Hieronymus Bosch’s triptych “The Garden of Earthly Delights” is universally recognizable for its bizarre, mystical imagery. Through a critical eye, however, it also uncovers something remarkable about what God’s real, genocide-worthy problem with humanity is in the Book of Genesis. Bosch exaggerates the actions of the humans in the center panel in an attempt to reveal some execution-worthy and commandment-violating sin, yet none appears. The humans’ indulgence in lust and frivolity is naive rather than malicious. Without strict guidance, humans fall victim to their curiosity; through his illustration, Bosch asks – can you blame them?

Calm Before the Storm: The First Panel 

Favoring the priestly account in the first panel, Adam and Eve seem to be created simultaneously and directly “in [the] image” of God (Genesis 1:27). 

Contrary to God’s claims in the text, humankind does not “have dominion over…every…thing…upon the Earth” (Genesis 1:26). However, there is strict order: deer with deer, people with people, fruit small and attached to trees. The human figures are a nominal part of the scene; even God himself looks demure, blending in with his other creations. This first discrepancy between God’s word and the depicted reality paves the way for Bosch’s commentary in the adjacent panel. Further, framing the subsequent panel with the chaste and picturesque view of Creation lends Bosch’s piece an aura of respectability – something it desperately needs after the observer sees a couple, butt-out, being transported via massive shrimp tail in the next panel.

Identifying the “Evil:” The Center Panel

Just as people read, they observe left to right. Thus, as the eye moves from Eden’s idyllic harmony to the tornado of naked bodies, mythical plants, and animals all coexisting. By comparing the two panels, Bosch asks onlookers to identify what precisely this sin is. 

If you take one five-inch square of the central panel (below) and take a closer look, you would see a couple canoodling in a giant bubble, someone taking a nap in a giant clamshell, a man hugging an owl, and a man and a woman embracing while riding a giant mallard. Now, multiply the actions in this small section to the whole center panel, over seven feet tall, and six and a half feet wide. 

The sheer multitude of people engaging in such unsavory action demonstrates how lawlessness has caused the dissemination of the natural order. 

What Caused The “Wickedness”? 

In the creation story, God constructs specific boundaries of natural life: “God divided the light from the darkness…divided the waters [from land,]” and separated cattle from humans in the hierarchy (Genesis 1:4,7). However, when he exiles humans from Eden, these principles obviously do not translate. When God is looking upon Earth, pondering its destruction, what makes him angry is “people together with animals and creeping things and birds of the air;” not evil as we would think it, but the intermingling of people, animals, and berries alike, representing the destruction of the order of the cosmos that God created (Genesis 6:7). God blames humans for the “wickedness” of intermingling natural life, executing justice with a flood; however, the juxtaposition between this center image and the one prior simply reveals the consequences of humankind with and without God’s own guidance (Genesis 6:5). Many attribute the “wickedness” of humankind to Cain’s murder of Abel, or the killings perpetrated by Cain’s polygamous descendent Lamech (Genesis 6:5). However, Bosch challenges these conclusions by illustrating the destruction of the natural order God created, rather than humankind’s violation of some hypothetical moral code of which they will have no knowledge until Exodus 20. In Genesis’ text and Bosch’s piece alike, readers get no definitive account of what provokes God to “blot out from the Earth the human beings [he has] created” (Genesis 6:7). Through this, we can conclude that Bosch is not damning the people’s actions, but rather exposing that God’s problem is one of His own making. The jumbling of species and rejection of the natural order is what God sees as wrong with the Earth in Genesis 6:7. However, God failed to teach humans right and wrong, punished them when they tried to learn by eating from the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil,” then blamed and killed-off humans for unknowingly violating God’s unexpressed expectations for natural order (Genesis 2:9). Bosch’s piece uncovers the unjustness of God’s actions, revealing the importance of his reproduction.

The text blames humans; Bosch does not.

SOPHIA FRIGULETTO is a member of Colgate’s class of 2024 from Dallas, Texas. She intends to major in Economics but also harbors a passion for art and art history.