The Purpose of Pain

therefore the Lord God sent him out of the Garden of Eden, to cultivate the ground from which he was taken.   So He drove the man out; . .  Genesis 3:23-24a  NASB

Drove – Did you notice that God’s action of expelling the man from the Garden is repeated.  Verse 23 says, “God sent him out,” and then verse 24 says “He drove the man out.”  The repetition is not accidental, and it’s not a literary device.  The difference in the vocabulary highlights how important this action was.

First, “sent him.”  The verb is šālaḥ, “to send, send away, let go.”  There are some important actions under this umbrella:

The verb šālaḥ means “to send,” “to send away,” “to let loose,” “to spread,” used of strife and discord, “to stretch out,” “extend,” used of the hand or a rod, “to extend,” “reach out,” used of roots and branches, and with ʾēš “fire,” “to light a fire.”^[1]

Did you realize that Moses’ extending his hand is the same verb, that Yeshua speaking about the spread of the Kingdom is likely the same verb, or that the commission to the disciples to reach beyond Jerusalem is probably the same verb?  Do you suppose that šālaḥ in Genesis foreshadows these other “sending” events?  Pharoah sent the children of Israel away and in the process created a new nation.  What do you suppose God had in mind when he sent the man out of the Garden?  We don’t have to guess.  The text tells us.  God sent him out “to cultivate the ground,” but, of course, “cultivate” is the translators’ interpretation of the verb ʿābad, a verb that means “to work, to worship,” and “to serve.”  It’s a lot more that tilling the soil.  Do you find it interesting that God had to send the man out of the Garden so that he could fulfill the very purpose he was created to do?  What does this tell us about the man in the Garden after the fall?  He couldn’t do what he was designed to do while he stayed there.  He had to get out to go to work.

But sending out isn’t the same as driving out, is it?  We need the second verb in order to understand the severity of this event.  gāraš—to cast up, drive out, drive away, divorce, expel, put away, trust out, trouble.  This verb tells us that the action wasn’t so friendly.  In fact, it suggests that the man had no intention of leaving, nor of fulfilling his purpose.  God had to force it on him.  After the fall, after the man discovered that he now had a hidden agenda, that he now wanted to hide himself from God, God had to force the man to take up the very mission he had when he was created.  The mission didn’t change.  The motivation did.  What caused that?  You might say, “Well, sin, of course,” but that is a bit naïve.  Sin is the disruption of the relationship with God.  It is not necessarily a change in mission.  No, something else caused the man to retreat from his original mission.  Might I suggest that the factor that changed his motivation was pain!  To experience the knowledge of good and evil means to experience pain, and once experienced, human beings basically do everything possible to avoid it.  Like staying in the Garden.

God understands pain disrupts purpose, but the purposes of God can’t be thwarted.  So, God uses pain to push us on.  In fact, pain is the signal that we are alive and God is at work.  Rabbi Kushner writes:

Pain is the price we pay for being alive. Dead cells—our hair, our fingernails—cannot feel pain; they cannot feel anything. When we understand that, our question will change from, “Why do we have to feel pain?” to “What do we do with our pain so that it becomes meaningful and not just pointless empty suffering?”[2]

Why did the man have to be driven from the Garden?  Because he could only fulfill his destiny outside Paradise and pain was the reminder that he still had work to do.

Topical Index: pain, send, šālaḥ, drive out, gāraš, purpose, Genesis 3:23-24a

^[1] Austel, H. J. (1999). 2394 שָׁלַח. In R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (electronic ed., p. 928). Moody Press.

[2] H. S. Kushner, When Bad Things Happen to Good People (Schocken Books), p. 132