CHAPTER 3

(4004 B.C.)

THE FALL OF MAN

¹Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made (the word subtle, as used here, is not negative, but rather positive; everything that God made before the Fall was positive; it describes qualities such as quickness of sight, swiftness of motion, activity of self-preservation, and seemingly intelligent adaptation to its surroundings). And he said unto the woman (not a fable; the serpent before the Fall had the ability of limited speech; Eve did not seem surprised when he spoke to her!), Yes, has God said, You shall not eat of every tree of the Garden? (The serpent evidently lent its faculties to Satan, even though the Evil One is not mentioned. That being the case, Satan spoke through the serpent, and questioned the Word of God.)

²And the woman said unto the serpent (proclaims Satan leveling his attack against Eve, instead of Adam; his use of Eve was only a means to get to Adam), We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the Garden (the trial of our first parents was ordained by God, because probation was essential to their spiritual development and self-determination; but as He did not desire that they should be tempted to their Fall, He would not suffer Satan to tempt them in a way that would surpass their human capacity; the tempted might, therefore, have resisted the tempter):

³But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the Garden, God has said, You shall not eat of it, neither shall you touch it, lest you die (Eve quoted what the Lord had said about the prohibition, but then added, neither shall you touch it).

⁴And the serpent said unto the woman, You shall not surely die (proclaims an outright denial of the Word of God; as God had preached to Adam, Satan now preaches to Eve; Jesus called Satan a liar, which probably refers to this very moment [Jn. 8:44]):

⁵For God does know that in the day you eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened (suggests the attainment of higher wisdom), and you shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. (In effect says, You shall be Elohim. It was a promise of Divinity. God is Omniscient, meaning that His knowledge of evil is thorough, but not by personal experience. By His very Nature, He is totally separate from all that is evil. The knowledge of evil that Adam and Eve would learn would be by moral degradation, which would bring wreckage. While it was proper to desire to be like God, it is proper only if done in the right way, and that is through Faith in Christ and what He has done for us at the Cross.)

⁶And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food (presents the lust of the eyes), and that it was pleasant to the eyes (the lust of the flesh), and a tree to be desired to make one wise (the pride of life), she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat (constitutes the Fall), and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat (refers to the fact that evidently Adam was an observer to all these proceedings; some claim that he ate of the forbidden fruit which she offered him out of love for her; however, no one ever sins out of love; Eve submitted to the temptation out of deception, but Adam was not deceived [I Tim. 2:14]; he fell because of unbelief; he simply didnt believe what God had said about the situation; contrast Verse 6 with Luke 4:1-13; both present the three temptations, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life; the first man falls, the Second Man conquers).

⁷And the eyes of them both were opened (refers to the consciousness of guilt as a result of their sin), and they knew that they were naked (refers to the fact that they had lost the enswathing light of purity, which previously had clothed their bodies); and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons (sinners clothe themselves with morality, sacraments, and religious ceremonies; they are as worthless as Adams apron of fig leaves).

⁸And they heard the Voice of the LORD God walking in the Garden in the cool of the day (the Voice of the Lord had once been a welcome sound; it is now a dreaded sound, because of their sin; it is not that the Voice of the Lord had changed, for it hadnt; it was the same Voice that they had heard since creation; He hadnt changed, but they had): and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God amongst the trees of the Garden (here is the dawn of a new era in the history of humanity; the eye of a guilty conscience is now opened for the first time, and God and the universe appear in new and terrible forms).

⁹And the LORD God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where are you? (This is the first question in the Old Testament. Where is he? is the first question in the New Testament [Mat. 2:2]. The Old Testament, God seeking the sinner; the New Testament, the sinner seeking God.)

¹⁰And he (Adam) said, I heard Your Voice in the Garden, and I was afraid (fear is the first reaction of fallen man; Adams consciousness of the effects of sin was keener than his sense of the sin itself), because I was naked; and I hid myself (he was naked to the Judgment of God, because of sin, which must be judged; he tried to hide himself from God, even as untold millions have, but never with any success; God wanted Adam to know that he who hides himself from Him is never hidden from Him, and that he who runs away from Him can never escape Him).

¹¹And He said, Who told you that you were naked (carries Adams mind from the effect to the sin that had caused it; as long as a man feels sorrow only for the results of his action, there is no Repentance, and no wish to return to the Divine Presence)? Have you eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded you that you should not eat? (The way the question is framed removes the pretext of ignorance, and also points to the fact that the sin had been carried out in direct violation of the Divine prohibition [Calvin].)

¹²And the man said, The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat (Adam first of all blamed God, and then blamed Eve; he recapitulates the history, as if, in his view, it was a matter of course that he should act as he had done; man has been doing this ever since).

¹³And the LORD God said unto the woman, What is this that you have done? (The two questions, Where are you? and What is this that you have done? comprise the human problem.) And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat (presents Eve blaming the serpent; in a sense, she was blaming God as well, simply because God had made the serpent).

THE ADAMIC COVENANT AND CURSES

¹⁴And the LORD God said unto the serpent (as we shall see, presents no question or interrogation being posed toward the serpent at all; God judges him, and it is in listening to this judgment that the guilty pair hear the first great Promise respecting Christ), Because you have done this, you are cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field (refers to this animal being reduced from possibly the highest place and position in the animal kingdom to the lowest); upon your belly shall you go, and dust shall you eat all the days of your life (if in fact the serpent was an unwitting tool in the hand of Satan, then I think that the Lord would not have placed a curse upon this animal):

¹⁵And I will put enmity (animosity) between you and the woman (presents the Lord now actually speaking to Satan, who had used the serpent; in effect, the Lord is saying to Satan, You used the woman to bring down the human race, and I will use the woman as an instrument to bring the Redeemer into the world, Who will save the human race), and between your seed (mankind which follows Satan) and her Seed (the Lord Jesus Christ); it (Christ) shall bruise your head (the Victory that Jesus won at the Cross [Col. 2:14-15]), and you shall bruise His Heel (the sufferings of the Cross).

¹⁶Unto the woman He said, I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception (the original Plan of God was that husband and wife would bring sons and daughters of God into the world; due to the Fall, they can only bring sons and daughters into the world in the likeness of Adam [Gen. 5:3]); in sorrow you shall bring forth children (as a result of the Fall, children would be born into a world of sorrow); and your desire shall be to your husband, and he shall rule over you (her husband, instead of God, would now rule over her).

¹⁷And unto Adam He said, Because you have hearkened unto the voice of your wife (Adam hearkened unto his wife instead of God), and have eaten of the tree, of which I commanded you, saying, You shall not eat of it (the tree itself contained no evil properties in the fruit; the Fall, as stated, was caused rather by disobedience to the Word of God): cursed is the ground for your sake; in sorrow shall you eat of it all the days of your life (Earth was originally intended to be a paradise, but now it will give up its largesse reluctantly; as well, the phrase, all the days of your life, proclaims the death sentence, which means that life is now terminal, all as a result of spiritual death, which was, and is, separation from God);

¹⁸Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to you (thorns and thistles were not originally in the creation of God, this being a result of the curse, which is a result of the sin of man); and you shall eat the herb of the field (this would not now grow freely, as originally intended, but only now with great care and great labor);

¹⁹In the sweat of your face shall you eat bread (food will be obtained by hard labor), till you return unto the ground (the life-source, which was formerly in God, is now in food, and which is woefully insufficient); for out of it were you taken: for dust you are, and unto dust shall you return (the Power of God alone could keep the dust alive; that being gone, to dust man returns).

²⁰And Adam called his wifes name Eve; because she was the mother of all living. (God named the man, and called him Adam, which means red earth. Adam named the woman, and called her Eve, which means life. Adam bears the name of the dying body, Eve of the living soul.)

²¹Unto Adam also and to his wife did the LORD God make coats of skins, and clothed them (in the making of coats of skins, God, in effect, was telling Adam and Eve that their fig leaves were insufficient; as well, He was teaching them that without the shedding of blood, which pertained to the animals that gave their lives, which were Types of Christ, is no remission of sin; in this first sacrifice was laid the foundation of the entirety of the Plan of God as it regards Redemption; also, it must be noticed that it is the LORD God Who furnished these coats, and not man himself; this tells us that Salvation is altogether of God and not at all of man; the Life of Christ given on the Cross, and given as our Substitute, provides the only covering for sin; everything else must be rejected).

EXPULSION FROM THE GARDEN

²²And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of Us, to know good and evil (the Lord knew evil, not by personal experience, but rather through Omniscience; man now knows evil by becoming evil, which is the fountainhead of all sorrow in the world; the pronoun Us signifies the Godhead, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit): and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the Tree of Life, and eat, and live forever (this would have been the worst thing of all, to have an Adolf Hitler to live forever, etc.):

²³Therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the Garden of Eden (in effect, this was an act of mercy; man is expelled from the Garden, lest by eating the Tree of Life he should perpetuate his misery; but Gods Love for him, though fallen and guilty, is so strong that He accompanies him into exile; as well, through Jesus Christ, Gods only Son, Who will be given in Sacrifice, the Lord will show Adam, and all who would follow him, how to come back into Paradise; regrettably, there is no record that Adam and Eve placed any faith in the Lord; unfortunately, untold billions have followed suit), to till the ground from whence he was taken (refers to a place of toil, not to a place of torment).

²⁴So He (God) drove out the man (implies the idea of force and displeasure); and He placed at the east of the Garden of Eden Cherubims (these Cherubims signified the Holiness of God, which man had now forfeited), and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the Tree of Life (the flaming sword was emblematic of the Divine Glory in its attitude towards sin).