The creation

To understand the end of the Bible, you have to understand its beginning. Did you know that the tree of life from the story of the Fall, and the sign given to Cain, both reappear in the book of Revelation?

The poem

In the ancient mythologies surrounding Israel, creation was typically the byproduct of a battle between the gods, emerging out of chaos.

The Bible tells it differently: creation there is written as a poem, with its own recurring refrain — “God saw that it was good, and there was evening and there was morning, the … day” — the whole account crafted as a work of art.

It’s also clearly intended and designed: the first three days form the “houses” of creation (light, water, earth), the next three fill them with inhabitants (sun, moon and stars; fish and birds; land animals and people), and the seventh day sums up the rest with the Sabbath.

And it was all very good. Man and woman, God’s representatives made in his image, were placed as rulers over everything — created equally, both of them, to represent God.

The drama

The next part of Genesis is a drama that grows out of the creation account. Where the poem laid out the structure, the drama reveals the intention, and it begins with the man and the garden of Eden.

The man had complete freedom except for one restriction: he was not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

He had everything else — a task to cultivate and protect the garden, creative ownership expressed in naming the animals (and so giving them identity), and an intimate relationship with God. But one thing was still missing, the one thing God does not call good: he was alone.

God himself exists in relationship and is defined by it — God is love, and love only makes sense in relationship — so he looked for a counterpart for the man, found none suitable among the animals, and made the woman out of him instead. The man was delighted and named her “woman”; God had called her “helper” — a word better translated “life-saver.” And that is exactly where the fall begins: all it takes from there is a tipping point, and the shape of a serpent.

The tipping stone

The serpent approaches the woman, not the man, and challenges her about the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Notice how careful she is not to violate the actual commandment: to guard against ever eating from it, she adds a commandment of her own — as guardian, presumably on the man’s behalf — not even to touch it.

That extra commandment is exactly what the devil exploits, and it offers no real protection: the fruit is appealing to look at, and she eats it.

Then she gives it to the man — and he doesn’t need to be found, because he has been right there the whole time, silent. That silence is telling, since the Hebrew word for “male” carries the sense “to remember.” If there is one thing he is supposed to be good at, it’s remembering what God said and who he is. Instead, both of them fail. The result is shame, and shame drives them to hide from God and to blame each other — it breaks every relationship it touches.

God’s recovery plan

God could have exposed them outright, but he doesn’t. Instead he asks, as if he did not know, “Adam, where are you?” — the perfect opening for Adam to step out of his shame and come clean with God.

Adam, though, only points to the symptoms of his shame: he hid because he was naked, even though he had been naked before with no shame at all. So God presses more directly: have you eaten from the tree you were told not to eat from?

Even then, Adam doesn’t confess — he blames everyone but himself: “the woman you gave me.” In one line he manages to blame both God and the woman he had just been so amazed by. The woman, for her part, admits only that she ate from the tree, not that she gave it to the man.

The consequence

God judges the serpent without a single mitigating word, and promises that the woman will bring forth the savior who destroys it.

The man’s judgment names the actual problem: “because you listened to the voice of your wife.” The woman had been a dream come true, a gift straight from God — but instead of letting her draw him closer to God, the man let God’s gift replace God himself. He obeyed her word instead of God’s word. The fruit only exposed a problem that was already there. The man was “with her” the whole time (3:6) — present, and silent. And when God asks, he points at her: “the woman you put here with me.” God does not accept the excuse.

The unthinkable

They have to leave the garden, but first their shame is covered — with animal skins. Sit with that for a moment, because animal skins don’t grow on trees. God has to damage his own creation and let animals die just to cover the shame of the man and woman. The text does not call this a sacrifice. But Christian readers have long seen in it a first hint of what is to come: a life given so that shame can be covered.

A new beginning

After they leave the garden, Eve becomes pregnant and makes a striking statement: “I have gotten a child with the help of the Lord.” It was obviously Adam’s child, but the name she gives him — Cain, which sounds like the Hebrew for “I have gotten” — shows what she’s really thinking.¹ Perhaps she hopes Cain is her ticket back into the garden, the promised savior who will destroy the serpent. That hope becomes even clearer when she names her second son Abel — meaning “nothing” or “vapor.”

The explosion

It was hard for Cain to carry all his parents’ expectation, and just as hard for Abel to have none placed on him at all. Both brothers suffered from the loss their parents had imposed on them, and that loss pushed them to compare themselves with each other.

One day they each bring a sacrifice — Cain from the grain, Abel from the flock — and God accepts Abel’s but not Cain’s. Cain becomes furious.

What was the problem? Genesis does not say. The New Testament points to the heart, not the gift: “by faith Abel brought God a better offering” (Heb 11:4).

As Cain’s anger builds, God steps in immediately to warn him. Notably, sin here isn’t described as an act already committed, but as an intention with a purpose still forming. Cain doesn’t listen, and he kills his brother. When he is confronted, he does not repent. He complains that his punishment is more than he can bear — and even so, God places a protective sign on him.

The scandal

Cain’s descendants keep growing, finding refuge in cities and in the innovations of civilization. Then, in the seventh generation after Adam, Lamech shows his true face.

He is the first man on record to take two wives, and he openly mocks the protective sign God had placed on his ancestor Cain. He has already killed a man — the very thing that sign was meant to prevent — and boasts that the consequences for anyone who touches him will be far greater than God’s own promised consequences for Cain. Is he claiming to be greater than God himself?

And yet he is also, in his own way, a laughing stock. He doesn’t dare announce this boast to the world — only to his wife, in private. And who, exactly, is left to avenge Lamech if someone kills him? His wives?

In Revelation

The story breaks off with Lamech’s boast, and nothing in Genesis 4 answers it. The rest of the Bible is the answer, and Revelation is its last page. Three things from these chapters come back there.

The tree of life. Adam and Eve lose it. Jesus promises it again to those who overcome, and at the end it stands in the city, bearing fruit every month, its leaves for the healing of the nations. The tree is a picture of life in God’s presence. What was lost in the garden is given back, and more.²

The sign. God puts a sign on Cain so that no one will kill him. In Revelation God’s people carry his name on their foreheads. It does not keep them from suffering. It says whose they are, and that he will bring them through.³

The city. Driven out of the garden, people do not look for the way back. They choose the city instead. Cain builds the first one, away from God’s presence, and at Babel they build one to make a name for themselves. The city is their own answer to the lost garden: safety and a name without God. Revelation ends with a city too. But this one is not built from below. It comes down from God, and he lives in it. And in the middle of it are the river and the tree of life: the garden is given back inside the city.⁴

Sources