Genesis 2:15 Commentary and Bible Study

Adam did not have to work in a way that was onerous or difficult for him. Onerous work came later with the curse – chapter 3.19: ‘in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground’ – but there was no hardship for man in the Garden of Eden. So we see him dressing it and keeping it, not hard work, but more an opportunity to exercise his wonderful capacities and abilities, having an application and having fulfilment and beautiful things to do. If you are a gardener and you know about gardening there are some things you enjoy doing, and there are some things you don’t enjoy doing – the chores and the difficult things. Take all the latter away and you get some idea of the Garden of Eden; only the fulfilling things, the enjoyable things, the constructive things, the wonderful things. There was no hard work, and there was no pain and there was no sweat in the Garden of Eden.So he was put in the Garden of Eden to dress it and keep it. Even before the fall, man was made a person who must be active and fulfilled and must work in the very best sense of the word. And so it is today: if you are not working you are unhappy, you are bored, you are not fulfilled; and people say, ‘I’m looking forward to retirement, I’m going to retire.’ They think of retirement, rest, ease – but it is not fulfilling, and it is not really happy, and they wish they could do something positive and constructive and useful, because that is what we are made for, and so it was in the Garden of Eden.Here are just some of the commands given to Adam. There is the command in chapter 1 to be fruitful and multiply, and here there is an instruction to dress the garden and to keep it. There are commands even before the fall. The creation ordinance is one of them. A day which is sanctified. ‘Be fruitful and multiply’ is another, and now there is a command concerning the dressing and tending of the garden. Christian people all have a responsibility right through time to observe that command given to man in the very first day of his existence. Men and women are under command too. We are not savages. We are not to live in chaos and disorder. We are not to rear families without any order and timetable and discipline and tidiness and cleanliness. We are made by God for a special purpose. We do not have a command to lavish our attention on ourselves and our surroundings to a wrong degree. But we have a command to keep order and tend and clean and to bring up the next generation to do the same. The command in verse 24 of this chapter which was given in Eden is also a perpetual command: ‘Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.’ These commands in the garden were not just for the pre-fall era; they are abiding, including the Sabbath provision.