The Promise of Life in the First Covenant
Genesis 2:8-14
And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed.…


I. We behold here the goodness and grace of God to man. Though the first covenant was a covenant of works there was, not withstanding, much grace displayed in it. Could that obedience of the first Adam which was perfect, have, strictly speaking, merited nothing for him, at the hand of God? What ignorance, then, what folly, what pride, does it argue in a sinner, to pretend that his performances, notwithstanding their acknowledged imperfections, merit for him not something merely, but eternal happiness!

2. If Adam in innocence was not to depend for happiness immediately on the goodness of God's nature but on the promise of His covenant, how evidently does that sinner expose himself to woful disappointment who trusts to general, to uncovenanted mercy! Finally, was the first Adam's state of innocence his state of trial? Then a state trial or probation is not, properly speaking, the state of man since his fall. But now, since he has failed in his obedience, and broken the covenant, his state of trial has issued in a state of condemnation.

(J. Colquhoun, D. D.)

The tree of knowledge of good and evil.



Parallel Verses
KJV: And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed.

WEB: Yahweh God planted a garden eastward, in Eden, and there he put the man whom he had formed.




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