The First Sunday of Lent, Year A
Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7; Psalm
32; Romans 5:12-19; Matthew 4:1-11
Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7
15The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of
Eden to till it and keep it. 16And the LORD God commanded the man,
“You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; 17but of the tree
of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you
eat of it you shall die.”
Genesis
3:1-7
Expulsion
from the Garden
1 Now the serpent[i]
was more crafty[ii] than
any other wild animal[iii]
that the LORD God[iv] had
made. He said to the woman, “Did God say, ‘You shall not eat from any tree[v]
in the garden’?”
2The
woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden;
3but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is
in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it,[vi]
or you shall die.’”[vii]
4But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not die; 5for
God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be
like God,[viii]
knowing good and evil.” 6So when the woman saw that the tree was
good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to
be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave
some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate. 7Then the eyes of
both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves
together and made loincloths for themselves.
Comments
on Genesis
2:15-17
This is the second creation story, the one written
by “J” (the Yahwist, so creatively named because he refers to God as “Yahweh,”
and in German, “Yahweh” is spelled with a “J”). The story as a whole begins at
2:4b, with the creation of “man” ('âdâm)
and ends at 3:24, when they are driven out of the garden. The Yahwist is
generally considered the oldest and most poetic author of the Pentateuch.
Compare the dry chronology of Genesis 1 with the lyrical narrative nature of
Genesis 2, and you’ll get it.
The garden of Eden story recounts the beginning of
human life and culture as well as the first human transgression and its
punishment. It understands reality as the condition of exile from a prior
existence of a perfection of relationship with God, self and world. The fall
from this relationship (“The transition from essential oneness to existential
estrangement,” Tillich) is portrayed by J as the cause or origin of self-awareness,
or perhaps even awareness itself. The story lays the ground work, by 3:24 for
the beginnings of civilization.
It also lays the foundations for understanding what
it means to be human. As such, two important parts of the story are missing
from the reading as we have it in the lectionary. They are, first he relationship
of “the Man” with God in the garden, and the second is the relationship he has
with the woman. He was created by the breath of God (2:7) and was placed in a
garden filled with “every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food”
(2:9). He is directed to till the garden, not out of punishment, but because
that is what human beings are created to do. It is one of two things here that
makes them human. The other is free choice. Human beings have the power to choose
between good and evil. “You may eat of every tree in the garden; but of the
tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that
you eat of it you shall die” (2:16b-17). The sin of the lectionary passage can
only be understood against the backdrop of the choice they made which was a
violation of this command.
His relationship to the woman is what it means to be
human. The man is functional in the garden, but he is lonely. “It is not good
that the man should be alone,” says Yahweh (2:18). So God creates and then
parades all manner of beasts before the man for his approval and naming, “but
for the man there was not found a helper as his partner” (2:20). So God puts
him asleep, steals a bone, creates a woman, pushes her in front of the man, and
the man says “at last” (2:23).
A major message of this part of the story is that
community, even if only with one other, is critical for creatures to be humans.
They are complete now because they have become “one flesh.”
Note that most names in Hebrew (and in many other
western languages) construct the nouns for male and female of a species from
different forms of the same word. An exception are the words adam (“man”) and
eve (“woman”). When he finally comes to her symbolically he changes his name to
‘ish, a different word for man, who
is the “one flesh” partner of ‘ishshâh ,
woman. Now they are the male and female forms of the same creation.
With chapter three comes the serpent. Note that the
serpent does not have a separate origin, but was also created by God. He is “the
most crafty” of all creatures and challenges God’s truth and rule within the
garden. He accuses God of lying about killing them if they disobey and eat of
the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and asserts that God prevents them
from eating the fruit only to maintain control, so that they will not be “like
God, knowing good and evil” (3:5). She accepts his truth over that of God’s and
tries the fruit. She likes it, shares it with her husband and they both have
their eyes opened, never to be closed again.
They do gain knowledge in the sense of losing
their “dreaming innocence” (Tillich, again). They know they are naked (shame,
v. 7), they know fear (of God, v. 8), they know estrangement (from themselves,
the world, and God, v. 12-13). Their punishment, the result of their learning
to distinguish between good and evil, is that they are forced to give birth and
farm the land in brokenness rather than harmony. And, perhaps the feature which
will come to most define them as creatures and not the Creator, they may no
longer have access to eternal life: “‘See, the man has become like one of us,
knowing good and evil; and now he might reach out his hand and take also from
the tree of life, and eat, and live forever’ therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden
of Eden” (vv. 22-23).
[i] The serpent is reminiscent
of the snake who steals from Gilgamesh a plant conferring immortality in the
Mesopotamian epic (Epic of Gilgamesh 11.287-89).
[ii] “More Crafty” “In Hebrew, a
wordplay on ‘naked’ in 2:25.” (HCSB). The Hebrew word, arum has both meanings.
[vi] “Nor shall you touch it” A
slight exaggeration of what God had said (2:16-17). Was it on purpose?
[vii] “You shall not die” Directly
contradicting God in 2:16. In actual fact, the serpent is not lying. They won’t
die. But the serpent “tailors the truth to incite envy.” HCSB. He accuses God of lying about killing
them if they disobey and eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and
asserts that God prevents them from eating the fruit only to maintain control,
so that they will not be “like God, knowing good and evil” (3:5).
[viii] “like God”: The Septuagint
translation has divine beings. They may be of the heavenly court. See
also “us” and “our” in v. 22; 1:26; 11:7;
Isaiah 6:8.
See also 1 Kings 22:19
and Job 1:6.
The singular form in Hebrew, Elohim, is an ordinary name for God; in the
plural, it means divine beings. The singular and plural forms of the
word are the same. [NOAB]
Matthew 4:1-11
4Then Jesus was led up[1]
by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.[2]
2He fasted forty days and forty nights,[3]
and afterwards he was famished.
3The tempter [4]came
and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become
loaves of bread.”
4But he answered, “It is written,
‘One[5] does not live by bread
alone,
but
by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”[6]
5Then
the devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the
temple, 6saying to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself
down; for it is written,
‘He will command his angels concerning
you,’
and ‘On their hands they will bear
you up,
so that you will not dash your foot against
a stone.’”[7]
7Jesus
said to him, “Again it is written, ‘Do not put the Lord
your God to the test.’”[8]
8Again,
the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of
the world and their splendor; 9and he said to him, “All these I will
give you, if you will fall down and worship me.”
10Jesus said to him, “Away with you, Satan! for it is written,
‘Worship the Lord your God,
and
serve only him.’”[9]
11Then
the devil left him, and suddenly angels came and waited on him.
Comments on
Matthew 4:1-11
Here we go again.
Every year at this time the temptation story in one of the three Synoptics is
retold. Some of us who measure our ordination anniversaries in decades can
understandably grow weary, but it’s inevitable.
Some of the
more commonly made observations about the passage are the following:
(1) Mark’s version is brief,
Matthew and Luke’s are lengthy, and they are very similar to one another,
leading scholars to believe that they both departed from following Mark and
inserted a version they found in “Q.”[10]
(2) In the placement of the story
in the overall Gospel, Matthew more nearly follows Mark’s order than does Luke.
Matthew and Mark have the temptation follow Jesus’ baptism, while Luke
interrupts with the genealogy (3:23-38).
(3) Matthew lists the three temptations
in a different order than Luke, helping hundreds of scholars over the ages to
receive endowed chairs at prestigious schools of Theology for trying to figure
out why.
Here are some
observations related to our version in Matthew:
(1) In the Hebrew scriptures, it is
usually God who is the source of both good and evil, weal and woe, and capable
of enticing one to temptation. Even though in later Judaism, Satan came
increasingly to replace God as the source of temptation, there never evolved a
sense that Satan was equal to, or independent of God. God was always portrayed
as retaining the right to tempt. “Lead us not into temptation,” says Matthew
6:13. And in this passage “Jesus was led
up by the Spirit into the wilderness to
be tempted by the devil” (Matthew 4:1, italics added). (Note that Luke does
not portray the spirit as driving him “to be tempted”.)
(2) The idea of trying to fit Jesus
into the typology of a second Moses is found most prominently in Matthew. To
Matthew, Jesus is the fulfillment of the prophesy to Moses in Deuteronomy
18:18, “I will raise up for them a prophet like you (Moses) from among their
own people; I will put my words in the mouth of the prophet, who shall speak to
them everything that I command. Anyone who does not heed the words that the
prophet shall speak in my name, I myself will hold accountable. (It should be
said, that both Islam and Christianity claim their particular leader is this
prophet.)
The two most
obvious examples of Matthew’s parallels between Jesus and Moses are these:
(1) Jesus’ forty days in the
wilderness and Israel’s forty years in the wilderness. For the Hebrew people
that experience was a time of great tempting, where people were taught to live “not
by bread alone” (Deuteronomy 8:2-3).
(2) Moses was taken to the top of a
high mountain for forty days and nights (Exodus 34:28, 24:18), during which
time he did not eat or drink. (Recall the Moses/Jesus parallels from last week
when both were on a high mountain with God in the midst of clouds etc.)
New Testament
scholar, Helmut Koester, argues that “Q” expanded an historic notion of Jesus
being tempted into a Haggadah (an
interpretation for ethical instruction) in the form of a narrative, as opposed
to a Halaka, (an interpretation with
rules for conduct).
This notion that
it was originally created as an ethical frame, rather than a rule of conduct
protects us from the three most common interpretations of the story:
(1) The historicizing understanding
which sees in this text a report of Jesus’ temptation to become a political
Messiah.
(2) The psychological
interpretation which speaks about the struggle of Jesus with respect to the
question whether or not he should assume the exercise of divine power.
(3) The dogmatic theologian’s
interest that wants to use this narrative as evidence that Jesus subordinated
his own actions under God’s will.[11]
As a Haggada,
the story is used to teach the faithful about those temptations which beset us
all. It’s interest is ethics: the relationship between our self’s will to power
and the will of God.
There is more
on that that one could say, but it is late and you guys are not worth the
trouble.
[1]
“Led up” (ἀνάγω anágō) Fut. anáxō, 2d aor. anēgagon, aor. pass. anēchthēn
with mid. sense, from aná, up, again,
or away, and ágō, to Led bring or
lead. To bring, lead, carry, or take up (Luk_2:22; Luk_4:5; Luk_22:26;
Act_7:41). “Though he
is tempted by the devil, he is ‘led up’ by the Spirit to this encounter with so
much at stake. Mark’s account is even stronger; the Spirit ‘drove’ (ekballei—the
verb used for Jesus’ own driving out demons; Matt. 8:31; 12:27) Jesus into the
wilderness.” (Roger Van Harn, The Lectionary Commentary: Theological
Exegesis for Sunday's Texts, 19, Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2001).
[2] “The Devil” (τοῦ διαβόλου)
“The word means calumniator, slanderer. It
is sometimes applied to men, as to Judas (Joh_6:70); in 1Ti_3:11 (slanderers);
and in 2Ti_3:3, and Tit_2:3 (false accusers). In such
cases never with the article. The Devil, Satan, the god of this world (ὁ διάβολος), is always with the article and never plural. (Vincent, Word Studies)
[3] “He fasted.” Because fasting makes the
temptations more severe?
[4] “The tempter” (πειράζω peirazō) The present participle of peirazo, "to tempt," preceded by the article, lit.,
"the (one) tempting," is used as a noun. The descriptive term for Satan. In the NT, used only here
and 1 Thess. 3:5.
[5] “One” Or “a person” (ὁ ἄνθρωπος ho anthrōpo). The term is rendered “man” in the kjv and in more conservative
translations, but in Greek is meant generically for humanity.
[6] Deuteronomy
8:3: “He humbled you by letting you hunger, then by feeding you with manna,
with which neither you nor your ancestors were acquainted, in order to make you
understand that one does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes
from the mouth of the Lord.”
[7] Psalm
91:10-12: “Because you have made the Lord
your refuge, the Most High your dwelling place, no evil shall befall
you, no scourge come near your tent. For he will command his angels concerning
you to guard you in all your ways. On their hands they will bear you up, so
that you will not dash your foot against a stone.”
[8] Deuteronomy
6:16: “…because the Lord your God,
who is present with you, is a jealous God. The anger of the Lord your God would be kindled against
you and he would destroy you from the face of the earth. Do not put the Lord your God to the test, as you tested
him at Massah.”
[9] Deuteronomy
6:13: “The Lord your God you shall
fear; him you shall serve, and by his name alone you shall swear.”
[10] Matthew and Luke are assumed
by most scholars to have derive a good chunk of their gospel from an earlier
(non-Markan) source, which they call “Q.” The name comes from the fact that the
Germans at the beginning of the last century called it simply the “Source,” and
Source in German is quelle, and “Q”
is the abbreviation for that.
[11] Helmut Koester,
Proclamation: Lent, Series A (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1974), p. 14.
