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Nadhrah Bte Zainalabiden (A0157239X)

Dr. Gilbert Yeoh

EN2201: Backgrounds to Western Literature and Culture

25 April 2019

Power to the People: The Nature of Human Agency in Genesis

When attempting to interpret and understand religious texts, there is a tendency to fixate on

God’s sublime power, placing God and humans on a restrictive dichotomy of the powerful and

the powerless or subservient. A further look into Genesis undermines this myopic view and

instead, elucidates that human agency is very much relevant and existent despite God’s

dominion. However, agency is an element that is purported to be hierarchical. Though humans

are provided with limited agency, they nonetheless are able to exercise freedom to a certain

extent. Yet, this very freedom to pursue personal desire is presented as detrimental as it

disconnects man from God, only to enable problematic agency. Agency is made more complex

due to its heterogeneous nature amongst humans, varying with men and women. Ultimately,

agency is something that is presented as diverse within Genesis, where humans are not

completely subjected to God’s divine authority and are instead bestowed with the power of

choice to dictate their personal actions as well as acquisience to God, aligning itself with the

Hebraic thought of obedience.

Though God is evidently all-powerful and has the capability to assert complete leverage over

humans, Genesis advances a form of agency, albeit limited, that is given to humans in terms of

decision-making and finite autonomy. In creating humans, God says to “Let us make man in our

image, after our likeness” (Gen. 1.26), suggesting that humans are made to be a reflection of
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God, also indicating a form of sacredness in each human being. Though only made to be an

“image” or reflection of God, signalling at God’s unparalleled might, this very reflection through

the existence of humans also insinuates their primacy amongst other creations of God. Though

humans are not on the same plane of divinity, amplifying their limited agency, this heightens the

point that they are not entirely powerless. As Bruce Waltke observes in his work entitled

Genesis: A Commentary, “In the order of creation, humans are lower than the heavenly beings

and higher than the animals” (89), underscoring how humans are attributed with a degree of

superiority rather than subjected to total subjugation. This is magnified by how humans have

“dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and

over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth” (Gen. 1.26), paralleling

yet again another attribute of God which is exerting power and control over others. God’s

command for humans to “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it” (Gen. 1.28)

furthers the assertion that humans have agency as they are able to “subdue” other creatures and

thereby are provided with an outlet to channel their dominance. Additionally the imagery of

barrenness and unproductivity through the description of “no bush of the field was yet in the land

and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up” as “there was no man to work the ground”

(Gen. 2.5) coupled with how “The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to

work the ground” (Gen. 2.15) highlights how, to a certain capacity, humans are able and needed

to ensure growth and development, exhibiting human agency. Another demonstration of human

agency can be noted from how “whatever the man called every living creature, that was its

name” (Gen. 2.19), signalling at humans being endowed with knowledge which other beings do

not possess. An instance which could quite possibly be the most blatant display of human agency
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is through God’s command that Adam and Eve “may surely eat of every tree of the garden” (Gen

2.16), evincing humans’ ability to make their own decision, separate from God’s decree. The use

of the modal verb “may” strengthens this argument as it suggests the availability of personal

choice and therefore, agency on the humans’ part. Although God tells Adam and Eve that “the

tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat” (Gen 2.17), it is conclusively up to

humans to decide whether they want to obey God, aligning themselves with the Hebraic notion

of obedience, or to give in to temptation and desires.

This agency that comes from personal choice also unveils how knowledge therefore produces a

form of negative or problematic agency, displaying aptly the contestation between Hellenism and

Hebraism. The serpent mentioning that “when you eat of [the tree of the knowledge of good and

evil] your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Gen 3.5) hints

at a Hellenic idea explained by Matthew Arnold in Culture and Anarchy that “Hellenism is to see

things as they really are” (130), though this is expressed in a negative manner in Genesis. This

foregrounds the Hebraic way of thinking that, as Arnold mentions in his work, “[sets] doing

above knowing” and how it is “the following not [of] our own individual will, but the will of

God” as well as how “obedience, is the fundamental idea of this form” (131). Although

knowledge in Genesis allows for “the eyes of both [Adam and Eve]” to become “opened” (Gen

3.7), it is displayed as an entity that goes against the Hebraic notion in Christianity as it causes

humans to stray away from their deference to God in the pursuit of a fully autonomous

knowledge. The pursuit of knowledge in Genesis is thus appropriately illustrated as dangerous

and transgressive as it is one that is wholly divorced from God. Moreover, the equating of eating

from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil to the subsequent cause for the Fall also
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demonstrates man’s temptations and their weakness for temptation, especially when they seek for

knowledge that is independent from God, disrupting the totality and damaging the equilibrium.

Quoting Leon Kass in his work titled The Beginning of Wisdom, “It is precisely this natural and

unrestricted human way that the Bible warns us against by having God attempt to prevent man

from attaining, or even pursuing, that freedom and its correlative, autonomous knowledge” (64),

accentuating the destructiveness of such an autonomous knowledge that even God is against. It

also illuminates man’s desire to be similar to God and their want to establish their autonomy,

alluding to the problematic agency that arises from knowledge as this knowing and seeing

paradoxically causes man to be blind to faith in God.

Yet, even amongst humans, agency is something that differs on the basis of gender. On the

surface level, the female figure in Genesis is one that can easily be interpreted as inferior to the

male due to the seemingly cursory nature of Eve’s creation. This is discernible through the rather

stark contrast between the creation of Adam and Eve where, for the former, “the Lord God

formed man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life” (Gen. 2.7),

hinting at the conception of man that is done ex nihilo, emphasised by the imagery produced by

the phrase “dust from the ground”. This juxtaposes the way in which the woman was made

where, instead of being created out of nothing as Adam was, God “took one of [Adam’s] ribs

and… he made into a woman” (Gen 2.21-22), pointing to how Eve was not created out of

nothing and on top of that is also formed from man himself, physically and literally. The contrast

between the creation of Adam out of “dust” as opposed to Eve being made out of Adam’s “ribs”

may also allude to a lack of divinity in woman’s formation into existence, reinforcing the

inferiority of the woman due to its differing origin. This interpretation of inequality amongst man
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and woman is intensified by how Adam, along with other creations, are made ex nihilo while

Eve appears to be the only entity that is formed out of another being, implying that women are

merely adjuncts to men rather than independent figures. This is foregrounded by Adam’s

declaration that “she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man” (Gen. 2.23),

accentuating woman as a mere extension of men both metaphorically and physically. God’s

mention of Eve as “a helper fit for [Adam]” (Gen. 2.18) also begs the question: why not

“partner” but “helper”? The choice to term woman in relation to man as “helper” therefore

reduces woman as simply a service for her counterpart and thereby disrupts the equality of

humanity.

However, this interpretation of the creation of Eve is one that is superficial because upon further

analysis, the view of her as inferior stemming from her ascribed role as Adam’s “helper” can

then be inverted to reveal man’s weakness. Eve therefore is not a symbol of female inferiority

but rather, a feminine figure that is designated to a specific, tailor-made role that provides her

with her own form of agency. Through Waltke’s work, readers of Genesis will not limit their

perspective on the creation of Eve to one that is only negative. As Waltke mentions in his

reading, and perhaps an easily overlooked yet significant observation, that when Adam declares

Eve “shall be called Woman” (Gen. 2.23), “we read Adam’s only recorded words before the

Fall” (89). The use of absolute term “only” to emphasise how Adam vocalises simply to address

his recognition of Eve underscores man’s acknowledgement and appreciation for the woman.

Further, the fact that there are various living creatures yet “for Adam there was not found a

helper fit for him” (Gen. 2.20) amongst them indicates how, contrary to the previous argument,

Eve is in reality created with a specific and unique role that is complementary to Adam. The
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customised role that Eve plays with a fixed set of responsibilities which no other living being is

able to take on hence provides women with their own, distinctive agency as to some extent,

Adman depends on her for her idiosyncratic role and vice versa. Consequently, this hints at a

kind of totality as both man and woman are dependent on one another due to their particular,

distinguishing parts, making them complements to each other. This is also supported by Waltke

who purports that “both sexes are mutually dependent on each other” (88), highlighting how both

genders are in fact made equally, only that they are given differing yet exclusive parts to play.

Additionally, to quote Matthew Henry, Waltke also mentions the observation that the woman is

created “out of his side to be equal with [man]” (89), reinforcing equality in humanity,

undermining the argument that women are subjugated to men as they evidently are given a role

specially suited only for them. Essentially, man and woman are created equally, but differently,

each with their own form of agency.

In conclusion, Genesis postulates the existence of human agency and goes further to highlight

the nature of such agency that is characterised by diversity and hierarchy. Regardless of God’s

formidable power, humans ultimately are granted with personal choice, delineating a form of

agency that paints them as figures not entirely subjugated by God. The proclivity for knowledge

and autonomy however is depicted as pernicious as it leads to humans diverging from their

subservience to God, thereby engendering negative human agency and causing a deviation from

the Hebraic idea of obedience. Agency is made more complex as it varies in nature for both man

and woman, advancing equality in humanity that is nonetheless distinguished by differing forms

of agency for the different genders. Hence, Genesis provides its readers with a multifaceted look

on human agency that is often simplified or completely overlooked by its interpreters.

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(1929 words)
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Works Cited

The Bible. The English Standard Version, 2001, https://www.esv.org/. Accessed 20 April 2019.

Arnold, Matthew. “Hebraism and Hellenism”. Culture and Anarchy, edited by William S.

Knickerbocker, The Macmillan Company, 1925, 128-143, pp.

Kass, Leon. The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis, Free Press, 2003, pp. 64.

Waltke, Bruce. Genesis: A Commentary, Zondervan, 2001, pp. 86-89.