eden

1

T HE BIBLE AS T HE STORY

OF R EDEMPTION

Our objective as Christians is to understand the story
of redemption, the Bible More than anything else, we want to hear the
words of the biblical writers as they were intended and claim their epic
saga as our own To accomplish this, we need to get past the great bar-
rier—that chasm of history, language and culture that separates us from
our heroes in the faith In this first chapter we take our first step across
the great barrier by addressing what I believe is the most profound dis-
tinction between “us” and “them”: culture

Regarding the average human’s awareness of their own culture, career
anthropologist Darrell Whiteman has said that “it is scarcely a fish who
would discover water ”1 This is a reliable statement Humans, rather than
recognizing the trappings of their own culture (and that their culture may
in fact be very different from someone else’s), tend to assume that other
societies are just like their own This is known as ethnocentrism and is a
human perspective that is as old as the hills As regards the Christian
approach to the Old Testament, consider for example the standard depic-
tion of Jesus in sacred Western art Jesus is repeatedly portrayed as a pale,
thin, white man with dirty blond hair and blue (sometimes green) eyes
His fingers are long and delicate, his body frail and unmuscled Mary is
usually presented as a blond In medieval art, the disciples may be found
in an array of attire that would have rendered them completely anomalous

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22 The Epic of Eden

(and ridiculous) in their home towns I am reminded of the famous “sa-
cred heart of Jesus” image in which Jesus is, again, frail, pale, light-haired
and green-eyed, and Marsani’s Gethsemane in which the red highlights of
Jesus’ hair glow in the light from above, while his piano-player hands are
clasped in desperate prayer These portrayals are standard in spite of the
fact that we are all fully aware that Jesus was a Semite and his occupation
was manual labor So shouldn’t we expect a dark-haired man with equally
dark eyes? Certainly his skin would have been Mediterranean in tone and
tanned by three years of constant exposure to the Galilean sun His hands
would have been rough, probably scarred, definitely calloused; his frame
short, stocky and well-muscled So why is he presented in Christian art
as a pale, skinny, white guy? Because the people painting him were pale,
skinny, white guys! We naturally see Jesus as “one of us” and portray him
accordingly This is not necessarily a bad thing Rather, our close associa-
tion with the characters of redemptive history allows us to see ourselves
in their story And this is as God would have it But to truly understand
their story, we need to step back and allow their voices to be heard in the
timbre in which they first spoke We need to do our best to see their world
through their eyes

The flip side of ethnocentrism is a second tendency I have come to
speak of as “canonizing culture ” This is the unspoken (and usually uncon-
scious) presupposition that the norms of my culture are somehow superior
to the norms of someone else’s Like ethnocentrism, this tendency is also
as old as the human race And in case you are tempted to think that the
members of your culture have evolved past these sorts of presuppositions,
let me counter for a moment As an American, I spent most of my life sim-
ply assuming that democracy was somehow morally superior to monarchy,
that bureaucratic cultures were more sophisticated than tribal cultures
and that egalitarian relationships were more “advanced” than patriarchal
Why? Because these are the norms of my culture and I naturally saw them
as “better than” the norms of others’ In fact, until challenged, I would
have been hard-pressed to even separate the norms of my culture from my
values or beliefs Consider, for example, the early European and American
missionaries who wound up exporting not only the gospel but Western
culture as they spread across the globe The New England missionaries to

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The Bible as the Story of Redemption 23

Hawaii are an example made famous by James Michener’s novel Hawaii 2
Here, as the Hawaiians converted to Christianity, they were subsequently
also converted to the high-collared, long-sleeved, long-skirted uniforms
of the missionaries Petticoats and suit jackets for a seagoing people living
in an island paradise! Why? Because these valiant missionaries were un-
aware of the distinction between the message of the gospel and their own
cultural norms They had “canonized” their own culture such that they
saw their Western dress code as part and parcel of a Christian lifestyle
For the same reason, my senior pastor back in the 1980s would not allow
my youth group to listen to Amy Grant or Petra As their youth leader, I
was instructed that if the kids wanted to listen to contemporary Christian
music, they could listen to Sandi Patty Why? It had nothing to do with
the message or lifestyle of the respective musicians (my senior pastor did
not actually know much about Amy Grant or Petra or Sandi Patty for
that matter) It was because Sandi Patty sang slowly, she sang soprano and
she had no drums in her accompaniment In the mind of my senior pastor,
her music was “holier” than her more percussion-driven contemporaries
because it was similar to the music of his youth and the music that inspired
him to faith My senior pastor, like most of us, was having trouble separat-
ing culture from content But history proves to us that it is impossible to
diagnose any human culture as fully “holy” or “unholy ” Human culture
is always a mixed bag; some more mixed than others And every culture
must ultimately respond to the critique of the gospel

As we open the Bible, however, we find that the God of history has
chosen to reveal himself through a specific human culture To be more
accurate, he chose to reveal himself in several incarnations of the same
culture And, as the evolving cultural norms of Israel were not without
f law (rather, as above, there was a mixture of the good, the bad and the
ugly), God did not canonize Israel’s culture Rather, he simply used that
culture as a vehicle through which to communicate the eternal truth of
his character and his will for humanity We should not be about the busi-
ness of canonizing the culture of ancient Israel, either But if we are going
to understand the content of redemptive history, the merchandise that is
the truth of redemption, we will need to understand the vehicle (i e , the
culture) through which it was communicated Thus the study of the Old

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24 The Epic of Eden

Testament becomes a cross-cultural endeavor If we are going to under-
stand the intent of the biblical authors, we will need to see their world the
way they did

T H E WOR D R EDE M P T ION
But even as we attempt this first step of our journey into the Old Testa-
ment, we crash into the great barrier because the very term redemption is
culturally conditioned It had culturally-specific content that we as mod-
ern readers have mostly missed In fact, redemption is one of several words
I have come to refer to as “Biblish”—a word that comes from the Bible,
is in English, but has been so over-used by the Christian community that
it has become gibberish So let’s begin our crosscultural journey with this
word: What does the word redemption mean, and where did the church
get it? The first answer to that question is obvious; the term comes from
the New Testament

Blessed be the Lord God of Israel,
for He has visited us and accomplished redemption for His people
(Lk 1:68)

Knowing that you were not redeemed with perishable things like silver or
gold from your futile way of life inherited from your forefathers, but with
precious blood, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ
(1 Pet 1:18-19)

Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law (Gal 3:13)

Okay, so the word comes from our New Testament, but what does it mean?
And where did the New Testament writers get it? A short survey of the
Bible demonstrates that the New Testament writers got the word from the
Old Testament writers The prophet Isaiah declares,

But now, thus says the Lord, your Creator, O Jacob, and He who formed
you, O Israel, “Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by
name; you are Mine!” (Is 43:1)

And where did the Old Testament writers get the word? Contrary to
what we might assume, they did not lift it from a theological context
Rather, this word and the concepts associated with it emerged from the

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The Bible as the Story of Redemption 25

everyday, secular vocabulary of ancient Israel “To redeem” (Hebrew
ga4)al) in its first associations had nothing to do with theology, but
everything to do with the laws and social customs of the ancient tribal so-
ciety of which the Hebrews were a part Thus if we are to understand the
term—and what the Old Testament writers intended when they applied
it to Israel’s relationship with Yahweh—we will need to understand the
society from which the word came

ISR A EL’ S T R I BA L CU LT U R E
Israelite society was enormously different from contemporary life in the
urban West Whereas modern Western culture may be classified as urban
and “bureaucratic,” Israel’s society was “traditional ” More specifically it
was “tribal ”3 In a tribal society the family is, literally, the axis of the com-
munity An individual’s link to the legal and economic structures of their
society is through the family As Israel’s was a patriarchal tribal culture,
the link was the patriarch of the clan The patriarch was responsible for
the economic well-being of his family, he enforced law, and he had re-
sponsibility to care for his own who became marginalized through pov-
erty, death or war Hence, the operative information about any individual
in ancient Israel was the identity of their father, their gender and their
birth order 4 This is very different from a bureaucratic society in which the
state creates economic opportunity, enforces law and cares for the mar-
ginalized In fact, in a bureaucratic culture the family is peripheral—not
peripheral to the values and affections of the members of that society,
but certainly peripheral to the government and economy In Israel’s tribal
society the family was central, and it is best understood by means of three
descriptive categories: patriarchal, patrilineal and patrilocal

Patriarchal. The first of these terms, patriarchal, has to do with the
centrality of the oldest living male member of the family to the structure of
the larger society In his classic work on the topic, Marshall Sahlins states
that the societal structure of patriarchal tribalism involves a “progres-
sively inclusive series of groups,” emanating from the patriarchal leader 5
In other words, the layers of society form in ever broader circles, radiating
from the closely knit household to the nation as a whole as is pictured in
figure 1 1 In Israel’s particular tribal system, an individual would identify

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26 The Epic of Eden

their place within society through the lens of their patriarch’s household
first, then their clan or lineage,6 then their tribe and finally the nation 7
Even the terminology for “family” in ancient Israel reflects the centrality
of the patriarch The basic household unit of Israelite society was known
as the “father’s house(hold),” in Hebrew the be=t )a4b This household was
what Westerners would call an “extended family,” including the patriarch,
his wife(s), his unwed children and his married sons with their wives and
children

In this patriarchal society when a man married he remained in the
household, but when a woman married she joined the be=t )a4b of her new
husband An example of this is Rebecca’s marriage to Isaac in Genesis
24 She left her father’s household in Haran and journeyed to Canaan to
marry

Modern ethnographic studies indicate that the Israelite be=t )a4b could
include as many as three generations, up to thirty persons 8 Within this
family unit, the “father’s house(hold)” lived together in a family com-
pound, collectively farming the land they jointly owned and sharing in
its produce 9 This extended family shared their resources and their fate 10
And those who found themselves without a be=t )a4b (typically the orphan

Nation Clan

Tribe Patriarch’s household
(bêt ā b)

Figure 1.1. Israelite society

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The Bible as the Story of Redemption 27

and the widow) also found themselves outside the society’s normal circle
of provision and protection This is why the Old Testament is replete with
reminders to “care for the orphan and the widow ” So profound is Yahweh’s
concern for those who stand outside the protection of the be=t )a4b that he
actually describes himself as “the God of gods and the Lord of lords, the
great, the mighty, and the awesome God who does not show partiality nor
take a bribe He executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and shows
His love for the alien by giving him food and clothing” (Deut 10:17-18)
As we will see later in this chapter, there were numerous laws in Israelite
society targeted at the protection of “the least of these”—the marginalized
of Israel’s patriarchal society

Correspondingly, it was the patriarch of the household who bore both
legal and economic responsibility for the household In extreme situations,
he decided who lived and who died, who was sold into slavery and who
was retained within the family unit An example of this from the Bible
is the story of Judah and Tamar in Genesis 38:6-26 Here Tamar has be-
come a member of Judah’s be=t )a4b by marriage, but is currently a widow
Although she is apparently no longer living under Judah’s roof (which is
evidence that Judah is not fulfilling his responsibilities to her), she is still
under his authority When Tamar is found to be pregnant, the towns-
people report her crime to Judah It is obvious in this interaction that they
expect him as the patriarch of her be=t )a4b to administer justice 11 And so
he does Judah instructs the townspeople, “Bring her out and let her be
burned!” (Gen 38:24) As the head of her household, Judah’s words carry
the power of life and death for this young woman We will return to this
story a bit later in the chapter

When the patriarch died, or when the be=t )a4b became too large to sus-
tain itself, the household would split into new households, each headed
by the now-oldest living male family member Consider the descrip-
tion of Abraham’s family in Genesis 11:26-32 Here Terah’s household
consists of his adult sons, their wives and their children His oldest son
Haran “died in the presence of his father Terah” (perhaps while still a
member of his household?) but Lot, Haran’s son, remains under Terah’s
care So when Terah migrates to the city of Haran, he takes Lot with
him When Terah dies, Abram, the eldest, becomes the head of the

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28 The Epic of Eden

be=t )a4b and therefore takes responsibility for his brother’s son Thus Lot
comes to Canaan with Abram

Now Lot, who went with Abram, also had f locks and herds and tents
And the land could not sustain them while dwelling together; for their
possessions were so great that they were not able to remain together (Gen
13:5-6)

As a result, Abraham invites Lot to “be separated from upon me” (Gen
13:11) Lot chooses the fertile Jordan Valley and the original be=t )a4b be-
comes two 12

Patrilineal. The term patrilineal has to do with tracing ancestral de-
scent (and therefore tribal affiliation and inheritance) through the male
line In Israel the possessions of a particular lineage were carefully passed
down through the generations, family by family, according to gender and
birth order, in order to provide for the family members to come and to
preserve “the name” of those gone before

The genealogies of the Old Testament make this legal structure obvi-
ous—women are typically not named When women are named, some-
thing unusual is afoot and we should be asking why A woman might be
named in a genealogy if a man had several wives who each had sons, as is
the case with Jacob and Esau’s genealogies in Genesis 35 and Genesis 36
A woman might be named in the rare and extreme cases in which she
might inherit land or goods (Num 26:33; 27:1-11; cf Num 36:1-12; Josh
17:3-6) But most often, women are named when the biblical writer has
something to say

Note the genealogy of Matthew 1 Here in what comes to be the open-
ing chapter of the New Testament, the information most significant to a
first-century Jewish audience regarding one claiming to be the Messiah is
announced—his credentials as the son of the promise Any Jew knew that
the Messiah must be the offspring of Abraham; he must be a son of David
This is the bloodline of the Christ But notice that there are four women
named in this crucial register: Rahab, Ruth, the wife of Uriah (Bathsheba)
and Mary Mary’s inclusion is an obvious necessity, but what about the
others? Why are they here in what ought to be an exclusively male list? Do
you remember Rahab’s occupation? Ruth’s nationality? Bathsheba’s claim

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The Bible as the Story of Redemption 29

to fame? Why might the biblical writer have included these women in the
opening chapter of the New Testament? I believe it is because this writer
has something to say about the nature of the deliverance that this Messiah
is bringing This deliverance is for all people Not just the Jews Not just
the righteous Rather, the unclean, the foreigner, the sinner—if they will
believe as Rahab did—are welcome Not merely welcome into the new
community, but welcome even into the lineage of the Christ

The genealogies also give us a window into the privileged position
of the firstborn in Israelite society The firstborn male child would re-
place his father in the role of patriarch upon his father’s death Hence,
the firstborn took precedence over his brothers during his father’s life-
time (Gen 43:33), and upon his father’s death he received a double-portion
of the family estate (Deut 21:17; cf 1 Sam 1:5) 13 I often joke with my
classes about the potential impact of incorporating Deuteronomy’s law of
the double-portion into the typical American home Picture Christmas
morning The first rays of dawn peek over the horizon Your offspring
leap from their beds and bound down the stairs to find the pile of loot
that has come to characterize the celebration of an American Christmas
But rather than finding the carefully apportioned, equal stack of stuff
awaiting them under the Christmas tree, your children discover that your
firstborn has twice as much as his siblings Anarchy! Chaos! Bloodshed!
In my egalitarian society it is obvious why this apportionment would in-
spire dispute Not so in Israel’s tribal society There was a reason that the
firstborn received a double-portion: he would become the next patriarch
Thus, during the lifetime of the patriarch, the firstborn was expected to
shadow his father, to serve as an apprentice in all his duties Much more
was expected of him than his siblings As the firstborn came to maturity,
he slowly evolved into his father’s peer, until upon the patriarch’s death
he was prepared to assume the weighty responsibility of directing and
maintaining the be =t )a 4b Obviously, the firstborn would need adequate
resources to insure the survival of the family; hence, the double-portion
All firstborns are special to their parents, but because of his pivotal role in
Israelite society, the firstborn in Israel was precious

Consider the stories of Esau and Jacob, Reuben and Judah, David and
his seven brothers In each of these stories the culture demanded that the

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30 The Epic of Eden

firstborn male be the one who received the privilege of leading the fam-
ily into the next generation But in each of these cases, God chooses a
younger son to lead Thus each of these stories is an example of how God’s
way of doing things often stands in opposition to the cultural norms of
his people and how redemption’s story critiques every human culture The
choice of David is particularly telling As the eighth-born son of Jesse,
David’s inheritance would have fit into a backpack But after surveying
all of Jesse’s sons (eldest to youngest, of course), God’s spokesman says
“no” to those David’s society would have chosen and “yes” to the one least
likely in the eyes of his own community: “For I have selected a king for
Myself among his sons” (1 Sam 16:1) Indeed, “people look at the outward
appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart” (1 Sam 16:7)

In Israel’s patrilineal society, children always belonged to their father’s
tribe, but when a female child came of age she was married into another
be=t )a4b. She became a permanent member of that new household, and her
tribal alliance shifted with that marriage As a result, a woman’s identity
in Israel—and her link to its economy and civil structures—was always
tracked through the men in her life She was first her father’s daughter,
then her husband’s wife and then her son’s mother The resources and
protection of the clan came to her through the male members of her fam-
ily This is why it was critical for a woman to marry and to bear children
A woman who was widowed prior to bearing a son was a woman in crisis
And a woman without father, husband or son was destitute; without the
charity of strangers, she would starve Because of this, there were a num-
ber of laws in Israelite society targeted at the protection of the widow
Consider, for example, Deuteronomy’s gleaning laws, which required that
landowners reserve a portion of the produce of their land for those among
them who found themselves “on the margins ”

When you reap your harvest in your field and have forgotten a sheaf in the
field, you shall not go back to get it; it shall be for the alien, for the orphan,
and for the widow, in order that the Lord your God may bless you in all the
work of your hands When you beat your olive tree, you shall not go over the
boughs again; it shall be for the alien, for the orphan, and for the widow
When you gather the grapes of your vineyard, you shall not go over it again;
it shall be for the alien, for the orphan, and for the widow (Deut 24:19-21)

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The Bible as the Story of Redemption 31

Another law concerned with the well-being of widows, and directed at
preserving proper lines of inheritance within Israel’s tribal culture, is the
levirate law found in Deuteronomy 25:5-10 The Latin term levir means
“brother,” and the law dictates the behavior expected when a brother has
left a young widow behind In sum, the levirate law prescribes that in a
be=t )a4b that has more than one son, when a married man dies before he has
produced a male heir, his young wife is not to be married off to someone
outside the household Rather, it was the responsibility of a living brother
to take that woman as his wife (often his second wife) and to father a
child with her The first child of that union would belong to the deceased
brother The child would be legally recognized as the deceased brother’s
offspring and would receive his inheritance If there were additional chil-
dren, those would belong to the living brother The intent of this law was
both to protect the young widow from destitution and to protect her de-
ceased husband’s inheritance The people of Israel considered it a serious
offense for a man to fail to fulfill this responsibility to his dead brother

When brothers live together and one of them dies and has no son, the wife
of the deceased shall not be married outside the family to a strange man
Her husband’s brother shall go in to her and take her to himself as wife
and perform the duty of a husband’s brother to her And it shall be that the
first-born whom she bears shall assume the name of his dead brother, that
his name may not be blotted out from Israel But if the man does not desire
to take his brother’s wife, then his brother’s wife shall go up to the gate to
the elders and say, “My husband’s brother refuses to establish a name for
his brother in Israel; he is not willing to perform the duty of a husband’s
brother to me ” Then the elders of his city shall summon him and speak
to him And if he persists and says, “I do not desire to take her,” then his
brother’s wife shall come to him in the sight of the elders, and pull his san-
dal off his foot and spit in his face; and she shall declare, “Thus it is done to
the man who does not build up his brother’s house ” In Israel his name shall
be called, “The house of him whose sandal is removed ” (Deut 25:5-10)

Although this system seems very odd to most Westerners, it worked
The inheritance of the deceased brother was properly conferred upon his
legal offspring, and the young widow was secured within the household
Thus her current need for food and shelter was met, and her future need

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32 The Epic of Eden

for a child to care for her in her old age was addressed as well 1

4

With this insight into the nuts and bolts of a patrilineal society, let us
return to the story of Judah and Tamar in Genesis 38 We have already
learned that the widowed Tamar had become a member of Judah’s be=t

)a4b through marriage, and as such Judah is responsible for bringing her
to justice after the townspeople announce her out-of-wedlock pregnancy
In agreement with societal norms, Judah orders her execution But there
are details of this story that must be reconsidered According to Genesis
38:6-11, Tamar had been the wife of Judah’s firstborn, Er When this
man died, Judah had instructed his second son Onan to fulfill the “duty
of a husband’s brother” by marrying Tamar and fathering a child in his
deceased brother’s name But because Onan knew that the child would
not be his, “when he went in to his brother’s wife, he wasted his seed on
the ground in order not to give offspring to his brother” (Gen 38:9) The
text tells us that for this crime, Yahweh requires his life Although the
law called for Judah now to give this woman to his third son, Judah did
not He was afraid that there was something wrong with this woman
(as opposed to something wrong with his sons), and that if his third son
Shelah married her, he would die too So Judah deceived Tamar saying,
“remain a widow in your father’s house until my son Shelah grows up ”
The biblical narrator makes it very clear that Judah has no intention of
carrying out his responsibilities toward this young woman either by mar-
rying her to his third son, or by making a place for her within his house-
hold Thus, “after a considerable time,” when Tamar saw that Judah was
not going to fulfill his obligation to her (Gen 38:14), Tamar decided to
take matters into her own hands She “removed her widow’s garments,”
and disguised herself such that when Judah encountered her along the
road, he believed her to be a prostitute Judah propositioned her, and she
consented, providing that he leave a pledge of payment with her The
pledge she requested? “Your seal and your cord, and your staff ” (Gen
38:18) Tamar’s plan worked; she conceived And when her condition be-
came apparent to her village, they reported it to Judah Even though this
woman was living in her own father’s home, Judah ordered her burned
Now consider Tamar’s response:

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The Bible as the Story of Redemption 33

It was while she was being brought out [to be burned] that she sent to her
father-in-law, saying, “I am with child by the man to whom these things
belong ” And she said, “Please examine and see, whose signet ring and
cords and staff are these?” Judah recognized them, and said, “She is more
righteous than I ” (Gen 38:25-26)

“She is more righteous than I”? Hadn’t this young woman just tricked
her father-in-law into illicit sex? How could one of the twelve patriarchs
of Israel make such a statement? To answer this question, we have to un-
derstand the culture of the people of the Old Testament and resist the
temptation to impose our cultural norms on them Although in my world
Tamar’s actions would be reprehensible, in her own culture it was Judah
who was worthy of rebuke For it was Judah who had failed to honor the
levirate law and had allowed another household to take responsibility for
the support of his widowed daughter-in-law In Israelite culture, Judah was
the villain; Tamar was the courageous (albeit a bit audacious!) heroine

Another important biblical law regarding inheritance addressed land
Throughout its national period, the bulk of the Israelite populace lived on
small family farms in which the main economy was a mixture of pastoral-
ism and diversified agriculture The primary goal of that economy was
insuring the survival of the family 15 As a result, for the typical household
in ancient Israel, the inherited land holdings of the be=t )a4b were the fam-
ily’s lifeline Thus there were laws in ancient Israel designed to insure that
the family plot (Hebrew nah9a6la=) remain within the lineage Based on the
concept formulated early on that the promised land actually belonged to
Yahweh and had been distributed among the tribes as he intended, the
only legally permissible permanent transfer of land in Israel was through
inheritance And the parcels of land originally distributed by Yahweh were
to pass from father to son in perpetuity But if poverty or dire life circum-
stances forced the sale of some portion of the patrimonial estate, the land
was not to be sold permanently Rather, according to the “inalienable land
law” of Leviticus 25:13-28, it was the responsibility of the seller’s nearest
kinsman to step in and buy back what his relative had sold If there was
no kinsman, but the seller managed to recoup his loss such that he was
able to repurchase his land, the buyer was required to give him that op-
portunity And if there was no kinsman, and the seller was incapable of

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34 The Epic of Eden

raising the funds necessary to reclaim his patrimony, “then what he has
sold shall remain in the hands of its purchaser until the year of jubilee; but
at the jubilee it shall revert, that he [the seller] may return to his property”
(Lev 25:28) Although we have no evidence to prove or disprove the ac-
tual practice of the widespread restoration of patrimonial lands at the year
of jubilee, we do have firm evidence that the kinship-based land tenure
described in Leviticus, and the responsibility of the nearest kinsman to
restore patrimony when possible, was indeed the expectation of Israelite
society (cf Jer 32:6-44; 2 Kings 8:1-6) 16 Again, this system of land tenure
is very different from the capitalist economy in which I have been raised,
but, generally, it worked The end result was that no lineage in Israel was
condemned to permanent or inescapable poverty 17

Patrilocal. The term patrilocal has to do with the living space of the
family unit which, as we have come to expect, was built around the oldest
living male Corresponding to the make-up of the be=t )a4b as an extended
family, the architectural structure in which the Israelite family lived was
not so much a house as it was a compound Nuclear families were housed
in individual units which were clustered together within a larger, walled
enclosure, and this living space was also known as the be=t )a4b.

The integration of data gathered via archaeology, modern ethnographic
study and the biblical text leaves us with a surprisingly clear picture of this
Israelite family compound Here the individual dwelling places circled a
shared courtyard in which the necessary domestic chores were carried out
by family members At any given daytime hour, one might find the women
of the household in this courtyard grinding grain into f lour, preparing
food or baking bread in the standard domed oven known as a tannu=r; all
of this was done with the small children close at hand A pergola of grape-
vines for the family’s use and animals who had been brought in from the
fields to be watered and housed would also be typical courtyard residents
At day’s end the family would regather within the security of the walled
compound for the evening meal and sleep 18

The individual dwelling units of the Israelite be=t )a4b are especially
characteristic of Israelite culture and are so consistent in their design that
they have come to be known as the “four-room, pillared house ” In the
States, you might call them the “two-bedroom Cape” of the average Isra-

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The Bible as the Story of Redemption 35

elite neighborhood In a rural setting, the houses might be free standing,
but frequently (especially in more crowded, urban settings) these houses
were more like townhomes—sharing their exterior walls, with their rear
walls sometimes doing double-duty as the wall around the compound and/

or village 19 Figure 1 2 offers a diagram of the foundation of such a house,
excavated in Tall al ‘Umayri (within the territory of the tribe of Reuben)
Known as Building B, this is the best-preserved Iron Age I four-room
house in the Levant Figure 1 3 offers a reconstruction of the same 20

Notice that this typical Israelite home has two stories, each of which
has three long rooms delineated by rows of pillars,21 and a long room

courtyard

1

4

2 3

Figure 1.2. Footprint of the Israelite four-room pillared house (Courtesy of the Ma-
daba Plains Project excavations at Tall-al-‘Umayri, Jordan)

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36 The Epic of Eden

which spanned the back of the house The house was constructed of a
mixture of field stone and mud brick, sealed and plastered 22 The roof was
composed of small branches, plastered together with eight to ten inches
of tempered clay and mud and/or sod, all of which required a great deal of
maintenance The side rooms of the first f loor functioned as stables and
were therefore often cobbled Apparently this warm, protected space was
ideal for young or vulnerable animals, as well as the space in which one
would house the “stall-fed calf ” in order to fatten him up for feast day (1
Sam 28:24) 23 And although the aroma of this shared habitat might be
less than ideal, the animals’ presence on the first f loor provided the fam-
ily with a cheap source of central heat The center room often housed a
hearth and was used for domestic chores and storage This center room
typically had a f loor of beaten dirt or plaster The long room in the rear
was utilized for food storage, often with pits used as grain silos dug into

Figure 1.3. Israelite four-room pillared house (Courtesy of the Madaba Plains Proj-
ect excavations at Tall-al-‘Umayri, Jordan. Artist: Rhonda Root ©2001)

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The Bible as the Story of Redemption 37

the f loor 24 The family members ate, slept and entertained on the second
floor and (during good weather) the roof (cf 1 Sam 9:25-26; 1 Kings
17:19, and perhaps the “upper room” in Acts 1:13) Based on the now
well-known design of the Israelite four-room house, Lawrence Stager has
proposed that the story of Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem had nothing to do
with a stable down the street as we often assume and regularly picture
in our nativity sets Rather, the Bethlehem innkeeper is probably telling
Joseph that although he has no room for the laboring woman in the house
proper, the little family is welcome to stay on the first f loor with the ani-
mals Here, hopefully, they would be warm and safe and the innkeeper’s
wife would be close at hand in case of trouble The stone feed troughs that
typically separated the stalls from the central room probably served as
Luke’s “manger” (Lk 2:7) 25

The design of the family compound helps us see that one of the primary
goals of Israel’s tribal culture was tribal solidarity—the tribe intended to live
together. In their unity they found the capacity to prosper under the harsh
economic conditions of the highlands, to defend themselves against their
Canaanite neighbors and to insure their survival as a people group This
solidarity of the extended family persisted even into death, as is apparent
from Israelite burial practices Archaeology has made it clear that the stan-
dard practice was to immediately bury the dead in one fashion or another
to allow for the decomposition of the flesh, but then to gather the bones
into the family tomb such that the family member was housed permanently
with the rest of the clan 26 The biblical expressions “to sleep with” and “to
be gathered to” one’s fathers are the literary expressions of this “secondary
burial” practice in Israelite culture Consider the biblical stories surround-
ing the cave of Macpelah, which Abraham purchased to bury Sarah, and in
which Abraham, Isaac, Rebeccah, Jacob and Leah were all eventually laid
to rest (Gen 23:1-20; 25:9-10; 49:29-32; 50:13) Here several generations of
a single family found their rest together. This burial practice also helped to
communicate land tenure—the family buried on a plot of ground owned
that plot of ground 27 It is for these reasons that Jacob and Joseph make
their sons swear that when they leave Egypt they will take the bones of their
ancestors with them, and bury those bones in the land of promise (cf Gen
47:30; 50:25) The be=t )a4b that lives together, dies together

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38 The Epic of Eden

L E AV I N G A N D C L E AV I N G I N G E N E S I S 2 : 2 4
In Israel’s patrilocal society, it was the women who did the relocat-
ing when marriages were formed. Typically much younger than her
fiancé, and probably still in her teens, this young woman was ex-
pected to leave her home and family and join her husband’s be=t )a4b
Can you imagine the relational challenges this young woman faced?
Building a new marriage with a man she might hardly have known,
relearning how to cook, weave and do laundry according to her new
family’s habits; navigating the pecking order of this unfamiliar fam-
ily system . . . all under the watchful eye of her new mother-in-law.
Add to this the inevitable homesickness resulting from leaving her
own mother and siblings for a group of near strangers, and it is not
difficult to envisage some very difficult times for this new wife.
Now consider the well-known passage in Genesis 2:24: “For this
reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to
his wife; and they shall become one flesh.” Wait a minute. Doesn’t
the biblical author know that Israel was a patrilocal society? Why
is he speaking of the groom doing the leaving? I believe the rea-
son for this apparent “mistake”—like the listing of women in Jesus’
genealogy—is that the message of the biblical writer is one of cri-
tique. Everyone knew that the relational burden of forming a new
household fell upon the women in Israel’s society. Everyone knew
that it was she who was uprooted and isolated by the process. Yet the
earliest and most foundational word we have regarding marriage
states that a man shall leave his father and mother and cleave to his
wife. They shall become one flesh. I believe this is an intentional re-
versal on the part of the biblical author. And I think he is intending
to communicate something like this: “Young man, although you have
all the benefits and comforts in this system, from this day onward
you shall live your life as though you too have left. She is now bone
of your bones and flesh of your flesh. Your most significant kinship
alliance, as of today, is her.”

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The Bible as the Story of Redemption 39

J ESUS A N D PAT R I L OCA L CU LT U R E: JOH N 14:1-2
The basic patrilocality of Israelite culture and the concept of the family
compound survived into New Testament times and serves as a back-
drop to many of Jesus’ stories and teachings Consider John 14:1-2
Part of Jesus’ “Farewell Discourses,” the scene is a private one—Jesus’
closest friends have gathered for one last meal together Just after the
meal, Jesus begins telling his disciples about his impending departure
and the troubles that will follow Of course, the disciples are confused
and upset Peter asks the question on everyone’s heart: “Where are you
going and can we go with you?” (Jn 13:36-37) Jesus responds as
follows:

Do not let your heart be troubled; believe in God, believe also in Me In
my Father’s house are many dwelling places,28 if it were not so I would have
told you; for I go to prepare a place for you If I go and prepare a place for
you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there
you may be also (Jn 14:1-3)

Did you notice Jesus’ vocabulary? “In my father’s house there are many
dwelling places ” For generations we in the West have imposed our cul-
tural lens upon this passage such that we have whole songs dedicated to
the “mansion up over the hilltop” that is awaiting us in heaven But what
Jesus is saying to his disciples and to us is so far superior to the objec-
tives of a consumer culture that it takes my breath away—our ultimate
destination as the newly adopted children of the Father is the family
compound! And Jesus, the firstborn of his Father’s household, is going
back to heaven to get your four-room pillared house ready Why? “So
that where I am, there you may be also ” The goal of redemption is not
a marbled mansion, but reincorporation into the be=t )a4b of our heavenly
Father

In sum, in Israel’s earliest culture the tribe and the family were the
most important and influential elements of society Within this tribal sys-
tem the oldest, closest living male relative held the greatest authority in
one’s life and the greatest responsibility for one’s well-being And although
their culture morphed over the generations with the effects of urbanism,
exile, Hellenism, etc , this basic value system endured

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40 The Epic of Eden

R E DE M P T ION I N T H E BI BLE
So now for the question most central to our chapter: how do these in-
sights into Israelite culture help us in our quest to understand the term
redemption? As I stated at the beginning of this chapter, whereas we the
church have adopted the word redemption from the biblical writers, they
adopted it from their everyday, secular world And rather than entering
biblical vocabulary as a theological term as we might expect, the word
and concept of redemption actually entered the Bible through the laws
and mores of Israel’s patriarchal, tribal culture Specifically, the idea of
redemption was intrinsically linked to the familial responsibilities of a
patriarch to his clan

Ruth and Boaz. Consider the story of Ruth and Boaz recorded in the
book of Ruth During the era of the judges, an Israelite woman named
Naomi marries a certain Bethlehemite named Elimelech to whom she
bears two sons In her world, Naomi was a blessed woman—a husband
and two sons! A local famine, however, prompts Elimelech to abandon
their patrimonial estate and relocate to Moab (a neighboring country just
across the Jordan River) While in Moab, Elimelech dies, leaving Naomi
a widow This is a grievous event for Naomi, but not a disastrous one as
she still has two healthy sons, who subsequently take Moabite women as
wives Naomi’s world is stable Her husband is dead, but her two adult
sons are married and the hope of grandchildren (and thus the continua-
tion of her be=t )a4b) cannot be far off But ten years pass and there are no
children Far worse, the men die Naomi is left far from the patrimony of
her husband’s family, with no husband, no sons and no grandchildren In
the Israelite mind this family has become an “un-family,” and this woman
is in dire straights

Naomi chooses the only course of action left to her, to return to Bethle-
hem with the hope that a family member will take her in So she instructs
her daughters-in-law to return to their households of origin,29 hoping that
they will find the opportunity to marry again, bear children and secure
their own futures Weeping, the girls beg to stay with her, but knowing
that she has nothing to offer them, Naomi says,

Return, my daughters Why should you go with me? Have I yet sons in my

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The Bible as the Story of Redemption 41

womb, that they may be your husbands? Return, my daughters! Go, for I
am too old to have a husband If I said I have hope, if I should even have
a husband tonight and also bear sons, would you therefore wait until they
were grown? Would you therefore refrain from marrying? (Ruth 1:11-13)

Without some knowledge of Israel’s tribal culture, the reader would
have absolutely no idea what Naomi is talking about But knowing some-
thing about patrilinealism, it is obvious that what Naomi is referring to is
the levirate law of Deuteronomy 25:5-10 Naomi is reminding her daugh-
ters-in-law that she has no means by which to provide for them She has
no sons, and she is too old to have more And even if by some miracle she
found a husband and conceived that very night, would her daughters-in-
law wait the twenty-plus years it would take for these unborn sons to come
to maturity? Of course not

No, my daughters; for it is harder for me than for you, for the hand of the
Lord has gone forth against me And they lifted up their voices and wept
again; and Orpah kissed her mother-in-law, but Ruth clung to her (Ruth
1:13-14)

Naomi again instructs Ruth to take the prudent road and follow her
sister-in-law There was no shame in leaving Naomi; they all knew that
But Ruth, as an attestation of her remarkable character, refuses:

Do not urge me to leave you or turn back from following you; for where
you go, I will go, and where you lodge, I will lodge Your people shall be
my people and your God, my God Where you die, I will die, and there I
will be buried (Ruth 1:16-17)

We often hear Ruth’s words quoted in marriage ceremonies—which is in
some ways appropriate—but these words are in reality plainspoken state-
ments of tribal solidarity Ruth is announcing that her tribal affiliation is
with Naomi Regardless of the patrilineal mores of their society, Ruth has
chosen Naomi as her kin, and she’s not leaving

So the women return to Bethlehem Here Ruth takes advantage of the
local gleaning laws to support them, and her diligent work ethic and tender
care for her widowed mother-in-law earn her the attention and kindness of
a certain local landowner Note the subtle aside of the narrator regarding
this wealthy (and surely handsome) man: “Boaz, who was of the family

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42 The Epic of Eden

[lineage or clan] of Elimelech” (Ruth 2:3) “Aha,” the reader says, “I won-
der how Boaz will play into all this?” When Ruth returns from her work,
she tells Naomi of Boaz’s kindness and Naomi responds excitedly, telling
Ruth that this man is “one of our relatives,” in fact, “he is one of our clos-
est relatives” (Ruth 2:20) At last we begin to see the secular origins of our
term As the story reaches its climax, Naomi instructs Ruth to carry out a
daring (and in her day, risqué) plot Under the cover of darkness, far from
town in the harvest fields, after Boaz had enjoyed his fill of wine, a dressed
and perfumed Ruth places herself at the sleeping man’s feet The audience
is well aware that this is the ideal setting for seduction and sin, and the
question in everyone’s mind is if Ruth and Boaz are indeed the people of
excellence that we have been told they are Apparently, the answer to that
question is yes because rather than the sordid scene we expect, Ruth uses
this moment to ask Boaz to “redeem” her Not only does Boaz generously
agree to do all she asks, concerned for her safety and reputation, he sends
her home before dawn with a wealth of grain for her mother-in-law

So what are the practical expressions of Boaz agreeing to redeem this
young woman? As the story unfolds, we see that “to redeem” in this situa-
tion means that Boaz will marry Ruth, buy back the patrimony of her de-
ceased husband (cf the inalienable land law of Lev 25), take both Ruth and
Naomi into his household, and father a child in Mahlon’s name, thereby
giving Elimelech an heir to whom the family inheritance will pass (cf the
levirate law of Deut 25) We also learn in chapter four that a relative closer
in kinship refuses to do this for Ruth “because I would jeopardize my own
inheritance” (Ruth 4:6) This exchange makes it obvious that what Boaz
was asked to do was costly His generous actions put his own resources on
the line But in his integrity, Boaz chooses to embrace the responsibility of
a patriarch and become Ruth’s go4)e4l—her “kinsman-redeemer ”

From this story we learn that the tribal law of “redemption” had to
do with a patriarch rescuing a family member who, due to crippling life
circumstances, had been lost to the kinship circle, to protect their legal
rights The law demanded that the patriarch protect the individual’s legal
rights and resolve her debts Here is a reconciliation of family ties that
costs the redeemer And it is the oldest, closest male relative to whom one
looks for help and hope

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The Bible as the Story of Redemption 43

Lot and Abraham. A second story illustrating the expectations of tribal
law is found in Genesis 14 Lot and Abraham have parted company, and
Lot’s newly formed be=t )a4b is residing in the Jordan Valley, in close prox-
imity to the urban centers of Sodom and Gomorrah A coalition of kings
from Mesopotamia invades the region, and in the process of looting So-
dom, takes Lot and his household captive (most likely in order to sell
them as slaves) But one of the populace escapes and hurries to Hebron to
report to Abraham that a member of his clan has been taken as a prisoner
of war Immediately, Abraham musters the local sheiks as well as the men
of his own household to pursue his brother’s son (In case you are pictur-
ing a band of ten or twelve, note that there were 318 “trained men” born
in Abraham’s household [Gen 14:14] ) So, Abraham pursues the forces of
the eastern kings past the northern boundaries of Canaan (i e , past the
city of Dan), defeats the invaders and rescues his relative and his relative’s
possessions Does Abraham do these things simply because he is a good
man? Yes and no Yes, Abraham was a good man, but more significant
to our discussion are the mores embedded in his society A patriarch had
responsibilities If a member of his lineage found himself in need of ran-
som or rescue, as had Lot, that patriarch was expected to do something
about it So Abraham puts his own household on the line, his own life on
the line, in order to rescue his brother’s son from a strong enemy against
whom he had no defense This is another expression of “redemption” in
Israel’s world

Gomer and Hosea. A final biblical illustration comes from the story of
the prophet Hosea and his wayward wife, Gomer Hosea was a prophet
to the northern kingdom of Israel and had the unenviable privilege of be-
ing commissioned by Yahweh to live his life as an ongoing visual aid of
Yahweh’s relationship with Israel Thus we are introduced to Hosea when
he is instructed to “take to yourself a wife of harlotry and have children
of harlotry; for the land commits f lagrant harlotry, forsaking the Lord”
(Hos 1:2) Whether Gomer was a woman with a reputation for promis-
cuous behavior or a woman professionally employed as a prostititute has
been hotly debated over the years 30 But regardless of how Gomer earned
her reputation, we are left with the tale of a local holy man heading down
to the “other side” of the tracks (quite possibly the local brothel) to pick

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44 The Epic of Eden

out a wife Pause for a moment to picture this scene These little Israelite
villages rarely numbered more than 250 people The trip alone would have
made the morning gossip column The fact that this prophet returned with
a bride ? Can you imagine the scuttlebutt in Hosea’s village, and the
emotions swirling around his soul as he began his life as the husband of a
woman he knew had been available to his neighbors possibly for hire?
From start to finish, this is a story that grates upon the soul

And what of Gomer’s perspective in all of this? I can assure you that
no ten-year-old girl from any culture in any era wakes up one morning
and says, “I want to grow up to be a prostitute ” Nor have I ever met a
young woman who wanted the reputation of “tramp ” Rather, there must
have been some agony in Gomer’s history or that of her family that had
left this girl in a very bad place And in Israel’s tribal culture, that agony
would be ongoing Gomer had no be=t )a4b. As a woman with a sexual past,
she would never have a husband And whatever children she might bear
would be shunned forever by her community This is Gomer’s fate But
then one morning a miracle happens Hosea, a man of stature and means,
asks her to be his wife Can you imagine the reversal this represented for
Gomer? This woman with a past became a woman with a future Then,
blessed be Yahweh, she conceives, and the child that opens her womb is
a son! And then she conceives again and again—three children Gomer’s
life is transformed, and her world filled with good things

But chapter two makes it clear that the brokenness of Gomer’s soul was
not so easily fixed Rather, this young woman who had gone from nothing
to everything repeats the crimes of her past Consider Hosea’s anger and
humiliation when he finds that his wife is cheating on him, that in her mind
a life of promiscuity is superior to life as his wife (Hos 2:12; 3:1) Although
the Bible reports these things in a very restrained fashion, by the opening
verses of chapter three it is clear that Gomer is bouncing off of rock bot-
tom, and Hosea’s heart is broken Whereas she had previously enjoyed some
measure of income and autonomy, now Gomer is up for sale Apparently she
is now being forced into slavery, auctioned off in the city gate

So God speaks to Hosea again “Go and buy her back” (Hos 3:1) 31
Think again of who Hosea is—a holy man in a small town Think again
of what he has given Gomer—a home, children, his bed and probably his

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The Bible as the Story of Redemption 45

heart And now Hosea finds himself in the public square, in the presence
of his neighbors, bidding on the mother of his children his wife “Fif-
teen shekels of silver and a homer and a half of barley” for his wife (Hos
3:2) This is “redemption ”32

CONCLUSIONS
So now we have come full circle and are ready to define the word redemp-
tion We are also ready to understand why this word was chosen by the
Old Testament writers to describe Yahweh’s relationship with his people
In Israel’s tribal society redemption was the act of a patriarch who put
his own resources on the line to ransom a family member who had been
driven to the margins of society by poverty, who had been seized by an en-
emy against whom he had no defense, who found themselves enslaved by
the consequences of a faithless life Redemption was the means by which
a lost family member was restored to a place of security within the kin-
ship circle This was a patriarch’s responsibility, this was the safety net of
Israel’s society, and this is the backdrop for the epic of Eden in which we
New Testament believers find ourselves

Can you hear the metaphor of Scripture? Yahweh is presenting himself
as the patriarch of the clan who has announced his intent to redeem his
lost family members Not only has he agreed to pay whatever ransom is
required, but he has sent the most cherished member of his household to
accomplish his intent—his firstborn son And not only is the firstborn
coming to seek and save the lost, but he is coming to share his inheritance
with these who have squandered everything they have been given His
goal? To restore the lost family members to the be=t )a4b so that where he is,
they may be also This is why we speak of each other as brother and sister,
why we know God as Father, why we call ourselves the household of faith
God is beyond human gender and our relationship to him beyond blood,
but the tale of redemptive history comes to us in the language of a patri-
archal society Father God is buying back his lost children by sending his
eldest son, his heir, to “give His life as a ransom for many” (Mt 20:28), so
that we the alienated might be “adopted as sons” and share forever in the
inheritance of this “firstborn of all creation ”

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46 The Epic of Eden

For He rescued us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the
kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgive-
ness of sins He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all cre-
ation (Col 1:13-15)

Knowing that you were not redeemed with perishable things like silver or
gold from your futile way of life inherited from your forefathers, but with
precious blood, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ
(1 Pet 1:18-19)

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5

G OD’S FINA L IN T EN T

The New Jerusalem

For as through the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners,
even so through the obedience of the One the many will be made righteous
That, as sin reigned in death, even so grace would reign through right-
eousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord (Rom 5:19, 21)

When we lef t Eden, we lef t a fruit-filled paradise ani-
mated by a cosmic river and graced by the Tree of Life This paradise,
which was once the shared dwelling place of God and humanity, is now
defended against Adam’s race by means of cherubim The city of man and
the kingdom of God are now separated; Adam and Eve now live in ex-
ile from their heavenly father How will this wretched state of affairs be
righted? What is God’s plan of redemption? Or should we say, what is
God’s final intent for humanity?

T H E ICONOGR A PH Y OF EDEN: OF CH ERU BI M,
T R EES A N D R I V ER

S

There are many ways to approach the questions voiced above, but the one
I like best is to ask these questions by tracing the iconography of Eden
throughout redemption’s story Let’s start with the cherubim, the fear-
some creature armed with a double-edged sword, stationed at the entrance
of the garden Who (and what) is this dire creature?

Cherubim. In the Bible we find that cherubim appear only in particu-
lar contexts After Eden, the first reappearance of the cherubim is the

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120 The Epic of Eden

divinely dictated design of the tabernacle in Exodus 25–26 and Exodus
36–37 Here on Mount Sinai, God instructs Moses to build a habitation
for the Holy One among his people

“Let them construct a sanctuary for Me, that I may dwell among them”
(Ex 25:8) The text tells us that the reason God wants this sanctuary is “so
that I might live among them ” Do you hear the echo of Eden here? This
will be the first time since the garden that God has dwelt with )Ada4m.
Perhaps I am overly sentimental, but I hear in this passage the longing of
a father for his children Whereas with the Fall humanity was forbidden
from God’s presence, with the Mosaic covenant God commands a meet-
ing place so that he may cohabit with his children once more In order to
help get our bearings for the following discussion, I’ve included figure 5 1,
which provides the footprint of the sacred tent-structure we know as the
tabernacle, and figure 5 2, which is an artist’s reconstruction of the same

Notice that whereas the Holy Place and Holies of Holies were con-
cealed under tent curtains, the outer court of the tabernacle (where the al-
tar and laver were located) was open to the sky The outer court was open
to worshippers, but only priests were allowed to enter the Holy Place The
innermost sanctuary, the Holy of Holies, was only visited once a year by
the High Priest on the Day of Atonement This is where God lived and
where the Ark of the Covenant was housed

And according to God’s instructions, the curtains of the Holy of Holies
(where God actually dwelt) and the sacred veil that divided the Holy of
Holies from the Holy Place (the place in which the priests served him)
were to be decorated with cherubim

You shall make a veil of blue and purple and scarlet material and fine twisted
linen; it shall be made with cherubim, the work of a skillful craftsman You
shall hang it on four pillars of acacia overlaid with gold, their hooks also
being of gold, on four sockets of silver You shall hang up the veil under
the clasps, and shall bring in the ark of the testimony there within the veil;
and the veil shall serve for you as a partition between the holy place and the
holy of holies (Ex 26:31-33; cf Ex 36:8-13; 1 Kings 6:32-35)

The Ark of the Covenant, which housed the tablets of the covenant
within the Holy of Holies, is also adorned with cherubim

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God’s Final Intent 121

You shall make two cherubim of gold, make them of hammered work at the
two ends of the mercy seat Make one cherub at one end and one cherub at
the other end; you shall make the cherubim of one piece with the mercy seat
at its two ends The cherubim shall have their wings spread upward, cover-
ing the mercy seat with their wings and facing one another; the faces of the

Altar of
Incense

Holy
Place

Holy of
Holies

Outer Court

Altar of
Burnt

Offering

Table of
Showbread

Laver

Golden
Candlestick

A
rk

o
f t

he
C

ov
en

an
t

N

S

W E

Figure 5.1. The footprint of the tabernacle

Figure 5.2. An artist’s reconstruction of the tabernacle (copyright 2003, The New
Life Mission)

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122 The Epic of Eden

cherubim are to be turned toward the mercy seat You shall put the mercy
seat on top of the ark, and in the ark you shall put the testimony which I will
give to you (Ex 25:18-21; cf Ex 37:1-9; 1 Kings 6:23-29; 8:6-7)

Very interesting to us is the function of the ark’s golden cherubim

There I will meet with you; and from above the mercy seat, from between
the two cherubim which are upon the ark of the testimony, I will speak to
you about all that I will give you in commandment for the sons of Israel
(Ex 25:22; cf Num 7:89; 1 Sam 4:4, 6:2)

So what in the world are cherubim? Obviously the Israelites knew what
one was, or these texts would have been unintelligible to them When we
search the Scriptures, we find that Ezekiel and John the Revelator actually
describe these creatures One of Ezekiel’s descriptions reads as follows:

And this was their appearance: they had human form Each of them had
four faces and four wings Their legs were straight and their feet were like a
calf ’s hoof, and they gleamed like burnished bronze Under their wings on
their four sides were human hands As for the faces and wings of the four of
them, their wings touched one another; their faces did not turn when they
moved, each went straight forward As for the form of their faces, each had
the face of a man; all four had the face of a lion on the right and the face
of a bull on the left, and all four had the face of an eagle Such were their
faces (Ezek 1:5-11; cf Rev 4:5-11; 2 Sam 22:11; Ps 18:10-11)

Ezekiel’s fearsome figures are not at all like the chubby, flying babes so
popular on postcard art today And when we broaden the circle further we
find that these creatures, so mysterious to us, were actually well known
to the ancient Near East In Mesopotamia, Egypt and Canaan we find
repeated presentations of huge, intimidating creatures with the wings of an
eagle, the face of a man and the body and feet of either a lion or a bull Their
composite bodies have been interpreted by modern scholars as pointing to
“a union of the highest powers (strength, speed, sagacity)” of the human
and animal kingdoms 1 Examples of such composite creatures include the
sculpted column bases guarding the entryway to Barrakub’s palace in Zin-
jirli (Neo-Hittite, late eighth century b c ), the winged Sphinx well known
in Egyptian art and architecture, and the enormous winged bulls and lions
stationed outside the throne room and palace entrances of the great Assyr-

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God’s Final Intent 123

ian monarchs 2 According to Othmar Keel, these creatures served as semi-
divine guardians: “The emplacement of guardian genii was motivated by
the belief that they would repel, or even kill the wicked, and thus protect
the holy precincts from defilement ”3 Stationed at the entrances of palaces,
throne rooms and temples, these creatures were intended to intimidate visi-
tors and to make them think twice about doing any sort of damage or show-
ing disrespect to the king/deity or his palace/temple And so they did And
when you stand in the British Museum next to one of the winged lions of
Ashurbanipal and your head barely reaches its knees, you quickly come to
understand why these things were used as royal and sacred sentries!

Why is all this significant to us? Because the cherubim of the biblical
text also show up at the entrance of a throne room, and they too were
intended to defend the Great King from any who would attempt to enter
unworthily Indeed, the cherubim stationed at the entrance of Eden and
embroidered on the curtains of the Holy of Holies let us know that Eden
and the Holy of Holies should both be understood as the throne room of
God And this throne room is now defended from ’Ādām by the armed
sentries of heaven

And what of the cherubim that adorn the ark (Ex 25:18-25)? Turning
back to archaeology for a moment, we find that one of the most amazing
portrayals of cherubim coming out of
the ancient world is the frequent Late-
Bronze/Early Iron-Age depiction of
cherubim thrones 4 One of these is
carved into the tenth-century-b c
limestone sarcophagus of Phoenician
King Ahiram of Byblos 5

In this sketch of the carved panel
of the sarcophagus, Ahiram is por-
trayed as seated upon his cherubim
throne, participating in a banquet
There are ten similar images from
ancient Canaan 6 When we recall
that Exodus 25:18-25 commands Figure 5.3. King Ahiram’s sarcophagus

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124 The Epic of Eden

Moses to position two cherubim above the ark, and that God’s plan was
to meet and speak with the Israelites from that spot (“from above the
mercy seat, from between the two cherubim,” Ex 25:22), and that Yahweh
is repeatedly described as the one “enthroned above the cherubim” (2 Sam
6:2; 2 Kings 19:15; 1 Chron 13:6; Ps 80:1; 99:1; Is 37:16), it seems that
archaeology has provided us with a picture of what the Bible is describing
These analogues show us that the cherubim on the Ark of the Covenant
were to serve as the actual throne of Yahweh, and the ark as his footstool
(1 Chron 28:2) And Yahweh, like all kings, intends to utilize his throne
room as a place of audience with his people Thus the cherubim of the ark
and of Eden are best understood as Yahweh’s watchers, his sentries, his
armed guards But the distinction between Eden and the Holy of Holies
is that whereas )Ada4m was driven from Eden with no hope of reentry, the
Holy of Holies is designed to function as God’s outpost in )Ada4m’s world
Here, although guarded by his cherubim and set apart by means of the
mediation of sacrifice and a priestly staff, God once again dwells among
his people

Longitudinal Section

Floor Plan

Jachin

East

Boaz

Holy of
Holies Holy Place

Vesti-
bule

Figure 5.4. The footprint of Solomon’s temple

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God’s Final Intent 125

Trees. When Israel became a settled people under David’s monarchy,
they began to think in terms of a more permanent sanctuary So with
God’s direction, Solomon built the temple Formatted and decorated in
the same fashion as the tabernacle, we find the same floor plan, furniture
and appliances, as well as the same decorative motifs But here the cur-
tains are replaced with walls and roofs, dimensions are amplified and the
adornment is far more elaborate

In 1 Kings 6 and 7 we read a description of the temple

Then he [Solomon] carved all the walls of the house round about with
carved engravings of cherubim, palm trees, and open f lowers, inner and
outer sanctuaries He overlaid the f loor of the house with gold, inner and
outer sanctuaries For the entrance of the inner sanctuary he made doors of
olive wood, the lintel and five-sided doorposts So he made two doors of
olive wood, and he carved on them carvings of cherubim, palm trees, and
open f lowers, and overlaid them with gold; and he spread the gold on the
cherubim and on the palm trees So also he made for the entrance of the
nave four-sided doorposts of olive wood and two doors of cypress wood
He carved on it cherubim, palm trees, and open f lowers; and he overlaid
them with gold evenly applied on the engraved work (1 Kings 6:29-35)

Figure 5.5. An artist’s reconstruction of the temple

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126 The Epic of Eden

So as in the tabernacle, we encounter cherubim in the temple But now
another motif of Eden has been added—trees, f lowers and fruit Appar-
ently this place in which God and his people cohabitate is designed to turn
the heart toward Eden (1 Kings 6:29, 32, 35; 7:15-26, 36) 7

Rivers. Our next stop is Ezekiel 47 This chapter is embedded in the
prophet’s larger vision about the rebuilt and restored temple (Ezekiel
40–48) Whereas Ezekiel had lived through the period of the exile in
which Jerusalem was captured and the temple razed, in these chapters
he is seeing with the eyes of vision the restoration of this beloved temple
at the end of all things 8 In his vision, the temple has subsumed all of
Jerusalem; the entire city has become the temple And the temple is
now a perfect square (Ezek 48:35) This becomes very significant when
we remember that the only part of Solomon’s temple that was perfectly
square was the Holy of Holies Thus, in Ezekiel’s vision, the Holy of
Holies (the place God actually dwelt) has enveloped the city of man
“He said to me, ‘Son of man, this is the place of My throne and the
place of the soles of My feet, where I will dwell among the sons of Israel
forever’” (Ezek 43:7) In sum, Ezekiel’s vision of the “rest of the story”
is God and humanity dwelling together within a city that has become
a temple

Then suddenly in Ezekiel 47 we are introduced to something wonder-
fully new—a river It begins as a trickle in the Holy of Holies but eventu-
ally becomes a raging river f lowing east through the desert toward the
Dead Sea The river transforms the deserts of Judah into a garden, and
even turns the Dead Sea (which can support no marine life) fresh

Then he said to me, “These waters go out toward the eastern region and go
down into the Arabah; then they go toward the [Dead] sea, being made to
f low into the sea, and the waters of the sea become fresh ” (Ezek 47:8)

The supernatural nature of this vision becomes fully apparent when we
read the next verse For although this river will transform the heavy,
mineral-laden water of the Dead Sea so that it will support “very many”
fish (Ezek 47:10), it will not turn the marshes of the Dead Sea fresh This is
because those salt marshes were an important source of income in Ezekiel’s
day! So this river brings all that is good and nothing that is evil Rather,

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God’s Final Intent 127

this river is a river of life: “everything will live where the river goes” (Ezek
47:9l cf Is 66:12)

So what does this have to do with Eden? You may recall that Eden was
characterized by a cosmic river that split into four and “watered the entire
garden” (Gen 2:10) In Ezekiel’s heaven, this river does the same Origi-
nating in the throne room of God (i e , the Holy of Holies), it brings life
back to a fallen earth Pause for a moment over Ezekiel 47:12

By the river on its bank, on one side and on the other, will grow all kinds
of trees for food Their leaves will not wither and their fruit will not fail
They will bear every month because their water f lows from the sanctuary,
and their fruit will be for food and their leaves for healing

Hmmm when did we last encounter a Tree of Life?

T H E NEW J ERUSA LE M
This brings us at last to Revelation 21–22, the end of the story

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the
first earth passed away, and there is no longer any sea And I saw the holy
city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready
as a bride adorned for her husband And I heard a loud voice from the
throne, saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is among men, and He will
dwell among them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself will be
among them, and He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there
will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or cry-
ing, or pain; the first things have passed away ” And He who sits on the
throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new ” (Rev 21:1-5)

What John is describing here is what Christians call “heaven ” But unlike
the images common to our imaginations—disembodied spirits, clouds
and wings, harps and chubby cherubs—the biblical author is describing
heaven as a new earth The garden has been restored, the primordial deep
(“chaos”) has been defeated, and Ezekiel’s city/temple is being lowered
from the heavens to serve as the residence of the redeemed 9 Hear the
voice from the throne ringing out into the silence and grief of )Ada4m’s
wasted world: “I am making all things new!” (Rev 21:5) The Creator
speaks and the earth and its inhabitants are finally free (cf Rom 8:21)

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128 The Epic of Eden

Healing has come; mourning is passed; death is no more This is the New
Jerusalem, purified and whole And with the New Jerusalem comes the
Presence, “and God Himself shall be among them” (Rev 21:3; cf Rev
21:22-27) Glory to his name

Then he showed me a river of the water of life, clear as crystal, coming
from the throne of God and of the Lamb, in the middle of its street On
either side of the river was the tree of life, bearing twelve kinds of fruit,
yielding its fruit every month; and the leaves of the tree were for the heal-
ing of the nations There will no longer be any curse; and the throne of
God and of the Lamb will be in it, and His bond-servants will serve Him;
they will see His face, and His name will be on their foreheads And there
will no longer be any night; and they will not have need of the light of a
lamp nor the light of the sun, because the Lord God will illumine them;
and they will reign forever and ever (Rev 22:1-5)

This New Jerusalem (what we know as “heaven”) is all that the city of
man in Eden was meant to be In fact, it is Eden—a fruit-filled paradise
animated by a cosmic river and graced by the Tree of Life Here, once
again, the unhindered presence of God and the unhindered maturation
of a sinless humanity coexist The most significant difference between
the New Jerusalem and Eden is that there was no city in Eden; )Ada4m
had not gotten that far But now the city built in our fallenness has been
redeemed and restored God and )Ada4m live under the same roof once
again Moreover, the icons of Eden are now multiplied and expanded
The Tree of Life lines both sides of the river in the New Jerusalem, and
now the tree and the river bring healing to a wounded race All of this
because what had been the “outpost” of God’s presence has become the
whole Whereas the Holy of Holies had served as a small-scale locus of
connection, a “bubble” in )Ada4m’s world in which the two dimensions of
God’s place and humanity’s place could be the same place, in the New
Jerusalem the two dimensions are rejoined:

I saw no temple in it, for the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb are
its temple And the city has no need of the sun or of the moon to shine on
it, for the glory of God has illumined it, and its lamp is the Lamb The
nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their
glory into it In the daytime (for there will be no night there) its gates will

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God’s Final Intent 129

never be closed; and they will bring the glory and the honor of the nations
into it; and nothing unclean, and no one who practices abomination and
lying, shall ever come into it, but only those whose names are written in the
Lamb’s book of life (Rev 21:22-27)

This city will need no temple, because it will not need to house God,
he will live there Its gates will never be closed because there will be no
enemies to threaten it And who will live there? “Those whose names are
written in the Lamb’s book of life ”

And where are the cherubim in the New Jerusalem? As there is no
longer any need to defend the throne room of God from )Ada4m (“they
will see His face, and His name will be on their foreheads”; Rev 22:4),
we find no cherubim here either God has taken back the garden, Adam’s
children are home, and the seven days of Genesis 1 have been put back in
their proper order

G OD’ S F I NA L I N T EN T
So what is God’s final intent for humanity? As is obvious from tracing the
iconography of Eden through redemptive history, God’s original intent is
his final intent Eden was the perfect plan, and God has never had any
other His goal was that the people of God might dwell in the place of
God, enjoying the presence of God This is all our heavenly Father has
ever wanted for us And everything that lies between Eden’s gate and the
New Jerusalem, the bulk of our Bibles, is in essence a huge rescue plan In
fact, we could summarize the plot line of the Bible into one cosmic ques-
tion: “How do we get )Ada4m back into the garden?” In Genesis 3 human-
ity was driven out; in Revelation 21–22 they are welcomed home

My years in the classroom tell me that at this point some readers are
asking, “Wait, I’m confused Then where is heaven?” Heaven is the same
place it has always been where God is More specifically, heaven is
the place where the people of God dwell in the place of God with full
access to the presence of God But this insight must be balanced by the
fact that )Ada4m is a creature; humanity was not designed to f loat about
in the heavenlies as is so often portrayed in popular theology No, )Ada4m
was designed for Eden And the new heavens and the new earth (which
are the new Eden) is where God intends for us to spend eternity Because

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130 The Epic of Eden

of this, Eden-past is actually our best picture of what heaven-future will
be This portrait of heaven should help out a lot the next time your seven-
year-old asks you where relatives go when they die

So if Eden and the New Jerusalem are God’s original and final intent
for humanity, what of all that lies in between? Take a look at figure 5 6
This simple little chart offers us a synopsis of redemptive history The
tree in the top left-hand corner is our icon for Eden Start here Although
designed to live out their lives in Eden, humanity chose rebellion instead
The result was the Fall with all of its horrible repercussions Like a rock
climber having fallen from a great height, )Ada4m now lies broken and
bloody on the ledge of the cliff—too far from top or bottom for a simple
rescue It will take a series of rescues to bring this climber to safety Let’s
pursue this metaphor for a moment A climber who has experienced this
sort of accident is too injured to do anything to help himself; he is prob-
ably unconscious So someone is going to have to rappel down that preci-
pice to reach him in his need That someone will need to do emergency
first aid, brace the climber’s neck and strap his battered body into a litter
so that he can be hoisted back up or down the face of the cliff But this is
only the beginning of the rescue An airlift will be needed to get this man
to a hospital Emergency surgery will be necessary to stop the bleeding,
remove the irreparable organs and splint the bones And now the real vigil
begins Placed in ICU on a respirator and IV, will our climber recover?
This is only a metaphor, but it’s one that has a lot to teach us because the
rescue of )Ada4m is much the same The Bible teaches us that redemptive
history did not happen in one fell swoop Rather, God has been leading
humanity back to Eden by means of a sequence of steps, a series of rescues,
a series of covenants To mix metaphors, with the covenant of Noah the
paramedic successfully reaches the fallen climber; with the covenant of
Abraham triage is done and the climber is lowered down the cliff; with
the covenants of Moses and David the airlift is accomplished and surgery
begins; with the covenant of Jesus the surgery is successful and the vigil
begins—will our rescued climber endure to the end?

The rest of this book is dedicated to detailing each of the covenantal
administrations of this great rescue plan As promised, we will find that
the “general law” that will organize the facts for us is covenant Each step

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God’s Final Intent 131

of the story, each stage of the rescue may be organized under one of six
covenants Let me summarize The first post-Eden covenantal adminis-
tration is with Noah This covenant reestablishes contact between Adam’s
race and Yahweh, and it speaks to all creation Thus we will speak of
Noah’s covenant as a “cosmic” and “re-creational” covenant The Abra-
hamic covenant begins the hard work of restoring a people for God’s own
possession Do you remember our little triplet? The people of God dwell-
ing in the place of God with full access to the presence of God The
Abrahamic covenant addresses the first two components of this equation
by promising Abraham offspring and land: the people of God (Abraham’s
offspring) and the place of God (Canaan) The covenant with Moses comes
next When the New Testament writers speak of the “Old Covenant,” this
is the one they mean This covenant takes up the lion’s share of the Old
Testament, and in it the promises offered to Abraham are fulfilled But
they are fulfilled only in a typological fashion We will get to the idea of
“typology” later; for now understand that under Moses the people of God

Eden New Jerusalem

New Covenant (Jesus)

Davidic Covenant

Mosaic Covenant

Abrahamic Covenant

Noahic Covenant

Figure 5.6. A synopsis of redemptive history

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132 The Epic of Eden

are the citizens of the nation of Israel and the place is the real estate that
belongs to that political entity Moreover, under this covenant, for the first
time since Eden, the Presence is restored to the people God dwells among
his people by means of the tabernacle and then the temple Although in a
limited (typological) fashion, under Moses the people of God dwell in the
place of God with access to the presence of God David’s covenant will
add to this picture the capstone of a human leader whose first ambition is
to lead his people in their service to God David is, in essence, the ideal
vassal And unlike Adam, David welcomes the seventh day into his king-
dom Thus David becomes the prototype of the coming Messiah who will
be the ultimate human mediator, the perfect vassal, the Word incarnate
With Jesus comes the new covenant In Jesus, the types of the Mosaic and
Davidic covenants are fulfilled in an “already” and “not yet” fashion The
“already” is what we live today: restored but waiting, free but bound, born
again yet still experiencing death The “not yet” is what we live for This
is the promise of the New Jerusalem in which the people, place, and pres-
ence are restored in full and forever—where death has been defeated and
the curse forever repealed

In its simplicity, figure 5 6 illustrates that Eden and the New Jeru-
salem are the bookends of redemptive history God’s original intent is
his final intent, and everything that lies between is one extraordinary
rescue plan To use another metaphor, the rescue plan is much like a
series of overhead transparencies In the days of overhead projectors,
when I needed to illustrate a region of Israel in my classes, I would
start with a backdrop transparency showing the topography of the land;
I would then overlay that with a second transparency illustrating the
national boundaries of the region and then overlay that with a transpar-
ency showing the towns and highways in which I was particularly inter-
ested Thus, whereas each transparency was correct in and of itself, the
picture was not complete until each had been laid upon the other This is
redemptive history as well Each of the stages in the story brings )Ada4m
one step closer to full deliverance; each serves to re educate humanity
as to who the God of Eden was and is But the picture is not com-
plete until the New Jerusalem descends from heaven, God reestablishes
his dwelling place among humanity, and humanity is home

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God’s Final Intent 133

Another way to picture this story is illustrated in figure 5 7 Here you
see the ever-expanding embrace of redemptive history Whereas in Eden
all humanity was welcomed into relationship with God, with the Fall,
that relationship was broken With Noah, one man and his immediate
family reenter God’s plan With Abraham, an extended family that even-
tually becomes a tribal confederacy is welcomed home With Moses, an
entire nation experiences the grace of God Finally with Jesus, as in Eden,
every son of Adam and daughter of Eve is offered the opportunity for
relationship with their Creator

A final illustration of the trajectory of redemptive history is found in
figure 5 8 Here a simplified timeline is offered According to the Bi-
ble, human history begins with Eden and may be tracked and organized
around the six covenantal administrations until it finds its great culmina-
tion in the New Jerusalem in which “there will no longer be any curse”
(Rev 22:3) This is the big picture, and it is in every way amazing We are

Noah
one
man

Eden
all

people

Israel
(Moses)

the
Church

all
people

one nation

Abraham

one family

Figure 5.7. The people of redemptive history

Adam Abraham Jesus

Noah Moses [David] New
Jerusalem

Figure 5.8. The timeline of redemptive history

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134 The Epic of Eden

headed back to Eden, with all of heaven urging us on! To use a New Tes-
tament metaphor, the table is prepared and our Father awaits our return

CONCLUSIONS
In sum, redemptive history is all about fixing what went wrong in the
garden What went wrong in Eden is what must go right in redemption;
what was done in the garden must be undone in Christ In the garden hu-
manity made a choice for autonomy That choice cast the entire cosmos
into disarray Moreover, that choice birthed in our race the power of sin
which has been passed down to every son of Adam and every daughter
of Eve Thus you and I stand guilty on two fronts: (1) we are guilty be-
cause our forefather represented us in a sinful choice; but (2) we are also
guilty because we have followed our forefather in that choice with our
individual choices Thus we need to be delivered on two fronts as well
First, we need a representative who will stand in for us in making a dif-
ferent choice; and second, we ourselves need to make a different choice
But as we do not have the power on our own to free ourselves from
our depraved state (inherited from Adam and Eve) and make the right
choice, we need to be somehow lifted from our depravity long enough
to say “yes” to God

How in the world will God save his people from this impossible state
of affairs? Glory to his name, the solution to all of this and more was ac-
complished in the life and death and resurrection of Jesus Although there
are volumes that could be written, the essential points are these When
Jesus came to this fallen planet as the “Last Adam,” he was born in the
same state as was the first Adam, sinless As a result, he had the same op-
portunities and the same weaknesses as our forefather in the f lesh Thus,
when Jesus successfully resisted Satan’s temptation to throw off the Fa-
ther’s authority and use his own authority as he pleased (Mt 4:1-11), and
when he chose to participate in the crucifixion by taking the wrath of
God upon himself on our behalf, he did two things One, he proved that
the first Adam could have succeeded in his charge Two, he bore in his
own body the curse of Eden, so that the children of Adam would not have
to And when Jesus rose from the grave, he defeated death; he eradicated
the curse of Eden And because Jesus was both human and God, his death

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God’s Final Intent 135

and resurrection was of such a nature that it could be vicariously applied to
all of Adam’s children Thus Jesus became that right representative of our
race who made the right choice In his victory over the grave, this same
Jesus suspended the power of death in our lives such that you and I could
be given the same opportunity given to Adam and Eve the chance to
choose Thus, when you said “yes” to God at that altar rail years ago, or
last week as you knelt at the side of your bed, what you were doing was
“undoing” the choice of Adam in your own life Whereas Adam said “no”
to the sovereignty of God, you said “yes ” What is the prayer? “Jesus, be
lord of my life ”

If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart
that God raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved (Rom 10:9)

Saved from what? The curse of Eden with all of its ramifications In sum,
in the work of Christ, the rebellious heart is softened, the choice is “un-
made,” the broken relationship is healed, the curse is lifted, and the lost
inheritance regained All this because the second time around, Adam did
not fail

For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all shall be made alive (1 Cor
15:22)

Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death
through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned—for until
the Law sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed when there is no law
Nevertheless death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over those who
had not sinned in the likeness of the offense of Adam, who is a type of
Him who was to come But the free gift is not like the transgression For
if by the transgression of the one the many died, much more did the grace
of God and the gift by the grace of the one Man, Jesus Christ, abound
to the many The gift is not like that which came through the one who
sinned; for on the one hand the judgment arose from one transgression
resulting in condemnation, but on the other hand the free gift arose from
many transgressions resulting in justification For if by the transgression
of the one, death reigned through the one, much more those who receive
the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life
through the One, Jesus Christ So then as through one transgression there

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136 The Epic of Eden

resulted condemnation to all men, even so through one act of righteousness
there resulted justification of life to all men For as through the one man’s
disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience
of the One the many will be made righteous (Rom 5:12-19)

So also it is written, “The first man, Adam, became a living soul ” The
last Adam became a life-giving spirit (1 Cor 15:45)

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