Read Genesis 2:4-3:24 at Bible Gateway.
the teaching tools of scripture
Hebrew paragraph divisions
Gen 2:4-3:15 {s} Disobedience to YHVH’s command is sin
Gen 3:16 {s} Consequences for the woman (painful toil)
Gen 3:17-21 {p} Consequences for the man (painful toil)
Gen 3:22-24 {s} Exile from YHVH’s presence (Eden) is the consequence of sin
The difference between Gen 1 and Gen 2
Beware of deviations from the word of God
Strong themes of the parashah
Gen 2:4-3:21 {s+s+p} Disobedience to YHVH = sin, introducing painful toil, and death
Gen 2:4-3:21 strong theme: curse or consequences
Chiastic structure(s)
Structure 1:
1A) Gen 2:4-3:13 Disobedience to God’s command is sin;
1B) Gen 3:14 Consequences for the serpent;
CENTRAL AXIS) Gen 3:15 {s} The promise of the Messiah;
2B) Gen 3:16-21 {s+p} Consequences for the woman and the man;
2A) Gen 3:22-24 {s} Exile from God’s presence is the consequence of sin.
Structure 2:
1A) Gen 2:4-8 YHVH Elohiym made man and established him in the garden of Eden and in His presence;
1B) Gen 2:9-14 Three lifes: breath of life, tree of life, river of life;
1C) Gen 2:15-17 The command of YHVH Elohiym given;
1D) Gen 2:18-24 Woman, the helper of man;
CENTRAL AXIS) Gen 2:25 “And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed;”
2D) Gen 3:1-5 Woman, the downfall of man;
2C) Gen 3:6-13 The command of YHVH Elohiym broken;
2B) Gen 3:14-21 {s+s+p} Three consequences: the serpent, the woman, the man;
2A) Gen 3:22-24 {s} YHVH Elohiym exiled man from the garden of Eden and from His presence.
Structure 3:
1A) Gen 2:4-15 YHVH Elohiym made man and established him in the garden of Eden and in His presence;
1B) Gen 2:16-25 Commandment + Adam named the creation + his wife + they were naked:
1) Gen 2:16-17 YHVH Elohiym’s commandment concerning the tree of the knowledge of good and evil;
2) Gen 2:18-23 Adam named the creation;
3) Gen 2:21-24 Adam’s wife;
4) Gen 2:25 The man and his wife were naked and were not ashamed;
CENTRAL AXIS) Gen 3:1-14 Adam did not walk with God due to sin coming from doubt, disbelief;
2B) Gen 3:15-21 {s+p} Consequence + Adam named his wife + Eve the mother of all living + they were clothed:
1) Gen 3:15-19 YHVH Elohiym’s consequences because of the disobedience to His commandment;
2) Gen 3:20a Adam named his wife Eve;
3) Gen 3:20b Because she was the mother of all living;
4) Gen 3:21 {p} For Adam and his wife YHVH Elohiym made tunics of skin, and clothed them;
2A) Gen 3:22-24 {s} YHVH Elohiym exiled man from the garden of Eden and from His presence.
The chiastic structures of scripture and scripture’s true boundaries
Theme of the parashah
Sin brings the curse of exile, painful toil, and death
Finding Messiah in Torah
Messiah leaps off the page: He is the Seed of the Woman promised in Gen 3:15, who crushes Satan’s head and restores mankind to the perfection, communion with God, and rest we experienced in the Garden before the Fall of Man. He erases the effect of sin on His perfect Creation!
“And I will put enmity between you and the woman,
And between your seed and her Seed;
He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel.”
Interestingly enough, the ancestors of the Greeks, at least, remembered this promise after they had dispersed from the Tower of Babel and settled in the Balkan peninsula. The hero legend of Achilles, portrayed as the savior of the Greeks in The Iliad of Homer, grew around this promise, relating that he was invincible and could only be wounded in his heel.
For further reading
Gen 2:17 – “You shall surely die”
When Did Adam and Eve Rebel?
Athena and Eve by Robert Bowie Johnson
The worship of the serpent traced throughout the world by Rev. John Bathurst Deane
Genesis in Greek Art by Robert Bowie Johnson
The Principle of the Seed by Brad Scott
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