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Genesis 2

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1 And the heavens and the earth and all their host were finished.

2 And God had finished on the seventh day his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.

3 And God blessed the seventh day, and hallowed it, because that on it he rested from all his work which God had created in making it.

4 These are the histories of the heavens and the earth, when they were created, in the day that Jehovah Elohim made earth and heavens,

5 and every shrub of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew; for Jehovah Elohim had not caused it to rain on the earth, and there was no man to till the ground.

6 But a mist went up from the earth, and moistened the whole surface of the ground.

7 And Jehovah Elohim formed Man, dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and Man became a living soul.

8 And Jehovah Elohim planted a garden in Eden eastward, and there put Man whom he had formed.

9 And out of the ground Jehovah Elohim made every tree grow that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; and the tree of life, in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

10 And a river went out of Eden, to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became four main streams.

11 The name of the one is Pison: that is it which surrounds the whole land of Havilah, where the gold is.

12 And the gold of that land is good; bdellium and the onyx stone are there.

13 And the name of the second river is Gihon: that is it which surrounds the whole land of Cush.

14 And the name of the third river is Hiddekel: that is it which flows forward toward Asshur. And the fourth river, that is Euphrates.

15 And Jehovah Elohim took Man, and put him into the garden of Eden, to till it and to guard it.

16 And Jehovah Elohim commanded Man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou shalt freely eat;

17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it; for in the day that thou eatest of it thou shalt certainly die.

18 And Jehovah Elohim said, It is not good that Man should be alone; I will make him a helpmate, his like.

19 And out of the ground Jehovah Elohim had formed every animal of the field and all fowl of the heavens, and brought [them] to Man, to see what he would call them; and whatever Man called each living soul, that was its name.

20 And Man gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the heavens, and to every beast of the field; but as for Adam, he found no helpmate, his like.

21 And Jehovah Elohim caused a deep sleep to fall upon Man; and he slept. And he took one of his ribs and closed up flesh in its stead.

22 And Jehovah Elohim built the rib that he had taken from Man into a woman; and brought her to Man.

23 And Man said, This time it is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh: this shall be called Woman, because this was taken out of a Man.

24 Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and cleave to his wife; and they shall become one flesh.

25 And they were both naked, Man and his wife, and were not ashamed.

   

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True Christianity #469

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469. Everyone today who is inwardly wise is capable of perceiving or divining that what is written [in Scripture] about Adam and his wife involves spiritual details, which no one has known until now because the spiritual meaning of the Word has not been disclosed before. Who cannot see, even from a great distance, that Jehovah would not have placed two trees in the garden, one of which was a stumbling block, if doing so did not have some spiritual significance? [The same goes for the fact that Adam and Eve] were cursed because they both ate from a particular tree; and that that curse remains in effect for every human being after them, which means that the whole human race was damned for the misdeed of a single individual - and a misdeed in which there was no evil from a craving of the flesh or a wickedness of the heart. Does this square with divine justice? Why indeed did Jehovah, who was present and watching this happen, not distract Adam from eating? And why did he not throw the snake into the underworld before it exercised its persuasive powers?

[2] But, my friend, the reason God did not do all this is that he would have taken away human free choice by so doing, and yet freedom is what makes a human a human and not an animal. Once this is known, it becomes obvious that the two trees, one for life and the other for death, represent human free choice in spiritual matters.

For another thing, hereditary evil is not from this source; it is from our parents instead. Parents pass on to their children a weakness for the evil they themselves have been involved in. Anyone can see that this is the case by carefully examining the behavior, the minds, and the faces of children, and indeed of extended families, descended from the same ancestor. Nevertheless, it is up to each individual in the family whether he or she wishes to move toward that evil or away from it, since each one has his or her own free choice.

As for what the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil mean in detail, see the memorable occurrence related above in , where this has been fully explained.

  
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Thanks to the Swedenborg Foundation for the permission to use this translation.