Genesis 2–3

These verses really complete and close chapter 1, if we divide the text into chapters on a sound principle. Such a division has no authority, except in the Psalms and the like, and it is often wrong.

"All the host of them" evidently refers to the innumerable host of stars and planets which God has set in the heavens for the benefit of man on earth.

Moses does not teach the creation of angels, but he teaches the creation of all things — the heavens and the earth, and all the hosts of them. The account describes the whole creation in relation to man; other scriptures state this clearly. "He makes his angels winds." (Older translations, which the writer used, read: "He makes his angels spirits.")

Until the days introduced Adam and his world, no one could say that the heavens and the earth, still less "all their host," were finished. Previous states of the creation had their importance. But until man came, with the animals and plants made alongside him, there was a great lack. Neither on earth nor even in the heavens was there a creature made in God's image or after His likeness.

After God formed the world and created man in His own image and likeness, His creation works were finished. This led to creation rest with its two distinctive marks: first, God's satisfaction in all that He had made; second, the entire cessation from all His creation work. So we learn the two great truths that mark God's rest: the absolute delight in the result of the labour; and satisfaction being reached, the absolute end of all toil.

In this earth, thus prepared and furnished, man, made after the image of God, is placed as lord of all that was in it. Its fruits are given him for food; and God rests from His work, and marks with His blessing the day that saw His labours closed. Man enjoyed the fruit of God's work rather than entered into the rest; for in nothing had he taken part in the work.

The seventh day was a day of rest for God. His work had involved both creating and making, but all was now complete. Since that time He has plainly not set His hand to work of that order. Sin entered, and that made it necessary for Him to take up work of another order. The Lord Jesus referred to this when He said, "My Father is working until now, and I am working" (John 5:17).

Here God alone appears, and the work being ended, all being according to His mind, He sanctifies the day of His rest. How significant this is of the day that will never give place to another! Then redemption will be fully accomplished, and all things brought to the pattern proposed in the eternal counsels. He will indeed put the seal of His perfect delight upon the whole new creation, set apart to Himself forever. How could God rest short of this?

Here the work and the rest of God stand in clear view of the human race, and the seventh day — the sabbath — has immense importance. The first time it is mentioned, it clearly witnesses to God's rest: His rest — not from weariness, of course, but from the work of creating and making. That work was now finished for the life we live now. And just as the six days before it were literal days, so the seventh is the closing day of the week.

This led to creation rest, and it has two marks. First, God was satisfied with all that He had made. As we read, "And God saw everything that He had made, and behold, it was very good." Second, He stopped all His creation work completely. As it is written, "He rested on the seventh day from all His work that He had done." So we learn the two great truths that mark God's rest: complete delight in the result of the work; and, once He was satisfied, the complete end of all toil.

In the chapter before us there is no command given to man at all. There is simply the record that God rested on the seventh day. … We are simply told that God enjoyed His rest, because everything was done, as far as creation itself went. There was nothing more to do. So the One who had worked for six days stopped working and enjoyed His rest.

In Genesis 2:2 the Samaritan text agrees with the Septuagint, the Syriac and others in reading "sixth." Here we see the tendency to adopt readings that are easier and seem less troubling.

He would say, "Well, I thought God rested when He created the world…" Oh yes, says the writer, "God rested from all His works." And so He did. But sin broke through His rest. He rested only from creating; He never rested in the works of His hands. Sin came in at once and disturbed His rest. It left Him with three choices: 1. to destroy everything by judgment; or 2. to leave everything in its ruined state, fallen along with the man He had set over it; or 3. to begin working again. He refuses to destroy them by judgment, and He will not let things stay ruined. So we find Him working again, making coats of skins for Adam and his wife. And He has never rested since that day.

In the first six days we read of the evening and the morning. But there is no mention of this on the seventh day, because there is no reckoning of time in eternity. … One day He will rest with a rest that no morning or evening breaks. Adam's sin broke His rest after the six days of work on the first creation. Since then God has worked, and He will work until sin is gone from His creation, as the Lord Jesus said, "My Father is working until now, and I am working."

Three things are mentioned. First, God ended His work — the dawning of the seventh day brought with it the end of His labour. Second, God rested; this is what the day brought in for Him — rest. Third, God blessed and sanctified it. The blessing of the day can only consist in God's delight and satisfaction over the finished work. That finished work is what makes rest possible. It is sanctified — set apart for the enjoyment of this delight and satisfaction.

How touching the testimony of God's delight in the creation, as yet unspoiled! He rested on the seventh day. He did not rest in the sense in which we use the word, as the opposite of being tired. He rested as the opposite of the six days' work.

The first mention of sanctification in the Bible is connected with creation. God sanctified the seventh day in which He rested (Gen. 2:3). The second is connected with redemption, when He brought Israel out of Egypt.

There is no mention here of man at all. We are not told that man rested on the seventh day. People may infer, conclude or imagine that he did; but the second chapter of Genesis says nothing about it. We also look in vain for any reference to the sabbath in the whole book of Genesis. The very first mention of the sabbath in connection with man is in Exodus 16 … There we see clearly that God gave it to Israel, a people in recognised covenant relationship with the LORD.

So God blessed the seventh day in a special way and set it apart. We may say that a seventh day of rest after six days of work is a thought that dates back to the very beginning of man's history. The word "sabbath" does not appear until Exodus 16:23 … After that God gave the law, and this "sabbath" — this "ceasing," as the word means — became a legal institution for Israel.

This is the only sabbath which God ever celebrated, as far as the inspired record tells us. After this we read of God commanding man to keep the sabbath, and man failing completely to do it. But we never read the words "God rested" again. On the contrary, the word is, "My Father is working until now, and I am working" (John 5:17). God could celebrate the sabbath, in the strict and proper sense of the word, only when there was nothing to be done. He could celebrate it only in an undefiled creation — a creation with no spot of sin on it.

In the first six days we read of the evening and the morning. On the seventh day there is no mention of this, for there is no reckoning of time in eternity. God has worked and will work until the thousand years of peace end and the judgment of the great white throne takes place. Then He will rest with a rest unbroken by morning or evening.

Here God alone appears, and the work being ended, all being according to His mind, He sanctifies the day of His rest. How significant this is of that day, which will never give place to another! When redemption is fully accomplished … He will indeed put the seal of His perfect delight upon the whole new creation, made holy to Himself for ever. How could God rest short of this?

This verse opens a new section of the book. The rest of Genesis 2 and Genesis 3 use the divine names in a very special way. This verse also sums up the main facts of Genesis 1. What went before gave creation completely. The new section does not speak of the creation of the heavens and earth. It is not a second account, and still less a different or contradictory one. It is the added revelation of man set in moral responsibility, tested by Jehovah Elohim.

From Genesis 2:4 we see the subject from another point of view. This is not a repetition of the account of creation. It is something even more necessary to bring before us here: the place of relationship in which God set the creation He had formed — not only among themselves, but above all towards Himself. That is why Eden is first spoken of here. We would not have known anything of paradise from the first chapter. The reason is clear. Eden was to be the scene of the moral trial of man.

The word translated "generations" occurs only sparingly in the Old Testament... and it seems to have the force of "births" or "origins." If this is so, "the generations of the heavens and the earth" would mean their origins. The generations of Adam, Noah and others would mean those who by birth found their origin in these fathers.

"The generations of the heavens and of the earth" (Gen. 2:4) include Adam unfallen. Next, man was tested with no restraint up to the flood, and "the book of the generations of Adam" [fallen] (Gen. 5:1) brings us up to the flood and Noah.

I doubt that the order in verse 4, eretz v'shamayim (earth and heavens), is changed without design. Here we have come down to the present ordering of the earth and the heavens around it — yet it still hangs on the original creation.

No one can honestly deny that Scripture, like other speech, uses "day" in a general or figurative sense where needed. That sense may cover a long stretch of time. But this need never trouble a careful reader: as always, the context gives the clue.

Jehovah is His personal name, "The Name." He bears it in relationship with man on earth, and above all with His people. He is the Self-existent and Eternal One. This is always the proper name of the true God for those on earth. In time it became the name by which He made Himself known as the covenant God of Israel.

"Jehovah" is His title of relationship. It is wonderful that He should stoop to enter into relationship with His lowly creature man. So all through Genesis 2, from verse 4, we read "the LORD God," that is, "Jehovah Elohim." Note the various relationships in that chapter: vv. 4-6, the heavens and the earth in relation to Him. He created them... vv. 7-15, man in relation to Him. The special inbreathing. vv. 16-20, man in relation to the lower orders. Their lord. vv. 21-25, man in relation to woman. Her head.

Suppose there was only one writer of the book of Genesis, as I am persuaded there was. Then the book would not have borne the stamp of a divine communication if he had used the name Jehovah-Elohim in 1–2:3, or the name "Elohim" only in 2:4-25. The change of name springs from distinct truths. It does not come from different storytellers, or from a poor compiler who could not even blend them.

It is wrong to say that the second account brings the whole present world into being at once. The creation history runs from Genesis 1 to Genesis 2:3. From verse 4 to the end of Genesis 2 we have not so much a history of creation as a statement of the relations of creation, and especially of man, its centre and head. Genesis 2 assumes Genesis 1, but adds moral elements of the utmost importance and interest.

Here we meet the solemn truth that God is Jehovah-God: He is not merely a Creator, but sets the creature, man, in relationship with Himself. So He is not only the Absolute One; the One who is absolute chooses to form relationships between the creature and Himself.

Verse 5 stresses that the plant world came straight from the hand of God. Natural causes such as rain did not produce it, and neither did man's skill at cultivating. Verse 6 shows that a mist rising from the earth itself kept it alive, with no water coming down from above. Some think that the watering of the earth by mist and not rain lasted until the time of the flood. It may have been so.

This describes the plants and herbs produced on the third day, before man, the head of creation, appeared. Like man, they were full-grown, and not from seed as ever since. The account names them as the food the living creatures would need when God called them into existence on earth; and there they were, in suitable maturity, by God's ordering — in contrast with everything since.

This is another evidence of God's authorship of the Bible, for it is something that man would never have imagined. Though there were "waters above," God did not use them as rainfall. How the earth produced the mist we do not know.

If divine power separated the earth from the waters, why should the earth stay soaked? Genesis 1 says God called the dry land Earth. These verses say that though no rain had yet fallen, a mist went up. What could be more consistent?

All things were here in their own order as creatures of God, connected with the earth. But man's work was not what made them grow and bear fruit. Nor did rain from heaven supply fruitfulness from above. The mist that watered the ground rose from the earth, drawn up by power and blessing, but not coming down. Yet man's own place was a special one in relation to God.

Scripture does not say that there was no "work" before his fall. God placed man in the garden "to work it and keep it," which shows that it was not God's will for His creature to be idle. But there was no "toil" or "sorrow" in that occupation. Now thorns and thistles would appear, and man would eat bread by the sweat of his face.

In Genesis 1, and in chapter 2 down to the end of verse 3, we have the great fact that God created... Then a new subject begins, not a new account of creation. That is simply not the case. Creation is mentioned only briefly here, and only in connection with there being no man. What follows sets out the condition, nature, and moral position of man: where God put him, under what conditions, the place of the animals, and the woman.

Verse 5 stresses that plant life came straight from the hand of God. Natural causes such as rain did not produce it, and neither did man's skill in farming. Verse 6 shows what kept it alive: a mist that rose from the earth itself, with no water coming down from above. There were waters "above the expanse" (Genesis 1:7), but they had not yet fallen on the earth as showers. We do not read of rain until Genesis 7:4.

Here everything stood in its own order as God's creatures on the earth. But man's work was not what made them grow and bear fruit. Nor did rain from heaven supply that fruitfulness from above. The mist that watered the ground rose from the earth, drawn up by power and blessing, but not coming down. Yet man's place before God was a special one. Man did not live in heaven; God did not live on earth. But God had formed a place of special blessing and delight for man to live in, and there He visited him.

Creation did not come into being merely as a display of God's power. It came as a sphere in which God's tender interest in man is wonderfully clear... Then, even after He had brought in plant life, there was no rainfall. Instead a mist went up from the earth to water the face of the ground (v. 6). This is another evidence that God is the author of the Bible, because it is something man would never have imagined. Though there were "waters above," God did not use them as rain. How the earth produced the mist, we do not know.

The words "I have set My bow in the cloud" imply that no one had ever seen a rainbow before. That supports the thought mentioned on Genesis 2:5-6: until the flood no rain had fallen on the earth, and a mist watered it instead.

Some have claimed that there was no rain until the flood, and that these waters came down then. It may be so. I see no proof of it.

Some say Genesis 2:5-6 does not fit with Genesis 1:9-10. If divine power separated the earth from the waters, why should the earth stay soaked? Genesis 1 says God called "the dry land" earth; the later verses say that no rain had yet fallen, but a mist went up. What can be more consistent?

Only a word or two needs saying about the garden. It was a place of delights. Eden means pleasure. It has completely disappeared, and God meant it to disappear. Yet at least two of the rivers show us that it stood on this earth much as we have it now. The LORD God had formed the man; the LORD God had planted the garden.

So at the beginning the LORD God planted a garden in Eden, in the east. All the earth was fair before sin ruined it, and God had made everything "very good." Even so, the garden was better still, and God gave it special care in His moral government. Man had to be tested, and no excuse would be open to him, because no one could point to a single flaw. God planted the garden, so everything in it was there for use and beauty, fit for a creation that had not yet fallen. He loves a cheerful giver, and He is Himself the pattern of all generosity.

This has always been God's way. He planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there He put the man whom He had formed (Gen. 2:8). The One who did this has gone to prepare a place for His own in His Father's house. He prepares the place, the land, beforehand, and then brings His people into it.

He was not created in Eden. He was made of dust, and God breathed the breath of life into him — that is all. Then God forms the garden and places him there under set conditions. The whole scene shows the relationships, and the footing on which man stood in every respect.

He was the favourite of Heaven, the last and newest creature. God put him there as a dependent one, and, I believe, the most dependent of all His creatures. God placed him in a paradise that He Himself watched over and cared for. All his needs became simply ways of showing God's care for him. He was a dependent creature by his very nature. The angels had fallen before this… In all this God was hiding pride from man. He was teaching him dependence.

Eden was the country. "The garden" was that choice part of it, not in the west or the centre, but "in the east," which the LORD God planted for Adam. Scripture speaks of it again later — in this book, again and again in the prophets, and at greatest length in Ezekiel. It is quite distinct from another Eden, spelled a little differently in Hebrew, which seems to have been in Babylonia.

He planted a garden in Eden and separated it from the rest of the scene. The man was to live there, work it and keep it. Yet four rivers flowed out of it, carrying its blessings to the four quarters of the earth.

Eden means "delight." It is called Paradise in the Greek translation — the Septuagint. We have heard of "Paradise Lost" and "Paradise Regained." Scripture says nothing of the second. Once lost, man's Paradise is never regained. But God in grace opens a heavenly Paradise.

Once innocence is lost, it can never be recovered. For faith, God does bring in a better condition through the Second man at His first coming, and He will bring it in open power at His second. But the first state is never restored. People keep forgetting this. They make far too much of Adam's original condition. They fail to see how complete the ruin caused by sin is. They lower or ignore the new creation in Christ.

God created man in this way, and then made a garden of delights to be his home. The name Eden means "Pleasure." Every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food was there. Nothing was lacking to support life or to give pleasure. The verse gives special mention to two trees. The tree of life was surely a witness to a life different from the one man already had. God put that life within his reach. The other tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, was there to remind him of his responsibility and to test it.

As with Israel long afterward, there was full preparation now. Nothing was lacking on Jehovah's part... So at the beginning Jehovah Elohim planted a garden eastward in Eden. However fair all the earth might be before ruin came through sin, and everything that God had made "very good," the garden was clearly superior, and the object of special care to God in His moral government. Man had to be tried; and no excuse was possible, no flaw could be alleged.

But there is revealed in verse 9 another fact of the deepest interest. The tree of life was distinct from the tree of knowing good and evil. The test of responsible obedience was one thing; the means of life was quite another. From the very first they are separate. When man disobeyed by eating from the one tree, God drove him out, in case he should take from the other as well and make his fallen sinful state last for ever. The point is marked clearly here: responsibility and life are wholly separate.

People often find it hard that God made the moral history of the world turn on touching that tree or eating that fruit. To the mere mind of man it seems a great problem that something which looks so small should carry such terrible results. Do you not understand that this was the very essence of the trial? The key feature of the trial was this: it turned only on God's authority in forbidding, not on some grave moral evil.

Almost all men say that God created Adam in righteousness and in holiness of the truth. Not so... He was innocent; he did not have what Scripture here calls "the knowledge of good and evil." Man only gained it by the fall. He had, of course, the consciousness of responsibility... Now holiness implies that, having this knowledge, we are separate from the evil to the good. Adam had no such knowledge. Unfallen, he had no lust.

The constant effort of man, especially of religious man, is to treat the two trees as one. That is, to make life depend on fulfilling responsibility. This idea flies in the face of the facts when man was innocent. It is even more plainly false once man was a sinner, expressly shut out from the tree of life... Sin morally compelled God to be a judge. Love, divine grace, made Him a Saviour.

In the garden of Eden there was the tree of life, and there was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Life stood on one side, responsibility on the other. Man failed, ate of the tree of knowledge, and could not get to the tree of life. Now the law took up the same principle... and said, "Do this and live." Then the Lord Jesus Christ, the second Man, comes. He does His Father's will in everything, and sovereign grace takes up our responsibilities. He takes the consequences of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and He is the life.

If in the earliest chapters of the Bible we find man shut out from the tree of life in the middle of a paradise of innocence, in the closing chapters we find him redeemed through Christ's precious blood, and in the paradise of God — the paradise of holiness — eating of the Tree of Life, in a higher sphere and condition than before.

The point matters little in itself. What matters is that we hold the whole account of Paradise to be history in the strictest and fullest sense. More than that, the position of these rivers seems to me to explain the account given here, which has often been a difficulty to many. If the garden of Eden lay in that region (that is, in Armenia), in the part where the springs or watershed of these rivers rise, they would all lie within one limited area, surrounding this garden.

The last two rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates, are well-known rivers today, though the flood will have changed the shape of the land so much that their courses cannot be the same.

Notice that in these verses we first hear of a "river." Which river it was that went out from Eden to water the garden seems to be withheld on purpose. If it vanished when the garden was no longer seen, the wisdom of Scripture's silence is not hard to see. Some argue, like the poet Milton, that the Tigris watered paradise. Others say it was the Euphrates and the Tigris joined together. Both certainly do violence to the inspired text.

The source of these rivers was the territory from which God had ordered that blessing should flow. River-streams took their source in Eden. This is how the garden was watered, and all their freshness was there. From there the waters flowed here and there. They surrounded other countries and gave them their character… The garden was the first object, but from there they flowed around the world, which needed them.

"Four" is a number with a definite meaning attached to it. The river with four heads went out of Eden to water the garden, and through it the whole earth received its refreshment from the original fountain. Four Gospel writers record the life of Him who was sent to be the Saviour of the world, and their testimony is for the whole earth.

Scripture also mentions a river flowing out of the garden. It clearly rose from a spring in the earth, but it watered the garden as it flowed. This speaks of the blessing of God by His word and Spirit. So does the "river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb," described in Revelation 22:1. But this river from the garden of Eden parted into four different rivers, showing blessing increasing as the waters flowed.

The reference to Genesis 2 is unmistakable: "A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden." The heavenly city's river does not part "into four heads," as the river of Eden did. Nor does it part into east and west, like the living waters of Zechariah. One river flows throughout the city, and one joy is shared by all. In the same way there is only one tree of life, not two trees named on their own, as in the garden on earth. Moses mentions the tree of life first. John refers to the river of life first.

This is only a side point. Where the rivers ran is of no great importance in itself. What matters is that we should hold the entire account of Paradise to be historical in the strictest and fullest sense.

It is remarkable that the two less well-known rivers get a fuller description than the rivers everyone knows. This shows that the Spirit of God takes an interest and gives us a thread to help us. We are therefore justified in supposing that Scripture describes them just because they might have been harder to recognise.

Land encircled by the river Pison, where there was fine gold and precious stones. No one has identified it.

Reland has given strong reasons for concluding that the Pison is the Phasis, though Colonel Chesney argues for the Halys. Reland even held that Colchis, the region the Phasis runs through, is simply the Greek form of Havilah. Ancient sources link gold and precious stones with that land more clearly than with the land the Halys skirts.

Scripture speaks of copper very early (Genesis 4:22), where it calls Tubal-cain a teacher of those who worked in brass. Tellingly, Genesis names gold first, and before the fall: "the gold of that land is good." God's glory comes first. It may also mean something that copper appears in connection with the family of Cain.

Gold is a figure of the glory of God, of His attributes of righteousness, holiness, wisdom, power, goodness and truth — everything suggested by the purity, brightness and value of the metal. This is not guesswork. Under God's direction, gold was used wherever these great facts were to be shown. Solomon's temple, as God's earthly dwelling, was overlaid with gold, even its floor (1 Kings 6:21-22, 30). And in the book of Revelation the heavenly city is described as "having the glory of God"; "and the city was pure gold, like clear glass."

Pison, "increase," is first; it encircles the land of Havilah, "anguish" or "travail," where the gold is that is good. Gold is the symbol of God's glory. Christ has won increase for eternity by encircling the land of anguish — the birth-pains of the new creation, of which He is the Beginning. There, all the same, the glory of God has been found in all its wealth. And if faith can say now, "the gold of that land is good," how much more in the eternal day!

Leaving Eden, the river parted into four heads, marking the beginning of God's ways worldwide. The first head became the river Pison, which encircled the land of Havilah, a land that spoke of the richness, fragrance and glory of God's providence in its gold, bdellium and onyx stones.

In the earthly paradise there was a river, and with it the riches of the earth, the gold and precious stones (Genesis 2:10-12). In the Paradise of God the seer is shown "the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb" (Revelation 22:1). God and the Lamb are the source of divine life and heavenly freshness. Everything flows from the throne that orders all for His glory and the blessing of His own.

The account has the difficulties that come from countries obscure to later generations, both in their own names and in the names of their products. People have debated Havilah and Cush nearly as much as Pison and Gihon, and they have debated just as much what B'dolach and Shoham exactly mean.

No opinion has been clearly proved, because the text itself presents serious difficulties as to its meaning.

Suggestively, gold is mentioned first and before the fall: "The gold of that land is good" (Gen. 2:11-12). God's glory is first.

Any of God's creatures becomes a source of evil only when man puts it to evil uses. Gold is the most precious thing man has, so it makes a fitting emblem of the rights that belong to God alone — the rights man wrongly hands to his idol. Gold, then, is a figure of the glory of God, of His righteousness, holiness, wisdom, power, goodness and truth. It stands for everything the purity, brightness and value of the metal suggest... Solomon's temple was God's home on earth, and gold covered it, even its floor (1 Kings 6:21-22, 30). And in the book of Revelation the heavenly city has "the glory of God", and "the city was pure gold, like clear glass."

People have taken the word bedolach to mean both a clear white oily gum and a white pearl. The description of the manna refers to its colour in Numbers 11:7, and in Genesis 2:12 it stands with gold and onyx stones as a mark of the land of Havilah. The white pearl seems the more likely picture, since Exodus 16:14 also compares the manna to frost.

His glory as the Firstborn in Creation may be shown in the first precious stone named in the Bible, the onyx (Gen. 2:12). It is also the first in the group in Job 28:16-19, and there it is called the "precious onyx" — the only single stone given that title, except where Christ is spoken of as the Stone, chosen and precious. The onyx stones were on the shoulders of the High Priest... Genesis 2:12 names the bdellium with it alone, and bdellium is named only once more in Scripture, in Numbers 11:7, where it describes the manna. This confirms what we have said. If we have the glory of Christ as the Firstborn of all Creation in the onyx, we are reminded that when He came into His Creation He came in lowly grace as the Manna, whose appearance was like bdellium.

Pison, which means "increase," comes first. It winds round the land of Havilah, which means "anguish" or "travail," and the gold there is good... The Hebrew word for bdellium means "in trouble," and the word for onyx-stone means "their recompense." Here we may get a hint of how faith is joined to the sufferings of Christ and the glories that follow. Those who find their increase through the anguish of Christ are given not only to believe but to suffer for Him. Suffering leads to being glorified with Him, so there is both the trouble and the recompense.

Scripture describes heaven as a city of gold and jewels, just as here we have the gold of the land of Havilah, which is "good", and bdellium and the onyx stone, precious jewels. They foreshadow that final display, when God at last will be free to let all the brightness of His glory shine out to His ransomed creatures.

Scripture had not yet mentioned rivers, though it had mentioned seas and dry land. Their source was the land from which God had ordered blessing to flow… Their freshness all was there. From there the waters flowed here and there. By their course they surrounded and gave their character to other countries. So the sense would be — "And a river-source was in Eden to water the garden; and from there it was distributed, and became four principal streams." Of these we know two, and two are uncertain — which is not very surprising… The primary object was the garden; but from there they flowed around the world which needed it.

The Ethiopia of verse 13 is really Cush, of whom we read in Genesis 10:6. There appears to have been a district bearing his name between Mesopotamia and India, as well as the better known land we now call Abyssinia.

Reland has clearly proved… that the Gihon is the Araxes, or Aras… There is no doubt that the Gihon or Aras encircled the Cossaei, the descendants of Cush. There was an Asiatic Cush no less than an African, and widely dispersed too. This certainty explains "the rivers of Cush" in Isaiah 18:1.

What is given clearly was worth knowing. God holds back the details that would only satisfy man's curiosity, or might expose people to dangerous superstition. The burial place of Moses is not the only spot which divine wisdom has veiled from human sight. And the site of the lost paradise might have become the goal of an even wider — indeed worldwide — pilgrimage of folly and evil. The sad truth is that sin led to man's expulsion. He is an outcast.

Ethiopia may show that God has before His eye even the distant lands. Assyria may show that God is watching the land that will be closely tied to Israel. The Euphrates may show that God is already marking out the borders of Israel.

The second river of Eden is Gihon, "the bringer-forth." It surrounds the whole land of Cush, which means "terror," or "black." Christ is our Deliverer from the land of our terror and blackness. In this way God in His mercy brings us out of darkness into marvellous light… To this end Christ first entered the land of terror and blackness, and came out as the firstborn from among the dead. Those who believe share in His triumph.

Scripture describes the garden, and mentions two rivers that certainly exist today. There can be no doubt that the Euphrates and the Tigris, or Hiddekel, named here, are the same two rivers that still go by those names.

This river is only mentioned by name in one other place (Gen. 2:14). Most identify it with the Tigris, from both geography and the origin of its name. If this is correct, Daniel would have had to cross it on his journeys to Shushan (Dan. 8:2) from Babylon.

The river that watered paradise has no name, and that silence is the more striking because the four rivers it was parted into are carefully named. The last was well known enough to need no description. Its companion called for the very few words, "that which flows toward," or in front of, "Assyria." The first and second get a fuller description, since Israel hardly knew them, and in fact the scriptures never mention them anywhere else.

The text then settles the Armenian table-land as the true place, and disproves every version of the scheme that puts the garden and the rivers described here in Babylonia. As to the moral lesson, it was only a test for the creature, and neither the river nor paradise was permanent.

That there were four rivers is fairly clear. Of the four heads, two are named and well known as rivers — Tigris and Euphrates. Nobody has identified the other two for certain… No opinion has been proved, because the text itself is seriously hard to understand.

The early mention of Assyria in Genesis 2:14 shows how important it is in the ways of God. So does Genesis 10:11, which might read, "he (Nimrod) went to Assyria, and built Nineveh."

Among the many rivers mentioned in Scripture are the Euphrates and the Jordan. The Euphrates stands out in the ways of God with the nations of the world. Its first mention is in Genesis 2:14 and its last in Revelation 16:12. There, as the great barrier between east and west, its waters are dried up "to prepare the way for the kings from the east," so they may enter the conflicts of the last days.

The third river is Hiddekel, which means "sharp words." "The word of God is sharper than any two-edged sword." Mark presents the Lord Jesus as a servant. Connect the name with that, and we find His word full of power and authority. Those who opposed Him felt its sharp keen edge all the way through. Demon, disease and death all fled at His word.

The man had received his being from God, and it was God who placed him in the garden prepared for him. He was placed there not to be idle, but "to work it and keep it." How complete were God's rights over the creature He had formed! All of Adam's rights — over the garden, the earth, and the various kinds of lower creatures — came from the sovereign appointment of the One to whom they all belonged, Adam included.

Here we are told not about the place, its resources and surroundings, far-reaching as they were. We are told its moral point and purpose. God the Governor took Man and put him into the paradise He had prepared. All was unfallen, in order and beauty, with no stain in Adam or in the creation under him, and certainly none in its loveliest spot. Yet God put Man there to work it and keep it. Standing above the work in indifference would have been out of place, even though Man was blessed, everything was very good, and toil and sorrow were unknown.

Scripture does not say there was no "work" before the fall. Man was placed in the garden "to work it and keep it," which shows God did not want His creature to be idle. But no "toil" or "sorrow" went with that occupation. Now thorns and thistles were to appear, and man was to eat bread by the sweat of his face. Weariness is known now, and so is the sweetness of rest after work. Idleness was one of the sins of Sodom (Ezek. 16:49). It had no place in innocence… Work here is good for all, and there is profit in it. For out of evil God can and does bring good.

How telling it is that God laid toil on man when sin came into the world! Man was to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow. At first God put him there to work and keep the garden, but there was no bitterness of service and toil. So in that heavenly Paradise, the rest of God we enter, there will be service and ministry throughout eternity — but no weariness, no toil, nothing to show that sin is present.

He had put Adam there to work it and keep it — not as a slave, bent low by the sweat of his face over ground cursed because of him. That ground gives back for his labour, along with the plants he eats, "thorns and thistles," rods of discipline and constant reminders of his fall. No, God had placed Adam there as king, centre and head of the whole lower creation, a picture of the One who was to come.

Along with everything else God provided for his blessing we must count this — too little thought of — that Adam was also to be taught mastery, even in a place where no moral evil existed. He was to "fill the earth and subdue it," and to "work and keep" even the "garden of delight."

In the first garden God placed Adam, innocent, with access to the tree of life. But he chose the tree of responsibility, went the wrong way, and fell. In the second garden lay the One who had a right to the tree of life, yet who had met that responsibility in the dust of death. For the first man, the garden east in Eden became the gateway to a lost world that ends in the lake of fire. For the other, that garden becomes the gateway for His people — not back to Paradise regained, but into the Paradise of God.

How fitting that there should be some test of whether Adam recognised these rights of his Creator! And if there was to be a test, how could there have been an easier one, or one kinder to man? In Genesis 2:16-17, notice four things: God's authority — He "commanded the man"; His bounty — "Of every tree"; His prohibition — "You shall not"; His warning — "In the day." So man is fully set in responsibility before the woman is created. She was to share the responsibility with him.

God had revealed His ways to him, as a Giver, in the widest generosity. Nothing was withheld from man. The ten thousand streams that fed into his happiness in Eden spoke of a God who would withhold no good thing. "Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat" announced the freeness and fullness of a Hand that was not stingy. The man was to enjoy it all freely.

What could have met such a poisoned arrow from Satan but perfect confidence? Confidence would have answered in the very words of the LORD God: "Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat." Such is our Creator's goodness. And since He made only this one exception, we can trust His goodness in this too — that it is for our good. Faith would have noticed the "every" and the "freely" in Genesis 2:16.

God had reserved for Himself only one of the trees in that great estate. That one tree showed that the garden belonged to God. The command not to eat from it simply upheld God's right to be obeyed by His creature.

Here was a test of man's obedience. The wide range of delightful fruits made it no hardship to refrain from this one tree. And further, it was a merciful fencing off of a real danger. Think for a moment. Adam knew the good. The good could only be a blessing to him. The knowledge of evil could only defile, and bring nothing in its train but sorrow.

The sense of responsibility was there, the debt of obedience. It belonged to the nature of his relationship with God. But distinguishing things as good and evil in themselves had no place in his mind. To have eaten of the tree was no evil in itself: he would have eaten of it as innocently as of any other. God had forbidden it, and everything depended on that command. Adam in innocence was formed to understand responsibility to obey. Avoiding something just because it was evil, where no command had been given, was unknown to him.

In verses 16 and 17 we find that Adam, though created in a state of innocence, was put in a place of responsibility… He was put under law in the simplest way. The law was one commandment, and that commandment concerned only one tree… The divine command was cut down to the barest minimum. It was just enough to keep before him that as the creature he must be subject to the Creator and walk in obedience.

Responsibility and moral obligation to God is the due relationship of the creature, man, to God as sovereign and supreme, in every condition… Law was not in Eden, though responsibility to obey was there. So it is written: "The Lord God commanded the man." This commandment was not a ban on something wrong in itself, like "You shall not murder." It was a simple test of obedience.

The forbidden tree took nothing from Adam. It denied him no pleasure or taste, for the Lord God had set in the garden every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. It did carry fruit. But God restricted eating it for one reason only: to remind His wonderful creature that he held everything in trust under his Maker. Beneath man was everything in this lower creation. Above him, God. The one simple safeguard for keeping his position was obedience. And obedience, not to a complicated code of laws, but to one simple command.

The actual test was the prohibition of something that was not in itself evil, but simply and by decree wrong for man because God had forbidden it. That is the very essence of a test for an innocent man... It was the simple question of whether God was really Jehovah-Elohim, whether He was a moral governor or not, whether man was to be independent of God or not. This was not decided by some great matter whose results man could reason out and foresee. It was decided simply by doing or not doing the will of God.

God had given every tree of the garden for food except one single tree. This prohibition was a test of the creature's obedience to the Creator. The Creator also knew what would follow if they ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. It would ruin man's innocence. It would poison his whole being by bringing in the knowledge of evil, with no power to resist it. Therefore His prohibition was merciful.

Knowledge was acquired, but no wisdom, and man's knowledge ever since has been his ruin — knowledge of good, but no power to practise it; knowledge of evil and no power to resist it.

Adam already had life. God tested him by a direct, well-known command: do not eat the forbidden fruit. What made this test perfect was that it raised no moral question in itself... What I insist on is this. There was no promise of life, which would suppose he did not have it. There was a threat of death, which supposed he was alive — alive and innocent, with no knowledge of good and evil.

The tree of life was distinct from that of knowing good and evil. The test of responsible obedience was one thing, the means of life quite another. When man disobeyed by eating from the one tree, God drove him out, in case he should also take from the other and make his fallen sinful state everlasting.

Here the Lord attaches to the first act of evil nothing less than complete separation from Himself; for He is the living God... and therefore a state of death was a state of separation from Him. He announces this state as the certain and immediate doom of the creature the moment he commits evil.

Spiritual death, or "death in trespasses and sins," cannot be what God speaks of in His warning to Adam. That is indeed the spiritual state that results from the fall. But the moral state of a criminal is very different from the judgment passed on the criminal. Man's depravity is what he is condemned for, not what he is sentenced to.

The first form of unbelief was the denial of God's word... God said, "in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die." The serpent said, "You shall not surely die." Eve did not believe God's word, and so she became the unbeliever.

The Lord had said, "you shall surely die." Christ came as the great witness to His people that "the wages of sin is death." In His case it was by imputation only, for He was perfectly and entirely holy. But He took our sins; He bore our iniquities. He was willing to be looked on as the guilty one, and to bear the penalty God had attached to sin — "you shall surely die" — to uphold the truth of God.

Here in Genesis 2 the LORD God is both moral Governor and Creator. He enters with kind care into the daily life and comfort of man on earth. He has a kind and wise mind about man's well-being. He also speaks it out, so that man may know it as His. This is not a command, as in verses 16 and 17. It is the kind judgment of One who knew everything and overflowed with favour toward man. "Then the LORD God said, 'It is not good that the man should be alone.'" Exchange of affection and interest is good for man. No wonder that solitude is the harshest punishment short of death.

The love that had blessed with so much had further good in store, and that in the form of one who should be worthy of the object of such love and goodness.

For Adam, where everything was still right, here was a spiritual being he could share thought and feeling with — the exchange our whole being craves. She was also an object for his heart. She was a pledge of his Creator's love. In her, love served him where he could see it, and drew out his own love. She rescued him from isolation, and from being wrapped up in himself.

God did not create man to be self-sufficient. He needed more than company. He needed a "helper fit for him," a counterpart. We see the goodness of God as well as His wisdom in the way the counterpart came into being. God's aim was Adam's own good. So He brought the whole range of beasts and birds before Adam. That way Adam saw for himself that no such counterpart existed among them.

"A marriage" carries us back at once to Eden, and to the word by which God set it up: "It is not good that the man should be alone." God made man for communion. The gift of language shows it — man can speak, and can be spoken to. In this he shows not only a creature's need. He also shows the likeness of his Creator. In the very preface to his creation the words "Let us make man" speak of communion.

It was "not good that the man should be alone." But His provision was not two or more. It was one woman, "a helper fit for him," his counterpart. Self-will kept growing. In the end it did not hesitate to cross God's mind, which His act had shown plainly to those who fear Him: "And Lamech took two wives." From the beginning it was not so.

The man was created first, and it was not good for him that he should be alone. The woman was created in view of this need. Why a woman for that reason, and not another man? Because another man would not have given the help she gave.

In eternity past God looked forward and saw the risen, glorified Son. He was saying, It is not good for Him to be alone. I will build a helper suitable for Him. God thought it; God said it; and God has done it. All of it is of God. Think of the predestined glory of the church. Whatever Adam was, that was every particle of Eve. Whatever Christ is, as the risen man from among the dead, such shall be, such is, His bride.

This moral meaning, and the picture it carries, is the true key to the record in Genesis 2:4-25. It fully accounts for the differences from chapter 1 to 2:3 — differences that ignorance and unbelief twist into the contradictions of two separate writers. It is not true that Genesis 2:7, 19 presents man as created first of all living creatures, before the birds and beasts. Nor does man's creation in God's image (Gen. 1:27) contradict Genesis 2:7, which says that God formed him from the dust of the ground.

Chapter 2 shows that God made birds out of the earth. But Genesis 1:20, they say, shows that He made them out of the waters. Superficial objectors! Genesis 1 says nothing of the sort. It agrees perfectly with Genesis 2:19… This verse does not teach that the waters were to bring forth birds, as it appears to do in our English version. It says, "Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature, and let birds fly about the earth in the open expanse of heaven."

God made Adam lord of the lower creation here on earth. In His goodness He gave him the wisdom and intelligence to give the proper names to all cattle, to the birds of the sky, and to every beast of the field, for He had put them all under him. This matters all the more, because it is the fitting sign of the dominion given him… Adam claimed nothing here in pride. It was the Lord God who brought the animals to him to see what he would call them, and whatever Adam called every living creature had His approval.

One of man's first lessons was a lesson in zoology. Giving names to all the creatures implies that he understood them, and the names stood for qualities in them that could be recognised, and were. Adam had no language but his own. He could not hide the emptiness of a meaningless name behind grand-sounding Greek, as our zoologists do now.

The Lord God brings these creatures before Adam, and Adam gives names to them all. This shows not only his title as lord, but the power of fitting language, given by God from the first. The idea that clear speech is only a growth from the slow putting together of elements is a dream of clever speculation… On the very first day of his life, even before Eve was formed, Adam gave the animals their names, and God Himself endorsed what their head said.

God did not create man to be an entirely self-sufficient being. He needed not only companionship but a "helpmeet," a counterpart. We see the goodness of God as well as His wisdom in the way that counterpart came into being. God's aim was Adam's good and profit, so He brought the whole range of beasts and birds before him and let him see for himself that no such counterpart existed among the animals.

To complete his condition, the Lord God holds for him a coronation day and a wedding day. But this action has an order in it… He brings the creatures of the field and of the air to Adam, to see what he would call them. This was investing him with dominion, setting the royal crown on his head. Then He prepares the helper suited to him, and presents Eve to him, following his coronation with his marriage.

Giving names is a ruler's right. Scripture recognises this everywhere — not only in Genesis but right through the Bible, even when Gentile nations held the upper hand. It belongs to man by nature, and he still uses it today over everything and everyone under him. But the weightiest and most striking use of this right was in man before he sinned, fresh from his Creator's hand. The Creator, Himself Sovereign Ruler, took pleasure in the rule of His representative on earth.

Giving names is a mark of lordship, or ownership. So Adam at the beginning gave names to the animals. Pharaoh gave a name to Joseph, and Nebuchadnezzar gave one to Daniel (Gen. 2:20; Gen. 41:45; Dan. 1:7).

He gives them each a name. These are not made-up names. In Scripture a name states the mark that sets a thing apart. So in naming the animals we see that Adam knew them perfectly. But with all this knowledge he fails to find one "his like."

Jehovah-Elohim brings these creatures before Adam, and he gives names to them all. This shows not only his title as lord, but also his power of fitting speech, which God gave him from the first. Some say that speech grew piece by piece, out of smaller elements. That idea is a clever dream. It may exercise men's wits, but it has no foundation at all. On the very first day of his life, before God formed Eve, Adam gave the animals their names. And God Himself approved what their head said.

God did not create man to be completely self-sufficient. He needed more than company. He needed a "helpmeet," or counterpart. The way God brought that counterpart into being shows His goodness as well as His wisdom. God's aim was Adam's own good. So He brought the whole range of beasts and birds before him, and let Adam see for himself that no such counterpart existed among the animals.

Every creature under Adam's rule had its mate to share the joy of its new life. The eagle in mid air, the singing birds in the trees, the roaring lion, the lamb feeding in peace beside him, down to the silent creatures of the waters — each had its own. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. Man was alone in the middle of a paradise, and therefore it was no paradise to him. There was a void in his heart, with all the abundance of that beautiful garden around him.

The beautiful picture is kept intact: creation belongs to Christ. It does not belong to the church in the first place at all; her place is one of grace alone. The Heir of all things is the Second man, not the bride. If she has everything along with Him, that is because she is joined to Him, not because it is hers in herself.

When God created man, no other creature of God's hand was found to be "a helpmate, his like" (Gen. 2:20) — none that could enter into the thoughts and feelings of man, or respond to his love. Ephesians 5 teaches us that Christ went into death, as Adam went into his deep sleep, so that one could be produced who would be "His like."

A deep sleep — in Hebrew, tardemah. The word is never used of natural sleep. It is used of sleep that is either supernatural, sent for a special purpose, or spiritual, sent as part of God's dealings in governing man.

God would give man the gift of companionship, the joy of fellowship, the exchange of affection. The end was good, and so was the way. He put the man into a trance, as the Greek version of the Old Testament renders it. So the man felt no pain, yet knew fully what God was giving him. She was not taken from his head, and not from his feet. She was not an absolute equal, and not an utter inferior. She came from his side: the object of nearest love and sustaining care, one who shared all joy and sorrow while depending on him.

Of course God could have created a wife for Adam in a different way, if that had been His will. But He chose to do it in a way that man would never have imagined, showing a wisdom far higher than man's. He caused a deep sleep to fall on Adam, and removed one of his ribs, closing up the wound (without stitches!).

If God had created the woman separately from the man, it would have been a bare fact with nothing to teach us. Instead, God keeps this striking detail for the account of moral relationship. And may I put it to the conscience of every soul: is this event not placed exactly where it should be? We all know how ready man is to forget the truth, and how often might takes advantage of right. God, for His part, was pleased to form the woman, and to reveal how He formed her. He did it in a way that ought to shame any man who admits she is his own flesh and bone, and yet slights or misuses a relationship so close.

It takes little to see in that deep sleep God sent on Adam a figure of the deeper and more mysterious sleep of the "last Adam." The woman came out of the sleeping man, as the Church came out of Christ's death. And the creative Spirit builds the Church up as His body, "of His flesh and of His bones."

The Risen One breathed the spirit of resurrection life on those for whom He had died. He had made the first Adam a living soul. He was the same One who took the rib out of sleeping Adam's side and made Adam's helper out of it. One day a soldier's spear would pierce His own side and draw out the blood and the water. That was to fit the bride the Father had given Him to live with Him in glory.

Adam fell into a deep sleep, and God built from a rib out of his side a woman, whom He presented to Adam as a helper suited to him. In the same way, the helper suited to Christ came into being after His death. The church did not spring out of the living body. There was no union with Christ when He became man. Through His death this new body came into being.

It is worth noticing that the Hebrew word translated "rib" here is in every other case translated, no less than nineteen times, as "side."

He would give man the gift of companionship, the joy of fellowship, the exchange of affection. The end was good, and so was the way. He threw the man into a trance, as the Greek translators put it. Adam would not feel pain, yet would know perfectly what God was giving him. It was not a separate human being independent of Adam. It was not from the head nor from the feet — not an absolute equal, nor an utter inferior — but from his side. Others long ago have observed what that means: she is the object of nearest love and sustaining care, a sharer of all joy and sorrow, joined to him yet dependent on him.

When it comes to the way God's act of creating Eve is described, the word "built" catches our attention. It was certainly an act of creation. Yet the wording is unusual: God "built the rib into a woman." This is the first time this verb (to build) appears in the Bible. In Ephesians 2:20, 22 the word for the building of the church comes from the same root as the word used here, in the Greek translation of the Old Testament. The church is presented here as companion. But the mention that God "built" Eve is meant to confirm the truth that the builder of the church is a divine One. The Lord Himself said to Peter: "on this rock I will build my church" (Matt. 16:18).

As Jehovah Elohim was pleased to build his rib into an Ishah (woman), so He brought her to the man. This is the highest and best form of marriage. The woman was received, as it were, from the divine hand. She came not from Elohim only, but from Him who in all His action recorded here was perfectly laying the ground for mutual duty in the relationship of marriage.

The woman was formed by divine handiwork, not from the dust of the ground as Adam had been, but out of Adam himself. Eve was the Creator's provision for Adam. The marriage of Adam is the prototype of the marriage of all his sons. In every case of true marriage, God arranges the union. Divine wisdom notices the moment when the man's loneliness is no longer good for him. He then provides a bride who is the complement of his nature, with its personal characteristics. Adam had no choice of brides; there was only the one that would suit him, and she was prepared by God especially for him.

Scripture fully warrants us in looking at Adam and Eve as a type of Christ and the church. So the death of Christ had to be an accomplished fact before the church could be set up. Yet in the purpose of God she was looked at, and chosen in Christ, before the foundation of the world.

We may find a contrast to Christ in Genesis 2:22. The Lord God presented Eve to Adam; in Ephesians 5:27 Christ presents the church to Himself. Why is this? The answer is very simple — Christ is God.

Man was alone, and it was not good that he should be so... If God had created someone else out of the dust, apart from Adam, where would Adam's supremacy have been? And where would the tender closeness of relationship that such a companion needs have been? ... His exclamation clearly shows the joy with which he received her. It also shows that he saw the infinite wisdom that had provided him a partner and companion. She was distinct from him, and so the object of his affection and delight. Yet she was so mysteriously linked with his existence that she had once been part of himself.

When he awoke out of sleep and saw standing by his side the fair one whom the Lord God, in His goodness, had provided for him, he exclaimed, "This is now bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh." The blank was now filled up. He had seen nothing till now to suit his heart.

The woman now came to him as it were from God's own hand... "the man said, This time it is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh: this shall be called Ishah, for out of Ish was taken this." He knew at once how close and fitting this relationship was, though until then he had not known God's purpose. And he gave her a name that expressed the fact perfectly.

Note the intelligence of Adam and his knowledge of the mystery of the woman's creation... He gives her a name, but owns that she is part of himself. This time it is so, as the name itself shows — part of himself, yet subject to him.

God formed the woman by His own hand. He did not take her from the dust of the ground, as He had taken Adam, but out of Adam himself. So the woman really was bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh. Eve was the Creator's provision for Adam. God saw that Adam was incomplete while he was alone, and gave him a partner designed to meet exactly what he lacked. So in their marriage the two became one flesh, each completing the other.

We all know how ready man has been to forget the truth — how often power takes advantage of what is right! God, for His part, chose to form woman, and to reveal how He formed her, in a way that should shame any man who recognises her as his own flesh and bone, yet slights or misuses so close a relationship.

Adam's marriage is the pattern for the marriage of all his sons. In every true marriage, God arranges the union... Adam had no choice of brides; there was only one who would suit him, and God had prepared her especially for him.

The relationship of husband and wife is not merely a convenient illustration. Ephesians 5 makes it clear that God modelled marriage on what He already had in His mind — the relationship of Christ and the church. In other words, God had the relationship of Christ and His church in mind in His eternal purpose, and only later, in time, did He institute marriage.

The link is not between the Lord as Man and men in general. It was not true, as some say, that in becoming Man He became flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone. It is we, His people, who are flesh of His flesh and bone of His bone (Eph. 5:30). For this, too, death had to come in... It was in the deep sleep that fell on Adam — the image of that death-sleep — that Eve was taken out of his side.

The first verse describes circumstances entirely different from those of Adam, who had no father or mother to leave.

As He had already answered: "Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, 'Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh'? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate" (Matt. 19:3-8). It is not Adam who said this, but God.

Up to the time of a man's marriage the chief relationship he stands in is that of a son, and his responsibility is towards his parents. But when he marries he leaves his father and mother and holds fast to his wife. From then on she becomes his chief care, for he and she are no longer two but one flesh.

This verse settles many questions. He holds fast to his wife — only one wife, so that bigamy and polygamy are completely unscriptural. Holding fast to his wife involves genuine love for her, and faithfulness and devotedness.

Now the same lawgiver who allowed divorces had, in an earlier book of the law, made known how God first set up marriage. That first account has no clause permitting divorce. Both passages (Deut. 24:1; Gen. 2:23-24) were God's Word. The first was a provision "for the hardness of their hearts"… The second (Gen. 2:24) taught the sacredness and the real character of the tie… So we are taken back to how marriage began, and reminded of how God sees it — two made one flesh, whom He has joined, and whom therefore man should not separate.

It matters greatly that God set up marriage between Adam and Eve while they were still innocent. When they were joined, sin had not entered the world, and death, its just penalty, had not yet come. But when their disobedience brought sin in, marriage kept the holy character God gave it when He set it up.

That union is meant to remind the Christian of his own blessed privilege: he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him — not one flesh, but one spirit. This is so because he has received the Holy Spirit. So impurity is a sin not only against his own body, but against the Trinity and the price paid for him. "Glorify God then in your body."

God cast Adam into a deep sleep and formed Eve from a rib taken from his side. This is a picture of the church, which was formed by the death of Christ. Ephesians 5:25-32 brings this out so clearly that there can be no mistake about its meaning. Marriage was not just a handy illustration of Christ and the church. God designed it from the start to be a picture of that union.

Christ, as man, left what belonged to Him through His link with His earthly people, Israel, so that He might gain and have the church… The marriage bond, therefore, becomes the picture of the union of the church with Christ.

The first condition of man is described too. "And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed." It was a state completely different from that of fallen man. It suited them then, but man as he is now could never rightly imagine it. Yet we cannot help feeling how right it was for innocence, the condition in which God made man and woman. Could He have made them any other way and stayed true to His own character?

There was neither holiness nor righteousness before the fall. The original state was something distinct from both. Adam was innocent, but not properly righteous or holy. To apply innocence to God, or to the Lord Jesus, would be absurd. God is holy: He sees what is bad and hates it. That, at least, is the negative side of what holiness is. A righteous man judges what is contrary to justice, and hates it. An innocent man did not know good and evil in themselves, though of course he knew it was his duty to obey God.

Finally, we see here the unashamed nakedness of the man and the woman — a happy expression of innocent closeness. No closeness such hearts might enjoy would deserve rebuke, and it will be the same between the true pair in the heavenly garden. There will be no fear of having to hide, and no shame in coming very close. Innocence was the safety between Adam and Eve. In the same way, all the virtues of the new mind will be the necessary, instinctive guard over the ways of the redeemed Bride of the Lamb, as she walks with the Lord.

This verse gives the facts that belonged to that first condition — facts that were not true, and could not fittingly be true, at any other time. Shame followed sin: the knowledge of good and evil made them conscious that they had fallen, and so they covered themselves.

When they gained a conscience through sin, God planted in them a sense of shame at being naked. Animals do not have this, but even in the lowest type of human culture, conscience speaks.

Adam and his wife in innocence were naked, and were not ashamed (Gen. 2:25), but it was very different when they sinned. They knew they were naked, tried to cover themselves with fig leaves, and hid among the trees. This is a solemn picture of what man is in sin, and at a distance from God. Man knows he is not fit for God's eye in the nakedness of his sinful state. So he tries to clothe himself in garments of his own making — his own self-righteousness. Yet when he is brought near to God's presence, he has to admit that his own words of righteousness cannot hide his nakedness.

Adam and his wife had tried to cover their nakedness with fig-leaf aprons, and had failed. The Lord God did cover them with coats of skins. Now skins do not come from a plant; they come from an animal. They can only clothe man once death has come upon the animal that produced them. Here, then, is the earliest revelation that man can only stand clothed before God on the basis of death.

Notice that when the enemy attacks our first parents, the account leaves him in mysterious obscurity. Yet no believer, no serious mind, can doubt that under the form of a serpent, Satan was at work to deceive and destroy... The last book of the New Testament answers the first book of the Old Testament with striking force. It names him from first to last as "that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan" — the slanderer and the adversary.

This chapter introduces the serpent as more cunning than all other beasts. Satan's use of the serpent as his mouthpiece shows that this was so. The woman had probably never heard any other animal speak. When the serpent spoke to her, she should have been doubly on her guard... God has never allowed Satan to appear to mankind as he is in his own person, except in his temptation of the Lord Jesus.

Notice, the first thing introduced here is the craftiness of Satan. When Eve replied to it, it was not flagrant, open sin and wickedness. He does not say, "I am the devil come to deceive you." He points to how pleasant the thing is right now.

It opens mildly. Planting a doubt overthrows convictions better than a flat denial does. The mind is then left to draw its own conclusions... The woman's reply makes it clear. Her mind had caught the drift of his words, and her heart, sadly, had taken in the implied question about God's goodness.

It was by craft, not by force, that man was overcome... The way the enemy attacked makes one thing clear. Faith is the root and spring of all obedience in the creature, even in innocence. Faith is also what receives the Saviour and His great salvation once man has fallen... Our first parents knew nothing of the reason for the ban. Perfect confidence in God's goodness would have assured them that it must be, and was, for their good and happiness... How much more that question held than appears on the surface! It carries his pretended concern for their enjoyment. It hints that God, if He really said this, must be an enemy of their happiness, grudging them so small a pleasure.

The right way to meet Satan's questions and suggestions is to treat them as his, and to repel them by the word. To let them near the heart, even for a moment, is to lose the only power by which to answer them. To admit the question, "Did God actually say?" when I know that God has spoken is outright unbelief. The very fact that I admit it proves I am completely unable to meet it.

His first move was to throw doubt on the Word of God. God had revealed very little so far, but on one point He had spoken clearly and decisively. The serpent questioned that revelation. He twisted God's words as he questioned them, to make his hint of doubt more believable. What is more, he addressed himself not to the man, who was primarily responsible, but to the woman. Of the two links in the human chain she was the weaker, and the adversary struck just there.

The enemy's approach was indeed subtle. It was to awaken distrust of God in Eve's heart. Could it be good to refuse man the fruit of any tree in the garden? Distrust of God opens the door to every sin. Eve ought at once to have turned away. She knew the goodness of the LORD God. Why then talk a moment longer with one who questioned it? To allow it was to sit in judgment on Him, to doubt His love, to accept the serpent as a better friend.

If you do not want temptation to defeat you, do not argue with Satan. When Eve began to argue the case with the serpent, he was too strong for her. The devil reasoned her right out of Paradise. If you enter into a discussion with him, you give him half the victory.

But Eve's first reply has two sad features. First, it was not made up of God's own words. Second, the two she left out were the ones that show the tempter's suggestion had already begun to take effect. Her answer shows that her thoughts of God's generosity are already smaller and poorer than His own words. The thin edge of the wedge was already inserted. All the rest, sadly, was easy.

Here we see a soul that has lost its balance. It wavers, and flounders all the more as it tries to regain it. What tree had God put into "the midst" of the garden? According to the inspired account, it was the tree of life. Prohibition — was that at the very heart of paradise? Did everything there radiate, so to speak, from the threat of death? Sadly, slight as the matter may seem, it tells us where the woman's soul is. For how easily with us does one forbidden thing blot out of our view a thousand blessings!

Had she held fast the sense of her responsibility to obey, she would have resented the question rather than answered it. And her answer lets us see that Satan's evil intent did not fail of its effect. She adds to the prohibition, and takes from the penalty. The LORD had not said a word about touching the forbidden fruit. But He had threatened death, in the most certain terms, on the day they ate it. Exaggerating truth is no more the truth than reducing it; either weakens it, and both are Satan's work.

Simple rest in the infinite goodness of God would have kept Eve safe from all this reasoning. She should have said to the serpent, "I have the fullest confidence in God's goodness. So I think it impossible that He could withhold any real good from me. If that fruit were good for me, I would surely have it. But God has forbidden it, and that proves I would be no better off by eating it — I would be much worse off. I am convinced of God's love, and I am convinced of God's truth. And I believe you are an evil one, come to draw my heart away from the fountain of goodness and truth. Get behind me, Satan." This would have been a noble reply. But it was not given.

Notice how plain it is that she has already fallen. She has let in the question about God's ways seeming strange. At once her eyes fasten on the forbidden thing until she can see little else. God had set the tree of life in the midst of the garden, and without any prohibition. For the woman now it is the forbidden tree that occupies that place. Instead of life, she puts death — or what was identified with death for her — as the central thing. The "garden of delight" has faded from her eyes.

Either to add to God's word or to take from it proves very clearly that His word is not living in my heart or governing my conscience... The Lord Jesus, in His conflict with Satan, applied the word accurately, because He lived on it and valued it more than His necessary food. He could not misquote or misapply the word, nor could He be indifferent about it. Not so Eve. She added to what God had said. His command was simple enough: "You shall not eat of it." To this Eve adds her own words, "neither shall you touch it." These were Eve's words, and not God's.

A mere touch, as she put it to herself, was death. Why, then, had He put it before them only to forbid it? What was He guarding from them with such jealous care? Must it not be something He valued highly?

She first adds to the prohibition, then she weakens the penalty. Instead of "you shall surely die," it is for her only "lest" — for fear — "you die." There is no real certainty that death would be the result. So the question of God's love becomes a question of His truth as well. I do not want on the throne a being I cannot trust; that is where the tampering with His word comes from. The heart deceives the head. If I do not want a thing to be true, I soon learn to question whether it is.

Even as to the threat, the solemn words, "in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die," have shrunk on Eve's lips to "lest you die." Her heart is set on a forbidden pleasure. The threatened punishment is the only barrier left, and she sees even that through a shrinking lens. How easily Satan can silence every remaining fear with the bold contradiction of God's word: "You will not surely die!"

She adds to the prohibition and takes from the penalty. The Lord had not said a word about touching the forbidden fruit, but had threatened death in the most certain terms in the day of eating it. Exaggeration of truth is no more the truth than reduction of it; either weakens it, and both are Satan's work. By the truth we are sanctified, and His word is truth.

So we ought to guard the exact words of God the Holy Spirit. We must not add to His words, as Eve added "neither shall you touch it" to the prohibition. The apostles, too, thought that John was not to die. But "Jesus did not say to him that he was not to die, but, 'If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you?'" Read the warnings against this snare (Proverbs 30:5-6; Revelation 22:18-19).

She first adds to the prohibition, then she weakens the penalty. Instead of "you shall surely die," for her it is only "lest you die." There is no real certainty that death would be the result. So the question of God's love becomes a question of His truth as well. I do not want on the throne a being I cannot trust; that is where the tampering with His word comes from. The heart deceives the head. If I do not want it to be true, I soon learn to question whether it is so.

The serpent now takes a bold step and dares to call God a liar. This soon follows, once the heart starts to distrust His love. "You will not surely die." "Fear nothing of the sort. On the contrary, keeping away from the fruit of that tree means giving up hopes that are rightly yours. God does not want you to know good and evil as He does. He wants you to stay children and slaves. Do not fear death. Claim your independence." So the serpent attacked God's truth and His majesty alike.

Men do not know how deep Satan's deceit goes. His plan is not to put forward at once a broad, plain falsehood that carries the lie on its face. Not so; he puts it forward under the guise of truth, in the form of truth, and in some sense mixed up with the truth. This is how he deceived Adam… He says, "You will not surely die!" That was an obvious untruth. But he adds, "You will be like God, knowing good and evil." This we know was in part the real truth. At once we hear God saying, "The man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil." So the lie came partly in the form of truth. But he kept back entirely the truth man most needed to know: what would follow from taking his advice. He did not tell him it would end in death.

Men say in their hearts that sin will not bring the consequences God has said it will — "the wages of sin is death." No man could go on if he believed God's word instead of Satan's. Man's happiness rests on faith in Satan's lie… So all the devil can do is hide the consequences of sin. He could only keep men going by keeping that truth out of their sight: "You shall surely die." Terror of it would not change their hearts. But if they truly believed it, they would not have one happy day here.

The serpent approached Eve, as we all know, and challenged God's word about this. He said plainly, "You will not surely die." But the word of God stood anyway, and so it must always be. "Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned."

The serpent found in Eden a scene of purity and happiness. He entered it intending to corrupt and ruin it. "He was a murderer from the beginning." And the deadly weapon he used was a lie… He got what he wanted. Through his lie he ruined the creature whom God had just made and blessed. But now, in contrast to all this, the Son of God had begun His work. He came and found a scene nothing like Eden. Misery and death because of sin filled it… But He had come to save. And the instrument of His ministry was the truth: "He who sent me is true, and I declare to the world what I have heard from him."

Notice how the serpent tried to shake Eve's confidence in God's truth. He wanted to bring her under the power of unbelieving "reason." He did it by shaking her confidence in God's love. He made what God had said look as if it did not come from love. In other words: "There is a real advantage tied to eating that fruit, and God is trying to deprive you of it. Why then should you believe God's testimony? You cannot trust someone who clearly does not love you — for if He loved you, why would He forbid you a real privilege?"

God has lost His character in the heart of man. All man's confidence in God is gone, and man believes Satan, the liar and chief deceiver. Now the devil can say whatever he likes, because he has the confidence of the heart instead of God… He began by hinting that God knew the fruit would make her happy but grudged to give it. Then he questioned God's truthfulness. Now he adds, "you shall be as gods." He tempts man to take up the privileges of God Himself.

The serpent's words to Eve set out this other ideal: "You shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." Remember, too, that the Hebrew word Elohim, translated "gods" here, is the same word translated "God" elsewhere in these chapters. That makes it bolder and more blasphemous still.

If Satan said, "You shall be as gods (Elohim)," One far above all created beings repeated, "The man has become as one of us, knowing good and evil." But oh, what a store of evils and ruin came in with that act of disobedience! It was built on a truth the devil used. He used that truth out of place. He hid what went with it when man acted on it. That was the foundation of the ruin that came upon the world.

The Lord God had arranged it so that in and through the fall man would gain what he did not have before: a conscience, a knowledge of both good and evil. The very first effect of that conscience was to make him a coward. Satan had completely deceived the woman. He had said, "your eyes shall be opened, and you shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." But he left out a vital part of the truth. They would know good without the power to do it. They would know evil without the power to avoid it. By trying to lift themselves higher in the moral scale, they lost true elevation. They became degraded, powerless, enslaved by Satan, struck by conscience, terrified creatures. "The eyes of them both were opened," no doubt — but to what a sight! Only to discover their own nakedness.

The deceiver baited the first man with the words "You shall be as God." Independence and self-importance have been natural to the human family since that fateful day. These evil traits have not only dishonoured and insulted the Creator. They have also plunged people into continual sorrow. The history of the world has been an endless struggle over who should be greatest.

The tempter drew our first parents to grasp at something far above them — at becoming as gods, as Genesis 3:5 shows. That place was not for them, and their grasping at it was sheer robbery. But there was nothing of that with our Lord. In His case equality with God was not something to be grasped at. It was His to start with, for He was God. He could not be higher than He was. Before Him lay only the choice of staying as and where He was, or of coming down in humiliation.

What a contradiction to the One who judged not "by what his eyes see," nor decided disputes "by what his ears hear"! And what an answer to the unbelief that prefers "sight," or what men call "demonstration," to faith in God's word. She saw through the medium Satan had put in front of her, and what she saw was neither more nor less than three enormous lies. God had said, by forbidding the tree, that it was not good for food: she saw that it was. Had God kept His place in her heart, she could not have found pleasure for her eyes in what He had forbidden. But she saw "that it was a delight to the eyes."

"And when the woman saw that the tree was good" — she was seeing through the devil's eyes now. "That the tree was good for food" — there the lust of the flesh was doing its work. "And that it was a delight to the eyes" — there the lust of the eyes comes out. "And that the tree was to be desired to make one wise" — there the pride of life shows itself.

Eve, by going on listening to the tempter's words, more and more lost the authority of God's word, which at first she knew clearly and felt to be supreme… Eve, when tempted, was at length drawn away by lust, by the desire to have what God forbade, and was enticed. She used her eyes against the word, and saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes. Emboldened by this she reflected that the tree was desirable to make wise. So desire, having conceived, gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is finished, brings forth death.

Here was the root of all evil. She judged for herself. Independence means rejecting God and accepting Satan. She never imagined that — and neither did her husband, or the children who came after them. Self-will blinds the eyes to God and to things as they are. It sees nothing but the beauty and advantage of what it wants. In truth it is leaving God's service for Satan's slavery.

And now she becomes the active instrument of sin, "and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate." The man was not deceived (1 Tim. 2:14); but all the more shame to him for following the woman (who was deceived), against the truth of God. Natural affection often becomes the means of drawing the heart away from God.

The ruin was complete. Distrust of God's love, unbelief of His truth, disregard of His glory in seizing it, brought in open self-will and transgression. And so it has been ever since, with ever increasing corruption. For Adam was head of the human race and involved his descendants in his own evil. He became a father only after he was a sinner.

The first man had yielded to the enemy's seduction through his wife. Would the second man stand? The first fell by eating the forbidden fruit. He had no excuse for what he did. In the Garden of Eden he had everything he could want… Luke presents the three temptations in a moral order. They match the temptations that seduced Eve, which Scripture describes as "the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life" (1 John 2:16)… He did resist, showing the most perfect obedience to the Word of God. Adam and Eve had the word for their day. Eve knew it, and quoted it; but they did not keep it. Had they done that, it would have kept them.

Their eyes were opened — but not in the way they had imagined. They had expected to see new things and feel new delights. Instead they saw what they had been happily unaware of until then: they were naked! Their innocence had needed no veil. Shame is one of sin's first fruits. So is the felt need for a covering — from each other and from themselves.

The Lord God had arranged it so that in and through the fall, man would get something he did not have before: a conscience, a knowledge of both good and evil… Satan had utterly deceived the woman. He had said, "your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." But he left out a vital part of the truth. They would know good without the power to do it. They would know evil without the power to avoid it.

God knows good and evil, but He is Supreme over it all. Man, as a sinner, knows good and evil too. But he is a creature, and in owning that knowledge he is subject to evil. He knows good and evil by being subject to it, by having sinned. God is also the source of all good, and He knows all evil as something outside Himself, not part of Himself. Man is the receiver of all good, and he knows evil as something in himself, and he is subject to it in himself.

Sin had an instant effect on our first parents: "the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths," or girdles. There was the sense of shame as well as of guilt, and they sought to hide it from themselves and from each other.

As soon as sin entered the world, Adam and his wife tried to hide their nakedness from the eyes of their Creator. It did not work… An apron made from fig leaves must have been patchwork indeed! This is the first mention of the fig leaf in the Bible. Later it becomes a symbol of man's good works (so called), the outward profession of religion. Yet when Adam wore his fig leaf apron and found himself in the presence of God, he was the first to condemn it and treat it as if it did not exist.

Leaves speak of profession without fruit, and they last only a short time… A man may gather the best and brightest leaves of human worth and righteousness. He may stitch them together with clever workmanship — religious, social, moral, intellectual. But it all leaves him naked when the living God draws near. No covering that man has devised can give a moment's boldness in the presence of a holy God.

This is the difference between true Christianity and human religiousness. Christianity rests on a man being clothed. Religion rests on his being naked. What religion has for its goal, Christianity has for its starting post. A true Christian does everything because he is clothed — perfectly clothed. A merely religious person does everything so that he may be clothed.

How different is their clothing now! Before, they wore an "apron" with not one stitch of God's in it, and the whole thing was poor human effort. Now each one wears a "coat" with not one stitch of man's in it, for the Lord God made the fitting garment and gave it to them. What grace! … Adam's need then was no greater than yours is right now. And God is as willing to clothe you now as He was to clothe Adam and Eve.

At the beginning, as Creator, He formed His works so that He Himself might rest in them. Whatever happiness creation gave to man — and that measure was complete — the Lord God was still to have a place in the garden. He walked there in the cool of the day, seeking the presence of Adam.

Their hiding shows that their hearts had already turned away from God, before He passed any sentence of exclusion on them. He has become the object of their distrust and dread. See how far sin had already blinded their minds! They thought they could hide from God. Their hearts were turned away and their minds were dark. So when the voice of the Lord God woke their conscience, it did not lead them towards God. It drove them away from Him.

When the voice of the Lord God sounds through the garden, the fig-leaf apron is worth nothing. He hides himself from God among the trees of the garden: "I was afraid, because I was naked," is his own account. This is what always alternates with self-justification in a soul: the voice of God — the thought of God — is terror to it.

The fig leaves did not even satisfy Adam and Eve. When they heard the voice of the Lord God in the garden, they hid. So today our own consciences tell us that our efforts to cover our sins fail so badly that we are afraid to face God. But fig leaves and trees are only part of God's creation. They cannot protect anyone from sin, and they cannot hide anyone from God.

This useless hiding will happen again on a far larger scale. In a coming day, kings and great men and rich men will call on the mountains and rocks to fall on them. They will ask the mountains and rocks to hide them from the face of the One sitting on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb (Rev. 6:15-16).

If repentance had been at work in them at all, they would have sought Him, blaming themselves and horrified at their sin. They would have thrown themselves, confessing, on a mercy that lasts for ever. But there is no genuine repentance without faith, and there was no faith in Him at all.

If Adam had known God's perfect love, he would not have been afraid... But Adam did not know this, because he had believed the serpent's lie. He thought God was anything but love; and so the very last thought in his heart would have been to venture into His presence.

It has been the way of sinners to hide from God from the very beginning... They had lost their God, but He had also lost them; they were lost souls and He came to seek them, crying, "Adam, where are you?"

Once I would have been afraid to hear His voice. I would have said with the people of Israel, "Do not let God speak to us." Or, like Adam with a guilty conscience, I would have tried to hide myself away. But I do not say that now — no, let me hear His voice. I cannot see the glory of Christ now without knowing that I am saved.

What a question for Adam to have to answer! How it showed that he was not where he used to be! Why the difference? Why not meet, as he was used to meeting, the One who chose to visit the creatures of His power and love? No change had taken place with Him. What had happened to Adam, that he should hide himself when He came near? ... And yet He approaches — He speaks — not to accuse or to scold, but to ask. There is nothing unusual in His approach. The change was in those who run and hide, instead of welcoming with worship the God who stooped to visit them, as they had before. It is for them to account for the change.

God, at the first, came to create; and then, when the serpent dared to meddle with creation, God came down to save. This came out in the first words spoken by the Lord God after man's fall. "But the LORD God called to the man and said to him, Where are you?" This question proved two things. It proved that man was lost, and that God had come to seek. It proved man's sin, and God's grace. "Where are you?" Amazing faithfulness! Amazing grace! Faithfulness, because the question itself told the truth about man's condition. Grace, because the very fact that He asked brought out the truth about His character, and His attitude toward fallen man. Man was lost. But God had come down to look for him. He came to bring him out of his hiding place behind the trees of the garden. In its place, in the glad confidence of faith, man could find his hiding place in God Himself. This was grace. To create man out of the dust of the ground was power; but to seek man in his lost state was grace.

Man is self-convicted of departure from God because of sin. God "drove out the man"; but man had himself fled from His presence first. His own conscience told him that he could not stand before God. God made this plain by the words of His call to Adam: "Where are you?" He was gone from God, banished by conscience before God drove him out.

But the great question, besides what had been done, is, "Where are you?" This is a far wider question than the one to Cain — "What have you done?"

If men do not want Him, He wants them! Right after the rebellion in the garden, the voice of God was heard, saying, "Adam, where are you?" The Gospel tells us — what a wonderful thought! — that God is now the Seeker after men. This is the meaning of the coming among us of His beloved Son. So in the New Testament sinners are never told to seek the Lord, though it is still their responsibility to do so. Instead, they are told that God is seeking them... "the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost" (Luke 19:10).

Verses 7 and 8 are full of gloom. A ray of light, however, appears in verse 9. The Lord God might have discarded the guilty pair on the spot and handed them over to their doom. Instead He sought them out — a sure sign that He had plans for their ultimate blessing. His call was, "Where are you?" In response Adam had to reveal where he was. By trying to cover his nakedness he uncovered his sin.

We judge that the key to understanding the word "naked" here and in the next verse lies in verse 21. There we read that "the LORD God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them." So from his fall, his transgression, until God clothed him in a coat of skin, Adam was naked before God. The word "naked" expresses his moral condition after his sin — his moral exposure, so to speak, before the all-searching eye of a holy God.

The moment Adam heard the voice of the Lord in Eden, "he was afraid." He confessed the reason himself: "I was naked." Yes, naked, although he had his apron on. But it is plain that that covering did not even satisfy his own conscience. Had his conscience been divinely satisfied, he would not have been afraid... Adam's apron could not screen him from the eye of God. He could not stand in His presence naked, so he fled to hide himself. This is what conscience will do at all times. It will cause man to hide himself from God. What is more, all that his own religiousness offers him is a hiding-place from God.

Conscience, too, is brought to life. Sin did this. "They knew that they were naked." At the hour of its birth it was an uneasy conscience, as it is to this hour — a conscience that makes cowards of all who carry it. "I was afraid," says Adam, unable to look at God, "because I was naked." Conscience in man must be like this, because it owes its existence to sin. There was no sense of good and evil in him till he sinned. Gained this way, that sense must leave him a coward in the presence of the righteous One.

Was Adam's response a frank acknowledgment of sin, and submission to the will of the One who had such cause of just offence? Sadly, no. He owns the effect of sin — the sense of nakedness, and the fear that came from it. But he says not one word about having sinned. Not a word of sorrow for his offence. Then the question comes closer to his conscience, in a form he could not dodge. He casts the blame on "the woman," and indirectly on God Himself — blame for what he could neither deny nor hide any longer.

Adam "was afraid," as he confessed to Him who called him from his hiding-place... When man hears His voice, every hope of enjoying life is gone... God "drove out the man"; but man had first fled from His presence. His own conscience told him that he could not stand before God. God made this plain by the words of His call to Adam, "Where are you?" He was gone from God, banished by conscience before God drove him out.

Adam and Eve hid themselves, for they could not stand in His presence in their nakedness. But oh, the love of God's heart! As soon as they needed clothing He in mercy and love provided it... How different is their clothing now! Instead of an "apron" in which God has not put one stitch — the whole thing was poor human effort — each now wears a "coat" in which man has not put one stitch. The Lord God made the fitting garment and gave it. What grace!

Grace worked, and grace provided what Adam could never get by his own efforts. God clothed him in his nakedness, and clothed him with the skin of an animal that had been put to death... So the coat of skin Adam wore was surely a picture of this fact: only Christ can cover our moral nakedness before God.

Let us note, first of all, this questioning of Adam by God. Three separate times we find these questions. He questions the man, and He questions the woman. He does not question the serpent, but moves straight to judgment instead. Clearly there is something significant in this. It cannot be thought that the all-knowing God needed to learn the things He asked about. So if He did not ask for His own sake, He must have asked for man's sake. It was, in fact, an appeal to man for confidence in One who had done nothing on His part to forfeit it. It was a gracious effort to bring him to admit, in front of his Creator, his present condition and the sin that had brought him into it.

The first question is an appeal to Adam to consider his condition — the effect of his sin, rather than his sin itself. It is the second that refers directly to the sin, not the first. We will find this double appeal everywhere in Scripture. Does a man "thirst"? He is told to come and drink of the living water. Is he "labouring and heavy laden"? He is invited to find rest for his soul.

Notice here, before moving on, how solemnly precise and personal the questions are. Not "My creatures, where are you?" but "Adam, where are you?" He had only one companion in sin. But this question completely isolates him. It sets him alone before God and forces him to answer for himself. "I heard"; "I was afraid"; "I hid myself." The next question is just as direct... I and you, God and the sinner — the sinner and his sin facing each other! And is this not still the effect of God's word, when it is felt to be His living voice?

Fallen, they knew good and evil, and they knew that they were naked; they are under the shame of sin. Then we learn how completely powerless all human means are to hide sin. The moment they hear the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, all the fig leaves are simply nothing. They had used them to cover themselves from one another; but the moment God was there, they say that they are naked.

He shrank from the One whose word he had disobeyed, and recognised himself as naked... He was in fact self-condemned. It was not sorrow of a godly kind for the wrongdoing. There was no earnest care, no clearing of self, no indignation, and no other such feeling as the Spirit works in the conscience towards God. So in nothing did Adam prove himself pure in the matter. His sense of nakedness showed his guilt.

As yet there is not a trace of repentance, but hardness of heart and self-justification. Had there been the least self-judgment, any real sense of the dishonour done to the Lord God, they would have confessed their sin in listening to the tempter. They would have humbled themselves at once, instead of covering their nakedness in their own way.

Of course God knew what had happened, but He questioned Adam as to whether he had eaten from the forbidden tree (v. 11). Adam admitted it, but not before putting the blame on his wife, and even hinting that possibly God had some blame too, because He had given the woman to Adam! How true this still is of us all: no matter how guilty we have been, we always want to shift the blame to someone or something else!

Self-justification is as pointless as trying to hide from God. How the mighty has fallen! The head of creation stoops, to excuse himself of his sin, and casts the fault on his wife — yes, on God Himself! How degrading evil is, once we allow it and let it rule. The hardest thing for a sinner to do is to confess his sin truly and thoroughly; to judge oneself is only the fruit of grace through faith. A bad conscience dreads God and the consequences too much to confess, while it knows its sin too well to deny it.

It is hard to imagine anything lower, or more insolent, than the man's answer. On the surface the words might be true; morally they were false, unworthy, irreverent, even blasphemous. Sin had debased Adam so far that he tried to excuse himself by the woman's fault, and even to throw the blame on the LORD God. The woman only pleaded the serpent's craft. Neither felt or confessed personal wrong, any more than disloyalty to God.

Along with all this cowardice there is sheer nerve. Man lays the trouble down at God's door. He says in effect, "Let God see to it; the woman is His creature, and He gave her to me." In the spirit of his mind he still says the same thing: "Let God see to it; the world is His, and He made it." A strange and horrible combination! The insolence of the heart charging God, and a cowardly conscience that cannot face Him. The sinner may talk big and make a noise. He may reason about God and his own condition, and build speeches and arguments as well as aprons. But despite everything he surrounds himself with, there he is, like Adam, ashamed of himself and afraid of God.

There is another kind of evil in our souls — a readiness to excuse ourselves. Adam laid the blame on the woman. It was as much as saying, Why did you give me this woman? It was your gift that caused the sin. He wanted to push it away from himself, as a matter between God and the woman. It was not untrue, and yet it was as far as possible from the truth. It is the way of our guilty nature to throw onto another a sin our own will took part in. And God judged Adam out of his own mouth. The excuse he makes is the very reason for which God condemns him. "Because you have listened," and so on. Our excuses are our condemnation.

This has always been the way with the flesh once sin had entered. So Adam first makes a false excuse to cover his rebellion. Then he evades God's direct question and refuses to confess his sin. Had he confessed, it might have brought him at once into the results of grace. He was still rolling that sin as a sweet morsel under his tongue, and so he charges God with being the real cause of it, since it was He who had given the woman to be with him.

He revealed the secret when He said, "While I was with them in the world, I kept them in Your name: those that You gave Me I have kept, and none of them is lost" (John 17:12). It was His love and power and grace that kept them, so that a subtle enemy could not seduce them away from Him. But all this involved Him in death. He found His own where sin had left them, lying under the judgment of death, and He had to bear that judgment to set them free from it. What a contrast to Adam! As a willing partner in his wife's sin, he stood miserable and afraid before God, casting the blame on the one he ought to have kept.

Man's religion is one of outward forms with nothing to disturb the conscience. God, beginning with the conscience, raises the question, "What have you done?" (compare Genesis 3:13; 4:10).

In turning to the woman the Lord God asked a second question as to what she had done. The first had raised the question of man's state; now the second challenges his acts. Eve admitted she had eaten of the tree but blamed the serpent. It was the same with Adam. What she said was true, for the serpent did deceive her. But she was clearly trying to shift the responsibility for the act off herself. On this point Romans 2:15 is very helpful. But we must add that sinful men always tend to "accuse" others and "excuse" themselves, unless the Spirit of God works in the conscience.

When the LORD God asked the woman, "What is this that you have done?" her answer was not "I have sinned," or "I am guilty," but "The serpent deceived me, and I ate." So our excuses only make bad worse. God can only deal righteously with pleas so empty and unworthy. They show that unrepented sin tends to spread like gangrene, and is truly ungodliness.

All this is the truth; but conscience is not before God.

They were convicted and compelled to own their respective acts of sin; but there was no true self-judgment, no grief at their dishonour of God, no horror at the evil and their own guilt. On the contrary, there was the self-justification that proves the spirit unbroken, and the shifting of the blame from one to another, and even onto God Himself.

Eve's reply to God's question describes exactly how the enemy won his victory — "The serpent deceived me." Scripture itself confirms her words in 2 Corinthians 11:3 — "the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning." And this record is true as well: she was completely deceived and fell into transgression (1 Timothy 2:14). How deep the fall! How serious the results for a creature so gifted as man was! The height of his former honour measures the depth of his fall now.

The very excuse he gave was the very height of sin, and the very thing by which God condemned him. So also with the woman. Out of their own mouths were they judged. In fact, pleading temptation was only saying that they preferred their own desires to God. It was saying that they listened to the devil's word more than to God's commandments.

The Lord then turns to the woman, and she puts the blame on the serpent. "The serpent deceived me, and I ate." Quite true! Throw the fault off your own shoulder if you can. You will never be able to hide it from God. And you cannot escape the judgment of God, unless you are hidden in the merits of the wonderful death of the Lord Jesus Christ.

To this confession do these questions of God call these first sinners of the human race. Because there is mercy for them, they are invited to cast themselves upon it. Because there is none for the serpent, there is in his case no question.

The serpent is recognized as the originator of the mischief; hence for him it is all judgment without a ray of light. The woman and the man were his victims; hence the only gleam is reserved for them.

We have no reason to believe that Adam yet knew the mystery of who the tempter was. To him, "that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan" was surely nothing more than the craftiest of the wild animals the Lord God had made. In this, God's wisdom and mercy were shown. He did not let the tempter come as an angel, as one above man. He came in animal form, as one below him — one of the creatures man had named as their lord, and among which he had found no helper. How great was his shame when he listened to the deceiver! In that moment he gave up the rule God had given him.

So the victory of evil is really the degrading of the victor. His own success drags him down. How plainly this lasting principle shows in every career of villainy under the sun! Because of it, Satan will not be the highest in hell and its prince, as people have imagined. He will be the lowest and most miserable of all the miserable there.

"Dust" means total and complete humiliation, as in "lick the dust" and "you who dwell in the dust." Scripture uses it this way again and again. Daniel 12 is the same: "many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth." Here it expresses the judgment that will fall on the power of Satan.

The curse brings the serpent lower than the creeping things: it must slither on its belly (v. 14). We do not know what it was like before, but now its food was to be dust. This verse deals only with the literal serpent. What follows applies to Satan, who used the serpent as his mouthpiece.

The actual judgment is in this world. So the serpent is not cast into the lake of fire here. God says, "Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field …"

Satan used the serpent to deceive Eve, and the curse on it ran, "on your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat …" This sentence will never be revoked. It seems that among the lower creatures the serpent will stay as a sign and reminder of the tragic effects of sin. The serpent will not be able to hurt nor destroy, but its degraded and miserable state will remain.

What can be more striking or instructive? God reveals grace in judging the enemy, not in what He said afterwards to the woman (v. 16) or to Adam (vv. 17-19). This was not only just but for the divine glory in Christ. What could justify a promise to fallen man or woman? Their sin, just committed, called for judgment, and the LORD God did not fail to declare it.

Believers have long called it a "promise," but Scripture never does. God did reveal endless blessing for man here, but that is not quite a promise. He spoke the words to the serpent. If they promised anything to anyone, it was to the woman's Seed, the last Adam — not to the first Adam, whom God had just sentenced along with Eve.

The question here is really between the serpent and the second Man, not the first. This is not a promise to Adam and Eve from God, nor a hope that their children will improve. God passes judgment on the enemy. In the same breath He reveals the Saviour — the child of the very woman who had drawn the man into ruin at the devil's hand. The woman's Seed will bruise the serpent's head, but He Himself is bruised first. What grace, yet what righteousness! What humiliation, yet what victory!

Everywhere in creation, from man downward, the seed belongs to the male and not the female. So the seed of the woman is not according to nature as we know it. It stands outside what God had just made, and it points forward to a new creation. The Lord Jesus was born of a virgin, and here we have the first hint of that fact, which is a vital one. No taint of the fall attached to Him. He was not just innocent, as Adam was at the start — He was holy.

This is not a repair of the place Adam lost. It is a new and mysterious beginning. In it God's power takes up the weakness and instability of the creature — seen most clearly in the woman — to display His grace. The victory over the enemy costs something. The Conqueror bruises the serpent's head, but His own heel is bruised.

A double meaning runs through this verse, one literal and one deeper. Everyone knows that people hate snakes more than any other creature. So the sentence is literal. In the deeper sense, the seed of the woman is Christ. The words "between your seed and her seed" then cover two sides. On one side are all who belong to Christ. On the other are the children of the devil, whether wicked spirits or wicked men. The hostility would not come from the children of God toward others. It would come from the wicked toward the righteous. Cain murdering Abel showed this at once.

This overwhelming victory would also cost the Victor some suffering. During the conflict the serpent would bruise His heel. In walking, the heel is the first part of the foot to touch the ground. The picture is striking. The Victor suffered when He first touched the earth in His holy Manhood. God made Him a little lower than the angels so that He could suffer death — the death that Satan's cunning brought about.

Christ suffered at the cross, and this Scripture came true there. It had announced what would happen to Christ, the woman's Seed. It was also a partial fulfilment of what He would do to Satan. "Through death" He destroyed "the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil." The crushing of the serpent's head will be complete when the Lord casts the devil into the lake of fire.

The church is joined to Christ. It will then be with Him who, as the woman's seed, will bruise the serpent's head. But the power is in Christ, not in the church.

True and righteous indeed are His judgments! Where she had sinned, there she was punished. Her lust had conceived and brought forth sin. So her sorrow and her conception were to be greatly multiplied, and she was to bring forth children in sorrow. She had forgotten her place as Adam's "helper." Taking the lead, she misled him into that terrible first sin of disobedience against God.

As with the serpent, Jehovah Elohim speaks to the woman of the present governmental effects of her sin. Woman, more than any other female, was to have sorrow multiplied in pregnancy and in giving birth. Woman, not man, is the one who suffers this sorrow again and again. It was righteous, however sad. She first listened to the enemy, despising God and His word; then she drew her husband after her into the ditch. From now on she was to be subject. Like a younger brother to an elder, her desire was to be to her husband, and he was to rule over her. The fall would make this hard. How different the original position of companionship! Sin made God a judge: before it, He simply blessed.

But this sorrow underlines that every child is born with a sinful nature. David says in Psalm 51:5, "I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me." Her desire would be to her husband, and he would rule over her. This is the normal condition of the marriage relationship now. Many people have tried, and still try, to change this. The result is a state of things that is not normal, and it only causes more confusion and dissatisfaction everywhere… When people ignore God's word, no wonder the troubles of the world multiply. People cannot sidestep the consequences of sin so easily as they think.

Genesis 3:16 is explicit in naming two results which were to follow for the woman as a consequence of her sin. The second of those two results is alluded to in the verses we have been considering, while the first result is alluded to in verse 15 of our chapter, and in connection with that a gracious proviso is attached, no mention of which is found in Genesis 3.

Part of the curse pronounced on the woman at the fall was, "Your desire shall be to your husband, and he shall rule over you." Christianity confirms this order, but so remodels it that all trace of the curse disappears. When a believer submits to the Lord, or the Church to Christ, that is no curse and no bondage. These are now the patterns for a wife's submission… How beautiful to see a human relationship — one that takes part of its character from the fall — turned into a picture of the mystery in which God displays His "manifold wisdom."

In her sorrow and pains the woman is always reminded of her sin. She is also reminded of Him who will deliver her from the results of her evil, through a deeper sorrow and pain. So from the very beginning, the desire for the promised Deliverer is planted in her heart.

Self-will had brought forth its full harvest of sin and sorrow. To the woman He says, "I will surely multiply your pain." But now, to the woman, "Woman, why are you weeping?" Sorrow has taken the place of joy in this world, because self-will came in, and death followed it. But now the old things have passed away… death has given place to life, and sorrow to joy.

Was Adam's guilt lessened by his wife's sin? Far from it! He offers his wife as an excuse: "the woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate." God declares that very thing to be the reason for Adam's judgment: "Because you have listened to the voice of your wife… cursed is the ground because of you" [not because of her].

Man was not cursed. The curse fell on the serpent and on the ground. In sorrow man was to eat of the fruit of the ground all the days of his life, and in sorrow the woman was to bring forth children (Gen. 3:17). After the flood, the Lord smelled a sweet aroma from Noah's sacrifice. He said in His heart, "I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the intention of man's heart is evil from his youth" (Gen. 8:21).

Scripture says nothing here about his soul and spirit. The consequences in view belong to God's government of this life, not to eternity. Men scheme to get rid of the sweat and toil, and they may think they are going to achieve it. But already we have heard the slogan, "We work or we want." To that we may add, "We sweat or we starve." We can no more dodge that part of the curse than we can escape death.

That there was no "work" before his fall is not stated. Man placed in the garden "to work it and keep it" shows it was not God's will that His creature should be idle. But there was no "toil" or "sorrow" connected with such occupation. Now thorns and thistles were to appear, and man was to eat bread by the sweat of his face… Labour here is good for all, and there is profit in it. Out of evil God can and does bring good.

In a certain sense mercy mingles with these consequences too, as usually happens, I think, in God's government. Man in his present state is just that much less happy when he does not know what it is to work in a world like this. It is not only what he is doomed to, but the wisely ordered place for fallen man here below. There is no one more miserable than the man who has no object before him.

The world belonged to Him, for He made it… but it was under the curse. Man's disobedience had brought the curse upon it, and thorns were the product and lasting evidence of the curse. He had come to redeem the world, to remove the curse and bring in the blessing, and to do this He must bear the curse… the original curse fell upon Him, and the sign of this was the crown that He wore.

Creation was made subject to emptiness, not by its own choice, but because of man when he fell. It groans and waits for the day when it will be set free from its bondage to decay, into the liberty of the glory of the children of God. We read in Genesis 3, "Cursed is the ground because of you… thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you." But of the day of its renewal: "instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress, instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle."

Because of the man the ground is cursed. His higher place brings wider and more serious results. He too must face sorrow here below all his days. Thorns and thistles fight against the food he needs and looks for. Hard work must be his lot if he is to eat bread. The plants of the field were given to him just as they were given to the animals under him — to the man who had lost, through rebellion, the beautiful and rich garden which the LORD God had planted.

Scripture plainly states that the ground was cursed because of Adam's sin. It does not say that there was no "work" before his fall. Man placed in the garden "to work it and keep it" shows that it was not God's will that His creature should be idle. But there was no "toil" or "sorrow" connected with such occupation. Now thorns and thistles were to appear, and man would eat his bread by the sweat of his face.

Since Adam's fall, the curse of God rests on the earth. It brings forth "thorns and thistles." They bear witness to man's fallen, ruined state, not to God's glory.

What should we do without the thorns and thistles which grow out of the ground cursed for man's sake? What should we do without the need of the sweat of the brow? What, without the work that death itself does? Surely a blessing is in this curse; it is an evil which is good; the discipline of the Father of spirits for our profit.

Cain offered to God what cost him more. He was not a completely irreligious man. He offered to God, he worshipped God, and God rejected him completely. He was not an unbeliever or an irreligious man. He was a worshipper — and a rejected worshipper. His worship was founded on unbelief. A sinner, one out of paradise, he thought to go to God as though nothing had happened! And what did he bring? The very thing that had the stamp of the curse upon it.

The world belonged to Him, for He made it. As the eternal Son He was the Heir to it. But the world was under the curse. Man's disobedience had brought that curse upon it, and thorns were the product and lasting evidence of it. He had come to redeem the world, to remove the curse and bring in the blessing. To do this He must bear the curse… The original curse fell upon Him, and the crown He wore was the sign of it.

By his sin, man has not only brought ruin on himself. He has spoiled his home and dragged down all the creatures that depend on him. Thorns and thistles are marks of man's sin… The whole of this lower creation either suffers or rejoices with its head. This is its time of suffering. "For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now" (Rom. 8:22).

Then Adam came up for judgment, and the governmental effects of his sin are more clearly seen. He had listened to the voice of his wife instead of listening to what God had said, and now he must face the fruits of it. God cursed the ground because of him. He must earn his living from it with sweat and sorrow until death overtakes him, when his body should return to the dust out of which it was taken. Men scheme to get rid of the sweat and toil, and they may think they will manage it. But we have already heard the slogan, "We work or we want." To that we may add, "We sweat or we starve." We can no more dodge that part of the curse than we can escape death.

It is not merely "your brow," as people usually misquote it. The "face" gives a larger and more graphic picture of the fact.

Nothing is clearer than that Adam was not simply a lower organism raised to a higher form, but the subject of special creating power. Scripture states one of the sad results of his fall: his body must return to the dust of the ground he came from. He was therefore a true creation, and moreover created for life, and not for death; since death came in by sin.

How clearly the body only is in view here, and the end of life on the earth! Yet chapter 2 carefully showed where man's soul came from: God breathed it into him, unlike every other creature on earth. … The theme here is God's present government, not hades or the lake of fire. … The body alone returns to dust. The soul did not come out of dust, but, as we are told elsewhere, the spirit returns to God who gave it. All the notice taken of man here is to humble the one who did not look up to God, nor obey Him: sorrow and toil, death and dust.

The sentence on Adam was not a final sentence, but one in which the mercy is evident amid all the severity of righteous judgment. Without the ministry of death, sad as the history of the world has been, it would have been much sadder… The sentence passed on Adam after his sin is clear enough, and no one can doubt what it means. Of the second death it may be, and is, a type, and a warning: but no more.

When our first parents fell, we read of no "curse" pronounced on them personally, though we do read that God cursed the ground because of them. The very penalties He pronounced on them were morally necessary, and had mercy in them. For example, Adam was condemned to toil, and what would men be, what would the world be, without such a necessity?

Grace forgives; but the wheels of government roll on in all their terrible majesty. Adam was perfectly forgiven, but his sin produced its own results. The guilt of his conscience was removed, but not the sweat of his brow. He went out pardoned and clothed; but it was into the middle of thorns and thistles that he went.

The world belonged to Him, for He made it. But it was under the curse. Man's disobedience had brought that curse on it, and thorns were the product and lasting evidence of it. He had come to redeem the world, to remove the curse and bring in the blessing, and to do this He must bear the curse. The original curse fell on Him, and the sign of this was the crown He wore.

The Lord had to go into the grave and enter into the full extent of God's judgment on man. It is important to keep the grave in mind as part of the sufferings Christ bore in our place under the judgment of God.

In chapter 2 the man gave his wife a name from himself. He was Ish; her he called Isshah. But here sin had brought in disorder and ruin: our first parents were fallen. Nothing, however, is too far gone for grace. God's grace revealed enough even from the fall to instruct and comfort faith. So it was with Adam now. He did not look at the things he could see, temporary as they are. He looked at the unseen and lasting intervention of the woman's Seed.

A name given by Adam to his wife after they had fallen, and after God had spoken of "her seed," and had told her that in sorrow she would bring forth children. The Hebrew name is chavvah, which means "life," Adam adding that she was "the mother of all living."

There is evidence that Adam and his wife both welcomed the testimony of God into their hearts. Why else should Adam call his wife's name Eve "because she was the mother of all living," when in fact she was not the mother of anybody? Speaking of "life," at the very moment of his expulsion — what was this but faith?

He calls her not Death but Life, or Living! The divine assurance that the woman's Seed should bruise the serpent's head — can we doubt it? — led him to the new name. It was faith, founded on the word he had heard; faith real, if not explicit. He confessed what no created eye had yet seen. It rested only on the divine word: that she was "mother of all living." Mother of all dying would have been the natural sentiment.

So Adam, in his faith, talked only of life, though surrounded by death. He himself had brought that death in, and it stood as a witness against him... In the very place of judgment — from among the trees of the garden, where conscience had driven him — his ear had caught the sound of the sweet gospel. It spoke not of mercy only, but of propitiation and victory. And out he comes talking of life. All life was in the promised Kinsman-Redeemer.

How beautiful that faith can rise into the thoughts of God like this and see life given to the very one through whom death had come in! She is the "mother of all living" — not only of the entire human race, but especially of Him who was "born of woman." He is the true Seed of the woman. He has life in Himself, and He gives life to everyone who believes on Him.

Adam's faith bows to the divine word. He names the woman — the one through whom death had entered — Havvah (Eve), or "life." Then we read, "the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them." So the shame and the fact of their nakedness were together put away. It would now have been unbelief for Adam to say, as with his fig-leaf apron he still had to say, that he was naked. God's own hand had clothed him.

I consider that Eve is called "living" there as being Adam's faith, though you may not lay it down as a dogma. It is remarkable, coming just after the curse and after the judgment on Satan too. After death has come in, she is called the mother of all living, not of the dying. But it was no purpose of God to tell us whether Adam was saved or not.

They had fallen. They knew good and evil, and they knew they were naked. They are under the shame of sin. Then we learn how powerless all human means are to hide sin. Then they hear the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day. At that moment all the fig leaves are nothing. The leaves covered them from one another. But the moment God was there, they say that they are naked. Afterwards God made them coats of skins; it was a very different thing when God did it.

God had promised that a Deliverer would come and break the power of the enemy. To that promise God added an act, and the act shed light on how the deliverance would come. The Lord God covered Adam and his wife with coats of skins. Now skins are not a plant product but an animal one. They can clothe a man only after the animal that produced them has died. Here then we find the first revelation that man can only stand clothed before God on the basis of death. He must admit that another has taken his place and borne the death sentence that justly rests on him.

When our first parents fell, their conscience woke up to their fallen state. So they tried to cover themselves with fig-leaf aprons. They tried at-one-ment, but it did not succeed. How did the Lord God cover them? He had passed the sentence of death on them for their sin. Death ALONE then could meet their case. Here is a moving thought. The first death after the fall was not the death of the sinner who deserved it. It was the death of the sacrifice that provided the covering.

The word atonement, which occurs so often in the Old Testament, means in the original Hebrew to cover. These coats of skins covered our first parents. How did they get these skins? It must have been by the sacrifice of innocent animals. It must have been that blood was shed. Centuries roll by, and David throws fuller light on the subject. "Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered" (Psalm 32:1)... So atonement exists to bring forgiveness of sins and to cover wrongdoing — to put it out of God's sight for ever.

Eve is named the mother of all living in a world where death had come in. And the Lord God clothes them with coats of skins before they are driven out of Paradise. Grace met their need by God's act, before judgment drove them out from natural blessings they had forfeited — blessings they could no longer enjoy in the same way.

But what did God do for those poor naked sinners? He made coats of skin and clothed them. The coats were obtained by death. God has found us righteousness through the death of Christ... It is all God's work — He made the coats of skin, He clothed them. I had nothing to do with it, just as Adam and Eve had nothing to do with the coats of skin. They made the aprons of fig-leaves; God made the coats of skins. He had no hand in their work; they had no hand in His. Had I had a finger in the work of God I should never have had peace; I should always have been wondering whether I had done my part right.

We have here, in figure, the great doctrine of divine righteousness set out. God provided the robe, and it covered them because He provided it. Man made the apron, and it failed because man made it... When Adam stood clothed in the coat of skin he could not say, "I was naked," nor had he any reason to hide himself. To know that the dress I wear, and in which I appear before God, is of His own providing, must set my heart at perfect rest.

As soon as they discovered that they were not fit for the presence of God, He made coats of skin and covered them. The skin meant, of course, that the animal's life had to be given up. There is the gospel at Eden's door. It pointed on, ever clearer and clearer, to the Lamb of God. He gave up His life so that we could have a perfect covering for the shame of our nakedness.

Philosophy, or fear of philosophers, has misled many. They think the words spoken here were a taunt at man's groundless claim, and a way of exposing Satan's cheat. But Scripture is plain, and the truth is important... He was innocent and upright, but he is never said then to be righteous or holy. Nor could he be so called; for both suppose knowledge of good and evil, which he did not yet have and only got through transgression.

Verse 22 bears further witness to the truth of the Trinity: the Lord God speaks of Himself as "Us."... Now he knew good and evil, and only in this way was he like God. Yet, unlike God, he had the inclination to choose the evil rather than the good.

By the fall man got the knowledge of good and evil — an inner sense of right and wrong apart from any command... In Adam fresh from God's hand the knowledge of good and evil would have been a defect, a moral inconsistency, and therefore an impossibility. Before the fall he had conscience only in the sense of responsibility to obey, not at all in the way of accusing or excusing himself. Only when he sinned, and so lost his innocence, did he gain the moral power to know good and evil for himself. From then on it was his sad, painful, but most useful monitor.

Satan does not deceive the saints, or those who look like saints, with an open and simple lie... Satan said, "You shall be as gods." Then One far above all created beings repeated, "Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil." But oh, what a store of evils and ruin came in through the act of disobedience built on this truth that the devil used! Using it out of place, and hiding what went with it when man acted on it, was the foundation of the ruin that came on the world.

Man had gained the knowledge of good (and God was its source), without power to act on it or to please Him. He had also gained the knowledge of evil, and with it a nature always prone to follow it... But to eat and live for ever in the garden, knowing good and evil, would be misery — good he could never reach, evil he was always prone to. God could not allow it... This was grace, not judgment; the judgment was pronounced before, on Adam and his wife, and on the serpent too.

To take of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever in our present condition would be unmixed misery. The tree of life can only be tasted in resurrection. To live for ever in a frail tent, in a body of sin and death, would be unbearable.

Adam's act was a groundless assumption that he knew better than God. God's act in driving him out of Eden was one of mercy to His rebellious creatures. In John 3, however, we get something more than mercy — we get grace, God showing favour to sinners by giving them what no one would have dreamed of... It was necessary to banish Adam from Eden, so that he would not perpetuate his sinful condition for ever by eating of the tree of life. It was necessary for the Son of Man to be lifted up, so that any who have sinned might live for ever.

It was the first divine utterance to fallen man. What a volume of truth! On the face of things, past all denial, man was gone from God. He had morally doomed himself before he received the dread sentence. "He drove out the man," we are told later in the chapter; but man hid from His presence at first, and thus drew out the words, "Where are you?"

God cast out the man; yet Adam ran away from God before God turned him out. But when God turned him out, it was a judicial act. God put cherubim there, and a flaming sword turning every way, to guard the way to the tree of life. That is, Adam was not only going to dust, but could not get at life again. It would have been horrible if he could. He was an outcast from God altogether, and this is everlasting misery.

Suppose Adam had been able to put out his hand and eat of the tree of life, what would have been the result? He would have made his own condition of sin and misery permanent. He would have become a deathless creature in a hell of his own making. That would have been bad enough. But it would have been far worse in another way. Even by becoming Man, Christ could not have died. His death has become to us the door into life. In eating of the tree of life Adam would have closed and barred that door. We may well thank God for the cherubim and the flaming sword!

The tree of life was distinct from that of knowing good and evil. The test of responsible obedience was one thing; the means of life was quite another. So from the very first they are shown to be separate. In fact, when man disobeyed by eating from the one tree, God drove him out so that he would not also take from the other and make his fallen sinful state everlasting. The tree of life was for one who did not eat of the forbidden tree. It was marked so clearly here that responsibility and life are completely separate.

But Adam transgressed and lost the garden, and became a drudge in the earth, instead of being the happy lord of it. He was now to get a bare existence out of it, until he was laid down in death upon it.

How did man come to be toiling there in the sweat of his brow? Their very toil told the tale of the curse. They had been driven out of Eden for sin. But in Cain we see utter recklessness toward the judgment of God. He had forgotten the very nature of that God who had set man perfectly happy in the garden at the first, to keep it and enjoy its fruits — fruits that came to his hand without toil or labour. He supposed that by toil and labour, the judicial consequences of sin, he could produce something that God would accept.

Man placed in the garden "to work it and keep it" shows that it was not God's will that His creature should be idle. But there was no "toil" or "sorrow" connected with such occupation. Now thorns and thistles were to appear, and in the sweat of his face man was to eat bread... Labour here is good for all, and in it there is profit. For out of evil God can and does bring good.

There is no way back to the lost paradise. Christ is the way... He is the way for the believer to the Father and the paradise that shall never pass away. So there is no tree of knowing good and evil there, no tree of responsibility. The cross of Christ settled that for everlasting righteousness, in favour of all who believe, to God's glory. There is but one tree, the tree of life.

God cast out the man; yet Adam had run from God before God turned him out. But when God turned him out, this was judicial. He put cherubim there, and a flaming sword, turning every way to keep the way of the tree of life. So Adam was not only going back to dust. He could not get at life again — and it would have been horrible if he could.

In Genesis 3:24 they do not offer mercy. Along with the flaming sword they threaten the creature, now guilty, if he dared to force the way. The thought there is the title of God in glory and judgment... God's act of clothing the guilty with a garment that came from the death of another (v. 21), and God's word in v. 15, did show mercy — but the cherubim did not.

Suppose he had eaten, and by eating lived for ever — as long as he kept eating — in the state of innocence in which God first made him. That would have been right and simple obedience. But now he knew good and evil: good he could never reach, and evil he was always drawn to. To eat and live for ever in the garden in that condition would have meant misery without end, and God could not allow it... This was grace, not judgment; God had already passed the judgment.

Suppose Adam had eaten from the tree of life. What would the result have been? He would have made his condition of sin and misery permanent, and made himself a deathless creature in a hell of his own making. That would have been bad enough. But it would have been a far worse disaster in this way: even by becoming Man, Christ could not then have died. His death has become to us the door into life. In eating of the tree of life Adam would have closed and barred that door. We may well thank God for the cherubim and the flaming sword!

How different is the attitude of the cherubim over the mercy-seat. The point seems to be that they were not to look out at man's sinful condition. They were to look inward and downward, at the mercy-seat of pure gold, where the blood of the sin-offering was sprinkled on the day of atonement.

God set the cherubim, the symbols of judicial power, to bar the way... There is no way back to the lost paradise. Christ is the way — the way for the believer to the Father and to the paradise that will never pass away.

This is the earliest of the gifts forfeited in Eden. But under His new title, "I am the living one," the Lord grants the promise in redemption order as well as in resurrection power. He leads the overcomer to eat of the tree of life — which Adam never ate — in the middle of the paradise of God, where the first man never was. A garden in Eden is lost, it is true; but the paradise of God is gained. The knowledge of a crucified Christ sheathes the flaming sword that turned every way to keep the tree of life.