The Earthling Gets a Job (Gen 2:15)

Into and Out of the Garden

¹⁵ … to work it and keep it לְעָבְדָ֖הּ וּלְשָׁמְרָֽהּ׃

There is a slight bump in the road as we resume our tale. We saw that v. 15 works as a repetitive resumption, continuing the story that was interrupted by the description of the one river that becomes four. But though v. 15 resumes v. 8, it continues with a slight twist. V. 9 told us about the Tree of Life and the Tree of Sorting; only then did the geography lesson of vv. 10–14 begin. We’ll meet one of those trees again in v. 16. First, though, v. 15 — finally! — explains to us whythe earthling was created. He’s got work to do.

The verbs here are basic Hebrew. The grammar is easy; these are infinitives (Qal infinitive constructs, if you’re scoring at home) with a suffix that is translated here as “it.” (More on this shortly from Abraham ibn Ezra.) A more difficult question is what these verbs are trying to tell us, and why.

Each of these two verbs could be translated in at least 3 different ways. Let me repeat what I said way back in the second verse of the Bible:

The Hebrew writer, of course, did not consider [which English translation he meant]. He did not mean “a ferocious wind” or “a divine wind” or “the spirit of God,” he meant ruaḥ-elohim — and that is what he said. I’m reluctant to use the word “impossible,” but it certainly seems extremely difficult to find an English phrase that could convey all three meanings at once. But the Hebrew phrase seems to embody them all as a single package.

It's hard to keep the Hebrew words in mind and not focus on one or another of the English words that translate them. Nevertheless, it’s very important that we try to do that. Otherwise we are not thinking about the Bible, but about someone’s imitation of the Bible (even if in this case it’s my own).

Here we go:

לְעָבְדָ֖הּ l’ovdah comes from the root עבד ayin-b-d, which might be translated in any of these ways:

• to work

• to serve

• to worship

Yes, when your avodah (the noun form) is in service to a god, that is the biblical term for worshipping the god you are working for. Remember the background information to this version of the creation story. We learned in v. 5 that “there was no one to work the ground.” In story terms, and because the object of the verb is “the ground” (in v. 5) and “it” in v. 15, it looks like this earthling (though he doesn’t realize it yet) has answered an ad for garden work — work that may somehow amount to service to, perhaps even worship of, YHWH.

Now, a message from the Gender Fluidity Board.