But more, we must regard this knowledge not as it affects the individual, but in the light of history; what is meant is what we call civilisation.  As the human race goes forward in civilisation, it goes backward in the fear of God.  The first step in civilisation is clothing; and here this is the first result of the fall.  The story is continued in chapter iv.  Adam’s sons begin to found cities, Jubal is the first musician, Cain discovers the oldest and the most important of the arts, that of the smith—­ hence the sword and bloody vengeance.  Of the same tendency is the connected story of the city and the tower of Babel, in which is represented the foundation of the great empires and cities of the world, which concentrate human strength and seek to use it to press into heaven itself.  In all this we have the steps of man’s emancipation; with his growing civilisation grows also his alienation from the highest good; and—­this is evidently the idea, though it is not stated—­the restless advance never reaches its goal after all; it is a Sisyphus-labour; the tower of Babel, which is incomplete to all eternity, is the proper symbol for it.  The strain is that strain of unsatisfied longing which is to be heard among all peoples.  On attaining to civilisation they become aware of the value of those blessings which they have sacrificed for it. 1

*************************************** 1.  Dillmann thinks this idea insipid:  Genesis (1882), p. 44 **************************************

It was necessary to discuss the notion of knowledge at some length, because the misunderstanding of this point on the part of philosophers and theologians has cast over our story an appearance of modernness, which has, in its turn, done something to influence general opinion as to the age of this story compared with the other.  Having got rid of this impression we turn to those features of Genesis ii. iii. which help to determine positively its relation to chapter i.

What has been untruly asserted of Genesis i. is true of Genesis ii. iii.  The Jehovist narrative does shine by the absence of all efforts after rationalistic explanation, by its contempt for every kind of cosmological speculation.  The earth is regarded as being at first not moist and plastic but (as in Job xxxviii. 38) hard and dry:  it must rain first in order that the desert may be turned into a green meadow, as is the case still every year when the showers of spring come.  The ground further requires cultivation by man that the seed may spring forth.  No regard is paid to any natural sequence of the acts of creation:  man, the most helpless of all beings, appears first, and finds himself placed on a world entirely bare, without tree or bush, without the animals, without woman.  Man is confessedly the exclusive object of interest, the other creatures are accounted for by their importance to him, as if this only conferred on them a right to exist.  The idea explains matter:  mechanical possibility is never consulted, and we do not think of asking about it.  Want of taste could find no lower deeps than when this or that scholar goes from Genesis ii. 21 to count his ribs, or comes to the conclusion that the first man was hermaphrodite.