Commentary on Genesis, Vol. 1: Luther on the Creation

by Martin Luther

Therefore Origen, Jerome and all the other allegorists are alike involved in the greatest folly, who because they can no longer find a paradise on the face of the earth think that some other sense than the natural one is to be given in its interpretation. But that there was a paradise and that there is a paradise are two very different subjects for consideration. Moses, as is the general nature of all such narrations, merely records that there was a paradise. The case is the same in reference to Adam's dominion over all the beasts. He could call the lion, and command and manage him, according to his will and pleasure; but it is not so now. All these glorious things are no more. They are simply and merely, though sacredly, recorded by Moses as having been in the beginning.

Another question is here agitated, as to the spot of the earth where God created man. There are some who maintain with great warmth that he was created in or near Damascus; because they find it recorded that the soil of Damascus is red and fertile. But I pass by all idle and vain inquiries of this description. It is enough for us to know that man was formed out of the earth on the sixth day after all the other animals had been created, and that he was placed by God himself in the garden of Eden. But as to the very spot on which he was created, what necessity is there for our knowing that? It is certain that he was created out of paradise. For the text before us declares that he was removed to or placed in paradise, before Eve was created who, as Moses here shows, was created in paradise.

Now let us proceed to that which follows:

V. 9a. And out of the ground made Jehovah God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food.

The contents of this verse properly belong to the description of paradise. For although the whole earth had been so created as naturally to bring forth trees and herbs, with their fruits and seeds, yet this garden of Eden had its peculiar cultivation. A similitude illustrative of the case before us may be derived from things as they now are among us. Woods and fields bring forth their trees. But when we select a place as a garden for special cultivation, the fruits of the garden are always more excellent than those of the field. So paradise, having been created for and devoted to peculiar cultivation, beyond that which was bestowed on any other part of the earth, was adorned with trees delightful to the sight, whose fruits were sweet to the taste and for use. When therefore God said, in the first chapter, verse 29, "Behold I have given you every herb and every tree for food:" by that meat was meant necessary food. But paradise supplied food for pleasure and delight; fruits better, sweeter and more delicious than those which the trees of any other part of the earth produced. On these the beasts also fed.

II. V. 9b. The tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge (scientiae) of good and evil.

Moses so describes paradise that he makes God himself as it were the cultivator of it; as a cultivator, who after he has planted a garden with the greatest care according to his pleasure, selects this and that tree from the rest, which he tills and loves as particular favorites. One of these trees was "the tree of life," a tree created to the end that man by feeding on it might be preserved with a sound body, free from diseases, and not subject to fatigue.

Here again we find the man, whom God first created, highly distinguished from the brutes; not only by the delightful spot in which God placed him, but also by the exalted privilege of a longer life, a life always continuing in the same state. Whereas the bodies of all other living creatures grow in youth and increase in strength, but in old age decay and perish. But the original condition of man was intended to be far different. Had he continued in his innocence he would have enjoyed his meat and his drink; a change of his meat and drink and a conversion of them into blood would have taken place in his body, but that commutation would not have been impure and foul as it is now. This tree of life moreover would have preserved him in perpetual youth, nor would he have experienced any of the afflictions or inconveniences of old age. His brow would have contracted no wrinkles, nor would his foot nor his hand nor any other part of his body have known weakness or languor. By the blessing of the fruit of this tree man's powers would have remained perfect for generation and for labor of every kind; until at length he should have been translated from this corporeal to his spiritual life. The other trees would have supplied him with food the most excellent and the most delicious; but this "tree of life" would have been as it were a general medicine which would have preserved his natural life and powers in perpetual and complete vigor.

Some may here interpose the question, How could this corporeal food or natural fruit effect such a conservation of the body as to prevent it from being weakened or debilitated by time? The reply is easy and divine. "He spake, and it was done!" Ps. 33:9. For if God can make bread of a stone, why should he not be able to preserve the natural powers of man by a fruit? Even since the sin of the fall we see what powerful properties the smallest herbs and seeds possess.

Look for a moment at our own bodies. Whence comes that peculiar property of their nature that bread, eaten by them, is by their natural heat digested and converted into blood, by the circulation of which the whole body is strengthened and confirmed? Now bring together all the fires and all the furnaces of the universe, you cannot produce by them all this one single effect, the conversion of bread into blood. But this mighty effect is produced by that small degree of heat, which our natural bodies contain. There is no room for wonder therefore that this tree should have become by the will of the Lord, its Planter and Maker, "The tree of life!"