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Sefer Bereshis
Parashas Bereishis
Hashem took the man and put
him in the garden of Eden to work it and guard it.
We
can surmise from this verse that there was work to do in the garden of Eden.
The first man was put there to work and guard the garden. Besides wondering
what kind of guarding was needed when the human population was so small, I
also could not figure out who has been working and guarding the garden
since the first man was removed from it.
The
Ohr Hachaim Hakadosh has a commentary on this verse. He says that
there are two kinds of commandments: positive and negative. The man was put
in the garden to do commandments and to guard from doing against the
commandments.
(The
Meshech Hachmoh wrote
that there was a positive commandment to eat the permitted fruits and a
negative commandment not to eat the forbidden fruits.)
Back
then the first man was actually in the garden and could see the effect of
his work. Now that Eden is only for souls who have departed from this world, the
ones who reach Eden after death will find waiting for them
what they prepared for themselves while alive.
In
other words, the first man had a big advantage over us. When he did
something good, he could see the garden improve. When he did something
wrong, he could see the garden deteriorate. This is a fantastic way to
improve our service to the creator. However, now that we do not see what we
are building or ruining in Eden, we often doubt that what we do has any
effect at all.
I
saw a very similar idea at the beginning of the parsha:
"Hashem saw the light that it was good and Hashem separated between the light and the dark."
Of course, the question is that if Hashem thought
it was so good, why did he change it? Rashi says
that Hashem did not want the light to be used by
the evil so he put it aside for the righteous people in the future.
Harav Sternbuch,
SHLITA, wrote that light and darkness were to help the first man in his
service of the creator. When he did good he was in
light and when he did wrong he was in the dark. Hashem
did not want the evil people to push their way into the light by
occasionally picking some decent thing to do, so He put this light away for
the righteous in the future to help them serve Hashem.
(This explanation is used to explain the meaning of the song in the Hagaddah that the day is approaching which is neither
day nor night.)
Both
of the ideas are similar in one way: our good deeds are supposed to give us
strength to do more good deeds. We should believe that following the Torah
is a way of building for the future in a fine garden with strong spiritual
light. We should make a major effort to imagine that everything we do is
recorded in order to improve our service of the Creator.
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