BEMA Discipleship

BEMA 2: Knowing When to Say “Enough” (2025)

Transcription Status

13 Jan 25 — Initial public release

12 Jan 25 — Transcript approved for release

Transcription Volunteers: Sergey Bazylko, Justin Nunner

Knowing When to Say “Enough”

Brent Billings: This is the BEMA Podcast with Marty Solomon. I’m his co-host Brent Billings. Today we talk about the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and what the story might really be getting at.

Marty Solomon: Might really be getting at. My goodness, that makes it sound like we don’t know what it’s getting at, Brent Billings.

Brent: Well, as we’ve started to discover, sometimes there’s more to the text than what we read on the surface.

Marty: Sometimes there is. Absolutely. And that doesn’t mean everything we’ve ever known is wrong or it’s no sense to panic. But one of the things that we looked at last episode, and we’re just going to keep doing this for quite some time. People have told us over the years since we have done BEMA—like this was actually the thing. This was the thing that BEMA did for them. This was the thing that unlocked a whole new relationship with the Bible.

But we started looking at problems in the last episode. Like we noticed the chiasm because we noticed the problems in the text. And we have been taught to not notice problems. We’ve been taught to resolve problems, to make the problems go away, to show why the problems aren’t really problems. But what we’re discovering with this Eastern way of thinking is that the problems are actually there on purpose. The problems are there to be problems.

We’re going to keep working on that. And you’re going to hear me use that language, because this story—we’re going to talk about Adam and Eve today—this story has loads of problems, Brent, right? Like, I feel like this story has more problems than many stories I have learned in my time in church.

Brent: [laughs] Yeah, yeah, for anyone who has done any kind of work trying to like harmonize Genesis 1 with Genesis 2 creation stories, and just—you know—even on its own, Genesis 2 has all sorts of weird details and stuff that just makes you turn your head like, “why is that in there now?”

Marty: Yep.

Brent: So yeah, we’ll talk about all this.

Marty: Well, with that, I think we should. That’s a great segue into the first few verses. We’ll just dive right in. We’re going to start with that fourth verse where we left off last episode—fourth verse of Chapter 2.

Brent: Chapter numbers are not inspired, and they’re kicking it off real early with the strange decisions and where they broke things up. But Chapter 2, verse 4, “this is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created, when the Lord God made the earth and the heavens. Now no shrub had yet appeared on the earth and no plant had yet sprung up, for the Lord God had not sent rain on the earth and there was no one to work the ground, but streams came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground. Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.”

Marty: All right, you just hinted at this a moment ago Brent—like we’re just going to kind of be—we’re going to keep our antennas up trying to look for problems. And you mentioned it a moment ago, we have 2 different creation stories. Like it’s kind of the first verse as you read there—“Now, this is the account.”

I thought we had just read the account—I thought we already read the account, but here’s another account, and they go together. It’s not that you can’t harmonize them. It’s not that you can’t plug the one into the other, but it’s not this clean—seamless, chronological. And then next, this story certainly overlaps.

There are 2 different creation stories here. Not that there’s 2 different creations, but there’s 2 different ways of telling the story of creation. And so that just jumps right off the page to me as I thought we already did the story of creation. I thought we already talked about the creation of man. And in fact, in Genesis 1, “Let us make man in our image. And so he made man in his image.” And then what did it say? “He made them…”

Brent: Male and female.

Marty: And yet a central part of the story is going to talk about the loneliness, the solitude of—So these stories, they overlap, but they are told in just different ways. It’s different ways of telling the creation story. So there’s that, but we can go ahead and keep going.

Brent: “Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden, and there He put the man He had formed. The Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground, trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.”

Marty: Okay, helpful to know just the Hebrew phrasing there sounds nice and clean in our English translations. It’s kind of clunky and ambiguous in the Hebrew when it talks about the tree of life being in the middle of the garden. And as it reads in the English, Brent, it kind of sounds in the English like both trees are in the middle of the garden, right? There’s 2 trees, a tree of knowledge and the tree of life, and both of them are in the middle of the garden. Is that how it kind of sounds to you in English?

Brent: That is how I would assume yes.

Marty: Yeah. And yet in the Hebrew, it’s a little ambiguous. The tree of life is in the middle of the garden, but you don’t really know for sure, cleanly, directly, if the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is actually in the middle? Is it just the tree of life and the tree of knowledge?

There is some rabbinic conversation that swirls around. You know, part of the problem here is that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil wasn’t in the middle of the garden, but Adam and Eve had made it the middle of their garden, which is an interesting take on commentary.

I’ve since learned that you can even read the Hebrew to suggest that there’s not 2 different trees at all. There’s 1 tree, but that’s for another time. That’s a whole other conversation for another time. The Hebrew here is a little bit fuzzy, and it feels a little fuzzy on purpose. Maybe even a problem, we might say, but go ahead and keep us going.

Brent: Yeah, well, and I’ll just note for anyone who’s like, “What do you mean, ’rabbinic conversation’?”— or ‘“what do you mean, midrash or any of these other things that we’ll talk about?” If there’s a possibility in any way, in any imagination, it’s probably in there somewhere. So I would not suggest trying to go find this because you’re gonna get absolutely lost and bewildered. So we’ll get there, we’ll take you through that, but for now we’ll just say that the conversation has all sorts of possibilities.

Marty: Absolutely. Those sages and rabbis have found every little detail and talked about it for thousands of years. And we will get into some good juicy stuff in the next few episodes. Baby steps. Baby steps.

Brent: What’s the thing they say—if there’s 5 rabbis, you have 8 opinions or something like that?

Marty: Absolutely. That’s the joke I’ve always heard. If there’s 5 rabbis in a room, you’ve got 8 opinions. Like it’s, there’s just so many different ways of seeing something and the rabbis have found it.

Brent: Okay. “A river, watering the garden, flowed from Eden. From there it’s separated into four headwaters. The name of the first is the Pishon. It winds through the entire land of Havilah, where there is gold. The gold of that land is good. Aromatic resin and onyx are also there. The name of the second river is the Gihon. It winds through the entire land of Kush. The name of the third river is the Tigris. It runs along the east side of Asher. And the fourth river is the Euphrates.”

Marty: And that’s just a weird paragraph. I mean, we were talking about problems. That’s just—that’s just weird. It’s weird because of the way it talks about the rivers, but it’s also weird because if you know anything about the story, what does this paragraph have to do with anything, Brent? Is this paragraph going to be relevant at all directly to the Adam and Eve story?

Brent: I don’t think so.

Marty: And I know when I learned it in the past, it was always like, this is the historical veracity. Now I know that it was a real place, but actually when you look at it again in Hebrew—the description of these rivers is quite odd. One river, some rabbis say it actually is winding in a circle. It’s just flowing in like this endless circle. Some rivers have a lot of details, some don’t. It’s just an odd, the whole paragraph is just odd. It’s a problem to me. Why is this paragraph here and why is it the way that it is?

Brent: Yeah, I mean, maybe the Tigris and the Euphrates don’t get as much detail here because they’re more familiar too. I mean, I’ve heard of the Tigris and the Euphrates.

Marty: And if I remember right, we’re going to introduce people to one of our other teachers here on the BEMA team, Elle Grover Fricks. I believe she said that’s a pretty arbitrary—that’s not actually in the name itself, but the translators have just decided to associate those rivers with the Tigris and Euphrates, for some reason, but it’s probably not even directly there in the language itself. So, odd on all kinds of levels.

Brent: Indeed. Okay, back to the Text then. “The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden, but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it, you will certainly die.” The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.” Now, the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in sky, he brought them to the man to see what he would name them. And whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name.”

Marty: Right, so God puts man in the garden, gives him some instructions about what he can eat. And then we’re told that man is alone. It’s not good for humankind. At this point in the story, we should be really reading humankind. Adam’s name, Adam [misspoken as adamah in the episode, which means ground/earth], really just means man, and not a name. It just means mankind, humankind, is what that Hebrew expression literally refers to. It’s not good for humankind, Adam, to be alone. So I would expect the very next verse to be, if it’s not good for him to be alone, the next verse is going to be what, Brent?

Brent: So then he’s not alone.

Marty: He’s going to make his wife, but he doesn’t.

Brent: He’s gonna make a woman. Yeah.

Marty: All of a sudden there’s like this big parade of animals. Like I picture like the big parade at Disneyland or Disney World that comes on through and It’s not good for you to be alone. And so the next thing should be making his companion, but instead he gives them this project of naming the animals.

That feels weird. Like that’s just a weird way to tell the story. Why not skip to the part where he makes the companion? But there’s—for some reason the animals are here.

Brent: I’m thinking of the movie Aladdin, and it’s like, “Oh, it’s not good for Jasmine to be alone…”

Marty: (laughs) Yes, yes.

Brent: So we’re going to have this giant parade…

Marty: I love that, yes.

Brent: And you know, we only see the one, but I’m assuming every suitor who came to town had a similar parade of all of this show—and, you know, slightly different purpose, it’s not like they’re trying to get Jasmine hooked up with any of those animals—but it’s a big display.

Marty: Yep.

Brent: Now my mind is reeling with all these analogies and thoughts, but anyway, back to the Text.

“So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds in the sky and all the wild animals, but for Adam no suitable helper was found. So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep, and while he was sleeping he took one of the man’s ribs and then closed up the place with flesh.”

Marty: All right. So they look through all the animals and can’t find a helper suitable. They can’t find a companion for Adam. And so we’re told that God takes a rib, and the actual Hebrew term there means “round.” He takes a round.

And so at this point, in this particular creation story, it’s not good for humankind to be alone. God takes something away from Adam to make his companion. Ish and ishah, man and woman, is what the text is going to tell us. Ish and ishah, and even in that language, I feel like you can—I love saying it in the Hebrew because I feel like ish and ishah, they feel like they go together, like they’re parts, two parts of a single whole.

Like I can’t tell you how many times I have heard in Christian circles, “Well, you know, man was made, man, not woman, man was made in the image of God and woman was taken out of man.” But that’s not accurate at all in the Hebrew story here humanity was alone. And so God took humanity and took a complete humanity and made it into two things.

So that only together with ish and ishah do you have humanity, male and female, man and woman. When you put them together, you have humanity. And this is true about marriage, but this is bigger than marriage. This is about all of humanity. This is about humanity only being complete, no one gender, no one expression of humanity has all of humanity in it. We all have to have all the pieces of humanity to make humanity whole.

She is called in verse 18, the phrase there was a helper suitable. I have heard help mate. I have heard helpmeet. It’s a phrase in the Hebrew that’s ezer k’negdo. Ezer k’negdo. The ezer is a helper, a supporter, literally help or support. K’negdo can mean something that comes alongside of. It can mean something that parallels, But the word has a connotation and a usage to it that has, it comes against. Sometimes when the word k’negdo is used, it will be against. So this isn’t a, that’s what they’re trying to communicate when they translate “help meet,” because they’re trying to say these two things meet. They meet together. K’negdo, ezer k’negdo. She is the help.

Here’s another way to phrase it. Here’s how the rabbis talk about it. She is the help that opposes. She is the help that opposes. She supports the man by opposing him. So the rabbis explain this by talking about two planks. If you take two planks and rest them, and you stand them up resting against each other, if you were to take either plank away, they can’t stand. They can only stand because they stand opposed. It’s their opposing force that makes them whole.

Humanity has been broken up into ish and ishah, and only together is humanity able to find its healthy, full, whole expression. And so we usually talk about this in all of these ways that make her subservient. She is the submissive wife that is here to support her husband. She was taken from his side. And yet the Hebrew story here—as the ancient Jews understood it and heard it in the Hebrew language itself—she shares the other part of humanity. She opposes the husband and in her opposition, she supports him.

What does this look like in a healthy way? It looks like a wife that calls out the good in her husband when he’s going off the path that says, “That’s not who you truly are. That’s not who you are at your best. Let me call out the best parts of you. Let me let me fill in the gaps that you lack.”

That is a ezer k’negdo, the help that opposes. Only with male and female together do we ever have humanity in its fullness. Male or female alone can’t bear the entire image of God. Only all those genders together can be the full image of God. And that’s buried there in the Hebrew language. But go ahead and keep moving.

Brent: Well, and just on the idea of the opposition, I think you could say it’s not like it has to be this all-out war, like man is fighting all like just full on and then woman on in the complete opposite direction, just all out like total. It’s not necessarily like that.

Marty: It’s a supporting help.

Brent: They support each other.

Marty: Correct.

Brent: And maybe that force is greater at different times depending on what is going on. But it’s not like it’s not like a war. It’s not like opposition in like this negative sense. It is a supporting.

Marty: That’s correct, yep, it’s those two words together, it is support and it’s opposition. And when the opposition is no longer supportive, then it’s not the opposition we’re talking about. But if it’s just support with no pushback, no opposition, nothing holding it up, well, then that’s actually not a help. And so it’s this help that opposes, and it opposes in a way that’s helpful. Absolutely.

Brent: “Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man. The man said, “This is now bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman, for she was taken out of man. That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.”

Marty: And there’s a lot of what—is it the new NIV? I think you’re reading out of the new NIV, Brent. What is in the new NIV? Does it put it in parentheses, that last statement there?

Brent: It does not.

Marty: It does not. Now I think the old NIV used to, some translations will put it in parentheses. What they’re trying to do is they’re trying to capture this language shift. It might even be—potentially even a later addition by another author. It’s just not flowing in the typical voice of the narrator that we typically see. And so all of a sudden there’s almost like this parenthetical reflection. Like the author here is reflecting on marriage. Like the things that are being discussed have absolute relevance to marriage, but marriage is not the only, the sole application of this story.

This story is about something far wider and deeper than just the marriage union, especially a civil understanding of a marriage union today, or at any other point in history. It has deep relevance for the marriage relationship, as we were just talking about a moment ago, but it’s also true, it would be just as true for somebody who were single. It would be just as true for somebody who wasn’t married. this other part of humanity, which completes the image of Godness in us.

It’s not just for marriage. And yet the author does make this statement about like, this is why marriage is the way that it is. Like when you take these two and you bind them together in a covenantal union, boy, do you feel the tension—Boy, do you feel the k’negdo in the ezer in ways that you just don’t in other ways. So there’s almost like this parenthetical statement, but that seems to show up in this story. And I think we hear that and we make this story only about marriage. And we do that to our harm and our detriment. But give us the last verse here, Chapter 2.

Brent: Yeah, and one other thing, there’s a relatively new translation called the New English Translation. I think it’s online.

Marty: Yes.

Brent: There may be printed copies at this point, but generally I look at it as online because it just has an insane number of footnotes on stuff. And it mentions here on this statement that the Hebrew phrase al-khen introduces this. And that’s like why they think that it’s a parenthetical comment and whatever. There’s a textual reason why they call it a parenthetical or an editorial comment.

Marty: Yeah. Yep. The al-khen. Yep, absolutely. That’s a great point. And I’ve noticed that. So that’s a great note.

Brent: NET—sometimes great, sometimes bonkers—but there’s a lot of information there either way. Okay, finishing up this chapter. “Adam and his wife were both naked and they felt no shame.”

Marty: All right, there’s that last verse of Chapter 2. It feels like a weird, I don’t know, feels, feels, and I know we’re so used to this story. We’re like, no, it’s a big part of the story. We’re going to get to this in a moment. But I don’t know, it just feels like of all the details that you could point out of all the things, It just feels like an odd, I don’t know, unnecessary maybe? I don’t know. We’ll have to—we’ll have to see.

But that feels like of all the things you could say about humanity, I’m sure there’s lots of things about this new humanity that God has created. But the one thing the author wants to point out is that they’re naked. Okay. It seems interesting. We’ll put a pin in that.

Brent: I feel like it would be just as weird if it said they were both naked, period. It would not be as weird if he said they felt no shame, but then you’re like, well, why would they feel shame? So it’s like, “is their shame connected to the nakedness somehow?” But also why?

Marty: Ooh, yep.

Brent: So yeah, lots of questions.

Marty: Very good, yeah, very good. Yep, good problems there. Yeah, totally.

Brent: Into Chapter 3 then?

Marty: Yeah, I’m just gonna [let you] read for a while. Pay attention to all the different problems that we have here and we’ll go through these. Let’s just read Chapter 3.

Brent: “Now the servant was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say you must not eat from any tree in the garden?” The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say you must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it or you will die. You will not certainly die, the serpent said to the woman, for God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.

Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked. So they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves. Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?” He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked. So I hid.”

And He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?’ The man said, ‘The woman you put here with me, she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.’ Then the Lord God said to the woman, ‘What is this you have done?’ The woman said, ‘The serpent deceived me, and I ate it.’

So the Lord God said to the serpent, ‘Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and all wild animals. You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life. And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers. He will crush your head, and you will strike his heel. To the woman, he said, I will make your pains and childbearing very severe. With painful labor, you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.

To Adam, he said, because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, you must not eat from it. Cursed is the ground because of you. Through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken. For dust you are, and to dust you will return.”

Adam named his wife Eve, because she would become the mother of all the living. The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. And the Lord God said, ‘The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat and live forever.’

So the Lord God banished him from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword, flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.”

Marty: All right. Now there is, I mean, there are so many things as you were reading that I’m like, Oh, I’d love to talk about that. I’d love to talk about that. I’d love to talk about that. Let’s just focus—let’s start by just noticing the list of problems that we—what kind of problems do you have? Brent, I’ll let you start. There’s a number of them. Let’s start with maybe some of the more obvious ones that jump out to you.

Brent: I mean, pretty much from the beginning, you have this talking snake, which is not something I typically would see a snake doing.

Marty: It is one of the greatest problems in the story that we seem to, in our Christian reading, in our Christian world, just act like, “Ah, it’s just totally normal. Like this isn’t a problem at all.” Yeah, of course, snakes talk back then. It’s Satan, it’s the devil, it’s whatever. So we just like totally read over it.

One of the rabbis we’re going to talk a lot about in this journey and we’re going to learn a lot from is a rabbi that I’ve learned from. His name is Rabbi David Fohrman, and he’s not a follower of Jesus, but he has some just incredible teaching that I feel like works so well with a Jesus perspective for me on Torah.

And one of the things he talks about is—he talks about this thing he calls the lullaby effect. When we’ve heard a story so much that we just kind of slip into a trance, we get stuck in a rut as we read. It  just lulls us to sleep—the lullaby effect. And I’ll tell you, one of the things that jumps, we have a talking snake.

Not only that, but it seems, there’s only one other story I can think about in all of Scripture, Brent, where I have a talking animal. It’s Balaam’s donkey. And the whole point of that story is that donkeys aren’t supposed to talk. Like when the donkey talks, it gets everybody’s attention. In this story, it’s just like, “oh yeah, cool, talking snake.” And it just–in this story, it’s normal. That seems to be a problem. What else you’ve got?

Brent: There’s also her perspective on the tree.

Marty: Sure.

Brent: Seems to be a little bit–I don’t know, it’s not quite what we read before.

Marty: Yeah, sure. Yes, absolutely. There are absolutely key differences. First of all, she sees. How does she see some of this stuff? But you’re right. The first time we were told about the tree, we were told that it was pleasing to the eye and good for food.

She sees that, but it also adds a third thing. Do you remember what the third thing was that gets added? Pleasing to the eye, good for food, and...

Brent: And desirable for gaining wisdom.

Marty: Desirable for gaining wisdom. Very interesting. What other problems do you have?

Brent: There’s just like the general–there’s the continuing emphasis on nakedness.

Marty: Yes.

Brent: There’s like, God walking in the garden, which, you know, we always think of like “oh, that’s cool.” We–you know–Adam and Eve walked with God, like we think about that. But also, isn’t that weird, because we don’t really see that anywhere else. And I think we explain that away in all sorts of ways. But even the idea of the cool of the day. I’m like, well, that’s when I want to be walking like there’s nothing there’s nothing better to me than walking on a summer night where it’s been like 90 some degrees (Fahrenheit) and then I get out after you know my wife and the boys have gone to bed and I’m out there at like 10 p.m. it’s like you know high 60s low 70s and it’s just like that’s that’s a nice time to walk so I like that image but but also what does that mean in a Hebrew context?

Marty: Right. And there’s actually a lot of debate about what that means in the Hebrew phrasing. It actually says “the breeze,” the ruach. We’re talking about the idea of ruach in the last episode, the breeze of the day. Most translators, it seems, are of the opinion that at the end of the day when it does–like you’re talking about, you know–as it’s dusk and the sun is going down in that part of the world, that’s where the breeze seems to kind of blow at the end of the day. It may be juxtaposed to other things later on in the Bible.

Brent: Ah. Ah.

Marty: So I love that we would point those things out. I’ll tell you one of the problems that I have, Brent, is this tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but apparently it’s not the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, because she already has the knowledge of good and evil.

Brent: [laughs]

Marty: The snake talks to her about what she should or shouldn’t eat. And she knows, she tells the snake, “What’s right and what’s wrong. We can’t eat from the other trees. I can’t eat from this one.” She already has the knowledge of good and evil.

Not only that, but if it was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, like you wouldn’t be able to punish them justly until the second time they ate of the tree, because they didn’t possess the knowledge of good and evil the first time. It would have only been after they ate the fruit. And so you just–I mean, they didn’t possess the reason to be judged or punished until they eat from the tree a second time.

So whatever this tree is, it’s really not the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, at least as you read it. It’s a problem to me as I look at the story.

Brent: I was thinking about that as I was reading through the Genesis 2 portion, when God is talking to Adam, He says, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden.” And I’m like, “Well, what if Adam stopped listening right there?”

Marty: Sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Totally. Yeah.

Brent: Because then it says, “But you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” You know, clearly Eve here, at the beginning of [Chapter] 3, she does know.

Marty: And she wasn’t there at the beginning. Now, unless we say she was kind of there like both Adam and Eve were together in humanity when they were given that command. But there’s all kinds of rabbinic discussion.

How did she know what she was supposed to do? Adam must have told her. In fact, when she talks to the snake, we have another problem because she tells the snake, “I can’t even touch it.” Is that a part of the command that God gave?

Brent: No.

Marty: And so the rabbis say, well, that must have come from Adam, or maybe them together or whatever. They had added a fence around God’s law. God said, don’t eat it. And they decided, well, we’re not even going to touch it.

Now, one side of rabbinical conversation says they shouldn’t have made it more difficult because it actually didn’t work. Another side of Jewish conversation says, yeah, if they wouldn’t have touched it, they never would have eaten up, but they should have followed their own rules.

Brent: Yeah.

Marty: So, but it is interesting, they have built some sense of whether it’s coming from Adam, whether he’s told her that, or whether they’ve decided it together as a pact, they’ve added to the original. So that’s interesting.

Brent: The Edenic Talmud.

Marty: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yep.

Brent: The original fence around the fence.

Marty: I love that. Absolutely. That will make even more sense later in our study.

Brent: Yeah.

Marty: Brent, you’ve pointed this out to me before. You pointed out that the serpent says you’ll become like God, but the whole point of the story is that they have, they are like God, even in the other creation.

Brent: They’re made in the image. Yeah.

Marty: Yeah. Yeah. They’re already like God. So what is that all about? I have a problem with, who’s actually lying? God kind of tells a fuzzy truth, and please don’t mishear me.

Brent: Can you say that about God? Is that okay?

Marty: I don’t know–I was just about ready to say, the first time we did this podcast, a lot of people misheard what I’m saying right here. It’s a problem in the story, like a literary device. Because if I had—just imagine—one person says, “If you eat from the tree, you’re going to die.” And another person says, “You’re not going to die.” And then you eat from the tree and what happens immediately, Brent?

Brent: You don’t die

Marty: They don’t die.

Brent: *Chuckle*

Marty: And you go and you’re like, “Hey, I thought you said I was going to die.” And God’s like, “Oh, what I really mean is like years from now.”

Brent: Yeah.

Marty: If I had two kids and they both told me opposite things, and then one of them was wrong and they’re like, “Oh, but I actually meant–you know, I meant something else.”

Brent: *Chuckle*

Marty: That would be–it seems here–like God’s the one telling a fuzzy truth.

Brent: Yeah.

Marty: And it seems like, and I’m not saying somehow everybody–some people heard me say that I called God a liar in this episode. I’m just saying, as I listened to the story, I’m trying to find problems. Like what is really going on here? ‘Cause if I just read this on the surface, it doesn’t work as cleanly as I think we’ve gotten used to hearing it. The serpent on the other hand, doesn’t really lie much at all. Not directly.

There’s lots of deceiving that’s going to go on, but the serpent’s not directly lying. And I’m not saying that God is either, but there’s a lot of fuzzy half truths going on right here. And by the way, one last bone I have to pick, what kind of God sets this whole scenario up–this whole thing kind of feels scandalous, doesn’t it? We’re only, we’re in episode 2, Brent, and we’ve been told not to do this with the Bible.

Brent: Yeah.

Marty: We’ve been told, don’t ask these questions. But I’m telling you, for the Eastern people who wrote this story, this is the point. This is what you’re supposed to do. What kind of a God, and I know we’ve all thought this before.

We just thought we couldn’t ask it. What kind of a God sets this whole scenario up to begin with? Like what kind of a God sets up a garden where there’s a tree that you can’t eat from, and in the middle or it’s somewhere else.

But it would be like me taking my–when my son was little, I remember my son Ezekiel, he had this fascination with swords, knives, all things that had a blade. What if I would have taken my three-year-old son, I would have put a knife block, I would have taken the knife block out of my kitchen, set it down in the middle of the living room, said, “Son, I’m going to be back. I’m going to come back once a day. We’ll walk in the cool of the day Like what kind of a parent–I would be sent to jail for negligence. What kind of a parent would do that?

Brent: [laughs]

Marty: Like what kind of a God? This story does not logically work cleanly. This story must be trying to tell me something.

And so very similar to the last episode, Brent, we looked at the story. We’re like, “it doesn’t work. It doesn’t make sense. This doesn’t work with this. This doesn’t work with that. There’s problems. There’s problems.”

So I just keep looking at the story. I keep looking at it. This story, it starts with mankind being alone. The story ends with mankind. Essentially, he still has his companion–Eve is still with him, but they’re banished from the garden. So they end, starts the story alone, kind of ends the story alone. The story starts with him naming woman. You remember when he said, this is, I will call her woman, ish and ishah, because she is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. At the end of the story, he does what, Brent?

Brent: Gave her a name.

Marty: It seemed weird because you’re like, “you already did that.” He gives her a name. At the beginning of the story, the snake was introduced to us. And then at the end of the story, the snake is cursed. I feel like I’m saying a lot of “at the beginning and at the end”, “at the beginning and at the end”. And when I say that, Brent, what have we learned? This feels like a chiasm. And this one is kind of–it’s a little bit more. It’s a little bit easier to see for all of our people that might be new to this journey, because you can see the pieces that I just pointed out. The loneliness, the naming, how it sits at the front and the back, the snake. When you trace it and you go all the way to the middle, the middle statement of the chiasm is this, “The eyes of both of them were opened and they realized they were naked.” And there’s that theme yet again. It sits at the center of the chiasm and we’ve already noticed it, Brent, as an awkward problem. Story is awkwardly about nakedness?

Brent: Yeah, considering how much it’s talking about nakedness, it’s not really a surprise that nakedness ends up being at the center because it’s everywhere in the story.

Marty: It’s everywhere. We’re told about man and woman, and then we’re told of all the things we could be told about, then we’re told that they’re naked. And then they eat from the tree, and the first thing they notice of all the things that can happen when they eat from the tree, it’s kind of anticlimactic because you’re like, “Uh-oh, they just ate from the tree.” And the one thing that like, like the music is swelling, what’s going to happen? And of all the things we’re told is they realize that they’re naked.

Brent: Yes.

Marty: And then God shows up and he’s like, “Where are you?” And Adam, of all the things he could tell God, like, “I’ve screwed up. I’ve eaten from the tree.” Guilt, shame, of all the things Adam wants to tell God, “I realized I was naked. I hid from you because I was naked.”

And then God, of all the things that God could respond with, because God should respond with, “Did you eat from the tree?” Forget about nakedness. There’s a million other things, but God responds with, “Who told you you were naked?”

This whole story is so awkwardly about nakedness and we kind of don’t realize it because we’ve just read this story so much, but this story is awkwardly about nakedness. And when we notice that, if we would hear it in the original language, it would help. This is not fair to us in English, because we can’t see what the original people who heard this story or read this story heard.

Because in the Hebrew, there’s a play on words. The word for naked is arowm. The word for nakedness is erowm. And the word for crafty and shrewd is aruwm.

Brent: Can you say those three one more time Marty?

Marty: Yes.

Brent: Maybe a little more enunciation for us.

Marty: Arowm is naked. You might translate it A-R-O-W-M, arowm. And then nakedness, erowm, E-R-O-W-M. So those are close. You would expect them to be close. Arowm and erowm. But then there’s eruwm, E-R-U-W-M, you might translate it. That is the word for crafty and shrewd. And we were told, were we introduced to somebody who was eruwm? We’ve been introduced to people that are arowm. We’ve been told about their arowm. And now we’ve been introduced to somebody who is eruwm. Who is eruwm?

Brent: That’s the serpent.

Marty: The serpent. See we don’t hear it in the English, but you would have heard it in the Hebrew. You almost would have had to have done what you did to me just a moment ago. Can you enunciate that? Can you say, wait a minute, did you just say the serpent was naked or crafty? Are Adam and Eve crafty or naked?

The story is working really hard to make it difficult to distinguish between the snake and humanity. Because the snake is talking. We’ve noticed that problem already. The snake is reasoning.

See, if you were to ask somebody, like, “What does it mean to be human?” They might say, “Well, we have the ability to reason.” But not in the Genesis story. The snake is reasoning. He’s engaging in a very reasonable conversation. We might say, “Oh, it means to be able to communicate.” No, not in the Genesis story, the snake is communicating.

Well, it means, to be human means that we can relate to people in a unique way. But the snake seems to be just easily relating to people. In fact, there’s a Jewish commentary that talks about the snake’s trying to weasel his way into the relationship between Adam and Eve.

By the way, the snake is walking. And you’re like, “No, the snake’s not walking. “The snake is a snake.” And yet, what was the curse at the end of the story? That the snake would what?

Brent: You’ll crawl on your belly.

Marty: So apparently he wasn’t crawling on his belly in the story. At the beginning of this story, the snake, when we’re introduced to the snake, looks very, very, very human. And yet the story is very clear that the snake is not a human. The snake is a beast. But we’ve already seen this. We have already seen that this story is making a thing. This story has already brought up the relationship between humanity and beasts. When Adam was alone, we expected God to make woman, but instead he did what, Brent?

Brent: He paraded all the animals in front of him.

Marty: And no helper was found. Because why? Because Adam is not a beast. Humanity is not a beast. And yet this story is begging the question, why? So in biblical language, Brent, why would we say that—what would we say is a defining mark of humanity? Biblically speaking, as we’ve heard in the story now twice, humans are humans because they are what?

Brent: Created in the image of God.

Marty: They’re created in the image of God. But what does that mean? If being made in the image of God doesn’t mean that we’re talking or reasoning or relating or walking.

Rabbi Fohrman has this great—we already mentioned his name before—he has this great teaching. And he says, “The best way to understand this would be to put the emphasis of the snake’s question in a different place than we’re used to.” When the snake says to Eve, “Did God really say you cannot eat from any tree of the garden?” We often put a particular emphasis on, “Did God really say you couldn’t eat from any tree of the garden?” We’ll put the emphasis all over that sentence.

He says, “Rabbinically, the emphasis should lie with this. Did God really say, did God really say you can’t eat from any tree of the garden? Did God really say that? I’ve thought of this metaphor. It’s like if I were to have, if I were to go out and I were to talk to somebody tomorrow night, and they were saying, “Oh, hey, I talked to Brent last night. I talked to Brent last night and he said that your recording the other day just went really—like you did a really bad job on the recording.”

And I might say to him, “Did Brent really say that? Did he really say that?” And when I put the emphasis on that idea, what am I trying to communicate when I phrase the question that way? Brent, what do you hear?

Brent: Almost like you can’t believe it or there’s no way I would say that because it’s not even true.

Marty: Yeah, exactly. I was there. Why would Brent say that? The recording went fine. Did Brent really say that? There’s no way. There’s no way that God would say that. The serpent is saying, he would never ask you to not eat it. Just look at the tree. Look at the tree. It’s good for food. It’s pleasing to the eye. And it’s desirable, desirable for gaining wisdom. God would never build a garden and put you in it and make a tree like this and not expect you—and this is what separates humanity from beasts.

You see, a beast always acts, an animal is always going to act on its desires. If I were to walk out into the woods here tonight and I were to see a deer, the one thing I’m never going to see a deer do if a deer is hungry is think to itself, you know what? I could shed a few pounds if I just went without tonight. A deer doesn’t do that. An animal doesn’t do that. If an animal is hungry, an animal what, Brent?

Brent: They eat.

Marty: They eat. If an animal, if it’s mating season, an animal mates. Because an animal acts on their desires. It’s what it means to be a beast. But we—humanity—we are not beasts. We are made in the image of God. We are more than beasts. And we’ve already met this God in the last story.

This God will be called later, Fohrman talks about how this God that we met is often called El Shaddai. And El Shaddai is a really weird name for God. There’s all kinds of things that could mean in the Hebrew. Scholars argue about what the word means, but rabbinically, in the Talmud, the Rabbis said, you know what El Shaddai means?

If we treat El Shaddai, essentially, we might say an acronym. Then the word, the name El Shaddai, means the God who knows when to say enough. That’s what the Talmud says. El Shaddai means the God who knows when to say enough. Is that what it literally means when it’s translated? Not, no, not easily—but it’s what the Jewish Rabbis said. That’s what we hear when we hear the name El Shaddai, the God who knows when to say enough.

By the way, if you want to hear somebody talk about this, you can get the book, The Exodus You Almost Passed Over by Rabbi Fohrman. It’s going to talk about the Exodus. That’s a little bit ahead of us, but there’s a section in part three of that book, which is my favorite presentation of what the Talmud teaches about this.

We met this God last week—the God who knows when to say enough. We met them last week in last week’s episode, Brent. Do you remember us talking about the sculptor?

Brent: Yeah, right.

Marty: And we said a sculptor, an artist, has to know when to what?

Brent: When to stop.

Marty: When to stop.

Brent: Because if you chisel too much away, you don’t have the artwork anymore.

Marty: Yeah, you’ve told me before, like you’ve seen the Michelangelo—not the—the David by Michelangelo is what I’m trying to say. You’ve seen that sculpture, right?

Brent: Yeah, and like the defining characteristic of it is how large the hands and feet are on the statue.

Marty: Which means Michelangelo knew when to stop. Because your gut would be, I just got to make those a little bit smaller, just chisel a little bit more. And then the whole thing would not be what it is today. He had to know when to stop. God was a God who knew when to stop creating. God knew when to say enough.

Rabbi Fohrman makes this point too. You know, cancer is destructive because it doesn’t stop creating. Like the reason we can’t cure cancer is because it’s not a static—it’s a neverending creative process. Cancer just keeps creating and creating and creating and creating, and it’s that neverending creating that makes cancer so destructive. Ongoing creation with no ability of saying enough is destructive. We are made in the image of a God who knows when to stop.

He invites us to be like him. What is he like? He’s a God who knows when to say enough. What was the added component that Eve saw in the tree, Brent? It was good for food. It was pleasing to the eye, and it was what?

Brent: Desirable for gaining wisdom.

Marty: The added element was desire. I first heard Fohrman teach on this in an old lecture series he had. It was called “Serpents of Desire,” and I can’t find it online anymore. But this whole idea of desire being the defining moment of the Adam and Eve story. What does it mean to be made in the image of God?

It means that we know how to say enough. We know how to harness our creative desires for greater good. We know how to harness our creative desires for greater good. Brent, what are some of the things that you see?

Brent: Yeah, so I think of what we talked about with the ruach being breath, wind, and spirit, and all of those ideas being tangled up. So God forms Adam and then breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. And I mean, just all the different permutations of how you could even translate that sentence.

Marty: Yep.

Brent: But if we’re thinking of like the Spirit of God, the breath of God, the Spirit of God, and like the fruit of the Spirit, one of those, and I think one that we talk about a lot, is self-control.

Marty: Absolutely. I love that. I love that concept, that part of having this image of Godness in us, the breath of God in us, is living by the breath, living by the Spirit. And part of the fruit of that is self-control—knowing when to say enough.

Just a couple things that come to mind as well for me. I find it interesting when Adam names his companion, the first time he names her woman, which is who she is. She is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. The second time he names her, after what we might call the fall, he names her based on what she can do and produce. Her name is Havah, because she is the mother of all the living.

So on the front end of the story, it’s about who she is. On the back end of the story, it’s about what she can do. And we talked last episode about the invitation to realize that you are a human being, not a human doing. So we can see how the story can easily fall apart.

And then God calls. He comes to the garden. He calls out and he says, “Where are you?” And Fohrman will talk as well, and we’ll give a book recommendation in the next episode for this. God calls out and he says, “Where are you?” There can be two different expressions for where in the Hebrew. There’s where, like where in terms of location. Like I can walk into a room and go, “Where are my keys? Where are my keys? I don’t know where my keys are. Where are...” And I’m asking a question about location.

Or I can walk into a room, I can stare down at the counter and go, “Where are my keys?” One means, what’s the location of my keys? The other one says, my keys are missing because my keys are supposed to be right here. Those are two different “wheres” in the Hebrew.

And what God says to Adam and Eve is the second one. Not “Where are you?” He’s not asking where they are, like he doesn’t know. He’s saying, “You’re supposed to be here. We’re supposed to be walking in the garden. Where are you? You’re missing.” And I love that, because what he ends up hearing is that you’re naked. And then he says, “Who told you that you were naked?”

Which—I love this! Like there’s a teaching from Skip Moen that I heard years and years ago that deeply shaped this section of verses for me. Like why is this all of a sudden a problem? We’ve been told the whole time they’re naked. We’ve been talking about how nakedness is such an awkward part of the story. Why is this? It wasn’t a problem before. You were naked and you were fine because I made you naked and I loved you and you were beloved and everything was good. Why is your nakedness all of a sudden a bad thing? It wasn’t a bad thing a moment ago. Who have you been listening to?

“What other voices?” is what Skip Moen said. This question begs the question, “What other voices have you been listening to?” We walk around, I think, you and I, Brent—and you pointed out shame earlier. They were naked and without shame. We walk around with so much shame. And I think part of what we’re learning here as we read the story in a new way is maybe to re-listen to this story. Who else have we been listening to?

I made you good, God said, and you are beloved. So why are you ashamed of who you are? Why are you ashamed of the very person that I made and I love and I called “good”? Those are just some of the things that I see as I wrap up our thoughts for this episode.

Brent: Yeah, even going back to that comment you made about like, who’s telling truth here? Like the serpent says, God knows that when you eat from it, your eyes will be open. And then what do they do? They ate from it and it says their eyes were opened. But what was the result of their eyes being open? It was the realization of their nakedness. So it always comes back to the nakedness idea.

Marty: Absolutely.

Brent: But speaking of that, also weird thing is they realized they were naked and they sewed fig leaves and made coverings for themselves. But then later on, God makes them coverings. So what happened to their own coverings in the meantime?

Marty: Yeah, which I love—and I don’t necessarily even know what to do between the two. What I do find interesting is that the coverings don’t materially remove their shame. Like their shame isn’t attached to their material physical nakedness. Their nakedness has caused them shame that somehow—and yet what I love about that is God doesn’t sit there and argue with them in the garden.

He doesn’t go, “No, no, no, you shouldn’t be ashamed. No, no, no, you shouldn’t be ashamed. We’re not going to move on until you decide you’re not ashamed.” God meets them in their shame, clothes them, has this benevolent act of compassion, and says, “I see you in your shame. I’m going to meet you here, and I’m going to love you through this.” And I do love that observation as well.

Brent: And there’s just all sorts of other details to explore. And so as we close this episode, I would just encourage you—I mean, I have probably half a dozen things that I’ve noticed and want to talk about, but at some point we have to stop.

So we’re going to stop here, but we hope that you are discussing this with other people, whether you’re getting together with a friend or two, or if you’re forming a whole discussion group, whatever it is, like get together and look at this stuff. Because if you really just get together with a group and spend time in this, somebody is going to be like, “Okay, but the tree was supposed to be here, but then it talks about it being here. And then Eve says this, and God says this.”

Like there’s all sorts of things that you can look at together. And when you do that in a group, you’re going to find so much stuff and you’re going to—I mean, maybe you’ll probably come up with even more questions than when you started with, which is kind of the beauty of it. When we explore these things together, we find the good stuff and we grow together. So I’d encourage people to do that.

Marty: Yeah, absolutely. Love it.

Brent: So if you want to form a group or if you want to find a group, you can go to bemadiscipleship.com. We have a Groups page there. There’s a map. There are lots of groups already. Maybe the group’s already way far into the podcast and you’re like, I’d rather start my own group.

You can use the Contact page and get in touch. We’ll get you on the map. We have a brief guide there. It’s super simple. It doesn’t have to be complicated to start a group. Don’t make it a big burden. Just get together with people and read the Text together and talk about it and wrestle through these problems and these questions. That’s what it’s all about. It shouldn’t be this big burden.

So whatever it takes, get together with people and dig into God’s Word together. But all of that is on the website at www.bemadiscipleship.com. So thanks for joining us on the BEMA Podcast this week. We’ll talk to you again soon.

Dallas: Hi, I’m Dallas, a BEMA listener in Wollongong, Australia. Here’s the prayer from Episode 2’s Companion:

Father God, thank you for being the God who walks with us in the cool of the day and teaches us to trust that your word is enough. For being the God who meets us where we’re at, clothes us, and calls us very good. May we carry this with us and see this goodness in others, each and every day. Amen.