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.