The Adamah Connection

And the Lord will guide you continually, 
and satisfy your desire with good things,
and make your bones strong;
and you shall be like a watered garden,
like a spring of water, 
whose waters fail not (Is. 58:19).

I have to ask, who wouldn't want this?  

What is this strange disease that keeps us from returning to the Lord for our own sake?  For our own health?  The book of Genesis portrays the Garden of Paradise as a place of lush growth, a place of friendship with God and total unity with one another, as well as with the animals and nature.  There are four rivers flowing from Eden, which water the entire earth.  Out of this well-watered earth, God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into him the breath of life.

From the beginning to the end of the entire bible, there is a strong relationship between the soul of man and the "dust of the ground."  The Hebrew word for man/the man is adam; the word for ground, soil, dust, earth, field, etc. is adamah.  The common root here is intentional, not accidental.  The condition of the soil, the earth, the ground, biblically speaking, is directly linked to the condition of mankind, of man's soul.  

Once separation takes place between man/adam and God, from Whom comes the breath of life, the results are immediately seen not only in disunity between man and woman, but also reflected in the earth/soil itself:  Cursed is the ground/adamah because of you...it will produce thorns and thistles for you...since from it you were taken; for dust/adamah you are and to dust you will return.

During the next generation, the disharmony between God and man, man and man, and man and the earth grows even greater:  Listen! Your brother's blood cries out to me from the ground/adamah.  Now you are under a curse and driven from the ground/adamah, which opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand.  When you work the ground/adamah, it will no longer yield its crops for you.  You will be a restless wanderer on the earth/adamah.

Cain said to Yhwh: "My punishment is more than I can bear. Today you are driving me from the land/adamah, and I will be hidden from your presence; I will be a restless wanderer on the earth/adamah, and whoever finds me will kill me.  The human/adam is no longer in friendship/harmony with God, with his fellow men, or with nature.  The world has become a hostile, rather than a safe and welcoming, presence.  

One of the most interesting bible studies one can undertake is to trace the connections from this point on between the fate of the earth/ground/adamah and the condition of man's soul in his relationship to God.  When I speak of the earth as a whole, I include in that category the condition of man's body, taken from the earth.  When our soul is "parched, lifeless, and without water," our bones waste away...and our strength is sapped as in the heat of summer (Ps. 32).  

The remedy for a sick adamah/adam is once again walking with God in the garden and listening to His words:  "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my says," declares the Lord. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.  As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: it will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.  You will go out in joy and be lead forth in peace; the mountains and hills will burst into song before you, and all the trees of the field/adamah will clap their hands.  Instead of the thornbush will grow the pine tree, and instead of briers the myrtle will grow (Is. 55).  The curse of mankind, the death of the earth, is reversed by the healing word of the Lord which comes down on man like the rain and snow come down on the earth.  And man's spirit, renewed by the spirit/breath of the Lord, will renew the condition of the earth.

Once man's connection to Yhwh is re-established, the man/adam flourishes. His soul is watered like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in due season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever he does prospers (Ps. 1).  When Jesus offered the Samaritan woman "a spring of water welling up to eternal life" (Jn.4), He was offering her friendship with the Living God, re-connection with her neighbors, and a new fruitfulness of the earth.  She had come to the well for life-sustaining water, and that is exactly what she found.  

I cannot help but look at the condition of our earth today ---climate change, fires, floods, earthquakes, drought, storms----and wonder if our brothers' and sisters' blood is crying out from the adamah.  The earth is reacting to adam's soul, and it is dying: no longer producing crops, but disaster.  Will Adam become like Cain, a restless wanderer on the earth because he can no longer connect to God, to his fellow man, or to the earth itself?