Scripture & Creation
Genesis 2:15
Dressing & Keeping Creation
In this passage God tells the newly created man “to dress it and to keep it [creation].” “Dressing,” or “tending,” the garden means that people should care for the earth as the Lord would care for it. To “dress” the garden means to raise it up. This should be distinguished from a charge to merely improve it, for dressing means to cultivate it into fruition and completion.
The original Hebrew word for “dress” is "abad" (or in some transliterations "avad") which means to bring to completion, as in the way seeds are brought from planting through nurturing and cultivation to harvest. Some translators maintain that "abad" also conveys a sense of service, and most nuanced translations include this meaning. Adam is given the garden as a living seed which is to be cultivated through service into its full flowering and completion or perfection.
What is “completion” in terms of the earth? In the fourth century St. Basil described this passage as a mandate to raise the earth “to its full cosmological potential.” This raising of the earth requires inspiration from Christ for each step of direction or progression to its transfiguration. This implied a human relationship to Jesus Christ based upon cooperation and a participation that leads to theosis. No separation between God and man exists in this description of human function.
As Adam was charged to “dress” the garden, so he is also commanded to “keep” it. The word “keep” conveys through this archaic Old English term the meaning of the Hebrew word “shamar,” which involves spiritual renewal, vigilance, and especially protection from desecration or evil. The meaning of “shamar” includes a vigilant watching for and guarding against anything which would destroy that which is being “dressed.” Those destructive forces must be rooted out for the continued growth and flowering of the garden.
Great wisdom and balance exist in the complimentary character of these twin commands. Without vigilance, neither the garden nor human society can be rightly cultivated for “weeds and thistles” soon spring up. “Keeping” is a vital partner-component to dressing the Garden in a manner that can raise it up into a fulfillment of its purpose.
This task of “keeping” creation requires a spiritually alert humanity. For this reason it can be concluded that inherent in keeping the garden, there is an implied but nevertheless essential requirement for personal transformation. This is necessary to allow the creative dynamic in “dressing” to develop along with “keeping” to preserve the “garden” from attack or pollution.
The twin charges of dressing and keeping relentlessly point to a working relationship and participation with the Lord. Otherwise there is no sense of direction in “dressing,” cultivating and serving, and so no ability otherwise exists to discern how to rightly protect and keep the creation. Like the command to take dominion, the meaning of this passage intimates a deep and continuing connection to the Lord. Thus the Psalmist rightly proclaims, “Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it; except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain” (cf. Psalm 127:1).
It might be parenthetically noted that the biblical picture is not a “sustainable society” as envisioned by secular environmentalists. The biblical vision portrays a condition in which humanity, consecrating the earth back to God, lifts into higher degrees of righteousness, virtue, fruitfulness and attunement to its Creator-Source. This does not deny balance within the environment, but it invokes a dynamic, step-by-step journey of human transformation, even transfiguration, in which creation comes into an ever finer attunement with its Creator-God through the mediating agency of submitted human action. This may include some dimensions of sustainability and the integration of human society into the ecosystem of the planet. More importantly it requires a continually active human connection to the Holy Spirit through which the earth and its people are renewed and transformed and transfigured.
