[:en]
(Leonardo da Vinci)
Mankind before the Fall has the briefest of mentions — chapter 2 of the Book of Genesis. But does the Bible say how long Adam and Eve lived in the Garden of Eden before the events of chapter 3?
Genesis 5:3 does say Adam fathered Seth at the age of 130, so perhaps 130 years is an upper bound. So it is possible that Genesis 2 was several decades.
All we can be certain is that this time was before the entry of sin in the world. Therefore, everything Adam and Eve did during that time was not wrong. What did they do, besides garden?
And if they did no wrong, does that mean everything they did was perfect? Were they perfect gardeners?
Not necessarily perfect
I am of the (layman) opinion that what they did before the fall was not necessarily perfect. I believe God makes a space for us between perfection and disobedience, and physically that was the Garden, where “out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food.”
Work predates sin
Yet it also says God “put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.”
This means that God’s sinless creation did not maintain itself like a 5-star resort while Adam and Eve lounged around. The words say to me that the plants, then as now, needed tending. Some plants would overgrow if left one, then as now.
Mankind, before the Fall, was needed to work the garden.
Imbalance predates sin
There is a popular notion that everything “natural” is perfect and that nature always exists in perfect harmony in the absence of man.
Those who believe this have not seen predators hunting, a forest consumed by fire, or the destruction of typhoons.
Genesis 2 contains a hint that these natural imbalances existed before the sin of man. Why else would man be needed to “work it and keep it?”
Farts forever
Therefore, neither pleasure nor work are the consequences of sin. Neither is the possibility of natural objects growing out of whack. God’s design for us includes all of these.
If your ideal lifestyle is one free of work, or alternatively your ideal is to transcend ‘earthly’ pleasures, or you think ‘Mother Nature’ is perfect, you need to re-read Genesis chapter 2.
To put it in earthy terms, the New Heaven and New Earth will come with toilets and toilet paper.
Chapter 2 is also when man named every creature. We know there are thousands of kinds of animals, and we also know the nature of a person’s work without a boss. So I think this must have taken, with generous breaks for eating, napping and (ahem) gardening, at least fifty years.
Lastly there is the matter of tree of life, which was “in the midst” of the garden along with the forbidden tree of the knowledge of good and evil. I am not sure what to make of a tree that, “lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever,” had to be guarded by cherubim and flaming sword (Genesis 3:22-24). Is it a literal physical tree? I will let the properly-trained answer that.[:]