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’?”
2 The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3 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.’ ”
4 “You will not surely die,” the serpent said to the woman. 5 “For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
- Why didn’t Eve respond with “EEK! A talking snake!”?Why does the Bible state that the serpent was more crafty than any other animal?
This seems to insinuate that the animals had personalities, and that communicating with them, perhaps verbally, wasn’t out of place. That’s all I’m going to say about this subject, but I invite comments about it.
- First, the serpent questions God’s law. Eve, in her humanness, fights this battle alone, and adds her own law to it for her own protection. Next, the serpent flat-out denies God’s truth, and offers his own counterfeit reality.
6 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. 7 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.
8 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. 9 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.”
- At this point, Adam and Eve tried to cover their own sin. In the same way, we try to do more, do better to gain favor with God. We pray more, read the Bible more or perform acts of service in the hopes that perhaps we will cover our own sin. The only way to truly take care of our own sin is through God’s grace.
- Up until this point, I don’t picture that Adam and Eve had been naked and completely clueless like children. I believe that it just had not been relevant. For a better picture, please read The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis. But notice Adam’s words: I was afraid because I was naked. He realized that he had left God’s protection, and was suddenly at odds with God, and authority above him. Once again, this is our normal reaction when we attempt to escape God’s authority: we attempt to run and hide. Not physically, but we do our best to escape through activity, busy-ness, entertainment or some other means.
14 So the LORD God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this,
“Cursed are you above all the livestock
and all the 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 greatly increase your pains in childbearing;
with pain 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 from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat of it,’
“Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat of 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 [e] of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.
- In verse 15, we see God’s ultimate plan to solve this problem. This is the first messianic prophecy, indicating that even at this early point in history, God had started to unfold His plan. At this point, all Adam and Eve knew was the God would take care of their covering, using one of their children. Keep in mind that they had never even seen a child yet, much less had one of their own. They had probably seen the animals procreating, so they had an idea of what would happen at some point.
- Notice God’s grace in verses 16 and 17-19. God’s curse extends to relationships, as well as to the physical creation. God could have made the curse worse. He could have eliminated Eve’s ability to have children, or made it so the ground would not produce any edible plant life, and doing so would have been within His righteousness. However, out of God’s grace, He still provided a way for mankind to live, multiply and rule.
- In verse 21, we see the first sacrifice for sin. Up until this point, no death of any kind has been recorded. From what we’ve read in Genesis, man at that point had a vegetarian diet, as did the animals. It never occurred to Adam and Eve to kill and animal and eat it, much less use skins as a covering. What were their thoughts when they saw an animal be slaughtered because of their actions? Shock and horror…disgust at the results of their actions…sorrow? Here we see another precedent about sin: blood is required to cover it. This will be echoed before the Mosaic laws are given, and is fulfilled when Jesus sheds His own blood to cover our sins, once and for all.
- Also, this marks the start of what Chip Ingram has called “living between the bookends”. Genesis 1-2 and Revelation 21-22 show how The Lord intended humanity to live, and intends humanity to live once again. Those passages serve as bookends, surrounding time as we know it. We are used to a world of injustice, betrayal and horror. When we are confronted by it, we shrug and pass it off by saying “That’s how the world is.” True. But that’s not how the world was, that’s now how it will be, and that’s not the world for which we were made.
#1 by Jenn Blessing on December 4th, 2009
I recently picked up the book “Bad Girls of the Bible” – really good stuff actually. And the first chapter is about Eve and has an interesting perspective on her and the serpent….too long to type here but you might want to pick it up…(or have Deb do so!)