Demon at the Door

Chapters 1-11 of Genesis, recounting events from the creation of the cosmos to the Tower of Babel, are frequently referred to as “primeval history,” but that term is a bit of a misnomer because it has nothing to do with “history” in our understanding of the word. Only when we arrive at the story of Abraham in Genesis 12 does the narrative appear to take place in what we would call “recorded history.” A better term for it would be “primeval mythology” because it attempts to explain how the world came to be in its present form.

Curiously, there are very few references to any of the characters or events in Gen 1-11 in the rest of the OT. For example, you might find a couple of mentions of Noah outside of Genesis, compared to dozens of references to Moses and the events of the Exodus outside of the Pentateuch. But the situation changes in the NT as there are frequent references to Adam, Noah, and Cain and Abel because the early Christians drew from the primeval history theological points about sin, covenant, and the shedding of innocent blood.

Just as we saw with early Christian interpretations of the events in the Garden of Eden as “the Fall,” NT references to the story of Cain and Abel read more into the story than is actually found in the text. For example, Heb 11:4a explains why YHWH looked with favor on Abel’s offering: “By faith Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain’s.” And 1 John 3:12b clarifies Cain’s motive: “And why did [Cain] murder him? Because his own deeds were evil and his brother’s righteous.”

“Cain and Abel” by Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld (1794-1872)

But the Genesis text doesn’t explain at all why Abel’s sacrifice was acceptable and Cain’s was not. According to Gen 4, Cain was a farmer and Abel a shepherd. Cain made an offering to YHWH from his crop and Abel from the firstborn of his flock. “And YHWH had regard for Abel and his offering, but for Cain and his offering he had no regard” (4:4b-5a, NRSV). No explanation is given. Maybe none is possible. Why do I prefer vanilla ice cream over chocolate? It just is. God has ultimate freedom to do what God wants: "I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy" (Ex 33:19b).

Understandably, Cain was somewhat put out by this and YHWH noticed. What follows has been called “the most difficult verse in Genesis” due to translation difficulties:

YHWH said to Cain, “Why are you angry, and why has your face fallen? If you do well, will you not be lifted? And if you do not do well, sin is a demon [or, is lurking] at the door; its desire is for you, but you can master it.” (4:6-7)

Even if the exact translation and meaning is uncertain, the author is clearly assigning Cain responsibility for what happens next. If he makes the right choice, his face – currently fallen – will be lifted up once again. But if he makes the wrong choice, well… Cain is reminded that although sin desires him, he must overcome it. The words here are a deliberate echo of YHWH God's words to the woman in Gen 3:16c: “Your desire shall be for your man but he will master you.”

This is not the only callback to the Eden story. After Cain’s crime, YHWH metes out the punishment. Whereas YHWH cursed the ground after Adam’s sin, here he curses Cain “from the ground.” If the ground would yield thorns and thistles for Adam, for Cain the farmer, it will yield nothing at all. He has no choice but to become a restless wanderer on earth. A restless wanderer who, we will learn in 4:17, builds the first city on earth.

Indeed, the basic plot of Gen 3 and 4 are the same: a crime is committed, YHWH questions the perpetrator(s), punishment is pronounced, the punishment is mitigated, and expulsion is the final result. We have one example of a crime against God and another of a crime against one’s brother. These two categories sum up the categories of individual sin. (There’s still the category of communal sin which we’ll see in Gen 11:1-9.)

What I find interesting is that the motivations leading to the crimes in both cases are understandable because they are so common. In Gen 3:6, the woman looked at the tree, saw that its fruit was “good to eat and pleasant to look at.” This is a completely natural reaction of the senses of taste and sight to the fruit of the trees in the garden. YHWH God made them to look and taste good. She also found the fruit “to be desired to make one wise.” The verb translated “to make wise” could also be translated “to cause success,” “to make prosperous,” or “to bring understanding.” Who doesn’t want to have success in life? Who doesn’t want to prosper?

If you recall that the fruit is to be understood symbolically and not literally, the woman is being tempted by something that is worthy in and of itself – pleasing to the senses and/or capable of making one wise or successful. It is only wrong to eat of the fruit because it has been forbidden. Now we see the genius of the author because this temptation is not something that only happened in the primeval past, but something that continues to happen today. We are constantly tempted to indulge the senses or take a shortcut to success. Whole industries have been built around satisfying those primal desires. We can understand how Eve was tempted because we’re tempted in the same ways.

We can also understand how Cain felt. Anyone who has ever experienced envy over a favored sibling or has been passed over for a promotion or jilted by a lover can understand how Cain felt when YHWH rejected his sacrifice and accepted Abel’s. The difference between us and Cain is that we don’t take it to the extreme that he did; we master the demon at the door. And that’s another thing the author is telling us. Desires and feelings are purely natural reactions, and we have little control over them, but how we act on those desires and feelings is completely under our control.

The Great Awakening

Last week, Pope Francis announced that Fr. Robert Barron would be appointed auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. Fr. Barron, Catholic evangelist and founder of the Word on Fire website, uses modern social media, blogs and videos to promote the gospel. I thought I would check out some scripture commentaries of this “modern-day Fulton Sheen,” and since I’ve been commenting lately on Genesis 2-3, I chose his homily on the first reading for the First Sunday of Lent in Year A (Gen 2:7-9; 3:1-7).


Fr. Robert Barron [courtesy Wikimedia Commons]

Fr. Barron starts off making some very positive comments about our physicality: “It is of singular importance to realize that sin is not a function of matter, not the consequence of our embodied nature. God exults in our physicality, and so should we.” He rightfully summarizes that intellectual and sensual pleasures are not inherently sinful.

After this promising start, Fr. Barron lays out a traditional understanding of the tree of knowledge of good and evil:

The tree in question is identified as the tree of “the knowledge of good and evil,” which is to say, a form of knowing that is the unique prerogative of God. Since God is himself the unconditioned good, he alone is the criterion of what is morally right and wrong. According to the semeiotics of this story, therefore, the eating of the fruit of the forbidden tree is the act of arrogating to oneself what belongs in a privileged way to God. It is to make of the human will itself the criterion of good and evil, and from this subtle move, on the Biblical reading, misery has followed as surely as night follows the day.

This traditional interpretation – which Fr. Barron is merely relating – understands “the knowledge of good and evil” as divine knowledge that is proper only to God. To acquire such divine knowledge, therefore, is to attempt to make one’s self like God. This understanding further confines “the knowledge of good and evil” to the moral sphere; humans will now decide for themselves what is morally right and wrong.

There are problems with the moral interpretation. For one, why would God have denied them an understanding of right and wrong? Without an understanding of right and wrong, Adam and Eve were morally ignorant before they ate from the tree. How then could God hold them at fault for disobeying his command when they would not have known the difference between right and wrong?

The moral interpretation also doesn’t fit other uses of the term in the rest of the Bible. For example, Deut 1:39, referring to the generation that will live to enter the promised land, says: “And your children, who as yet do not know good from evil – they shall enter there.” According the parallel passage in Num 14:29f, the children who “do not know good from evil” are those under 20 years of age. Being able to discern the good from bad requires wisdom that only comes with age and experience. Once acquired, it makes a person responsible for his or her own decisions. That person is then counted as an adult.

At the other end of the spectrum is 2 Sam 19:36. In this passage, Barzillai explains to King David why he cannot go with him to live in Jerusalem: “I am now eighty years old. Can I distinguish between good and evil? Can your servant taste what he eats and drinks, or still hear the voices of men and women singers?” Barzillai is obviously a mature adult and has experienced life, but he no longer experiences life to its fullness. His senses of taste and hearing are diminished so he lacks the capacity to discern between good and bad food, wine or song. Distinguishing between good and bad does not only mean making moral judgments.

Other ancient texts offer parallels. In the Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh, Enkidu was naked and hairy and lived in the wild with the beasts. Trappers, upset that Enkidu was ruining their livelihood by letting the animals escape, hire a temple prostitute to tame him. Shamhat presents herself to Enkidu and they make love for six days and seven nights. Satisfied at last, Enkidu finds that the wild beasts now run away from him. Returning to Shamhat, she explains, “You are wise, Enkidu, and now you have become like a god.” She clothes him, introduces him to bread and wine, and brings him to the city of Uruk where he becomes friends with its king, Gilgamesh, and they have many adventures. There are similar themes at work in both tales. Knowledge makes a human like a god. And, once they become wise, humans can no longer live naked with wild animals, but must clothe themselves and live a civilized life.


“God Confronts Adam and Eve” by Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld (1794-1872) [Courtesy of the Digital Image Archive, Pitts Theology Library, Candler School of Theology, Emory University]

Before eating the forbidden fruit, Adam and Eve were, like children, oblivious to their nudity. But after eating the forbidden fruit, they acquired the wisdom of experience that told them that something was not right with their nakedness. Identifying a problem, they sought a solution using their newly-acquired knowledge: “and they sewed fig-leaves together and made themselves aprons” (3:7b). In a similar way, earlier in the story, God identified that it was not good for man to be alone and provided a solution by making woman as a suitable companion for man. Under the fruit’s influence, Adam and Eve begin taking the first steps towards civilization. They have become like God, recognizing a problem and seeking a solution for it.

It is important to keep in mind that Genesis 2-3 is describing a primeval event, not a historical episode. The author is trying to explain why it is that our lives on earth are full of suffering, toil and sin, ending in death. If God had intended things differently, the author reasons, then something must have happened that caused human beings to be alienated from God and suffering, toil and sin were the result. Death will claim us in the end, but in the meantime there’s no limit to what we can accomplish if we put our minds to it. We have no choice but to live and learn.

Double Tree

In the fashion world, a doublet is a man’s close-fitting jacket that was worn in Europe during the Renaissance. In biblical studies, a doublet refers to a duplicate version of a saying or narrative. The story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden is so familiar to most people that we don’t notice little inconsistencies and oddities like doublets. There are at least 3 in Genesis 2-3:

1. 2:8a (“And YHWH God planted a garden in Eden, in the east”) and 2:9 (“And YHWH God made grow from the ground all kinds of trees, pleasant to look at and good to eat, and the tree of life in the middle of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.”)
2. 2:8b (“and there he put the human whom he had formed”) and 2:15a (“And YHWH God took the human and put him in the garden of Eden, to till and watch over it.”)
3. 3:23 (“So YHWH God sent him out of the garden of Eden to till the ground from which he was taken”) and 3:24 (“And God expelled the human and he placed at the east of the garden Eden the cherubim and the flickering flaming sword, to guard the way to the tree of life.”) 

Sometimes lines are repeated for stylistic effect, as may be the case with 2:8b and 2:15a. In between these two verses lies a passage (2:10-14) describing a river passing through Eden that branches out to become four great rivers. Even the casual reader notices that these verses interrupt the narrative flow. The literary style is more enumerative than narrative. Either the author is trying to situate Eden geographically or making a theological point about how the life-giving waters of the great rivers derive from the mighty river that watered Eden. Resuming v. 8b in 15a could be the author’s way of picking up the narrative where he left off.

But the other two doublets occur back-to-back, so this is a likely indication of two different sources. In 2:9, the emphasis is on the trees of the garden, specifically the “tree of life” and the “tree of knowledge,” although mention of the tree of knowledge seems like an afterthought. The tree of life is identified as the tree “in the middle of the garden,” but after this verse it disappears from the story until it re-appears at the end (at 3:22, 24). It is the tree of knowledge that is the forbidden tree in 2:17, but by 3:3 the tree in the middle of the garden is the forbidden tree. Something odd is going on here.

The composite nature of Gen 2-3 has led biblical scholars to hypothesize that there were two primeval stories that were carefully stitched together. Narrative A (2:4b-8, 18-24) describes the creation of humanity. Narrative B (2:9a, 15-17; 3:1-13, 23) recounts the expulsion from the garden. To these core tales, the author added additional material, such as the rivers interlude (2:10-14), the penalties for disobedience (3:14-19), and the naming of Eve (3:20).

In the original form of narrative B, the tree in the middle of the garden was not named. The text only says that humans were forbidden to eat of it, yet the humans deemed it pleasant-looking and desirable for the acquisition of wisdom (3:6). The name for the tree was created by the author in the introduction (2:9, 17) based on the effect that its fruit had on the human couple once they ate it. (BTW, in Latin, the word for evil is malum and the word for apple is malus. The Bible does not say the forbidden fruit was an apple, but the similarity of names in Latin led to that connection.)



"Fall of Man" (1628-29), painting by Rubens

The “tree of life” mentioned in 2:9 is a well-known symbol in both the Bible (for example, Prov 11:30) and other cultures in the ANE. The tree of life was something that humankind struggled for but could never attain. The vv. 3:22, 24 that were tacked on to the end of narrative B comes from a parallel story explaining how YHWH had to expel humans from the garden and set a sentinel at the entrance to prevent humans from eating from the tree of life. The author is telling us that a similar event was associated with the tree of life as was with the tree of knowledge.

The “tree of the knowledge of good and evil” is a symbol that only appears in Gen 2-3. The term “good and evil” is a figure of speech called a merism that uses extreme opposites to refer to the whole (for example, saying “heaven and earth” to mean the entire cosmos). It is another way of saying “the tree of all knowledge.” It should not be understood as moral awareness, that is, learning to distinguish good from evil. “Knowledge” in the Bible refers not to the learning of facts but to knowledge gained through experience.

By linking two stories of two different trees, one of life and one of knowledge, the author is trying to express how humans are built in such a way that they crave to advance their life and also to advance their knowledge. The barrier of death prevents them from achieving the goal of living forever, but there is no real barrier to our ability to advance in knowledge or wisdom. Our ability to think and grow in knowledge separates us from the animals. In our ability to strive for all knowledge, humans have the potential “to become like God.” That is what the author is trying to tell us.