Tuesday, September 24, 2024

Ronald Hendel on Genesis 2:7

  

The creation of hā’adām explicitly associates him with hā’ādāmā (“the soil,” as with his “absence” in 2:5). The repetitions of these words create a Leitwort effect in the story. The words echo each other (and are probably etymologically related by the root ‘dm, which has a basic meaning of “red,” although this is not significant in the narrative). From this likeness comes many aspects of human nature. The most tangible sense is that humans are physical creatures, made of soil. This earthy, fleshy quality of humans distinguishes them from Yahweh, who is a nonmaterial being, dwelling in heaven (e.g., 11:5, “Yahweh came down to see the city and the tower”). By Yahweh forming the human from the earth’s soil, he defines humans as categorially different from gods. This difference—and the human desire to overcome it—is the focal point for the transgression, transformation, and punishment in the story.

 

The resolution of this crisis in the finitude of life outside of Eden is foreshadowed in the human’s earth nature, as Yahweh God articulates in his judgment, “You are dust, and to dust you shall return” (3:19). This earth’s soil is the human’s origins and destiny. The woman is included in this destiny, since she is implied in the concept of hā’adām, both because of the word’s collective meaning and because of her origins as “bone from my bones and flesh from my flesh” (2:23). All humans must die. Further, the man must work the soil in pain, by the sweat of his brow (3:17-19). Once again, hā’adām oscillates between its collective and its singular (and gendered) meanings. In the complex relationship between hā’adām and hā’ādāmā , we see a philosophy of life is the ancient agricultural society, a painful realism in its understanding of human origins and destiny. (Ronald Hendel, Genesis 1-11: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary [AYB 1A; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2024], 160-61)

 

 

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