...Walking In The Garden To The Wind Of The Day... (Part 2)

ְהוָה אֱלֹהִים מִתְהַלֵּךְ - Yahweh God walking

שְׁמְעוּ אֶת־קוֹל יְהוָה אֱלֹהִים מִתְהַלֵּךְ בַּגָּן לְרוּחַ הַיּ֑וֹם וַיִּתְחַבֵּא הָֽאָדָם

וְאִשְׁתּוֹ מִפְּנֵי יְהוָה אֱלֹהִים בְּתוֹךְ עֵץ הַגָּֽן

Then they heard the sound of Yahweh-God walking in the garden to the wind of the day and they hid...

Genesis 3:8

You can never assume that what you think you understand about another culture is how they understand themselves unless you work to set aside your own cultural background, place yourself in their shoes, and try to understand their cultural cohesion from their perspective.

Genesis chapter three, verse eight is a seemingly innocuous passage. Most Christians choose to focus on other verses which bolster a formal theology and its subsequent world-view that was developed several millennia after this text was first written, and which as we shall see promotes a meaning that is far from the original meaning, but which justifies what amounts to a crazed view of God set forth by people who have no intimate knowledge of God, and which is the opposite of the intention of the Hebrew text. As such it is important to return to the original language, the original text, and its original intentions in order to understand how Jesus of Nazareth himself, as well as other Christian writers of the first century, would have understood it. In doing so we shall see that doing so changes the intent and meaning of what we understand the very message of Christianity to be, disallowing us from imposing our values today on what people 3,500 years ago were trying to tell us about God’s own self-revelation, and what that portends for us as those who accept that the Jew, Jesus of Nazareth, is the fulfillment of God’s instructions to them as taught in the Torah (Books of Moses), the Nevi’im (the Prophets), and the Ketuvim (the Writings).

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ְהוָה אֱלֹהִים מִתְהַלֵּךְ - Yahweh-God walking

The subject of Genesis 3:8 is God.

But we must always bear in mind that the Hebrew language presents a highly nuanced understanding of God. These understandings are not sterile abstractions, but are based upon the actions of God as God actually is present and working in the world.

So which God is present in Genesis 3:8? The Hebrew is clear; it is Yahweh-God.

Yahweh is both the formal name of God, and as such describes the chief characteristic of God, namely, that this God is immanent and available at all times, past, present, and future. This name includes the meanings, I was who I was, I am who I am, and I will be whom I will be, but is mostly simply translated and encountered as I AM.

In stating this the writer of Genesis is saying that the story of what we are about to hear really happened because this God actually showed up and is about to say or do something that warrants our hearing, so pay attention.