‘So he drove out the man, and at the east of the plain of Eden he placed the cherubim, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to guard the way to the tree of life.'
The verb is forceful - ‘He drove out'. This suggests some powerful catastrophe that made it impossible for man to stay where he was. The mention of the cherubim takes us by surprise, and indeed this is the first time that heavenly beings are suggested as playing any part in God's activity. The fact that they do so is a further indication of the barriers that have grown between man and God. What tragedy. The guardians of God are set to keep out the one who had been set to guard. reaching out' --- and ‘he drove him out'.
In Psalms 18:10 the idea of the cherub is paralleled with the ‘wings of the wind', and in Ezekiel 1:4-5 with a stormy wind, and it may thus be that originally the cherubim were seen as directly connected with powerful, stormy winds. The cherubim and their parallels are regularly seen as the guardians of sacred places, and even, as an escort, of God Himself.
“The flaming sword” almost certainly refers to lightning, continually flashing down and hitting the ground. Certainly in Ezekiel the cherubim are associated with both stormy wind and lightning (Ezekiel 1:4-5). So we have here the idea of stormy winds and the continual flash of lightning. We are thus left to visualise for ourselves the destructive forces which forced man to leave and ‘guarded the way to the tree of life'. Heavenly powers combine with earthly powers to exclude man from what was once his hope and delight. No doubt at some later stage the plain of Eden was so devastated that neither guard was further necessary.
But we note that God did not there and then destroy the tree of life. The fact of its continued existence left hope for the future.
The Facts behind the Story.
In dealing with the above account we have deliberately stuck to the plan and pattern of the writer. We have thus avoided reading in what later teaching would reveal. His account was written so as to lay the emphasis where it belonged, on the man, his failure and his destiny. But we, of course, are aware of the background which would push the man into the background, the activities of ‘that old snake, the Devil and Satan' (Revelation 12:9), the coming of Jesus Christ, the Messiah, to defeat him, the final victory of God. But this was the beginning, the low point, and we must not lose its impact. The remainder of the story will be revealed later.
The Mythological ‘Background'.
Much has been made of the myths that are said to lie behind the stories of Creation, the Garden of Eden and the Fall and for the sake of completeness we attach details of some of these myths and our view of them. But Genesis 1-3 are remarkably free of mythical elements, and, although briefly mentioning such myths as we went on, we were loath to clutter up the narrative with detailed discussion. Those, however, who may be interested should go to Mythology.