Second Thoughts (Gen 3:22)

You Can't Go Home Again

²² Then YHWH God thought … ו וַיֹּ֣אמֶר ׀ יְ׳הוָ֣ה אֱלֹהִ֗ים

As I explained at length last time, we are now in the 3^rd episode of the book of Genesis. Episode 1, which we’ve been calling Version 1 of the creation story, was subtitled on this blog “Reading through the story of creation,” since I started with the plan of reading just through those seven days and then jumping elsewhere in the Bible. It ran from Gen 1:1-2:3.

Gen 2:4 served as a hinge between Version 1 and Version 2. That second version, which we’ve just finished, was called “Into and Out of the Garden,” and ran from Gen 2:5-3:21. The two versions of the creation story show us creation first from a divine perspective and then from a human one.

Now — somewhat to my surprise, and perhaps to yours as well — we begin Episode 3, consisting of Genesis 4 and its famous story of Cain and Abel but also of the rest of that chapter, all of it introduced by these last three verses of Genesis 3. Again, as I explained last time, these three verses are not the end of something but a new beginning.

It’s easy to see why Stephen Langton and his colleagues might have decided this was the end of the story we’ve just been reading, which has been all about eating from that tree. (More on that shortly.) But in order to think afresh about the Bible, I’m taking advantage of the Jewish division of the text. Since וַיֹּ֣אמֶר va-yomer is an imperfect consecutive (see here; go to Lesson 11 of my Hebrew course for the Teaching Company for more details), it’s telling us the sequence of events.