Adam --- and Sin, Reconsidered

Did you really fall for the foolishness of talking serpants and tempting apples?

Time to explore the Garden of Eden with the Sages of the Ages

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In order to understand a sin, one must understand the sinner.

Moses -- master of all prophets, most trusted in the Divine's universe, most humble of men -- was denied the cherished goal of entering the Holy Land because he hit the stone and chastised the people (Numbers 20:7-13). There are many differing explanations of the sin; the commentators themselves find it hard to explain how Moses' deed and words were serious enough to merit so severe a punishment.

Any understanding of the sin of Moses, as of any of the ancients, required a realization that they were so great that their actions were measured by standards far above our own (see Overview, ArtScroll edition of Ruth). Who was Adam, whose sin played such a pivotal role in the history and destiny of man?

When he was created the angels erred [thinking he was a Divine being] and wished to sing "Holy" before him . (Midrash).

The very angels thought that Adam was a deity. They had no concept of what he really was. We cannot even imagine how exalted was his greatness -- for if the angels didn't know, can we mortals hope to know?

Says the Talmud:

Adam extended from the earth to the firmament . . . from one end of the earth to the other. (Chagigah 12a).

This statement of the Sages has a profound spiritual dimension. There was no facet of creation, from the most mundane to the most sublime, that Adam did encompass. Nothing was hidden from him.

More --- no one ever comprehended better than Adam how each of his actions could determine the course of creation.

The angels knew that, ultimately, it was not they who controlled him, but he who controlled them, for the Divine Will made the functioning of earth dependent upon the deeds of man, as explained previously in this series.

Even after his sin and after death, the holiness of Adam was so awesome that the least significant part of his body, his heel, was, according to Jewish teachings, as brilliant as the sun. Having these barest insights into the greatness of Adam, we still know nothing of his awesome nature; it is sufficient to know that the distance between his loftiness and ourselves is like the distance between heaven and earth.

Only in these terms can we hope to have a faint understanding of his sin. Surely, however, we cannot either understand it or learn from it to perfect our own puny selves unless we banish from our minds the foolish myth of "apples in Eden."

ADAM'S "WORLD" WAS MUCH DIFFERENT FROM OUR OWN. He tilled and planted without tools: he was placed in the Garden of Eden, he was conscious in his everyday life that he worked the Garden of Eden through the performance of positive commandments and he protected it by means of avoiding transgression.

We, too, "know" this, but only in an abstract sense. As believers, we know that our deeds matter; but as part of a physical, cause-and effect world, we find ourselves seeing and feeling the efficacy of medicines and surgeons, of bulldozers and bricklayers, of bombs and physicists.

True, the Talmud says (Berachos 33a), "it is not the poisonous snake that kills, but the sin that kills." The snake, the bullet, the runaway auto, the disease --- these are but the messengers that carry out a decree sealed by human misdeed. They are no more the cause of death than the white sheet pulled over the face of the expired patient.

We may find it so hard to believe that spiritual causes brought about physical effects that most of us are quick to point to impressive lists of external factors that caused them to be so. But this is nothing more than a symptom of the Almighty's concealment in this world of hiddenness.

The great Jewish believers knew it to be so. "Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord and who makes the Almighty the source of his trust" (Jeremiah 17:7).

Chidushei HaRim (d. 1866) explains that the two halves of the verse are dependent upon one another: the more one trusts in G0D, the more G0D justifies his trust with the result that his trust in G0D continues to increase.

Our greatest people found no difficulty in casting their lots for service of the Divine without knowing where the next morning's breakfast would come from. Indeed, the Torah was given to the generation that ate the manna (Mechilta). They learned in their everyday lives that they could live in a barren wilderness without fear, in secure confidence that His promise was their assurance of the next day's sustenance.

Adam not only knew but saw that his service of G0D was the determining factor in his success. And he saw it to a greater extent than any man who ever lived --- until he sinned!

FOREIGN TEMPTATION

What was the difference between Adam before the sin and Adam after the sin?

Each of us is subject to his own temptations --- some to money, some to lust, some to glory, some to power. Whatever our spiritual station, there are some sins that tempt us sorely, others that have conquered us, and still others that we never even consider.

Which of us, imperfect though we are, would attempt to commit a barbaric atrocity? We know that human beings have, do, and will commit such acts --- even people who love their families, assist helpless old people across the street, and consider themselves civilized.

Nevertheless, we don't consider ourselves prey to this pathology. There may be gossip on our tongues and larceny (in varying degrees) in our hearts; but some transgressions are beyond the pale, are so unjustifiably evil that in no way could we conceive of ourselves ever committing them.

They are beyond our thought processes. Even modern terminology reflects this conviction: certain behavior is called the law of the jungle --- but that behavior is beneath us, because we live in "civilization," not the jungle.

This can help us understand, in small measure, the greatness of Adam before his sin.

Ramban (d. 1270) explains and Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin (d. 1821) in Nefesh HaChaim elaborates, that when Adam was created, his nature was to do good. He was not the mixture of good and evil inclinations that human beings are today. We have lusts and desires that are part of our very humanity. The desire for wealth, comfort, and pleasure is not whispered in our ears by some outside agency seeking to lead us astray. We want them, our psyche demands them. We are born selfish beings who would grow up to be totally avaricious and hedonistic were it not for the strictures of society and the strength of developing conscience.

Adam was different: his innate nature was good and it sought to perform nothing but the will of his Maker. Of course, he had free will, for, as we have seen previously, without man's free-willed struggle to choose good over evil, the purpose of creation could not be fulfilled.

But the temptation to evil was not part of him; it came from without and it was against his nature. He was free to heed its blandishments just as we are free to place ourselves in great danger or even to commit suicide, but such courses are as alien to our nature as evil was to Adam's.

When the call to sin came to Adam, it came not from within himself, but from the serpent who served as the embodiment of the Satanic evil inclination. But after the sin, man changed. The urge to sin was no longer dangled in front of him by a seductive serpent; it had become part of him.

Now the desire for forbidden fruits comes from within man; when we sin, we respond not to the urging of an outside force, but to our own desires. It is we -- no it or they -- who urge transgression upon us.

IF ADAM WAS SO GREAT HOW COULD HE SIN? IF HE HAD so clear a perception of G0D's holiness, and was himself a person of such exalted spirituality, how could any outside temptation have swayed him?

Even at his rarefied level, there was still a challenge. Temptation came from outside, but Adam was capable of hearing and understanding it: it was his mission to elevate himself to a level where the urge to sin was so patently false and senseless that it made no more impact on him than the buzzing of a fly.

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Holy though he was by virtue of being the handiwork of G0D and the subject of angelic awe and praise, he was still created in partnership with the earth. His animal flesh was the agent of earth to conceal even greater levels of holiness: it was his mission to elevate even the fleshly, the earthly, until the very veils shone with the splendor of their Creator.

To us -- intertwined and interlocked as we are in contradiction, doubt, and temptation -- Adam's challenge seems like simplicity itself. But it was a real challenge, nevertheless. Had he persevered during the few hours between his creation and the onset of the first Sabbath, the purpose of creation would have been achieved and the rest of history would have been a tale of perfection and sublime enjoyment of His reward.

Adam's immediate challenge was to resist the inclination to disobey represented by the serpent, and to cleave even closer to the Divine despite the barrier of flesh that removed him from the ultimate Heavenly glory. That the challenge was indeed worthy of even so great a creature as Adam is plain from the reward in store.

The purpose of creation was His wish to bestow well-deserved, hard-earned reward -- and that purpose would have been achieved in just a few hours had not Adam succumbed. In the Heavenly scale, mighty rewards are not earned by puny achievements. No matter how convinced we are that we would have done better had we had the opportunity, we must realize that our lack of comprehension does not minimize Adam's challenge.

Just as we have no conception of his greatness, we have no conception of the seeds of his failure.

Part II, next week.

Rabbi Nosson Scherman is, among many other life achievements, the general editor of ArtScroll, the world's most successful and influential publisher of Judaic titles.

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