Lecture

We turn back now to the creation of Adam and Eve and their temptation by the devil. First, there is one problem—the problem of dating. If, as I suggested the possibility, these finds of Dr. Leakey and his son show that man was very, very old, how shall we square that with the biblical record? The point is, we must be careful to notice that the Bible does not actually give a date for Adam and Eve. The date of 4004 by Ussher, as we have said, depends upon the idea that the genealogies in Genesis 5 and 11 are complete; and we shall have to say something about that later. But the Bible gives no specific date, and so some say it really makes no difference how old Adam and Eve were and these finds, if they are human, are indeed the finds and fossil bones of the descendants of Adam and Eve. There is no real and specific contradiction of the Bible.

It does seem though that the biblical picture is in favor more of a fairly recent date of Adam and Eve rather than in the millions. And my own feeling is that we should be very cautious about accepting the alleged dates of two million for these creatures found in Africa if they really are men. I may say that when Leakey first discovered Zinjanthropus, he argued that it was about six hundred thousand years old, basing this view on the animal forms that he found associated with it. It is the dating of the adjacent rocks by the potassium-argon method that has given these large dates of two million years. This is one of the radiometric methods of dating, something like carbon fourteen or like uranium dating and scientists claim high accuracy for this dating. On the other hand, the method is new and certainly can be challenged when you’re dealing with extremely small amounts of argon that are formed by the decomposition of potassium in the rocks. And if there is any loss of the potassium, if there is any loss or entrance of argon, of course it throws the dating off.

I may say that in certain lava flows in Hawaii that have been dated by this method, the results do not check out. The lava flows that occurred only about two hundred years ago have been measured taking samples from the lava at the bottom of the sea. Although the samples that are left on the beach seem to be datable by the potassium-argon method, the same flows when they are underwater the sea floor about a mile deep, show an age of several million years when they should show an age only of two hundred years. So there are some things not fully understood about the potassium-argon dating. And I feel that here too we might well adopt a policy of watchful waiting.

Now as to the fall of Adam and Eve, it says in chapter 3 that the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. There is a question at once who the serpent was. Some take the view that the serpent was just a snake. This is kind of the naturalistic view that it was merely a fable of snake speaking. Certainly the consequences here of this serpent’s temptation are much more serious than any such childish view. Others take the view that it is not a snake at all but that it is the devil in the form of a snake. This is a possibility. We have a picture of the devil in the form of a snake in the book of Revelation. He is called the old serpent, the devil—not exactly in the form of a snake because it has seven heads but at least in a mythical form of a symbolic, mythical animal.

The view that I would espouse really is that this was indeed a snake. It seems that it was more subtle than any beast of the field. He is compared with the beasts of the field, but that certainly he was not an ordinary snake. He was a snake filled with the devil. Snakes don’t usually talk, and particularly they don’t talk in evil ways. So that this was a devil-inspired snake I think is the easiest interpretation. It is instructive to notice that the same devil tempted the second Adam in the wilderness of Judea. Whereas Adam fell in the temptation in Genesis 3, the second Adam triumphed gloriously for us and won our salvation. The devil first tempted the woman, and she gave (we must note briefly) to her husband, and he ate of it. The devil contradicted the Word of God “You shall not surely die.” Eve fell for it. And when she saw that the tree was good for food and pleasant to the eyes and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit and ate and gave also to her husband.

It says also in verse 8 that they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day. They had hidden themselves. They had indeed learned something of good and evil. And in their shame, they had covered their nakedness with the fig leaves sown together. And the King James Version translates this “they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day.” The word in Hebrew is not the cool of the day but the wind of the day, the breeze of the day ruach which is never elsewhere translated cool. And rather than take it in this totally anthropomorphic way, I’m not opposed to anthropomorphisms; there are many in the Bible. But here I think the picture is not that the Lord is walking as if He is going through the garden as He would in company with Adam hand in hand but rather, it is the voice of the Lord God going in the garden. The Hebrew word halak can certainly take that signification. They heard the voice of the Lord God going through the garden speaking on the wind that penetrated all through the garden. And Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord.

The Lord calls to Adam and says where art thou? The following dialogue is of great interest of course though we have no time to speak of it in detail. The man, of course, blamed the woman; and the poor woman has been blamed by man hundreds of times ever since of course—Cherchez la femme as the French say in their detective stories. The man said, “The woman whom Thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree and I did eat.” It always seemed to me that there’s a note of almost surprise in the answer of the Lord when He says to the woman, “What is this that thou hast done?” And the woman blamed it on the serpent. “The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.” Then comes the curse on the serpent. “Upon thy belly thou shalt go, and thou shalt eat. And thus thou shalt eat all the days of thy life.” I think it is perhaps appropriate to say that it is not necessary to hold that the serpent before this time did not go on his belly but rather the low condition of the serpent, the snake, is taken as indicative of the curse. And the sample is taken to be a sign of the curse that the Lord placed upon the serpent both the snake, but particularly upon the devil who inspired the snake. There is an interesting passage in Isaiah 65 where it says that the lamb shall lie down with the kid and so on. Nature will be changed. But it also says there that thus shall be the serpent’s meet where it seems to make it very definite that this curse is referred to and that the curse that God proceeds to give to the woman and to the man and to the ground will be removed from this world in the time of the Lord’s return. But the curse upon the serpent will not be removed.

So He turns to the woman and He says, “I will put enmity between thee and the woman” Genesis 3:15. It has been spoken of for years as the protoevangelium, the first gospel—an initial indication of the Messianic promise. Between thee and the woman (that would be between the devil-inspired snake and the woman) and between thy seed and her seed. This pair is not so clear what this is. Does this mean the descendants of snakes, or does this mean the demons who follow the devil, and her seed, the woman? In any case, the third parallel is very striking. He, that is the woman’s seed, shall bruise thy head. That is the serpent’s head. The enmity may be between seed and seed, but the conquest is the conquest of the woman’s seed conquering the devil himself. The woman’s seed shall bruise the head of the devil, and the devil shall bruise his heel. The same verbs are used, but the point of attack is different. The one is on the head of the devil—the fatal attack. And the other is on the heel of the woman’s seed which will be a stroke and a humiliation and a danger but not a fatal blow. It’s referred to, of course, in the sixteenth chapter of Romans where it says the Lord will bruise Satan under your feet shortly, referring of course to this conquest of the devil obviously by the seed of the woman fulfilled surely in Christ. I think it is correct on strict analysis to show that this is a first gospel.

Then to the woman, there is the curse of sorrow in conception. I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and they conception. My teacher, the late Dr. E. A. Speiser, University of Pennsylvania, argued that this was a hendiatris. And I think that is true. A hendiatris is a figure of speech where one thing is taught by two words. He would translate that, “I will greatly multiply thy sorrow in conception. Your conception will be with sorrow.” Not that there will be many conceptions more than otherwise, but that birth in the woman will be with pain and sorrow. And of course it is notable that in humankind, birth is much more a tragic phenomenon and a time of great burden, sorrow, pain, and even death. How many women through the years passed before modern methods of delivery have been elaborated, gave their lives in the birth of their children. So this was part of the curse on the woman. “In sorrow shalt thou bring forth children, and thy desire shall be to thy husband; and he shall rule over thee.”

And I cannot pass over this verse without saying just a little something about the declaration here that women will be dependent upon men, and men shall rule over them. This might be thought of course in the present circumstance to be an example of male chauvinism. I think we ought to understand it carefully when it says that thy desire shall be to thy husband; there is spoken of here, I believe, an emotional dependence and attachment. Women of course have their great abilities. We don’t want to put them down at all. I read some years ago a statement by a doctor that made a great impression on me that women are tougher than men. Women can stand more than men. He said they are made of spring steel and rawhide, and this is true in many ways. I say I do not believe in the equality if the sexes. We men try to keep up, but sometimes we have a hard time.

Nonetheless, although women have that extra ability, they need it for themselves and their children as well; their bodies are adapted not to feed themselves only but also the baby. They have reserves of fat that are needed for the pregnancy period sometimes in days of famine or great distress. Women are built specially, and the Lord has done this for them. Nonetheless, there is an emotional dependence. This doctor said he never saw a woman faint unless there was a man’s arms nearby to faint into. I think he had a real point there. So there is a dependency, an interdependency. It says “the husband shall rule over her.” But I think again we must realize what the word rule means. We have the idea of oriental despotism and a king that may be hard on his subjects, and sometimes Christian husbands take this text to mean that they should rule as tyrants in the home. Far be it from that, the picture of a king in the Bible is a king who rules for his subjects. God is our king, but not a harsh tyrant. When we have God as our king, He is our preserver. He is our protector. He is our guard and our helper. And these are the things that are meant when we speak of a husband ruling.

The Westminster Catechism remarks that Christ in His capacity as king rules over and defends us. And so this defending us and restraining and conquering all His and our enemies, as the catechism goes on, is surely what is meant in the Bible when it says that the man shall rule. The word would involve all the tender aspects of care and love that are commanded of the husband for the wife. And we remember the New Testament declaration that a husband should love his wife even as Christ loved the church. And if husbands loved their wives faithfully in this way, there would be no problem within the home. It would be a wonderful place. And women and men both would be far happier than any relationships that ordinary society imagines.

Well, it goes on with a curse upon Adam. He was cursed as well. He is cursed with the sorrow in his toil. The same word sorrow is used as is used for the wife. In thorns and thistles, the ground shall bring forth. The sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread till thou return unto the ground. For out of it wast thou taken. For dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return. Remember the words of Longfellow who said, “To dust thou art, to dust returnest was not spoken of the soul.” But is indeed spoken of our bodies and the curse of death was fulfilled. It says in Romans 5 that sin entered into the world and death passed upon all men for all have sinned. This is the dismal story of Genesis 3. But out of that dismal story, we have the great promise that there would come life. God Himself would bring a Savior in due time, and the Messianic promise was repeated and amplified down through the pages of Old Testament history until fulfilled at last in the coming of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, our Savior.

Now chapter 4 tells of the sin of Cain and Abel. Adam knew Eve, his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain and then his brother, Abel. These grew and Abel gave a sheep for a sacrifice, and Cain gave the product of the ground. And it says that the Lord had respect to the one and not to the other. When God rebuked Cain, I think we ought to believe that when Abel gave his sheep, he was doing it in accordance with the instructions God had given. It says in Hebrews 11 that Abel sacrificed by faith and that Cain violated those instructions. Cain evidently didn’t care. He was that kind of a man. It is no wonder that God rebuked him, and Cain responded with anger against his Maker. The Lord said unto Cain, why art thou angry? Well, we do not have time to discuss in detail, but here we have the first murder. The Lord rebuked Cain, and he has become of course a type of the anger and murder that is all about us even to this day.

In chapter 4, verse 17, there is a verse that has occasioned some comment. Cain knew his wife, and she conceived. Some ask the question, where did Cain get his wife? Rather a foolish question it would seem. It’s obvious that Adam and Eve had others in the family, had sons and daughters it says, so Cain married his sister. The phrase “Cain went to the east and knew his wife” does not mean that he went to the east and there met his wife. He had married before, and here it is simply speaking about sexual relations of course as a Hebrew expression for this to explain this. She conceived, it says, and bore Enoch. Then we have, in the last part of chapter 4, the genealogy of Cain. The genealogy of Cain tells of the early culture. Because we must say that if Adam and Eve were on the earth a long time ago and they were followed by the so-called cave men, we must insist that Adam and Eve were not brutish. Adam and Eve did not know modern mathematics, modern physics, chemistry or lots of other things. They had no gadgets. They may indeed have used very elementary tools, but they were not dumb. I think we should emphasize that fact that savages too, what we call savages, live in very primitive conditions. But that does not mean that they are not themselves quite intelligent. It is now realized that languages of peoples called very primitive are sometimes very complicated languages.

So Adam and Eve and their descendants were not ignorant and not incompetent. They did not have much culture to build upon. They did not know how to write, for instance. But they did have language, communication, skill, love, faith, and understanding of God. They had a great many things. They did not look like you and me. We do not know what they looked like. It really does not matter. Some feel that they were perhaps dark-skinned. It’s easy to explain the loss of pigment rather than to imagine that they were white-skinned and other races have gained pigment. So Adam and Eve had in them all the characteristics that you find in modern races which have separated out from the parent stock of Adam and Eve. They would have had some characteristics of the oriental races, some characteristics of the black races, some of the white races, and so on.

The Lord gave Adam and Eve another son to take the place of Abel who had been killed and of Cain who had gone astray. In chapter 5, we have the book of the generations of Adam and the genealogy of Seth. It is the characteristic plan of the book of Genesis to speak first in generalities and then to get particular and to trace the line in which the author is mostly interested. The first chapter speaks of the universe as a whole. The second chapter speaks of the garden of Eden and the creation of Adam and Eve. Here you have the story of Cain and Abel, and Cain is in the godless line; he’s lost track of. But then chapter 5 tells about the godly line of Seth. After that we have Noah, and in chapter 10, a genealogy of the nations as a whole—what we call the table of nations. Then in chapter 11, the genealogy of Abraham which takes us down to the patriarch himself.

We must say something about the genealogies of chapter 5 and 11. They are apparently very brief and compressed and selective genealogies. It is noted that there are ten names in the genealogy down to the flood and ten names in the genealogy from the flood on down to Abraham. Also both of them end with three men, and Noah begat Shem, Ham, and Japheth. You have the three men also of Genesis chapter 11 where the genealogy of Abraham is given. Terah begat Abram, Nahor, and Haran. It is probable that these genealogies were therefore just composed of the main figures that would be easily remembered. There is a certain amount of artificiality in their structure. I don’t mean that the names are artificial at all, but the selection was made to give you a genealogy that would be easily remembered. This would have been passed down by word of mouth for many years.

You might remember that the genealogy of Christ is likewise given a structure; it has fourteen generations in three units. These fourteen generations are secured by dropping a few names of the regular genealogies given in the Old Testament. Just as there are gaps in the genealogy of Christ in Matthew 1, there may well be gaps in the genealogy here. This is typical of genealogies in the Old Testament. The genealogy of Moses, for instance, shows four names between him and Levi, the son of Jacob. Whereas the genealogy of Joshua shows probably nineteen names between him and Ephraim, the grandson of Jacob. Yet they were contemporaries at both ends of these genealogies.

Obviously, the genealogy of Moses omits many names. It was not at all necessary to suppose that these genealogies were complete. Indeed, the genealogy in Genesis 11 that goes from Noah to Abraham it seems is clearly incomplete. If you take that genealogy and work through it, you can see that if the genealogy were complete, that Shem, who lived after the flood 502 years, would have outlived Abraham. This seems strange indeed. Arphaxad begat Shelah, and these patriarchs would have lived into the days of Abraham or past the days of Abraham. Yet the picture of the Abrahamic story would seem to be that these patriarchs were way in the past. There is no contact between Abraham and these patriarchs it would seem. So it is much more logical to suppose that there were gaps in the genealogies and that we do not know the date of the flood, and we do not know the date of Adam and Eve—simply that it was a long time before Abraham. I have suggested that it would be logical to think of Adam and Eve as being in the tens of thousands of years ago rather than in the hundreds of thousands. But again, we do not know the details here.

Well, the generations of Adam then. The genealogists’ set goes down through Enoch who walked with God and was translated not seeing death; one of the two men who were taken straight to heaven. Methuselah, the oldest man living we know and down to the flood. Now when we come to chapter 6. It speaks of the wickedness of the earth that was so great. God decided to curse the earth with a flood. The subject of the flood is a big one, and we can say only a little bit. There is the view abroad that the flood was responsible for all the sedimentary rocks. This is called flood geology. This could be true, as far as the Bible goes. I don’t know that we would insist upon it. I don’t hold that view myself, but I do feel that there are many questions in the geological picture that have not been answered satisfactorily. So there again we surely seek more information and more answers.

I think the Bible does very clearly speak of a universal flood. Exactly what kind of a flood that was, it is perhaps not easy to see. The word flood (translated flood) is also translated flood in the Psalms, in the last verses of Psalm 29. There it says “The Lord sitteth above the flood.” But in Psalm 29 it is clear that it is referring to a storm. “The Lord sitteth above the storm.” I think that we might picture the flood likewise from the viewpoint of a great storm. It was a storm, of course, of great precipitation. The water came down, but also there were movements in the ocean floor. The waters came up as well. I’m not sure that we know all about the flood. I certainly believe that the flood was universal, and its purpose was to destroy all mankind. Incidentally, it destroyed the animals, of course its purpose was not to destroy fish or insects or plants and so on, but animals in whom was the breath of life.

I have wondered, and it is only a theory, if perhaps we have been looking at the flood too simplistically. Instead of finding water all over the world and mountain deep, if we should not say that it was a combination storm that would be water with tremendous rains in the area where Noah was. But in the upper latitudes and in the higher altitude that it would have been snow. We realize after all that what is rain down south is usually snow up north. What is rain in the lowlands is usually snow in the mountains. It is perhaps not impossible to hold that the upper reaches of the world were frozen stiff in deep snow for a year and then the lower regions of course would be covered by the water that came up as well as the rain that came down. This would have made it impossible for man to live unprotected as he is. If he did not freeze, he would starve, and warm-bodied animals likewise. It would not have affected greatly the fish and vegetation and so on, but it certainly would have affected mankind. Whether that is true or not, we do not know. But it is quite probable that if there was such a flood as is pictured here, that it would have been associated with a tremendous change of climate. This change of climate would be a change that would be associated doubtless with a colder period in order to make this precipitation.

Can we date the flood? Not from our current records. It would have been earlier than the Egyptian empire, earlier than any writing or the cities of Palestine. It would have been earlier than the city of Jericho, which can be dated probably to around 8000 BC. It seems as if a natural, logical dating of the flood might well be that great freeze that obviously took place when the Siberian mammoths were frozen and a number of other things took place in the world. Various parts of the world would perhaps indicate the extent of a change of climate or a flood that would have taken place around ten thousand years ago, according to the dating of these mammoths. These frozen mammoths in Siberia are very remarkable, and this is the closest perhaps we can get to a date for the flood. We’ll have to say a little bit more about that as we consider Noah and his times.