Genesis 3:24 So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubim, and a flaming sword which turned every way… His expulsion is not to be viewed, as is generally done, as mere ejection from a happy dwelling, his own special home, as if this were his punishment. No, it is banishment from God and from His presence, that is the true idea which the passage presents to us. Paradise was not so much Adam's home as Jehovah's dwelling. Man is banished from paradise, yet he is left within sight of it; he is allowed to remain in Eden. He is not driven into some desert, as if there were nothing for him bat wrath. There is favour for him in spite of his sin; and the expulsion does not cancel the pardon he has received, or intimate that God has begun to frown. It merely showed that before the full consequences of that favour could reach man, time must elapse, and barriers be thrown down. It is not the "outer darkness," neither is it the full sunshine, into which he is brought. It is the twilight that surrounds him; and that twilight assures him of the coming noon. He is left to linger at the gate, or wander round the sacred fences of that forbidden ground. For paradise is not swept off nor swallowed up. It is left as God's temple, now shut up and empty, but still within sight of man. Probably it shared the common blight of creation; though, like primeval man, it took long to wither; till, having waxed old and being ready to vanish away, the deluge came and swept it from the earth. It remained as a specimen of God's original handiwork, reminding man of the glory which he had lost. It stood as a monument of what sin had done in blighting God's perfect creation, and turning man into an exile. It showed how God estimates the material creation, and that matter is not the defiling and hateful thing which some conceive it to be. It proclaimed that God had not wholly left the earth, and that in His own set time He would return to it; nay, that man, though for a season dethroned and banished, should yet repossess earth as king and lord. (H. Bonar, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life. |
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