Mike wrote:
"Let us not forget that
Lucifer fell before man. Doesn't that come into the
picture?"
Good point, Moorad. I hadn't even considered that. However, I
don't
believe the fall of Lucifer brought a curse upon the rest of
creation.
Nowhere does Scripture seem to indicate this. Not that I'm aware of
anyway.
It wasn't until the fall of man that God cursed the ground in Genesis
3:17.
First lf all, I think we can look at the ground, or earth, and ask if it
is cursed today or is it fertile? It looks fertile to me, so I
would say that the "ground" is not presently cursed. If
God cursed the ground at Adam's Fall, either the "curse" wore
off, which is hard to justify per Scripture, or else the curse was local,
as was the flood, and not global.
In historical perspective, it appears the garden in Eden was irrigated by
canal off the Euphrates river. The Euphrates is named as one of the
four rivers in Genesis, and all of the cities in that region were
irrigated by canals. If you read Ezekiel 1:1, it names the
"river" Chebar in Babylon. Yet a map shows only the river
Euphrates. The "river" Chebar was an irrigation
canal. They were named in those days.
Now we know from an example in Scripture the Bible will use the word
"river" to pertain to a canal. And "edin" is a
Sumerian/Accadian word which means "plain, priarie or
desert." Let's presume the word "desert" is apt
because that fairly well describes the area of Mesopotamia - present-day
Iraq.
Quoting Genesis 2:10: "And a river went out of Eden to water the
garden ..." Substituting accordingly, a canal went out of the
desert to water the garden. The garden was irrigated.
When Adam was banished from the garden he left the area that was
irrigated and found in the unirrigated desert "thorns and
thistles." Another possibility is that over the years the
ground became salty from continued irrigation and Eridu (the likely
original home of Adam) was abandoned. In fact we know Eridu was
abandoned at least once, presumably for that reason. So whether
Adam suffered from banishment immediately or through the increasingly
salty soil, the result was the same.
Either way, the curse was local, and effected Adam's circumstances, not
the American Indians, for example, who planted corn in fertile land both
before and after Adam's Fall.
Dick Fischer -
Genesis Proclaimed Association
Finding Harmony in Bible, Science, and History
www.genesisproclaimed.org
Received on Fri Sep 24 16:03:54 2004