guarded it well, may be seen as carrying a profound and important implication. What did
360 The Literal Meaning ofGenesis sion from it. Finally he also received a command, in order for there to be some thing by which he might guard Paradise for himself, that is, by observing which he might avoid being thrown out of it. You are rightly said, after all, to have guarded or kept your property when you have acted in such a way as not to lose it, even if it is preserved undamaged for someone else, who may have found it or have been considered to receive it in turn.34
23. There is another meaning in these words, which l consider is not improp erly to be preferred, that God should work and guard the man himself. Just as a man works the land, you see, not in order to make it be land, but to be neatly culti vated and fruitful, so much the more does God, who created the man to be a man, work him to be ajust man, if he does not part company with God through pride; that, you see, is to apostatizefrom God, which scripture says is the beginning of pride (Sir 10:12). So then, God is the unchangeable good, while the man is a changeable thing both in soul and in body; unless therefore he remains turned and directed towards the unchangeable good which God is, he cannot be formed into being just and blessed. And thus the same God who creates the man to be a man, is himself the one who works and guards him into also being good and blessed. For this reason the turn of phrase by which the man is said to work the land, which is already land, into also being landscaped and fertile, is the same as the one by which God is said to work the man, who was already a man, into also being godfearing and wise; and to guard him, because the man could not safely be left to delight in his own power and authority rather than that of the one above him and to ignore his rights as Lord and master.
Why God is only called "the Lord God" from this point on35
1 1, 24. Accordingly l do not regard it as in any way void of significance, but as drawing our attention to something, to something very important too, that from the start of this divine book, from where it began, ln the beginning God made heaven and earth (Gn 1 : 1 ), up to this point, it has never put "the Lord God," but simply "God." Now however, where it has come to the point of God setting up the man in Paradise and working and guarding him by means of a command
34. This rather curious afterthought, assuming that you do lose your property because you have not guarded it well, may be seen as carrying a profound and important implication. What did Adam, after all, lose by not guarding his property well, what was this property? 1t was grace, the grace of what is termed original justice. Now when he lost it, this grace was preserved undamaged—what after all can damage grace?—-for the one who "found it," who was considered worthy to receive it, namely the last Adam, Jesus Christ, and through him all who have put off the old Adam and put on the new. 35. This is the case in the Greek Septuagint, which the Latin Augustine is commenting on follows. English versions start using the phrase from 2:4, following the Hebrew, in which it is in fact "YHWH God"; "Lord," Hebrew Adonai, being the word actually pronounced instead of the sacred proper name.