And Man called his wife's name Eve; because she is the mother of all living.
God has just passed sentence on the serpent, the woman and the man, and the ground is cursed. Under that sentence Adam gives his wife a name that means life — and commentators read that one act as faith.
Adam had already named her once, in the garden, out of their relationship to each other. This name is different:
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.
The name Adam chose is a Hebrew word:
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."
Nothing Adam could see supported the name he chose.
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?
The name he did not choose is as telling as the one he did:
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.
Adam's words did not match his surroundings.
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.
The title stretches past the human family to one particular descendant.
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 speaks of life. Then God acts.
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.
Scripture never says outright whether Adam was saved. One writer meets that objection: "not less surely would it be an error to think that none believed of old except those who are expressly named" (The Bible Treasury). Another agrees, but will not press it further:
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.
- Word first. Adam had heard God's promise about the woman's Seed. The name he gives rests on that word alone, not on anything he could see.
- Faith next. He names her Life while under a death sentence. "Mother of all dying" would have been the natural thing to say.
- Life relocated. Death was all around him, yet Adam talked only of life, because all life was in the promised Redeemer.
- Reach widened. She is mother of the whole human race. She is also mother of the One born of woman, who gives life to everyone who believes.
- God responds. Faith speaks of life, and God at once clothes the pair in skins — their own covering replaced by His.
And Jehovah Elohim made Adam and his wife coats of skin, and clothed them.
This verse closes the account of the fall. God has passed judgment on the serpent, the woman and the man. Then, before He drives them out of the garden, He dresses them Himself. Two questions sit under the sentence: why did the fig leaves have to go, and where did the skins come from?
Adam and Eve had already tried to deal with their own nakedness. Their own covering worked only until God came near.
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.
The word "skins" is the key to the whole verse.
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.
Who died first matters as much as that a death occurred.
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 action of the verse also supplies a word that runs through the rest of the Bible.
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.
The order of events carries its own message: the clothing comes before the expulsion.
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.
Two garments appear in the chapter, and the difference between them is who did the sewing.
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.
Two coverings appear in this chapter, and the difference is who provided each one.
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.
This first covering pointed forward, and the light on it kept growing.
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.
- Exposed — fig leaves hid them from each other, never from God; the moment He drew near they knew they were naked.
- Death — skins cost a life, and the first death after the fall fell on the sacrifice, not on the guilty pair.
- Covered — the Hebrew word behind atonement means to cover, so God puts sin out of His sight for ever.
- God's hand — the robe covered them because God provided it; the apron failed because man did.
- Rest — clothed by God, Adam had no reason to hide, and this gospel at Eden's door points on to the Lamb.
And Jehovah Elohim said, Behold, Man is become as one of us, to know good and evil. And now, lest he stretch out his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever ...!
God's last words in Eden are not a sentence of doom but a strange observation: man now knows good and evil, and so he must not reach the tree of life. Why is that new likeness to God a danger, and why call it mercy to drive him out of the garden?
Some readers hear the line as sarcasm — God mocking a creature who reached too high. Commentators reject that reading and take the words at face value.
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.
Another writer takes that plural "Us" as pointing to the Trinity, and marks how narrow the likeness is.
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.
Before he disobeyed, Adam had no way of weighing right against wrong from the inside — and did not need one.
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.
God's words here repeat the serpent's promise almost word for word. The quote below uses an older wording of that promise: "You shall be as gods."
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.
Barring the tree of life looks like the harshest stroke of the chapter. Commentators read it the other way round.
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.
Why would endless life now be a curse and not a gift?
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.
The "lest" of this verse has a counterpart in John 3.
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.
- Real, not mocking. The likeness God names is genuine as far as it goes: man now knows good and evil, a knowledge innocence never had.
- Real, but ruined. He knows the difference and leans to the wrong side — a likeness to God without the power to please Him.
- Real, so fatal. Endless life in that state would have locked misery in for ever. So God stopped the hand before it reached the tree.
- Shut out in mercy. God had already passed sentence. Driving man out was grace, guarding him from a state he could never escape.
- Opened in Christ. Eden's gate shut so man would not live for ever in sin. The Son of Man was lifted up so that sinners might live for ever.
Therefore Jehovah Elohim sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from which he was taken.
God sends Adam out of Eden, and the ground he must now work is the ground he came from. Two questions follow: was this only punishment, and what did the man lose besides a place to live?
Two departures stand behind this verse: Adam's own flight from God, and God's judicial sentence on him.
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.
Shutting the way to the tree of life was mercy as well as justice. To fix Adam forever in his fallen state would have been the real disaster.
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 garden held a tree that tested obedience and a separate tree that gave life. The test and the gift were never the same thing.
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.
"To work the ground from which he was taken" describes a demotion.
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.
Everyday labour became a standing witness to what had happened. Later, Cain would try to bring God an offering out of that very labour:
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.
This raises a fair question: did work itself begin as a punishment?
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.
The gate stayed shut, but there is still a way to paradise, and it is a Person.
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.
- Sent — Adam ran from God before God removed him. The expulsion made official a separation he had already chosen.
- Spared — the barred tree of life kept a sinner from living forever in his misery. Judgment and mercy travel together here.
- Separated — the tree of testing and the tree of life were never the same thing. Failing the test did not decide how God gives life.
- Sweat — the lord of the garden became a drudge on the ground. Work was his before the fall; toil and thorns now tell the story of sin.
- Saviour — no one gets back into Eden. Christ is the way to a paradise that never passes away, and it has only one tree.
And he drove out Man; and he set the Cherubim, and the flame of the flashing sword, toward the east of the garden of Eden, to guard the way to the tree of life.
Genesis 3 ends with God shutting Eden: He drives the man out and posts guards at the tree of life. Two questions follow: why God used force against His own creature, and whether the closed way ever opens again.
Earlier in the chapter Adam had already hidden himself among the trees. What happens here is different in kind, because it is God who now acts and settles the case.
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.
Cherubim appear later in Scripture over the mercy-seat. Readers often carry that gentler picture back into Eden. One writer refuses that reading, and points to where the mercy in this chapter lies.
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.
Commentators differ on what to call the barring of the tree. Some call the shut gate itself a kindness, because of what a fallen man would have become if he had eaten and lived on.
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.
Another writer takes this further, to the cross.
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!
When the cherubim next appear, they are gold figures on the lid of the ark. The way they face changes the picture.
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.
The gate stays shut. But the story does not end there.
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.
What the guarded tree denied Adam, the risen Christ now promises — on better terms than Eden.
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.
- Driven. Adam ran from God first; then God put him out. This was a judicial act, not just a change of address.
- Guarded. The cherubim at the gate stand for God's title in glory and judgment. The mercy in this chapter lies elsewhere — in the clothing God made at the cost of another life.
- Spared. Blocking the tree stopped fallen man from making his misery last for ever. It also left open the door of death, through which Christ would later come.
- Turned. The next cherubim stand on the mercy-seat. Their faces look inward, at gold sprinkled with blood — the same guardians, now watching atonement instead of the sinner.
- Gained. There is no way back to Eden. Christ is the way forward. A crucified Christ sheathes the sword, and the overcomer eats in a paradise better than the one that was lost.