Or, He Gives and Takes Away
Scripture: Genesis 3:20-24
Date: July 5, 2015
Speaker: Sean Higgins
As I’ve mentioned throughout our study of Genesis 3, it is impossible for us (though not for God) to calculate the global and historical consequences of the original sin. One sin divided the man and the woman and separated them from their Maker. One sin cast the shadow of pain over every mother’s labor and delivery and introduced conflict into the home. One sin condemned man to work the cursed ground all the days he wants dinner. One sin earned the wages of death for everyone.
The rest of the first book of the Bible records enough barely speakable sins, let alone the remainder of history. Genesis reveals murder, lying, revenge, and pride, and that’s just in the next chapter! By the time we reach Genesis 6, the “LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (6:5). The “earth was filled with violence” to such an extent that the LORD “determined to make an end of all flesh” (6:11, 13), and He spared only Noah and his family in the ark. After the flood it didn’t get any better. Immorality, adultery, deceit, wars, enslavement, homosexuality, covetousness, unbelief, and idolatry prevail.
After Genesis 3, there is no going back. Even in heaven, after the serpent’s final defeat and his entire band of rebels are thrown into the lake of fire, we will still see the scars on the Seed of the woman. We will worship the Lamb slain—slain for sin, though now risen as the one who conquered sin and death. But there is no going back to a time of innocence.
And as we finish our study of paradise in the final five verses of Genesis 3, there is a flicker of hope, though Adam and Eve are banished from the garden, never to go home again. There are two parts in verses 20-24. Verses 20-21 hint at the man’s hope and God’s provision. Verses 22-24 reveal the remaining part of God’s immediate discipline on Adam’s disobedience. God created man and placed him in the garden, God is also the One who casts man out of the garden and there is no going back.
Though the immediately preceding scene saw God’s curses and condemnation, including the sentence of back-breaking, sweat-inducing labor until death, Adam focused on life.
The man called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all living. (verse 20)
Something must have changed in Adam’s attitude between 3:12 and 3:20. The last time Adam opened his mouth he distanced himself from the woman and threw fault on her. Now he seems to be back on the same team, throwing honor on her and rejoicing with her as the agent through whom hope was coming.
Previously, he called her Woman (Isha). Now, the man called his wife’s name Eve (Chavah), and the reason is because she was the mother of all living. Though different suggestions have been made, Eve is likely related to a word that means life. In light of his earlier blame-shifting, and in light of God’s recompense of death, wouldn’t we expect Adam to call her the mother of all the dying? (Philipps, 62) For that matter, why did Adam give her another name at all? And why would this positive note be written between two minor chords (3:14-19 and 22-24)? Wouldn’t this verse fit better after the birth of Cain (4:1)?
The only explanation is that Adam is speaking by faith, and that the life he’s referring to is the best sort of life. Jonathan Edwards observed:
[T]hat Adam should…call her name Life, immediately upon their losing their life and glory, and coming under a sentence of death…occasioned by Eve’s folly, is altogether unaccountable, if he had only meant, that she was the mother of mankind. It is moreover probable, that Adam would give Eve her name from that which was he greatest honour…that God said she should be the mother of the SEED, that should bruise the Serpent’s head.
The causal phrase the finishes verse 20 may or may not have been added by Moses for clarification, similar to his addendum in 2:24. Regardless, it motivated Adam’s renaming. It need not bother us that she was the mother of all living, past tense, as it is a regular (Hebrew, prophetic perfect) expression to speak of something so certain in the future as having already taken place. As the child-bearer, and in particular as the one through whom the victorious Seed would come, she is forever the first mother.
Not only did the man recognize the hope of God’s promise through the woman, the man and the woman also received the attention and care of their Creator.
And the LORD God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them. (verse 21)
The very first thing that happened after eating the forbidden fruit was that “the eyes of both were opened and then they knew that they were naked” (3:7). When the LORD questioned Adam about why he hid, Adam answered that he “was afraid, because I was naked” (3:10). Sin activated guilt, exposure, and vulnerability.
Adam and Eve covered themselves by sewing “fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths” (3:7). Now the LORD graciously provided better covering. The LORD God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skin and clothed them. The word garments could also be translated “tunics,” usually used to describe a somewhat loose, long piece of clothing reaching to the knees or ankles. The same word is used for the garment Jacob made for Joseph (37:3). Compared to the minimal “loincloths,” the tunics were much more appropriate, and durable, made of animal skin. Adam and Eve were the first to wear leather.
In order to use the skin, an animal (or two) were killed, and so this was the first blood and the first death of “living being” (that description is first used in 1:24). Not only that, this was the first death for the benefit of another. Some have seen in this act an example of sacrifice or even atonement. That seems to me to be too much for the context to bear, but it would have made an impression on the first couple. Whether God killed the animal in front of them or had them kill the animal by His instruction, they began to get a sense of what death was about.
God did not overlook their sin. The consequences were real, painful, devastating, emotional-spiritual-physical. Adam and Eve would gradually experience and understand more and more as time went on, even in being banished from the garden in the next verses and prohibited from ever returning. Yet the LORD did not leave them only in their humiliation. He takes personal care, He made and He clothed, and that Adam and his wife. He is willing to address the problem and able to do something about it.
Their clothes would be another reminder of their rebellion, but also an evidence of Yahweh’s mercy and kindness.
God created a paradisiacal garden, placed man in it to enjoy and tend it along with his bride. Maybe they enjoyed it for a week.
An element of the serpent’s proposal was true, but it didn’t have quite the positive and empowering payoff as he had spun it. “The couple not only fail to gain something they do not presently have; the irony is that they lose what they currently possess: unsullied fellowship with God. The found nothing and lost everything” (Hamilton, 208).
Then the LORD God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—” (verse 22)
A first person plural pronoun ( “us”) returns as God talks, recalling Genesis 1:26. As I said there, I do not think God is speaking with angels in the heavenly court. Even though we may not (as Moses did not) see a fully developed revelation of the Trinity at this point, there is no doubt that the Persons of the Godhead are taking counsel with Themselves. Angelic beings do show up in this paragraph, but they are assigned a station by God, they do not collaborate with Him.
The man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil, and instead of elevating him to godlike status (as the serpent promised in verse 5), this knowledge lowered man and soiled him with sorrow. Before eating, man and woman had an intellectual awareness of good and evil; if nothing else they knew that’s what the tree was called. But now they knew good and evil in that Old Testament way of knowing, being intimately acquainted and experienced with it. Once he took the red pill, there was no going back.
There is also a sense that man is “godlike” in that, in deciding to eat against God’s command, he is making his own judgment on what is good and evil, as an expression of independence.
The deliberation ends abruptly and the thought left hanging. It communicates the idea of urgency. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—. It is as if the LORD had hardly finished speaking before the man and woman were evicted.
This tree was mentioned in chapter 2:9 along with the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. However, God put no prohibition on the fruit of this tree. Presumably, Adam and Eve had not yet eaten of it—no mention is made—but now God aims to keep them from it.
I’m not sure if God put in some molecular uniqueness in the fruit that would overcome man’s mortality, or if the fruit simply had it’s power according to God’s word. But the sense is that if man ate, he would continue to live.
Adam and Eve could not have been eager to go. It was already going to be hard enough according to the preceding paragraph. But God expels the couple from their garden home.
therefore the LORD God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. 24 He drove out the man (verses 23-24a)
Two verbs reveal God’s undertaking, the LORD God sent out and He drove out. For as much as I imagine Adam and Eve didn’t want to leave, I also suspect there was a sense of sadness on God’s part. But it was for their own good. God expelled, He sent out, He put man out. It was a mercy for God to keep Adam and Eve from unending life on earth.
God already gave man the mandate to subdue the earth, to work and keep it (1:28; 2:15), and then God cursed the soil (3:19). Verse 23 echoes verse 19 in that man would work the ground from which he was taken. There would be food, it would just take sweat in the process. Now the work would remind man of everything lost by sin.
Lest Adam and Eve be tempted to go back to the garden (and again seek what was not right for them to have), God set guardians in place.
and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life. (verse 24b)
Cherubim are angelic creatures. Moses did not tell us about the creation of angels in Genesis 1, but it was sometime during that first week. According to the rest of the OT, cherubim are at the top of the angelic hierarchy and don’t look like chubby babies with wings.
In addition to angels, God also placed a flaming sword that turned every way. It is difficult to imagine exactly what this looked like, but it seems to be the idea of a spectacular, frightening, and deadly deterrent. That it turned every way means that it was turning this way and that, zigzagging and rotating. One was bound to be cut to pieces if coming to close. It was a big sign saying: Do Not Enter Upon Pain of Death!
The detail, at the east of the garden lends credence to the idea of the garden being enclosed somehow, perhaps by a thick wall of brush and hedges, with only one entrance. That entrance was now blocked, sealed, and fortified. Adam and Eve could never go home again.
After Genesis 3, Adam and Eve are only included in the story in relation to their offspring.
There are at least a few conclusions we can make from this passage.
Sin never liberates anyone from subordination to God. Adam lost the freedom of dependence on God and gained the bondage of domination by sin.
Consequences of (certain) sins will never be unscrambled. Redemption is not a removal of every result of our disobedience, at least not in this life.
Perhaps the only thing more amazing than our rebellion is our insensibility to the consequences of our rebellion. Why do we not turn back to God, especially in light of all the sin and death in and around us?
God’s discipline, however painful, is also a demonstration of His love. His initiation and pursuit reveals care and concern. Any patience from Him is beyond compare and completely undeserved, because any disobedience from us is infinitely appalling. His questions and reproofs are not meant only to point out our failure to obey Him, but in effect they pull us to something better, to the happiness of solidarity with Him.
The hope is always and only in the Seed. Life on earth will never again be like it was before Genesis 3. Adam and Eve would learn more about it, and we know more than they. But our hope is still the same as theirs, and we know His name: Jesus.
We leave this chapter with sorrow, in darkness, and disaster. No son of Adam or daughter of Eve is exempt from the pain and penalties resulting from the original sin. We can never go back, but we can be restored to fellowship with God and true life through the Seed.