וַיְכֻלּוּ הַשָּׁמַיִם וְהָאָרֶץ, וְכָל-צְבָאָם
2:1 And the heaven and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. 2 And on the seventh day God finished His work which He had made; and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had made. 3 And God blessed the seventh day, and hallowed it; because that in it He rested from all His work which God in creating had made.
First:
Genesis One
28 And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
Adam is not simply created as an object soul that then has freedom to act or not act. Adam is created as a blessed entity, one blessed in doing, in obedience to the word of God. This being fruitful and multiplying is surely more than simply mechanical reproduction, say on the level of microbes. This obedience which is Adam involves life expressed in all degrees and forms of kindness and carefulness. This is Adam doing, Adam being fruitful, Adam multiplying Adam, loving the neighbor, loving the greater self, corporate Adam. Adam being is Adam doing, incarnating or embodying the word of God, and in this elevating the elementary obedience to the word of God of every other living soul, implying ultimately every creature of God. Thus within Adam also there is the possibility of more or less true Adam being/obedience. And for this reason there is the possibility of learning one from another, and the possibility of the children learning from the elders and of all learning from the one who is most perfect. And this learning is itself doing and obedience, multiplying the blessing given to Adam. For the essential physical reproduction serves the reproduction of souls, but does so only when it is conjoined with kindness and strict carefulness. Otherwise fruitfulness is broken. So when Adam saw himself as if he were an object-soul who could chose to act or not act at his own will and so decided to act that way he acted against the commandment of God that defined him as Adam, thus creating the mind of sin. Then we read:
Genesis Three
9 But the LORD God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?”
10 And he said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.”
11 He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?”
12 The man said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.”
13 Then the LORD God said to the woman, “What is this that you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”
14 The LORD God said to the serpent,
“Because you have done this,
cursed are you above all livestock
and above all beasts of the field;
on your belly you shall go,
and dust you shall eat
all the days of your life.
15 I will put enmity between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and her offspring;
he shall bruise your head,
and you shall bruise his heel.”
16 To the woman he said,
“I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing;
in pain you shall bring forth children.
Your desire shall be for your husband,
and he shall rule over you.”
17 And to Adam he said,
“Because you have listened to the voice of your wife
and have eaten of the tree
of which I commanded you,
‘You shall not eat of it,’
cursed is the ground because of you;
in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life;
18 thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you;
and you shall eat the plants of the field.
19 By the sweat of your face
you shall eat bread,
till you return to the ground,
for out of it you were taken;
for you are dust,
and to dust you shall return.”
Where Adam had been defined by blessing Adam became defined by curses. First the serpent who had deceived the woman was cursed. Rather than Adam's elevating the serpent through the natural modeling of kindness and carefulness that Adam being Adam would have modeled to all creatures, including the serpent, Adam's failure in interaction with the serpent resulted in the serpent being cursed. Reproduction would no longer necessarily bring love and joy to the woman because it would no longer be necessarily a full expression of the kindness and strict carefulness of Adam, these attributes of Adam had been broken. Therefore the woman would suffer pain in childbirth. She would be trying to give birth to children out of a broken soul, trying to multiply what was broken. Instead of blessing in all earth and heaven through Adam the ground that Adam lived from would be cursed with having to receive him back again to itself as the dust that he was to begin with. Nevertheless, God spoke of blessing again amidst the curses. He spoke of this blessing as a part of the cursing of the serpent. Only much later would he give the blessing of Adam again to Humanity, but only through Abraham.
