Adam as Sacrificial King

I‘ve already talked about Chava. But Adam really gets left out of so much; he truly gets the short end of the stick. But he's such a tragic hero to me, and his story makes me weep in ways I can't really articulate all that well at times.

Adam came to, face to face with the awe of the Universe: A clay figure carefully shaped by adoring hands, and the Breath of Life blown gently into him- a literal kiss from the Divine; his life opening up before him with the very first expression of Love that one can truly perform with another.

He was shown the Paradise before him and given everything within its boundary. But gifts do not come without responsibility- and it was Adam's responsibility to care for Gan-Eden; to turn the soil, to nurture it, and to help it thrive. And thrive it did under his gentle hands. His tender hands and heart and actions nurturing were a constant, loving reflection of the Divine which shaped him in its image.

Adam was content with his lot, happy to toil away and tend to the plants. But HaShem saw a loneliness. One Adam didn't recognize, perhaps, but one HaShem recognized would come eventually. And so he gave to Adam all the creatures of the land and sky- breathing the same life into them, and presenting each one with Clay-stained hands soaked with tears of love, hoping to give him the ultimate gift.

"What shall you name it?" HaShem asked. "Dog", Adam responded. And it was good; a loving, happy friend who would give up its life for him. But it was not the companion that his soul longed for at its very core in a way he could not articulate and didn't even know he needed ... None of them were.

Eventually, exhausted, HaShem could not continue. But it could not give up yet; it was not good for Man to be alone. And so it tried a different tactic: The creation of one from one, rather than one from clay ... Chava. The first birth ... And Adam looked at her- bejeweled and veiled as if a Queen beneath the Wedding Canopy- and said "This one, at last, is Bone of my Bone and Flesh of my Flesh" ... "At last this is she who will shape and excite me just as I shape and excite the plants beneath my care". And HaShem rejoiced and Adam was content again.

Then one day Chava brought him the Orange, and he peeled back the skin and ate of it and was embarrassed instantly- for he understood his transgression; where there was naïvety and innocence before, there was now a harrowing sadness. The kind of melancholy that can only come with the sudden understanding of Good vs Evil, and the knowledge that true perfection is (now) unobtainable ... Ignorance is bliss, after all, and knowledge, like gifts, comes with responsibility.

Lying is bad, and so when HaShem comes again they utter the truth as plainly as they can; Adam can no longer be perfect, but he knows Good from Evil, now, and he loves the Divine the way only the first of the Divine's creations truly can. And when they are exiled from Gan-Eden- the Paradise he tended with so much love in his own two hands- he grieves the way only a babe ripped from its mother can.

Adam is allowed one joy before they depart, however: Seeds from the Garden to take and plant wherever they may reside. And those seeds become a new Paradise. One that is not Gan-Eden, but which is lovingly rereated in her memory, honor, and image; one that he can continue to tend and love in the same way. And he is thankful for the salve.

But the sorrow stains his soul, twisting into a darkness that remains always. And sorrow left unhealed turns to bitterness, and Eve's love becomes a gaping wound. And when he lays on his deathbed later, he still recounts the way he failed Gan-Eden. The only comfort are the boughs of Spruce, Cedar, and Cyprus she weaves into a crown in his final moments; the gentlest scent of home given as a final balm for his wounded soul in place of what Chava and Seth lovingly sought for him: Freedom from the mortal end she had cursed him with.

Sorrow can be a powerful force to a Spirit- one which can chain them to the Earth for an eternity, if strong enough. And when HaShem calls out to Adam's Soul from beneath the soil where he was created in Gan-Eden, it is his Spirit which answers back from the Abyss of Death: "I am still here. I cannot go quietly. My work is not yet done". HaShem promises him that his time will come- that his work will be done. But first, he will sleep.

Who better as the Perambulatory Sacrificial King- he whose blood renews the land over Winter- than the first person to ever till it or pluck a bounty from its branches? One whose heart is full of sorrow for a land already lost; who has already given up everything for the land, and is willing to do so time and time again?