Tool Beta
Hebrew and Greek Without Learning Either
A walk through Genesis, the Psalms, and John, plus the key Hebrew and Greek words worth knowing. Each card is a place the English Bibles part company, and what in the Hebrew or Greek made them.
Genesis 2:15
To work it and keep it. The same two verbs describe the Levites guarding the tabernacle.
Genesis 2:15, in every translation this tool compares.
He tends the garden. He guards the temple. English keeps those as two different jobs done by two different kinds of people. This verse uses the same two verbs for Adam that a later book uses for priests on duty.
Because the two verbs describing Adam's job in the garden are the same two verbs used together elsewhere only for the Levites guarding the tabernacle, and that changes what kind of place the garden is being described as.
Every version reads some pair like work and keep, till and keep, or cultivate and guard. None can show that the identical pair recurs elsewhere as a fixed phrase for priestly duty.
עָבַד abad · H5647 / שָׁמַר shamar · H8104
Abad, to work or serve, and shamar, to keep or guard, appear together describing Adam's task in the garden. The same two verbs appear together describing the Levites' duty toward the tabernacle at Numbers 3:7-8 and 18:5-6, and shamar alone covers guarding it from intruders at Numbers 1:53. The garden is being described in the vocabulary later used for sanctuary service.
English work and keep are ordinary household words. They carry none of the specialized, cultic resonance the same two verbs carry when the same corpus later uses them for tabernacle duty, so the priestly overtone of Adam's job is simply not visible in translation.
A common-sounding word pair can be a technical phrase elsewhere in the same body of literature. Before assuming ordinary vocabulary, check whether the same combination recurs in a specialized context.
There is no dispute about the plain gloss, work and keep. The disagreement is how much weight to put on the Numbers parallel, whether the echo is a deliberate signal that Eden is being described as sanctuary space, or a coincidence of two common verbs appearing together twice.
- Same verb pair for the Levites: Numbers 3:7-8; 18:5-6
- shamar for guarding the tabernacle from intruders: Numbers 1:53
- The cherubim guarding Eden's entrance after the expulsion use related guard vocabulary: Genesis 3:24
