Covenant Series: Adamic Covenant

The Adamic Covenant is probably the most unfortunate one of all. In Genesis 3:14-24, God cursed the earth, the snake and the labor of women for Adam and Eve’s disobedience. In this covenant there is the understanding that mankind will continue to sin, and therefore God will make their existence toilsome. It seems strange to include this as a covenant, when really it is the consequences of breaking the Edenic Covenant, but ultimately it is a promise from God regarding his relationship between himself and human kind.

Genesis 3:14-15 details the curse of the snake: he will always be the most cursed creature of all creation; he will always be the enemy of mankind, and ultimately man will always dominate the snake because the snake will merely bruise man’s heel, but man will bruise or crush the snake’s head. Genesis 3:16 details the curse upon the labor of woman. Note that the curse is not against Eve as it is against the snake; it is against the things that were supposed to be a blessing to her in the previous covenant. In the Edenic Covenant God commanded Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply, to have children, to raise them and teach them God’s ways and how to care for His creation. Now, the woman will struggle with this commandment because it will be painful to have children and raise them. Furthermore, in Genesis 2:18 states that Eve was created to be a “suitable helper”. The Hebrew text however describes this helper as an “ezer kenegdo”. Ezer literally means “helper”, but kenegdo means “alongside” or “corresponding to”. The idea here is that Adam was given, not a subordinate, but an equal to help him in his task of ruling over creation. Now in Genesis 3:16, we see this initial status of Eve reversed. Her husband will rule over her, and she will let him.

Finally, in Genesis 3:17-19, the ground is cursed. Whereas the Garden of Eden produced fruit and food miraculously and everything worked as it should, now the food for the man will be brought forth only with much effort. Man will toil to cultivate and plant, and rather than everything working as planned, thorns and thistles will grow. Therefore, even the harvest will be hard. Life will be hard, toilsome, and exhausting from this point forward until death. The issue here is not that mankind will have to work, but that the work will be hard and any progress made will not last.

I am sure that not many will argue that this covenant is no longer in existence. In fact, if you were paying attention to my grammar, you will note that everything above was written in the present and future tenses. This covenant and its consequences are still in effect! Snakes are held by most to be vile and generally evil (note I said most. I know several people who own snakes as pets and coo over them as I would a kitten). Childbirth is usually exceptionally painful, and the battle for equal standing for women as compared to men is hardly won. Work is good for the mind, body, and soul, but toilsome work means that we are not building off previous work but constantly working to restore it. As a gardener, I don’t just pull weeds once and then wait till harvest. I must constantly tend my vegetable’s growth and pull all weeds that come up all season long. Furthermore, as I write about this part of the Adamic Covenant, I think of the terrific storm we had last week. It began with rain and then around 11pm turned to hail and hailed for several hours. I didn’t sleep well, not just because of the noise, but because I was thinking of my garden. Most the vegetables planted were started from seed months ago and the hail storm did some major damage to that work and effort. However, perhaps the most disappointing thing was to go outside and begin picking up the broken leaves and branches only to discover that several weeds popping up under the lettuce survived unscathed, and that annoying little thorn plant that insists on growing by my sweet peas looked perfectly fine, while all the other vegetables and plants looked pitiful.

Adam and Eve’s sin has not merely affected themselves, but all of creation too. Therefore as the other covenants begin to point towards redemption for human kind, they are also pointing towards redemption for all of creation, and not just humans. From this point forward, each and every covenant works to mend the break in the human-divine relationship and restore creation to what it was originally intended to be. Does this mean that there won’t be any weeds in heaven? No, this means that weeds will be in their proper place, and not in the divine vegetable gardens.