The Earth and the Man
“therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden, to cultivate the ground from which he was taken.” Genesis 3:23
Ground – How does language condition worldview? In subtle ways, the very syntax and grammar of our language creates boundaries for our thoughts, bringing one aspect of the world into focus and blurring others. Unless we are aware of these artificial linguistic borders, we will easily believe that there is only one way to look that the world – our way.
English is a member of the Indo-European family of languages. But Hebrew comes from a very different background, the Western Semitic family. The differences in worldview are enormous. If you have ever seen the Hebrew text, you know you’re in foreign territory. It reads from right to left. It has a different alphabet. It has no vowels. Its imagery is much more concrete. It is a language of tribal life. Most importantly for this verse, it is a language of the land. The center of its focus is not on the individual human being but rather on connectivity between the God who made the land and the man who came from the land.
In English, the individual subject is the focal point of the syntax and grammar. The individual subject is separated from the object. Some separate connector like a verb is needed to bring the two together.
Now you’re asking, “So what?” Here’s what. English is a language that predisposes us to individual guilt. Our very grammar conditions us to be the responsible subject. We are the focus of attention as the separate center of our thought. We think in terms of individual boxes clumped together. We are separate and distinguished from everything else.
Hebrew doesn’t share this picture. The variations of this word (adam for man and adama land) underscore the continuity in creation. Man is the extension of the ground, the land God gives. Yes, he has a special function in creation, but he is not separate from it. He’s just hallowed dirt. And when adam (the man) sins, he carries the consequences into the substance that he came from. He pollutes the very essence of his being, the land, the dirt.
A central theme of the Old Testament is the disposition of the land. There is no conception of God’s people without the land. All of this connects us not to our individuality but to our essential unity. We are people of the ground. We, the adam, are from the adama. The first three chapters of the Bible contain numerous examples of this play on words. Why? Because God wants us to see how we are all connected, not how we are all different. He wants us to see that we are one together. You and I are the same, brother and sister. God made it that way. Is that how you think?
