

THE first book of the Bible story contains a number of sections called “generations.” The first of these commences a more detailed account of the creation of man. It reads thus, “The Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul,” The account is interesting and import­ant. It tells what man is. So long as he breathes the breath of life he lives; if that process is stopped, he dies. No mention is made as to how long man was to live; later events decided that.

The man, Adam, was placed in a garden some­where in the country known as Mesopotamia, through which the rivers Euphrates and Tigris (the latter is called Hiddekel in the Bible) flow. In that garden was all that man needed; trees, plants, and flowers, provided food and beauty, pleasant to see, to taste, and to smell; there were no weeds, no thorns, no thistles. But (and there are often “buts” in life), Adam was told that there was one thing he must not do; he was not to touch a tree which was called “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” Concerning that God said “In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.”

There was another special tree in the garden, the tree of life, a tree which had the property of giving life to those who partook of it.

In the garden Adam was alone; the birds and the beasts were good to look at, but they were not companions for him. It was not good for Adam to be alone, so one night God caused him to sleep very soundly, and whilst he was asleep God took one of his ribs and fashioned it into a woman. She was the companion he needed, one who could be a help­meet, for him. She was a joy to Adam and he named her Issha, which means taken out of man, for the man himself was called Ish as well as Adam. So the days passed pleasantly and happily, work was light and the garden beautiful.

The first sin

Owing however to one of the creatures in the garden a change took place. Among the animals was a serpent, an observant creature, who approached the woman and asked “Hath God said, Ye shall not eat of any tree of the garden?” The woman replied that they might eat of all except of the tree of know­ledge of good and evil; of which God had said, “Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.” She was not quite correct in this. “Lest ye die” implies a danger, not a certainty, whereas God had said “Thou shalt surely die.” Then the serpent went further. “Ye shall not surely die,” he said, and suggested that it was jealousy on God’s part that had caused Him to give such a command, “for God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as God, knowing good and evil.” It was the first lie in the history of the human race, and one which people still continue to believe, telling their fellows “ye shall not surely die,” for you have immortal souls and cannot die. It is strange that people will not believe God, but insist on believing the serpent’s lie.

The words of the serpent appealed to the woman. She listened, she looked, and she ate, for she desired to be wise. The taste was good, so she gave to her husband, and he also ate. They found the serpent’s words to be true in one respect; they knew some­thing they had not realised before, they knew they were naked, and they were ashamed. Sin is like that, it makes those who are guilty ashamed until the sin becomes a habit, then shame is dulled. Adam and his wife did the best they could for themselves, they made clothes from fig leaves, and hid in the garden.

As the day drew to a close they heard the voice of God speaking to them. Adam tried to explain why he was hiding, without telling what had hap­pened. “I was afraid,” he said, “because I was naked, and I hid myself.” “Who told thee that thou wast naked?” came the reply, “Hast thou eaten of the tree whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat?” Then all the sorry story came out. Adam blamed his wife, and his wife blamed the serpent, but the simple fact was that both had disobeyed God’s command. There were three parties to the sin and three separate sentences were passed upon them. The serpent was placed under a curse and condemned to go upon its belly. It is not said what its means of locomotion were before, whatever it was its progress in the future was to be sinuous, a word strikingly suggestive of sin. The woman was told that her sorrow and conception should be multiplied, and that she should be under the dominion of her husband. The multiplication was an indica­tion of what was to follow. Sin had changed the whole outlook. The people who were to inhabit the earth when the whole creation would be for God’s pleasure, had now to be a selection from the human race. Multitudes would be quite unsuitable, so there must be a multiplication of seed in order that the chosen ones should be sufficient for the purpose in view.

Death, the punishment

As for the man, the sentence was explicit. The ground was cursed, and thereafter brought forth thorns and thistles, which caused toil and “the sweat of the face” until the penalty threatened should be received, “dust thou art and unto dust shalt thou return.” There is no mistaking the character of the penalty, it was death, and “the dead know not anything.” Thus, as an apostle afterwards said, “Through one man sin entered into the world and death through sin.”

The picture is not all dark. While God is just, He is also merciful and gracious, and He caused a ray of hope to shine through the gloom. Speaking to the serpent He said, “I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.” It was a strange saying, an enigma, and probably its meaning was not very clear to Adam and his wife. Yet it suggested hope, a hope of the defeat of the seed of that which had led to sin, through a wound to the seed of the woman. As the story develops more will be heard of this hope.

Meanwhile other things should be noted. First of all Adam gave a new name to his wife; he called her Eve, because she was to be the mother of all living (Eve means “living”). The clothes of fig-leaves were superseded by clothes of skins. To pro­vide these, animals had to be slain and blood shed. This too is a matter that will recur as the story advances, and will be found to be of profound importance. Sin made sacrifice necessary.

The chapter that records man’s failure is com­pleted by the record of an important, and highly significant, event. Man had become like God in one respect, he had learned to know good and evil. But in another respect he was not like God, for he had not learned how to know the good and reject the evil as the wonderful beings called angels had done. God did not intend that a race of immortal sinners should live on the earth, 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.” Thus separated from the tree, the man and the woman had to face the future, to live a life of sorrow and toil, until the dying process triumphed, and they returned to the ground from which they had been taken.

It was a sad beginning to what might have been a great story. Everything seemed to have gone wrong. But when God is at work there can be no such thing as failure. As the God-Spell is developed in future chapters it will be seen how human failure and man’s mortality will give place to success and immortality, and how man may attain to life and incorruptibility through the “seed of the woman.”

When Adam and Eve left the garden of Eden to face their new life it must have been with sadness and shame. They and the earth had been changed, and the thorns and thistles which grew were sug­gestive of the change that had taken place in them­selves. There too weeds sprang up, the lusts that caused temptation. As James wrote long afterward they “were drawn away by their own lust and enticed.” No outside tempter was necessary now; temptation came from within.

Cain and Abel

In due time two sons were born to them, Cain and Abel. It seemed to Eve as if the prediction about the “seed” was to be accomplished and when the first of her sons was born she said, “I have gotten a man from the Lord.” She was quite wrong; the first child of a guilty pair was not the seed of the promise.

The years passed by, and the boys grew up; the elder tilled the ground, the younger tended the flocks. Sacrifice was already a way by which God was worshipped, and the two brought their offer­ings before the Lord. Cain brought the fruit of the ground, Abel the firstlings of his flock. Even at this early stage God must have indicated that the way of approach to Him involved the shedding of blood, for He rejected the offering of Cain, and Cain was angry. He could not show his anger towards God, so he vented it on his brother. He went with him into the field and killed him. Rage and jealousy caused the first murder. As Cain looked upon his brother, whose blood welled forth and stained the earth, he heard a voice saying, “Where is Abel, thy brother?”

“I know not; am I my brother’s keeper?” replied Cain.

“What hast thou done?” was the answer, “the voice of thy brother’s blood crieth unto Me from the ground.”

Remorse was useless then, and his doom was pro­nounced. The tillage of the earth was not to be for him; he was to be a fugitive and a wanderer, and a mark was set upon him to protect him from ven­geance. He left his home and journeyed eastward to a country called the land of Nod, or “wandering,” where his descendants grew into a people separate from the rest of the sons of Adam.

Cain’s family

The descendants of Cain were, from the human point of view, a go-ahead people. They followed the pursuits of cattle raising, cultivated musical arts, and learned the use of metals. But they were not the kind of people that God desired for His purposes, for though skilful and gifted, they had no desire to serve Him. The only other thing that is known about them is the Song of Lamech, who had killed a man. The song ran:

“Adah and Zillah, hear my voice;
Ye wives of Lamech, hearken unto my speech:
For I have slain a man for wounding me,
And a young man for bruising me;
If Cain shall be avenged sevenfold,
Truly Lamech seventy and sevenfold.”

There is nothing noble about this song; it speaks of blood-shedding and vengeance. After the allusion to Lamech the descendants of Cain do not appear again in the Bible story.

Abel being dead, and Cain rejected, the record turns to a new line of the sons of Adam, that of Seth. Centuries passed away, and nothing is known of what happened. The names of the fathers and sons in the direct line of Seth are given, and that is nearly all. Only two matters stand, out in the whole period. Enoch “walked with God; and he was not, for God took him.” He was “translated that he should not see death,” as a New Testament writer has recorded. His son was Methuselah who had the longest recorded life of any of the ante­diluvians, and died in the year of the flood. The whole period is like a great cloud in which little specks of light shine through to show that history was being made, but what that history was we do not know.

When the story is resumed a dreadful picture is presented. Men and women gradually forgot the past, and cared nothing for God; they only thought how they might please themselves. The “sons of God” married the “daughters of men” instead of taking women of their own class. Mighty men, bullies and tyrants, arose who sought their own glory and advantage. They were ambitious, and through their actions the earth was filled with wickedness and violence. After enduring this for a long time God determined to give men a terrible lesson.

Only Noah saved

Among the people there was one family that kept the true religion, and tried to serve God amid the corruptions of the times. It consisted of eight persons-Noah and his three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, and their four wives. Like Enoch before him Noah “walked with God,” and God saved him from the calamity that came upon the world.

In order that he and his family might be saved, and animal life preserved in the earth, Noah was told to make an ark. It was to be about 525 feet long, 90 wide, and 50 high. In it he was to take the various kinds of beasts and birds by pairs or by sevens. It must have taken a long time to construct such a vessel, and during the whole of the period Noah was a preacher of righteousness, preaching to an unheeding world of the judgment to come. No one regarded him; the people probably looked upon him as a crank, and said that such things as he foretold never had happened and never would.

At last the time for the judgment arrived. Noah and his sons had finished the ark, had gathered in the animals as God had enjoined, and entered into the ark themselves. “And the Lord shut him in.” The people who had jeered at him looked on and won­dered. Then the rain began to fall as he had fore­told, earth movements took place, for “the fountains of the great deep were broken up.” Fear seized the hearts of those outside, but it was too late. The rain continued and the waters rose, until even the high hills were covered and there was no place to which the people might go to escape the flood.

It was the end of an era, and “the world that then was being overflowed with water perished.” Long afterwards Jesus said, “And as were the days of Noah so shall be the coming of the Son of man.”

When the world of the ungodly had perished the rain ceased and the waters gradually subsided. Inside the ark they could tell that things had changed; there was no motion, so Noah opened the “window” of the ark to see what had happened. There was nothing to be seen but a watery waste. He let out a raven and it did not return; it found its freedom and kept it. Then Noah sent out a dove, but the dove came back, the conditions outside were not suitable for it. A week afterwards he sent out the dove again, and this time it came back with an olive leaf in its beak. The ground was dry, and Noah knew that at last he could leave the ark and renew the life he had been living before the flood, though he did not leave it until he was told by God that he might do so.

It was a new world that he gazed upon. The old evil days were gone; the violence of the past was ended. What would the future bring forth?