How did Adam and Eve go about guarding the holiness of the temple of God and the people of God? Initially, they attended to the Word of God and border
management. The priestly tasks of sacrifice and mediation would become characteristic of priestly responsibilities later after mankind fell into sin.
29God’s Word. A priest must be devoted to maintaining personal holiness as he seeks to live a life in obedience to the Word of God. Additionally, a priest is responsible for guarding the holiness of the people of God as he teaches them the Word of God.
28 Davies, A Royal Priesthood, 162.
29 Though some of the duties that are commonly associated with the latter priesthood were not incumbent on Adam in the Garden (namely sacrifice and mediation), it is still apparent that Adam was placed in the Garden as the first priest. Though not entirely apparent in the text, it may be possible to argue that Adam served God through the kinds of sacrifices akin to those attributed to the later new covenant priests and that he mediated the covenant of creation to the world. Adam’s priestly roles of sacrifice and mediation become obvious after his sin.
A priest’s personal holiness is, throughout Scripture, regarded as crucial to his ongoing success as a priest, and this was certainly true of Adam and Eve’s priesthood.
30Immediately after Adam is placed in the Garden and is instructed to “serve” and
“guard”
31the temple of God (Gen 2:15), God gives him a command: “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” (vv. 16-17). As a newly minted priest, Adam is “commanded”
32to obey, to comply with the law of God.
Persisting in obedience presented Adam with the privilege to continue enjoying the divine access to the presence of God that he had been granted. His was the opportunity to respond to God’s blessing through adoration, worship, and continued obedience.
33On the
30 In the Levitical “holiness code” (Lev 17-26), God directs Moses to speak to Aaron, his sons, and the house of Israel and call them to live lives of holiness in obedience to the Word of God. The success of a priest of Israel was contingent on his commitment to holiness and personally obeying the law of God.
The same was true of the first priest, Adam. See Mark F. Rooker, Leviticus, NAC, vol. 3A (Nashville:
Broadman & Holman, 2000), 231; Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus: A Book of Ritual and Ethics, CC (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2004), 175.
31 The priestly terms “serve” and “guard” are contextually proximate to God’s divine directive to obey his word, a pattern that is seen elsewhere in the Old Testament in relation to priests guarding the temple. Beale observes this connection:
After telling Adam to “cultivate” and “guard/keep” in Genesis 2:15, God gives him a specific
“command” in v. 16. The notion of divine “commanding” (sāwâ) or giving of “commandments”
(miswôt) not untypically follows the word “guard/keep” (šāmar) elsewhere, and in 1 Kgs 9:6, when both “serving” and “keeping” occur together, the idea of “commandments to be kept” is in view. . . . Is this a mere coincidental connection with Genesis 2:15-16? Hence, it follows naturally that after God puts Adam into the Garden for “cultivating/serving and keeping/guarding” (v. 15) that in the very next verse God would command Adam to keep a commandment: “and the Lord God
commanded the man . . .” The first “torah” was that “from any tree of the Garden you may eat freely;
but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you shall surely die” (Gen 2:16-17). (Beale, The Temple and the Church’s Mission, 68-69)
32 This is the first occurrence of the verb “commanded” (הָוָצ) in Genesis, and it is “the only place in Genesis where the narrative introduces a divine command by this formula: ‘And the LORD God commanded.’” Mathews, Genesis 1-11:26, 210. Mathews notes further, “Elsewhere in Genesis the formula, introducing direct discourse, always has a human subject (e.g., 12:20; 26:11; 28:1).” Here Adam learns that
“unrestricted freedom does not exist. Man is called upon by God to exercise restraint and self-discipline in the gratification of his appetite. This prohibition is the paradigm for the future Torah legislation.” Nahum M. Sarna, Genesis, JPS Torah Commentary (Philadelphia: JPS, 1989), 21.
33 Redford writes, “[Adam’s] continued enjoyment of the blessings there was conditioned on his adherence to God’s rules. His love for his Creator was to be demonstrated by obedience to his will.”
Douglas Redford, The Pentateuch, Standard Reference Library: Old Testament, vol. 1 (Cincinnati:
Standard, 2008), 25. Adam is blessed with the opportunity to eat freely from every tree in the Garden with the exception of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God’s abundant provision for Adam should have motivated Adam toward greater love, thankfulness, and obedience to his creator. Moreover, “The prohibition against eating the fruit of the ‘tree of knowledge’ gave Adam opportunity to worship God through loyal devotion.” Mathews, Genesis 1-11:26, 210-11.
other hand, failure to obey God’s law would compromise these blessings and his position as priest, such that he would be “cut off from the sacred land of the Garden”
34with the associated blessing of access to the divine presence (Gen 3:23-24) and the privilege of serving as guardian (Gen 3:24).
As a priest, Adam was unquestionably responsible for his personal holiness and for obeying the Word of God. A natural extension of this responsibility would be that of teaching the Word of God to the family of God. In the Garden, this would mean that, as a priest, Adam would become responsible for teaching his wife Eve after she was created.
35A husband’s duty of teaching God’s Word to his wife is clearly an expectation in the new covenant (1 Cor 14:35; Eph 5:26); the same pattern applies to the first
marriage as well.
While teaching is undeniably part of the priestly ministry of those who followed Adam’s priesthood, the question of whether or not Adam actually engaged in this priestly ministry in the Garden is somewhat uncertain. While it is true that Adam received the moral command of God in Genesis 2:16-17 and was, thus, accountable to personally obey God’s Word, it is impossible to conclude with absolute certainty that Adam communicated God’s Word to Eve. Initially Adam alone received God’s
prohibition to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Gen 2:17); Eve was not yet created. But somehow Eve was aware of God’s prohibition when the serpent set out to deceive her. Eve’s initial response to the serpent was, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die’” (Gen 3:2-3). How did
34 Beale writes, “Adam’s disobedience, as Israel’s, results in his being cut off from the sacred land of the Garden.” Beale, The Temple and the Church’s Mission, 69.
35 Teaching was also, in one sense, the responsibility of prophets throughout the Old
Testament. Prophets were responsible for representing God to his people, speaking the Word of God to the people of God (Deut 18:18; Jer 1:9; Ezek 2:7; Hos 1:2; Joel 1:1; Mic 1:1; Zeph 1:1; cf. Jonah 1:1; Amos 1:3).
Eve gain this knowledge? “Either God repeated it for her, or it was communicated to her by her husband.”
36While the scriptural evidence in Genesis for determining whether or not Adam was Eve’s priestly teacher may be inconclusive, there is reason to believe that Adam was, at the very least, responsible for communicating God’s Word to her and that he was the one who did in fact communicate God’s prohibition to her. David Schrock suggests that,
“As an archetypal Levite, it is fitting that Adam would not only guard God’s space, but he would guard his word through the ministry of teaching. In fact, the progression in Genesis 2:15-17, from priestly commission to covenantal stipulations, suggests that Adam had the responsibility of making known God’s law to all those in his family.”
37Following this logic, then, it is reasonable to conclude that Adam may very well have taught Eve concerning the will of God and that he is likely the one who communicated God’s prohibitive statement about not eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil to his wife. At the very least, Adam was, as the first priest, responsible for teaching the Word of God to his family.
Concluding that Adam was appointed as Eve’s priestly teacher does nothing to detract from Eve’s own status as a priest or her own responsibility to attend to the Word of God. Such a conclusion aligns with the rest of Scriptural revelation concerning the differing and complementary roles of men and women. Though Adam and Eve’s priestly ministries may have manifested themselves differently, both were co-responsible for the priesthood as they carried out their priestly duties in complementary ways.
3836 Redford, The Pentateuch, 25.
37 Schrock, “A Biblical-Theological Investigation,” 62.
38 Though Adam and Eve’s priestly responsibilities may have been different, they were also complementary. They were, thus, co-responsible for the office. Throughout the narrative of Scripture, God’s people are regarded as priestly people. And yet, different roles and responsibilities are given to specific individuals throughout the unfolding narrative. While Eve helps Adam in the Garden, he is nonetheless the head of his family and is the one who is primarily held responsible for mankind’s fall. Men serving as the heads of their households during the patriarchal period carried out the primary priestly role in their families. Men are entrusted with the priestly office among the Levitical priesthood in Israel. Christ, a
Border management. As the guardian of both the temple of God and the people of God, Adam was responsible for attending to border management. Negatively speaking, this meant that, as a priest, he was tasked with protecting the Garden-sanctuary from defilement and from the intrusion of evil. The Garden was established by God as a separate and holy space, which was to be protected. The Hebrew term for Garden “ןַּג”
“comes from a root meaning to ‘enclose,’ ‘fence,’ or ‘protect.’ The garden envisioned in Genesis 2:8-17 is an enclosed or protected space.”
39This holy Garden-temple was, thus, to be protected by Adam, its priest. Positively, Adam was charged with the role of expanding the borders of the Garden through reproduction, dominion, and cultivation. As the first priest, Adam was to manage the Garden, seeking to preserve its holiness along with its inhabitants while also working to cultivate the Garden, expanding its reach to the ends of the earth so that the glory of God would eventually cover the face of the earth as the waters cover the sea.
Prior to Eve’s creation, Adam alone received the priestly commission to cultivate and guard the Garden (Gen 2:15).
40As a natural outflow of Adam’s original priestly directive, he and his wife receive the priest-kingly charge from God to exercise dominion over the entire created order as his co-regents, to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth with human image-bearers through sexual reproduction, and to cultivate and
male, is the great high priest. And men in the new covenant are charged with leading their homes and their churches. This divine design does not diminish the significance of the priestly identity of women. Instead, it places the onus on the shoulders of men to lead in carrying out the priestly office.
39 Gentry and Wellum, Kingdom through Covenant, 209-10.
40 Though the details of Gen 2 are recorded in the text after those in Gen 1, the reader is not to conclude that the details of chap 2 happen chronologically after those in chap 1. See Mathews, Genesis 1- 11:26, 187-90. Whereas 1:1-2:4 details the “history/origin of the cosmos,” 2:4-24 provides the
“history/origin of Adam/mankind” and concentrated detail about the creation and design for mankind.
Hamilton, The Book of Genesis, 8.
The point here is to show that the presentation of the material in chap 2 indicates that Adam was chronologically created first (Gen 2:7), was set apart as a priest before his wife’s creation (Gen 2:15), and was given the law of God before Eve came to be (Gen 2:16-17). Only then was the woman Eve created (Gen 2:18-25). Gen 1:26-31 functions to provide the fundamental identity and purpose for all human beings; that is, both male and female, indeed all of humanity, possess the status of image bearers and are co-regents and stewards of the created order. Thus, both Adam and Eve are divine image bearers, co-rulers, and priest-kings.
steward the earth through work (Gen 1:26-31). In creating Adam and Eve, “God
determined to give to the man about to be created in his likeness the supremacy . . . over the earth itself.”
41God’s instruction for all divine image bearers to “have dominion over . . . all the earth” (Gen 1:26) meant that humanity’s priestly duties were originally
designed to extend outside the original boundaries of the Garden of Eden and ultimately to encompass the entire earth. Taking up these duties, Adam and Eve were to serve God as a royal priests or priest-kings,
42exercising dominion and spreading God’s glory over the earth, thus, extending the reach of God’s temple across the earth. Beale agrees with this idea when he writes, “As Adam and Eve were to begin to rule over and subdue the
41 Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch, Commentary on the Old Testament, vol. 1 (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1996), 40.
42 Some writers tend toward making a strong distinction among the three offices of the munus triplex. Christ’s threefold office prophet, priest, and king (munus triplex Christi) has been regarded as important to understanding Christ’s overall work in redemption throughout church history. In the early church, Eusebius Pamphilius, for example, spoke of this threefold office when he wrote,
And we have been told also that certain of the prophets themselves became, by the act of anointing, Christs in type, so that all these have reference to the true Christ, the divinely inspired and heavenly Word, who is the only high priest of all, and the only King of every creature, and the Father’s only supreme prophet of prophets. And a proof of this is that no one of those who were of old
symbolically anointed, whether priest, or kings, or prophets, possessed so great a power of inspired virtue as was exhibited by our Saviour and Lord Jesus, the true and only Christ. (Eusebius of Caesarea, “The Church History of Eusebius,” trans. Arthur Cushman McGiffert, in A Select Library of the NPNF of the Christian Church, ed. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, 2nd Series, vol. 1, Eusebius: Church History, Life of Constantine the Great, and Oration in Praise of Constantine, [New York: Christian Literature, 1890], 3.8-9:86)
During the Reformation, John Calvin contended for the munus triplex Christi when he wrote, “That faith may find in Christ a solid ground of salvation, and so rest in him, we must set out with this principle, that the office which he received from the Father consists of three parts. For he was appointed both Prophet, King, and Priest.” John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2006), 2.15.1 (1:482).
Others recognize the interconnectedness of some aspects of the office. Making a marked delineation between the offices, Richard Belcher contends that Adam’s failure to cast the serpent out of the Garden was a failure of his kingly office rather than his priestly office. Speaking specifically of Adam’s kingly office, Belcher writes that Adam “failed to exercise dominion over the serpent by not casting him out of the garden.” Belcher, Prophet, Priest, and King, 105. Taking a different approach, William Dumbrell observes a connection between the two offices and instead associates Adam’s call to dominion as the work of a “priest-king.” Expressing this sentiment, Dumbrell writes, “Before the fall, the man, the priest-king, exercised dominion over nature.” Dumbrell, The Search for Order, 25. Gentry, Wellum, and Schrock regard sonship as integral to what constitutes the image of God, an identity that is also associated with priesthood and kingship. Gentry and Wellum, Kingdom through Covenant, 192; Schrock, “Restoring the Image of God,” 31. Taken together, it, therefore, seems best to regard Adam and Eve’s priest-kingly commission to exercise dominion over the creation, to engage in sexual reproduction, and to cultivate the earth as integral to their identity both as priests and kings.