The Garden of Eden was a classroom for God’s first people, a place where their interaction with the creation would endlessly teach them and their offspring more about the Creator. “The holy pair were not only children under the fatherly care of God,” Ellen G. White pointed out, “but students receiving instruction from the all-wise Creator. . . . The mysteries of the visible universe—‘the wondrous works of Him which is perfect in knowledge’ (Job 37:16)—afforded them an exhaustless source of instruction and delight.”—Patriarchs and Prophets, pp. 50, 51.
Read Genesis 2:9–17. What was the first command, a prohibition, that God gave to humanity, and why was it so important?
The first use of the root verb tswh, “to command,” that God gave to humans was in Genesis 2:16, 17, the command not to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. How can some knowledge be forbidden? Isn’t it always useful to experience and to know more?
Not according to Scripture: God was intent on educating His people thoroughly while sparing them from the long-term suffering that some knowledge would cause, such as what would later happen when people chose to rule themselves rather than to be ruled by the Lord Himself.
Millennia later, when Israel asked for a king, the Lord laid out the consequences (as we discovered last week), and He informed His people that the decision to step away from His direct rule would last until the end of time.
As the kings of Israel became progressively more wicked, God’s covenant people became so worldly and so removed from their purpose that He gave them even more of what they wanted: human government.
Approaching the book of Daniel with this background in mind can be enlightening. Not only is the march of empires depicted in the book’s visions an indictment of “the nations”—the Gentiles—it is also an indictment of Israel’s failures, their refusal to follow His mitswot (commandments). Centuries of subjection, instead of the freedom first given in Eden, would become a new classroom in which willing hearts could witness the striking contrast between the kingdoms of this world and God’s kingdom.
Think about the kinds of knowledge, even now, that many of us would be better off not knowing. How does this help us understand what was forbidden in Eden?
Supplemental EGW Notes
The system of education instituted at the beginning of the world was to be a model for man throughout all aftertime. As an illustration of its principles a model school was established in Eden, the home of our first parents. The Garden of Eden was the schoolroom, nature was the lesson book, the Creator Himself was the instructor, and the parents of the human family were the students. . . .
The book of nature, which spread its living lessons before them, afforded an exhaustless source of instruction and delight. On every leaf of the forest and stone of the mountains, in every shining star, in earth and sea and sky, God’s name was written. With both the animate and the inanimate creation—with leaf and flower and tree, and with every living creature, from the leviathan of the waters to the mote in the sunbeam—the dwellers in Eden held converse, gathering from each the secrets of its life. God’s glory in the heavens, the innumerable worlds in their orderly revolutions, “the balancings of the clouds” (Job 37:16), the mysteries of light and sound, of day and night—all were objects of study by the pupils of earth’s first school.—Education, pp. 20, 21.
God gave Adam and Eve employment in Eden. Eden was the school for our first parents, and God was their Instructor. They learned how to till the soil, and how to care for the things which the Lord had planted. They did not look upon labor as degrading, but as a great blessing. Industry was a pleasure to Adam and Eve in their sinless state. Everything responded to their efforts to develop and perfect; but the fault of Adam changed the order of things. The earth was cursed and no longer only brought forth that which was good. Yet God decreed that man should earn his bread by the sweat of his brow, and this decree was not given as a curse. To labor in faith and hope would bring a blessing to Adam and Eve and their descendants. God never meant that man should have nothing to do; but the deeper the curse of sin, the further men go from the order of God.— “The Kind of Schools Needed,” in Manuscript 8a, 1894, par. 9.
Heaven is a school; its field of study, the universe; its teacher, the Infinite One. A branch of this school was established in Eden; and, the plan of redemption accomplished, education will again be taken up in the Eden school.
Between the school established in Eden at the beginning and the school of the hereafter there lies the whole compass of this world’s history—the history of human transgression and suffering, of divine sacrifice, and of victory over death and sin. . . . Restored to His presence, man will again, as at the beginning, be taught of God: “My people shall know My name: . . . they shall know in that day that I am He that doth speak: behold, it is I.”
There, when the veil that darkens our vision shall be removed and our eyes shall behold that world of beauty of which we now catch glimpses through the microscope; when we look on the glories of the heavens, now scanned afar through the telescope; when, the blight of sin removed, the whole earth shall appear “in the beauty of the Lord our God,” what a field will be open to our study!—The Adventist Home, p. 547.
The above quotations are taken from Ellen G. White Notes for the Sabbath School Lessons, published by Pacific Press Publishing Association. Used by permission.