...Walking In The Garden To The Wind Of The Day... (Part 5)

they hid - וַיִּתְחַבֵּא

מְעוּ 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 theirs from their perspective.

There are natural events which occur, that if faced squarely, draw something out of people, which explanations in and of themselves can never do.

It is wrong to place upon this text a later interpretation of it. It is correct to accept what this text simply shows about people in their own time and place.

What we have seen so far in this verse is that the writer of Bereishit/Genesis experienced God as an immanent and relational being who without hurry appears in the wind to interact with people.

And in doing so this natural occurrence - the wind - elicits a realization in people.

This verse provides an extremely significant insight into how ancient Israelites experienced God. Nothing could be less metaphorical. It is self-evident that for them there was no separation between the physical and the spiritual. In this instance the wind was the means of encountering God. That is not to say that the wind was God, but that for them the wind could be trusted to present God in a very real and tangible way. Again. stated simply and straightforwardly, there was no separation between the physical and the spiritual. This is a far cry from pantheism; nature was not God. Nor was it strict panenthiesm; God was not rigidly present in nature. But it was clearly an olique panenthiesm, because you were never quite certain when or where God would decisively show up in natural occurrences. But it is certainly clear that Genesis 3:8 was certainly one of these moments.

And what effect did God showing up in the wind produce? They hid at the sound of God as mediated by the wind.

It would be wrong to say that the wind itself said something to them about their choice to eat of the fruit, because God actually speaks with these people using words in later verses.

But it is the sound of the wind - this natural occurrence in the world - that brings them to self-knowledge. And what do they realize, fully exposed to the elements in their natural state in the natural world? They realize that they are vulnerable...they are naked. They realize that they are mortal. They realize that as creatures of the world, they will die. They understand that whereas they had existed in a state of immortality and innocence (literally the word means to be unwounded), now they are no longer so.

Go. Stand in a grove of trees in the wild. Listen to the rustle. Take away all of the artificial supports that you are so accustomed to expect and that make life without end seem possible, and see what you have left?

This at its root is primitive Judaism. And as such it is also primitive Christianity. Jesus, Peter, and Paul each lived with this reality, this connection to the natural world and one’s interaction with God both in and through it. This is the overarching context of life. And it appears time and again throughout the rest of Hebrew scripture and forms the basis for Christian scripture as well. Among other natural occurrences, wind plays a key role in God’s revelation in countless stories in the Hebrew Bible, and also constitutes the very core of the grand entry of God into the salvation story of the Gentiles at Pentecost as well.

The story of Genesis 3:8 is not about any Fall per se, which is itself an imposition on the text at the time of the Reformations, fifteen hundred years after the time of the Apostles. No, it is about the first humans and how they actually experienced God. Paul picks up on this as he introduces what it means to be the second creation in Christian scripture. But even in Christian scripture these second humans are deeply connected with the physical world, witnessed to by Paul being physically knocked off of his horse and seeing a blinding light; these physical acts led to his realization of God’s immanence in the person of Jesus. Can we expect otherwise? And what constitutes genuine faith if we today have no physical connection to God through daily life in the physical world?

Put simply, by removing ourselves from the tangible elements of natural life on earth, do we become blind to the presence and work of God? Without hearing God here and now in the natural physicalness of the world around do we condemn ourselves to lives that are infested with the weeds of our own thoughts, which grow up to be weeds that we sow throughout our lives, and that prevent us from experiencing both God and life as we were created to do.

Or in other words...

...(w)hoever does not see God everywhere, does not see him anywhere.

- Kotsker Rebbe

According to the insights found in Genesis 3:8, this is the self knowledge that is absolutely necessary to relate to God, both as Jews, as well as for Christians. There can be no separation between the physical and the spiritual. This is the gift of Judaism to the world. Indeed, this is the most natural thing in the world...

...for the wind blows where it wills.

- Jesus of Nazareth