Genesis 1:26-31
Made in the image
Humanity is created last and given responsibility for everything already made. The dignity is not earned, it is assigned.
People of the Bible
Adam
The first man, given a garden to keep and a choice he did not have to make.
Adam is formed from the ground and given breath, a name, work, and a world to care for. He names the animals, receives a companion made from his own side, and lives in a garden with one boundary drawn across it. When that boundary is crossed, the whole account changes register: the man who had walked openly with God hides, answers for himself by blaming someone else, and leaves the garden for ground that resists him.
Scroll down to the story
The movements, in the order the text gives them.
The story of Adam
- 01
- 02
Genesis 2:7-25
The garden and the naming
The man is placed in Eden to work it and watch over it, names every creature, and is given a companion who answers him as no animal could.
- 03
Genesis 3:1-13
The one boundary
The single restriction is questioned, then crossed. The first thing the man does afterwards is hide, and the second is blame.
- 04
Genesis 3:17-24
East of the garden
The ground turns hard, the labour turns bitter, and the gate closes behind him. Mortality enters the account as a sentence and a mercy at once.
Why it matters
Adam sets the pattern the rest of Scripture answers. Everything said about humanity afterwards, the dignity of bearing an image and the ruin of turning away from it, is measured against what he was given and what he did with it. The New Testament will reach back to him deliberately, treating a second man as the undoing of the first.
6 songs
The music
Every song in the catalogue whose passage falls inside these chapters.
