GENESIS 3

Literary Interpretations of Biblical Narratives: “Because of the particular narrative technique of Genesis, we are given only the bare essentials-- background information, psychology, and descriptive detail are absent. We are left, therefore, with many unanswered question, questions which have challenged the ingenuity of biblical commentators and the imagination of countless creative writers.... There are no answers to these questions, of course, only alternatives.” I would like to approach this chapter with a series of questions, most of which, actually I got from a young man in the church whom I was mentoring.

Genesis 3:1 This seems to imply that the serpent wasn't Satan, but only a very smart animal. Revelation 12 and 20 identify the ancient serpent as Satan himself. Perhaps he appeared in the form of a snake, or the snake was a crafty animal who cooperated with Satan. The snake in Biblical times was a symbol for craftiness, as witnessed by Jesus' words in Matthew 10:16: “Be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.”

We will revisit this question when we talk about the snake's punishment later.

Genesis 3:2-3 Is Eve accurately repeating God's commands? Eve shades the truth by saying that they can't even touch it (The first example of adding commands of God that really don't exist. It boomerangs when she touches the fruit and doesn't die, so she doubts the actual commands of God as well). We don't know if she made that part up or whether she got it from Adam, since he was the one who received the command from God. In either case it is an example of what the Pharisees called “building a fence around the law,” adding additional laws to make sure that the core law did not even begin to be broken. What is wrong with that? Let's look at at it from a Christian context.

When I was in high school, our Sunday school teacher gave us each copies of a pamphlet entitled “The Devil's Dance of Death and Destruction,” which taught about all the satanic influences in rock 'n roll music. It was ridiculous to outsiders, and dangerous to those in the church. The paradox is that you begin to doubt anything taught in God's name, even the valid commandments. Dancing may have been the favorite sin to talk about in Baptist circles years ago; in my church it was playing cards (no face cards); and in my wife's church it was going to a movie (any movie). Jump to the end of the Bible: Revelation 22:18 says, “I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: if anyone adds to them, God will add to that person the plagues described in this book. If anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away that person's share in the tree of life and in the holy city, which are described in this book.” Liberal Christianity tends to take away from the words in the Bible, but fundamentalists have a tendency to add to the words. Look at Jesus' many discussions with the Pharisees concerning their tendency to stress the peripheral items at the edge of the “fence” while ignoring the heart of the law.

Genesis 3:4-5 The serpent seems to be correct in contradicting God's word (in Genesis 2:17) that they would die in the day they ate of the tree since neither Adam or Eve died until much later. The snake was shading the truth if referring to immediate physical death. However, spiritual death may be more in mind here. This may be the first example of a fundamentalist interpretation of the Word. He stresses the literal Word of God, but ignores the underlying meaning.

Jacques Ellul: “Satan exploits aspects of the truth to produce an effect contrary to the intended truth of God. Finite reality becomes ultimate truth to mankind.”

Why wouldn't God want us to know good and evil? And if Adam and Eve didn't understand the difference, why should they be blamed for disobeying God's command? Donald Bloesch: “Our task is not to know what God knows, but to know what God wills.” The next thing to point out is the ridiculous notion of us questioning God's actions. Jacques Ellul explains it this way: “We have a certain understanding of justice, and from that starting point, we claim that we can declare Him [God] just or unjust. That would mean that above God are certain values such as goodness and justice which we know and which would allow us to pass this justice. But if there are values above God, then He is not really God at all.” Unless we accuse God of being unfair, the best explanation is that Adam and Eve at least were capable of choosing whether or not to follow this one simple command.

One opinion is that there was nothing magical about the tree at all; the knowledge of good and evil came from Adam and Eve's disobedience itself. Charles Williams: “They already knew good but they knew that God knew more than they did and wanted that additional knowledge. Unfortunately, man could only know evil by experience, unlike God, who could know it by pure intelligence.” This is sort of like the various dietary restrictions God outlines in Leviticus. Scholars have yet to come up with one overall criterion for putting the various animals into clean and unclean categories. It almost appears that God arbitrarily compiled the list as a test of obedience and to set the Jews apart from all other peoples. C. S. Lewis wrote an interesting science fiction book called Perelandra (Adam and Eve on Venus) in which a human representative from earth is allowed to argue God's side of the case with the serpent – I won't tell you whether this particular Adam and Eve end up eating the forbidden fruit; you'll have to read the book.

Let me give you a quote and see if anyone knows where it comes from: “As man is, God once was; as God is, man may become.” This popular Mormon saying is believed to have originated with Brigham Young. See any similarities to what Satan is telling Eve?

Genesis 3:6 Can we blame everything on Eve? Paul later does stress the fact that it was the woman who was deceived, not the man (I Timothy 2:14), but the context is one in which the women in the church were being led astray by false teachers so Paul sees a good parallel to the Gen. 3 story. On the other hand, Paul writes in three other places (which we will consider in a minute) that it was through Adam (not Eve) that sin came into the world. In those contexts, Paul is trying to contrast one man's actions with another man's (Jesus). Others have pointed out that it took an angelic being to successfully tempt Eve while it only took another human being to cause the man to sin. Another point that I hadn't noted until recently – Adam was actually with Eve when the serpent was tempting her, apparently doing nothing to stop her except standing around.

Genesis 3:7 Does this mean that sex is evil and that they didn't have sex before this point? This is doubtful since Gen. 2 already talks about man and wife becoming one flesh, which generally in the Bible connotes the act of sex. They realized for the first time that they were naked primarily before God, not each other. Andy Crouch: “And what is the first thing that happens after the man and woman have eaten? ... They make something of the world to ward off their sudden exposure to one another and to God. Culture is no longer the good, gracious activity of tending a good, gracious world. It is a defensive measure...to ward off the world's greatest threat—the threat of being known, of trusting one's fellow creatures and one's Creator.” Cain's first act after being told to wander the earth was to settle down and found the first city (Genesis 4) where the sciences of metallurgy and agriculture were first developed and the arts such as music began. The city is man's attempt to be self-sufficient apart from God.

Genesis 3:8-9 Do these verses teach that God had a physical body and was not all-knowing? The answer to the first part of the question is that anthropomorphic language is being used (like God fashioning man with his hands). It is the crude way we have to try to picture God. Regarding the second, it is equivalent to Jesus several times asking a question or pretending ignorance of a subject while knowing the answer all along.

Genesis 3:10-11 explain why Adam and Eve clothed themselves. They felt ashamed and exposed before God's presence. Paul talks about this in 2 Corinthians 5:3: “For in this tent we groan, longing to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling – if indeed, when we have taken it off we will not be found naked. For while we are still in this tent, we groan under our burden, because we wish not to be unclothed but to be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life.”

Genesis 3:12-13 A classic example of passing the buck.

Genesis 3:14 Does this mean that snakes had legs originally? Ancient Jewish seals picture snakes with sets of wings. Was the snake punished by having his wings removed? Fossils from Australia have provided our first evidence that snakes had hind legs. It is interesting that in the description of the new heaven and new earth in Isaiah 65, it says that “the wolf and the lamb shall feed together, the lion shall eat straw like the ox; but the serpent – its food shall be dust!” Alternatively, the curse may have been a figurative one on Satan himself, stating that he would never rise in the world to the position he desired. Remember the passage in Revelation 12 where the dragon/serpent was thrown down to earth from the heights of heaven.

Genesis 3:15 Is this the explanation of why women, in general, are more afraid of snakes than men? Possibly, but there is more to this verse, as you can see in its ending. This is probably the first prophecy of the Savior coming as a human being; “offspring” can be singular or plural, but here it is singular as seen by the word “he.” The same word in Hebrew can mean crush or snap at according to context. So one way of translating these words to the snake is “He will crush your head and you will snap at his heel.” Satan may harass Christ, but Christ will conquer him.

Genesis 3:16 Does “increase your pain in childbirth mean that there was no pain up to this point?

Multiplying pain in childbirth is ironic contrast to the 1:28 language where the man and woman are told to multiply and fill the earth. The Hebrew word for pain is the same one used for toil in the next verse.

What does it mean that the woman's desire will be for her husband?

It is almost impossible to determine the meaning of the key word “desire” since it only appears two other times in the OT in ambiguous contexts. There is probably no sense of physical lust intended in this verse. It has been interpreted positively (want to be with, or rely on, your husband) and negatively (strive for dominance over). This last meaning is actually found in the next chapter (Genesis 4:7). God says to Cain, “If you do not do well, sin is lurking at the door; its desire is for you, but you must master it.”

Doesn't this teach that the man is the undisputed head of the household? It certainly denotes that one unfortunate consequence of Eve turning away from God would be that she will turn toward her husband for support instead, and man will take advantage of this to rule over her. That is not God's ideal will, but reality in a fallen world. We need to go to the NT for the ideal situation still possible for Christians. (“In Christ there is neither male nor female.”)

Genesis 3:17-19 Does this imply that (a) no tending of the garden was needed up to this time and (b) any attempts to invent labor-saving devices are against God's will? It wasn't the work itself that was cursed since that was present from the start (see Genesis 2:15). It was the difficulty of work, the toil, that was the curse. There is an interesting contrast between two Christian sects: the Shakers, who invented many labor-saving devices (including the washing machine) to free up their time for more important things and the Mennonites who reject modern inventions. There is a good insight by William Hendricksen, who noted that Christ wearing the crown of nettles meant he was taking the curse on the land onto himself.

Is the curse on the ground still in effect today?

If we jump ahead to the flood story at Genesis 8:21, God says, “I will never again curse the ground 

because of humankind.” It is taught on some Bible websites that this verse teaches that God reversed 

the original curse on the land found in Genesis 3:17. This is almost certainly not what this verse says, 

for a variety of reasons:

1. There is no evidence that the other aspects of the original curse, such as pain in childbearing or 

manual labor in agriculture, were eliminated at the time of Noah.

2. This view demands that a key Hebrew word be translated as “view as accursed” instead of “curse,” 

which has no justification elsewhere.

3. A completely different Hebrew word for curse appears here than in Gen. 3.

4. The following verses in chapter 8 (21-22) explain exactly what God means when he says he will not 

curse the land again. There will be no major upset in the normal balance of nature such as with the 

flood, and the order of creation with its seasons will continue.

5. There is a similar statement (the inclination of the human heart is evil) at Genesis 6:5b that begins 

the flood story and 8:21c that ends it. It shows that only the curse of the flood is in mind.

6. A further explanation behind God's promise in 8:21 is given in Genesis 9:11,15, namely that God 

will not flood the earth again.

7. The strongest argument, however, to support the idea that the curse of Genesis 3 on creation has not 

been removed but is still in effect is found in Romans 8:18-23. It talks about all creation groaning and 

waiting for the removal of its subjection to futility and decay. This clearly points back to the Gen. 3 

curse, as noted in all ten commentaries I consulted.

Genesis 3:20 Note that Adam only gives his wife a name after the Fall (a sign of his power and mastery and the disorder that is now in the world).

Genesis 3:21 Is this the first time an animal died? We really don't know, but probably not. Some people assume that life in the garden involved no death for man or animals, but Gen. 2:17 only warns Adam (singular “you”) that he will die if he eats of the tree. It doesn't say anything about animals. This is felt by some to be the first animal sacrifice performed on behalf of mankind and a foreshadowing of the sacrifice of Christ for our sins. Colossians 3:9-10 alludes to this re-clothing of man by God himself: “Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have stripped off the old self with its practices and have clothed yourselves with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator.”

Genesis 3:22 This portrays God as someone who is afraid of man being as knowledgeable as himself. The comment "Behold, man has become one of us" should be taken as irony. (Walter Kaiser) The same accusation has been leveled against God in Tower of Babel story in Genesis 11 when God says, “Look, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.”

Is he punishing or protecting man by limiting his lifespan? The whole idea of removing man from the garden and putting him in a harsh environment may be to limit the damage he can now do to himself and others with his potential for evil. Again, like the Tower of Babel story.

Verse 22 may be interpreted “and continue to eat of the tree of life.”

Even if God's punishment on Adam and Eve was just, why should we suffer today because of it? That doesn't seem fair. First, let's repeat the point that I made earlier that it is absurd for us as imperfect humans to think that we know more about justice and fairness than God himself. But I have to admit that it doesn't appear to be fair of God. We need to go to Paul's perspective in the NT to understand this a little better.

Romans 5:12,14 “Therefore just as sin came into the world through one man, and death come through sin, and so death spread to all because all have sinned...Yet death exercised dominion from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sins were not like the transgression of Adam, who is a type of the one who was to come.” (1) We all sin in our own way even if it is different from Adam's sin. (2) The good news is that Adam is a foreshadowing of Christ – explained in next scripture of Paul's.

I Corinthians 15:21-22 “For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead has also come through a man, for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ.” If it is not fair or just that we are being punished for Adam's sin, it is also not fair or just that Christ should have to suffer punishment for our sins. True justice alone would condemn all of us, but we are saved by God's grace and mercy instead.

I Corinthians 15:45 “Thus it is written,'The first man, Adam, became a living being'; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit.” We are not only saved by the second Adam, but we are also given eternal life. We can partake of the Tree of Life.

Paul gets a bad rap for pointing out that it was Eve who first sinned. However, notice that in all these cases, the blame for sin and death entering the world is not placed on Eve, but on Adam.