From Eden to the Ark: How God's First Promise Points to Jesus

In Genesis 3, we also find amid the descriptions of the consequences, that the LORD God makes a promise to the serpent that ultimately becomes a word of hope. It speaks of a coming Messiah, who will be borne of woman, and this promise plays out as a strong hope for Jewish women in the Old Testament. In verse 15, God says to the serpent:

Though death and sin had entered the story through the fall of the man and the woman, God speaks condemnation to the serpent by declaring both life and death. The death that is spoken of points to the crushing victory of Christ over Satan at the cross: through Christ’s death and resurrection life, the serpent will meet his end. The book of Romans teaches us that though death entered the scene through Adam, Christ came and put the reign of death to an end (Rom. 5:12-21). Hope cannot be lost then, because though the man and woman will have difficulty in multiplication, still there will be an offspring from the woman who comes to crush the head of the serpent. Adam later exemplifies hope in this promise of God by renaming the woman.

Gen. 3:20 tells us, “The man named his wife Eve because she was the mother of all the living.” The account is brimming with hope and heartbreak at the same time. While Eve has a new name and there is the anticipation of this living One who will defeat the slithering enemy, the narrative ends with sadness as Adam and Eve are banished from their garden home with God, into the wilderness where sin and death are close at hand.

Genesis 4 begins with the first glimpses of the Regency Mandate being fulfilled in obedience to the command to multiply. We see Adam and Eve fulfilling their calling as husband and wife by being fruitful as they bear two sons, Cain and Abel. When Eve has Cain, surely, she is thinking back on God’s promise when she declares, “I have had a male child with the Lord’s help” (Gen. 4:1). But sin is close at hand, so close in fact, that the LORD tells Cain after his insufficient offering: “sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must rule over it” (Gen. 4:7). Interestingly, the Regency Mandate that calls humans to rule over creation is now frustrated by the domination of sin and the struggle to rule over it rather than being ruled by it.

Ultimately, sin conquers Cain, and he murders (rather than multiplying) by taking his brother, Abel’s life. Yet the Lord is faithful to Adam and Eve, by blessing them with another son, named Seth, and Eve proclaims, “God has given me another offspring in place of Abel, since Cain killed him” (Gen. 4:25). The text tells us that Seth has a son, named Enosh, and at this point, reality sets in with the population that maybe God’s promised One might not arrive as soon as they had hoped. Genesis 4 concludes: “At that time people began to call on the name of the Lord” (Gen. 4:26).

The picture of destruction brought about by the fall is completed in Gen. 5 as each descendant of Adam’s line meets the same end: death. Although the first two verses remind the reader about the creation of man and woman as made in the likeness of God (Gen. 5:1), who were given distinction in their biological gender (Gen. 5:2a), and blessed by God (Gen. 5:2b), the rest of the verses read as a death toll. A man’s name is given, his number of years is listed along with the next descendent, before ending with the refrain: “then he died.” What a weighty reminder of the consequences of sin, and of the truthfulness of God’s word which was questioned by the serpent. For God had said, “you will certainly die,” (Gen. 2:17) and yet Satan had mocked, “No! You will certainly not die” (Gen. 3:4). The serpent’s lie and Adam’s sin plunged humanity into a perilous cycle of sin and death so that by the time we get to Lamech, the great-times-eight grandson of Adam, the burden is so great upon humanity that Lamech names his son, Noah with the promise of Gen. 3:15 seemingly in the back of his mind:

Yet, Noah was not the promised One. While the Regency Mandate marched onward as man and woman continued to multiply upon the earth, sin continued to multiply as well, so much so that “the Lord said, “My Spirit will not remain with mankind forever, because they are corrupt. Their days will be 120 years” (Gen. 6:3). Genesis 6 goes on to describe the widespread wickedness of human beings during that time, noting “that every inclination of the human mind was nothing but evil all the time” (Gen.6:5).

This truth about humanity resulted in the Lord’s resolve to destroy mankind through the flood—while also saving Noah, a man who found favor with God, who was righteous, and who walked with the Lord. And even as the plan seemed to bend towards God de-creating all he had created before through the waters of judgment which would cover the earth, the account of the flood provides a picture of God’s good intent.

His plan was to continue to bless mankind and once again commission them to multiply, fill the earth, subdue it, and rule over the animals. How? Noah is told to bring his wife, his three sons, their three wives, and two of every creature that had the breath of life in it. Just as the plan seemed the bleakest, the Lord was showing that the Regency Mandate would begin anew with four men, their wives, and male and female representatives of every creature from the animal kingdom. After the flood waters rescinded, and Noah, his family, and the remnant of animals had all survived, the Lord then repeated the command given to the man and the woman on the sixth day of creation:

Again, we see that the Lord commissions mankind to serve him by filling the earth. As the rest of the story unfolds, however, sin remains a constant intrusion into the relationships of man and woman as they seek to follow God and represent him on the earth. Genesis 1-11 provides a foundation for what follows, and we will look at how the story continues to unfold as man and woman partner in various relationships to expand the kingdom of God on earth through the Regency Mandate.