Fear No Fear

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

“No plant of the field was yet in the earth, and no herb of the field had yet sprung up; for Yahweh God had not caused it to rain on the earth. There was not a man to till the ground,“
Genesis 2:5

This is BEFORE the Fall. The world did NOT work the same way. We CANNOT look at this through the eyes of what happens now or how things function in our experience. Everything changed when Sin entered creation. Everything began working in a VERY different way.

‘plant of the field’ and ‘herb of the field’ does not necessarily mean the vegetation that God created on Day Two. It COULD refer to that, since Adam’s main task is to spread the Garden and bring forth the fullest potential of the Earth. However, it COULD also refer to the thistles and thorns that the Earth would produce as part of the curse (Genesis 3:18). ‘plants of the field’ certainly uses the same language in both these verses. The word translated here as ‘plant’ is the word for shrub, and could refer to fruit-bearing trees. So it COULD mean that neither source of food for humanity had sprung up (Genesis 1:29), because humanity had not arrived yet. The sage Rashi writes that they were created, but were just at the surface of the ground and waiting to spring up when man came. Other sages (like Ramban and Sforno) write that these words emphasize that although all phenomena had been created, this referred to their potential, not to their functioning (as they do today). They were waiting for humanity to come into the fullness of their growth and propagation.

The world was NOT watered through the water cycle that we know and observe today. There was no need for it. We’ll get into it in the next verse, but the world operated in a very different way. There is NO REASON for a perfect world without death or deterioration (entropy) would operate in ANY WAY the same as the one we know. Pre-Fall, we HAVE to take God’s word for how things worked. He was the ONLY witness who can tell us how it was.

The LORD God is again called by Name. Ruler and Judge over all, there was no one else there yet. Humanity was not made. He had no partner in His work. It operated as He saw fit because He had not yet gotten to where His creation was complete. The sage Siftei Chakhamim writes that it ‘is the Name signifying His essence, whereas the other names each describe one of His traits.’