Genesis 3:1-7--The Temptation and Fall of Man

Daily Readings for this week:

1.  Day 1: Genesis 3:1-7   
2.  Day 2: Genesis 3:8-13
3.  Day 3: Genesis 3:14-16
4. Day 4: Genesis 3:17-19
5.  Day 5: Genesis 3:20-24
6.  Day 6: Psalm 6

On Day 7, I plan to write an Apologetics or Theology article of some kind, pulling on one or more threads from the readings for this week and expanding on one of those themes the make it into a Faith and Culture blog article.  Be on the lookout for that.

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Genesis 3:1-7
World English Bible

3 Now the serpent was more subtle than any animal of the field which Yahweh God had made. He said to the woman, “Has God really said, ‘You shall not eat of any tree of the garden’?”

2 The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees of the garden, 3 but not the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden. God has said, ‘You shall not eat of it. You shall not touch it, lest you die.’”

4 The serpent said to the woman, “You won’t really die, 5 for God knows that in the day you eat it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

6 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 some of its fruit, and ate. Then she gave some to her husband with her, and he ate it, too. 7 Their eyes were opened, and they both knew that they were naked. They sewed fig leaves together, and made coverings for themselves.

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We are introduced to a new character in the story--the villain of the story (we actually are going to see multiple villains before this passage is over).  "The serpent," as he is called here is both physical and angelic in nature.  The book of Genesis has not yet introduced the existence of angels or fallen angels yet, but both exist at this point, and the voice speaking through the serpent (which I believe is an actual serpent) is the voice of the one we would call Satan or the Devil or Lucifer.  He has many names in the Bible.  Let's start with that last name and see perhaps why he chose to possess this particular creature.

We are told in other Bible passages that Lucifer was made to be the worship leader of the heavenly host and he was beautiful and had a special kind of glory that gave him the name Lucifer (you can see the prefix "Luc" in there which means "light," so he is often associated with the "morning star" (the sun) and an "angel of light,")  He looked for a creature that was both beautiful and wise, he was both, though he was proud and thought more of himself than he should of, and was allowed to speak through that creature--I assume from the curse that the creature somehow had a choice in the matter and allowed itself to become his vessel, for the serpent and all of its offspring (both in the physical domain and the angelic domain) are cursed.

The serpent speaks to the woman--an intentional inversion of the created order, for the order had been set:  God, man, woman, creature, but now Satan is trying to reverse this order to be creature, woman, man, God.  Satan uses the serpent to speak to the woman and questions the words of her husband which came from God.  "Did God really say that?" "Do you trust God to choose good boundaries for you?" "Wouldn't you like to be wise enough to be able to decide good and evil for yourself?" "You too could be like God--gods with a little 'g.').  Satan uses the same kinds of lies and tactics today, and it is good for us to be aware of his same-old bag of tricks, even when we see them used in new ways through modern technology.  His goal is still to "steal, kill, and destroy," and he is still "a liar from the beginning" and "the father of lies."  In this way, He is juxtaposed with God, but we in no sense see a Dualism here where Satan is an equal and opposite force to God.  No, God is Creator and Satan is one of the creatures of creation--Satan just has a big ego (an issue with pride) and thinks he could run the universe better than God can, and he likes to tempt us to think the same thing many times.

It would seem that Adam added another good boundary for Eve when he relayed God's rules to her (and it was his privilege to do so).  It would seem that he told Eve not to even touch the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.  Why he didn't' build a fence or wall around it, I don't know, but he at least seemed to accurately relay the LORD's command, even if he added an extra layer of security of his own, for you cannot eat from a tree that you are forbidden to touch.  We do this many times with the ones we love and God does not seem to indicate that Adam did anything wrong by doing so.

Though Eve knew the command of the LORD, the seed of doubt has been planted.  Did God really say that? Then comes the questioning not of God's words, but of His morals and motives.  Satan accuses God of lying to Adam and Eve and Satan claims that this is about God trying to keep the best for Himself.  Satan promises them that if they eat of The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, they will be on equal footing with God (a blatant lie), but it sounded good to Eve and to Adam, who was with her.  The fruit of that tree looked delicious and they assumed that it would impart wisdom (not just knowledge, but they were wrong) and they desired to be like God, but this was the wrong way to fulfil that desire.  Satan likes to take even our good desires and twist them so that they become desire for self-gratification and that are in opposition to the kingdom and authority of Christ and His gospel message and mission.

The eyes of Adam and Eve were opened, but they saw things that they were not intended to see and knew things that they were not intended to know.  The first thing that they noticed was that they were naked.  Never before did they think about the fact that God clothed all of the other animals with hair (fur), feathers, and so on, but that He had not given them any exterior covering.  Now, they believe that they need to cover themselves and they will by their own work will sew together fig leaves to make garments to cover themselves, but these covering will be inadequate in every sense.  They are much like our works that we think will make us righteous in the eyes of God, but He is not impressed by them.  We'll leave the story there for today, but we see a need for reconciliation and restoration, and we see a need for dealing with the guilt and shame they feel for being naked, and we see a need for a better covering (and we honestly see a need for a better Adam already because Adam failed in his responsibilities to keep the Garden and everyone inside of it safe).  We'll talk more about each of these next time.