Adam

Adam is Scripture's first man, the figure in whom human creation, the entrance of sin, the lengthening genealogy of the race, and a Pauline pattern of Christ all converge. Genesis tells his story in narrative; Sirach retells it in praise; Paul reads him as the federal head whose trespass and likeness reach forward to "the last Adam." A city east of the Jordan also bears the name, and the Pauline letters apply the title to Christ as the second man.

Creation in the Image of God

The creation account states the divine resolve corporately: "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the heavens, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth" (Gen 1:26). The execution follows in pair: "And [the Speech of] God created the man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them" (Gen 1:27), with the blessing to "Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it" (Gen 1:28). The second account specifies the substance: "And Yahweh God formed the man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living soul" (Gen 2:7). Sirach echoes the same two-fold note — material and image — when it says, "God created man out of the earth, And returned him into it again" (Sir 17:1) and, "As was fitting for them, he clothed them with strength; And in his image he made them" (Sir 17:3). Paul's gloss draws the sequence into a typology: "The first man Adam became a living soul. The last Adam [became] a life-giving spirit" (1 Cor 15:45); "The first man is of the earth, made of dust: the second man is of heaven" (1 Cor 15:47).

The Garden, the Naming, and the Woman

Yahweh God plants a garden eastward in Eden and places the man there "to dress it and to keep it" (Gen 2:15), with the single negative command: "of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you will not eat of it: for in the day that you eat of it you will surely die" (Gen 2:17). The man's vocation includes naming: "And out of the ground Yahweh God formed every beast of the field, and every bird of the heavens; and brought them to the man to see what he would call them: and whatever the man called every living soul, that was its name" (Gen 2:19). The naming is also the sign of solitude — "for Adam there wasn't found a matching helper for him" (Gen 2:20). From Adam's side Yahweh God forms the woman (Gen 2:21-22), and Adam acknowledges her as kin: "This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she will be called a woman, because she was taken out of a man" (Gen 2:23). The narrator concludes with the institution of marriage: "Therefore will a man leave his father and his mother, and will stick to his wife: and they will be one flesh. And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed" (Gen 2:24-25).

The Temptation and the Fall

The serpent enters the garden "more subtle than any beast of the field" (Gen 3:1), and reframes the prohibition by denying its sentence: "You⁺ will not surely die: for God knows that in the day you⁺ eat of it, then your⁺ eyes will be opened, and you⁺ will be as God, knowing good and evil" (Gen 3:4-5). The transgression is told without commentary: "And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit, and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate" (Gen 3:6). The promised opening of eyes arrives as exposure rather than ascension — "they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig-leaves together, and made themselves aprons" (Gen 3:7) — and the pair hides "from the presence of Yahweh God among the trees of the garden" (Gen 3:8). Sirach summarizes the same logic with a single etiology: "From a woman sin originated, And because of her we all must die" (Sir 25:24), and elsewhere, "It was he who from the beginning created man; And gave him into the hand of his imagination" (Sir 15:14). Isaiah, addressing Israel as a corporate descendant, says, "Your first father sinned, and your teachers have transgressed against my [Speech]" (Is 43:27). Paul carries the apportioning of blame in 1 Timothy: "For Adam was first formed, then Eve; and Adam was not beguiled, but the woman being beguiled has fallen into transgression" (1 Tim 2:13-14).

The Curse and the Expulsion

The interrogation under the trees moves through deflections — Adam blames the woman, the woman blames the serpent (Gen 3:11-13) — and the sentences fall in turn: enmity between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman (Gen 3:15), pain in childbirth and rule by the husband (Gen 3:16), and to Adam himself: "Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten of the tree, of which I commanded you, saying, You will not eat of it: cursed is the ground for your sake; in toil you will eat of it all the days of your life" (Gen 3:17). The labor of the field becomes mortal: "in the sweat of your face you will eat bread, until you return to the ground; for out of it were you taken: for dust you are, and to dust you will return" (Gen 3:19). Adam names his wife Eve, "because she was the mother of all living" (Gen 3:20); Yahweh God clothes the pair with skins (Gen 3:21); and the man is sent out, with cherubim and a turning sword set to keep the way to the tree of life (Gen 3:22-24). Job's protestation of innocence supplies a later echo: "If like man I have covered my transgressions, By hiding my iniquity in my bosom" (Job 31:33); and Hosea's covenant-charge does the same: "But they like man have transgressed the covenant: there they have betrayed [my Speech]" (Hos 6:7).

The Generations of Adam

Outside the garden the narrative resumes with begettings. Cain and Abel are born (Gen 4:1-2); after Abel's death Eve bears Seth, "for, [she said], [the Speech of] God has appointed me another seed instead of Abel; for Cain slew him" (Gen 4:25). Genesis 5 reopens the story as a written record: "This is the Book of the Generations of Adam. In the day that God created Adam, in the likeness of God he made him; male and female he created them, and blessed them, and called their name Man, in the day when they were created" (Gen 5:1-2). Adam at 130 begets Seth "in his own likeness, after his image" (Gen 5:3), lives a further 800 years (Gen 5:4), and then the chapter closes the lifespan: "And all the days that Adam lived were 930 years: and he died" (Gen 5:5). The whole race traces back through this line. Moses' song reckons the boundaries of the nations from the same root: "When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance, When he separated the sons of man, He set the bounds of the peoples According to the number of the sons of God" (Deut 32:8). Malachi grounds an ethical appeal in the same fatherhood: "Don't we all have one father? Has not one God created us? Why do we betray every man against his brother, profaning the covenant of our fathers?" (Mal 2:10).

Adam in Sirach

Ben Sira reaches for Adam at three different angles. As cosmology, "It was he who from the beginning created man; And gave him into the hand of his imagination" (Sir 15:14), and "God created man out of the earth, And returned him into it again. … in his image he made them" (Sir 17:1, 17:3). As anthropology, the priest's eye notes shared origin: "And all men are from the ground, And Adam was created of earth" (Sir 33:10). And in the Praise of the Fathers, Adam closes the long roll: "Shem, and Seth, with Enosh were honored; But above every living thing was the glory of Adam. Great among his brethren, and the glory of his people" (Sir 49:16). Sirach 25:24 supplies the etiology already cited: "From a woman sin originated, And because of her we all must die."

In Adam All Die

Paul's argument in Romans 5 turns the genealogy into a federal pattern. "Therefore, as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin; and so death passed to all men, for that all sinned" (Rom 5:12); "death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over those who had not sinned after the likeness of Adam's transgression, who is a pattern of him who was to come" (Rom 5:14). The trespass of "the one" and the gift through "the one man, Jesus Christ" stand in calibrated parallel — "if by the trespass of the one the many died, much more did the grace of God, and the gift by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, abound to the many" (Rom 5:15) — until the conclusion: "as through the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the one will the many be made righteous" (Rom 5:19). Paul's resurrection chapter compresses the same reckoning: "For since by man [came] death, by man [came] also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ will all be made alive" (1 Cor 15:21-22).

Adam as Pattern

The Pauline use of Adam is not only causal but patterned. Romans 5:14 calls him "a pattern of him who was to come"; 1 Corinthians 15 carries that pattern to its end. The first Adam became a living soul; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit (1 Cor 15:45). The first is "of the earth, made of dust"; the second is "of heaven" (1 Cor 15:47). The dust-man and the heavenly man are Paul's two anchors for the resurrection body, and they read Genesis 2:7 forward into Christ's risen life.

The City of Adam

The same name attaches to a place. When Israel crossed the Jordan, "the waters which came down from above stood, and rose up in one heap, a great way off, at Adam, the city that is beside Zarethan; and those that went down toward the sea of the Arabah, even the Salt Sea, were wholly cut off: and the people passed over right against Jericho" (Josh 3:16). The toponym is mentioned only here, but it locates the miracle's upstream stop precisely.