The Fall

1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’? ”

The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”

“You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.

Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?”

10 He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.”

11 And he said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from? ”

12 The man said, “The woman you put here with me —she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.”

13 Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?”

The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”

14 So the Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this,

“Cursed are you above all livestock
and all wild animals!
You will crawl on your belly
and you will eat dust
all the days of your life.
15 And I will put enmity
between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and hers;
he will crush your head,
and you will strike his heel.”

16 To the woman he said,

“I will make your pains in childbearing very severe;
with painful labor you will give birth to children.
Your desire will be for your husband,
and he will rule over you. ”

17 To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’

“Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat food from it
all the days of your life.
18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
and you will eat the plants of the field.
19 By the sweat of your brow
you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
and to dust you will return.”

20 Adam named his wife Eve, because she would become the mother of all the living.

21 The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. 22 And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” 23 So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. 24 After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming swordflashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.

Summary: The Serpent convinced Eve to eat the fruit, and Eve gives it to Adam. After they eat it, they suddenly realize they are naked and make themselves some clothes out of Fig leaves. They then hide from God, who is walking in the Garden. After God questions them about what happened, he curses the serpent, makes Eve endure the pain of childbirth, and makes Adam have to till the ground for food. He then casts them out of the Garden of Eden so that they can’t eat from the Tree of Life and become immortal like Him/Them.

Interesting bits:

I find the Serpent’s questions quite cunning. When he first confronts Eve, he automatically makes her question what God said by contrasting the Tree of Good and Evil with all of the other trees. Then, Eve makes a critical slip up: She thinks that God commanded that they not even touch the tree. Of course, according to Chapter 2, she wasn’t there when God commanded all this because she hadn’t been created yet, so I would assume Adam thinks this way as well.

Anyway, the Serpent tells Eve that eating from the tree will give her wisdom and make her like God. Which is apparently true. I think it is a shame, though, that Wisdom and Knowledge are treated so harshly here. Is it really so bad to want to break out of childlike naivete and know which choices are Good and which are Evil? Not to mention, if she didn’t already have this knowledge, how did she know that eating from the tree was bad?

Some ancient phrasing makes some of the rest difficult to understand, even with modern translations. For example, Eve desiring her partner seems… normal. Does that mean that there was no concept of sex before they ate of the fruit? This seems to be supported by the next verses, where Adam finally named Eve, saying that she would be the mother of all the living. Therefore, before they ate the fruit, she wasn’t going to be a mother or pregnant.

After cursing them all in some way, God creates them clothing from animal skins. If Adam and Eve were vegetarians, seeing that they ate “every green thing,” this would have undoubtedly been shocking. This may have been the first they saw of death at all. It also nicely foreshadows the necessity of a sacrifice…

The Negatives:

A talking snake. It says specifically that God created this serpent, and that it was cunning. And since it could speak and it was intelligent enough to know what was going on around it, why didn’t this serpent get the same treatment as the humans? I can’t imagine that a talking, intelligent animal today would be treated like other stupid and mute animals. Also, a snake is a snake, right? So it would have been crawling on its belly in the first place. It’s not much of a punishment to keep on doing that…

Due to Eve’s desire for knowledge, she is made to submit to Adam and to endure childbirth. She hadn’t yet been created when God created Eden, so for not following a command she couldn’t have heard she suffered quite a bit. The Bible doesn’t say that she cajoled Adam or forced his hand in any way,  but she goes from being an afterthought and a helper to a slave. (I would like to briefly point out that, although in the previous sentences God had been talking about Eve’s descendants, the verses concerning her relationship with Adam seem to be made solely to her, not to all women.)

Adam becomes a manual laborer, although presumably trees exist outside of the Garden of Eden as they do today, so surely he could eat those as well.

The cherubim and flaming sword are a bit fantastical. With the description of the area and its rivers given in Chapter 2, surely it wouldn’t be too hard to find the area and see if there is any proof, but I haven’t heard of any yet.

If you have the secret map to the actual Eden, or just a cool idea for the Passage to Paradise 2: Rediscovering Eden video game– post those thoughts in the comment section below!