After reading the first book of Paradise Lost by John Milton, I thought of two major comparisons to the book of Genesis in the Bible. In both comparisons of creation and disobedience, God’s almighty power is evident because of God’s ability to create Heaven and Earth; defeat the greatest angel, Lucifer, and cast him to Hell; and the banishment of Adam and Eve from Paradise and all the other punishments that would exist for all creations to follow.
The first chapter on Genesis details the creation of the Heaven and earth by God in which at first, it was “without form and void and darkness was upon the face of the deep” (Genesis 1:2). However, by the seventh day there were living creatures, including humans and animals, there was light and dark, night and day, water and land, sun and moon, grass and seed, and fruit yielding trees. But, the dark emptiness before God declared that there would be light and all that would come reminds me of the Hell that God cast Satan and the other fallen angels to after they declared war on God and were defeated (Paradise Lost Book 1 Verse 40-70). Satan and his devil army then constructed a city for themselves and declared their opposition to God. The city center and capital was called Pandemonium (Paradise Lost Book 1 Verse 755). While God’s creation went from dark and empty to heavenly and light, Satan’s Hell remained dark, ominous and evil by nature. As declared in the first book of Paradise Lost, this story is about man’s disobedience to God and all that is a result of that disobedience. Lucifer’s (Satan) disobedience to God resulted in banishment to an underworld called Hell. This punishment reminds me of Adam and Eve’s disobedience to God when God told them not to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. When they did not obey God’s command and instead ate from the tree, they realized that they were naked and felt ashamed (Genesis 3). As a result of their disobedience, Adam and Eve were banished from Paradise and cursed them with death and pain. These two examples of man’s (and woman’s) disobedience to God illustrates the almightiness of God and the two greatest of punishments: the creation of Hell and the fall of Adam and Eve.