Fear No Fear

(All scripture from the World English Bible, ebible.org, all rights reserved)

“The earth yielded grass, herbs yielding seed after their kind, and trees bearing fruit, with their seeds in it, after their kind; and God saw that it was good.“

Genesis 1:12

God spoke to the Earth and it responded. God treats the Earth as an entity. In the creation account, His name isn’t directly associated with the ‘lower’ life forms – life that is immobile (grass/herbs/trees). But it IS associated with ‘higher’ life forms – life that MOVES. The Earth is in CONSTANT motion and God’s name was directly associated with it (Genesis 1:9-10). Later in scripture the Earth is said to have a mouth (Numbers 16:32; Deuteronomy 11:6). And God, the prophets, and Moses all call the Earth as a witness capable of witnessing legalities and covenants (Deuteronomy 4:26, 30:19-20; Isaiah 1:2; Micah 6:1-2). The Earth was created to produce what was spoken into it. By this and more physical means was Adam meant to spread the Garden (Genesis 1:28; 2:7). This is NOT a personality or a sentience (mother nature or earth, etc). This is a living organism that produces (like wheat that produces wheat which produces wheat, etc). A creation that ‘brings forth’ according to command.

Both the grass/herbs and the trees produced ‘according to their kinds’. Not only the species that appeared, but also the potential for all the various sub-species came into being here. God was establishing that the Earth would always produce in variety. In nature, there is never an occasion when a tree, herb, or grass appears that has within it a combination of the properties of two different species. That only happens when humanity does it. Jews are commanded to avoid this kind of cross-breeding in Israel (Leviticus 19:19), but Gentiles and those outside of Israel are not directly forbidden – although if viewed from the point of view of clearly intended existence, it is impossible to ever truly justify cross-breeding or mixing (no matter how beneficial, useful, or interesting – 2 Corinthians 6:14-18).

The trees that the Earth brings forth here are trees that bear fruit. But what of all the trees we encounter that do not? Perhaps all the trees grew fruit until the curse (Genesis 3) or that only fruit trees existed until then. Certainly only non-fruit trees are useful for the purposes of humanity’s constructions (Deuteronomy 20:19-20). And humanity HAD no need for artificial shelters before the curse. It’s interesting that the curse was for the ground to produce ‘thorns and thistles’ (Genesis 3:18) and since that point non-fruit bearing trees have proliferated to the point that they are dominant throughout the Earth – making the Earth full of mostly useless trees instead of mostly FOOD (forcing us to expend labour and sweat to find our food – Genesis 3:17-19).

The Hebrew words translated as ‘fruit-bearing’ can mean more than one thing. It can be a fruit tree, that produces fruit. The tree would be one thing and the fruit another. This is the simplest reading since it says ‘and’ makes fruit, not ‘that’ makes fruit. Another way would be a tree that is itself a fruit, that is edible, and also produces fruit. It would seem from the particular wording that is used that the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil was one such tree (Genesis 3:6). And a third way to look at the Hebrew phrase is as trees which are SUITABLE for producing, but do not NECESSARILY produce fruit. The sage Or HaChaim writes that the Earth, upon hearing the command of God, produced all three possible types of trees in order to bring about the fullness of the possibilities inherent in His command.

God declared all that came up as ‘good’. It was in full accord to His will and design. He had now made permanent the potential of the Earth to produce VARIETY – to MULTIPLY, which is in accord with His command to humanity (Genesis 1:28). The Earth is meant to be FILLED with fruit of every kind (physical and spiritual).