Genesis 3: The Fall

Now it is time to go through chapter three. At the end of chapter two, the very last sentence says that the man and his wife were both naked and not ashamed. There is a word play on the word for naked and the the description of the serpent who is subtle. The wisdom and shrewdness of the serpent is what is going to attack and deceive the innocence of the couple.

The serpent starts his misleading conversation with the woman: "Did God say, 'You shall not eat of any tree of the garden'?" His seemingly innocent question is designed to kill. It is a question full of attitude and mistrust of God. What kind of God would create this couple as a garden and then tell them not to eat of any of their trees (abilities and gifts)? There is a cruelness and tyrannical attitude in God if that is what He had done.

The woman corrects the serpent saying that they may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden, i.e. they may utilize all the gifts God has given them. She continues: "But God said, 'You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die'." There are several items of interest in her response. She does not call the tree the tree of the knowledge of good and evil but the tree which is in the midst of the garden. What is more centrally located in a woman's body than her child-bearing womb? Her reproductive system is in the middle of her body/garden. She also adds the point which is not mentioned by anyone in the story up to now that they shall not touch that middle tree either. The word "touch" is a word filled with meaning about as much as the word "to know." They both are very common idioms referring to sexual experience.

The serpent comes back at the woman saying: "You will not die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." This is the end of the recorded conversation of the serpent in our story. He starts with a half truth; they do die, as God had said they would, but that death is only immediate in a spiritual manner. It takes over 900 years for their physical death; as long as that sounds, it is still a very short time for someone made immortal.

The entrapment centers around the ability to see, to know good and evil, and to be like God. It is very important to recall the context of the narrative at this point. Every time God has seen has been after He finished creating during one of the days, and He sees what He has created is good. All that we or the man and woman have known of God to this point is that He is the creator. Our first parents' desire to see and be like God is, contextually, all about being creative. They want to create like God; the last creature He created was themselves, and they want fulfill His command to be fruitful and multiply. They want a child. All the serpent has revealed to the woman is that it is via "touching" the tree in the middle of the garden/eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that they can be like God and make a man.

The serpent has revealed to the woman that the way they can fulfill God's command to be fruitful and multiply and be like God is to disobey God and eat of the middle tree. By implication the serpent has also discredited God and made Him out to be an untrustworthy and selfish master who doesn't want the man and woman to be like Him (even though He made them like Him). Now the full weight of the temptation has hit home, and there remain no good reasons for the woman to obey God other than that she trusts Him. The two commands don't seem to fit together, and they seem to imply that God is not good.

In her heart, the woman turns away from God and turns toward the wisdom of the serpent. She resolves to get the man God made her to have: "So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband, and he ate." It only takes one sentence to describe the Fall and how the woman becomes like God. One, the woman becomes like God seeing what is good. Two, the man was a delight/Eden to God, and now the man is a delight to the woman. Three, God had taken the man and made the woman out of him, and now she has taken the man and will make a new man out of him, i.e. Cain. Of course, she cannot eat of the tree in the full sense without the man, so he is immediately mentioned as eating it, too. As they say, it takes two to tango.

The first thing they realize is that they are naked, and the first thing they do is cover themselves. Before they had sexual relations, they were like young children and had no knowledge or desire for it in and of itself. They only desired it as a means to the end of having a child. The nakedness they had before the Fall was one of purity and innocence; now the nakedness they experience is one of emptiness and death like a desert.

They hide from God who seeks them out. When God asks the man if he has eaten of the forbidden tree, he responds: "The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate." Most see this verse as man's blaming his wife for the trouble he is in. That element is probably present, but it could be simply or mostly his honest admission of what just happened. One minute before he had been sinless and endowed with a multitude of virtues and complete integrity of person; I would think his virtues would be not so completely and immediately vacated in his fall. If the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is sexual knowledge, then he cannot have eaten of it apart from the woman; that is why he mentions her. I am not saying that it is a perfectly wholesome confession, but I think it is more of a confession than is commonly attributed to the man. Another way of saying it is: the woman you gave to me as a wife gave herself to me, and I knew her. In that sense, it is a simple admission of his sin.

When God asks the woman what she had done, she admits: "The serpent beguiled me, and I ate."
Is she blaming the serpent? Maybe. But again, she is giving a brief account of what just happened. The serpent did trick her and get her to trust him, and then she ate. Neither of them are saying that they were forced to eat or that it wasn't their fault that they ate; they both admit they ate after saying what events led up to their eating. The man says God gave him a wife, the wife gave herself to the man, and he ate of the tree. The woman says the serpent tricked her, and then she ate.

God seems to accept their confessions; He makes no comment at all about them. As soon as they confess who it was who led them into sin, He moves on to talk to the next indicted person. The man mentions the woman, so God moves on to talk to her. The woman mentions the serpent, and God goes to talk to him. Now He knows everyone involved in the catastrophe.

The next step is to explain the consequences for those involved. The exciting thing is that the punishments fit the crimes perfectly. God curses the serpent and says, "upon your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life." That is just what the serpent had tricked the man and woman into doing. They are made out of the ground and of the dust, so when they ate of each other, it was as though they were eating dirt. They got down on the ground (contrary to popular opinion, Sleep Number beds were not in paradise) and wriggled upon their bellies. In addition to all of that symbolism of a snake slithering upon the ground, the serpent is the best creature to be a phallic symbol.

God puts enmity between the serpent and the woman and between his seed and her seed. Now the serpent and the woman are mortal enemies and no longer trusted friends. Here we also have the first mention of seed. The man had just finished planting his seed in the ground (the woman), and the fruit of the fall we will find out is Cain. In John's first letter he says: "By this it may be seen who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil; whoever does not do right is not of God, nor he who does not love his brother....we should love one another, and not be like Cain who was of the evil one and murdered his brother." Because Cain was conceived through the wisdom of the serpent, he became and is called by John a child of the devil (1John3:10-12). So those who do evil are children of the devil, and they will be fighting those who do good and are children of God. We see this acted out right away with Cain and Abel.

The last line is worthy of attention: "he [the seed of the woman] shall bruise your head, and you [serpent] shall bruise his heel." The word bruise could also means crush or desire in the sense of control and master. Paul tells us that Jesus is the seed, and it is He who crushes the head of Satan. The more interesting part for me is the serpents striking at mans' heel. The foot and heel are idioms referring to ones genitalia. If it is true that the Fall was the serpent encouraging the man and the woman to have sexual relations, it would make sense that he would continue to attack man in that area. Because the Fall concerned the sexual domain, that is man's weak spot and the most common place for Satan to strike. That is consistent with the Fatima seers' vision of hell; it was revealed to them that most people go to hell for sins of the flesh.

I was hoping to finish an overview of chapter three tonight. Now I realize that I am getting pretty tired, and I still have a good bit yet to say. I'll have to have a part two of this chapter, and hopefully I will write it tomorrow.

Thanks for reading.
Copyright 2007.