Page:A critical and exegetical commentary on Genesis (1910).djvu/153

 II. 4b—III. 24.—The Creation and Fall of Man (J).

The passage forms a complete and closely articulated narrative, of which the leading motive is man's loss of his original innocence and happiness through eating forbidden fruit, and his consequent expulsion from the garden of Eden. The account of creation in 2$4bβ$ had primarily, perhaps, an independent interest; yet it contains little that is not directly subservient to the main theme developed in ch. 3. It is scarcely to be called a cosmogony, for the making of 'earth and heaven' (2$19. 23$) is assumed without being described; the narrative springs from an early phase of thought which was interested in the beginnings of human life and history, but had not advanced to speculation on the origin of heaven and earth (cf. Frankenberg in Gu.$9. 16f.$ 24). From ch. 1 it differs fundamentally both in its conception of the primal condition of the world as an arid, waterless waste (2$1-5. 11. 17. 22$: ct. 1$8b. 15$), and in the order of creative works: viz. Man ($23f.$), Trees ($19$), Animals ($1a. 14$), Woman ($21-23$). Alike in this arrangement and in the supplementary features—the garden ($12$ $24$), the miraculous trees ($16b$), the appointments regarding man's position in the world ($25$), and the remarkable omissions (plants, fishes, etc.)—it is governed by the main episode to which it leads up (ch. 3), with its account of the temptation by the serpent ($7. 10f.$), the transgression ($4bff.$), the inquest ($4b$), the sentences ($2$), and the expulsion from Eden ($5f.$).

The story thus summarised is one of the most charming idylls in literature: ch. 3 is justly described by Gu. as the 'pearl of Genesis.' Its literary and æsthetic character is best appreciated by comparison with ch. 1. Instead of the formal precision, the schematic disposition, the stereotyped diction, the aim at scientific classification, which distinguish the great cosmogony, we have here a narrative marked by childlike simplicity of conception, exuberant though pure imagination, and a captivating freedom of style. Instead of lifting God far above man and nature, this writer revels in the most exquisite anthropomorphisms; he does not shrink from speaking of God as walking in His garden in the cool of the day (3$2$), or making experiments for the welfare of His first creature (2$7$), or arriving at a knowledge of man's sin by a searching