Don’t eat that fruit! – Genesis 2:10-17

Don’t eat that fruit! – Genesis 2:10-17 – 03/22/2016

Genesis 2:10 (ESV) A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden, and there it divided and became four rivers. 11 The name of the first is the Pishon. It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold. 12 And the gold of that land is good; bdellium and onyx stone are there. 13 The name of the second river is the Gihon. It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Cush. 14 And the name of the third river is the Tigris, which flows east of Assyria. And the fourth river is the Euphrates. 15 The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. 16 And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, 17 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.”

This article is designed to be a slightly more in depth article than I did in the “creation series” elsewhere on this website, Lord willing I hope to look at the full creation week and examine the case for a Biblical creation from the mindset that the bible is accurate and a honest and truthful source of history in how we came to be here. I am not here to attack other mindsets as I appreciate that not everyone shares my view of a biblical history and I do welcome lively debate on the subject regardless of your thoughts or beliefs on how the earth was made.

In order to look at this from a biblical context we must first look at the text in question starting in chapter two verse ten…

V10 A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden, and there it divided and became four rivers.

In this part of the scripture we learn more about the Garden of Eden and what a luscious place that it was. God truly did provide all that his children needed and the original plan was far from what we see today in our fallen decaying world.

When we read this description of the garden it is designed to give us an eye-witness account of how it looked and explain that there was plenty water and plenty of nature as it was created in its beauty.

V11 The name of the first is the Pishon. It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold. 12 And the gold of that land is good; bdellium and onyx stone are there. 13 The name of the second river is the Gihon. It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Cush. 14 And the name of the third river is the Tigris, which flows east of Assyria. And the fourth river is the Euphrates.

The rivers are given names that would have been replicated in the post flood world, the rivers will probably not be in the same place as they were post flood because of the great geologic changes that the flood caused and it is perfectly possible that new rivers may have been called pre flood names.

I equate this to American city names; I see when I am researching the area around here that often times cities are named after where the people came from. An example of this is where I live in California is named after a city in South West England. Is it the same place? No, but it carries the same name.

We also see that there are gold and precious stones in the original creation and we know this is before the fall of man because Adam is not displaying a greed nature and is not digging up those gold or precious gems to stockpile them. That comes much later! Even if he did, he would be the richest man in the world (of a population of one!) You could put a case that Adam was already at the pinnacle of man; he was the smartest, the handsomest and the one who was closest to God at this time!

V15 The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.

I love that work was part of God’s original plan! It kinda flies in the face of those who preach that if you will be faithful to God then you will lack nothing and God will grant all of your wishes and desires of your heart like some big Genie in the sky.

I am not mocking the notion that God provides, please do not misunderstand what I am saying, however I believe that God makes supplication for our needs and not for the whims and fantasies of our hearts because our hearts are deceitful and wicked and will often will not seek after the things of God and will want to seek after selfish gains and ambition.

You will notice that God doesn’t say, I have created all this wonderful, so just laze about under that tree and eat all day. God establishes the pattern even from the first book of the bible that his people are to be diligent at work, to do their best to be without criticism, to be people of integrity and an example that makes others question “what is it about those people that make then who they are?”

V16 And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, 17 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.”

Like every good parent, God allows man to make choices and basically gives them only one rule that they have to abide with. He allows them a choice of all the trees of the garden except for the “forbidden fruit”. Right from the beginning he allowed man to be a creature with free will as God does not wish to have robotic or zombie worship, he seeks our love and obedience rather than dead religion.

God allowed us to choose whether to go with him or against him and although we have a sin nature that has been passed down from Adam, we still have that choice today and the choice is whether to go with God or go against him. God told the man directly the only way he could mess up and as we learn temptation was too much. God states what the choice was and what the repercussions were.

Lord willing, in our next article in Genesis we will look at verses eighteen through twenty five when we see God’s compassion on man when he makes him a helper. I pray that you are able to join us as we go through the bible, line by line and precept by precept.

God bless and I pray this was a blessing and please feel free to like, share or comment on here or whatever social media platforms you use as the Lord leads you to, as always I love questions about this or any other article so please feel free to fill in the form below, all comments are moderated to avoid profanity.
TTE
TGBTG
SDG