Fear No Fear

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

“Yahweh God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to cultivate and keep it.“
Genesis 2:15

Humanity was not created in the garden (Genesis 3:23). He was placed in the garden to work and to fulfill the purpose for which he was created.

The sage Rabbeinu Bahya writes: ‘The plain meaning of this phrase is that seeing that G-d had already assigned to man what he was to eat, i.e. vegetables and fruit, He now placed him in the garden so that he would practice the art of gardening and plant all manner of crops therein. He was also encouraged to plant all kinds of fruit (trees). He had been placed in that garden in order to enjoy it and to experiment therein at will. His daily food consisted of the fruit provided by the trees in that garden. He would drink from the rivers traversing Eden… Viewed from an homiletical point of view, you might well ask what possible “work” there was in such a perfect garden in which all the trees had already grown and produced fruit without any input by man? Moreover, G-d had even provided irrigation by means of rivers so that man certainly did not have to perform any “labour,”’ The sages understood much of the ‘work’ was spiritual, seeking God and learning of His words.

This was not toil, but was spiritual work. Guarding and nurturing and watering. There was no automatic system for this. It was work. And it was the kind of work that would protect him. In that sense, we have the same work today (James 4:7).