The following transcript is intended to aid in your study. However, while we try to go through the transcript, our transcripts are primarily computer-generated and often contain errors. Please forgive the transcripts’ imperfections.

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Segment 1

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What is the most luxurious, delightful, and dainty thing you can think of? What if I told you that in Hebrew, these are the words that define the name of the place our story takes place in today, in Genesis chapter three through four and Moses chapter four through five, we are gonna find out something so awesome and not only how awesome this name is, but also how awesome it was to live there.

But sadly it wasn't meant to last. Welcome to the Sunday on Monday Study Group, A Deseret Bookshelf plus original, brought to you by LDS Living where we take the come Follow Me lesson for the week, and we really dig into the scriptures together. I'm your host, Tammy Uzelac Hall. Now, if you're new to our study group, please follow the link in our description and it's going to best explain how you can use this podcast to enhance your come Follow Me study, just like my longtime listening friend, Christine O'Brien.

And I hope to see you again at the Women's Conference this year. Hello, Christine. Okay, now the best thing about this podcast is each week I get to be joined by two friends or one friend. So it's always a little bit different. You never know what you're gonna get. And today I have one friend and you guys, I am so excited.

I told her I was kind of fangirling about her a little bit because she has a book coming out and I'm gonna let her tell you about it, but I read it. It's so good. I am so excited to introduce you to Rebekah. Call. Hello, Rebekah. Hello, Tammy. I'm so happy to be here. Yay. Okay. Rebekah, tell us a little bit about yourself.

I am originally from Pocatello, Idaho. Woo-hoo. It was a good place to grow up. I'm very thankful to have grown up there. And I lived there until I was 18, and then I went to BYU and studied there for four years. Uh, so I got a bachelor's in English linguistics. During the course of that time, I also went on a mission to Hong Kong.

Very cool. And I spent six years at BYU, but a year and a half that I was gone. Sure. Then I got a master's degree in the Bible and the ancient Near East really. It's sort of the, the Hebrew Bible in its ancient near Eastern context. Wow. And that was from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. So I, I had the pretty incredible opportunity to live in Jerusalem for two years, which I will just say it's sort of a heightened level of life in, in pretty much every sort of way.

The, the conflict is higher. The, the tension is higher, just all the stakes feel higher. And as a result, I think life there just feels so, almost like it's on a higher level of vibrancy or something. Um, I, I feel very thankful for that opportunity to live there. After coming back, I taught Hebrew for a little bit at BYU, and then I went and studied at Claremont Graduate University for my PhD, which is in religious studies.

So that's sort of where I'm at now. I graduated the end of 2023, um, and I've been teaching at Utah State ever since. That is so fantastic. Oh my gosh. Okay. This is really cool. Oh, hey. Something really fun about Rebekah though, recently over the holidays. Some good news. Yes, I got [00:03:00] married, Paula. We love that.

That's excellent. Okay, so fun. Now, I did say that Rebekah has a new book and it has not been published, like it's being published right now. But you guys, you need to go and pre-order it. Rebekah, what's name of your book? It's called Rediscovering Eve Eden Women and the plan, okay, you guys are, it's really good.

In fact, I read it and then I've taken excerpts from the book and I've woven them into this whole episode today. So you're gonna hear some pretty cool quotes from it, but we don't even cover everything in the book. Like it was very hard for me, Rebekah, to pick what I chose. Uh, like it's just good. And of course, I geeked out about all the Hebrew in there.

I love that. So we're gonna be into our scriptures, you guys. So if you wanna know more about my guest, if you wanna know more about Rebekah and see her picture and maybe one of her new cute husband, go and check them out in our show notes. And you're gonna find that at lds living.com/sunday on Monday. So everyone grab your scriptures and something to mark them with.

And let's dig into Genesis chapters three through four, and Moses chapters four through five. Okay, first things first, Rebekah, as you were just preparing for this discussion today, just tell me what's one thing the Holy Ghost taught you as you were reading these chapters? You know, one of the things, as I've read, because I've spent a lot of time in these chapters over the last several years Oh yeah.

Um, my dissertation is focused on these chapters, and the book that's coming out is very much focused on these chapters and sort of stems from my dissertation. One of the things that repeatedly and with more and more emphasis, I guess as time has gone on that jumps out to me, is just really how much e Eden and especially leaving Eden, was not an accident.

That, that God didn't sort of put the garden together and just crosses fingers in hope that Adam and e would leave the garden, because that would be a lack of planning. And I think, and, and we're going to talk about this a little bit later on, I think, in the podcast. Mm-hmm. But to me, it's just really beautiful that, that God thought it through well enough that he had a fail safe plan and actually the fail safe plan was not.

That Adam and you fall, the fail safe plan was that Jesus be our redeemer. Oh, that was beautifully said. All of that. I like how you summed that up. That is exactly what it was. And I like how in your book you talk about it wasn't a scramble by our heavenly parents and Jesus Christ to like, oh my gosh, we've gotta fix the problem now.

Like it was all organized. It was all divine and, and you, you do a beautiful job of discovering and help us discover that as well. So thank you for sharing that. Okay, so here's what we're gonna do then. Grab your scriptures, everyone, because in the next segment we're gonna tell you what Hebrew word means.

Luxurious, delightful, and dainty. We'll do that next.

Segment 2

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Alright, Rebekah, this is a fun little question [00:06:00] though. Did anything immediately come to your mind, other than the obvious answer? 'cause you know, Hebrew, when you heard the words luxurious, delightful, and dainty. I mean, what do you think of outside of Hebrew when you hear those words? Um, I love words, so it actually makes me think of the word paradise, which is borrowed from, I'm wanting to say it's borrowed from the Persian route, both into English and into Hebrew.

And Hebrew. It's pde. Mm-hmm. Um, and it has to do with the idea of having lots of water and lots of trees. Because if you think of being in the Middle East, where I think the very hot and very dry than what makes something a paradise, is the presence of trees for shade. Because it also means that there is water, so that can support life and the trees can produce food.

And so. I dunno. I guess in my mind, Eden is really connected with his idea of paradise, which we think of paradise as, you know, after death we go to spirit prison or spirit paradise, right? Mm-hmm. But in another sense, paradise is, is the place where there's enough to live, where there's plenty. Oh. And so I think of Eden in that sense.

What a little different for me. 'cause when I hear those words, I think of like in a Claire or maybe like a nice little baked good. Mm-hmm. Something with a frosting and delicate lattice work, you know, or something like that. And so when I learned this Hebrew word meant these words, then it makes me love this place even more.

So let's everyone turning your scriptures to Genesis chapter two, verse eight. This is the first place we see this Hebrew word in the scriptures. So Genesis chapter two, verse eight, we're just gonna highlight the word and then we're gonna talk. So in chapter two, verse eight. And will you read that for us, Rebekah?

And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there he put the man whom he had formed. Okay. There it is. And Rebekah kind of gave us a little clue about that. Highlight the name Eden. That's what Eden means in Hebrew. It means luxurious, delightful, and dainty. That sounds like a place I could live.

Like sign me up. Right. And now you've described it as being a place with water and trees. It just sounds. So like the word luxurious and wonderful. And so here's where Adam and Evar, they are in Eden. And now Rebekah wrote this in her book about the experience in Eden. She says, it is the contradictory commands that do the work.

Eventually the human has to realize that not both commands can be obeyed and that will force moral awareness. And so you're talking about these commands where they can eat of these, there's a tree they can eat, there's a tree they can't eat. And so we have this conflict in Eden, which does not seem very D dainty or delightful to me.

I would imagine Eden had no conflict, but there was some there. So tell us what you meant by that quote, and especially because I love the idea that you said as soon as they were given this conflicting command, then they also needed an Azer Kendo. And I thought that was really cool how you immediately went to that.

So will you teach us about that in these scriptures? Yes. Okay. So before I talk about that, I'm actually gonna take about three steps back. Great. [00:09:00] Talk a little bit about why the way that God creates the humans is different than the way that God creates anything else. Because when God creates the rest of all, the rest of creation, he's making distinctions.

He's separating things from each other. So we have God separating the light from the darkness and separating the, the waters above from the water's beneath and separating the, the seas from the dry land. And, and then he separates the animal life into different kinds of categories. And he separates the plants into different kinds of categories.

But the thing is, with the rest of creation, he makes separation and then he's done. Mm-hmm. But with the humans, humans, he makes the human, and then immediately he starts forcing the human to make their own distinctions. Okay. And, and this will become per, I'm gonna, it becomes very pertinent. Later on, I'll, I'm going to return to this idea.

And so after, after the, the human is created. And I say human very intentionally because the word Adam, that what we're saying, Adam literally just means human in. Mm-hmm. And actually in all, it's not until Genesis chapter four that Adam is used as a name throughout Genesis one through three. It is in Hebrew ha Adam, which means the human.

Yeah. So the, it's gotten translated as God created the man, or God created Adam. But in the Hebrew, it's saying God created the human. And immediately after God created the human. In Genesis chapter two, verse 16, and the Lord God commanded the man saying, now I'm gonna read the King James, and then I'm gonna do a little tree retranslation.

Okay. The Lord God commanded the man saying, of every tree of the garden, thou mayest freely eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Thou shall not eat of it. For in the day, thou eat us thereof, thou shalt surely die. Now, in the King James, it kind of seems a little bit like, here's this invitation, please.

I invite you to eat of these trees. And here's a commandment. Don't eat of that tree, right? Mm-hmm. So, so that's what we have in English, but that is not what is happening in Hebrew. In the Hebrew, it's it's, it says something like more like this. And the Lord God commanded the human saying. So this is the commandment you will eat of every tree in the garden of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

Do not eat of it, because in the day you eat of it, you're definitely going to die. Hmm. So under this umbrella of command is just introduced to this saying, this is what the Lord God commanded and he commanded eat of every tree of the garden and don't eat of that one tree. And so these are the contradictory commands because.

If the human eats from every tree, that includes, like every single tree includes the tree [00:12:00] of knowledge of good and evil. But if he doesn't eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, then he's not eating from every tree. Hmm. And, and so I, I know a lot of times we talk about that we have a conflicting command you to multiply and replenish the earth and don't eat the free of fruit of the tree of knowledge, depending how innocent Adam and Eve are.

If they don't understand how to multiply and replenish the earth, that's not a contradictory command. If they don't realize it's contradictory. But this command, this God creates the human and then immediately commands him, do this and do this, and they're mutually exclusive. You can't do both. You can only do one.

Wow. And I think what the reason why, and this is how God is forcing awareness, God doesn't force the animals to become aware. He doesn't force the trees to become aware, but he wants the humans to be aware. And so the moment the human realizes there are multiple commandments, and that means I can make choices, and choices have consequences, and not all choices are made equal.

That is the moment you have the birth of moral awareness. Hmm. That's when the, that's when the man and the woman can become morally aware. This is agency, this is choice. Now, that's the first conflicting command. And what's interesting is actually this command is given just to the human, the single human, because the woman's not around yet.

Okay? So this command is given to one person. Then the second thing, if we turn now to chapter two, verse 18. Mm-hmm. And the Lord God said, it is not good that the man should be alone. I will make and help meet the Hebrews as our ConnectTo for him. So now it's like, okay, humans shouldn't be alone. Let's make a woman.

But God doesn't go and make the woman. What happens in verse 19? Out of the ground. The Lord God formed every beast of the field and every fell of the air and brought them unto Adam or to the human to see what he would call them. And whatsoever the human called every living creature, that was the name thereof.

And the human gave names to all cattle and to the foul of the air and to every beast of the field, but for the human there was not found in zerto or help meat for him. So I don't think that this is the Adam and God is bringing all the animals, and Adam goes, Hmm, let's name 'em Fluffy and Bessie and Rover.

Right? He's not going, no, this is not what's happening here. I I think that what's happening here with, for, for Adam is that he is learning self-awareness. He is learning to distinguish what makes a leopard different from a lion different from a cheetah, and what makes a human. Different from a leopard or a gorilla or a dog.

And so the human becomes aware of self and other. And [00:15:00] once the human has aware of, and it even says, but for the human, there was no help meat found for him, the human sees, hang on a second. One of these things is not like the others. And that one thing is me. Yeah. So once the human is aware, then God brings the woman into the picture.

And then right away we get into the narrative with the trees. And, and here's where. So if we turn, we return back to the quote. It's the contradictory commands that do the work. So eventually the human has to realize that not both BA commands can be obeyed and that will force moral awareness. So this is sort of referring to what I talked about in my introductory statement where.

I know that growing up, sometimes I read this and it sort of seemed like the plan is for humans to be born and to come into the world so we can have experience. Except there was this tragedy that the humans were put in a paradise and they couldn't be obedient enough, so then they got kicked out. Mm-hmm.

So it sort of seemed like a, but wouldn't it have been so much better if, if Adam and Eve had gotten to stay in the paradise, right? Mm-hmm. In this beautiful place where everything's provided and there's no conflict, but then, then Jesus wouldn't come about. So I don't think that God put this plan together, just hoping, oh boy, hopefully they'll be smart enough that they'll disobey the command that I gave them so that way people can actually be born and Jesus can be a thing.

Mm-hmm. Like just crossing his fingers. I did the whole plan. Now they just have to hopefully do this thing. Yeah. I don't see God doing that. That to me does not, um, illustrated God who actually thought things through. I agree. Here's the thing. If it's the conflicting commands that are doing the work and it's once they have moral awareness that they need to leave the garden, then God doesn't actually have to do anything.

It doesn't matter whether the humans eat the fruit or not. What matters is that they make a choice. Mm-hmm. They can choose to eat the fruit because they're choosing, they're making a choice and they're getting a consequence. Or they can choose to not eat the fruit. Now, I'm not just talking about like they haven't thought it through.

Once they think it through and they see there's a con contradictory command, if they don't eat the fruit, they still made a choice. They still have moral awareness. They still need to leave the garden, and so that this is like the mastermind behind the plan, that it's fail safe. No matter what. Jesus gets to come and redeem humankind.

Mm-hmm. Because no matter what, they're gonna have moral awareness, but not the experience to always choose the good. I just love verse 19 how you've, the way you've, um, structured that for us to think about. It's so cool to consider that this is where he's learning awareness that for him, I'd never considered that.

He may just think he's just like everything else. And so here he is learning that he's different than all of these things that God has created. He's [00:18:00] in a way separating himself. He's part of that creation process where he's separating himself, like you said, all this separation. He's like, oh, wait a minute.

I'm different than all the other things that have been created. But then I wonder if it must have just hit him when he saw Eve to go, wait a minute. She's like me. But still she's a little bit different because now she's an azaro, she's gonna be a help me. Which we know, and we've talked about this on the podcast before, and I think one of the things I love the most about that is the word help, which the only other person referred to as help in scripture is the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

And so here is this woman who will be a help, an azer, not just to Adam, but to all of us, which I think is so cool that their decision helped us. I, I dunno, my brain is swirling. I love this awareness and how the fall helped us become self-aware. It helped us to go, okay, wait a minute. There's all these choices and we wanna return back to our Heavenly Father.

And we could not have been that aware if we'd stayed clearly in pre earth life, like we needed them to do what they did. Oh, this is so cool, Rebekah. I love it. Thank you. And you know, just building on what you're saying, I think it's amazing. That the humans, they get to start making their own distinctions.

Yeah. And that is a big part of the creation process. Mm-hmm. That all of the creation that Elohim does is the process of making distinctions, of making boundaries, of making demarcations, and none of the other animals, none of the other creations, the plants, no, the, the sky, the seas. None of these get to make distinctions.

But the humans, almost immediately, God pushes them to start making their own distinctions because that is the ability, it gives us the power to exercise our agency, and it gives us the power to create. So when we talk about God being our Heavenly Father, which means that we get to do in a small scale the kinds of things that God gets to do, we see that playing out in this narrative where God creates big time and then gives the tools for humans to start learning how to create.

Little things in comparison to God's creations, but still we have this capacity of creation that no other creation of God gets to also become creators. Wow. Awesome. I love this so much. I'm writing so many notes. She's looking at me 'cause she can see me looking over here. I'm like, it's just you. I'm just writing down everything you're telling me.

This is so cool. Okay, so here we are. We're in Eden. We're in this place that's dainty and luxurious and delightful and what in the world because there's something in this garden that is quite the opposite of these things. And so we're gonna find out what that is and how this whole thing played out.

We'll do that next.

Segment 3

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We are in Genesis chapter three, and we're just gonna look at verse one. [00:21:00] And here's the thing. Here's the thing that is not delightful, luxurious, or dainty. It is quite the opposite. So Rebekah, will you please read chapter three, verse one. Now, the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field, which the Lord God had made.

And he said unto the woman, yay. Have God said, you shall not eat up every tree of the garden. Okay? Now, what you wanna do is next to verse one. First thing you wanna look at, footnote A where it says serpent. And down below you're gonna see one A, which says the devil. Okay, we knew that that's really not, you know.

Hey everybody, I just ruined the story. No, we all know it's the devil. But next to verse one, you wanna put Moses chapter four? Because what I think is so interesting is Moses is going to get this whole creation narrative as well, but before it is shown to him and revealed to him, I love how the Lord's like.

Listen, before we get into that, there's something I want you to know first and foremost. So before we even read more about this conflict and how it played out, let's turn to Moses chapter four and in verse one, I think it's really kind of great how the Lord reminds him and says, and I'll read verse one, it says, and I, the Lord God speak unto Moses saying that Satan, whom thou was commanded in the name of mine, only begotten is the same, which was from the beginning.

He's like, remember that experience you had at the very beginning of Moses one where Satan came and tried to tempt you? Okay, we're gonna talk about that guy right here. And so he's kind of telling him like, remember him, here's what you wanna know about him. It's the same person. That tried to trick Adam and Eve and then he goes on by saying and teaching us about him.

So let's go into verse three, and we're just gonna read this. There's a word that is used that we read in Genesis, and we also see that word used in these descriptions of Satan in Moses, chapter four, verse five. It says, and now the serpent was more subtle. So highlight that word. 'cause that's what it said in Genesis, that he's subtle and we're gonna talk about that word fear frame in a minute.

But all of these verses, if you bracket off Genesis chapter four, verses three through 12, is just all the ways that Satan tried to trick Adam and Eve and ways that he was this word subtle. So highlight, subtle, we said to do that because you wanna know in Hebrew it is a room and that word means crafty, shrewd.

And this one got me. I thought this was so cool. It also means sensible. That is so crazy to me. 'cause I wouldn't think he'd be sensible. 'cause he seems like a chaotic, crazy man. And so he's very, very subtle or very sensible. So when we talk about how, first of all, let's go back to the very beginning of this.

With Satan being a serpent, why do you think he's in the form of a serpent? Okay, I'm gonna be honest with you, I don't have a clean answer for. I don't either. When we put it in the ancient near Eastern context, actually serpents were quite positive symbols. Mm-hmm. They were symbols of healing, they were symbols of fertility.

Um, so for instance, when Moses lifts up the bronze serpent in the Deseret, he is lifting a sign of healing and fertility that then if people will look to this sign [00:24:00] of healing and fertility, they will be healed. And so, so it's interesting that actually the symbol, like nowadays in, in our Western culture, we look at serpents as being, oh, they're crafty and they're sneaky and they're out to get you in their hiding in the grass.

Right. But in the ancient Near East, not necessarily like serpents were associated with, with a lot of positive things. And so yeah, we've actually got this. Positive symbol that's happening in the text. Mm-hmm. Don't have some sort of vilifying answer for the imagery of the serpent, but then we marked in our scriptures and I asked Rebekah to help me do this in all of these verses.

Rebekah, just tell us a little bit about the adversary and what are some of the tools that he used to carefully craft and deceive Adam and Eve? What did you find? Yeah, so if we, if we kind of remember back to the prior segment where we talked about that it's the conflicting commands that do the work. It doesn't actually matter whether Adam and Eve take the fruit of the tree.

As long as they gain awareness, they still get to leave the garden and have their mortal experience. And if we accept that reading, then the question kind of becomes then what's the serpent doing? Mm-hmm. Right. If, if it doesn't matter if they eat the fruit, as long as they see they have a choice and they make a choice, they have moral awareness, then what's the serpent doing?

'cause it's not necessarily about the serpent getting them to eat the fruit of the tree. Now let's, let's go ahead and turn back to our text, Genesis chapter three. And I'm gonna do a little bit of a retranslation here with, with cool one. Um, because in the Hebrew, there's this particle. And, and so if you retranslate what the serpent says to the woman in verse one, he says, he said unto the woman, and this is my retranslation, did God really say you shouldn't eat from a, the fruit of every tree of the garden?

And, and then, so everything the serpent says actually is, almost all of it is actually accurate because the woman says, oh, we can eat the fruit of the tree of the garden, but we can't eat or touch the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden, or we're gonna die. Okay? Now, what's interesting is that the woman, it doesn't say that she was there when the command was given, and she doesn't actually say what God said.

So I don't know, did did it get Miss transmitted? Through, through Adam. Adam said, oh, by the way, yeah, this tree don't eat it or touch it, or you're gonna die. Okay. Because she doesn't seem to necessarily have the, the nuance mm-hmm. Of exactly what Elohim said in chapter two. There's something there to think about.

Oh, I think that's cool. Now, what does the serpent say back to the woman, verse four and five, and I'm gonna do a paraphrase here. Sort of a retranslation, you won't definitely die because God knows in the day you eat, your eyes will be open. You'll be like the gods knowing good and evil. Actually, everything the serpent said is true.

Mm-hmm. Everything [00:27:00] the serpent has said is true, but here's the, here's the effect of what the serpent said, and that's where I think we need to look. It's the emphasis of the serpent. The serpent is trying to get the hu, the woman to mistrust God. Did God really say this? Mm-hmm. Or. No, you're not definitely gonna die.

God's not telling you the truth. So the serpent plants the seeds of mistrust. Yeah. And once those seeds of mistrust are planted, another effect that we see is that immediately the humans, they stop being unified with each other. They start mistrusting each other. Hmm. And then that's also the seeds for the humans mistrusting themselves.

So what the serpent does do, 'cause he is not necessarily about, oh, it has to be the fruit of the tree. No, the serpent is about sowing mistrust. Mm-hmm. And I would say that actually that is the heart of what the fall is. That the, the what? The fall is no longer trusting God, creating that distance between us and God.

Where, where there's not this open relationship anymore. There's no more confidence. Mm-hmm. It, it erodes faith. So teach us really quickly about the af, the af that's in Genesis chapter three verse one. So we can mark that. 'cause I love how you retranslated it. Mm-hmm. So show us how you got that Retranslation.

'cause when I read this in your book, I thought it was so cool. Yeah. It's off. Mm-hmm. I'll if pay are the Hebrew letters and it, it's, it's an intensifying particle. It can also mean Indeed. And so it's sort of the, it, it intensifies any question that it comes in front of to mean like indeed, or really, so the King James translators translated this as, yay, like, yeah, okay.

God's sake. Right. That's, you have that sort of intensifying element of Ah, but I think if you, the translation I like is really more of a verbal translation where you've got the vocal intonation to say, did God really say okay. Mm-hmm. You shouldn't eat from every tree of the garden. Oh, I like that. I like how you translate it better than the footnote down below has God actually said, but I like, you're like, did he really?

Because then you do have this little bit of mistrust and just the way you taught that. So that is so good because he just is so subtle with his ability to just a little bit of like doubt. And you can imagine Eve going, well, maybe I didn't hear it right. Well maybe E maybe Adam missed something 'cause I wasn't there.

And so she starts to question just in his. Craftiness with the way he does that. And when you go back to Moses chapter four, and you look at all of the words that are used to describe how Satan works, starting in verse four, he, he deceives, he blinds men, he leads them captive at his will. Um, in verse six, he draws away many after him.

He beguiled, Eve. Uh, the one that always strikes me is he knew not the mind of God. Wherefore he sought to [00:30:00] destroy the wor world. I love that one because I feel like if he knew the mind of God, he would've kept it status quo. If he really knew what was going on, he wouldn't have tempted at all. And he just would've had Adam and Eve stuck and Eden forever.

Kind of a thing. Like I, I love that Elder Holland came and taught that to our mission one time, and he said, he read that verse to us and he said, if a, if he had just kept it status quo, and this is exactly what Elder Holland said, it was so funny. He said, Adam and Eve would still be in Eden writing giraffes and eating bananas.

I laughed so hard. That's great. He's like, Satan didn't even get it. But then he does. And I love how you pointed out, he tells the truth, like, you're not really gonna die. I mean, don't be so dramatic you guys. And then he sows this distrust. And so I'm wanting to know really quickly when you said that that is his key today is for us to distrust each other.

Tell me what you mean a little bit more about that and, and how it helps us be more self like how does that play into self-awareness? Okay. That this is a really big answer that I'm gonna try and do briefly. Yeah, you're good. Um, so I'm gonna talk about it a little bit in scriptures and then I'm going to bring it in more into our, our everyday experience, our everyday lives.

If we read that. The key element of the fall that we need to be redeemed from is the distrust of God. Then actually, a lot of the other scriptural narratives that follow suddenly appear really different. So what is the first tragedy in Genesis? It's when cane kills Abel. It's not actually when Adam and you leave the garden, that that's the victory, right?

Mm-hmm. God, God, what he wanted. That's not the tragedy. The tragedy is a loss of unity to the point that one brother kills another. And so if, if we look at trust as being manifested through a form of unity, then, then we, then this becomes really clear. So you have Canin killing Abel, you have Noah, where the humans are become so violent that, that, that is the reason God sends a flaw.

If you look in Genesis chapter six. Mm-hmm. And what causes violence? What? What types of things are violent? Well. Every single one of them builds on a lack of trust. Yeah. The third thing, we've got the Tower of Babel, Genesis chapter 11. And what's interesting is that if you read really carefully, these people go and they start building this building and in the, it's literally the head or the top of it is in the sky because the word in Hebrew for sky is the same as heavens.

Okay? So they're building a really tall building, and then God comes and he says, the humans are one in their purpose. We will not be able to stop them from doing anything. And then God says to the heavenly council, let's go scramble the language. So why did he scramble the language? Because the human, these were so unified, they could do anything, but they weren't unified first in God.

So we start seeing this whole narrative play out that God is responding [00:33:00] to humans'. Lack of trust, lack of unity with each other. And the way to heal it is to regain that. So for instance, if we look at, if we turn to third Nephi, it's interesting if you read Third Nephi looking for unity and trust. Mm-hmm.

It is everywhere in Christ's teachings. And Christ says, uh, this is chapter 11 verse 28. According as I have commanded you, you thus shall you baptize. Okay? And there shall be no disputations among you as there of Hither two. Ben, neither shall be there. Be disputations among you concerning the points of my doctrine as there of hither two, Ben.

Okay. So if there's contention, if there's disputations, that comes from a lack of trust. Mm-hmm. If you really trust someone, you can disagree but not have it be contentious. Yeah. For Verily I say unto you, he, half the spirit of contention is not of me, but is of the devil who is the father of contention.

And he stirs up the hearts of men to contend with anger, one with another. Behold, this is not my doctrine. To stir the hearts of men with anger one against another. But this is my doctrine that such things should be done away. Now, behold, verily, verily I say unto you, I will declare unto you my doctrine.

And now he's gonna tell us his doctrine. And this is my doctrine. And it is the doctrine which the father has given unto me. This is his doctrine. I bear record of the Father and the Father Beareth record of me and the Holy Ghost Beareth record of the Father and me. That's Christ's doctrine. That's his first point of doctrine, is that he trusts his father implicitly and his father trusts him.

Absolutely. And the Holy Ghost trusts them to the point that they bear record of each other. Anything the father has said, the son will 100% without hesitation, uphold that. I love that idea. Like, and you can trust this record, you can trust our record that we bear witness of each other. Yes. You can trust our record.

That's so cool. So that's, that's his first point of doctrine. His second point of doctrine is. I bear a record. The father commandeth all men everywhere to belie, repent and believe in me and be baptized. What does it mean to be baptized? It means to make a covenant so we can receive the Holy Ghost and be one with the Savior and the Father.

So, mm-hmm. The first point of doctrine is I'm one with my father. The second point is you need to be one with us. The third command is for us to be unified with each other because immediately after this, Christ teaches the sermon at the temple. This is the Sermon on the mount, essentially. Yeah. Nearly the same.

Mm-hmm. Which is all about how we treat other people to make a good society. And it is things like turning the other cheek. Love your enemies. Yeah. It is about how, how do we trust other people and create a society where people can, where there are no poor among the society. Okay. I just have to say this then.

You're gonna love this. This is so cool. In one of my Hebrew classes, in Genesis chapter one. Verse five, after God called the light day and darkness, he called night. And the evening of the [00:36:00] morning or the first day, the teacher said In Hebrew, it's not first day, it's day of one. And I love that idea 'cause the teacher said, what if maybe it wasn't necessarily calling it?

The first day, but we were taught on day one to be one, and they removed 'cause we separated the light from the darkness and the symbolism of that. Mm-hmm. And so I love this idea of like on day one we were taught to be one, and that at the root of being one, like you're saying is trust right there. Like, trust the father, trust the son, trust the Holy Ghost.

I'm gonna send that all down so that you can make it. Oh my gosh, Rebekah, this is so cool. Okay, then this just changes everything in the whole, it sucks Cain and Adam narrative because then when you go into Kain and then you read the story, I love Moses so much because the story of Cain and Abel is really short in Genesis, but Moses expands a little bit on it.

But now when I'm reading in Moses chapter five, verse 18, it says, and Cain loves Satan more than God, and Satan commanded him there takes a level of trust. Like how in the world did Cain get to the point where he trusted Satan more than God? To then say, whatever you tell me to do, I'm going to saying can't command people to do stuff unless.

You put your trust in him like that, that gives me the chills. Like that is a perfect example of this. That's why Kane did what he did. 'cause he, he trusted the wrong person. Wow. In Eden, if we look at Adam and Eve, we find there initially a fracture of trust with God, a fracture of trust with each other, a fracture of trust for each one to themselves.

Mm-hmm. And we find a secondary fracture where every single one of those things becomes infinitely larger with Cain, where he has a fracture of trust with God to the point that he's not in God's good graces at all. He's trusting Satan. He's explicitly bringing the fruit of the land, of the ground, which actually the ground in, in chapter three, Adam, and even not cursed.

The serpent is cursed and the ground is cursed. And so I don't think it's that because in, in the, in the Jewish temple later on, there are sacrifices of grains and plants and things that are part of it. Mm-hmm. But I think that the reason Cain might be commanded not to is because that curse, the ground is cursed at that time.

The curse gets lifted with Noah, but it's cursed. So he is bringing, cursed produce the, the, the produce of what has been cursed to God rather than bringing something that has not been cursed to God. Mm-hmm. So he is sort of acting in this sense of defiance that he's, he's actively increasing the breach between him and God.

Mm-hmm. So, so that's the first breach. And then he increases the breach between him and his fellow man by shedding the blood of his brother. Yeah. And so the blood goes into the ground, which is already cursed, and the blood is like screaming out. God says, what have you done? The blood of your brother is [00:39:00] screaming to me from the ground.

So Cain internally, he fractures his own integrity. So in every single way, he fractures the trust a step further than Adam and Eve. And this is why this is where redemption that we, we have to learn first of all, and the first priority has to be our trust to God. Because if we do social trust first or internal trust first, it breaks the order.

That's when you get Tower of Babel sort of situations. Yeah, we have to rebuild the trust with God because that creates the transformation that enables us to heal the social trust and enables us to heal our internal trust with ourselves. I, I'd like to turn to another scripture together please. Uh, let's go ahead and go to Ether chapter three.

Okay. And this really ties in with the idea that the part of the fall that we need redemption from is not that we got awareness. It's not that we can choose. And I think it's not even so much that we make mistakes. That's not what we, we, we don't need to have that part of the fall undone. There was the whole point, right, that we get to come and make mistakes to learn to be like God.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. But the part that the serpent brings is the mistrust. And we see this really, really clearly depicted in Ether chapter three now, if we remember at the beginning of this chapter, they're making their boats, their barges mm-hmm. To to cross over the seas, to the promised land. And Jehovah Christ in bef in his pre-birth spirit form mm-hmm.

Has, has told the brother of Jared, okay, you need to put stoppers in for air and you know, you Yeah. And also you need light. Yeah. But you can't have fire, you can't have windows. What are you gonna do? Mm-hmm. And he lets, he lets the brother of Jared think about it and figure it out. So the brother of Jared brings the 16 small stones that he's made and asks Jesus to touch them.

Jesus touched them, touches them, and the brother of Jared sees Christ's finger now his response. Frankly, he, he's scared. He kind of freaks out and says, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I didn't know you had a body. Yeah. And Jesus says, well, you see the appearance of the body that I will come into later on. And then the brother of Jared says, Lord, show thyself unto me, okay?

Because he didn't see more than Christ's finger, right? I'm in chapter three, verse starting in verse 10. So he said, Lord shall thyself unto me. Verse 11, the Lord said unto him, believe us thou the words which I shall speak. And he answered, yay. Lord, I know that thou speak us the truth for thou art, I God of truth, and can not lie.

So he's just said, I 100% trust you. Anything you say I trust, and this is Christ's response, verse 13. And when he said these words, behold the Lord showed himself unto him and said, because thou know us these things because you trust me completely. You are redeemed from the fall, therefore you're brought back [00:42:00] into my presence, therefore I show myself unto you.

Mm-hmm. And so it, based on ether, it would appear that, that it agrees that when we fully trust Christ again, that is redemption from the fall. The, the thing that makes us fallen is that we don't trust. Wow. That's what we need redemption from. This is awesome. Okay, so a little bit earlier as you were talking in this segment, you talked about how the ground was cursed and how the serpent was cursed.

So let's do this in the next segment. Let's get into those cursings, because there's something in Hebrew that completely changes the wording and I can't wait for you to teach us what it is. So we will do that next.

Segment 4

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Okay. Spoiler alert, Adam and Eve, they partook of the fruit. We already knew that that was going to happen and when they partook of the fruit, something happened. And there's kind of a cool play on words that Rebekah was telling me about at the break and I said, no, no, you gotta teach this 'cause it's so cool.

'cause we've already brought up the word a room and for which is subtle, but there's something really cool about this storyline. So, Rebekah, tell us what happened after they partook up the fruit. How does a room connect to that? Okay. Let's talk a little bit about this before we get to, after they took the fruit.

I'm actually on track to the end of chapter two and the beginning of chapter three. Okay. If you remember. Chapter divisions as we have them now in our Bibles, are not original to the text. Correct. So originally, the end of chapter two ran right into chapter three. The chapters that we have now, they've only, this division has only been around for maybe six or 700 years.

Mm-hmm. So for a couple thousand years, it was a very different breakage in the text. Super important to remember when you get to Isaiah chapter three and chapter four. I love that one. I'm just gonna put that little, uh, plug there when we get to Isaiah. That's a very important one to get rid of that chapter break.

Yep. Keep going. You can't always trust the chapter in verse breaks here. I agree. So the chapter two verse 25 is talking about Adam and Eve and it says, I will read the King James and I'm gonna do a little bit of talking about Hebrew. Okay. Chapter or verse 25. And they were both naked, the man and his wife.

And were not ashamed. Okay. Now the word in Hebrew for naked that's used here is ame. This might sound a little familiar because the EAM ending is just a plural ending. Mm-hmm. Which means if we take the EAM off, that word is a room, which in the very next verse, chapter three, verse one, it says, the serpent was more a room than any beast of the field.

So in the Hebrew, we have a play on words here that you have two synonyms, these words that different meanings, but sound the same. Kind of like, I saw a bear in the forest and I am, I will bear heavy burdens. Right? Two different words, but bare, they both sound. Mm-hmm. That's what we've got [00:45:00] going on here with a room.

So Adam and Eve are more, are a room. They're not embarrassed in front of each other, and the serpent is more a room than anything else that's been created. So. A room can mean knowledgeable crafty. It can mean shrewd, but it can also just mean skilled. Like a lot of times it's used in very positive sense throughout the text.

Now the other meaning is that it can mean naked. So if we've got this play on words. Yeah. The serpent is more crafty or subtle or shrewd. Skilled than any other beast that God created. Great. But there's also, especially the fact that it's, you know, like five words removed from Adam and Eve being a room mm-hmm.

From each other. What if we take the reading that the serpent is more naked than any other beast of the field? And let's talk a little, like, now we get to talk a little bit about nakedness and covering. Um, because in Hebrew, the word to aone is the word to cover. Yeah. And so we have here that the humans, they're naked, they're not covered, they're not atoned for, because they don't actually need to be atoned at this point.

When do they get atone? They get atoned for after they eat the fruit when they actually need atonement. So they're unat toed. And the serpent is also unattained for, but it's unat toed more than any other beast of the field, which would seem to imply Wow. That the atonement is already covering all the creations of God.

Okay. That there is, there is some sort of atoning power already in place. Which makes sense because we know that it is through Christ's power that the very creation happened. Mm-hmm. And the serpent is not covered by that. And so the most naked Oh, that's cool. He's the most, he's the most untoned. So if we skip forward in the text, okay.

After Adam and e eat the fruit, what's the first thing they wanna do? They wanna cover themselves. Yeah. 'cause they see their nakedness, they see they're not atoned for and they want to do something about that. But their, their attempt, it's only an attempt to cover it, is not actually successful because clearly they've tried to cover themselves, but they're still hiding.

And why are they hiding? God comes and says, Adam, why are you hiding? And says, well, I hit myself 'cause I'm naked. If he's already tried to cover himself but still sees himself as naked, obviously that covering is doing nothing. Mm-hmm. Right? Mm-hmm. And, and he feels shame. That's what's getting me with this, is that Satan then wants them to feel ashamed for being what they've already been.

But it's almost like he's trying to say, now you're like me. You're, you're more a room than you were before. You should be so ashamed of that, of being a wound. 'cause now you just he or nakedness. Yes. Interesting. Is that, what does God respond with? Who told you your naked uhhuh? What's the source you're trusting?

Are you actually unattained for That's good. Are you actually unattained for? And then God gives them, he talks to 'em, have some consequences, so on and so forth. But the end of chapter [00:48:00] three, God takes skins of, of. He makes coats of skins. Mm-hmm. Now, if we think about this, could it be that God took a lamb?

There's been no death. They've seen no death. Right? God showed them death and took this skin of the animal they just saw, killed like a lamb, think atonement. Mm-hmm. And then cover them with that to say there is death and it will be sorrowful. But you are covered. I've had your back from the beginning. You don't need to listen to the voice that says you're naked.

You need to hide. And, and the reason I think this becomes so crucial is when you look at whether it's addiction or whether it's just cycles of self-loathing or whatever, we make mistakes and there's a human reaction to hide. We feel ashamed. I did this thing. I don't want people to know. Okay. And, and, and in with addictive tendencies, it becomes even more pronounced.

Okay, I, I took the drugs again, or I viewed the pornography again, and I can't let anybody know. But actually that shame, if you stay in that shame, if you try to cover it up yourself, it only makes it worse. You get into a cycle that you cannot escape. Yeah. It's when we go and we uncover, we let ourselves be figuratively naked, right?

We confess, we let people be there to support us. That is when we can break the shame cycle and actually make some progression where we can actually grow, where we can actually become stronger. And that's the beauty of this that we see and this allegory, it's laying out the steps for when we do make a mistake, when we realize that, boy, I've really messed it up this time.

Response shouldn't be to go hide by ourselves. Our response needs to be more connection. More trust. Yeah, more reaching out and letting God reach to us and lift us up and cover us, because that's, that's the whole point. I love this idea of being covered in this play on words, because then it makes me go into when he clothed them in Genesis three, verse 21, and you talked about how they could have been clothed in lamb skin and that is a symbol of Jesus Christ.

But that, I think one of the things we've talked about before on this podcast with other guests is that coats of skins, that skin's word is a homophone. It sounds like the same word for light. It doesn't, which is a moniker for Jesus Christ. So either way, if they're clothed in coats of skins or coats of.

They're clothed or kahar in the Hebrew word kahar in the atonement of Jesus Christ. Like there's so much truth to verse 21 with everything you just taught us, and I love that like you've already been covered, but you know what? I'm gonna cover you again in something tangible that you can touch and see and feel so that when you go out in the world, you can be reminded, I've never left your side.

I gotta just give so much more meaning to our, the garments of the holy priesthood and what [00:51:00] they do for us. It's just a reminder like, I've got you. I love that, Rebekah, especially when you talked about pornography and all of the shame and that Satan's the one reminding us. Shame, shame, shame. And the savior's like, I never left.

Like, let me, I've been covering you this whole time. What a great way to look at that. So then when you go into Genesis chapter three, and then you read these cursings, which can be seem so harsh, especially for the woman, and one of the things that Rebekah writes in her book and some really cool truths in Hebrew that we read in Genesis chapter three verses 16, 17, 18, and 19, and we're gonna show you what that says in Hebrew in the next segment.

Segment 5

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Grab your scriptures, everybody, and something to mark them with. You are gonna, ma you are gonna wanna mark these verses up. 'cause I did when I was reading her book. And it is so cool. You have this thing, it's called Hebrew Future indicative form. Now nobody really knows what that means. So teach us, Rebekah, what does that mean and how does it apply to these verses and how does it change the way we read these verses now, the cursings that seem so harsh.

Yes. So Hebrew future indicative form, it's a grammatical term and essentially what it's saying is in English, we have some words that actually change according to tense. So for instance, today I sing, yesterday I sang, and last I, I have sung many songs. Mm-hmm. And so I can tell just by hearing that word that is present tense or past tense or the past al.

Okay. Now Hebrew has. Even more verbs that are like that. Yes. And there are verbal forms that are saying this is something that will happen in the future that is just not yet happened. And there are also command forms. Now we have command forms in English, but they kind of sound the same as other verbs.

Like I want to go to the store, go or go to bed. Right? So we can tell based on other grammatical things, we can tell based on intonation of voice if something is a command or it's just a regular old verb. I just have to say this, doing verbs for anyone who's out there taking the Hebrew class. Um, we have a lot of listeners who've signed up to take Professor Don Perry's Hebrew class.

Like great 700 people, Rebekah. Oh my goodness. I know. It's crazy. Um, so anyone who's listening, you think you have it when you've learned future, when you've learned the first two tenses of Hebrew verbs and then all of a sudden they throw you this thing called the menorah, and it literally is a menorah.

And every one of those stems is a different form, a different verb, and the direction it can go. Like one means it's happening currently. Like it's still going on. Like that's a verb form. I mean, it, it's crazy when she says there's so many different ways that verbs can be used in Hebrew. Yeah. So yeah, just get, you'll love it.

For those of you studying Hebrew, get ready for it. It's so much fun. So we have future indicative form. Yes. So [00:54:00] the future indicative form is just saying that something will happen. Now there's also the. Imperative form, which is the command form. Mm-hmm. That's saying that like God is ordering something to happen.

Now, there have been a lot of people through history who have read these verses that I'll read in Genesis chapter three, and they've read them to say that God is commanding this because in Hebrew command form versus just something going to happen. Mm-hmm. Sometimes kind of sound the same, especially in the future tense.

So chapter three, verse 16. Okay. Un until the woman he meaning God said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception in sorrow, thou shalt bring forth children and thy desire shall be to thy husband and he shall rule overly and unto Adam, he said, because thou has token unto the voice of thy wife and has eaten of the tree of which I commanded, these same thou shall not eat of it.

Cursed is the ground for thys sake and sorrow. Sht thou eat of it all the days of thy life. Borns and thistles shall it bring forth to thee, and thou shall eat the herb of the field and the sweat thy face shalt th eat bread until they'll return to the ground. For out of it west thou taken for dust, thou art and unto dust sht thou return.

Okay. Now there've been a lot of commentators throughout, I don't know the last few centuries, couple millennia Yeah. Who have read this and said, God is commanding for the woman to have sorrow and conception and to bring forth children and sorrow and to desire her husband. And he's commanding for the husband to rule over the wife.

Okay. For men to rule over women harsh, hard. Yeah. It's pretty harsh. Mm-hmm. Okay. And, and when I say that this is harsh, this has been used. And also the cultural ramifications of the belief of this have been used. To deny women opportunities to keep women from having careers or financial independence, or even from ha keeping women from having any sort of say in their lives.

Yeah. So this sort of thing has been used in the past, I'm not saying in every single case, but it has been used throughout history to justify spousal abuse. Mm-hmm. Um, it's been used to justify marital rape, um, where it's the idea that once you're married, it is the job of the wife to always defer to her husband, to always listen to her husband because he will rule over her.

And that is what God has commanded the man to do. Okay. Yeah. So, and I'm, and it's, it sounds like a really bleak picture that I'm painting, which for a lot of history it has been very bleak for many, many people. Yeah. So now let's return to the Hebrew grammar. Okay. Because if we look at all the, the consequence section, okay.

Which really is, is verse. Verses 14 through 19. This is when God is giving consequences to the servant. He's giving consequences to the woman. He's giving consequences to the [00:57:00] man. Now, if we look at this, this section is overwhelmingly filled with future indicative words. That means God is not commanding, he is just saying this will happen in the future.

Now, there are some of these verbs that in Hebrew, the command form and the future indicative form look the same. Mm-hmm. But here's what I would say. I, I, I'm pretty sure I think there's 12 verbs in these verses. And if I'm, I'm going off the top of my head here. I'm pretty sure there are three of them that are vague.

First of all, let's just talk about numbers. If you're in a section where somebody is saying certain things in the same context, and nine of the 12 verbs are just future tense, this is something that will happen. It makes sense that the other three that are vague, they could be either one, would also be regular, future tense.

This is something that will happen. Yeah. That's the first thing. The second thing, he does not curse the woman. He does not curse the woman. And actually she, her consequences are largely the same as the man's. Mm-hmm. If you look at the words that are repeated, both of them are told twice they will have pain and sorrow in their lives.

That's the second thing. Now, if we wanted to read commands into this, honestly it, you start, then it's like, okay, well why are we changing the context? Just for the woman to make it a command. The man should rule over her because it would not make sense to make commands anywhere else. Commanding the man to eat in sweat and eat in sorrow and only do agriculture.

So what we're saying, men shouldn't be doctors or lawyers or anything except for farmers. And if they're not sweating, when they eat their food, they're breaking God's command. Like, no, it's ridiculous. It is absolutely absurd. And it's the same for the woman. Now, the next thing I'll point out in verse 16, the translation of this is hard.

Mm-hmm. Because it says, you know, in, sorry, you'll bring forth children, and the King James says, your desire will be to your husband. The Hebrew is vague. Mm-hmm. You can correctly translate this as your desire will be to your man. You can also correctly translate it as your desire will be against your man.

Okay. The, the preposition in Hebrew can go either way. Yeah. And so I would suggest, propose that this entire section, that this is more of God instructing the man and the woman and saying, here's what you need to know. 'cause you've been living in this paradise. You've been living in Eden, this place of, of delicate delights.

Mm-hmm. You have no idea what's coming for you. Yeah. So here are the, here's the bullet point list of what you better watch out for. Just so you know, bearing children is gonna hurt like nothing you've ever experienced. Yeah. And actually it's, it's your conception will [01:00:00] be in pain. Yep. Is going to be so hard.

You're not always gonna get along with your husband. Sometimes you're gonna want him, and sometimes you're not gonna want him, and your desire might be against him. This is something you should be aware of because unity and trust are crucial. Here's another thing you need to be aware of, both man and woman.

The human tendency will be for men to domineer over women. And this is not right. You need to be warned for the man. Your life is gonna be hard. You're gonna eat with sorrow. Things are not gonna go right. You're gonna cry a lot of tears. Mm-hmm. You're gonna have to work so hard and the ground, your life will not always go your way.

You'll work so hard and still get thorns and thistles and weeds for all of your effort. And then at the end of you're gonna die. Yeah. So you need to be aware of these things because this is what's happening out there. So you need to stick together. You need to have each other's backs because you are created to be together.

And so I would say that this is, this is instruction and it's warnings from God to the people so that they're prepared to go and actually succeed in mortal life together. I love how you framed it with the future indicative form. Like this is what's going to happen. It's such a great way to read this, Rebekah, because even I'm thinking when you were talking about how it's gonna be hard, the the, the ground is not gonna work for you.

You're gonna have thistles. Like, it even makes me think of the garden. My husband plants every year. It's so funny because every year I've noticed, and I'm not a gardener, but I married into him and he has this big garden in the backyard. Every single year there's something new that destroys the garden, like we think, okay, we figured out how to take care of squash bugs.

Great. Then the next year we don't have squash bugs. You got a fungus that's not Yeah, then it's a fungus. Ah, all right. We figured out the fungus. Then the next year, every year in that garden, it is a new thing that we gotta figure out how we're gonna let everything grow. And I just think that's just life, isn't it?

That is such a great metaphor for life. Just when you think you have it figured out. Oh no. Something else is gonna come. And that is future indicative form. That is, I love the way you put this. I love your retranslation of scriptures in this whole episode today. You retranslate so perfectly because I love how he's like, it's gonna hurt when you have kids.

You have no, like, she doesn't have a mom to tell her what it's like. She doesn't have years of women in her life that she's been able to see, have children. She has no concept. I can't even imagine that of what's gonna, and so here is the father saying, let me help you out. This is gonna be super painful.

You're gonna toil, you're gonna labor, you're gonna have pain. I mean that word in Hebrew. It is all of these things. And she, even then she probably is like, ah, you know, well, I'll be fine. I don't even know. But I just love reading these verses now in that light, Rebekah. 'cause it just makes me think of such a loving father who's like, let me help you out.

You, you can't even, and then I [01:03:00] love so much that after that he's like, okay, and you know what? Let me help you out. Another, I'm gonna do you a double. Lemme give you the garments. Like you're gonna need that. For sure. And just this idea of being covered in the atonement of Jesus Christ because, and the thing we love about that is it's not even talking necessarily to them about sin.

It will eventually, but it's going to bring them comfort. It's going like, think of all the things that the atonement does. It's going to help you when you're sad and when you're thirsty. Like all the things that you read in Alma seven 11 in a moosa three seven. So the gamut, the umbrella of the atonement is huge.

And so he is like, let me give you that before you leave, because then in verse 25, so he drove out the man and there it is. Goodbye. And there's the fall. And everything you've taught us today has been so powerful because the bottom line is just trust me. Like I had a plan all along. Satan did not get the better of me.

Yeah. Yeah. Rebekah, that was so cool. I love future indicative form. Thank you for teaching that. Welcome and for writing about that. 'cause when I read that in your book, I was just like, yes, this is so good. It's so good, so good, so good. Okay, so all of that is Rebekah's book, but we just have to talk about the way she ends her book, and we'll do that in the next segment.

Segment 6

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Okay. Everybody listening, I'm going to say four words and I want to know who in scripture these four words are describing. Here we go. The words are Warrior temple, shepherd knowledge. Now maybe you thought, oh, it's Christ. Or maybe you thought, no, it's David. Well, these four words are very important to Rebekah because she writes about them at the very end of her book.

Rebekah, why do you end your book with seven whole chapters? That's what's kind of cool. Seven chapters about these words and who they mean. Who do they mean to you? Well, for me, they all connect to Eve. Yes. And the reason why. So in my dissertation, my dissertation does much more linguistics. But the book that I'm writing with Deseret book right now, the one we've talked about at the beginning of our, of our recording session here today, rediscovering Eve takes my linguistic conclusions that I made in my dissertation and I sort of explore some of how that can help us better understand Eve in the Garden and also how it can help us better understand the Garden of Eden in general.

And part of what I did in my dissertation is I looked at the phrase. In the King James. This is Genesis chapter two verses 18, and also it occurs in verse 20 and is translated as help meet. Mm-hmm. Now, I, growing up, I always thought the phrase help meet in English didn't make sense. It di i, it didn't make sense to me.

So actually, when I was an undergrad, I, I took a, I was taking an Old Testament class at BYU from Don Perry, and I [01:06:00] wrote a paper where I went and looked at the older English meanings of the words, helping me to try to answer that question for myself. And I wrote a paper and I got a good grade on it. But honestly, at the end of it, I still didn't think it made sense.

So it wasn't until several years later, after I learned Hebrew and went and started looking deeply at the Hebrew, that I realized the Hebrew also doesn't make sense. So, yes, it, it, it follows that the English would make sense if the original language doesn't. Hmm. What's so what I did for my dissertation, because the, especially it's the second word, conecto, that it's, it's like it's behaving almost Hebrew.

It's got the three root letters, but the vowels are not consistent with what we would expect for that type of, of word for that noun. Okay. It should be either kdo or kanado as a seit, but it's not. It's conecto. It is. It's almost Hebrew. So what I did is I thought, what if it's a Semitic route, but maybe it's not originally from Hebrew.

So I went and looked at four related languages to Hebrew. I looked at Acadian, which is the language of the ancient Assyrian and Babylonian empires. I looked at Aramaic, which also was used in the Babylonian empire, and continued to be used throughout Judaism. Even to this day, I looked at Ri, which is the language of a city in modern day Syria, but it was destroyed in about 1200 BC.

Hmm. And it's very close to biblical Hebrew. And when, when we found the remains of Ugarit academically, I mean, it just blew open a lot of words that we didn't know exactly what they're meant to be in Hebrew. And they were in the retic and they were so close in the context were the same. And so very, very close to Hebrew.

And then also Arabic, which is another Semitic language. And I looked for both er help and ne meat to see every single potential root that could be a cognate, meaning a related root from that related language. And there were dozens. Dozens and dozens and dozens. And so what I did with these words is I sort of put them into larger, 'cause I saw themes in, in these different ways they could be translated.

I divided them into these different sort of meta groups, these larger categories. And then I took those categories and I analyzed them against the Genesis account to see. Which one did the genesis or which ones did the Genesis account actually support? That is not to say that I looked to see which ones made a nice reading.

That was not my job. There were some really, there were some words that made such a great reading mm-hmm. That the account just didn't support. And when I say the account didn't support, what I mean is, does it have other contextual narrative or linguistic words or, or sometimes paralleling words that give, that build sort of this web, this network, um, that would support these other shades of meaning.[01:09:00]

And I, what I ended up coming out with in, at the end of my dissertation was, was about eight new translations for Zer and about 12 new translations for ne And I took, I took those and those are, what are the second half of my book, rediscovering Eve. Because if we're looking Zerto, which is help meet, is talking about the woman.

And this helps us understand. Who the woman might be, what, what her function is, how, what is she doing in this story? Especially because we have, you know, a couple thousand years of commentators who are using this passage to say, well, women are inherently lesser than men. They're morally inferior. They're incapable of correct reasoning.

And even though a lot of people might not accept that reasoning now, it sort of has filtered down. Into how culturally we might talk about gender roles. And sometimes it's sort of sneakily watered down into even the way that Latter Day Saints talk about the text, even though we overtly teach that we're grateful that eve partook of the fruit so that salvation can come to humanity, right?

Yeah. But still, sometimes there are these, these sneaky tendrils that, that make it through because we're still immersed in a culture that's not necessarily living the restored gospel, right? Mm-hmm. And so that's sort of what I'm writing for my book. And what's amazing is that there's all these things like my takeaway, 'cause I, I mean, I could go in and talk at length about any one of these different ways that we could translate looking at her as the first shepherd or looking at her as a warrior, because these are the ones that actually fit in the context.

My big takeaway is that Eve, this woman in the text, this, this person who we're looking at as our first mother. Is so much more nuanced. She is so dimensional. She has so many dimensions to her. She's complex. She's dynamic. She has unbelievable potential. And when I say this, I don't mean it in the traditional way that a lot of times people talk about women.

Mm-hmm. I mean all of that and about a thousand shades more, right? Mm-hmm. Potential to be a wife and a mother, and a potential to be a warrior, and a potential to be the leader and the potential to be the one who is the instigator. She's the catalyst for awareness and knowledge. She sets the whole plan in motion.

She is the first mortal instrument that makes it so salvation can happen. Like I do not think that we give her enough credit. For the leader, the trailblazer, the, the person of faith and valor that she is who fought. She was a warrior. She fought for the things that she needed that the, for the things that humanity needed because she had the foresight to bring it [01:12:00] about.

So that's sort of like the, the overarching, I guess, teaser for the, the things that I talk a lot more in detail about in, in the book. Well, the thing I love about that, and I felt the spirit so strong when you taught that Rebekah is all of those words and more, and if we really could understand Eve that way and understand that she is just all those words, like I love how you said a shepherd, a leader, um, the knowledge that she had and how she was able to start the process for us to come down and, and all of that, then I think it would be.

Even more powerful to then look at other women in scripture with that same lens. Because I think one of the things we do often is when we get to a story about a woman, we like to say, oh, look, she's meddling and she's changing things to get how she wants him to be. Or is she an instigator? Is she the one who has the knowledge to shepherd her family in the direction that the Lord wants them to go?

And the one that made the step to follow through on the revelation she received when she was pregnant with twins or Abigail, she wasn't a meddler. She was like, I just think if we could reframe Eve, then we can reframe all women in scripture and see that. Then we see ourselves, and then it goes back to what I learned from you, and this is my takeaway, awareness, awareness of self.

Like if we as little girls understood that about Eve, we might have a little more grace for ourselves and a little more awareness of what we can bring to the table and who we are and what role we're playing in building the kingdom of God. We're shepherds, we're warriors. We have knowledge. So I love what you're saying, that if if we as women understood really this heritage that we are endowed with by virtue of being Daughters of Eve, then it would change who we're being in our families.

It will change who we're being in church. It will change who're being in our communities. At the same time, if men understand this, 'cause this is not just women who need to understand this. No men need this too. Mm-hmm. Because what's interesting is when I first started studying this, I thought, oh yeah, this is for the women.

This is for the women. And the more I started studying, the more I realized that when we empower women, we empower men because we we're connected, we're in it together. Whether some people might not like it or whether we like it or not, we are in this together. And if you disempower, if we're one, we're, we're two sides of a coin, right?

Mm-hmm. If you disempower one side of the coin, you disempower the other too. So when we don't allow women to actually be who we have the capability of being, we make it so that men have a lesser ability to be who they're capable of being. Absolutely. And so it's, it's just as when we, when we understand our relationship with each other, then we are exalted together.

We, none of us are meant to do this alone. Men are not meant to do it alone. Women are not meant to do it alone. We are meant to be doing this for together. That is one of the things, like humanity is not created in the Garden of Eden [01:15:00] until the woman shows up on the scene. It's not complete. It's only half.

It's only half. And it cannot work until both are there. And so from the beginning, we are always meant to have been together, to be unified, and to work together and to lift each other up. Beautifully spoken. Beautiful. Oh, Rebekah, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Rebekah, thank you for paying the price to look that word up and to teach us about Eve.

Um, and for the discussion today. I loved it. There were so many things, so many times I felt the spirit. I wrote so many notes, but I just, I'm grateful that you were willing to come on and talk about these chapters and to just give us the new light and knowledge that we needed, especially the future indicative form.

I could go on and on, but this was a great episode. So thank you, Rebekah. Thanks for joining us today. You are so welcome. Thank you. And sorry for the scratchy voice. I've had a bit of a cold, but I'm thankful for the miracle that I can. I don't have laryngitis today. It is a miracle. We prayed for her. We were supposed to record three days ago and she couldn't 'cause she had no voice.

And heavenly father, he answered our prayers. She got a voice back. Rebekah, that was so cool. Thank you. Okay. What is your takeaway or what eternal truth did you guys learn? Please join our group on Facebook and follow us on Instagram to share what you have learned. And then at the end of the week on a Saturday, comment on the post that relates to this lesson and share your thoughts.

You can get to both our Facebook and Instagram by going to the show notes for this episode at ldsliving.com slash Sunday on Monday, and go there anyway, because it's where we're gonna have links to all the references and a transcript of this whole discussion. You're gonna wanna check it out for this episode.

The Sunday on Monday Study Group is a Deseret Bookshelf Plus original, brought to you by LDS Living. It's written and hosted by me, Tammy Uzelac Hall. And today our incredible study group participant was Rebekah. Call and you can find more information about my friend at LDS living.com/sunday on Monday.

Our podcast is produced by Cole Wissinger and me. It is edited and mixed by Cole Wissinger, and our executive producer is Erin Hallstrom. Thanks for being here. We'll see you next week, and please remember, you are God's favorite.