operari eum. The pronoun is masculine, and so can agree in Latin either with Paradise or with
Book VIII 361 ment, this is how scripture has spoken: And the Lord God took the man whom he made andput him in Paradise to work him™and guard (Gn 2:15). Not that God was not the Lord of the creatures mentioned earlier; but this was not being written on account either of the angels or of the other things that were created, but on man's account, to remind him how expedient it was for him to have God as his Lord, that is, to live obediently under his dominion as lord and master, rather than without any restraint to misuse his own personal power and authority. So scripture did not wish to use this expression anywhere earlier on, until it came to the placing of the man in Paradise and to working and guarding him. Here it would not say, as with everything else above, "And God took the man whom he made," but rather, And the Lord God took the man whom he made, andput him in Paradise to work him, so that he might be just, and to guard, so that he might be safe, under God' s dominion and authority of course, which is of use to us, not to himself.
He, that is to say, has no need of us as his servants or slaves, but we do need him as our lord and master, to work us and guard us. And that is the reason why he alone is truly Lord, because we are his servants and slaves for our benefit and welfare, not for his; l mean, if he needed us, by that very fact he would not be a true lord, since we would be helping him in his neediness, to which he would himselfbe the slave. Rightly did the man say in the psalm, My God are you, since you have no need of my good things (Ps 1 6:2). Nor should what I have said, that we are his slaves for our benefit and welfare, be taken in the sense that we should look for anything else from him but himself, seeing that he is himself our supreme benefit and welfare. In this way, you see, we love him freely and for nothing, according to the words, Butforme to stick to God is good (Ps 73 :28).
More about how God works and guards man
12, 25. Human beings, after all, are not the sort of things that, once made and left to themselves by the one who made them, could do anything well all by themselves. No, the sum total of their good activity is to turn to him by whom they were made, and by him always to be made just, godfearing, wise and blessed; not to be made so and then leave, like being cured of some bodily ailment by a physician and going away, because the physician has been working outwardly on the body, at the service of nature working inwardly under God, who works health of all kinds with that twin activity of providence of which we
36. He is now following the "correct" text of the Greek Septuagint, and his Latin rendering of it is operari eum. The pronoun is masculine, and so can agree in Latin either with Paradise or with the man. So earlier, when he was still thinking of the man working, 1 had to translate by "to work it and guard"; but as he is now assuming that God is the subject of "to work," it has to be "to work him and guard."