Dust and fruit: Symbolism in the Garden of Eden and beyond

Long post warning! I have been fascinated with symbols and symbolism in the gospel for a long time. Finding meaning in symbols is a great way for me to learn eternal truths. I do realize that others might find different meanings in the same symbols teaching them equally important truths. I don’t think there always is necessarily one and only one correct interpretation. So what I’m about to share is just how I see things, not necessarily the "correct" interpretation.

Lately, I have been contemplating the Garden of Eden story. Perhaps this is more of an Old Testament note than a Book of Mormon note, but the thoughts I’m posting now are at least in part a result of previous posts on this blog and a verse in Alma 42 that caught my attention.

Lord Wilmore has posted both on the topic of nakedness and dust. In another post, I linked both of these to the Garden of Eden. The passage in Alma 42 that caught my attention is in verse 2:

the Lord God sent our first parents forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground, from whence they were taken

Alma is quoting Genesis, so this passage is also found there. There is a certain irony in the statement. Adam is cultivating the very substance he is created from. Indeed, we learn that Adam’s physical body is created from the «dust of the ground» (Genesis 2:7). To keep us humble, we are reminded of this throughout the scriptures (e.g. Ecclesiastes 3:20, Psalms 103:14, Mosiah 4:2, Helaman 12:7). For ancient Israelites, this reminder was even constantly there as part of their language. In Hebrew, the word for ‘ground’ is ‘Adamah’. The ‘ah’ ending is really just the Hebrew letter corresponding to the Latin, ‘h’, usually not pronounced at the end of a word. Consequently, the Hebrew word for 'ground' is very similar to and pronounced more or less the same way as ‘Adam’, the word for ‘man’ or ‘mankind’.

So in Hebrew, the dust/ground is associated with man, but the physical/carnal side of him. Keep in mind that it was the body of Adam that was formed from the dust of the ground and it had no life until it had a spirit. (It is usually translated as 'breath', but the Hebrew word 'ruach' can be translated as 'breath', 'wind' or 'spirit'). As opposed to the serpent, who was confined to the ground to eat dust, Adam had the potential to rise above the ground and even cultivate it.

What happens when Adam or mankind "arise from the dust" (2 Nephi 1:14) and start cultivating it? It produces fruit! Elder Neil L. Anderson just gave a talk on fruit this last General Conference. Fruit can be good or bad but Jacob 5 is a good illustration of how much God wants his children to produce good fruit. Elder Anderson quotes John 4:36, where Christ invites us to gather "fruit unto life eternal". He also talks about Lehi's dream, where people had to hold on to the iron rod and overcome obstacles like the mist of darkness and the mockery from those in the great and spacious building, to taste the fruit from the tree of life. Another example from the Book of Mormon is Alma 32, where we exercise faith, patience and diligence to plant a seed and nourish the tree, before we can finally partake of the fruit of the tree of life.

Alma 42:5:

5 For behold, if Adam had put forth his hand immediately, and partaken of the tree of life, he would have lived forever, according to the word of God, having no space for repentance; yea, and also the word of God would have been void, and the great plan of salvation would have been frustrated.

Alma reminds us that the tree of life was there and Adam could just "stretch out his hand" but God prevented it. Instead, he wanted us to go through all the trouble described in 1 Nephi 8 and Alma 32. Why? Because it is a necessary part of his plan that we partake of this mortal experience, use our agency and knowledge of good and evil to rise above the ground/dust/flesh/carnal to till/cultivate/master it. In this way we produce fruit and ultimately get to taste the sweetest fruit of them all, the one from the tree of life. If Adam/mankind could just stretch forth his hand without any other effort and in their current state, "the great plan of salvation would have been frustrated".

In Mosiah 16:3-4 we read

3 For they are carnal and devilish, and the devil has power over them; yea, even that old serpent that did beguile our first parents, which was the cause of their fall; which was the cause of all mankind becoming carnal, sensual, devilish, knowing evil from good, subjecting themselves to the devil.

4 Thus all mankind were lost; and behold, they would have been endlessly lost were it not that God redeemed his people from their lost and fallen state.

If we are carnal, we are confined to the ground (which is the substance the flesh is created from) where the serpent/devil has dominion and we become subjects to him. But because of the redemption from God, we are able to arise. When we arise and cultivate the ground instead of crawling on it like the serpent, fruit becomes the result. In fact, the ultimate act of arising is the resurrection, which Abinadi talks about only a few verses later. Because of his resurrection, Christ became the "firstfruits of God" (2 Nephi 2:9). The sweetest fruit is the one on the tree of life that represents God's love manifest in Him sending his Son. In other words, the fruit can represent Christ himself. Just as the juice is squeezed out of a grape or oil squeezed out of the olive, blood was squeezed out of Christ. Blood in Hebrew is 'dam', also related to the word, 'mankind', it's Adam without the first letter, aleph. Acts 5:30:

The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom ye slew and hanged on a tree

1st Corinthians 15:22:

For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive

The atonement is the reversal of the fall! The fall came about when Adam took the fruit from the tree. The atonement came about when the firstfruit of God was hanged on the tree. The fall was figuratively a fall to the ground, to the carnal and the captivity of the devil. The atonement enabled mankind to rise, to "cultivate the ground", i.e. to become master of the carnal instead of subject to it. It enables us to eat fruit instead of dust. John 15:5:

I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing.

When we come unto Christ, his grace enables us to "till the ground" and produce good fruit and ultimately taste the fruit of the tree of life. Then we're back in the Garden of Eden, back in God's presence, we just needed this detour to learn and grow and come back differently from how we started. Like a tree arises from the ground as it grows, so must we.

Perhaps this all seems a bit jumbled, but I find much meaning in these symbols. I think we lose out when we are more concerned with what's historical than what we can learn from this story. The layers of symbolism are there for us to uncover.