Modern March | a Christian blog

Exile and Exodus – Eden, the Fall, and Restoration

Posted: 28 Sep 2010 08:00 AM PDT

The Garden of Eden

Much has been written on the Garden of Eden, some of which has been important and some of which…hasn’t. It isn’t necessary for me to rehash what has been said for this post^[1], but we need to understand something of what the Garden of Eden is about before moving on to the themes of exile and exodus.

Important for our purposes is an understanding of the essence of Eden. The essence of Eden is God’s kingdom. God’s kingdom has been variously defined, but let’s assume Graeme Goldsworthy’s definition: God’s people in God’s place under God’s rule. Though implicit, we should add God’s presence among God’s people in God’s place and under his rule. When viewed this way, we are in a good place to see the core of the theme of exile and exodus in the rest of the Bible—Eden prefigures both the Promised Land (“Eden” in the midst of fallen history) and the New Creation (“Eden” perfected). Eden is also the place of God’s presence among his people (and so the Tabernacle, Temple/Promised Land, Jesus, the Church, the New Creation).

Exile – Paradise Lost

Unfortunately for everyone, the exilic theme starts very early in the biblical story. If pre-fall conditions were to be a progressive overcoming of the chaotic wilderness in order to make it like the garden, the post-fall world is violently sent into exile. At the rebellion of Adam and Eve, the world became the wilderness rather than the garden.

As tragic as this de-creation is (and it is tragic), the most devastating exile from Eden is that of Adam and Eve. True, the account does not contain the technical word for “going into exile”^[2], but the concept is obviously there. As part of God’s judgment, God “banished them from the Garden of Eden” and “drove them out” (Genesis 3:23-24). Humanity was exiled from God’s presence and condemned to wander the wilderness. As defined in the first post, “exile” is “a departure that is the result of a punitive act on God's part to punish his people.” Therefore, the banishment from Eden is the proto-typical exile—humanity rejecting God’s rule, cut off as God’s people, banished from God’s place, and cut off from God’s presence.

Exodus – Paradise Regained

Fortunately for everyone, this exile is not the end of the story. Just as exile is shown here in seed form, so is exodus. In Genesis 3:15, God promises that one of Eve’s children will crush the head of the serpent (the one who initiated what would become Adam and Eve’s rebellion). Christians recognize this prophecy as being fulfilled in Jesus in his life, death, resurrection, return and judgment. Significant for Adam and Eve, however, is the idea that God will fix what they have broken. By destroying the very one who led the primal couple astray, God was implicitly promising an exodus—a departure from the sin-soaked wilderness and a return to the way things were supposed to be: God’s people, living in God’s place, under God’s rule, in his presence forever.

Adam and Eve had no knowledge that the skull-crushing seed of Eve would come much later. Imagine the hope Adam and Eve placed on Cain and Able… and the soul-crushing defeat that came with the blood-stained hands of Cain. Imagine how hope would arise again with the birth of Seth.

But, as they would find out, it would not be Seth that would inevitably bring us back to Eden. Instead, it was Seth’s greatest son, Jesus of Nazareth, who would finally conquer Satan, sin, and death. The exodus Jesus brings, however, is not simply a return to the garden, but rather a forward-pointing exodus that ushers us into the garden-city of the new creation. It is an exodus that we get a taste of now in salvation, but will become a reality when Jesus returns.

Next:The Tower of Babel and the Call of Abraham

1. I would direct those interested to Beale’s good if wordy The Temple and the Church’s Mission and relevant chapters in Tremper Longman III’s Immanuel in Our Place: Seeing Christ in Israel’s Worship. Return to Post.

2.Nor should we expect it as the word (with this meaning) enters the Hebrew Old Testament in Judges with a post-exilic comment about the captivity, as well as the books of Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles. The word does appear in the Pentateuch, but with the idea of “uncovering” or “revealing.” The exilic meaning is forged in the exile. Return to Post.

Filed under: Scripture Lessons, Series, Theology