Genesis 3.1-8.
There’s a bit of wordplay in the first verse of Genesis 3. The last verse of chapter 2 describes Adam and Eve as
Why’m I translating nakháš as “devil” instead of “serpent”? Because this is not a
Revelation 12.9 KWL - And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.
The ancients used the word’s verb-form,
Some will object to my using Revelation to interpret a Genesis passage. They figure since John wrote 15 centuries later, what does he know about the historical context of this story? Heck, did the author of Genesis even know the historical context of something which happened millennia before he wrote the book?
But I figure John wrote down what Jesus showed him, and Jesus knows exactly what this story means. So I’m still going with “devil.” If you’d rather read a translation which sticks to “serpent,” feel free.
Genesis 3.1-8 KWL 1 The devil was intelligent—- more than every wild living creature
- which the god Y
HWH made. - It said to the woman, “Did God really say,
- ‘Don’t you² eat from any of the garden’s trees’?”
2 The woman told the devil,- “We eat of the garden’s trees’ fruit.
3 Of the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden,- God said, ‘Don’t eat from it;
- don’t touch it, lest you² die.’ ”
4 The devil told the woman, “You² don’t die-die.5 For God knows on the day you² eat from it,- your² eyes will open,
- and you² become like gods,
- knowing good and bad.”
6 The woman saw the tree was good for food,- that it was desirable to the eyes,
- and that it was desirable for wisdom.
- She took from its fruit and ate.
- She also gave it to her man with her,
- and he ate.
7 The eyes of the two of them were opened—- and they knew they were naked.
- They sewed together fig leaves,
- and made themselves loincloths.
8 They heard the sound of the god YHWH - going through the garden
- in the wind that day.
- The human and his woman hid themselves
- from the face of the god Y
HWH - in the middle of the garden’s trees.
As if anyone can hide from God. But Adam and Eve were young and dumb, and knew they’d massively messed things up.
The original sin.
Even though most Christians know this story—it’s one of the first stories we teach our kids, and not just ’cause it’s one of the first stories in the bible—somehow, some way, Christian mythology has got a lot of us believing the first sin in humanity was sexual in nature.
I know. There’s nothing sexual in this story. Nobody was having sex! And even if they were, there’s nothing wrong with them having sex. Adam and Eve were specifically created for one another, and were commanded to be fruitful and multiply,
Well, the loincloths. The
We have to remember ancient Israeli culture was extremely modest. Women were fully clothed. Men too, though they might wear kilts for work, and God instructed his priests to not have stairs to the altar lest people see up those kilts.
In any case the fig leaves are where people first got the idea the Tree of Knowing was a fig tree. If you thought it was an apple, that’s because of the Roman Catholics: The Latin word mālum, “apple,” is spelled the same way as the word malum, “evil [thing].” Yep, it’s a pun. But either way, the scriptures never identify which fruit this tree produced. Bananas, for all we know. Humans eat crazy amounts of bananas; ask any grocer.
But yeah, anybody insisting the first sin was sexual in nature, is just reading their own personal perversity into it. They might be seriously tempted sexually; nearly all of us are. The sex drive is mighty powerful. But it’s not what we see in the scriptures. The devil told Eve if she ate of the Tree of Knowing, she’d know—she’d know good and bad like God knows it. What the devil left out is she wouldn’t have the maturity to handle this sort of knowledge, and learn it in a way God doesn’t know it, i.e. by being bad. God never sinned, but in disobeying God’s only rule about which tree not to eat of, Eve had.
And Adam had; he was right there with her, fell for the devil’s temptation same as his woman, and ate what she gave him knowing full well he shouldn’t. Historically Eve gets blamed for this—starting with Adam throwing her under the bus in the next few verses—but let’s be fair; it’s totally the both of them.
I’ve mentioned elsewhere the root of
And that’s the fall of humanity. God created us good and sinless; Adam and Eve ruined that, and all their descendants have been sinful ever since, and Jesus had to come to earth to save us from that.
Hiding from God.
Most bibles translate verse 8 as God “walking in the garden in the cool of the day” (
But in this particular case, they fled from his presence and hid.
Because, duh, they were gonna die. God told Adam if he ate of the Tree of Knowing, he’d die.
But I’m of the opinion that resisting temptation, that living a lifestyle where we avoid sinning, extends your lifespan. There’s something inherently life-giving about striving to do what God expects of us. Oh, we’re all gonna die anyway; the sin in our world kills innocent people too. Jesus knows this firsthand. But if sin never did enter our world, if Adam and Eve resisted the devil from the very beginning, for the most part they’d naturally live forever. Barring accidents—for which you need healing, for which you need Trees of Life.
Anyway, the first humans fled from God because they expected the consequences of their actions to come from God, and here he was. Other commentators like to claim they realized they were unworthy of God’s holiness and feared it might destroy them, for God’s far too holy for evil to withstand him. Although that view has been largely debunked by the fact Jesus ate with sinners,
But they were right: Their consequences did come from God himself. As we’ll see in the next passage.
