DID YOU KNOW?

Adam had no chores in Eden, the saying goes. But one line puts the man in the garden "to till it and keep it" before anything goes wrong. Is that line in the Bible?

The answer

In the Bible. Genesis 2:15 says the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden "to till it and keep it." To till is to work the soil. That comes before the one rule about the tree (Genesis 2:16-17) and before anyone eats from it. Work is part of the garden from the start.

Why it’s interesting

After the fruit, Genesis 3:17-19 turns farming into toil, with thorns and sweat. The work itself was already there. A study Bible, the New Oxford Annotated Bible, notes that other ancient creation stories also have humans made to do work for the gods.

Scholarly consensus

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