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The surprising lack of theological data in the creation accounts of Genesis. As I’ve mentioned, I approach the text of scripture without the precommitment of finding modern systematic theology in each page. So the ideas that we often apply to the first chapters of Genesis (such as assuming that God’s speaking is, in actuality, the second person of the Trinity or that the wind breezing over the chaos waters is the empersoned Holy Spirit) won’t show up in my discussion of the text in this chapter.
I want to keep the focus on the unfolding picture of God we get through the narratives of the text. However, I would additionally argue that influence of interpreters following the lead of Origin who hope to see a higher or spiritual sense in the text (or, in the context of modern theology, a fuller, theological sense) has at the very least hampered our ability to read the text on its own terms.
I should clarify that by “on its own terms” I mean reading within the constraints that the original authors had for the texts as they composed, compiled, and edited them. I acknowledge that, in the vein of Childs, the Bible took on the contours of the faith communities that harbored and edited those texts. However, I still advocate we should treat the Bible—especially the Old Testament—as a self-contained narrative that does its own work to wrestle with the person of Yahweh. By the time the OT reached the first century, its texts were generally established. And, while the Second Temple Jewish traditions certainly expanded on the meanings that could be pulled from the texts, interpretive moves were largely uninterested in the original intents of the authors.
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The exalted position of humanity in the original cosmic kingdom order. I highlight the earth-bound nature of humans in the cosmic structure intentionally. It’s not just a nod to the nature of human creation—from the dust of the earth—but also that the realm for which humanity was created was specifically earth. I’m following Michael Heiser in seeing an explicit division of rulers in the different realms of the cosmos. The celestial realm has its rulers, but the earth is the territory of humanity.
There’s a correspondence that bears exploring between humanity and the celestial realm, and it will come up on the periphery of Of Deity and Dust. But even the text of the Bible itself simply assumes a celestial realm without really diving into the mechanics of it or comparing it to humanity. Rather than attempt to outline what the Bible itself doesn’t bother to explain in detail, I’ll address it only as it pertains to the narrative itself.
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The reason for the term “dirtlings” to describe humanity. In his translation of the Hebrew scriptures, Robert Alter makes the wordplay that humans are “hummus” from the earth. While I appreciate his attempt to stick with the play on language that’s present in the Hebrew, I’ve opted for something a bit more palatable to English speakers.
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The justification for seeing the original task of humanity as establishing and expanding the borders of Eden. See G. K. Beale, A New Testament Biblical Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), 67. Where I disagree with much of what Beale does with the primordial state (the creation of humanity, the conditions of God’s relationship to humanity, and the occasion and consequences of the Fall), he does get this bit right. Despite an almost painful reliance on a priori theological categories for his interpretive lens, Beale rightly sees God’s explicit command to humanity to “fill the earth” (Gen. 1:28) as implicitly inviting the expansion of the Edenic borders once humanity is established the boundaries of the garden.
Though I don’t address it fully here, I do agree with Beale’s perspective that Adam functioned along with Eve in Eden as a kind of priest who was tasked with expanding the territory of the primordial temple. Beale leans too heavily on later material in the text and reads too many implicit parallels between the later tabernacle and temple with Eden, but the literary connections are worth mentioning, even if they are only slight.
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The nature of God’s contractual promises with humanity. Careful readers might pick up my allusion to the idea of covenant in these paragraphs. I’m intentionally avoiding the language not because I don’t see a covenant structure here in Genesis 2 (I don’t), but because bringing in the language of covenant also brings in significant theological baggage along with it.
The idea of “covenant” has shaped a lot of the discourse about the Old Testament. And, while I understand how the covenants become anchors as the narrative of the Old Testament progresses, we run the risk of destroying the actual narrative when we force them over the text as a super structure. I find it difficult to embrace a perspective that superimposes a much later framework (the covenant relationship of God to his people) into the primordial eras where the occasion for the covenants isn’t evident or even necessary.
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Setting up the cosmic structure in the creation narratives ahead of the story. Admittedly, I’m summarizing the full force of the first three chapters of Genesis in this chapter to establish the cosmic order. Some of these conclusions (the nature of humanity as a divine image and earthly viceregent) would have been self-evident to original audiences, but needs a bit more explaining here.
I’m also following Daniel Block, Covenant: The Framework of God's Grand Plan of Redemption (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2021), 47–53. He frames the cosmic structure in terms of a suzerain-vassal covenant, though he admits that the text itself has only overtures of covenant language and doesn’t invite an explicit reading of covenant into the matters of Genesis 1–3, as I pointed out in the previous note.
However, Block does lay out an excellent analysis of the status of humanity with respect to God’s authority. He builds his entire interpretive model for the Old and New Testaments on the framework he outlines in Genesis 1–3, much like I do here. Though I developed the content of this chapter several years before Block published his work, I’ve been heartened that his scholarship seems to walk in lockstep with what I’ve presented here.
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The importance of understanding cosmic structure as key to the narrative thrust of the Bible. In his book Covenant, Daniel Block refers to the hierarchical arrangement as the cosmic kingdom. While Block has in view the whole of the system that God’s set up—his relationship with the earth as well as the celestial realm and all that it contains—I’m choosing instead to focus on the relationship between the levels within that hierarchy. Block certainly has a point—that the kingdom transcends God’s relationship with humanity alone. But the force of the narrative drives toward humanity as the focal point. I do recommend Block’s book as a fuller examination of the kingdom dynamic.