And the serpent was more crafty than any animal of the field which Jehovah Elohim had made. And it said to the woman, Is it even so, that God has said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?
The third chapter of the Bible opens with a question about something God had already said plainly. Behind the animal that asks it stands a real enemy, and Scripture keeps exposing him right through to its last book.
The chapter names only a creature, but the rest of Scripture names the one using it.
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.
The very strangeness of a beast speaking should have warned the woman rather than drawn her in.
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.
Nothing in the approach announces itself as evil. That is what "more crafty" means in practice.
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.
A planted doubt works better than a loud denial. The mind finishes the argument itself.
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.
The question sounds like it is about food. It is really about whether they can trust God.
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 failure began before anyone touched the fruit. It began when the question got a hearing.
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.
The serpent chose which of the two to approach.
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.
- Craft — The enemy does not announce himself. He opens with something pleasant and a mild question.
- Doubt — A planted doubt beats a flat denial, because it leaves the mind to finish the argument against God on its own.
- Goodness — The question was never about a tree. It hinted that God's ban was not love. His goodness was the real target.
- Faith — Faith is the root and spring of all obedience, before the fall as much as after it. When trust goes, the command feels like mere restriction.
- Word — Treat the question as the enemy's. Answer it with what God said. To let "Did God actually say?" in, when you know He has spoken, is already the defeat.
And the woman said to the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden;
Eve answers the serpent, and at first her words look right. But commentators see in them the point where her trust in God began to slip. They also ask why she answered him at all.
Before we weigh what Eve said, writers ask whether she should have spoken. The serpent's question attacked God's goodness, and she knew better.
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.
Even a fair-sounding reply was a loss, because she entered the argument at all.
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.
Eve keeps the sense of God's permission, but not its full warmth. One writer treats the words she dropped as proof that the serpent's hint had already landed.
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.
Eve names the trees she may eat, then moves straight to the one she may not. Notice also where she places that tree — "in the midst of the garden" — though Genesis put the tree of life there.
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!
As her reply runs on, she widens the ban and softens the penalty. One writer counts both moves as damage to the truth.
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.
One writer supplies the reply Eve could have given — an answer resting wholly on God's goodness.
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.
- Doubt — the serpent's question targeted God's goodness. Letting it in was already the wound, since distrust of God opens the door to every sin.
- Debate — arguing with the tempter hands him half the victory before anyone takes a bite. The safe move was to turn away at once.
- Diminish — her retelling makes God's generosity smaller than His own words had made it.
- Distort — she then tightens the ban and softens the penalty. Stretching the truth weakens it just as cutting it does.
- Displace — one forbidden thing now fills her view, and a garden of blessings drops out of sight. All the rest came easily.
but of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, God has said, Ye shall not eat of it, and ye shall not touch it, lest ye die.
Eve answers the serpent by repeating God's command. Three small changes have crept into it. She moves the tree to the centre, forbids a touch God never forbade, and softens a certainty into a risk.
Which tree stands at the centre of the garden? One writer weighs Eve's answer:
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.
Eve adds a clause about touching. One writer sets her handling of God's word beside the Lord Jesus under attack:
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.
One writer follows where her added clause leads:
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?
Her "lest you die" leaves the outcome open. That change reaches further than wording:
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.
Why does the serpent's flat denial in the next verse meet so little resistance?
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!"
Her answer stretches the command in one direction and shrinks it in the other. Both moves damage the word equally:
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.
This scene stands as a caution against quoting God loosely:
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).
- Displaced. The forbidden tree takes the place that belonged to the tree of life. Once one restriction fills the view, the garden of delight fades.
- Added. "Neither shall you touch it" is Eve's sentence, not God's — proof that His word was no longer governing her.
- Diluted. "Surely die" becomes "lest you die." Doubt about God's love turns into doubt about His truth.
- Defenceless. The threat has already shrunk in her own mind. So the serpent's flat denial in the next verse meets no resistance.
- Applied. Stretching Scripture and trimming it are the same work. The Lord Jesus met the same enemy by quoting the word exactly, because He lived on it.
And the serpent said to the woman, Ye will not certainly die;
God had warned that eating from one tree brings death. Here God's enemy speaks for the first time and denies it outright — and all human history turns on which voice Eve believed.
The denial did not come first. Answering the serpent's first question, Eve had already turned God's certain warning into a mere possibility. That small change opened the way for an outright denial.
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.
Up to this point the serpent had only hinted. Now he drops the hint and calls God a liar, giving the woman a reason to stop fearing death.
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.
The lie did not stand on its own. It worked because of the true statement attached to it, and the one thing the serpent left out.
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.
People repeat the same denial whenever they expect sin to cost less than God has said. One writer says ordinary human happiness depends on it.
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 denial changed nothing. The death it dismissed came to every human being.
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."
One writer sets the serpent's work in Eden beside the work of the Son of God.
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."
- Doubt — before the serpent denied anything, Eve had softened God's certain penalty into a maybe. A weakened word invites a denied one.
- Denial — once the heart distrusts God's love, the hint becomes an open charge that God is lying.
- Disguise — the lie travelled inside a half-truth, and the deadly consequence went unmentioned.
- Delusion — men still prefer the serpent's word to God's, because today's happiness depends on keeping death out of sight.
- Death — the word the serpent denied proved true. No argument answers it — only the Son of God, whose instrument is the truth.
but God knows that in the day ye eat of it, your eyes will be opened, and ye will be as God, knowing good and evil.
The serpent's last word before the fall is a promise, not a command. He tells Eve what God is thinking, and what she could become. Two questions sit at the centre of it: is God holding something back out of jealousy, and is the offer even true?
The serpent does not begin by denying that God spoke. He begins by hinting that what God said was not said in kindness.
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?"
Once that suspicion lands, the whole conversation changes hands.
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 ESV has "you will be like God." Older translations read "as gods." The Hebrew word behind it matters.
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.
The serpent's offer was not a flat lie. That is what made it deadly.
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.
Man did gain something real in the fall. It was not what the serpent had promised.
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.
What began in a garden did not stay there.
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.
Set beside this verse, one Man's path runs in reverse.
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.
- Suspicion — the temptation makes God's love look like jealousy. Once the heart distrusts God, it will believe anything the tempter says.
- Substitution — "like God" uses the very name for God found in these chapters. It offers the creature the Creator's place.
- Half-truth — God Himself later confirms that man came to know good and evil. The lie lay in what the serpent left out and where he put the truth.
- Shock — the eyes did open, but on good they had no power to do and evil they had no power to escape. Their first sight was their own nakedness, and their new conscience made them cowards.
- Reversal — man grasped at what he could not hold. Christ already had it, did not clutch it, and came down instead.
And the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a pleasure for the eyes, and the tree was to be desired to give intelligence; and she took of its fruit, and ate, and gave also to her husband with her, and he ate.
Genesis 3:6 is the moment the fall happens: three verbs — saw, took, ate — with the whole race hanging on them. What made a forbidden tree look good, and why did the man, who was not deceived, eat anyway?
The woman had God's word about the tree. Now she looks at it, and her eyes tell her the opposite.
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."
The verse lists three attractions in a row. Each one answers to a different desire.
"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.
The eating was not a sudden slip. Listening had already worn away the weight of what God said.
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.
Underneath the appetite lies something simpler: she settled the question without God.
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.
The verse ends with the man eating too. His case is not the same as hers.
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.
Because Adam stood as head of the race, his act was never a private one.
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 same three appeals meet Christ in the wilderness.
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.
- Sight — She traded God's word for her own eyes, and every "good" she saw in the tree was a lie God had already answered.
- Desire — What the eye admires, the heart wants. Desire conceives and gives birth to sin, and sin brings death.
- Independence — The root was not the fruit but self-rule. To judge for herself was to leave God's service for Satan's.
- Affection — Adam was not deceived. Love for his wife drew him, and natural affection became the road away from God.
- Reach — One man's act carried the whole race with it. One Man met the same three appeals and stood where the first fell.
And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig-leaves together, and made themselves aprons.
The serpent had promised that their eyes would open. They did — and the first thing the man and woman saw was themselves.
The promise came true in form and failed in substance.
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.
They did gain something real that day: the ability to tell right from wrong. But the serpent had told them only half the truth.
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.
Man now shares a knowledge God has, but not in the way God has 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.
The stitching begins before God ever speaks. Guilt's first instinct is to hide — and the first people it hides from are the nearest ones.
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.
(Older translations say "aprons"; the ESV says "loincloths".)
The choice of material matters. So does what Adam did with his apron once God came near.
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.
Every human effort at self-covering since has been the same craft with better thread.
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.
They sewed the aprons to get a covering. That single detail marks the dividing line between two ways of approaching 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.
The chapter does not end with the fig leaves. God Himself later clothes them, and the contrast is in the workmanship.
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.
- Opened — Their eyes opened just as promised. But what they saw was their own nakedness, not the godlikeness they expected.
- Gained — They gained a conscience. Now they knew good but had no power to do it, and knew evil but had no power to avoid it.
- Ashamed — Shame came first, and their first covering hid them from each other and from themselves.
- Stitched — Fig leaves are the Bible's first picture of human religion. It shows leaves but bears no fruit, and it fails when God draws near.
- Clothed — Man's covering has no stitch of God's in it. God's covering has no stitch of man's. Christianity starts where religion is still trying to arrive.
And they heard the voice of Jehovah Elohim, walking in the garden in the cool of the day. And Man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of Jehovah Elohim, in the midst of the trees of the garden.
The sound of the Lord God in the garden had once meant welcome; now it drives the man and his wife behind the trees. This is the first instinct of a guilty conscience: to hide from the God who comes near.
The walking in the garden was not new. It describes a God who had made a place for Himself among the creatures He had made.
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.
Nothing about God's approach had changed. What changed was the pair who heard Him. The writers quoted here follow older translations, which read "voice" where the ESV reads "sound."
Three things surface the moment they step back among the trees.
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.
They had already made coverings for themselves. But fear, not covering, decides what they do next.
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 trees were no better than the leaves, and for the same reason.
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.
The same impulse reappears at the end of the Bible, on a far larger scale:
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).
Flight is not repentance. And repentance itself rests on something they no longer had.
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.
Behind the missing faith lies the lie they had swallowed about God's character:
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.
They hid. God did not leave them hidden:
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?"
For the believer, that instinct turns around. The voice has not grown quieter. What has changed is the One now seen in the glory.
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.
- Presence. God walked in the garden seeking Adam's company; His approach never changed — the pair who fled did.
- Distrust. Their hiding exposed hearts already turned away, and minds so dark they thought they could hide from God.
- Coverings. Fig leaves and trees are both pieces of creation; neither can shield a sinner from the Creator.
- Fear. Repentance needs faith, and faith was absent. Adam believed the serpent's lie, so he could not think of God as love.
- Seeking. God came looking for the lost, and the one who knows Christ in the glory no longer hides when He speaks.
And Jehovah Elohim called to Man, and said to him, Where art thou?
Sin had just entered the world, and the first thing God said to the guilty pair was not a verdict but a question. God comes into the garden looking for the man who is hiding from Him. Here the Bible's picture of a seeking God begins.
The visit itself was ordinary; the hiding was not. One writer asks why the meeting could not go on as before:
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.
These are the first words God spoke after the fall. One writer finds man's ruin and God's grace packed into them:
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.
Adam is later sent out of Eden. But the distance was there before the sentence:
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.
The same writer sets this question beside the one God put to Cain:
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?"
This call sets the pattern for how God deals with sinners right through to the Gospels:
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).
God could have ended it there. That He called instead points ahead:
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.
- God comes. The visit was normal; the hiding was new. Nothing had changed on God's side, so the man must account for the change on his.
- God asks. "Where are you?" is a wider question than "What have you done?" It asks where a man stands, not only what he has done.
- God convicts. Adam had already fled; his conscience banished him before God passed any sentence. The question made that plain.
- God seeks. The same words prove two things at once — that man was lost, and that God had come after him. Making man was power; seeking him was grace.
- God saves. He could have discarded the pair on the spot. That He called instead is the first sign of the seeking Saviour who later said He came to find the lost.
And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I feared, because I am naked; and I hid myself.
Adam is hiding when God calls him, and this is his answer. He names his fear and his nakedness, but never the sin behind them.
The word is not about clothing. One writer reads it in the light of verse 21, where God clothes the pair.
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.
Adam had already made himself a covering before this moment. He calls himself naked anyway.
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.
Something began in Adam that day which every human being since has carried. Its birth date is the fall.
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.
Notice what Adam names, and what he leaves out.
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.
The expulsion from Eden comes later in the chapter. This verse shows the separation had already happened from man's side.
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.
Before the chapter ends, God answers the problem Adam confessed here.
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!
One writer traces that garment back to a death, and forward to Christ.
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.
- Exposed. "Naked" describes Adam's moral condition before a holy God. It is not a clothing problem. The exposure lasts until God clothes him.
- Covered badly. The fig-leaf apron was already on him. It satisfied neither God nor his own conscience. Man's religion can only offer a hiding place.
- Afraid. Conscience was born at the fall, and it has made cowards of all who carry it ever since.
- Evasive. Adam admits the effects of sin — fear and nakedness — but never the sin itself, and then blames his wife and God.
- Clothed. Man's apron had no stitch from God. God's coat of skins had no stitch from man. It came from an animal put to death — a picture of Christ, who alone can cover our moral nakedness.
And he said, Who told thee that thou art naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree of which I commanded thee not to eat?
God speaks to Adam again, and the question moves from where he is to what he has done. Two questions stand side by side in one verse: one about the shame Adam has just confessed, the other about the one command God gave him.
The Creator was not gathering information. One writer asks who these questions were really for.
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 same writer shows why the order matters, and that this pairing runs through the rest of Scripture.
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.
The questions single out one man. One commentator makes that the whole point.
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?
Adam had already made himself a covering. God's question shows how little it was worth.
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.
Adam was afraid. But fear is not repentance.
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.
One commentator describes the answer Adam could have given.
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.
What Adam did with the question, we still do.
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!
- Asked, not accused. God did not need the answer. He asked for Adam's sake, to bring him to admit his condition in front of his Creator.
- Asked twice. The first question touches the state he is in. The second touches the act that caused it — the same double appeal Scripture makes to the thirsty and the heavy laden.
- Asked alone. Each question is personal. It sets one man before God with nothing between them but his sin.
- Asked of a self-condemned man. His sense of nakedness proved his guilt. The fig leaves that hid him from his wife counted for nothing once God spoke.
- Answered badly. He could have repented. Instead he chose self-justification and blame — his wife, and behind her, God. We have been doing it ever since.
And Man said, The woman, whom thou hast given [to be] with me, she gave me of the tree, and I ate.
God asks a plain question, and Adam answers with an accusation. His reply names the woman, and behind her the One who gave her.
Adam admits that he ate. He will not own the sin as his own.
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.
Every fact in Adam's sentence is true. That is what makes it so slippery.
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.
Adam turns God's gift into a charge against the Giver. He is still too frightened to face Him.
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.
God does not argue with Adam's plea. He picks it up and turns it into the verdict.
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.
Confession was still open to Adam at that moment.
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.
Christ also speaks of people God gave to Him. Not one of them was lost.
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.
- Given. God gave the woman to Adam. Sin turns the gift into an excuse and the Giver into the accused.
- Guilty. Adam's words were accurate on the surface and false underneath. He did not deny the sin; he passed it on.
- Judged. God does not debate the excuse. He convicts by it: "because you have listened" turns the plea into the verdict.
- Missed. Honest confession might have opened the door to grace right there; the excuse kept it shut.
- Kept. Adam refused to guard the one given to him. Christ says of those given to Him that He kept them all — and bore the judgment to do it.
And Jehovah Elohim said to the woman, What is this thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent deceived me, and I ate.
God has already questioned the man; now He turns to the woman and asks what she has done. Her answer is true, and still not a confession — the way people have answered God ever since.
Religion can be kept up without ever troubling the conscience. God's question goes straight there, and He asks Cain the same thing later.
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).
One writer traces both halves of her reply — an admission, then a blame — and why people still answer this way.
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.
Notice what her answer leaves out.
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.
Another writer sums up the gap in one line.
All this is the truth; but conscience is not before God.
Both the man and the woman admit the act. What is missing is any sorrow over what the act did to 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.
Two New Testament passages confirm her account, and one writer measures what that fall cost.
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.
God does not argue with either plea.
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.
One writer turns the scene on the reader.
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.
- Question — God's "What have you done?" goes straight to the conscience. The first question asked where man stood; this one asks what he did.
- Answer — Her reply is true, and Scripture later confirms it: the serpent did deceive her.
- Gap — Accuracy is not confession. She never says "I have sinned," so conscience is still not before God.
- Verdict — God does not debate the excuse. He judges them out of their own mouths, because choosing the tempter's word over His is the sin itself.
- Us — We still accuse others and excuse ourselves. No plea hides anything from God. Safety lies only in the death of the Lord Jesus Christ.
And Jehovah Elohim said to the serpent, Because thou hast done this, be thou cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field. On thy belly shalt thou go, and eat dust all the days of thy life.
God speaks to the serpent first, before a word to the woman or the man — and He asks it nothing. Does the sentence fall on a real animal or on the enemy behind it, and why is dust its food?
God questioned Adam and Eve. He asked the serpent nothing. One writer finds the reason in the questions themselves:
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.
Another puts the same contrast in terms of who started the trouble and who was caught in it:
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.
The form the enemy took was itself part of God's dealing:
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.
The serpent had just succeeded. The sentence turns that success into ruin:
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.
The word is not picked at random. Scripture uses it in one settled sense:
"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.
Commentators differ over how far verse 14 reaches. Some hold that God sentences the animal itself here:
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.
Others see something deeper pictured in the outward sentence. Even so, they hold that verse 14 is not the final doom:
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 …"
When creation is finally at peace, one creature keeps its sentence:
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.
God's first word of grace does not go to Adam or Eve:
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.
- Cause. God asks the serpent nothing. His questions call for confession, and He asks them only where there is mercy.
- Form. God would not let the tempter appear above man. He came as an animal man had already named, so the fall gave away man's own place of rule.
- Sentence. Belly and dust mean total humiliation. The winner is the one brought lowest: Satan ends as hell's most wretched, not its prince.
- Reach. Writers differ. Some see only the literal serpent here; others see a deeper picture. All agree the lake of fire is not yet in view.
- Result. The curse is never lifted. The serpent stays as a lasting reminder of sin — and inside this very sentence on the enemy, God speaks His first word of grace.
And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; he shall crush thy head, and thou shalt crush his heel.
After the fall, God speaks first to the serpent, not to the guilty pair. Inside that sentence of judgment lies the first announcement of a Deliverer. Who is this "seed of the woman," why is He the woman's and not the man's, and when is the serpent's head crushed?
Readers often call this verse the first promise. One commentator points out that the Bible never uses that word here:
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.
Adam had just blamed his wife and, through her, God Himself. So the hope that reaches him rests on Someone else:
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!
The phrase breaks the pattern of every genealogy that follows in the Bible.
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.
That wording also rules out any patching up of the old order:
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.
The verse speaks of the serpent's seed as well as the woman's, and one writer reads the sentence on two levels at once:
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.
The same writer notes that the pronoun "it" is masculine in Hebrew, because the verb is masculine — pointing to Christ, not to Mary, as some have argued.
The two wounds are not equal, and the choice of body part is deliberate.
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.
Commentators differ over how much of the head-crushing has already happened. Some place it at the cross. Others point out that Satan still goes about, so the word is not yet fully carried out. One writer sets the two stages side by side:
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.
Believers are not spectators in this. One writer comments on a later verse that says God will soon crush Satan under the feet of believers:
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.
- Spoken — the words are addressed to the serpent, not to Adam. Grace reaches the guilty man through Another, and rests on Him alone.
- Second Man — the contest is between the serpent and the second Man, never the first. Adam is sentenced; Christ is the object of promise.
- Woman's — seed always belongs to the male, so this phrase stands outside nature. It is the first hint of the virgin birth, and a new beginning instead of a repaired old one.
- Seeds — from Cain onward, two families run through history. The hostility flows from the wicked toward the righteous.
- Heel, then head — the wound to the Victor was real but limited. The wound to the serpent is fatal. It began at the cross and ends in the lake of fire.