創世記2:7-17 Genesis 2:7-17,

After creating various plants and animals upon the earth, God finally created a human being. Today’s Bible passage teaches us how God created a human being.

Verse 7 states, “Then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.” God gathered dust from the ground and shaped it into the human body. This signifies that, just as a potter uses clay to form a vessel, God used dust from the ground as material to shape the human body. Then, God breathed the “breath of life” into the human being. Two weeks ago, I shared the account of God creating a human being in his own image. Being created in God’s image signifies that a human being was made as a being capable of understanding God’s will. Thus, God and a human being originally shared a close relationship. God’s directly breathing the breath of life into a human being also signifies this intimate relationship. Having received God’s breath of life, a human being “became a living creature.”

Afterwards, God established a garden in a place called Eden. When people create a garden at their home, they plant various trees, grasses, and flowers to make it beautiful and keep well. God too established his own garden in Eden and made it beautiful and kept well. It was a very good place for the human being to dwell. The first part of verse 9 states, “And out of the ground the LORD God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food.” It must have been filled with many trees bearing fruits and nuts that the man could eat. And to make it clear that the garden of Eden was indeed God’s garden, God caused two special trees to grow in the middle of the garden. These were “the tree of life” and the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil” mentioned in the latter part of verse 9.

What does “the tree of life” represent? Since God created all living creatures, he is the source of all life. Therefore, “the tree of life” likely signifies that God alone is the source of life, and that eternal life is attainable through right fellowship with him. What, then, does “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil” represent? In the world God created, there are both good and evil things. For instance, saving a person’s life is good, but taking a life by killing is evil. And it is God who determines this. Only God can decide what is good and what is evil. Therefore, “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil” likely signifies that God alone knows what is good and evil, and that human beings must be taught this by God through his word.

In verses 16 and 17, God said to the man, “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.” Eating from “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil” represents that the man decides for himself what is good and what is evil. It means acting independently, without heeding God’s teaching, as if becoming like God and knowing everything about good and evil. If the man did such a thing, he would lose their rightful fellowship with God and die. But that is not all. What will happen in the future if each person arbitrarily decided what is good and what is evil? Each will consider whatever each liked to be good, and with everyone’s opinions differing wildly, strife would arise. That is why God said, “You shall not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” Yet, the ancestors of human beings did not keep this command. I shall tell that story another day.