Literal Commentary on Genesis 8.8–8.20

“And the Lord God took the man whom he had made and placed him in paradise to work and to keep. And the Lord God commanded Adam, saying: From every tree that is in paradise you shall eat for food; but of the tree of knowing good and evil you shall not eat of it. On the day you eat of it, you shall die by death.” Having said briefly above that God planted paradise and established there the man whom he had formed, he recapitulated so as to narrate how paradise was established. Now, then, he has also mentioned by recapitulation how God placed there the man whom he had made. Let us see, then, what is meant by “to work and to keep.” What was he to work, or what to keep? Did the Lord perhaps want the first man to work at farming? Or is it not credible that he condemned him to toil before sin? So indeed we would think, unless we saw some people farm with such delight of mind that it is a great punishment for them to be called away from it to something else. Whatever delights farming has, then, there were surely far more then, when nothing adverse happened either to land or sky. For there was not the affliction of toil but the gladness of will, when the things God had created came forth more joyfully and abundantly with the help of human work; so that the Creator himself would be praised more richly, who had given to a soul established in an animal body the reason and the ability to work, as much as was enough for a willing mind, not as much as bodily need would force upon an unwilling one. For what greater and more wonderful spectacle is there, or where can human reason in a way talk more with the nature of things, than when, with seeds sown, cuttings planted, saplings transplanted, and slips grafted, the power of each root and bud is questioned, so to speak, as to what it can and cannot do, why it can and why it cannot, what the invisible inner power of numbers can do in it, what the care applied from outside; and in this very consideration to see that neither he who plants is anything nor he who waters, but God who gives the growth, since even the work which comes from outside comes through one whom God has nevertheless created and whom he invisibly rules and orders?

From here the eye of thought is raised to the world itself, as to a great tree of things, and in it too a twofold working of providence is found, partly natural, partly voluntary: natural, through God's hidden governance, by which he gives growth even to trees and plants; voluntary, through the works of angels and of men. According to the first, the heavenly things are ordered above and the earthly below, the lights and stars shine, the alternation of day and night goes on, the earth founded on the waters is flowed through and around by them, the air is poured out higher above, trees and animals are conceived and born, grow, grow old, and die, and whatever else is done in things by an inner and natural motion. In the second, signs are given, things are taught and learned, fields are tilled, societies are governed, arts are practised, and whatever else is done either in the society above or in this earthly and mortal one, so that the good are provided for even through the wicked who do not know it. And in man himself the same twofold power of providence is active: toward the body, first, the natural power, namely by the motion by which it comes into being, grows, and grows old; and the voluntary, by which it is provided with food, clothing, and care. Similarly, toward the soul it acts naturally, so that it lives and senses, and voluntarily, so that it learns and consents. And just as in a tree farming does from outside what helps that which is done from within to advance, so in man, as to the body, medicine serves from outside what nature does within; and likewise as to the soul, teaching is supplied from outside so that nature may be made happy within. What neglect of cultivation is to the tree, neglect of healing is to the body, and laziness in learning to the soul; and what useless moisture is to the tree, deadly food is to the body, and persuasion to wickedness to the soul. God therefore, above all things, who founded all things and rules all things, creates all natures as good and orders all wills as just. What, then, is far from the truth if we believe that man was so placed in paradise as to work at farming, not with servile toil but with honorable pleasure of mind? For what is more innocent than this work for those at leisure, and what fuller of great reflection for the wise?

But “to keep” what? Paradise itself? Against whom? Certainly no neighboring invader was feared, no disturber of boundaries, no thief, no attacker. How, then, are we to understand that a bodily paradise could be kept bodily by man? But Scripture did not say “to work and to keep paradise”; it said “to work and to keep.” Although, if it is rendered word for word more carefully from the Greek, it is written thus: “And the Lord God took the man whom he made and placed him in paradise to work it and to keep it.” But whether he placed the man himself to work (for so the one who translated “to work” understood it) or to work paradise, that is, so that man would work paradise, sounds ambiguous, and the expression seems rather to require that it be said not “to work paradise” but “in paradise.” Yet in case it was said “to work paradise” in the same way as it was said above, “and there was no man to work the earth” (for “to work the earth” is the same expression as “to work paradise”), let us treat the ambiguous sentence in both ways. For if we need not take it as “to keep paradise” but as “in paradise,” what then was he to keep in paradise? For what he was to work in paradise we have already discussed, as it seemed right. Was it that what he worked in the earth by farming he should keep in himself by discipline, that is, that as the field obeyed him when he tilled it, so he too should obey his Lord when he commanded, so that, having received the command, he would yield the fruit of obedience and not the thorns of disobedience? In the end, since he would not, as a subject, keep in himself the likeness of the paradise he tilled, he received, when condemned, a field like himself: “It shall bring forth thorns and thistles for you,” it says. But if we understand it as working paradise and keeping paradise, he could work paradise, as we said above, by farming, but keep it not against wicked men or enemies, of whom there were none, but perhaps against beasts. How so? Or why? For were beasts already raging against man, which would not happen except through sin? For he himself gave names to all the beasts when they were brought to him, as is mentioned afterwards; and on the sixth day, by the law of God's word, he received food in common with all of them. Or if there was already something to be feared in beasts, how could one man fortify that paradise? For it was no small place that so great a spring watered. He ought to have kept it, if he could fortify paradise with a wall of such a kind and size that the serpent could not get in; but it would be strange if, before fortifying it, he could shut out all serpents from it. Why then do we pass over the meaning before our eyes? Man was placed in paradise to work that paradise, as was argued above, by farming that was not toilsome but delightful and that suggested great and useful things to the mind of the wise, and to keep that paradise for himself, so as not to commit anything for which he would deserve to be expelled from it. In short, he also received a command, so that there would be something by which to keep paradise for himself, that is, by observing which he would not be thrown out of it. For anyone is rightly said not to have kept his property who acted in such a way as to lose it, even if it is safe for someone else who either found it or deserved to receive it. There is another sense in these words which I think may rightly be preferred: that God was to work man himself and to keep him. For just as man works the earth, not to make it be earth but to make it tilled and fruitful, so, much more, God works man, whom he himself created so that he is man, so that he may be just, if man does not depart from him through pride; for this is to apostatize from God, which Scripture calls the beginning of pride. “The beginning of man's pride,” it says, “is to apostatize from God.” Since, then, God is the unchangeable good, while man, both in soul and in body, is a changeable thing, he cannot be formed so as to be just and happy unless he remains turned toward the unchangeable good, which is God. And therefore the same God who creates man so that he is man himself works man and keeps him so that he may also be good and happy. Therefore, in the way of speaking in which man is said to work the earth, which was already earth, so that it may be adorned and fruitful, God is said to work man, who was already man, so that he may be godly and wise, and to keep him, because man, delighting in his own power over himself rather than in God's over him, and despising his dominion, cannot be safe.

So I think it is in no way idle, but reminds us of something, and something great, that from the very beginning of this divine book, which begins thus, “In the beginning God made heaven and earth,” up to this place, “Lord God” is nowhere set down, but only “God.” But now, when it came to God's establishing man in paradise and working and keeping him through a command, Scripture spoke thus: “And the Lord God took the man whom he had made and placed him in paradise to work him and to keep him.” Not that God was not Lord of the creatures mentioned above; but because this was written not for the sake of the angels or of the other things that were created, but for the sake of man, to remind him how much it profits him to have God as Lord, that is, to live obediently under his dominion rather than licentiously to abuse his own power, Scripture chose not to set this down anywhere earlier than where it came to his being placed in paradise, worked, and kept: so that it would not say, as of all the other things above, “And God took the man whom he had made,” but would say, “And the Lord God took the man whom he had made and placed him in paradise to work him,” so that he might be just, “and to keep him,” so that he might be safe; by his very dominion, that is, which is useful not to him but to us. For he does not need our service, but we need his dominion, so that he may work and keep us. And therefore he alone is truly Lord, because we serve him not for his benefit but for our benefit and salvation; for if he needed us, by that very fact he would not be truly Lord, since his need would be helped through us, a need under which he too would be a servant. Rightly does the one in the psalm say, “I said to the Lord, You are my God, because you have no need of my goods.” Nor is what we said, that we serve him for our benefit and salvation, to be taken as though we expected anything from him other than himself, who is our highest benefit and salvation; for so we love him freely, according to that saying, “But for me to cleave to God is good.”

For man is not such a thing that, once made, he can do anything well as if from himself when he who made him abandons him; but his whole good action is to turn to him by whom he was made, and to be made always just, godly, wise, and happy by him, not to be made so and then depart, as one is healed by a physician of the body and goes away; for the physician of the body was a worker serving from outside the nature that works from within under God, who works all health by that twofold work of providence of which we spoke above. So man ought not to turn to God in such a way that, when he has been made just by him, he goes away, but in such a way that he is always being made so by him. For by this very fact, that he does not depart from him, he is justified, enlightened, and made happy by his presence, while God works and keeps him as he rules over him obedient and subject. For, as we were saying, it is not as when man works the earth so that it may be tilled and fruitful: when he has worked it he goes away, leaving it ploughed or sown or watered or whatever else, the work that was done remaining when the worker has gone away. God does not work man just in that way, that is, by justifying him, so that if he goes away what he did remains in the one he leaves; but rather, just as the air, when light is present, has not been made bright but is being made bright (for if it had been made bright and were not being made so, it would remain bright even when the light was absent), so man is enlightened when God is present to him, but when God is absent he is at once darkened, God from whom one departs not by distances of place but by turning away of the will. Let him, then, work man good and keep him, who is unchangeably good. We ought always to be made by him and always perfected, cleaving to him and remaining in that turning which is toward him, of whom it is said, “But for me to cleave to God is good,” and to whom it is said, “I will keep my strength toward you.” For we are his handiwork, created not only to be men but also to be good. For the apostle too, when he was commending to the faithful who had turned from ungodliness the grace by which we have been saved, says, “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not from yourselves, but it is the gift of God; not from works, lest anyone be lifted up. For we are his handiwork, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared that we should walk in them.” And elsewhere, when he had said, “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling,” lest they think it should be credited to themselves, as though they made themselves just and good, he at once added, “For it is God who works in you.” So “the Lord God took the man whom he had made and placed him in paradise to work him,” that is, “to work in him,” “and to keep him.”

“And the Lord God commanded Adam, saying: From every tree that is in paradise you shall eat for food; but of the tree of knowing good and evil you shall not eat of it. On the day you eat of it, you shall die by death.” If that tree from which God forbade man had been something evil, he would seem to have been poisoned unto death by the nature of that evil itself. But since he who made all things very good had planted all the trees in paradise good, and there was no nature of evil there, because there is no nature of evil anywhere (which we will discuss more carefully, if the Lord wills, when we begin to speak about that serpent), he was forbidden that tree, which was not evil, so that keeping the command would itself be good for him and transgressing it evil. Nor could it have been shown better or more carefully how great an evil disobedience alone is, since man became guilty of wickedness because he touched against the prohibition a thing which, if he had touched it without being forbidden, he would certainly not have sinned. For if someone says, for example, “Do not touch this plant,” if perhaps it is poisonous and threatens death if he touches it, death will indeed follow for the one who despises the command; but even if no one had forbidden it and he had touched it, he would die just the same. For that thing would not be suited to his health and life, whether he was forbidden it or not. Likewise, when someone forbids a thing to be touched which would harm not the one touching it but the one who forbade it, as if someone put his hand on another's money when forbidden by the owner of the money, it would be a sin for the one forbidden because it could be harmful to the one forbidding. But when a thing is touched which would neither harm the one touching it if it were not forbidden, nor anyone else whenever it was touched, why was it forbidden, except to show the good of obedience in itself and the evil of disobedience in itself? In short, the sinner sought nothing else than not to be under God's dominion, when he committed that in which, to keep from committing it, he ought to have paid attention to the command of his Lord alone. And if that alone had been attended to, what else would have been attended to than the will of God? What else would have been loved than the will of God? What else would have been put before the human will than the will of God? Why the Lord commanded it is his concern; what he commanded is to be done by the servant, and then perhaps the one who deserves it may see why he commanded it. But, so as not to seek longer for the reason of this command: if this very thing is a great benefit to man, that he serves God, then by commanding God makes beneficial whatever he wills to command, and there is no fear that he could command what is not beneficial.

Nor can it be that one's own will does not fall upon a man with the weight of a great ruin if he proudly puts it before the will of one higher. This man experienced when he despised the command of God, and by this experience he learned what difference there is between good and evil, namely the good of obedience and the evil of disobedience, that is, of pride and defiance, of perverse imitation of God and harmful freedom. And the tree in which this could happen took its name from the thing itself, as was said above. For we would not perceive evil except by experience, because there would be none if we had not done it. For no nature is evil, but the loss of good has received this name. For the unchangeable good is God; man, as far as concerns the nature in which God founded him, is indeed good, but not unchangeable like God. And a changeable good, which comes after the unchangeable good, becomes a better good when it cleaves to the unchangeable good by loving and serving it with a rational and its own will. For this too is why this is the nature of a great good: because it has received this too, that it can cleave to the nature of the highest good. But if it will not, it deprives itself of good, and this is evil for it, from which, by the justice of God, torment also follows. For what is so unjust as that it should go well with a deserter of the good? Nor can it in any way be so. But sometimes the evil of having lost the higher good is not felt, when the lower good that was loved is possessed. But it is divine justice that he who by his will lost what he ought to have loved should lose with pain what he loved, while the Creator of natures is praised everywhere. For it is still a good that grieves at the good that has been lost; for unless some good had remained in the nature, there would be no grief for lost good in the punishment. But he who is pleased by the good without experience of evil, that is, who, before he feels the loss of good, chooses to hold it so as not to lose it, is to be praised above all men. But if this were not a matter of singular praise, it would not be attributed to that child who, made of the race of Israel, Emmanuel, God with us, reconciled us to God, the mediator of God and men, a man, the Word with God, flesh with us, the Word made flesh between God and us. For of him the prophet says, “Before the child knows good or evil, he will despise wickedness, to choose the good.” How does he either despise or choose what he does not know, except that these two are known in one way by the wisdom of good and in another by the experience of evil? By the wisdom of good, evil is known even if it is not felt; for the good is held so that its loss may not be felt as evil. Likewise, by the experience of evil the good is known, since he who has fared ill from losing the good feels what he has lost. So before the child knew by experience either the good he would lack or the evil he would feel through losing the good, he despised the evil so as to choose the good, that is, he did not want to lose what he had, lest by losing it he feel what he ought not to lose. A singular example of obedience! For he came not to do his own will but the will of him by whom he was sent; not like that man who chose to do his own will, not that of him by whom he was made. Rightly, just as through one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so through one man's obedience many will be made righteous; because, as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.

Some people, though sharp, have been dulled in vain when they ask how it could be called the tree of discerning good and evil before man had transgressed the command in it and discerned by experience itself what difference there was between the good he lost and the evil he committed. For the tree received such a name so that, by not touching it in keeping with the prohibition, man would beware of what would be felt if it were touched against the prohibition. For it was not because they ate from it against the command that that tree became the tree of discerning good and evil; but surely, even if they had been obedient and had taken nothing from it against the command, it would rightly be called by what would happen to them there if they had taken from it. Just as, if it were called the tree of fullness because men could be filled from it, would that name be unfitting if no one had come to it? For when they came and were filled, they would then prove how rightly that tree was so called.

“And how,” they say, “would man understand what he was told, the tree of discerning good and evil, when he did not know at all what evil itself was?” Those who think this pay too little attention to how most unknown things are understood from known opposites, so that even when words for things that do not exist are put into speech, no hearer is in the dark. For what does not exist at all is called “nothing”; and everyone who hears and speaks Latin understands these two syllables. How, unless the mind looks at what is and, by its absence, recognizes also what is not? So too when “empty” is said, by looking at the fullness of a body we understand, by its absence as by its opposite, what is meant by empty. Just as with the sense of hearing we judge not only of sounds but also of silence, so from the life that was in man he could beware of its opposite, that is, the absence of life, which is called death. And the very cause by which he would lose what he loved, that is, any act of his by which it would come about that he lost life, by whatever syllables it was named (as when in Latin it is called “sin” or “evil”), he would understand as a sign of what he distinguished in his mind. For how do we understand when resurrection is spoken of, which we have never experienced? Is it not because we feel what it is to live, and call the absence of this death, and call the return from it to what we feel resurrection? And if the same thing is called by any other name in any language, a sign is certainly conveyed to the mind in the speaker's voice, at whose sound it recognizes what it would think even without a sign. For it is wonderful how nature avoids the loss of the things it has, even without experience of it. For who taught beasts to avoid death but the sense of life? Who taught a little child to cling to the one carrying him if he threatens to throw him from a height? This begins at a certain age, but still before he has experienced anything of the kind. So for those first human beings life was already sweet, and they certainly avoided losing it, and they could understand God when he signified this by whatever means or sounds. Nor could sin have been urged on them except by first persuading them that they would not die from that deed, that is, that they would not lose what they had and rejoiced to have: of which we must speak in its place. So let those who are disturbed about how they could understand God naming or threatening things they had not experienced take note, and see that we recognize the names of all things we have not experienced, without any turmoil of doubt, only from their opposites, which we already know, if they are absences, or from similar things, if they are kinds. Unless perhaps someone is disturbed about how they could speak or understand one speaking when they had not learned either by growing up among speakers or by any teaching; as though it were a great thing for God to teach to speak those whom he had made such that they could learn it even from men, if there had been any to learn from.

It is rightly asked whether God gave this command to the man only or also to the woman. But it has not yet been narrated how the woman was made. Or perhaps she had already been made, but how what had been done earlier was done is narrated afterwards by recapitulation? For the words of Scripture are these: “And the Lord God commanded Adam, saying”; it did not say “commanded them.” Then follows: “From every tree that is in paradise you shall eat for food”; it did not say “you (plural) shall eat.” Then it adds: “but of the tree of knowing good and evil you shall not eat of it.” Here now it speaks in the plural as to both, and ends the command in the plural, saying: “On the day you eat of it, you shall die by death.” Or, knowing that he was going to make the woman for him, did he command in this most orderly way, so that the Lord's command would reach the woman through the man? This discipline the apostle keeps in the church, saying, “If they want to learn anything, let them ask their husbands at home.”

Again it may be asked how God now spoke to the man whom he had made, now certainly endowed with sense and mind, so that he could hear and understand one speaking. For he could not otherwise receive a command, so as to be a transgressor of it, unless he understood it when received. How then did God speak to him? Inwardly in the mind, by understanding, that is, so that he would wisely understand God's will and command without any bodily sounds or likenesses of bodily things? But I do not think God spoke so to the first man. For Scripture narrates such things that we should rather believe God spoke to man in paradise as he also spoke later to the fathers, as to Abraham, as to Moses, that is, in some bodily form. Hence it is that they heard his voice as he walked in paradise toward evening, and hid themselves.

A great subject, then, not to be passed over, is set before us: that we should consider, as far as we can and as far as he deigns to help and grant, the twofold work of divine providence, which we touched on above in passing when we were speaking of farming, so that the reader's mind might begin from there to grow used to contemplating this, which helps very much to keep us from thinking anything unworthy of the very substance of God. We say, then, that the supreme, true, one and only God, Father and Son and Holy Spirit, that is, God and his Word and the Spirit of both, the Trinity itself, neither confused nor separated, God, who alone has immortality and dwells in light unapproachable, whom no man has seen or can see, is neither contained in a space of places, whether finite or infinite, nor varied by a course of times, whether finite or infinite. For there is nothing in his substance, by which he is God, that is less in the part than in the whole, as must be the case with things that are in places; nor was there anything in his substance that no longer is, or will there be anything that is not yet, as in natures that can undergo the changeableness of time.

He, then, living in unchangeable eternity, created all things together, from which times would run and places be filled and ages roll on by the temporal and local movements of things. Among these things he founded some spiritual and some bodily, forming the material which no other, nor anyone, but he himself altogether set up unformed and formable, so that it would precede its forming not in time but in origin. And he put the spiritual creation above the bodily, because the spiritual can be changed only through times, the bodily through times and places. For example, the mind is moved through time by remembering what it had forgotten, or learning what it did not know, or willing what it did not will; but the body is moved through places, from earth to heaven, or from heaven to earth, or from east to west, or in any other similar way. Now everything that is moved through place cannot but be moved through time as well; but not everything that is moved through time must also be moved through place. So, just as the substance that is moved through time only precedes the substance that is moved through time and place, so that substance which is moved neither through place nor through time precedes it. And therefore, just as the created spirit, itself moved only through time, moves the body through time and place, so the creating Spirit, moved neither through time nor through place, moves the created spirit through time. The created spirit moves itself through time and moves the body through time and place; but the creating Spirit moves itself without time and place, moves the created spirit through time without place, and moves the body through time and place.