earth, it is plausible to suggest that they were to extend the geographical boundaries of the Garden until Eden extended throughout and covered the whole earth.”
43Adam and Eve’s priestly task of border management meant that they were to exercise dominion over God’s temple by extending the borders of the Garden throughout the world (Hab 2:14; cf. Num 14:21; Ps 72:19; Isa 11:9). Adam’s charge to protect the borders of the sanctuary meant that he was responsible for guarding against its
defilement. Any failure to exercise dominion would result in a priestly failure to manage
the borders of God’s temple. The unfortunate reality of Adam and Eve’s narrative is that
they would, in fact, fail in this responsibility of exercising dominion.
Eve’s priestly failure, yielding severe consequences, including their expulsion from the presence of God and the Edenic temple and the suspension of their priestly status.
The text indicates that Adam and Eve’s individual sins—and the resulting curses—had to do with their rejection of God’s command to abstain from eating the forbidden fruit (Gen 3:11-13, 17). Eve first disobeys God’s command and eats, and then Adam does the same. While Scripture certainly holds Eve culpable for falling prey to the deceptions of Satan (2 Cor 11:3; 1 Tim 2:14),
45there is another sense in which Adam—
who had been entrusted with the duty of guarding the Garden and its contents/inhabitants, who had been personally issued the moral command from God himself (Gen 2:15-17), and who was assigned the leadership role as the head of his wife (Eph 5:22; Col 3:18;
Titus 5:2; 1 Pet 3:1)—is held responsible for the actions of his wife. Indeed, even though Eve was deceived and partook of the fruit first, God seeks out and confronts Adam first rather than Eve, holding him responsible (Gen 3:9-11).
46Thus, while the text addresses Eve’s and Adam’s individual rejection of God’s moral command as sin, it also indicates that Adam’s failure to attend to his priestly responsibilities was at issue as well.
Leading up to this sad event, Adam allowed a serpent to infiltrate the Garden and deceive his wife into believing and acting upon a satanic lie. There is reason to believe that Adam permitted the serpent to venture into a place where it was not intended to be. The text describes the serpent as being a “beast of the field” (Gen 3:1),
45 Speaking of the original sin, Paul writes, “Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor” (1 Tim 2:14). “Paul saw Eve as the representative woman who broke God’s law due to Satan’s deception. In describing Adam, Paul denied that he was deceived.” Thomas D.
Lea and Hayne P. Griffin, 1, 2 Timothy, Titus, NAC, vol. 34 (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 1992), 101.
Paul “emphatically states that Adam was not deceived, which means that his accepting the fruit from Eve did not constitute submitting to deception.” Daniel C. Arichea and Howard Hatton, A Handbook on Paul’s Letters to Timothy and to Titus, UBS Handbook Series (New York: UBS, 1995), 60.
46 The text employs the singular “you” in its address to Adam, “focusing on the individual liability of Adam”apparently because Adam “bears the greater responsibility.”Mathews, Genesis 1-11:26, 240. Lange agrees that Adam was responsible for Eve: “Adam, as the household lord of the wife, [was]
answerable for her step.” Lange, Genesis-Ruth, 232. Furthermore, Scripture says that Adam broke the covenant (Hos 6:7; cf. Gen 2:1-17; 3:17) and presents Adam as the covenantal head of the human race (1 Cor 15:22); it follows that sin and its curses were passed down to the human race through Adam and not Eve (Rom 5:12-17).
not a common part of the Garden’s pet population; its intended residence was, thus, outside the Garden in “the field” and not in the inner sanctum of God’s temple.
47The serpent’s presence in the Garden would, therefore, indicate that Adam failed to exercise dominion over this particular beast of the field and that he neglected his duty to protect the Garden by keeping the beast in its designated space.
Furthermore, though the text of Genesis does not describe the serpent as being
“unclean,” the snake would later be regarded as an unclean animal (Lev 11:41-45) and would be associated with the judgment of God (Num 21:6). This serpent, being
controlled by Satan, was set against the will of God and was, in this sense, most certainly
“unclean.”
48Just as Israel’s priests were to protect the temple from unclean things entering (Num 3:6-7, 32; 18:1-7), Adam too had the duty to protect the borders of the Garden against “unclean” creatures (i.e., the Satanically-possessed serpent) who might seek entry.
49The serpent, therefore, should not have been allowed entry to God’s holy sanctuary.
The unfortunate reality is that Adam failed as a priest, which led to the fall of mankind. Adam’s failure to guard the Garden from the entrance of the serpent, connected with his failure to guard his wife from being deceived by the serpent, was a failure to
47 The text says that the serpent is a beast of “the field” (ה ֶד ָש). The term may be understood to mean an open field, countryside, or pasture land (Gen 29:2; 30:16; Exod 9:3) that is unfrequented by man (Gen 24:63, 65) and is the home of wild animals (Exod 22:30). It is used to describe the open country outside of a walled city (Judg 9:32, 42-44) and the land outside a military camp (1 Sam 4:2; 14:15). See BDB, 961. In the immediate context of Gen 3:1, this same term is used in Gen 2:5 (i.e., bush of “the field”
and plant of “the field”) to speak of the barren land that awaited God’s decision to bring about plant life. In the midst of this barren “field,” the “Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east” (Gen 2:8). The idea is that God created the Garden as a unique oasis in the middle of an otherwise barren field. Thus, when Gen 3:1 speaks of the serpent being a “beast of the field,” it is making a statement about the serpent’s residence.
The serpent resided outside the borders of the Garden of Eden in the field, and it had ventured into the Garden where it did not belong.
48 While God had declared all creatures to be “good” in the first chap of Gen, it may be the case that Satan’s possession of the serpent’s body rendered the beast “unclean.”
49 Beale makes this point when he writes, “The task of Adam in Genesis 2:15 included more than mere spadework in the dirt of a garden. It is apparent that priestly obligations in Israel’s later temple included the duty of ‘guarding’ unclean things from entering (cf. Num 3:6-7, 32, 38; 18:1-7), and this appears to be relevant for Adam, especially in view of the unclean creature lurking on the perimeter of the Garden and who then enters.” Beale, The Temple and the Church’s Mission, 69.