Therefore Jehovah Elohim sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from which he was taken.
God sends Adam out of Eden, and the ground he must now work is the ground he came from. Two questions follow: was this only punishment, and what did the man lose besides a place to live?
Two departures stand behind this verse: Adam's own flight from God, and God's judicial sentence on him.
It was the first divine utterance to fallen man. What a volume of truth! On the face of things, past all denial, man was gone from God. He had morally doomed himself before he received the dread sentence. "He drove out the man," we are told later in the chapter; but man hid from His presence at first, and thus drew out the words, "Where are you?"
God cast out the man; yet Adam ran away from God before God turned him out. But when God turned him out, it was a judicial act. God put cherubim there, and a flaming sword turning every way, to guard the way to the tree of life. That is, Adam was not only going to dust, but could not get at life again. It would have been horrible if he could. He was an outcast from God altogether, and this is everlasting misery.
Shutting the way to the tree of life was mercy as well as justice. To fix Adam forever in his fallen state would have been the real disaster.
Suppose Adam had been able to put out his hand and eat of the tree of life, what would have been the result? He would have made his own condition of sin and misery permanent. He would have become a deathless creature in a hell of his own making. That would have been bad enough. But it would have been far worse in another way. Even by becoming Man, Christ could not have died. His death has become to us the door into life. In eating of the tree of life Adam would have closed and barred that door. We may well thank God for the cherubim and the flaming sword!
The garden held a tree that tested obedience and a separate tree that gave life. The test and the gift were never the same thing.
The tree of life was distinct from that of knowing good and evil. The test of responsible obedience was one thing; the means of life was quite another. So from the very first they are shown to be separate. In fact, when man disobeyed by eating from the one tree, God drove him out so that he would not also take from the other and make his fallen sinful state everlasting. The tree of life was for one who did not eat of the forbidden tree. It was marked so clearly here that responsibility and life are completely separate.
"To work the ground from which he was taken" describes a demotion.
But Adam transgressed and lost the garden, and became a drudge in the earth, instead of being the happy lord of it. He was now to get a bare existence out of it, until he was laid down in death upon it.
Everyday labour became a standing witness to what had happened. Later, Cain would try to bring God an offering out of that very labour:
How did man come to be toiling there in the sweat of his brow? Their very toil told the tale of the curse. They had been driven out of Eden for sin. But in Cain we see utter recklessness toward the judgment of God. He had forgotten the very nature of that God who had set man perfectly happy in the garden at the first, to keep it and enjoy its fruits — fruits that came to his hand without toil or labour. He supposed that by toil and labour, the judicial consequences of sin, he could produce something that God would accept.
This raises a fair question: did work itself begin as a punishment?
Man placed in the garden "to work it and keep it" shows that it was not God's will that His creature should be idle. But there was no "toil" or "sorrow" connected with such occupation. Now thorns and thistles were to appear, and in the sweat of his face man was to eat bread... Labour here is good for all, and in it there is profit. For out of evil God can and does bring good.
The gate stayed shut, but there is still a way to paradise, and it is a Person.
There is no way back to the lost paradise. Christ is the way... He is the way for the believer to the Father and the paradise that shall never pass away. So there is no tree of knowing good and evil there, no tree of responsibility. The cross of Christ settled that for everlasting righteousness, in favour of all who believe, to God's glory. There is but one tree, the tree of life.
- Sent — Adam ran from God before God removed him. The expulsion made official a separation he had already chosen.
- Spared — the barred tree of life kept a sinner from living forever in his misery. Judgment and mercy travel together here.
- Separated — the tree of testing and the tree of life were never the same thing. Failing the test did not decide how God gives life.
- Sweat — the lord of the garden became a drudge on the ground. Work was his before the fall; toil and thorns now tell the story of sin.
- Saviour — no one gets back into Eden. Christ is the way to a paradise that never passes away, and it has only one tree.
And he drove out Man; and he set the Cherubim, and the flame of the flashing sword, toward the east of the garden of Eden, to guard the way to the tree of life.
Genesis 3 ends with God shutting Eden: He drives the man out and posts guards at the tree of life. Two questions follow: why God used force against His own creature, and whether the closed way ever opens again.
Earlier in the chapter Adam had already hidden himself among the trees. What happens here is different in kind, because it is God who now acts and settles the case.
God cast out the man; yet Adam had run from God before God turned him out. But when God turned him out, this was judicial. He put cherubim there, and a flaming sword, turning every way to keep the way of the tree of life. So Adam was not only going back to dust. He could not get at life again — and it would have been horrible if he could.
Cherubim appear later in Scripture over the mercy-seat. Readers often carry that gentler picture back into Eden. One writer refuses that reading, and points to where the mercy in this chapter lies.
In Genesis 3:24 they do not offer mercy. Along with the flaming sword they threaten the creature, now guilty, if he dared to force the way. The thought there is the title of God in glory and judgment... God's act of clothing the guilty with a garment that came from the death of another (v. 21), and God's word in v. 15, did show mercy — but the cherubim did not.
Commentators differ on what to call the barring of the tree. Some call the shut gate itself a kindness, because of what a fallen man would have become if he had eaten and lived on.
Suppose he had eaten, and by eating lived for ever — as long as he kept eating — in the state of innocence in which God first made him. That would have been right and simple obedience. But now he knew good and evil: good he could never reach, and evil he was always drawn to. To eat and live for ever in the garden in that condition would have meant misery without end, and God could not allow it... This was grace, not judgment; God had already passed the judgment.
Another writer takes this further, to the cross.
Suppose Adam had eaten from the tree of life. What would the result have been? He would have made his condition of sin and misery permanent, and made himself a deathless creature in a hell of his own making. That would have been bad enough. But it would have been a far worse disaster in this way: even by becoming Man, Christ could not then have died. His death has become to us the door into life. In eating of the tree of life Adam would have closed and barred that door. We may well thank God for the cherubim and the flaming sword!
When the cherubim next appear, they are gold figures on the lid of the ark. The way they face changes the picture.
How different is the attitude of the cherubim over the mercy-seat. The point seems to be that they were not to look out at man's sinful condition. They were to look inward and downward, at the mercy-seat of pure gold, where the blood of the sin-offering was sprinkled on the day of atonement.
The gate stays shut. But the story does not end there.
God set the cherubim, the symbols of judicial power, to bar the way... There is no way back to the lost paradise. Christ is the way — the way for the believer to the Father and to the paradise that will never pass away.
What the guarded tree denied Adam, the risen Christ now promises — on better terms than Eden.
This is the earliest of the gifts forfeited in Eden. But under His new title, "I am the living one," the Lord grants the promise in redemption order as well as in resurrection power. He leads the overcomer to eat of the tree of life — which Adam never ate — in the middle of the paradise of God, where the first man never was. A garden in Eden is lost, it is true; but the paradise of God is gained. The knowledge of a crucified Christ sheathes the flaming sword that turned every way to keep the tree of life.
- Driven. Adam ran from God first; then God put him out. This was a judicial act, not just a change of address.
- Guarded. The cherubim at the gate stand for God's title in glory and judgment. The mercy in this chapter lies elsewhere — in the clothing God made at the cost of another life.
- Spared. Blocking the tree stopped fallen man from making his misery last for ever. It also left open the door of death, through which Christ would later come.
- Turned. The next cherubim stand on the mercy-seat. Their faces look inward, at gold sprinkled with blood — the same guardians, now watching atonement instead of the sinner.
- Gained. There is no way back to Eden. Christ is the way forward. A crucified Christ sheathes the sword, and the overcomer eats in a paradise better than the one that was lost.