Now the serpent was more subtle than any animal of the field which Yahweh God had made. He said to the woman, “Has God really said, ‘You shall not eat of any tree of the garden’?”
The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees of the garden, but not the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden. God has said, ‘You shall not eat of it. You shall not touch it, lest you die.’ ”
The serpent said to the woman, “You won’t really die, for God knows that in the day you eat it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took some of its fruit, and ate. Then she gave some to her husband with her, and he ate it, too. Their eyes were opened, and they both knew that they were naked. They sewed fig leaves together, and made coverings for themselves. They heard Yahweh God’s voice walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of Yahweh God among the trees of the garden.
Yahweh God called to the man, and said to him, “Where are you?”
The man said, “I heard your voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; so I hid myself.”
God said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?”
The man said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit from the tree, and I ate it.”
John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain On vv1, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 1. Now the serpent was more subtil In this…
1. Now the serpent was more subtil In this chapter, Moses explains, that man, after he had been deceived by Satan revolted from his Maker, became entirely changed and so degenerate, that the image of God, in which he had been formed, was obliterated. He then declares, that the whole world, which had been created for the sake of man, fell together with him from its primary original; and that in this ways much of its native excellence was destroyed. But here many and arduous questions arise. For when Moses says that the serpent was crafty beyond all other animals, he seems to intimate, that it had been induced to deceive man, not by the instigation of Satan, but by its own malignity. I answer, that the innate subtlety of the serpent did not prevent Satan from making use of the animal for the purpose of effecting the destruction of man. For since he required an instrument, he chose from among animals that which he saw would be most suitable for him: finally, he carefully contrived the method by which the snares he was preparing might the more easily take the mind of Eve by surprise. Hitherto, he had held no communication with men; he, therefore, clothed himself with the person of an animal, under which he might open for himself the way of access. Yet it is not agreed among interpreters in what sense the serpent is said to be ערום (aroom, subtle,) by which word the Hebrews designate the prudent as well as the crafty. Some, therefore, would take it in a good, others in a bad sense. I think, however, Moses does not so much point out a fault as attribute praise to nature because God had endued this beast with such singular skill, as rendered it acute and quick-sighted beyond all others. But Satan perverted to his own deceitful purposes the gift which had been divinely imparted to the serpent. Some captiously cavil, that more acuteness is now found in many other animals. To whom I answer, that there would be nothing absurd in saying, that the gift which had proved so destructive to the human race has been withdrawn from the serpent: just, as we shall hereafter see, other punishments were also inflicted upon it. Yet, in this description, writers on natural history do not materially differ from Moses, and experience gives the best answer to the objection; for the Lord does not in vain command his own disciples to be ‘prudent as serpents,’ (Matthew 10:16.) But it appears, perhaps, scarcely consonant with reason, that the serpent only should be here brought forward, all mention of Satan being suppressed. I acknowledge, indeed, that from this place alone nothing more can be collected than that men were deceived by the serpent. But the testimonies of Scripture are sufficiently numerous, in which it is plainly asserted that the serpent was only the mouth of the devil; for not the serpent but the devil is declared to be ‘the father of lies,’ the fabricator of imposture, and the author of death. The question, however, is not yet solved, why Moses has kept back the name of Satan. I willingly subscribe to the opinion of those who maintain that the Holy Spirit then purposely used obscure figures, because it was fitting that full and clear light should be reserved for the kingdom of Christ. In the meantime, the prophets prove that they were well acquainted with the meaning of Moses, when, in different places, they cast the blame of our ruin upon the devil. We have elsewhere said, that Moses, by a homely and uncultivated style, accommodates what he delivers to the capacity of the people; and for the best reason; for not only had he to instruct an untaught race of men, but the existing age of the Church was so puerile, that it was unable to receive any higher instruction. There is, therefore, nothing absurd in the supposition, that they, whom, for the time, we know and confess to have been but as infants, were fed with milk. Or (if another comparison be more acceptable) Moses is by no means to be blamed, if he, considering the office of schoolmaster as imposed upon him, insists on the rudiments suitable to children. They who have an aversion to this simplicity, must of necessity condemn the whole economy of God in governing the Church. This, however, may suffice us, that the Lord, by the secret illumination of his Spirit, supplied whatever was wanting of clearness in outward expressions; as appears plainly from the prophets, who saw Satan to be the real enemy of the human race, the contriver of all evils, furnished with every kind of fraud and villainy to injure and destroy. Therefore, though the impious make a noise, there is nothing justly to offend us in this mode of speaking by which Moses describes Satan, the prince of iniquity, under the person of his servant and instrument, at the time when Christ, the Head of the Church, and the Sun of Righteousness, had not yet openly shone forth. Add to this, the baseness of human ingratitude is more clearly hence perceived, that when Adam and Eve knew that all animals were given, by the hand of God, into subjection to them, they yet suffered themselves to be led away by one of their own slaves into rebellion against God. As often as they beheld any one of the animals which were in the world, they ought to have been reminded both of the supreme authority, and of the singular goodness of God; but, on the contrary, when they saw the serpent an apostate from his Creator, not only did they neglect to punish it, but, in violation of all lawful order, they subjected and devoted themselves to it, as participators in the same apostasy. What can be imagined more dishonorable than this extreme depravity? Thus, I understand the name of the serpent, not allegorically, as some foolishly do, but in its genuine sense.
Many persons are surprised that Moses simply, and as if abruptly, relates that men have fallen by the impulse of Satan into eternal destruction, and yet never by a single word explains how the tempter himself had revolted from God. And hence it has arisen, that fanatical men have dreamed that Satan was created evil and wicked as he is here described. But the revolt of Satan is proved by other passages of Scripture; and it is an impious madness to ascribe to God the creation of any evil and corrupt nature; for when he had completed the world, he himself gave this testimony to all his works, that they were very good. Wherefore, without controversy, we must conclude, that the principle of evil with which Satan was endued was not from nature, but from defection; because he had departed from God, the fountain of justice and of all rectitude. But Moses here passes over Satan’s fall, because his object is briefly to narrate the corruption of human nature; to teach us that Adam was not created to those multiplied miseries under which all his posterity suffer, but that he fell into them by his own fault. In reflecting on the number and nature of those evils to which they are obnoxious, men will often be unable to restrain themselves from raging and murmuring against God, whom they rashly censure for the just punishment of their sin. These are their well-known complaints that God has acted more mercifully to swine and dogs than to them. Whence is this, but that they do not refer the miserable and ruined state, under which we languish, to the sin of Adam as they ought? But what is far worse, they fling back upon God the charge of being the cause of all the inward vices of the mind, (such as its horrible blindness, contumacy against God, wicked desires, and violent propensities to evil;) as if the whole perverseness of our disposition had not been adventitious. The design, therefore, of Moses was to show, in a few words, how greatly our present condition differs from our first original, in order that we may learn, with humble confession of our fault, to bewail our evils. We ought not then to be surprised, that, while intent on the history he purposed to relate, he does not discuss every topic which may be desired by any person whatever.
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We must now enter on that question by which vain and inconstant minds are greatly agitated; namely, Why God permitted Adam to be tempted, seeing that the sad result was by no means hidden from him? That He now relaxes Satan’s reins, to allow him to tempt us to sin, we ascribe to judgment and to vengeance, in consequence of man’s alienation from himself; but there was not the same reason for doing so when human nature was yet pure and upright. God, therefore, permitted Satan to tempt man, who was conformed to His own image, and not yet implicated in any crime, having, moreover, on this occasion, allowed Satan the use of an animal which otherwise would never have obeyed him; and what else was this, than to arm an enemy for the destruction of man? This seems to have been the ground on which the Manichaeans maintained the existence of two principles. Therefore, they have imagined that Satan, not being in subjection to God, laid snares for man in opposition to the divine will, and was superior not to man only, but also to God himself. Thus, for the sake of avoiding what they dreaded as an absurdity, they have fallen into execrable prodigies of error; such as, that there are two Gods, and not one sole Creator of the world, and that the first God has been overcome by his antagonist. All, however, who think piously and reverently concerning the power of God, acknowledge that the evil did not take place except by his permission. For, in the first place, it must be conceded, that God was not in ignorance of the event which was about to occur; and then, that he could have prevented it, had he seen fit to do so. But in speaking of permission, I understand that he had appointed whatever he wished to be done. Here, indeed, a difference arises on the part of many, who suppose Adam to have been so left to his own free will, that God would not have him fall. They take for granted, what I allow them, that nothing is less probable than that God should he regarded as the cause of sin, which he has avenged with so many and such severe penalties. When I say, however, that Adam did not fall without the ordination and will of God, I do not so take it as if sin had ever been pleasing to Him, or as if he simply wished that the precept which he had given should be violated. So far as the fall of Adam was the subversion of equity, and of well-constituted order, so far as it was contumacy against the Divine Law-giver, and the transgression of righteousness, certainly it was against the will of God; yet none of these things render it impossible that, for a certain cause, although to us unknown, he might will the fall of man. It offends the ears of some, when it is said God willed this fall; but what else, I pray, is the permission of Him, who has the power of preventing, and in whose hand the whole matter is placed, but his will? I wish that men would rather suffer themselves to be judged by God, than that, with profane temerity, they should pass judgment upon him; but this is the arrogance of the flesh to subject God to its own test. I hold it as a settled axiom, that nothing is more unsuitable to the character of God than for us to say that man was created by Him for the purpose of being placed in a condition of suspense and doubt; wherefore I conclude, that, as it became the Creator, he had before determined with himself what should be man’s future condition. Hence the unskilful rashly infer, that man did not sin by free choice. For he himself perceives, being convicted by the testimony of his own conscience, that he has been too free in sinning. Whether he sinned by necessity, or by contingency, is another question; respecting which see the Institution, and the treatise on Predestination.
And he said unto the woman The impious assail this passage with their sneers, because Moses ascribes eloquence to an animal which only faintly hisses with its forked tongue. And first they ask, at what time animals began to be mute, if they then had a distinct language, and one common to ourselves and them. The answer is ready; the serpent was not eloquent by nature, but when Satan, by divine permission, procured it as a fit instrument for his use, he uttered words also by its tongue, which God himself permitted. Nor do I doubt that Eve perceived it to be extraordinary, and on that account received with the greater avidity what she admired. Now, if men decide that whatever is unwonted must be fabulous, God could work no miracle. Here God, by accomplishing a work above the ordinary course of nature, constrains us to admire his power. If then, under this very pretext, we ridicule the power of God, because it is not familiar to us, are we not excessively preposterous? Besides, if it seems incredible that beasts should speak at the command of God, how has man the power of speech, but because God has formed his tongue? The Gospel declares, that voices were uttered in the air, without a tongue, to illustrate the glory of Christ; this is less probable to carnal reason, than that speech should be elicited from the mouth of brute animals. What then can the petulance of impious men find here deserving of their invective? In short, whosoever holds that God in heaven is the Ruler of the world, will not deny his power over the creatures, so that he can teach brute animals to speak when he pleases, just as he sometimes renders eloquent men speechless. Moreover the craftiness of Satan betrays itself in this, that he does not directly assail the man, but approaches him, as through a mine, in the person of his wife. This insidious method of attack is more than sufficiently known to us at the present day, and I wish we might learn prudently to guard ourselves against it. For he warily insinuates himself at that point at which he sees us to be the least fortified, that he may not be perceived till he should have penetrated where he wished. The woman does not flee from converse with the serpent, because hitherto no dissension had existed; she, therefore, accounted it simply as a domestic animal.
The question occurs, what had impelled Satan to contrive the destruction of man? Curious sophists have feigned that he burned with envy, when he foresaw that the Son of God was to be clothed in human flesh; but the speculation is frivolous. For since the Son of God was made man in order to restore us, who were already lost, from our miserable over throw, how could that be foreseen which would never have happened unless man had sinned? If there be room for conjectures, it is more probable that he was driven by a kind of fury, (as the desperate are wont to be,) to hurry man away with himself into a participation of eternal ruin. But it becomes us to be content with this single reasons that since he was the adversary of God, he attempted to subvert the order established by Him. And, because he could not drag God from his throne, he assailed man, in whom His image shone. He knew that with the ruin of man the most dreadful confusion would be produced in the whole world, as indeed it happened, and therefore he endeavored, in the person of man, to obscure the glory of God. Rejecting, therefore, all vain figments, let us hold fast this doctrine, which is both simple and solid.
Yea, has God said? This sentence is variously expounded and even distorted, partly because it is in itself obscure, and partly because of the ambiguous import of the Hebrew particle. The expression אף כי (aph ki,) sometimes signifies “although” or “indeed,” and sometimes, “how much more.” David Kimchi takes it in this last sense, and thinks that many words had passed between them on both sides, before the serpent descended to this point; namely, that having calumniated God on other accounts, he at length thus concludes, Hence it much more appears how envious and malignant he is towards you, because he has interdicted you from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. But this exposition is not only forced, it is proved to be false by the reply of Eve. More correct is the explanation of the Chaldean paraphrast, ‘Is it true that God has forbidden? etc.’ Again, to some this appears a simple, to others an ironical interrogation. It would be a simple interrogation, if it injected a doubt in the following manner: ‘Can it be, that God should forbid the eating of any tree whatever?’ but it would be ironical, if used for the purpose of dissipating vain fear; as, ‘It greatly concerns God, indeed, whether you eat of the tree or not! It is, therefore, ridiculous that you should think it to be forbidden you!’ I subscribe the more freely to the former opinion, because there is greater probability that Satan, in order to deceive more covertly, would gradually proceed with cautious prevarications to lead the woman to a contempt of the divine precept. There are some who suppose that Satan expressly denies the word which our first parents had heard, to have been the word of God. Others think, (with whom I rather agree,) that, under the pretext of inquiring into the cause, he would indirectly weaken their confidence in the word. And certainly the old interpreter has translated the expression, ‘Why has God said?’ which, although I do not altogether approve, yet I have no doubt that the serpent urges the woman to seek out the cause, since otherwise he would not have been able to draw away her mind from God. Very dangerous is the temptation, when it is suggested to us, that God is not to be obeyed except so far as the reason of his command is apparent. The true rule of obedience is, that we being content with a bare command, should persuade ourselves that whatever he enjoins is just and right. But whosoever desires to be wise beyond measure, him will Satan, seeing he has cast off all reverence for God, immediately precipitate into open rebellion. As it respects grammatical construction, I think the expression ought to be translated, ‘Has God even said?’ or, ‘Is it so that God has said?’ Yet the artifice of Satan is to be noticed, for he wished to inject into the woman a doubt which might induce her to believe that not to be the word of God, for which a plausible reason did not manifestly appear.
Of every tree of the garden Commentators offer a double interpretation of these words. The former supposes Satan, for the sake of increasing envy, to insinuate that all the trees had been forbidden. “Has God indeed enjoined that you should not dare to touch any tree?” The other interpretation, however, is, “Have you not then the liberty granted you of eating promiscuously from whatever tree you please?” The former more accords with the disposition of the devil, who would malignantly amplify the prohibitions and seems to be sanctioned by Eve’s reply. For when she says, We do eat of all, one only excepted, she seems to repel the calumny concerning a general prohibition. But because the latter sense of the passage, which suggests the question concerning the simple and bare prohibition of God, was more apt to deceive, it is more credible that Satan, with his accustomed guile, should have begun his temptation from this point, ‘Is it possible for God to be unwilling that you should gather the fruit of any tree whatever?’ The answer of the woman, that only one tree was forbidden, she means to be a defense of the command; as if she would deny that it ought to seem harsh or burdensome, since God had only excepted one single tree out of so great an abundance and variety as he had granted to them. Thus, in these words there will be a concession, that one tree was indeed forbidden; then, the refutation of a calumny, because it is not arduous or difficult to abstain from one tree, when others, without number are supplied, of which the use is permitted. It was impossible for Eve more prudently or more courageously to repel the assault of Satan, than by objecting against him, that she and her husband had been so bountifully dealt with by the Lord, that the advantages granted to them were abundantly sufficient, for she intimates that they would be most ungrateful if, instead of being content with such affluence they should desire more than was lawful. When she says, God has forbidden them to eat or to touch, some suppose the second word to be added for the purpose of charging God with too great severity, because he prohibited them even from the touch But I rather understand that she hitherto remained in obedience, and expressed her pious disposition by anxiously observing the precept of God; only, in proclaiming the punishment, she begins to give ways by inserting the adverb “perhaps,” when God has certainly pronounced, “Ye shall die the death.” For although with the Hebrews פן (pen) does not always imply doubt, yet, since it is generally taken in this sense, I willingly embrace the opinion that the woman was beginning to waver. Certainly, she had not death so immediately before her eyes, should she become disobedient to God, as, she ought to have had. She clearly proves that her perception of the true danger of death was distant and cold.
John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 12 God suffered Satan to make the serpent his instrument…
God suffered Satan to make the serpent his instrument and to speak in him.
As Satan can change himself into an Angel of light, so did he abuse the wisdom of the serpent to deceive man.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv1–12 Gen 3:1 Now the serpent was more subtil than…
Gen 3:1 Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?
Ver. 1. Now the serpent was more subtile, &c.] And so a more fit instrument of that old serpent the devil, that deceiveth all the world. {Rev 12:9} {a} Good natural parts abused, prove rather as pressmoney to impiety, {b} as he phraseth it, and their wisdom was the crime counselor, {culpa suasoria} as Ambrose speaketh. Wit unsanctified is a fit tool for the devil to work with. Neither is there a likelier anvil in all the shop of hell, whereon to forge mischief, than one that is learned and lewd, wittily wicked. {ingeniose nequam}
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And he said,] that is, the devil in the serpent, as the angel in Balaam’s ass. {Satan istius prima fabulae poeta fuit, serpens histrio.} By the ear he brought death into the world; and God, to cross him, brings life in by the same door; for it is, "Hear, and your souls shall live". {Isa 55:3} The dragon bites the elephant’s ear, and thence sucks his blood; because he knows that to be the only place which he cannot reach with his trunk to defend. {c} So here, that great red dragon dealt with miserable mankind, setting first upon the woman as the weaker vessel - where the hedge is lowest, there the beast leaps over - and so climbing by Adam’s rib to his heart, as by a ladder, as I said before, out of St Gregory.
Yea, hath God said?] In the Chaldee, Is it true that God hath said? A concise expression, implying that this was not the first of their discourse; something had been said before. {d} It is not safe parleying with the devil. {Satan et si semel videatur verax, millies est mendax et semper fallax.} Halter him up therefore, and stop his mouth {e} soon, as our Saviour did. Or do as the French say in their proverb, When the Spaniard comes to parley of peace, then double bolt the door. The Hollanders are said to make no conditions with the Spaniard, but such as are made at sea, and scaled with great ordinance, &c. {f} He shoots with Satan in his own bow that thinks by parleying with him to put him off.
Hath God said, Ye shall not eat?] Here he began his assault upon our first parents; here, upon Christ, {Mat 4:3; Mat 3:17} and here he doth still upon us; endeavonring to elevate {g} the truth and certainty of God’s word, and to weaken our faith in his precepts, promises, and menaces. And here, if he take us out of our trenches, if he can but wring this sword of the Spirit out of our hands he may do what he will with us. Get but the heretics, said that subtle sophister, out of the paper walls of the Scriptures, into the open fields of fathers and councils, and ye shall soon do well enough with them. {h}
{a} πανουργος Theodotion; cui Paulus opponit την απλοτητα, "simplicity," {2Co 11:3} quam mundus vocat silliness, sheepishness.
{b} Authoramentum majoris infidelitatis. - Tertul.
{c} Pliny, l. viii., c. 25.
{d} Vide simile, Rth 2:21, in Hebraeo.
{e} φιμωθητι
{f} Greenham, Spec. Bel. Sacr.
{g} [Levis: make light of]
{h} Bristow’s Motives.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 The serpent; or rather, this or that serpent; for…
The serpent; or rather, this or that serpent; for here is an emphatical article, of which more by and by.
The serpent's eminent subtlety is noted both in sacred Scripture, Gen 49:17; Psa 58:5; Mat 10:16; 2Co 11:3, and by heathen authors, whereof these instances are given; that when it is assaulted, it secures its head; that it stops its ear at the charmer's voice; and the like. If it be yet said that some beasts are more subtle, and therefore this is not true; it may be replied,
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1. It is no wonder if the serpent for its instrumentality in man's sin hath lost the greatest part of its original subtlety, even as man's sin was punished with a great decay both of the natural endowments of his mind, wisdom, and knowledge, and of the beauty and glory of his body, the instrument of his sin. But this text may, and seems to be understood, not of the whole kind of serpents, but of this individual or particular serpent; for it is in the Hebrew Hannachash that serpent, or
this serpent, to signify that this was not only an ordinary serpent, but was acted and assisted by the devil, who is therefore called
that old serpent, Rev 12:9. And this seems most probable, partly from the following discourse, which is added as a proof of that which is here said concerning the serpent's subtlety; and that surely was not the discourse of a beast but of a devil; and partly from 2Co 11:3, which hath a manifest reference to this place, where the apostle affirmeth that the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtlety; not surely through that subtlety which is common to all serpents, but through that subtlety which was peculiar to this, as it was possessed and acted by the devil. There seems indeed to be an allusion here to the natural subtlety of all serpents; and the sense of the sacred penman may seem to be this, as if he said: The serpent indeed in itself is a subtle creature, and thought to be more subtle than any beast of the field; but howsoever this be in other serpents, it is certain that this serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field, as will appear by the following words. If it be said, the particle this, or that, is relative to something going before, whereas there is not a word about it in the foregoing words; it may be replied, that relative particles are often put without any antecedents, and the antecedents are left to be gathered not only out of the foregoing, but sometimes also out of the following passages, as is apparent from Exo 14:29; Num 7:19; 24:17 Psa 87:1; 105:19; 114:2; Pro 7:8; 14:26. So here, that serpent, that of which I am now to speak, whose discourse with the woman here followeth.
Quest. How the serpent could speak, and what the woman conceived of his speech, and why she was not affrighted, but continued the discourse with it? There be two satisfactory answers may be given to these questions.
1. The woman knew that there were spirits, and did freely and frequently converse with spirits or angels, who also did appear in some visible shape to her, which seems very credible; because in the following ages not only the angels, but even the blessed God himself, did in that manner converse with men. And as they afterwards used to appear in the shape of men, why might not one of them now appear to her, and converse with her, in the shape of a beautiful serpent? And why might she not freely and securely discourse with this which she thought to be one of those good angels, to whose care and tuition both she and her husband were committed? For I suppose the fall of the angels was yet unknown to her; and she thought this to be a good spirit, otherwise she would have declined all conversation with an apostate spirit.
2. A late ingenious and learned writer represents the matter thus, in which there is nothing absurd or incredible: The serpent makes his address to the woman with a short speech, and salutes her as the empress of the world, &c. She is not affrighted, because there was as yet no cause of fear, no sin, and therefore no danger, but wonders and inquires what this meant, and whether he was not a brute creature, and how he came to have speech and understanding? The serpent replies, that he was no better than a brute, and did indeed want both these gifts, but by eating of a certain fruit in this garden he got both. She asked what fruit and tree that was? Which when he showed her, she replied: This, no doubt, is an excellent fruit, and likely to make the eater of it wise; but God hath forbidden us this fruit. To which the serpent replies, as it here follows in the text. It is true, this discourse is not in the text; but it is confessed by Jewish and other expositors, that these words:
Yea, hath God said, & c., are a short and abrupt sentence, and that they were but the close of a foregoing discourse; which might well enough be either this now mentioned, or some other of a like nature. And that expression which follows, Gen 3:6, when the woman saw, i.e. understood that it was a tree to be desired to make one wise, may seem to imply, both that the serpent told her, and that she believed, that the speech and understanding of the serpent was the effect of the eating of that fruit; and therefore that if it raised him from a brute beast to the degree of a reasonable creature, it would elevate her from the human to a kind of Divine nature or condition.
He said unto the woman, who had upon some occasion retired from her husband for a season (an advantage which the crafty serpent quickly espieth, and greedily embraceth, and assaulteth her when she wanteth the help of her husband).
Yea, or, why, or, is it so, or, indeed, or, of a truth. It is scarce credible that God, who is so bountiful, and the sovereign good, and so abhorring from all parsimony and envy, should forbid you the enjoyment of any part of those provisions which he hath made for your use and comfort.
Of every tree, or, of any; for the word is ambiguous, which therefore the cunning adversary useth to hide the snare which he was laying for her.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain On vv1, 6, 9, 11 We have here an account of the temptation with…
We have here an account of the temptation with which Satan assaulted our first parents, to draw them into sin, and which proved fatal to them. Here observe,
I. The tempter, and that was the devil, in the shape and likeness of a serpent.
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1. It is certain it was the devil that beguiled Eve. The devil and Satan is the old serpent (Rev 12:9), a malignant spirit, by creation an angel of light and an immediate attendant upon God's throne, but by sin become an apostate from his first state and a rebel against God's crown and dignity. Multitudes of the angels fell; but this that attacked our first parents was surely the prince of the devils, the ring-leader in the rebellion: no sooner was he a sinner than he was a Satan, no sooner a traitor than a tempter, as one enraged against God and his glory and envious of man and his happiness. He knew he could not destroy man but by debauching him. Balaam could not curse Israel, but he could tempt Israel, Rev 2:14. The game therefore which Satan had to play was to draw our first parents to sin, and so to separate between them and their God. Thus the devil was, from the beginning, a murderer, and the great mischief-maker. The whole race of mankind had here, as it were, but one neck, and at that Satan struck. The adversary and enemy is that wicked one.
2. It was the devil in the likeness of a serpent. Whether it was only the visible shape and appearance of a serpent (as some think those were of which we read, Exo 7:12), or whether it was a real living serpent, actuated and possessed by the devil, is not certain: by God's permission it might be either. The devil chose to act his part in a serpent, (1.) Because it is a specious creature, has a spotted dappled skin, and then went erect. Perhaps it was a flying serpent, which seemed to come from on high as a messenger from the upper world, one of the seraphim; for the fiery serpents were flying, Isa 14:29. Many a dangerous temptation comes to us in gay fine colours that are but skin-deep, and seems to come from above; for Satan can seem an angel of light. And, (2.) Because it is a subtle creature; this is here taken notice of. Many instances are given of the subtlety of the serpent, both to do mischief and to secure himself in it when it is done. We are directed to be wise as serpents. But this serpent, as actuated by the devil, was no doubt more subtle than any other; for the devil, though he has lost the sanctity, retains the sagacity of an angel, and is wise to do evil. He knew of more advantage by making use of the serpent than we are aware of. Observe, There is not any thing by which the devil serves himself and his own interest more than by unsanctified subtlety. What Eve thought of this serpent speaking to her we are not likely to tell, when I believe she herself did not know what to think of it. At first, perhaps, she supposed it might be a good angel, and yet, afterwards, she might suspect something amiss. It is remarkable that the Gentile idolaters did many of them worship the devil in the shape and form of a serpent, thereby avowing their adherence to that apostate spirit, and wearing his colours.
II. The person tempted was the woman, now alone, and at a distance from her husband, but near the forbidden tree. It was the devil's subtlety, 1. To assault the weaker vessel with his temptations. Though perfect in her kind, yet we may suppose her inferior to Adam in knowledge, and strength, and presence of mind. Some think Eve received the command, not immediately from God, but at second hand by her husband, and therefore might the more easily be persuaded to discredit it. 2. It was his policy to enter into discourse with her when she was alone. Had she kept close to the side out of which she was lately taken, she would not have been so much exposed. There are many temptations, to which solitude gives great advantage; but the communion of saints contributes much tot heir strength and safety. 3. He took advantage by finding her near the forbidden tree, and probably gazing upon the fruit of it, only to satisfy her curiosity. Those that would not eat the forbidden fruit must not come near the forbidden tree. Avoid it, pass not by it, Pro 4:15. 4. Satan tempted Eve, that by her he might tempt Adam; so he tempted Job by his wife, and Christ by Peter. It is his policy to send temptations by unsuspected hands, and theirs that have most interest in us and influence upon us.
III. The temptation itself, and the artificial management of it. We are often, in scripture, told of our danger by the temptations of Satan, his devices (Co2 2:11), his depths (Rev 2:24), his wiles, Eph 6:11. The greatest instances we have of them are in his tempting of the two Adams, here, and Mt. 4. In this he prevailed, but in that he was baffled. What he spoke to them, of whom he had no hold by any corruption in them, he speaks in us by our own deceitful hearts and their carnal reasonings; this makes his assaults on us less discernible, but not less dangerous. That which the devil aimed at was to persuade Eve to cut forbidden fruit; and, to do this, he took the same method that he does still. He questioned whether it was a sin or no, Gen 3:1. He denied that there was any danger in it, Gen 3:4. He suggested much advantage by it, Gen 3:5. And these are his common topics.
1. He questioned whether it was a sin or no to eat of this tree, and whether really the fruit of it was forbidden. Observe,
(1.) He said to the woman, Yea, hath God said, You shall not eat? The first word intimated something said before, introducing this, and with which it is connected, perhaps some discourse Eve had with herself, which Satan took hold of, and grafted this question upon. In the chain of thoughts one thing strangely brings in another, and perhaps something bad at last. Observe here, [1.] He does not discover his design at first, but puts a question which seemed innocent: "I hear a piece of news, pray is it true? has God forbidden you to eat of this tree?" Thus he would begin a discourse, and draw her into a parley. Those that would be safe have need to be suspicious, and shy of talking with the tempter. [2.] He quotes the command fallaciously, as if it were a prohibition, not only of that tree, but of all. God had said, Of every tree you may eat, except one. He, by aggravating the exception, endeavours to invalidate the concession: Hath God said, You shall not eat of every tree? The divine law cannot be reproached unless it be first misrepresented. [3.] He seems to speak it tauntingly, upbraiding the woman with her shyness of meddling with that tree; as if he had said, "You are so nice and cautious, and so very precise, because God has said, 'You shall not eat." The devil, as he is a liar, so he is a scoffer, from the beginning: and the scoffers of the last days are his children. [4.] That which he aimed at in the first onset was to take off her sense of the obligation of the command. "Surely you are mistaken, it cannot be that God should tie you out from this tree; he would not do so unreasonable a thing." See here, That it is the subtlety of Satan to blemish the reputation of the divine law as uncertain or unreasonable, and so to draw people to sin; and that it is therefore our wisdom to keep up a firm belief of, and a high respect for, the command of God. Has God said, "You shall not lie, nor take his name in vain, nor be drunk," etc.? "Yes, I am sure he has, and it is well said, and by his grace I will abide by it, whatever the tempter suggests to the contrary."
(2.) In answer to this question the woman gives him a plain and full account of the law they were under, Gen 3:2, Gen 3:3. Here observe, [1.] It was her weakness to enter into discourse with the serpent. She might have perceived by his question that he had no good design, and should therefore have started back with a Get thee behind me, Satan, thou art an offence to me. But her curiosity, and perhaps her surprise, to hear a serpent speak, led her into further talk with him. Note, It is a dangerous thing to treat with a temptation, which ought at first to be rejected with disdain and abhorrence. The garrison that sounds a parley is not far from being surrendered. Those that would be kept from harm must keep out of harm's way. See Pro 14:7; Pro 19:27. [2.] It was her wisdom to take notice of the liberty God had granted them, in answer to his sly insinuation, as if God has put them into paradise only to tantalize them with the sight of fair but forbidden fruits. "Yea," says she, "we may eat of the fruit of the trees, thanks to our Maker, we have plenty and variety enough allowed us." Note, To prevent our being uneasy at the restraints of religion, it is good often to take a view of the liberties and comforts of it. [3.] It was an instance of her resolution that she adhered to the command, and faithfully repeated it, as of unquestionable certainty: "God hath said, I am confident he hath said it, You shall not eat of the fruit of this tree;" and that which she adds, Neither shall you touch it, seems to have been with a good intention, not (as some think) tacitly to reflect upon the command as too strict (Touch not, taste not and handle not), but to make a fence about it: "We must not eat, therefore we will not touch. It is forbidden in the highest degree, and the authority of the prohibition is sacred to us." [4.] She seems a little to waver about the threatening, and is not so particular and faithful in the repetition of that as of the precept. God has said, In the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die; all she makes of that is, Lest you die. Note, Wavering faith and wavering resolutions give great advantage to the tempter.
2. He denies that there was any danger in it, insisting that, though it might be the transgressing of a precept, yet it would not be the incurring of a penalty: You shall not surely die, Gen 3:4. "You shall not dying die," so the word is, in direct contradiction to what God had said. Either, (1.) "It is not certain that you shall die," so some. "It is not so sure as you are made to believe it is." Thus Satan endeavours to shake that which he cannot overthrow, and invalidates the force of divine threatenings by questioning the certainty of them; and, when once it is supposed possible that there may be falsehood or fallacy in any word of God, a door is then opened to downright infidelity. Satan teaches men first to doubt and then to deny; he makes them sceptics first, and so by degrees makes them atheists. Or, (2.) "It is certain you shall not die," so others. He avers his contradiction with the same phrase of assurance that God had used in ratifying the threatening. He began to call the precept in question (Gen 3:1), but, finding that the woman adhered to that, he quitted that battery, and made his second onset upon the threatening, where he perceived her to waver; for he is quick to spy all advantages, and to attack the wall where it is weakest: You shall not surely die. This was a lie, a downright lie; for, [1.] It was contrary to the word of God, which we are sure is true. See Jo1 2:21, Jo1 2:27. It was such a lie as gave the lie to God himself. [2.] It was contrary to his own knowledge. When he told them there was no danger in disobedience and rebellion he said that which he knew, by woeful experience, to be false. He had broken the law of his creation, and had found, to his cost, that he could not prosper in it; and yet he tells our first parents they shall not die. He concealed his own misery, that he might draw them into the like: thus he still deceives sinners into their own ruin. He tells them that, though they sin, they shall not die; and gains credit rather than God, who tells them, The wages of sin is death. Note, Hope of impunity is a great support to all iniquity, and impenitency in it. I shall have peace, though I walk in the imagination of my heart, Deu 29:19.
3. He promises them advantage by it, Gen 3:5. Here he follows his blow, and it was a blow at the root, a fatal blow to the tree we are branches of. He not only would undertake that they should be no losers by it, thus binding himself to save them from harm; but (if they would be such fools as to venture upon the security of one that had himself become a bankrupt) he undertakes they shall be gainers by it, unspeakable gainers. He could not have persuaded them to run the hazard of ruining themselves if he had not suggested to them a great probability of bettering themselves.
(1.) He insinuates to them the great improvements they would make by eating of this fruit. And he suits the temptation to the pure state they were now in, proposing to them, not any carnal pleasures or gratifications, but intellectual delights and satisfactions. These were the baits with which he covered his hook. [1.] "Your eyes shall be opened; you shall have much more of the power and pleasure of contemplation than now you have; you shall fetch a larger compass in your intellectual views, and see further into things than now you do." He speaks as if now they were but dim-sighted, and short-sighted, in comparison of what they would be then. [2.] "You shall be as gods, as Elohim, mighty gods; not only omniscient, but omnipotent too;" or, "You shall be as God himself, equal to him, rivals with him; you shall be sovereigns and no longer subjects, self-sufficient and no longer dependent." A most absurd suggestion! As if it were possible for creatures of yesterday to be like their Creator that was from eternity. [3.] "You shall know good and evil, that is, every thing that is desirable to be known." To support this part of the temptation, he abuses the name given to this tree: it was intended to teach the practical knowledge of good and evil, that is, of duty and disobedience; and it would prove the experimental knowledge of good and evil, that is, of happiness and misery. In these senses, the name of the tree was a warning to them not to eat of it; but he perverts the sense of it, and wrests it to their destruction, as if this tree would give them a speculative notional knowledge of the natures, kinds, and originals, of good and evil. And, [4.] All this presently: "In the day you eat thereof you will find a sudden and immediate change for the better." Now in all these insinuations he aims to beget in them, First, Discontent with their present state, as if it were not so good as it might be, and should be. Note, No condition will of itself bring contentment, unless the mind be brought to it. Adam was not easy, no, not in paradise, nor the angels in their first state, Jde 1:6. Secondly, Ambition of preferment, as if they were fit to be gods. Satan had ruined himself by desiring to be like the Most High (Isa 14:14), and therefore seeks to infect our first parents with the same desire, that he might ruin them too.
(2.) He insinuates to them that God had no good design upon them, in forbidding them this fruit: "For God doth know how much it will advance you; and therefore, in envy and ill-will to you, he hath forbidden it:" as if he durst not let them eat of that tree because then they would know their own strength, and would not continue in an inferior state, but be able to cope with him; or as if he grudged them the honour and happiness to which their eating of that tree would prefer them. Now, [1.] This was a great affront to God, and the highest indignity that could be done him, a reproach to his power, as if he feared his creatures, and much more a reproach to his goodness, as if he hated the work of his own hands and would not have those whom he has made to be made happy. Shall the best of men think it strange to be misrepresented and evil spoken of, when God himself is so? Satan, as he is the accuser of the brethren before God, so he accuses God before the brethren; thus he sows discord, and is the father of those that do so. [2.] It was a most dangerous snare to our first parents, as it tended to alienate their affections from God, and so to withdraw them from their allegiance to him. Thus still the devil draws people into his interest by suggesting to them hard thoughts of God, and false hopes of benefit and advantage by sin. Let us therefore, in opposition to him, always think well of God as the best good, and think ill of sin as the worst of evils: thus let us resist the devil, and he will flee from us.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv1–12 Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast…
Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field, which the Lord God had made,.... Many instances are given of the subtlety of serpents, in hiding their heads when struck at, rolling themselves up, stopping their ear at the voice of the charmer, putting off their skin, lying in sand of the same colour with them, and biting the feet of horses, and other things of the like kind; but by these it does not appear to be now more subtle than any other creature, whatever it might be at its first creation; particularly the fox greatly exceeds it: the words therefore may be rendered, "that serpent"; that particular serpent, of which so much is spoken of afterwards; "or the serpent was become" (t), or "made more subtle", that is, not naturally, but through Satan being in it, and using it in a very subtle manner, to answer his purposes, and gain his point: for though a real serpent, and not the mere form or appearance of one, is here meant, as is clear from this account, and the curse afterwards pronounced on it; yet not that only, but as possessed and used by Satan as an instrument of his to accomplish his designs, as is evident from its having the faculty of speech, and the use of reason, employed in a very artful and sophistic manner: nor is it rational to suppose that human nature, in the height of its glory and excellency, should be outwitted and seduced by a creature so inferior to it; besides, the Scriptures always ascribe the seduction of man to the devil; who, because he acted his deceitful part in and by the serpent, is called the serpent, and the old serpent, and the devil and Satan, Co2 11:3. The Targum of Jonathan restrains this subtlety to wickedness, paraphrasing the words"but the serpent was wise to evil.''Some Jewish writers (u) interpret the passage of the nakedness of the serpent, taking the word in the sense it is used in Gen 2:25 and render it, "more naked than any beast of the field", the rest having a clothing, as hair, &c. but this none; and so might be more agreeable to Eve, being in this respect like herself; but it is generally interpreted of subtlety. The serpent early became the object of religions worship. Taautus, or the Egyptian Thoth, was the first that attributed deity to the nature of the dragon, and of serpents; and after him the Egyptians and Phoenicians: the Egyptian god Cneph was a serpent with an hawk's head; and a serpent with the Phoenicians was a good demon: what led them to have such veneration for this animal, were its plenty of spirits, its fiery nature, its swiftness, its various forms it throws itself into, and its long life (w); and so Pherecydes (x) speaks of a deity of the Phoenicians called Ophioneus; and who also affirms (y), that this was the prince of demons cast down from heaven by Jupiter; and Herodotus (z) makes mention of sacred serpents about Thebes; and Aelianus (a) of sacred dragons; and Justin Martyr says (b), the serpent with the Heathens was a symbol of all that were reckoned gods by them, and they were painted as such; and wherever serpents were painted, according to Persius (c), it was a plain indication that it was a sacred place. Serpents were sacred to many of the Heathen deities, and who were worshipped either in the form of one, or in a real one (d); all which seem to take their rise from the use the devil made of the serpent in seducing our first parents.
And he said to the woman; being alone, which he took the advantage of; not the serpent, but Satan in it; just as the angel spoke in Balaam's ass; for we are not to imagine with Philo, Josephus, Aben Ezra, and others, that beasts in their original state had the faculty of speech, and whose language Eve understood: it is very probable that good angels appeared in paradise to our first parents, in one form or another, and conversed with them; it may be in an human form, and it may be in the form of a beautiful flying serpent, which looked very bright and shining, and that sort called Seraph, Num 21:6 hence angels may bear the name of Seraphim, as some have thought; so that it might not be at all surprising to Eve to hear the serpent speak, it being what she might have been used to hear, and might take this to be a good angel in such a shape, that was come to bring a message to her from God, and to converse with her for her good, and who thus accosted her:
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yea, hath God said ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden? or "of any tree" (e); so ambiguously does he speak, in order to reproach the divine goodness, and draw into a disbelief of it. The speech is abrupt; and, as Kimchi observes (f), supposes some discourse, as to this purpose; surely God hates you, for though you are greater than the rest of the creatures, he has not provided any superior excellency for you, and especially since he has said, "ye shall not eat", &c. Or as others, taking occasion from their being naked, Gen 2:25 he observes, that that was unbecoming them, of which they might be ashamed; yea, also, that it was unjust to forbid them to eat of the tree of good and evil: he might, it is suggested, first endeavour to persuade the woman, that it was indecent for her, and her husband, to be naked; which they not being convinced of, he insinuated that this was owing to a defect of knowledge, and that there was a tree in the garden, which if they ate of, would give them that knowledge, and therefore God had forbid it, to keep them in ignorance: but he seems to put this question, to cause them to doubt of it, whether there was such a prohibition or not, and as amazing that it should be, and as not believing it to be true; it being, as he would have it, contrary to the perfections of God, to his goodness and liberality, and to his profession of a peculiar respect to man: wherefore the Targum of Onkelos renders it, "of a truth", and that of Jonathan, "is it true?" surely it cannot be true, that a God of such goodness could ever deny you such a benefit, or restrain you from such happiness; he can never be your friend that can lay such an injunction on you.
(t) "factus est", Schmidt. (u) Tikkune Zohar, correct. 59. fol. 96. 1. (w) Philo Byblius, apud Euseb. Praepar. Evangel. l. 1. c. 10. p. 41. (x) Apud, Euseb. ib. (y) Apud L. Vivem in Aug. de Civ. Dei, l. 4. c. 11. (z) Euterpe sive, l. 2. c. 74. (a) De Animal l. 11. c. 2, 17. (b) Apolog. 2. p. 71. (c) "Pinge duos angues pueri, sacer est locus." Satyr. 1. (d) See more of this in a Sermon of mine, called The Head of the Serpent bruised, &c. (e) "ex ulla arbore", Piscator. (f) Sepher Shoresh in voce
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John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv1, 6, 9, 10, 11 The general contents of this chapter we have Rom.…
The general contents of this chapter we have Rom. v, 12. By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned. More particularly, we have here,
I. The innocent tempted, ver. 1-5.
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II. The tempted transgressing, ver. 6, 7, 8.
III. The transgressors arraigned, ver. 9, 10.
IV. Upon their arraignment convicted, ver. 11-13.
V. Upon their conviction sentenced, ver. 14-19.
VI. After sentence, reprieved, ver. 20, 21.
VII. Notwithstanding their reprieve, execution in part done, ver. 22-24, and were it not for the gracious intimations of redemption, they and all their race had been left to despair.
We have here an account of the temptation wherewith Satan assaulted our first parents, and which proved fatal to them. And here observe, (1.) The tempter, the devil in the shape of a serpent. Multitudes of them fell; but this that attacked our first parents, was surely the prince of the devils. Whether it was only the appearance of a serpent, or a real serpent, acted and possessed by the devil, is not certain. The devil chose to act his part in a serpent, because it is a subtle creature. It is not improbable, that reason and speech were then the known properties of the serpent. And therefore Eve was not surprised at his reasoning and speaking, which otherwise she must have been. (2.) That which the devil aimed at, was to persuade Eve to eat forbidden fruit; and to do this, he took the same method that he doth still.
1. He questions whether it were a sin or no, ver. 1,
2. He denies that there was any danger in it, ver. 4.
3. He suggests much advantage by it, ver. 5. And these are his common topics. As to the advantage, he suits the temptation to the pure state they were now in, proposing to them not any carnal pleasure, but intellectual delights.
1. Your eyes shall be opened - You shall have much more of the power and pleasure of contemplation than now you have; you shall fetch a larger compass in your intellectual views, and see farther into things than now you do.
2. You shall be as gods - As Elohim, mighty gods, not only omniscient but omnipotent too:
3. You shall know good and evil - That is, everything that is desirable to be known. To support this part of the temptation, he abuseth the name given to this tree. 'Twas intended to teach the practical knowledge of good and evil, that is, of duty and disobedience, and it would prove the experimental knowledge of good and evil, that is, of happiness and misery. But he perverts the sense of it, and wrests it to their destruction, as if this tree would give them a speculative notional knowledge of the natures, kinds, and originals of good and evil. And,
4. All this presently, In the day you eat thereof - You will find a sudden and immediate change for the better. See note at "ver. 1"
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 12 Satan, by means of a creature here called the…
CHAPTER III
Satan, by means of a creature here called the serpent,
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deceives Eve, 1-5.
Both she and Adam transgress the Divine command, and fall
into sin and misery, 6, 7.
They are summoned before God, and judged, 8-13.
The creature called the serpent is degraded and punished, 14.
The promise of redemption by the incarnation of Christ, 15.
Eve sentenced, 16.
Adam sentenced, 17.
The ground cursed, and death threatened, 18, 19.
Why the woman was called Eve, 20.
Adam and Eve clothed with skins, 21.
The wretched state of our first parents after their fall,
and their expulsion from the garden of Paradise, 22-24.
NOTES ON CHAP. III
Verse 1. Now the serpent was more subtle] We have here one of the most difficult as well as the most important narratives in the whole book of God. The last chapter ended with a short but striking account of the perfection and felicity of the first human beings, and this opens with an account of their transgression, degradation, and ruin. That man is in a fallen state, the history of the world, with that of the life and miseries of every human being, establishes beyond successful contradiction. But how, and by what agency, was this brought about? Here is a great mystery, and I may appeal to all persons who have read the various comments that have been written on the Mosaic account, whether they have ever yet been satisfied on this part of the subject, though convinced of the fact itself. Who was the serpent? of what kind? In what way did he seduce the first happy pair? These are questions which remain yet to be answered. The whole account is either a simple narrative of facts, or it is an allegory. If it be a historical relation, its literal meaning should be sought out; if it be an allegory, no attempt should be made to explain it, as it would require a direct revelation to ascertain the sense in which it should be understood, for fanciful illustrations are endless. Believing it to be a simple relation of facts capable of a satisfactory explanation, I shall take it up on this ground; and, by a careful examination of the original text, endeavour to fix the meaning, and show the propriety and consistency of the Mosaic account of the fall of man. The chief difficulty in the account is found in the question, Who was the agent employed in the seduction of our first parents?
The word in the text which we, following the Septuagint, translate serpent, is נחש nachash; and, according to Buxtorf and others, has three meanings in Scripture.
1. It signifies to view or observe attentively, to divine or use enchantments, because in them the augurs viewed attentively the flight of birds, the entrails of beasts, the course of the clouds, c. and under this head it signifies to acquire knowledge by experience.
2. It signifies brass, brazen, and is translated in our Bible, not only brass, but chains, fetters, fetters of brass, and in several places steel; see 2Sa 22:35; Job 20:24; Ps 18:34; and in one place, at least filthiness or fornication, Eze 16:36.
3. It signifies a serpent, but of what kind is not determined. In Job 26:13, it seems to mean the whale or hippopotamus: By his spirit he hath garnished the heavens, his hand hath formed the crooked serpent, נחש ברח nachash bariach: as ברח barach signifies to pass on or pass through, and בריח beriach is used for a bar of a gate or door that passed through rings, c., the idea of straightness rather than crookedness should be attached to it here and it is likely that the hippopotamus or sea-horse is intended by it.
In Ec 10:11, the creature called nachash, of whatever sort, is compared to the babbler: Surely the serpent (נחש nachash) will bite without enchantment; and a babbler is no better.
In Isa 27:1, the crocodile or alligator seems particularly meant by the original: In that day the Lord - shall punish leviathan the piercing serpent, c. And in Isa 65:25, the same creature is meant as in Ge 3:1, for in the words, And dust shall be the serpent's meat, there is an evident allusion to the text of Moses. In Am 9:3, the crocodile is evidently intended: Though they be hid in the bottom of the sea, thence will I command the serpent, (הנחש hannachash,) and he shall bite them. No person can suppose that any of the snake or serpent kind can be intended here and we see from the various acceptations of the word, and the different senses which it bears in various places in the sacred writings, that it appears to be a sort of general term confined to no one sense. Hence it will be necessary to examine the root accurately, to see if its ideal meaning will enable us to ascertain the animal intended in the text. We have already seen that nachash signifies to view attentively, to acquire knowledge or experience by attentive observation; so נחשתי nichashti, Ge 30:27: I have learned by experience; and this seems to be its most general meaning in the Bible. The original word is by the Septuagint translated οφις, a serpent, not because this was its fixed determinate meaning in the sacred writings, but because it was the best that occurred to the translators: and they do not seem to have given themselves much trouble to understand the meaning of the original, for they have rendered the word as variously as our translators have done, or rather our translators have followed them, as they give nearly the same significations found in the Septuagint: hence we find that οφις is as frequently used by them as serpent, its supposed literal meaning, is used in our version. And the New Testament writers, who seldom quote the Old Testament but from the Septuagint translation, and often do not change even a word in their quotations, copy this version in the use of this word. From the Septuagint therefore we can expect no light, nor indeed from any other of the ancient versions, which are all subsequent to the Septuagint, and some of them actually made from it. In all this uncertainty it is natural for a serious inquirer after truth to look everywhere for information. And in such an inquiry the Arabic may be expected to afford some help, from its great similarity to the Hebrew. A root in this language, very nearly similar to that in the text, seems to cast considerable light on the subject. [Arabic] chanas or khanasa signifies he departed, drew off, lay hid, seduced, slunk away; from this root come [Arabic] akhnas, [Arabic] khanasa, and [Arabic] khanoos, which all signify an ape, or satyrus, or any creature of the simia or ape genus. It is very remarkable also that from the same root comes [Arabic] khanas, the DEVIL, which appellative he bears from that meaning of [Arabic] khanasa, he drew off, seduced, c., because he draws men off from righteousness, seduces them from their obedience to God, c., &c. See Golius, sub voce. Is it not strange that the devil and the ape should have the same name, derived from the same root, and that root so very similar to the word in the text? But let us return and consider what is said of the creature in question. Now the nachash was more subtle, ערום arum, more wise, cunning, or prudent, than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. In this account we find,
1. That whatever this nachash was, he stood at the head of all inferior animals for wisdom and understanding.
2. That he walked erect, for this is necessarily implied in his punishment - on thy belly (i.e., on all fours) shalt thou go.
3. That he was endued with the gift of speech, for a conversation is here related between him and the woman.
4. That he was also endued with the gift of reason, for we find him reasoning and disputing with Eve.
5. That these things were common to this creature, the woman no doubt having often seen him walk erect, talk, and reason, and therefore she testifies no kind of surprise when he accosts her in the language related in the text and indeed from the manner in which this is introduced it appears to be only a part of a conversation that had passed between them on the occasion: Yea, hath God said, c.
Had this creature never been known to speak before his addressing the woman at this time and on this subject, it could not have failed to excite her surprise, and to have filled her with caution, though from the purity and innocence of her nature she might have been incapable of being affected with fear. Now I apprehend that none of these things can be spoken of a serpent of any species.
1. None of them ever did or ever can walk erect. The tales we have had of two-footed and four-footed serpents are justly exploded by every judicious naturalist, and are utterly unworthy of credit. The very name serpent comes from serpo, to creep, and therefore to such it could be neither curse nor punishment to go on their bellies, i.e., to creep on, as they had done from their creation, and must do while their race endures.
2. They have no organs for speech, or any kind of articulate sound they can only hiss. It is true that an ass by miraculous influence may speak but it is not to be supposed that there was any miraculous interference here. GOD did not qualify this creature with speech for the occasion, and it is not intimated that there was any other agent that did it; on the contrary, the text intimates that speech and reason were natural to the nachash: and is it not in reference to this the inspired penman says, The nachash was more subtle or intelligent than all the beasts of the field that the Lord God had made? Nor can I find that the serpentine genus are remarkable for intelligence. It is true the wisdom of the serpent has passed into a proverb, but I cannot see on what it is founded, except in reference to the passage in question, where the nachash, which we translate serpent, following the Septuagint, shows so much intelligence and cunning: and it is very probable that our Lord alludes to this very place when he exhorts his disciples to be wise - prudent or intelligent, as serpents, φρονιμοι ὡς οἱ οφεις· and it is worthy of remark that he uses the same term employed by the Septuagint in the text in question: Οφις ην φρονιμωτατος, the serpent was more prudent or intelligent than all the beasts, c.
All these things considered, we are obliged to seek for some other word to designate the nachash in the text, than the word serpent, which on every view of the subject appears to me inefficient and inapplicable. We have seen above that khanas, akhnas, and khanoos, signify a creature of the ape or satyrus kind. We have seen that the meaning of the root is, he lay hid, seduced, slunk away, c. and that khanas means the devil, as the inspirer of evil, and seducer from God and truth. See Golius and Wilmet. It therefore appears to me that a creature of the ape or ouran outang kind is here intended and that Satan made use of this creature as the most proper instrument for the accomplishment of his murderous purposes against the life and soul of man. Under this creature he lay hid, and by this creature he seduced our first parents, and drew off or slunk away from every eye but the eye of God. Such a creature answers to every part of the description in the text: it is evident from the structure of its limbs and their muscles that it might have been originally designed to walk erect, and that nothing less than a sovereign controlling power could induce them to put down hands in every respect formed like those of man, and walk like those creatures whose claw-armed paws prove them to have been designed to walk on all fours. Dr. Tyson has observed in his anatomy of an ouran outang, that the seminal vessels passed between the two coats of the peritoneum to the scrotum, as in man; hence he argues that this creature was designed to walk erect, as it is otherwise in all quadrupeds. Philos. Trans., vol. xxi., p. 340. The subtlety, cunning, endlessly varied pranks and tricks of these creatures, show them, even now, to be more subtle and more intelligent than any other creature, man alone excepted. Being obliged now to walk on all fours, and gather their food from the ground, they are literally obliged to eat the dust; and though exceedingly cunning, and careful in a variety of instances to separate that part which is wholesome and proper for food from that which is not so, in the article of cleanliness they are lost to all sense of propriety; and though they have every means in their power of cleansing the aliments they gather off the ground, and from among the dust, yet they never in their savage state make use of any, except a slight rub against their side, or with one of their hands, more to see what the article is than to cleanse it. Add to this, their utter aversion to walk upright; it requires the utmost discipline to bring them to it, and scarcely anything irritates them more than to be obliged to do it. Long observation on some of these animals enables me to state these facts.
Should any person who may read this note object against my conclusions, because apparently derived from an Arabic word which is not exactly similar to the Hebrew, though to those who understand both languages the similarity will be striking; yet, as I do not insist on the identity of the terms, though important consequences have been derived from less likely etymologies, he is welcome to throw the whole of this out of the account. He may then take up the Hebrew root only, which signifies to gaze, to view attentively, pry into, inquire narrowly, c., and consider the passage that appears to compare the nachash to the babbler. Ec 10:11, and he will soon find, if he have any acquaintance with creatures of this genus, that for earnest, attentive watching, looking, c., and for chattering or babbling, they have no fellows in the animal world. Indeed, the ability and propensity to chatter is all they have left, according to the above hypothesis, of their original gift of speech, of which I suppose them to have been deprived at the fall as a part of their punishment.
I have spent the longer time on this subject,
1. Because it is exceedingly obscure
2. Because no interpretation hitherto given of it has afforded me the smallest satisfaction
3. Because I think the above mode of accounting for every part of the whole transaction is consistent and satisfactory, and in my opinion removes many embarrassments, and solves the chief difficulties.
I think it can be no solid objection to the above mode of solution that Satan, in different parts of the New Testament, is called the serpent, the serpent that deceived Eve by his subtlety, the old serpent, c., for we have already seen that the New Testament writers have borrowed the word from the Septuagint, and the Septuagint themselves use it in a vast variety and latitude of meaning and surely the ouran outang is as likely to be the animal in question as נחש nachash and οφις ophis are likely to mean at once a snake, a crocodile, a hippopotamus, fornication, a chain, a pair of fetters, a piece of brass, a piece of steel, and a conjurer; for we have seen above that all these are acceptations of the original word. Besides, the New Testament writers seem to lose sight of the animal or instrument used on the occasion, and speak only of Satan himself as the cause of the transgression, and the instrument of all evil. If, however, any person should choose to differ from the opinion stated above, he is at perfect liberty so to do; I make it no article of faith, nor of Christian communion; I crave the same liberty to judge for myself that I give to others, to which every man has an indisputable right; and I hope no man will call me a heretic for departing in this respect from the common opinion, which appears to me to be so embarrassed as to be altogether unintelligible. See farther on Ge 3:7-14, &c.
Yea, hath God said] This seems to be the continuation of a discourse of which the preceding part is not given, and a proof that the creature in question was endued with the gift of reason and speech, for no surprise is testified on the part of Eve.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 Gen 3:1. The serpent was more subtle, &c. —…
Gen 3:1. The serpent was more subtle, &c. — Some would render the word נחשׁ, nachash, here, monkey or baboon, and the word ערום, arum, intelligent: but it may be demonstrated from divers other passages of the Old Testament, where the same words are used, and from several parts of the New, where they are referred to, that our translators are perfectly right. The former word is used concerning the fiery serpents which bit the people in the wilderness, which certainly were neither monkeys nor baboons, and concerning the serpent of brass, by looking at which the Israelites were healed. See Hebrew, Num 21:6-9. It is also used Isa 65:25, where, in allusion to Gen 3:14 of this chapter, it is said, Dust shall be the serpent’s meat; but surely dust is not the meat of monkeys. The word is also everywhere rendered Οφις, ophis, in the Septuagint and in the New Testament, which means serpent, and nothing else. The latter word, ערום, also, is rightly translated, meaning primarily, subtle, or crafty, from ערם, caliditate usus est, and is so rendered Job 5:12, and so interpreted 2Co 11:3, where the word πανουργια is used, which certainly never means intelligence, but always craft or subtlety. Than any beast of the field — Serpents, in general, have a great deal of subtlety. But this one had an extraordinary measure of it, being either only a serpent in appearance, and in reality a fallen angel, or the prince of fallen angels, Satan; or a real serpent possessed and actuated by him. Hence the devil is termed the old serpent, Rev 20:2-3. He said unto the woman — Whom it is probable he found alone. In what way he spake to her we are not informed: but it seems most likely that it was by signs of some kind. Some, indeed, have supposed that reason and speech were then the known properties of serpents, and that, therefore, Eve was not surprised at his reasoning and speaking, which they think she otherwise must have been: but of this there is no proof. Yea, hath God said, &c. — As if he had said, Can it be that God, who has planted this garden with all these beautiful and fruitful trees, and hath placed you in it for your comfort, should deny you the fruit of it? Surely you must either be mistaken, or God must be envious and unkind. His first object was by his insinuations either to beget in them unbelief, as to the reality of the prohibition, and to persuade them that it would be no sin to eat of the fruit of the forbidden tree, or to produce in them hard thoughts of God, in order to alienate their affections from him. And such are generally his first temptations still. What! has God, who has given you various appetites and passions, forbidden you to gratify them? Surely he has not: but if he has, he must be an unkind being. And how then can you trust in or love him?
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On vv1, 8 - Section III - The Fall
- Section III - The Fall
- The Fall
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1. נחשׁ nachash “serpent; related: hiss,” Gesenius; “sting,” Mey. ערוּם 'ārûm “subtle, crafty, using craft for defence.”
7. תפר tāpar “sew, stitch, tack together.” חגורה chăgôrâh “girdle, not necessarily apron.”
This chapter continues the piece commenced at Gen 2:4. The same combination of divine names is found here, except in the dialogue between the serpent and the woman, where God (אלהים 'ĕlohı̂ym) alone is used. It is natural for the tempter to use only the more distant and abstract name of God. It narrates in simple terms the fall of man.
Gen 3:1
The serpent is here called a “beast of the field”; that is, neither a domesticated animal nor one of the smaller sorts. The Lord God had made it, and therefore it was a creature called into being on the same day with Adam. It is not the wisdom, but the wiliness of the serpent which is here noted. This animal is destitute of arms or legs by which to escape danger. It is therefore thrown back upon instinct, aided by a quick and glaring eye, and a rapid dart and recoil, to evade the stroke of violence, and watch and seize the unguarded moment for inflicting the deadly bite. Hence, the wily and insidious character of its instinct, which is noticed to account for the mode of attack here chosen, and the style of the conversation. The whole is so deeply designed, that the origin and progress of evil in the breast is as nearly as possible such as it might have been had there been no prompter. No startling proposal of disobedience is made, no advice, no persuasion to partake of the fruit is employed. The suggestion or assertion of the false only is plainly offered; and the bewildered mind is left to draw its own false inferences, and pursue its own misguided course. The tempter addresses the woman as the more susceptible and unguarded of the two creatures he would betray. He ventures upon a half-questioning, half-insinuating remark: “It is so, then, that God hath said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden.” This seems to be a feeler for some weak point, where the fidelity of the woman to her Maker might be shaken. It hints at something strange, if not unjust or unkind, on the part of God. “Why was any tree withheld?” he would insinuate.
Gen 3:2-3
The woman gives the natural and distinct answer of unaffected sincerity to this suggestion. The deviations from the strict letter of the law are nothing more than the free and earnest expressions of her feelings. The expression, “neither shall ye touch it,” merely implies that they were not to meddle with it, as a forbidden thing.
Gen 3:4-5
The serpent now makes a strong and bold assertion, denying the deadly efficacy of the tree, or the fatal consequence of partaking of it, and affirming that God was aware that on the eating of it their eyes would be opened, and they would be like himself in knowing good and evil.
Let us remember that this was the first falsehood the woman ever heard. Her mind was also infantile as yet, so far as experience was concerned. The opening mind is naturally inclined to believe the truth of every assertion, until it has learned by experience the falsehood of some. There was also in this falsehood what gives the power to deceive, a great deal of truth combined with the element of untruth. The tree was not physically fatal to life, and the eating of it really issued in a knowledge of good and evil. Nevertheless, the partaking of what was forbidden issued in the legal and actual privation of life. And it did not make them know good and evil altogether, as God knows it, but in an experimental sense, as the devil knows it. In point of knowledge, they became like God; in point of morality, like the tempter.
Gen 3:6
And the woman saw. - She saw the tree, no doubt, and that it was likely to look upon, with the eye of sense. But only with the eye of fancy, highly excited by the hints of the tempter, did she see that it was good for food, and to be desired to make one wise. Appetite, taste, and philosophy, or the love of wisdom, are the great motives in the human breast which fancy assumes this tree will gratify. Other trees please the taste and the sight. But this one has the pre-eminent charm of administering not only to the sense, but also to the reason.
It would be rash to suppose that we can analyze that lightning process of instinctive thought which then took place in the mind of the woman; and worse than rash, it would be wrong, to imagine that we can show the rationale of what in its fundamental point was a violation of right reason. But it is evident from this verse that she attached some credit to the bold statement of the serpent, that the eating of the fruit would be attended with the extraordinary result of making them, like God himself, acquainted with good and evil, especially as it did not contradict any assertion of Yahweh, God, and was countenanced by the name, “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” It was evidently a new thought to her, that the knowledge of good and evil was to result from the eating of it. That God should know this, if a fact, was undeniable. Again, to know good and evil as the effect of partaking of it, implied that the consequence was not a cessation of existence, or of consciousness; for, if so, how could there be any knowledge? And, if death in her conception implied merely exclusion from the favor of God and the tree of life, might she not imagine that the new knowledge acquired, and the elevation to a new resemblance, or even equality to God himself in this respect, would be more than a compensation for such losses; especially as the disinterestedness of the divine motives had been at least called in question by the serpent? Here, no doubt, is a fine web of sophistry, woven by the excited fancy in an instant of time.
It is easy to say the knowledge of good and evil was not a physical effect of eating of the fruit; that the obtaining of this knowledge by partaking of it was an evil, and not a good in itself and in its consequences, as it was the origin of an evil conscience, which is in itself an unspeakable ill, and attended with the forfeiture of the divine favor, and of the tree of life, and with the endurance of all the positive misery which such a condition involves; and that the command of God was founded on the clearest right - that of creation - occasioned by the immediate necessity of defining the rights of man, and prompted by disinterested benevolence toward His intelligent creatures, whom He was framing for such intellectual and moral perfection, as was by them attainable. It is easy to cry out, How unreasonable was the conduct of the primeval pair! Let us not forget that any sin is unreasonable, unaccountable, essentially mysterious. In fact, if it were wholly reasonable, it would no longer be sin. Only a moment before, the woman had declared that God had said, “Of the fruit of the tree in the midst of the garden, ye shall not eat.” Yet she now sees, and her head is so full of it that she can think of nothing else, that the tree is good for food and pleasant to the eyes, - as if there were no other good and pleasant trees in the garden, and, as she fancies, desirable to make one wise, like God; as if there were no other way to this wisdom but an unlawful one, and no other likeness to God but a stolen likeness - and therefore takes of the fruit and eats, and gives to her husband, and he eats! The present desire is without any necessity gratified by an act known to be wrong, at the risk of all the consequences of disobedience! Such is sin.
Gen 3:7
Their eyes were opened. - Certain immediate effects of the act are here stated. This cannot mean literally that they were blind up to this moment; for Adam, no doubt, saw the tree in the garden concerning which he received a command, the animals which he named, and the woman whom he recognized as bone of his bones and flesh of his flesh. And of the woman it is affirmed that she saw that the tree possessed certain qualities, one of which at least was conspicuous to the eye.
It must therefore mean that a new aspect was presented by things on the commission of the first offence. As soon as the transgression is actually over, the sense of the wrongfulness of the act rushes on the mind. The displeasure of the great Being whose command has been disobeyed, the irretrievable loss which follows sin, the shame of being looked upon by the bystanders as a guilty thing, crowd upon the view. All nature, every single creature, seems now a witness of their guilt and shame, a condemning judge, an agent of the divine vengeance. Such is the knowledge of good and evil they have acquired by their fall from obedience - such is the opening of the eye which has requited their wrong-doing. What a different scene had once presented itself to the eyes of innocence! All had been friendly. All nature had bowed in willing obedience to the lords of the earth. Neither the sense nor the reality of danger had ever disturbed the tranquility of their pure minds.
They knew that they were naked. - This second effect results immediately from the consciousness of guilt. They now take notice that their guilty persons are exposed to view, and they shrink from the glance of every condemning eye. They imagine there is a witness of their guilt in every creature, and they conceive the abhorrence which it must produce in the spectator. In their infantile experience they endeavor to hide their persons, which they feel to be suffused all over with the blush of shame.
Accordingly, “they sewed the leaves of the fig,” which, we may suppose, they wrapped round them, and fastened with the girdles they had formed for this purpose. The leaves of the fig did not constitute the girdles, but the coverings which were fastened on with these. These leaves were intended to conceal their whole persons from observation. Job describes himself sewing sackcloth on his skin Job 16:15, and girding on sackcloth 1Ki 20:32; Lam 2:10; Joe 1:8 is a familiar phrase in Scripture. The primitive sewing was some sort of tacking together, which is not more particularly described. Every operation of this sort has a rude beginning. The word “girdle” חגורה chăgôrâh) signifies what girds on the dress.
Here it becomes us to pause for a moment that we may mark what was the precise nature of the first transgression. It was plainly disobedience to an express and well-understood command of the Creator. It matters not what was the nature of the command, since it could not be other than right and pure. The more simple and easy the thing enjoined, the more blameworthy the act of disobedience. But what was the command? Simply to abstain from the fruit of a tree, which was designated the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, upon pain of death. We have seen already that this command arose from the necessity of immediate legislation, and took its shape as the only possible one in the circumstances of the case. The special attraction, however, which the forbidden tree presented, was not its excellence for the appetite or pleasantness to the eyes, since these were common to all the trees, but its supposed power of conferring moral knowledge on those who partook of it, and, according to the serpent’s explanation, making them like God in this important respect.
Hence, the real and obvious motive of the transgressor was the desire of knowledge and likeness to God. Whatever other lusts, therefore, may have afterwards come out in the nature of fallen man, it is plain that the lust after likeness to God in moral discernment was what originally brought forth sin in man. Sexual desire does not appear here at all. The appetite is excited by other trees as well as this. The desire of knowledge, and the ambition to be in some sense, divine, are alone special and prevalent as motives. Hence, it appears that God proved our first parents, not through any of the animal appetites, but through the higher propensities of their intellectual and moral nature. Though the occasion, therefore, may at first sight appear trivial, yet it becomes awfully momentous when we discover that the rectitude of God is impugned, his prerogative invaded, his command disregarded, his attribute of moral omniscience and all the imaginable advantages attendant thereupon grasped at with an eager and wilful hand. To disobey the command of God, imposed according to the dictates of pure reason, and with the authority of a Creator, from the vain desire of being like him, or independent of him, in knowledge, can never be anything but an offence of the deepest dye.
We are bound, moreover, to acknowledge and maintain, in the most explicit manner, the equity of the divine procedure in permitting the temptation of man. The only new thing here is the intervention of the tempter. It may be imagined that this deciever should have been kept away. But we must not speak with inconsiderate haste on a matter of such import. First. We know that God has not used forcible means to prevent the rise of moral evil among his intelligent creatures. We cannot with reason affirm that he should have done so; because, to put force on a voluntary act, and yet leave it voluntary, seems to reason a contradiction in terms, and, therefore, impossible; and unless an act be voluntary, it cannot have any moral character; and without voluntary action, we cannot have a moral agent. Second. We know that God does not immediately annihilate the evil-doer. Neither can we with reason that he ought to have done so; for, to lay an adequate penalty on sin, and then put the sinner out of existence, so that this penalty can never be exacted, seems to reason a moral inconsistency, and, therefore, impossible in a being of moral perfection.
Third. We know that God does not withdraw the evil-doer from all contact with other moral agents. Here, again, reason does not constrain us to pronounce that it is expedient so to do; for the innocent ought, and it is natural that they should, learn a holy abhorrence of sin, and a salutary dread of its penalty, from these waifs of society, rather than follow their pernicious example. The wrong-doers are not less under the control of God than if they were in the most impenetrable dungeon; while they are at the same time constant beacons to warn others from transgression. He leaves them to fill up the measure of their inequity, while the intelligent world are cognizant of their guilt, that they may acknowledge the justice of their punishment, and comprehend the infinite holiness of the judge of all the earth. Fourth. We know that God tries his moral creatures. Abraham, Job, and all his saints have to undergo their trial.
He suffered the Lord Jesus Christ, the second Adam, to be tempted. And we must not expect the first Adam to be exempted from the common ordeal. We can only be assured that his justice will not allow his moral creatures to be at any disadvantage in the trial. Accordingly, first, God himself in the first instance speaks to Adam, and gives him an explicit command not arbitrary in its conception, but arising out of the necessity of the case. And it is plain that Eve was perfectly aware that he had himself imposed this prohibition. Second. The tempter is not allowed to appear in his proper person to our first parents. The serpent only is seen or heard by them - a creature inferior to themselves, and infinitely beneath the God who made them, and condescended to communicate with them with the authority of a father. Third. The serpent neither threatens nor directly persuades; much less is he permitted to use any means of compulsion: he simply falsities. As the God of truth had spoken to them before, the false insinuation places them at no disadvantage.
Man has now come to the second step in morals - the practice. Thereby he has come to the knowledge of good and evil, not merely as an ideal, but as an actual thing. But he has attained this end, not by standing in, but by falling from, his integrity. If he had stood the test of this temptation, as he might have done, he would have come by the knowledge of good and evil equally well, but with a far different result. As he bore the image of God in his higher nature, he would have resembled him, not only in knowledge, thus honorably acquired by resisting temptation, but also in moral good, thus realized in his own act and will. As it is, he has gained some knowledge in an unlawful and disastrous way; but he has also taken in that moral evil, which is the image, not of God, but of the tempter, to whom he has yielded.
This result is rendered still more lamentable when we remember that these transgressors constituted the human race in its primeval source. In them, therefore, the race actually falls. In their sin the race is become morally corrupt. In their guilt the race is involved in guilt. Their character and doom descend to their latest posterity.
We have not yet noticed the circumstance of the serpent’s speaking, and of course speaking rationally. This seems to have awakened no attention in the tempted, and, so far as we see, to have exercised no influence on their conduct. In their inexperience, it is probable that they did not yet know what was wonderful, and what not; or, in preciser terms, what was supernatural, and what natural. But even if they had known enough to be surprised at the serpent speaking, it might have told in opposite ways upon their conclusions. On the one hand, Adam had seen and named the serpent, and found in it merely a mute, irrational animal, altogether unfit to be his companion, and therefore he might have been amazed to hear him speak, and, shall we say, led to suspect a prompter. But, on the other hand, we have no reason to suppose that Adam had any knowledge or suspicion of any creature but those which had been already brought before him, among which was the serpent. He could, therefore, have no surmise of any superior creature who might make use of the serpent for its own purposes. We question whether the thought could have struck his mind that the serpent had partaken of the forbidden fruit, and thereby attained to the marvellous elevation from brutality to reason and speech. But, if it had, it would have made a deep impression on his mind of the wonderful potency of the tree. These considerations apply with perhaps still greater force to Eve, who was first deceived.
But to us who have a more extensive experience of the course of nature, the speaking of a serpent cannot be regarded otherwise than as a preternatural occurrence. It indicates the presence of a power above the nature of the serpent, possessed, too, by a being of a malignant nature, and at enmity with God and truth; a spiritual being, who is able and has been permitted to make use of the organs of the serpent in some way for the purposes of temptation. But while for a wise and worthy end this alien from God’s home is permitted to test the moral character of man, he is not allowed to make any appearance or show any sign of his own presence to man. The serpent alone is visibly present; the temptation is conducted only through words uttered by bodily organs, and the tempted show no suspicion of any other tempter. Thus, in the disposal of a just Providence, man is brought into immediate contact only with an inferior creature, and therefore has a fair field in the season of trial. And if that creature is possessed by a being of superior intelligence, this is only displayed in such a manner as to exert no influence on man but that of suggestive argument and false assertion.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On vv1, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 Why hath God? Hebrew, "Indeed hath God, &c." as…
Why hath God? Hebrew, "Indeed hath God, &c." as if the serpent had overheard Eve arguing with herself, about God’s prohibition, with a sort of displeasure and presumption. St. Augustine thinks, she had given some entrance to these passions, and the love of her own power, and hence gave credit to the words of the serpent, de Gen. ad lit. xi. 30. She might not know or reflect that the serpent could not reason thus, naturally; and she had as yet, no idea or dread of the devil. (Lombard, 2 Dist. 21.) This old serpent entered into the most subtle of creatures, and either by very expressive signs, or by the motion of the serpent’s tongue, held this delusive dialogue with Eve. Moses relates what happened exteriorily; but from many expressions, and the curse, ver. 15, he sufficiently indicates, that an evil spirit was the latent actor. (Haydock) --- Of every tree. Satan perverts the word of God, giving it an ambiguous turn: in doing which, he has set heretics a pattern, which they follow. (Menochius)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures 1864 · Public Domain On v1
SECOND PART
THE GENESIS OF THE WORLD-HISTORY, OF THE TRIAL, OF THE SIN OF MAN, OF THE JUDGMENT, OF DEATH, OF THE SALVATION-TRIUMPH, OF THE CONTRAST BETWEEN A DIVINE AND A WORLDLY TENDENCY IN HUMANITY, LASTLY OF THE UNIVERSAL CORRUPTION
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FIRST SECTION
The Lost Paradise.
Gen_3:1-24.
A.—The Temptation.
Gen_3:1 Now the serpent1 was more subtle [properly: alone subtle among all beasts] than all the beasts of the field which the Lord God had made; and he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden. 2And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden. 3But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. 4And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die. 5For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened and ye shall be as Gods knowing good and evil.
B.—The Sin.
6And when the woman saw that the tree was good2 for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof and did eat, and gave also to her husband [to partake with her] and he did eat.
C.—The Guilt.
7And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew3 that they were naked, and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons. 8And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking4 in the garden in the cool of the day [the evening breeze]: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.
D.—The Judgment and the Promise.
9And the Lord God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou? 10And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself. 11And he said, Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldst not eat? 12And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest unto me, she gave me of the tree and I did eat. 13And the Lord God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me and I did eat. 14And the Lord God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, 5and above every beast of the field: upon thy belly shalt thou go and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life: 15And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed: it [Vulgate: ipsa te, etc.] shall bruise6 thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel. 16Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow shalt thou bring forth children: and thy desire7 shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee. 17And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it, cursed is the ground for thy sake [from its connection with thee]; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it [get food from it] all the days of thy life.8 18Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field [instead of the garden]. 19In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread until thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken, for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.
E.—The Hope and the Compassion.
20And Adam [man from the earth] called his wife’s name Eve9 [life, life-giving] because she was the mother of all living. 21Unto Adam also, and to his wife did the Lord God make coats of skins and clothed them. 22And the Lord God said, Behold, the man has become as one of us, to know good and evil; and now lest10 he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat and live forever [as the everlasting man, according to the idea of the everlasting Jew].
F.—The Merciful Decree of Punishment and Discipline.
23Therefore the Lord God sent him forth11 [the intensive Piel form of the verb] from the garden of Eden [the blissful garden] to till the ground from whence he was taken. 24So he drove out the man: and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden cherubims [cherubs] and a flaming sword which turned every way [yet ever maintaining its place] to keep the way of the tree of life [Seraphim; comp. Psa_104:4; Psa_18:10-15; Isa_6:2].
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
1. The comparatively stronger symbolical that appeared in the representation of the primeval facts, and which we have noted in the second chapter, continues here also in the third; since the subject is the primeval history of Adam, as it is, at the same time, the primitive history of man, or of humanity. The fact of the first temptation is the symbol of every human temptation; the fact of the first fall is the symbol of every human transgression; the great mistake that lay in the first human sin is the symbol of every effect of sin.
2. Gen_3:1. Now the serpent.—The tree of knowledge, a part of the vegetable world, was made by God the medium of probation; from the animal world proceeds the serpent as the instrument of the temptation which God did not make. True it is, that the serpent appears as the probable author of this temptation, but such probability is weakened by what is said Gen_1:25; Gen_2:20. “It was (though Richers denies it) a good creation of God, though different, as originally created, from what it afterwards became” (Delitzsch). Through this supposition, however, of another created quality, he is brought nearer to the view of Richers. Does it appear as the mere instrument of a tempting spirit belonging to the other world, then must the decree of judgment, as pronounced, have regard not so much to it as to the spirit of sin, whose instrument and allegorical symbol it had become. How it could be such an instrument may be briefly explained by its craftiness; how it becomes an allegorical representation of the Evil One is taught us afterwards in the enmity that is proclaimed between the woman and the serpent. According to Nork (Etym.-Symb.-Myth. Real-Wörterbuch), “the serpent is just as well the figure of health and renovation, as of death; since it every year changes its skin, and ejects, moreover, its venom. This double peculiarity, and double character, as ἀγαθοδαίμων and κακοδαίμων, is indicated not only in language, but also in myths, in sculpture, and in modes of worship.” In this relation, however, we must distinguish two diverging views of the ancient peoples. To the Egyptian reverence for the serpent stands in opposition the abhorrence for it among the Israelites (see the article “Serpent” in the “Biblical Dictionary for Christian People”), Greeks, Persians, and Germans. Among the Slavonians, too, does the serpent appear to have been an object of religious fear; and from them may there have come modified views to the Germans, as from the Egyptians to the Greeks. Concerning the species of serpents mentioned in the Bible, see Winer. It may not be without significance that Genesis (Genesis 3) is in such distinct contrast with the Egyptian views, not only in respect to the serpent, but also in respect to the Egyptian cultus of death and the other world. Delitzsch thinks that the serpent could hardly, at that time, have had such a name as נָחָשׁ, since this (from נָחַשׁ, to hiss12) is derived from its present constitution. In this way the original constitution of the seductive serpent is regarded by him in a more favorable light than the nature of the tree of probation. Knobel, on the contrary, is of opinion that “the choice of the serpent was occasioned by the Persian myth, then known to the Hebrews, which makes the evil being Ahriman to be the tempter of the first man (giving to him the form and designation of the serpent), and represents him as the introducer of monstrous serpent forms.” Nevertheless, since in his time (according to Knobel), the belief in a devil was still foreign to the Hebrews, the author, he maintains, meant a real serpent, “as Josephus also rightly supposes (Antiq. i. 1, 4), as well as Aben Ezra, Jarchi, Kimchi, and most of the later commentators.” There is, however, not the slightest reason for deriving the primitive tradition, here given in its original Hebrew form, from any Persian myth, nor, in the second place, for ascribing to the Hebrews, not only a dependence on such Persian myth, but also an acknowledgment of its symbolical character or demoniacal background without any reasons for such anticipation; and, thirdly, is the alternative of its being either an actual serpent, or the devil himself, wholly untenable.—Now the serpent was more subtle. The question arises whether the adjective עָרוּם here stands in connection with מִן as expressing the comparative degree. At all events, the wholly analogous passage, Gen_3:14 (reminding us of this even by similarity of sound, מִכֹּל עָרוּם—אָרוּר מִכֹּל) cannot mean: cursed more than every beast of the field. Among the beasts, the serpent was just a single example of cunning; and so is it afterwards said of the curse. “Wisdom is a native property of the serpent (Mat_10:16), on account of which the Evil One chose it his instrument. Nevertheless, the predicate עָרוּם is not given to it here in the good sense of φρόνιμος (Sept.), prudent, but in the bad sense of πανοῦργος, callidus, crafty. For its wisdom presents itself as the craft of the tempter in this respect, that it applies itself to the weaker woman.” Keil.—And he said unto the woman.—The idea that the wife had a wish to be independent, and, for the sake of release, had withdrawn herself out of the man’s sight, as we find it in Milton, is original indeed, but sets up, when closely examined, a beginning of the fall before the fall itself.—Yea, hath God said.—The deluding ambiguity of his utterance is admirably expressed by the particles אַף כִּי. The word in question denotes a questioning surprise, which may have in view now a yes, and now a no, according to the connection. This is the first striking feature in the beginning of the temptation. In the most cautious manner there is shown the tendency to excite doubt. Then the expression aims, at the same time, to awaken mistrust, and to weaken the force of the prohibition: Not eat of every tree of the garden! But, finally, there is also intended the lowering of belief through the bare use of the single name Elohim. The demon that has taken possession of the serpent cannot naturally recognize God as Jehovah, the Covenant-God for men. Knobel thinks, that the author left out the name Jehovah to avoid profaning it. Keil interprets: In order to reach his aim must the tempter seek to transform the personal living God into a universal numen divinum. But would, then, the Elohim of ch. i. be merely an universal numen divinum? The assault is directed against the paradisaical covenant of God with men; therefore it is that the serpent cannot utter the name Jehovah.
3. Gen_3:2-3. And the woman said unto the serpent.—That the serpent should address the woman, and not the man, is explained from the circumstance that the woman is the weaker and the seducible (1Pe_3:7). The text, however, supposes that the woman knew the prohibition of God, and in some way, indeed, through the man. Still, the woman does not offer, in her defence, this mediateness of her knowledge, as neither does Adam present as an excuse that he saw that Eve did not die from the eating of the fruit. The answer of both appears to be wholly right, and to correct the serpent she would seem to make the prohibition still stronger by the addition: Neither shall ye touch it. And yet by this very addition does her first wavering disguise itself under the form of an overdoing obedience. The first failure is her not observing the point of the temptation, and the allowing herself to to be drawn into an argument with the tempter; the second, that she makes the prohibition stronger than it really is, and thus lets it appear that to her, too, “the prohibition seems too strict” (Keil); the third is, that she weakens the prohibition by reducing it to the lesser caution: lest ye die, thus making the motive to obedience to be predominantly the fear of death. Or simply thus: She begins herself to doubt, and to explain away the simple clear prohibition of God, instead of turning away from the author of the doubt. There is something, too, in the thought that the woman does not denote God as her Covenant-God. And yet many have regarded her first answer as a sign of steadfastness in the beginning.
4. Gen_3:4-5. Ye shall not surely die.—This bold step in the temptation seems to suppose a wavering already observable in the woman; although, in truth, it may be noted, that, in spite of the perfect readiness of answer, the temptation of our Lord, Matthew 4, even advances in increasingly bolder forms. Still those forms are properly co-ordinate, whilst here the gradation is very strongly marked. Moreover, Christ, as the perfect man, could allow Satan to come out in all his boldness, whilst here the unprotected woman can only find safety in an immediate turning away.
5. And the serpent said.—The temptation steps out from the area of cautious craft into that of a reckless denial of the truth of God’s prohibition, and a malicious suspicion of its object. Ye shall not die at all;13 thus is the truth of the threatening stoutly denied; that is, the doubt becomes unbelief. The way, however, is not prepared for the unbelief without first arousing a feeling of distrust in respect to God’s love, His righteousness, and even His power. Along with this, and entering with it, there must be also a proud self-confidence; and a wilful striving after a false independence. For the transition from doubt to unbelief the way is specially opened through a false security. The serpent denies all evil consequences as arising from the forbidden enjoyment, whilst he promises, on the contrary, the best and most glorious results from the same.—For God doth know that in the day, etc.—The imitation of the divine language contains a species of mockery. Your eyes, says the voice of the tempter, instead of closing in death, will be, for the first time, truly opened. Here it is to be remarked, that the hour when unbelief is born is immediately the birth-hour of superstition. The serpent would have the woman believe, that on eating of that fruit she would become wonderfully enlightened, and, at the same time, raised to a divine glory. And so, in like manner, is every sin a senseless and superstitious belief in the salutary effects of sin. The promise of the tempter’s voice is first regarded for its own sake, and then as a complaint against God. Against the immediate deadly effect it sets the immediate pleasurable effect, whilst, at the same time, it represents the condition of men hitherto as a lamentable one—as an existence with closed eyes. Against the fearful threatening: to die the death, it sets the opened eyes, and the being like God, as a caricaturing, as it were, of that promise which had appointed men to the image of God. The eyes were opened—a biblical expression which in the Old Testament frequently denotes a high spiritual seeing, either as an enlightenment in respect to truth, or as the seeing of some theophanic manifestation in prophetic vision (Gen_21:29; Num_22:21). The knowledge, however, of good and evil, as the words are employed by Satan, must here denote not merely a condition of higher intelligence, but rather a state of perfect independence of God. They would then know of themselves what was good and what was evil, and would no longer need the divine direction. To the same effect the assurance: for God doth know, etc. This must mean: He enviously seeks to keep back your happiness; and He is envious because He is weak in opposition to nature, because the fruit of the forbidden tree will make you independent of Him, and because He is tyrannical and without love in His dealings with you. In this distorting of the divine image, there is reflected the darkening of the divine consciousness which the temptation tends to call out in the woman, and actually does call out. In all this it must be noted, that the temptation here is already at work with those crafty lies (see 2Th_2:9) which it has employed through the whole course of the world’s history—that is, with lies containing elements of the truth, but misplaced and distorted. Already that first question of the serpent contains a truth, so far as man ought to become conscious in himself of the certainty and divine suitableness of God’s commands. The doubt, however, which tends to life, is to be distinguished from that which tends to death, by its design and direction. The tendency of the devil is to scepticism. But in this bold assurance of the serpent which immediately follows, namely, that no evil effects, but only good, would result from the eating, there lies the truth that the outward death would not immediately succeed the enjoyment of the forbidden fruit; that with the consciousness of guilt there comes in a conscious though a disturbed distinction between good and evil, and that the sinner has placed himself in a false independence through his own self-wilfulness (comp. Gen_3:22). When we take it all together, however, it is the appointment to the divine image which the spirit of the tempter perverts into a caricature: Ye shall be as gods, and into an anticipation of immediately reaching their aim: “A satanic amphiboly, in which truth and falsehood are united to a certain degree of coincidence.” Ziegler. Comp. Job_8:44. Very dark is Knobel’s comprehension of this passage: “In the account of the Jehovist,” he says, “God appears to be jealous of ambitious men (Gen_3:22; Gen_6:3; Gen_11:16). This same view of the jealousy of the gods appears also among the Grecian writers, e. g., Herod, i. 32; iii. 40. vii. 10, 46; Pausan. ii. 33; iii.; comp. Nägelsbach: ‘Homeric Theology,’ p. 33.”14
6. Gen_3:6. And when the woman saw.—There is truly indicated by the words, according to Luther’s translation, the lustful looking of the woman; but the expression presents, besides, the spiritual disturbance that attended it. She beheld it now with a glance made false by the germinating unbelief, or, so to speak, enchanted by it. “The satanic promise drove the divine threatening out of her thought. Now she beholds the tree with other eyes (Gen_3:6). Three times is it said how charming the tree appeared to her.” “The words ונחמד העץ להשׂכיל (to be desired, to make one wise) are taken by Hofmann for a remark of the narrator.” Delitzsch rightly rejects this view. First, there is painted, in general, the overpowering charm of the tree. It appears to her as something from which it would be good to eat; that is, good for food. The charm has now, too, its sensual side: The tree is, moreover, pleasant to the eye. It appears also to have a special worth in supplying a want; it is to be desired to make one wise. The sensual desire and the demoniacal spiritual interest (especially curiosity and pride) unite in leading her to the fall. Tuch, Beck, Baumgarten, and others, give to לְהַשְׂכִּיל the sense of making wise: it appeared to her as a means for spiritual advancement. Delitzsch (as also Knobel) disputes this, with the remark that it docs not agree with the word נהמד (a thing to be desired). But why should there not be supposed a charm in this property of making wise? Herein is indicated not only the common power which the charm of novelty has for our human nature in general, but also its special influence on the female nature.—She took of the fruit thereof and did eat.—The decisive act of sin (Jam_1:15). Knobel: The heart follows the eyes (Job_31:7; Ecc_11:9).—And gave also unto her husband.—The addition עִמָּהּ interpreted by Delitzsch as denoting “an actual presence, instead of mere association.” We hold both suppositions to be wrong. An actual presence of the husband standing mute in the very scene of the temptation presents great difficulty; whilst the second view amounts to nothing. If it is taken, however, as the representation of an eating together, then the language is an abridgment; after that she had eaten she gave it to her husband to eat thereof after her, or to eat with her. In the very moments of temptation, as we must take the account, there comes in the perception of the fact, that she does not die from the eating; and so it is that the wife’s power of persuasion, and Adam’s sympathy with her, are not made specially prominent.
7. Gen_3:7-8. And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked.—In the relation between the antecedent here and what follows there evidently lies a terrible irony. The promise of Satan becomes half fulfilled, though, indeed, in a different sense from what they had supposed: Their eyes were opened; they had attained to a developed self-consciousness. But all that they had reached in the first place was to become conscious of their nakedness as now an indecent exposure. It is here in this first irony, as appearing in the divine treatment of the consequences of sin, that we get a clear view of that ironical aspect in the divine penal righteousness which shows itself in the Scripture, and in the whole history of the world (see Psa_2:4; Act_4:24; Lange’s “Dogmatics,” p. 469). Knobel would really regard the new knowledge as a pure step of progress. “As a consequence of the enjoyment they knew their nakedness, whereas before, like unconscious, unembarrassed children, they had no thought of their nakedness, or of their personal contrasts. At once did they perceive that to go naked was no longer proper for them. They had attained, in consequence, to a moral insight. Shame entered into men in near cotemporaneity with their knowledge of right and wrong, good and evil; it belongs to the very beginning of moral cognition and development. This shame, in its lowest degree, limits itself to the covering of the sexual nakedness.” The question here, however, is not respecting a moral reform, but a religious deterioration. The reflection upon their nakedness and its unseemliness becomes, in the light of the symbolical representation, necessarily known as the first form of the entering consciousness of guilt. They have lost the unconscious dominion of the spirit over the bodily and sensuous appearance, and henceforth there enters into the conscience the world-historical strife between the spirit and the flesh—a strife whose prime cause lies in the fact that the spirit came out of the communion of the spirit of God, whose form consists in the fact that the flesh lusteth against the spirit, and whose effect (the feeling of hateful nakedness) is, indeed, attended by a reaction of the shame-feeling, but which can only manifest itself in the effort to cover, in the most scanty way, the nakedness revealed. In this part of the body the feeling of nakedness manifests itself as a sense of exposure that needs covering, not because that fruit poisoned the fountain of human life, or, by means of an innate property, immediately effected a corruption of the body, so far as propagation is concerned (Von Hoffmann, Baumgarten), nor because, in consequence of the fall, a physical change had taken place; but simply because, in the taking away by sin of the normal relation between the soul and the body, the body ceases to be any longer a pure instrument of the spirit which is united to God. “This part of the body is called עֶרְוָה (e. g., Gen_9:22) and בָּשֶׂר (e. g., Lev_9:2; comp. Exo_28:42), because nakedness and flesh, which shame bids men cover, culminate in them.” Delitzsch. In what follows, wherein he says that here the contrast between the spiritual and the natural, having lost its point of unity, is of the sharpest kind, and that the beastlike in the human appearance appears here most bestial, Delitzsch is approaching again the theosophic mode of view; although it is true that man, from his demoniacal striving after something too great for him, falls back into a beastly laxity of behavior, which, however, even here shame contends against, and seeks to veil. As the death of man, in its historical aspect, stands in counter-relation to the human generations in their historical aspect, so it would seem that whilst the first presentiment of death, in the first human consciousness of guilt, must give a shock to men, there would also be, in connection with this foreboding of death, another presentiment of a call to sexual propagation; but along with this, and in order to this, there would be a feeling which would seek to veil it, with its acts and organs, as by a sacred law. This modesty, or bashfulness, of man, however, relates not merely to natural generation, but also to the spiritual and the churchly; as though all origin demanded its covering—its creative night. The commendation of the first growths of intelligence in a man’s soul produces a feeling of blushing diffidence, and so, too, the churchly birth hath its reverent and modest veiling. When, therefore, along with the presentiment of death, and of the generic or sexual destiny (which, nevertheless, we cannot make independent of man’s historical death), there comes in the feeling of shame in the first men, so also, as a symbolic expression therefor, there enters into them, along with the guilt, an inner death, and the sense of the want of renovation. For the refutation of Knobel’s view, that by the fig-tree here is not meant the usual fig-tree, but the plant named pisang, or banana, see Delitzsch and Keil. See also more particularly, respecting the tree in question, Knobel and Delitzsch.—And they heard the voice.—Knobel, Keil, and Delitzsch explain the word קוֹל here, not of the voice of the Lord, but of the sound or rustling noise made by the Deity as he walked; and they compare it with Lev_26:33; Num_16:34; 2Sa_5:24. By such an interpretation is the symbolical element left entirely out of view. For beings in their condition, this sound of God walking must evidently have become a voice; but besides this it is said, farther on, that God called to Adam. At all events, the voice here becomes first a call. “In the cool of the day, that is, towards evening, when a cooling breeze is wont to arise.” Keil. To this we may add: and when also there comes to man a more quiet and contemplative frame of soul. So Delitzsch remarks very aptly: “God appears, because at that time men are in a state most susceptible of serious impressions.15 Every one experiences, even to this day, the truth of what is narrated. In the evening the dissipating impressions of the day become weaker, there is stillness in the soul; more than at other times do we feel left to ourselves, and then, too, there awake in us the sentiments of sadness, of longing, of insulation, and of the love of home. Thus with our first parents; when evening comes, the first intoxication of the satanic delusion subsides, stillness reigns within; they feel themselves isolated from the communion of God, parted from their original home, whilst the darkness, as it comes rushing in upon them, makes them feel that their inner light has gone out.” Farther on Delitzsch maintains that God appeared to man as one man appears to another, though this had not been the original mode of the divine converse with him. The theophanies had their beginning first after the fall ; and according to his explanation, “God now for the first time holds converse with men in an outward manner, corresponding to their materialization and alienated state.” On the other hand, Keil maintains, “that God held converse with the first men in a visible form, as a father and educator of his children, and that this was the original mode of the divine revelation, not coming in for the first time after the fall.” In neither can we suppose that there is taught a twofold incarnation of God, first in Paradise, and then in Christ. In like manner, too, must we regard the question here as unanswered, in what respect the theophanies (which were mediated in all cases through vision-seeing states of soul) are to be distinguished from real outward appearances in human form. Hofmann would complete the knowledge of Paradise, by taking as the appointed mode of revelation-God’s appearance to them as soaring on the cherubim. Delitzsch, moreover, informs us (after Hofmann, perhaps) that God, at this time, did not come down from heaven, since he yet dwelt upon the earth. More worthy of our confidence is the language of Keil: “Men have separated themselves from God, but God cannot and will not give them up.”—And Adam and his wife hid themselves.—Clearly an expression of guilt-consciousness, as also, an indication, at the same time, of the fall into sin, and of the decline into a state of corruption. The particular characteristics are these: consciousness of their transgression, of its effect, of their spiritual and bodily nakedness, of their separation from God—of a feeling of distrustful, selfish, and servile fear, in the presence of God, and of the loss of their spiritual purity, as originating in their guilt, together with the false notion that they can hide themselves from God. Moreover, the regular consistency which appears in this progress of sin must not be overlooked. Through this status corruptionis, the first common act of sin passes over into a second. Taken symbolically, this is the history of every individual fall into sin. “They hid themselves through modesty,” says Knobel. With all this, there is presented in the flight of the sinner from God a feeling of exculpation; yet still, again, it is attainted with self-deception, with a want of truth and humility.—Amongst the trees.—In the deepest density and darkness of the garden, which now becomes an emblem of the world, and of that worldly enjoyment in which the sinner seeks to hide himself.
8. Gen_3:9-19. Where art thou?—Knobel: “Jehovah must now call for man, who, at other times, was ever there.” Delitzsch: “It is clear, that not for his own sake does God direct this inquiring call to man, but only for man’s sake. God does in truth seek them, not because they are gone from his knowledge, but because they are lost from his communion.” It is a consequence of the very being of God as a person, if he would not violently surprise man with his omnipresence and his omniscience, that he should freely assume the form of seeking him, that is, of drawing nigh unto him gradually, in a way of mercy; since man must seek and find Him. The Good Shepherd seeks and finds the lost sheep; the sinner must seek and find God; the relation must be an ethical covenant relation. Delitzsch says farther: “This word, אַיֶּכָּה (where art thou?) echoes through the whole human world, and in each individual man.” That is, in a symbolical sense, the passage denotes every case of a sinner seeking his divine home. Delitzsch: “The heathen world feeling after God (ψηλαφᾶν, Act_17:27) is the consequence of this evening call, אַיֶּכְּה, and of the longing for home that is thereby evoked.—I heard thy voice in the garden.—Knobel: “His slight covering is sufficient as against the familiar wife, but not as against the high and far-seeing Lord of the Garden.” (!) The question may be asked, why God called to Adam, though Eve had been first in sin? Without doubt is Eve included in the more universal significance of the word Adam (man), yet still the call is directed to the individual Adam. In a certain sense, however, is this Adam, as the household lord of the wife, answerable for her step, notwithstanding that he himself is ensnared with her. The ethical arraignment for the complaint against the wife proceeds through Adam. But thus appears also here the additional indication that Adam is denoted as the first author of the hiding, as Eve was first in the sin itself. According to the mere laws of modesty (Knobel) the wife should rather have appeared in the foreground here. According to Keil, “when Adam says that he hid himself for fear, on account of his nakedness (thereby seeking to hide his sin behind its consequences, and his disobedience behind his feeling of shame), it is not a sign of special obduracy, but may easily be taken psychologically; as that, in fact, the feeling of nakedness and shame were sooner present to his consciousness than the transgression of the divine command, and that he felt the consequences of sin more than he recognized the sin itself.” Delitzsch would amend this by adding: “although all that he says is purely involuntary self-accusation.” It is to be observed that here appears the first mingling and confusion of sin and of evil, that is, that punishment of sin ordained of God, and which is the peculiar characteristic of our redemption-needing humanity.
Gen_3:11. Who told thee that thou wast naked?—Knobel: “From this behavior Jehovah recognised at once what had happened.” Hardly can any such anthropomorphism be found in the sense of the text. Keil says better: “It is for the sake of awaking this recognition of sin that God speaks.” The question, however, concerns not merely the means by which the recognition of sin may be brought out, but in a special manner the methods through which its confession may be educed. So also Delitzsch. “His explanation, however, of the interrogative מי as indicating that a personal power was the final original cause of the change that had passed upon man,” is far beyond the mark. For it is not the occasion of sin that is referred to here, but the occasion of the consciousness of nakedness. This, however, comes not from without, but from within. There lies, moreover, in the question that immediately follows: Hast thou eaten of the tree? the explanation of the meaning of the first.
Gen_3:12. And the man said, the woman whom thou gavest.—An acknowledgment of sin by Adam, but not true and sincere. The guilt proper is rolled upon the woman, and indirectly upon God himself; in which, however, there is naturally expressed a general exculpation, only God is put forward as the occasion of the calamity that has arisen. The loss of love that comes out in this interposing of the wife is, moreover, particularly denoted in this, that he grudges to call her Eva, or my wife (see this form of grudging, Gen_37:32; Job_3:20, where he says he16 instead of God;Luk_15:30; this thy son, Joh_9:12; where is he? namely, Jesus, etc.). “That woman by my side, she who was given to me by God as a trusty counsellor, she gave me the fruit;” in this form, again, is Eve in part excused by an imputation to God.
Gen_3:13. And the Lord God said unto the woman, what is this that thou hast done?17—God follows up the transgression, even to the root—not the psychological merely, but the historical root.—The serpent beguiled me.—Although temptation is a beguiling, yet here, in the gross delusions of the serpent, and the wife’s inclination to excuse herself, the latter conception is the more obvious one.
Gen_3:14. To the serpent he said, because thou hast done this.—It is no more said here, wherefore hast thou done this? although the serpent is previously introduced as speaking, and, therefore, as capable of maintaining conversation. Therein lies the supposition, that the trial has now reached the fountain-head of sin, the purely evil purpose (the demoniacal) having no deeper ground, and requiring no further investigation. Accordingly, there follow now the fatal dooms, according to the consequences of each particular evil act. The serpent receives his sentence first: thou art cursed.—The sense of מִן (rendered in the English translation above, or comparatively) is clearly that of selection: among all cattle, or out of all cattle (Clericus, Tuch, Knobel). It does not mean, therefore, cursed, that is, abhorred, by all cattle (Gesenius, De Wette, et al.) or above all cattle, that is, comparatively more cursed (Rosenmüller et al.). The sentence pronounced upon the serpent proceeds in a threefold gradation. Its explanation brings up, of itself, the question, whether the whole sentence bears upon the serpent alone, or in connection with something else, or only in a symbolical sense. Surely the general doom, cursed be thou (singular) among all cattle, and among all beasts (corresponding with the causality: subtle among all beasts, prominently), indicates a symbolical background of the whole judgment. 1. Quidam statuunt maledictionem latam in serpentem solum (quia hic confertur cum aliis bestiis) non in diabolum, quia is antea maledictus erat. 2. Alii in diabolum solum, quia brutus serpens non poterat juste puniri. 3. Alii applicantv. 14ad serpentem, v.15in diabolum. At vero tu et te idem sunt in utroque versu. 4. Alii existimant cam in utrumque latam. Quam sententiam verissimam judico. Medusin Poli Commentar. ad h. l. The inconsistency that arises when we would understand v. 14 of the serpent only, and v. 15, on the contrary, of Satan, is very apparent. The various diversities of interpretation are a consequence of a want of clearness in respect to the fundamental exegetical law, that here an historical foreground is everywhere connected with a symbolical background. Accordingly, both the historical and the symbolical go together through all the three dooms imposed upon the serpent; it is in the third act, however (the protevangel, as it is called), that the symbolical becomes especially prominent, and casts its light over the whole passage.—First judgment doom: Upon thy belly shalt thou go; that is, as the worm steals over the earth with its length of body, “as a mean and despised crawler in the dust (Deu_32:24; Mic_7:17).” It is a fact that the serpent did not originally have this inferior mode of motion like the worm, and it is this circumstance partly, and partly the consideration that along with his speaking the serpent presented to Eve the appearance of a trusty domestic animal, that appears to have given occasion to the expression: among all cattle, as a complement to which there is added: among all the beasts of the field. And to this effect is the remark of Knobel, that “for the time before the curse, the author must have ascribed to the serpent another kind of movement, and perhaps another form. It is reckoned here with the בהמה (cattle), v. 1 with the חית השדה (or beasts of the field).” In respect to this, it must be noticed, that there has also been maintained the supposition of his having before gone erect (Luther, Münster, Fag. Gerhard, Osiander) and been possessed of bone (Joseph., Ant. i. 1, 4; Ephraim, Jarchi, Merc.). Delitzsch and Keil, moreover, favor the view, that the serpent’s form and manner of motion were wholly transformed (Delitzsch) or changed (Keil). Delitzsch: “As its speaking was the first demoniacal miracle, so is this transformation the first divine.” Instead of that, we hold that this exposition only works in favor of the mythical interpretation (Knobel), since it mistakes the symbolical of the expression; on which, beside, it can only touch in the phrase to “eat the earth.” According to Delitzsch, “the eating of dust does not denote the exclusive food of the serpent, but only the involuntary consequence of its winding in the dust.” So, moreover, the expression, “On thy belly shalt thou go,” cannot denote that he was deprived of bone and wing, but only the involuntary consequence of the manifestation of the serpent’s hostile attitude to men, namely, that it should now wind about timorously upon its belly, or go stealing about in the most secret manner; whereas, before this, it could, with impunity, perform its meanderings before their eyes, yea, even stand upright in some respects, and twine itself round the trees. The older exegesis had some excuse, since it did not always know how to separate the conception of a biblical miracle wrought for judgment, or deliverance, from a magical metamorphosis. The assumption, however, at the present day, of such a metamorphosis, has to answer the question, whether through it the conception of a miracle is not changed, as well as that of nature itself. That, in fact, in consequence of the fall, and of their changed attitude towards men, the forms of animals can undergo monstrous changes, and have often been thus changed, though still remaining on the basis of their generic organization, is shown in the case of dogs who run wild; but the exposition above mentioned extends itself illimitably beyond any conception of deterioration. As far as concerns the symbolical side of the first sentence, it is clear that before any wider relation (to Satan), we must hold to the specific appointment, that the tempting evil shall no longer meander about the world, bold and free, but, in correspondence with its earthly meanness, and bestial association, shall wind along the ground in the most sly, and sneaking, and secret manner, eating the dust of the earth, and feeding itself upon the coarsest elements of life, or the very mould of death. This sentence, then, in the next place, avails not only against evil in general, but the Evil One himself. And therewith is denoted, at the same time, The second doom. Knobel: “According to the older representations, serpents licked the dust, and enjoyed it as their food. (Compare Mic_7:17; Isa_65:25; Bochart:Hieroz. iii. p. 245).” Here it is supposed that Micah and Isaiah have merely taken Genesis too literally; whereas Knobel interprets: “it is compelled to swallow down the dust as it moves here and there with its mouth upon the ground.” As the serpent, the allegorical type of the temptation, is sentenced to have its mouth in the dust, so is the genius of the serpent condemned to feed on elements which are a coarse prelude, or a nauseous after-game, of life.—Third doom of the serpent; the Protevangel. The rationalistic interpretation, which is last defended by Knobel, finds here denoted only the relation between the serpent-nature and the human race. That is, Genesis here, in one of its most ethically significant passages, flattens down into a mere physical anthropological observation. It is true that the physical here forms the point of departure. “Enmity shall exist between the serpent and the woman, and between the descendants of both. Man hates the serpent as a creature in direct contrariety to himself, persecutes and destroys it.” (To this point the words of Plautus: Mercat. iv. 4, 21, aliquem odisse œque atque angues.) It is also hostile to man, and bites him when uncharmed. In Pliny: Nat. Hist. x. 96, it is called immitissimum animalium genus. Compare also Ovid, Metamorph. xii. Genesis 804: calcato immitior hydro. It appears, as matter of fact, to have been the creature of the primitive world that was the most absolutely opposed to culture, and which, proceeding from the dragons of the earlier earth-periods, found its way through the last catastrophes into the newly prepared world, or had been organically metamorphosed—like “the den-inhabiting brood of the old dragons,” which, in a worse sense than any other beast could have done it, render the earth uncomfortable, destined as it was to culture; and therefore is it devoted to destruction in the world into which it had passed over. In connection with this fact, the thought readily occurs, how very appropriate that the natural relation between the serpent-brood and the human race, destined ever, and here anew, to the kingdom of God, should become a symbol of the religious ethical conflict between the evil and the good, upon earth. In opposition to the rationalistic stands the orthodox interpretation of our passage, which refers it to Satan on the one side, and to Christ, the personal Messiah, on the other. According to most of the older interpreters, the seed of the woman denotes directly the Messiah. (See Hengstenberg: “Christology of the Old Testament,” I. p. 21.) In respect to it, however, the Romish interpreters make a very bold variation. They do this in correspondence with the translation of the Vulgate: ipsa (instead of ipse) conteret caput tuum, which is condemned, not only by the Hebrew text, and the Septuagint, but in the “Quest. Heb.” of Hieronymus, who was himself the author of the Vulgate, as also by Petrus Chrysologus and Pope Leo the Great (see Calmet’sComm. p. 120); whilst Augustine, Ambrose, Gregory the Great, and others, have ranged themselves on the side of the Vulgate. Calmet interprets: in eundem sensum (namely, the right sense of the Hebrew text) reddi potest vulgata; neque aliter B. Virgo conterere valuit serpentem quam per filium suum Jesum Christum. So also says Von Schrank in his “Commentary:” in Hebrœo quidem habetur, ille (הוּא) conteret caput tuum: ergo semen mulieris, i.e. Jesus Christus conteret, sed res eodem redit: nam neque sanctissima Virgo aliter quam partu suo, i.e. in virtute Jesu Christi filii sui, caput serpentis contrivisse credenda est. Both authors, indeed, gave these wrested interpretations before the latest Papistical glorification of Mary. In modern times has the interpretation which refers the seed of the woman to the personal Messiah been defended by Philippi. In the primary sense, says Delitzsch, it is only promised that humanity shall win this victory, for הוּא (he) relates back to זֶרַע אִשָׁה (seed of the woman); as, however, the seed of the serpent has its unity in Satan, so it may be fairly conjectured that the conquering party, the seed of the woman, has also a person for its unity—a conjecture which, as we readily concede to Philippi (“Treatise concerning the Protevangel in Kliefoth-Meier’s Church Periodical,” 1855, pp. 519–548), is the more obvious; since in this second sentence the pronoun הוּא has for its object not the seed of the serpent, but the serpent, and in it Satan himself. It is, however
an incorrect opinion, that הוּא has immediately, and exclusively, a personal sense, and that the organic process of the annunciation of redemption demands this. The conception of הוּא is that of a circle, and Jesus Christ, or, as the Targum says, King Messiah, is evermore in the course of the redemptive history the prominent centre of this circle. So Delitzsch says, too, that Christ is essentially meant as the centre of humanity, or as the head of humanity, especially of the redeemed, as Keil says. We miss here the distinct exposition, whether the prophecy directly applies to Christ as a conscious announcement, or only impliedly, in as far as Christ is the kernel and the star of the woman’s seed. Hengstenberg regards the place as more decidedly relating to the collective posterity of the woman (“Christology,” i. p. 22). “Truly hast thou inflicted a sore wound upon the woman (such would be the import of the words addressed to the serpent), and thou, with thy fellow-serpents, wilt continue to lie in ambush for her descendants. Nevertheless, with all thy desire to hurt, wilt thou be only able to inflict curable wounds upon the human race, whilst, on the other hand, the posterity of the woman shall at last triumph over thee, and make thee feel thine utter impotency. This interpretation is found, indeed, in the Targum of Jonathan, and in the Jerusalem Targum, which, by the seed of the woman, understand the Jews who in the days of the Messiah shall vanquish Sammael.18 Paul seems to proceed on this view, Rom_16:20, where the promise is collectively referred to Christ. More lately has it found an acute advocate in Calvin, and then in Herder.” As the interpretation of the whole Protevangel is specially conditioned on the choice of expressions in detail, we apply ourselves to the analysis of the passage. As it is the third and most important part of the doom, taken collectively, so does it also divide itself again into three parts, whose point of gravity may also be said to be in three divisions. 1. Enmity between thee and the woman.—In place of the false, ungodly, and man-destroying peace between the serpent and the woman, must there come in, between them, a good and salutary enmity, established by God. That the woman may have a special abhorrence of the serpent, after her experience of the deception which she charges back upon him, and that the falsehood of the serpent, which had all along before been enmity, should now be unmasked,—this is the point of departure. But, since this enmity, as occasioned by an ethical event, must be itself substantially ethical—since the serpent is denoted as permanently present in his serpent-seed—since, finally, there is mention, at the end, of one head of the same—so does the whole passage have for its aim the ethical power of temptation, which must have worked in some way through the physical serpent, notwithstanding that a being morally evil is characterized, chap. Gen_3:1, and throughout the whole process of the temptation. The woman, however, is set in opposition to the serpent, in the first place, because she has been seduced by him, but then, too, in order to set forth more prominently the ethical character of the human enmity against the serpent. We must take into view here the predominant susceptibility of the woman, which, in its curiosity, had become a special susceptibility to temptation, but which now must become a predominant susceptibility for the divine appointment of enmity between them; add to which that, in general, man becomes master of evil only through a feminine susceptibility for the assistance of God. 2. Between thy seed and her seed.—That is, the appointment of this enmity shall work on permanently through the generations that are to come; the strife shall never cease. And truly, it thus continues as a war between the serpent-seed in its one totality, and the woman’s seed in its one totality. And now here the symbolical sense presents itself much stronger; for in all the occasional conflicts between men and serpents there is no universal and generic war between both. But this indicates a working of the power of temptation as a unit against the unitary moral power of the woman’s seed in the conflict. In general, it is a contrast between the mysterious power of evil from the other world, and the human race altogether in this. Since, however, men alone can belong to the genuine seed of the woman, as it carries on the enmity of the woman against the serpent, so it is clear, that from the opposite direction it must be men that fall in with the society of the serpent’s seed (that is, the demons and their powers), or in other words, become ethically children of the power of temptation. 3. It shall bruise.—Here now the question arises: what is the meaning of that enigmatic verb שׁוּף? The Septuagint translates: αὐτός σου τηρήσει κεφαλὴν καὶ σὺ τηρήσεις αὐτοῦ πτέρναν; the Vulgate: ipsa conteret caput tuum et tu insidiaberis calcaneo ejus. The Septuagint is consistent in having the same expression (τηρήσει-ς) in both cases, but it is the one which, in view of the Alexandrian spiritualism, is the weakest of them all. The Vulgate chooses for both members of the sentence interpretations of the same word that lie too far apart. This is evidently done in order that, on the one side, the ipsa (the she, or the Virgin in that translation) may exhibit the highest possible degree of heroism, whilst on the other side, under the protecting veneration of the monastic theology, she does not suffer the least injury to her heel. The word שׁוּף is interpreted in various ways: 1. terere, conterere. So the Syriac, the Samaritan, and others (such as our German and English versions). So also Clericus, Tuch, Baumgarten, Rödiger; also, with special reference to Rom_16:20, Hengstenberg, Delitzsch, Keil. In any case, it would be an epexegetical translation, if we would find the expressions, to tread with the foot, and to pierce, in one common conception, lying at the ground of both. Moreover, this same word, as used Psa_139:11, and Job_9:17, cannot denote either to tread, or to pierce. Just as little, on the other side, can it mean insidiari, or inhiare, to assail or pursue in a hostile manner—as Umbreit, Gesenius, and Knobel explain the word with reference to its supposed affinity with שׁאף. The middle conception, which suits both places here, and which commends itself as suitable to the two parallel passages, Job 9 and Psalms 139, is to lay hold of, seize, hit. Keil: “The same word is used in relation to the head and the heel, to indicate that the enmity on both sides is aimed at the destruction of the opponent—for which purpose by head and heel are expressed majus and minus, or, as Calvin says, superius and inferius.19 This contra - arises, indeed, out of the very nature of the foes. The serpent who crawls in the dust, if he would destroy man walking in his uprightness, can only seize him by the heel; whereas, man can crush his head. But this difference itself is already a consequence of the curse pronounced upon the serpent, and its crawling in the dust is a premonition that in the strife with man it must, at last, succumb. Be it even that the bite of the serpent in the heel is even deadly when its poison penetrates throughout the whole body (Gen_49:17), yet it is not immediately mortal, nor incurable, like the crushing of the serpent’s head. There comes also into consideration: 1. The contrast: head and heel. The life, like the poison, of the serpent, is in its head, and is destroyed with it. The heel of man is the least vulnerable, whilst it is that part of the body which is the most easily healed. 2. The conscious, adaptive aiming of the woman’s seed, the blind, brutal, and ill-directed assault of the serpent. The seed of the woman seizes the power of evil in its central life, in its principle; the seed of the serpent attacks the power of good in its most outward and assailable appearance. 3. The very moment in which the serpent bites at the heel of the man, is the one in which the latter brings down the crushing foot upon its head. It is, indeed, not without significance, that the seed of the woman is presented in the singular, and in fact, in the last decisive moment, set in opposition, not to the seed of the serpent, but to the serpent himself—as is pointed out by Hengstenberg and others. Here now must we distinguish between the prophetical and the typical elements of prophecy—as also the prophecies that are strictly verbal. The prophetic element is present in the prophet’s consciousness; the typical element is not, although it may be consciously present to the spirit of revelation that guides him. Our text appears primarily, indeed, as the immediate speech of God, the all-knowing, who sees beforehand every thing in the future; but still, the measure of consciousness in our prophecy can become determinate to us only according to the presumable degree of consciousness in the author of Genesis, or, still further, in those who actually brought down the tradition contained in chapter 3. In relation, therefore, to this human prophetical consciousness, and its germinal state of development, must we distinguish between the conscious prophecy of the word and the unconscious prophecy of the typical expression. So in Psalms 16. the conscious prophecy says, through my communion with God I shall possess immeasurable joys of life; the typical expression, however, is fulfilled in the resurrection of Christ (Acts 2). So also says the prophet, Isaiah 7 : the young prophet wife shall, 1. conceive; 2. bear a son, whose name, 3. with joyful hope they shall call Immanuel. The typical expression, however, is a prediction of Christ, the son of the virgin. In this sense, also, does Paul allow himself to interpret the singular, in thy seed, as a typical prophecy of Christ. And we doubt not, that here, too, the spirit of the type chose this expression, the seed of the woman, with an æonian consciousness of its rich significance. If we go back, however, to the conscious prophecy, so it may be safe to say, that with the humanity in general, on its light side, there is also placed its core20—as it is with Judah (Gen_49:10), and Israel (Hos_11:1). In truth, the core, or heart, is ever embraced in concrete unity with the hull, but to the biblical view is this gravitation to the unity peculiar from the very beginning. On the other side, however, according to the New Testament, and the patristic unveiling of its significance, is the seed of the woman not exclusively to be referred to the individuality of Christ. Christ, as the Christ in the universal humanity, is here to be understood; especially in the second clause, at least, as also, therefore, in the third according to Paul (Rom_16:20).
There remains, finally, the question how the temptation of the first pair by the serpent is to be understood. According to Knobel there is found in our passage just as little reference to the devil as to the Messiah (p. 48). Consequently would the whole passage become a mere physical myth. Von Bohlen goes back to the kindred traditions of the ancients, and finds it of the deepest significance that in the printed Samaritan text there is כָּחָשׁ, liar, instead of נהש, serpent. According to one of the Indian myths, Krishna, in the form of the sun, contends with the Evil One, in the form of serpent. In like manner in Egypt, Typhon, whose name is interpreted by Serpent, persecutes his brother Osiris, or the sun. Hercules possesses himself of the golden apple of the Hesperides, which the Serpent guarded. According to Bohlen, however, the nearest source of our narrative, as of Paradise in general, lies in Iran. Ahriman, according to the Zendavesta, in the form of a serpent brought of his fruits to men, who were of the pure creation of Ormuzd. And so, according to him, as also according to Rosenmüller, must the author of our account have had that as a model before his eyes. And yet, somehow, we know not how he distinguishes from it the simple sense of the Israelitish narrator. The reference of Bohlen only shows how our primitive tradition spreads itself in the manifold adumbrations and transformations of the most varied mythological systems, even as the like holds true in respect to the cosmogony, the first human pair, Paradise, and still further on in respect to the flood. In opposition to all this stands the traditional view of the Church, that under the serpent as instrument and symbol our passage consciously intends the devil (see Hengstenberg: “Christology,” p. 5; Delitzsch, p. 168; Keil, p. 51). In respect to this, there is no doubt that in the Holy Scripture there lies before us a connected line of testimonies whose object is ever the same demoniac tempting spirit—a line which, going out from the serpent in the passage before us, reaches even to the close of the New Testament in the Apocalypse, Gen_12:3; Gen_12:9; Gen_12:13; Gen_20:2; Gen_20:10. The identity is established by the cited places of the Apocalypse, by 2Co_11:3 (compare Gen_3:14) by the Book of Wis_2:23; with which again in connection stands Joh_8:44; though to this have been objected certain weakening interpretations (Lücke, and others). It is so also in Rom_16:20. Here is every where evident the relation of the fall to the serpent according to its symbolical significance. In many more ways, as in the Book of Wis_2:24; Joh_8:44; 2Co_11:3; Rom_16:20, there appears the identity of the tempting Spirit, which worked through the serpent, with the figure of the devil as he appears later in the Scripture. That, indeed, the physical serpent could not have been meant, as the tempter in our passage, shows itself from the distinct appearance of consciousness in respect to the great separation between man and the animal world (Gen_2:19-20), as it is rightly presented by Hengstenberg; it also appears from the collective declaration that every creation of God was good (Genesis 1), and from the ethical features which in the third chapter the serpent assumes as a maliciously subtle creature, as well as from the symbolical background which ever shows itself stronger and stronger in the primitive condemnation. Next to the identity of the tempting spirit behind the serpent and Satan, comes now its continuity. Before all, in the Old Testament. First Stage of the idea: Indication of evil spirits, and of one especially as an apostate, pre-eminently in Azazel, Lev_16:8; in symbols of the Evil One, Deu_32:17; in the Schedim (Septuagint, δαιμόνια, properly, master-gods), and the Seirim, Isa_13:21. Second Stage: The appearance of Satan as the foe of man, as the tempter and accuser, Job 1, 2; 1Ch_21:1. Third Stage: The designation of Satan as the enemy of God, as the fallen founder of an evil dominion in opposition to the establishment of the divine kingdom, ZeGen Gen_3:1; Isa_27:1; serpents and dragon-forms as symbols of the reign of Antichrist; Daniel 7, the beasts out of the sea. The New Testament clearly introduces the doctrine of Satan with a counterpart of the temptation of Adam in Paradise, when it represents the temptation of Christ in the wilderness, Matthew 4. After this, in the perfecting the doctrine of Satan, there is, first, the mention, Mat_12:43, of his connection as chief with the individual evil spirits in the demoniacs. Then, in the second stage, Satan is especially designated as the foe of man (Joh_8:44; Mat_12:29; Mat_13:39; Act_10:38). In the third stage comes forth the finished form of the doctrine, when Satan is represented as the enemy of God and Christ, and the prince of the kingdom of darkness, making complete his revelation, first in secret influences, then in pseudo-Christian organs, and finally in one Antichristian organ (Joh_12:31; 2Co_4:4; Eph_6:12; 2Th_2:9, and the Revelation).
A chief question here, however, is this: whether we are to suppose that in the passage before us there is already indicated a developed consciousness in respect to the nature of the devil. Since in the Old Testament, the New Testament doctrines have not yet come to their full development, and since the beginnings of them on the first pages of Genesis meet us throughout in a very dark, veiled, and germinal form, so would it be a gross inorganic anomaly, if a developed knowledge of the devil has to be supposed in this place. Just such an anomaly, however, appears to be assumed by Delitzsch, along with others, when he says (p. 168): “The narrator keeps his position on the outer appearance of the event without lifting the veil from the substance that lies behind. He may well do this, since even the heathen sages present an express though deformed notice of the truth; but the author throws a veil over it, because the unfolding would not have been suitable for those people of his time who were inclined to a heathenish superstition, and to a heathenish intercourse with the demon-world (still would there have arisen a superstition from it, even if the narrator had had the purpose to stand purely by the literal serpent). It is a didactic aim that determines the narrator to rest satisfied with the objectivity of the outward event as it becomes perceivable, and to be silent in regard to its remoter ground.” In maintaining this view, Delitzsch himself refers (p. 625) to the Church fathers. Keil presents a more striking ground for this “didactic aim” of silence in respect to Satan, both here and further on in the Old Testament; “it had respect,” he says, “to the inclination which men have to roll the guilt from themselves upon the tempting spirit; it was to allow them no pretext.” We may, however, just as well trust the spirit of the divine revelation with a didactic aim in relation to the narrator, as the narrator himself in relation to his readers; and it is in accordance with the divine mode of instruction, that revelation should unfold itself in exact correspondence with the human state of development. The assumption of an objective development of evil in the spirit-world has in it nothing irrational; yet Hengstenberg rightly remarks: “moreover, the position held by most of those who deem themselves compelled to regard the book of Job as originating before the captivity, namely, that the Satan of that book is not the Satan of the later Old Testament books, but rather a good angel, only clothed with a hateful office, is becoming more and more acknowledged as correct; so that we may wonder how Beck (Lehrwissenschaft, I. p. 249) can be impressed with the supposed fact, and seek to adapt himself to it, through the assumption that the alienation of a part of the angels from God, and their kingdom of darkness, develops itself in a progressive unfolding.” Yet clearly is the commencement of the tempting spirit, Gen_3:1, devilish enough. Moreover, must we distinguish the conception of the development of the demoniacal kingdom, from that of the development of the demoniacal character. The measure of the knowledge of demons, or demonology, which distinctly presents itself in our text, is the recognition of an evil that stands back of the serpent, and of a malicious spirit of temptation which henceforth ever, more and more, shall become acknowledged as the crafty, lying foe of man (“and I will put enmity”), but who betrays himself already as the foe of God and the adversary of his counsels, as connected with the human race. The more definite unveiling of this last, point, and its wider consequences, such as a fallen angel-prince of a fallen angel-host, and of a kingdom of darkness, belong to the later development of the doctrine.
When, finally, the question is asked, in what manner must we think of the working of this foe of man as taking place through the serpent, we encounter again the abstract opposition of the pure actuality as against, the supposition of a fact under the relations of a vision. Next to such views as these: the devil spoke in the phantom shape of a serpent (Cyril of Alexandria); the devil spoke through the serpent, or made it speak by a diabolical agency (Delitzsch’s “First Demoniac Miracle”); the serpent is only an allegory (Grotius: the representation of an old poem); or, an outward eating by the serpent of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, and a simultaneous whispering by Satan to the soul of Eve, happened together (Clericus, Hetzel)—next to such as these we place the view that Satan worked through a sympathetic influence upon the mind of Eve, and thereby made the indeterminate acts of the serpent to become speaking signs, to such a degree, that, in the excited visionary temperament of the woman, they became transformed into a dialectical process of speech and reply.
To conclude, it is especially to be borne in mind, against the assertions of Delitzsch in respect to the imposition of punishment upon the serpent (p. 179), that every application of the idea of punishment to beasts takes away its peculiar conception; so much so, that, even on the ground of the Old Testament consciousness, can we boldly affirm that, from the very fact of Jehovah’s pronouncing a doom upon the serpent, the meaning must be of something more than a serpent. Rather, may we say, that the future of the serpent-brood is announced in a way which unmistakably expresses the sentence of the man-hating spirit in a symbolical form. Indeed, Delitzsch himself says: Not as though beasts were capable of the imputation; but none the less is there repeated the mention of the infliction of punishment upon the serpent, and we can, therefore, read: the beast that gave itself for this purpose, to lead astray to an ungodly deed him who is called to be lord of the animal world, and his helpmeet, is also to be punished, though in a different way. Delitzsch refers to Lev_20:15 : “It is truly an Old Testament law, that contra-natural lust must be punished, not only in man, but also in the beast with which it is practised; and, in general, the beast is to be punished through which a man has suffered any harm whatever in body or soul (Gen_9:6; Exo_21:28; Deu_13:15; 1Sa_15:3).” In the passage from Leviticus, the killing of the abused beast is denoted by הרג. The notion that in this and the other places cited the destruction of the beast is ordered for the sake of the man, or in company with the man, rests upon the idea of the personal elevation of man above the beast, in accordance with which it is that, in the symbolical expression, a beast that has killed a man is likewise put to death, and the beasts of multitudes of men devoted to death are put to death with them. It is, moreover, as a symbolical expression of anger and abhorrence, as “when a father breaks in pieces the sword with which his son has been slain.” The symbolical in those acts arises out of the contrast between the New Testament and the Old. The Petrobrusians treated even the sign of the cross as a sign of ignominy, because Christ had been put to death on the cross. The Christian church, however, has never acknowledged this view. Moses also, at one time, established a type in the New Testament sense, in the lifting up of the brazen serpent.
Gen_3:16. Unto the woman he said.—The sentence pronounced upon the woman contains a painful modification and transformation of the womanly calling, as farther on the sentence pronounced upon Adam is a similar modification of the manly, or, we may say generally, of the human calling [since Adam embraces at once the common human nature]; and so, accordingly, is the earlier mode of life of the serpent made to become a modification of the sentence pronounced upon it. What they do according to their nature, that must now bring upon them the punishments that are in correspondence with their natures. Delitzsch distinguishes a threefold retribution in the sentence upon the woman. We follow him therein, only taking the members in a different way. The punishment falls: 1. Upon the relation of the womanly organism in and for itself; 2. on the relation to her children; and 3. on the relation to her husband. 1. I will greatly multiply thy sorrow. The expression עצבונך והרונך is generally taken as a hendyadis. “The frequency of pregnancy can be no punishment.” The Samaritan translates: The burden that is connected with pregnancy. And yet we are not justified here in limiting the whole doom of the womanly distress and sorrow directly to the state of pregnancy. Still it may be more safe to say with Delitzsch: Thy burden, and especially thy pregnancy with its burden. The womanly calling is an endless multiplicity of little troubles, and the womanly destiny is loaded with the most manifold sexual pains. The pains of a woman with child, Jer_31:8.—2. With sorrow. [Lange translates it, with difficulty, noth.] We maintain that the translation of עצב by trouble or pain is too weak. It is the state of birth-travail, which is, all at the same time, labor, pain, difficulty, and danger (see Isa_13:8; Isa_21:3; Hos_13:13; Mic_4:9; Joh_16:21), “Gravida et pariens,” says an old proverb, “est sicut œgrota et moriens.” Delitzsch. The contrast between the lightest (Exo_1:19) and the most difficult births, may help to give us an idea of the contrast between the normal paradisaical way of birth, and the birth-sorrows that have prevailed in human history; and this too without our having to suppose, with Delitzsch, a change in “the physiological constitution of the woman.” Hence-forth must the woman purchase the gain of children with the danger of her life,—in a certain degree, with spiritual readiness for death, and the sacrifice of her life for that end.—3. And thy desire shall be to thy husband. This sentence obtains its full significance in its embracing that which follows, and in its contrast to it. It is, emphatically, that her desire should be to the man as though she were magically bound to him. תְּשׁוּקָה may denote the longing of the woman’s dependence upon man. תְּשׁוּקָה comes from שׁוּק, to run, run after, pursue, want.21 It is further emphatic that the man shall rule over her in a strong way; and finally that she, in her bound and destined adherence to man, shall find in him a strong and severe master. The woman had specifically sinned, “not for the sake of earthly enjoyment merely” (Delitzsch), but in high-flown aspiring, as though she would emancipate herself from man, get before him, and take him under her guardianship. Her punishment, therefore, must consist in this, that she must become subject in the normal line of her sexual being, her consciousness, adhesiveness, and dependence. “The man can command in a lordly way, and the wife is inwardly and outwardly compelled to obedience. In consequence of sin thus arises that subjection of the wife to the husband, bordering on slavery, that was customary in the old world, as it still is in the East, and which through the religion of revelation becomes gradually more tolerable, until, at last, in the increasing worth of the woman, it becomes entirely evened” (Delitzsch). “Among the Hebrews a wife was bought by the husband (? Gen_34:12; Exo_22:16; Hos_3:3; Hos_3:2). and was his possession (female slave, ? Gen_20:3; Deu_22:22). He is called her lord (Gen_18:21; Exo_21:3), and he can divorce her without much ceremony (Deu_24:1). This subordinate and depressed condition of the wife the author (!) regards as the punishment of sin.” Knobel.
Gen_3:17. And unto Adam he said.—Sentence against Adam. In the case of Adam (whose name here first appears as a proper name) there is an indictment or declaration of his guilt going before the sentence of condemnation. His guilt culminates in this, that he had listened to the voice of his wife who was placed under him, and this, too, in direct opposition to that obedience which he owed to the voice and the command of his God. Instead of the protector and guide of his wife, to guard her from the fall, or, after her fall, to bring her back to God, he becomes, in his cowardly renunciation of his dignity, subject with her to evil. Mediately is this also a rebuke of his self-exculpation: “the wife whom thou gavest unto me,” as it is also of the seductive voice of his wife, and her obedience to the voice of the serpent. As, however, the woman is punished through the derangement of the smaller subjective world of her womanly calling, so is Adam punished through the disorder of the greater objective world of his masculine calling. The adamah (the soil of Eden) which, with his wife, he was to carry forward, in a normal unfolding, to imperishable life and spiritual glory, is now cursed for his sake, and therewith changed to a position of hostility to him, and of power over him. Like a sick, disordered woman, it becomes to him a capricious and hard stepmotherlike tutoress, swinging the rod over him with thorns and thistles. Here, too, may we distinguish a threefold act in the one sentence. 1. The curse-state of the adamah, and the harm endured by it for Adam’s sake, outwardly, on its surface, and in its peculiar adamitic nature, even to its very life,—especially as the endurance of unfruitfulness, decay, and impoverishment, to such a degree that it can only afford to him its food in a scanty manner. 2. The positive strife which the curse-loaded adamah, with its thorns and thistles, opposes to Adam’s labor, and the resulting failure and deterioration of its nourishing product: the herb of the field. 3. The fruitless efforts of man, in the sweat of his brow, to sustain his life in perpetuity through his daily bread; since it has become subject to the power of death, which now impends as doom upon the very substance of the adamah.—1. Cursed be the ground.Knobel: “Agriculture among the Hebrews was a divine institution (Isa_28:26), but at the same time a heavy burden (Sir_6:19; Sir_7:15), that pressed especially on servants (1Sa_8:12; Isa_61:5; ZaGen Gen_8:15), and presented the idea of punishment when compared with the primitive golden age. Classic antiquity, too, assumed that in the golden age the earth brought forth spontaneously every thing necessary for man, and that agriculture proper came in first at a later period (e.g. Hesiod, Op. et Dies, p. 118 f; Plato, Politicus, p. 274 f; Virg., Georg. i. 27; Ovid, Met. i. 162; Macrob., Som. Scip. ii. 10).—2. Cursed the earth for thy sake. That is, in order to punish thy transgression through it, shall she no more be blessed with fruitfulness, but shall be unfruitful. Just so do the Prophets derive the desolation and barrenness of the land from a divine curse (Isa_24:6; Jer_23:10).—3. In sorrow shalt thou eat of it. With painful labor shalt thou hereafter derive thy food from it (comp. Isa_1:7; Isa_5:17; Isa_36:16; Jer_23:10).” Delitzsch takes it in a deeper sense: “Man had for his grand vocation to guard the creation of God, all good from Paradise down, against the entrance of evil, and to be the medium of its gradual transfiguration. As a spirito-corporeal being, he was to the material world as אדם to אדמה, being placed in a relation of essentially mutual adaptiveness and casual reciprocity. Even from this it becomes clear, how, in consequence of the fall, the material in man, the direct opposite of this transforming power, takes possession first of his corporeity, and then propagates itself upon the surrounding material, that is, the universal nature.” It is, however, not wholly correct to say that the doom of the curse is represented as going out from the nature of man against the outer nature; much rather, according to the representation, does the curse of the adamah come nigh to man, as a new divine ordering of nature (comp. also Rom_8:20). We must, therefore, distinguish those special deteriorations of nature which in their ethical causality proceed immediately from man, from that doom of God which was pronounced collectively upon the adamitic cosmos. In correspondence with the above idea, Delitzsch continues: “This curse of sin consists firstly in this, that the soil of the earth, now far from producing what man needs with its original ease and abundance, demands painful exertion, and this often in vain.” Keil makes the point still sharper when he says that “Adam, in the act of listening to the voice of his serpent-befooled wife, had renounced his superiority to the creature. On this account shall nature henceforth array herself against him for his punishment. Through his transgression of the divine command hath he set himself against God; therefore shall he, by falling under the power of death, become conscious of the vanity of his being.” Since we have recognized the conception of blessing (chap. 1) as the conception of an endless fertility and multiplication, as an unceasing and wonderful reproduction, so must we here regard the curse that comes in as the opposite,—even as it appears from the divine explication itself. The doom of unthriftiness, or of mysterious self-generating unfruitfulness, as pronounced upon the adamah, unfolds itself unitedly in the ground-forms of deterioration, sickliness, perishability; negatively in the ground-forms of impoverishment, disorder, malformation, and decay; positively in the forms of crudity, coarseness, deformity, and self-destruction. This curse is the adjustment of a causal nexus between sin and evil in its objective, physical, cosmical appearance. As on the one side it is a mysterious fatality, so, on the other side, as matter of contemplation and conception, is it an ethical consequence. The first ground: the negative side, the spoiling or disordering, presents itself in the first act.—1. With sorrow shalt thou eat, that is, derive thy food (see Isa_1:7).—2. Thorns and thistles.קוֹץ וְדַרְדַּר terms that occur in connection only here and in Hos_10:8, where they are repeated from this place; the ancient דרדר became obsolete, being of like significance with שַׁמִיר וָשַׁיִת as used in Isaiah.” Keil. In their ground type, doubtless, thorns and thistles must have already existed before; but it is now the tendency of nature to favor the ignoble forms rather than the noble, the lower rather than the higher, the weed rather than the herb. In place of the ennobling tendency which would produce a fruit-tree or a rosebush out of a thorn-shrub, or that wonderful flower of the cactus out of the thistle, there comes in a tendency to wildness or degeneracy which transforms the herb into a weed. The sickliness of nature: a falling back upon its subordinate stages, as a punishment of man for his contra-natural falling back into a demoniacal, bestial behavior. Here now, along with the thorns and thistles, there is, at the same time, the positive opposition of nature to man. In place of the garden-culture, there is introduced not agriculture simply, but an agriculture which is, at the same time, a strife with a resisting nature, and in place of the fruit of Paradise, is man now directed to the fruit of the field. There stands, besides, the burden cast upon the field as an expression for the more universal deterioration of nature,—namely, in the animal world (see the note from Calvin cited by Keil, p. 61). In like manner the burden cast upon the human agriculture stands for that which is imposed upon every branch of the human vocation.—3. In the sweat of thy face. An emblematical denoting of the daily toil and burden of labor, even for the necessary daily bread. It shall not merely be earned by the sweat of the face; the sweat shall stand upon his brow even in his meal; that is, he shall have only a brief respite for recreation. The face is the most peculiar representative of the human dignity. It may reflect the light of a holy spiritual life; on the contrary, like the dark, gloaming shadow of distress and care, must now the sweat veil the countenance and moisten the bread of toil. Therefore is it well said, the sweat of the face. The eating of bread denotes here, as throughout the Scripture, the sustaining of life generally, or the assuaging its wants (Ecc_5:16; Amo_7:12).—Till thou return unto the ground. That man must return unto the earth, that is, must die, is now taken for granted, and therewith it is, at the same time, expressed, that now from the power and rule of immortality, he has fallen under the law and rule of death. The appointment of the time: till thou return unto the earth, says not merely that even to the grave his life should be pain and labor (Psa_90:10), but this moreover, that it shall be a fruitless effort for the maintaining of his existence, until at last he shall be wholly subdued by the overpowering might of death.—For dust thou art. This is the culminating point in the penal sentence, expressed nevertheless in the form of a confirmation of what precedes: not as a new or repeated doom; since after the threatening (Gen_2:17), it is understood of course. The declaration here especially makes clear the fact that death had already secretly commenced in life. Knobel affirms that “neither this passage, nor the Old Testament in general, teaches that death belongs solely to the punishment of sin.” What else is said in Psalms 90? The possibility, indeed, that Adam might become dust again, that is, that he might die, is made clear from this, that he was taken from the earth; but it does not therefore follow that before this time the necessity of dying must have been imposed upon him. Moreover, the terminus in death which is here appointed, must clearly be regarded, not as primarily the limit of misery, but as the culminating point of the necessity; notwithstanding a glimpse of promise presents itself, as well in this place as throughout the different sentences. Knobel thus explains himself further on: “He might have gained immortality through the tree of life (Gen_2:9), but only as something lying above the plane of his nature, only as some superior excellence of the heavenly powers, just as it was imparted to Enoch and Elijah.” So that, even according to Knobel, when through his guilt man lost the tree of life, he thereby fell into death. This is just the way the text presents it, as the normal destiny of man, that he should eat of the tree of life, and not of the tree of death. It is a perversion of relations, when out of the conditional posse mori we would make a conditional posse vivere. Keil. “The fact of man’s not immediately coming to an end after eating the forbidden fruit has not its ground in this, that through the creation of the woman, coming between the death-threatening and the fall, the fountain of human life was parted, and that the life which in the beginning had been shut up in the one Adam became divided, and thereby the deadly effect of the fruit in them was weakened and rendered more mild (Hofmann, ‘Prophecy and Fulfilment,’ I. p. 67; ‘Scripture Proof,’ I. p. 519). Delitzsch seeks some rational support for this poetical fancy, but finds the true reason in the divine long-suffering and grace, which gives space for repentance, and so rules and orders even the sins of men and their punishment as may best serve the realization of his counsels in creating, and the glory of his name.” It must, nevertheless, before all things, be maintained, that the text would have us recognize the beginning of death, the root of death, the inward ethical beginning of the same, as the matter of chief moment.
9. Gen_3:20-22. The hope and the compassion. And Adam called his wife’s name Eve.—Throughout the pronunciation of doom, Adam had kept his eye fixed upon the brightest spot, the word of promise in respect to the seed of the woman, and with this he consoles himself now against the perceived announcement of death, in that he names his wife havah. Just as his own generic name had become a proper name (v. 17) in the declaration of punishment, so now does he give his wife a proper name after the promise as received not only in its generic sense but also in its deeper significance. “According to this, חַיָּה = חַוָּה is either life, ζωή (Sept.) = life-spring, or it is to be taken as abbreviated participle: the sustenance, that is, propagation of life [for מְהַוָּה from חִיָּה = חִוָּה (Gen_19:32; Gen_19:34), which I prefer as being more significant than γυνή from γένω and femina from feo, although essentially of like significance. Symm. ζωογόνος.” Delitzsch. Keil declares himself for the former acceptation, and against the latter. Knobel hints at an expression for the wife: חִיָּה זֶדַע, to quicken the seed, that is, to propagate the race, and decides for taking it as an adjective: quickener, life-giver, propagatist, which also is nearer the truth than the indeterminate and too extensive ζωή. In the explanatory addition of the narrator, there appears to be indicated, along with the extensive promise of the name: mother of all living, also the intensive: mother of life, as mediatrix of life in the higher sense. With great pertinency remarks Delitzsch: “The promise purports truly a seed of the woman. In the very face, therefore, of the death with which he is threatened, the wife is for Adam the security of both, as well for the continuance, as for the victory, of his race; and it is, therefore, a laying hold of the promise and of the grace in the midst of wrath, and with a consciousness of death incurred; in a word, it is an act of faith that Adam names his wife חַוָּה, havah—Eve.” In distinction from אִשָּׁה (woman) this is a proper name which as a memorial of promised grace, as Melanchthon calls it, expresses the peculiar significance of this first of wives for humanity and its history.—For Adam and his wife made coats of skins.—Knobel: “Clothes of skins, that is, clothes from the skins of beasts, which elsewhere, throughout antiquity, were used as the earliest human clothing (Diod. Sic. I. p. 43; ii. 38; Arrian Ind. vii. 2; Lucian. Amor. 34; Bundeh 15 in Kleuk III. p. 85). In this the clothing makes an advance corresponding to the increasing moral knowledge.” In the connection of events our passage is explained by the fact that along with the word of death there is introduced the immolation of the animal for the need of man. They are on the point of being compelled to leave Paradise; they need now a stronger clothing for their entrance upon the climate of the outer land. And finally, in place of the insufficient, easily fading, and easily destroyed covering of their nakedness, as practised in their self-willed, servile shame, there must now be introduced, under the divine direction, a sufficient covering, adapted to a freer and more ingenuous modesty. In this sense it is God who makes their clothing, although it is done by means of their own hands. It is an act of inspiration, of divine revelation and guidance, out of which proceeds their becoming clothed as though from themselves. According to Hofmann, Drechsler, Delitzsch, this clothing would appear to be a sacramental sign of grace, a type of the death of Christ, and of the being clothed with the holy righteousness of the God-man (Delitzsch, p. 192). Keil disputes this, although firmly maintaining that in this act of God there was laid the ground of the sacrificial offering of beasts. The idea of the sacrificial offering of animals points indeed to a vast remote; here, at least, it is an obvious expression to the effect that the restoration of the human dignity, purity, and divine acceptableness, is not too dearly bought even by the shedding of blood, and that it presupposes a suffering of death. It becomes necessary, moreover, that, even before his departure from Paradise, man should see, in the spectacle of the bleeding beasts, how serious his history has become.—Behold the man has become like one of us.—“That is, a being possessed of a similar attribute, therefore like me, so far as I belong to the class of higher spiritual beings.” (!) Knobel.—As one of us.—According to Delitzsch the language is communicative in relation to the included angels. We are inclined here to be satisfied with the conception of the anthropomorphising pluralis majestatis. But in how far has he so become? Only in relation to the knowledge of good and evil, says Keil. Again, says Knobel, “it is the commencing moral recognition, which, therefore, makes him like God.” Says Chrysostom, he Speaks this, ὀνειδίζων αὐτῷ καὶ τὴν ἄνοιαν αὐτοῦ κωμωδῶν (reproaching him and mocking his folly). Delitzsch might find something strange in such an irony. Richers says strongly: “Irony against an unfortunate, seduced soul! Satan might cherish such a disposition, not the Lord.” The opinion proceeds, in the first place, from a misunderstanding of the irony, as also, in the second place, of the “poor seduced” soul. According to Göschell’s more correct and profounder representation, a divine irony is everywhere the second stage in all divine acts of punishment (Zerstrcute Blätter, vol. i. p. 468). As the serpent had lyingly promised: ye shall be as gods, so is it clear that God cannot simply confirm this by saying, his promise is established. When he serves himself, therefore, with the same words, it must be meant ironically. That, however, irony and malicious sarcasm are two quite distinct things, we may learn everywhere, and out of the Scriptures themselves. In this way the expression becomes more distinctly clear: he has become one like us, that is, as we become represented in different forms and transformations. He is become like God; true, alas! God pity him, he knows now in his guilt-consciousness the difference between good and evil. None the less, too, in this ironic word lies the recognition that he has broken through the limits of his proper development, and prematurely obtruded upon the consciousness of the spiritual realm.—And now lest he put forth.—We do not, with Delitzsch, regard פֶן as denoting an anakolouthon, since this is not necessary according to Isa_38:18; Job_32:13; and since the assumption of anakoloutha is only allowable in cases of necessity,—a view which is specially applicable to the simple diction of Genesis 22 Knobel: “Jehovah is concerned, lest they may be able to enjoy also the tree of life, and thereby get to themselves the farther advantage of a higher being (immortality),”—a wholly paganish representation of Jehovah which we have no right to lay as a burden upon the text. Keil says better: “After he had become the property of death through sin, the fruit that produces immortality could only redound to his destruction. For, in a state of sin, undyingness23 is not the ζωὴ αἰώνιος (the eternal life of the soul) which God has designed for men, but endless pain, never-ceasing destruction (everlasting destruction), which the Scripture calls the second death (Rev_2:11; Rev_20:6; Rev_20:14; Rev_21:8). The banishment from Paradise was, therefore, a punishment having for its aim the salvation of man,—a banishment which, indeed, exposes him to temporal death, but shall be a protection24 to him against the everlasting death.” Nevertheless there is overlooked by Keil the difficulty, that there appears to be meant such a mere physical eating from the tree of life as would produce a physical undyingness in contradiction with the spiritual state. Clearly, though symbolically, is there here expressed the possibility that even sinners, through a mysterious power of health, may attain to a marvellous longevity. In the full sense of the word, the paradisaical tree of life was lost for man. “But the tree of life,” says Delitzsch, “which takes away the death-power of the tree of knowledge, is already sown in, and with, the proclaiming of the prot-evangel.”
10. Gen_3:23-24. Therefore the Lord God sent him forth.—His new state has also a mission, and before there is mention made of his being driven out of Paradise, is his new task laid before him. He is sent forth quickly to cultivate the ground from which he was taken, and as the earth had borne him, so must it now nourish him, and as he had his origin (his physical origin) from her, so must he now serve her, and, in the dust of the ground which he cultivates, have his birth and his future home ever before his eyes. Per crucem ad lucem is now the watch word.—And he drove out the man.—Eastward of Eden God places the cherubim; on the east, therefore, we must hold to have been the departure of man from Paradise. Nevertheless, they did not leave the district Eden; “Cain was the first who did that (Gen_4:16).” Knobel. First of all, then, is to be noted here, the distinction of a twofold guard of Paradise: the cherubim and the flaming sword; also, that the meaning is not the cherubim with the flaming sword in hand (Knobel), although there are places, sometimes, in which the Hebrews use the connective Vau (and) where we would expect the preposition with. In the interpretation of the cherubim, there is to be first kept in view the Bible analogies, before taking into account the mythological analogies. When now the cherubim make their appearance, further on, in the two golden cherub-forms which hovered over the ark of the covenant (Exo_25:18; Exo_37:7), and which also appear in the temple of Solomon, only in greater proportions (1Ki_6:23; 1Ki_8:6), though not fourfold (as is maintained by Biblical Dictionary for Christian People)—we must call to mind the command of God, Exo_20:4, so as not to be led away by the idea that they are images of some peculiar kind of heavenly angels, as Hofmann, Delitzsch, Näglesbach, and Kurtz have supposed, in opposition to Bähr, Hengstenberg, Hävernik, and others. How would the images of heavenly angels figure here as guardians of the command: “Thou shalt not make to thyself any likeness of anything that is in heaven above.” These two ceremonial cherub-forms were winged; their wings hovered over the ark of the covenant, and their faces, as they stood opposite to each other, looked down upon the covering of the ark, Exo_25:20, or the mercy-seat, whilst between them appeared the shekinah of Jehovah’s presence (Lev_16:2; Num_7:89). Their form is not more particularly described; like the most holy place itself, they appear to have previously belonged to the mysteries of the people. We have here presented to us in worship the first unfolding of the paradisaical form. Just as these cherubim guarded Paradise, with the tree of life that was therein, and protected them from the approach of sinners, so do the cherubim watch and guard the holy place of God’s personal presence, or of the appearing of Jehovah, especially the mercy-seat, and the essential unity of the law that was comprehended in it. The sinner is parted from the tree of life. There is the same meaning here; he is separated from the beholding of God, from the full enjoyment of his mercy, and from the possession of the essential life of the law, that is, the righteousness that avails with God. In this sense are they called, Heb_9:5, cherubim of glory, δόξης. The poetical and didactic references to the cherubim, Psa_18:11; Psa_80:2; Psa_99:1; Psa_104:4; Isa_37:16, form the transition to the fully developed prophetic, apocalyptic symbolical of the cherubim, as we find it in Eze_1:10; Eze_10:4; Eze_41:18; and in Rev_4:6; Rev_5:6-14; Rev_6:1-7; Rev_7:11; Rev_14:3; Rev_15:7; Rev_19:4. The passage, Psa_18:10-11, appears to have the highest significance in respect to the symbolical of the cherubim. Jehovah comes down the heavens, it says—the dark cloud beneath his feet. Next, וַיִּרְכַּב עַל־כְּרוּב, he rode upon a cherub. God rides, therefore, upon the storm-driven thunder-cloud, as upon his chariot. On this account, we hold that that derivation of the word is the right one which brings כְּרוּב in closest connection with רָכַב to ride, and regards the word as formed by a metathesis of letters25 from רֶכֶב = רְכוּב chariot, team, and not from קָרוּב qui Deo propinquus est, ei adstat, nor as the same with the γρύφες of the Persians, as very generally held (see Gesenius’ Lexicon). Since here, at all events, the swift-moving thunder-clouds appear as the chariot of God, and very significantly, too, in the singular, so also, the fact must not be over-looked, that, in connection with this cherub, there is mention of the wrath of God, of the consuming fire that goeth out of his mouth, of the glowing flames that burn before him, of the fire-flash, of the burning coals, God’s arrows, and finally, of the lightning. To this we may add the passage, Psa_104:4, where it is said, and in fact with special reference to the creative history: Who maketh the winds his messengers, the flames of fire his servants. Keeping this in view, that the cherubim have their nature = symbols in wind and cloud, and present themselves in connection with the flames of the lightning, we get light upon the dark passage respecting the cherubim, Isa_6:1, as seen in the analogies of Scripture. That the seraphim, which appear here in the train of Jehovah, are likewise symbolical angel-forms, is evident from their configuration itself, wherein they appear as endowed with six wings, an arrangement which evidently has a symbolical significance. That, moreever, they are not to be regarded in connection with the serpents mentioned Num_21:6, appears from the fact, that these have their name simply from the burning poison. Neither can they (to say nothing of the groundless identification of the name with שָׂרִים principes, nobiles) mean the burning, the shining, according to Kinchi and others; for שָׁרף does not mean to burn, to shine, but to scorch, to burn up, cremare, comburere. When we consider that in Genesis 6. Isaiah does not set forth his general prophetic inauguration, but his special calling to denounce the obduracy of the people, and to set before them the judgments that must follow, we understand how it is that he sees the appearance of Jehovah in the temple, and in the midst of the seraphim or burning angels, whilst he feels the door-sills of the temple tremble at their call, and beholds the house filled with smoke. The meaning is, that in spirit he anticipates the future burning of the temple as the infliction of Jehovah’s judgment. In Psa_80:2, it is said: O shepherd of Israel, appear, thou that sittest above the cherubim, awake thy power. The cherubim, therefore, are symbols of the actual putting forth of the divine authority. To this corresponds, too, the expression, Psa_99:1 : He sitteth above the cherubim, therefore does the world tremble. Wholly in a similar sense does Hezekiah, in his extreme necessity, call upon Jehovah as the one who rules over all kingdoms, when he addresses him as Jehovah Sabaoth, the God of Israel, who sitteth above the cherubim. In Ezekiel, the cherubim are denoted in strong symbolical, allegorical forms, no longer as angels, but as חַיּוֹת, ζῶα, living things (Luther: beasts). Moreover, in Ezekiel 10. there are again set forth in connection with the cherubim, the coals of fire that are to be cast over the city. And, finally, in the temple of Ezekiel, do we find the cherubim again as the key-note for the symbolical destruction of the temple (Gen_41:18). We have in Ezekiel the cherubim figures especially set forth in their full development (man, the lion, the ox or bullock for sacrifice, and the eagle), whilst in the Revelation they are recognized as the ground-forms of the divine ruling in the world, as symbolized in the four ground-forms of the creaturely life (see “Life of Jesus,” i. p. 234, Dogmatik, p. 603). If any one is disposed to regard these as the ground-forms of the spiritual life in the world, because the beasts bear up the throne of the divine rule in the world, or because, according to the analogy of the Apocalypse, they pray unto God, there is no objection to be made to it. But they are not thus denoted as containing the idea of the highest creaturely life. Thus also here, in accordance with all the related places of Scripture, must we firmly hold fast the view that the cherubim are only symbolical angel-forms; as we must also distinguish the seraphim everywhere from personal angels; although in the manifestation of the cherubim, there was disclosed to the first men a glimpse of the angel-world. As symbolical forms, they must be here regarded as appointed to form a permanent post of watching, in order to keep men from approaching Paradise, and especially the tree of life. When we perceive the fact that the cherubim everywhere form the accompanying guard and watch of the divine throne, we are under the necessity of bringing Paradise also, and especially the tree of life, which they are appointed to guard, in special relation to this throne. Thereby may it be explained how Jacob says: “I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved (Gen_32:30),—also how the beholding of God especially brings death, because it is through death that the highest life is attained (Exo_33:20; Psa_16:11; Psa_17:15; 1Jn_3:2; and the history of the visions, Isa_6:5; Dan_7:15; Dan_8:17; Rev_1:17). The cloud and pillar of fire which led the children of Israel through the desert was also a sign of the presence of God, as well as a dividing between the glory of God and sinful men; in other words, it was the guard that kept off from the divine glory the profane entrance and the profane look. For that reason, it seems to stand in connection with the cherubim of the ritual symbolic, as it is connected with the cherubim and seraphim of the religious symbolic, view.
The mythological analogies of the cherubim figures are, in fact, most striking. “On the mountains north of India,” says Knobel, “or, in general, in the region of the mountain and Eden of God, do the ancients (e.g. Ktesias, Judea, xii; Arrian, Hist. Anim. iv. 27; compare also Philostrat., Vit. Apoll. iii. 48) place the fabulous griffins, which they describe as feathered beings with lions’ claws, the wings and beaks of eagles, flaming eyes, &c.,—making them the guardians of the gold that there abounds. Others refer them to the higher North, to the Arimaspian country, describing them partly in a similar manner, and setting them forth as watchers of the gold, e.g. Herod., iv. 13, 27; Æsch., Prom. 804; Pausan., &c.—Of these stories the author probably had some knowledge, as also of the gold land of Havilah, which he mentions.” Delitzsch cites besides the Persian stories, according to which 99,999 Fervers (that is, a countless number) keep watch over the tree hom, which contains in itself the power of the resurrection. In regard to the connection between the Bible tradition and this legend, Delitzsch regards as significant the comparison (Eze_28:14) of the king of Tyre to the protecting cherub with its outspread wings. This comparison, however, has its ground simply in the fact that the history of the king of Tyre is presented in analogy with the history of the fall in Eden. Delitzsch supposes that the appearance of the analogous legends which have come down to us, has its origin in this, that humanity, as it went forth in tribes, ever spreading farther and farther asunder, took along the representation of the cherubs from the ancestral home, and continually made mythological additions to it. It appears to us, nevertheless, that the analogies of the griffin legends are only apparent, since there is a great difference between the idea of a lost tree of life, and that of gold mines which may yet become the booty of mankind. The story of the tree hom may be very easily connected with the later Persian legends, which may be referred back to the Hebrew traditions rather than to any early and universal tradition of Paradise—to say nothing of Knobel’s opinion, that the Hebrew idea of the cherubim, so consistently maintained, should be explained from the very indefinite form of the Greek legend of the griffins. In our opinion, the story of Prometheus has much more of an inner relationship to the Paradise history. To conclude, as Keil remarks on the chapter before us: “With the banishment from the Garden of Eden, Paradise, as far as men were concerned, disappeared from the earth. God did not withdraw from the tree of life its supernatural power, neither did he lay waste the garden before their eyes, but he guarded it against their return, to indicate that it must be preserved and permanently guarded to the time of the consummation, when sin should be destroyed through judgment, death taken away by the conqueror of the serpent (1Co_15:26), and the tree of life grow again and bear fruit upon the new earth of the heavenly Jerusalem (Rev_20:21).” This is clearly a right symbolical understanding. And yet we must not lose sight of the historical fact, that for sinful man the central and collective power of health in nature, as in a still higher sense the beholding of God, is, through sin, and through the divine judgment, hidden and vanished, though not absolutely lost. The individual man, like the collective humanity, may in many ways draw nigh to Paradise; but he is ever driven back as by a divine tempest and fiery judgment to the outer field of labor, of conflict, and of death. Not backwards must he look, but ever onwards.
DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL
1. The meaning of the narrative of the lost Paradise. Like the biblical histories everywhere, and especially the primitive traditions of Genesis, it is an historical fact to be taken in a religious ideal, that is, a symbolical form. It is just as little a mere allegory as the human race itself is a mere allegory. It is just as little a pure, naked fact, as the speaking of the serpent is a literal speaking, or as the tree of life, in itself regarded, is a plant whose eating imparted imperishable life. That sin began with the beginning of the race, that the first sin had its origin in a forbidden enjoyment of nature, and not in the Cainitic fratricide or similar crimes, that the origin of human sin points back to the beginning of the human race, that the woman was ever more seducible than the man, that along with sin came in the tendency to sin, consciousness of guilt, alienation from God, and evil in general,—all these are affirmations of the religious historical consciousness which demand the historicalness of our tradition, and would point back to some such fact, even though it were not written in Genesis. It is then the actual historical influences of our narration, in their world-historical significance, which wholly distinguish it from a myth. The symbolical understanding of the history appears in this, that the universal existence of sin, of the fall, and of the fall of every individual, are reflected in it. Here come especially into consideration: 1. The various mythological analogies of the biblical tradition of the fall. 2. The various exegetical understandings of the Jewish and the Christian theology. 3. Modern interpretations.
1. In respect to the mythological analogies, compare Lücken, “The Traditions of the Human Race,” p. 74 n., having the superscription: La chute de l’homme dégéneré est le fondement de la théologie de presque toutes les anciennes nations. Voltaire, Philos. de l’hist. In the first place, Lücken shows why it is that the heathen legends respecting these facts must present themselves as transformations. Then follow, first the legends of the old Persians. “According to the Zendavesta, or the sacred writings of the old Persians, the peoples of this race, namely the old Medes, Persians, and Bactrians, as well as all the Indogermanic peoples, had primarily the doctrine of four ages of the world. In the first, which lasted 3,000 years, the world was without evil, and Ormuzd, the good principle, reigned alone; in the second, Ahriman began the conflict with Ormuzd; in the third he divides with him the dominion; in the fourth he is apparently to gain the victory, then to be subdued, after which is to follow the burning of the world. To the universal legend, how Ahriman brings death to Rajomord, the first man, there is attached the special story of the fall of the Meschia and the Meschiane (p. 81). So the Indian legends also number four ages. The mythical Indian tendency has presented the fall in manifold myths, as well Brahminic as Buddhistic. Here-upon follow the Chinese legends, the Grecian legends (the Hesiodic ages of the world: the golden, the silver, the brazen, the iron, the Titan legend, the Prometheus legend, the Tantalus legend), then the Romish legends (the ancient time of Saturn), the Germanic legends (the gold thirst, the fall of Asen, to which may be added the admittance of Lock into the Asenbund, death of Baldur, and other similar things), then Ægyptian legends, as also those of the Negroes, of the polar nations, of the Iroquois, of the Mexicans, &c., &c.” In conclusion, there is a treatise on the dominion of the demons, the origin of sorcery and idolatry, concerning woman and her place in heathendom, the restoration to pardon of the first men. In a shorter method, Delitzsch gives an account of the myths in relation to the fall, p. 169, Knobel, p. 40.—2. Exegetical understanding of the Jewish and the Christian theology. “It was a universally prevailing opinion among the Jews that Satan was active in the temptation of the first men. This is found in Philo, and in the ‘Book of Wisdom,’ Gen_2:24 : ‘through envy of the devil came sin into the world.’ In later Jewish writings Sammael, the head of the evil spirits, is called הנחשׁ הקדמוני, the old serpent, because he tempted Eve in the form of a serpent, or נחשׁ (the serpent) alone (compare the places in Eisenmenger, ‘Revelation of Judaism,’ i. p. 822).” Hengstenberg, “Christology,” i. p. 7. It must nevertheless be observed, that even among the Jews there had already come in a twofold conception of this history of the temptation. Philo (De Mundi Opificio) saw in the serpent an allegory of the evil lust (ἡδονή). In the same manner does Maimonides interpret the place allegorically; whilst Josephus understands the speaking of the serpent as a proper speaking, and other Jews again are inclined to see in the serpent an apparent form merely of Satan himself. Abarbanel and others connect a directly seductive address of Satan to the woman with the fact of his winding himself about the tree, and tasting of its fruit. Cyril of Alexandria supposes the serpent to have been only an assumed outward appearance of Satan, whilst Basil, Chrysostom, Augustine, and, in general, the later fathers, regard Satan as having served himself of the serpent, and spoken through him. The inclination of the Alexandrians to an allegorizing interpretation continues in a progressive measure, in the school of the Gnostics, namely, among the Ophites (see Müller, “History of Cosmology,” p. 190), and in like manner in the interpretations of the later mystics and theosophists. According to Grotius, Moses found the narration before us in the form of an ancient poem. Clericus is inclined to agree with those who hold that the serpent did not actually speak, but only eat of the fruit before the eyes of Eve, and that with this was connected the temptation of Satan (as Abarbanel maintains); but it appears to him that in re obscura tutissima ingenua ignorantiœ confessio. Concerning the modern views, an account is given by the author of the article “Sin,” in Herzog’s “Real Encyclopedie,” as follows: The tempter is the devil (Joh_8:44; Rev_12:9; Book of Wis_2:24), who used the serpent as his instrument (2Co_11:3); the serpent is, therefore, neither alone active as such (T. Müller, Schenkel), nor is he an incorporation of Satan (Gerhardt, Philippi), nor the mere emblem of the cosmical principle (Martensen). The influence of Satan upon men was by way of dialogue, wherein the peculiar nature of the serpent was taken advantage of and with which his alluring motions may have coöperated (Hengstenberg, Thomasius, Delitzsch, Ebrard), not a mere physical influence in that the unrecognized voice of Satan like a vision-reflection passed over upon the serpent (in which case the speaking serpent would have been merely a symbolical figure), nor something at the time unobserved by the first formed men, but afterwards, in the later recollections of the tradition, taken for Satanic influence (Hofmann). The tree of knowledge of good and evil is neither a poison-tree (Reinhard, Döderlein, Morus) nor otherwise a tree of knowledge of good and evil in such special sense that the consequences of the enjoyment must have been an intoxication, a disturbance of the pure equilibrium in the harmony of the first man (Lange), nor a mystical tree whose fruit, for the one who enjoys it, is the reception of evil into his being, and therewith the knowledge of good and evil (Martensen), nor an emblem of the world darkened to the perdition of death, in its false influence upon man (Schenkel), but—an ordinary tree, which had its significance only through the command of God.” In this dry, idealless positivism must such an understandind come to its stop. We must, however, distinguish at present three or four principal views: 1. The traditional, orthodox, popular representation, according to which the serpent, under the influence of Satan, literally spoke, or Satan, in fact, in the appearance of the serpent-form. 2. The Gnostic allegorical, farther developed into the mythical allegoric, and, in fact, at one time in a sense akin to Ophitism (the view of Hegel, according to Delitzsch, p. 171), and again, in a more churchly and ethical sense. 3. The connection of the definite dialectical speaking of Satan with corresponding motions of the serpent, such as its eating the fruit. 4. An influence of Satan, exemplified in acts of the serpent, incapable of being farther defined, and thus becoming a dialogue through the visionary or ecstatic condition of the woman. This is our view (Dogmatic, p. 439), for the understanding of which there must be previously an insight into the essential nature of this visionary state of soul. In respect to the design of our narration, there are, in like manner, various views presented. According to Berger (“Practical introduction to the Old Testament, continued from Augusti”), who is disposed to see here, not the history of the first men generally, but only that of an ancestor of the Abrahamitic race (a hereditary legend, in fact, of the family of Abraham, which presupposes an already previous longer existence of humanity; Kains, Ackerbau, Stadtbau), the most usual decision in respect to the aim of our narration is that which regards it as containing a doctrine of the origin of evil. As a modification of this view, however, Pott sets forth the proposition that its aim is to represent the transition from the golden to the silver age. For the old narrator this is much too general a view. If he intended, which is the most likely, something more than narrating merely for the sake of the story,—in other words, if he meant also to teach us something along with it, then his purpose could have been nothing else than to show how man may have been led into transgression, and what consequences it must have had (I. p. 55). According to the Jerusalem Targum, Eichhorn, and Paulus, the design of our narration was to paint the loss of the golden age, whilst Von Bohlen, Hegel, Knobel, and others, in exact accordance with the Gnostic Ophites, would represent it as an advance (an advance, indeed, attended by calamities) from the state of savage beastliness. The representation clearly presents itself as the religious symbolical primeval history of humanity, holding the key of all history that follows it, according to the contrast of the fall and the resurrection, or of sin and death, as also redemption and renovation, whilst it gives the ground for the unveiling of the demon and angel-world, as the appointed means for introducing the deepest understanding of the history of the kingdom of God. According to its most peculiar key-note, it is a representation of the beginning of the kingdom of grace. For a catalogue of the modern literature in respect to the different interpretations of the fall, see Bretschneider, “Systematic Development,” n. p. 520.
2. The Probation-Tree, the Probation and the Temptation. “The Rabbins and Mohammedans understood by the probation-tree, the vine; the Grecian church fathers understood it of the fig-tree; the Latins, in the first place, of the apple. The tree hom plays the same part in the Zendavesta. The Hindoos speak of a knowledge and creation tree, the Tibetans of a sweet, whitish herb, or marrow, from the enjoyment of which originated the feeling of shame, and the custom of wearing clothes.” Von Bohlen. We have elsewhere alluded to the analogy between the falling into sin of the second ancestor Noah, who became intoxicated by the fruit of the vine, and in consequence thereof lay in his nakedness, and the falling into sin of the primitive ancestor who became aware of his nakedness after eating of the forbidden fruit. This analogy does not justify us in concluding that it was the vine, but some other fruit, perhaps, whose effect, for the first men, was too strong, being of an intoxicating or disturbing nature. If we do not find in that unknown fruit some immanent ground of the divine command, it is clear that we must adopt the idea of a purely arbitrary ordinance. Nature itself is, indeed, and in the most general sense, a tree of probation for man; this peculiarity of it has always had its special types, and there are yet various probation trees for different nations—such as opium, hashisch, the coco plant, etc. So Beyer, in his sermon on the History of the Primitive World (p. 90), takes the contrast between the tree of life and the tree of probation to consist in this, that the first, although it had not the power to make men ever healthy and young, possessed, nevertheless, a healing and strengthening efficiency (analogous to similar medicine trees), whilst the probation-tree was, in these respects, the opposite. He supposes it, indeed, without any ground, to have been a poison-tree;—without any ground, we say, for the human race is not poisoned corporeally, but distempered and disordered physically through an ethical consequence of its effects. Besides this, the probation-tree is distinguished from the serpent, as the probation from the temptation. The probation is from God, as the temptation is from the evil one. The probation, along with the demand for watchfulness, presents an alternative for the good. The temptation increases the danger of the alternative with an instigation to the evil. The probation has in view that man should be on his guard; it is intended to lay the ground of his normal development. The temptation has in view the fall of man; its purpose is to entice him into an abnormal development, or rather, entanglement. Since the time that sin is in the world, has each probation also in itself the force of a temptation, because there is added to it the enticement to sin on the part of the devil, the world, and one’s own peculiar evil lusts. In this sense of probation can it be said God tempted Abraham. And just on this account is it that the sins of a man already perpetrated become for him a temptation to future crimes; therefore do we pray: Lead us not into temptation. Moreover, the hereditary sin is itself one great universal temptation, which lies as a load upon the human race. From all this it follows that the temptation which was added to the first probation of man came not from God, neither from any physical creature, and just as little from anything within the soul of innocent man, but solely from a malignant spirit. In this fact, however, lie two consequential inferences: the first that there are spirits besides men endowed with reason (the angel-world), the second that in this spirit-world there must have been already a fall preceding that of man.
3. The Serpent and Satan. The former has been thus described: “The serpent, a beast like to an embodied thunderbolt that has had its origin in the deepest night, parti-colored, painted like fire, as black and dark as night, its eyes like glowing sparks, its tongue black, yet cloven like a flame, its jaws a chasm of the unknown, its teeth fountains of venom, the sound of its mouth a hiss. Add to this the strange and wonderful motion, ever striving like a flash to quiver, and like an arrow to flee, were it not hindered by its bodily organization. It appears among the beasts like a condemned and fallen angel; in the heathen world of false gods, it hath found, and still finds, ever, awe and adoration; its subtlety has become a byword, its name a naming of Satan, whilst the popular feeling, even now, as in all times past, connects a curse and an exorcism with its appearance.” F. A. Krummacher, “Paragraphs for the Holy History”(p. 65). In this splendid painting there is left out the brutal clumsiness and obtuseness of the serpent which stand in such remarkable contrast with its mobility and its guile. (See R. Snell, “Philosophical Observations of Nature,” Dresden, 1839.) Respecting the presence and the significance of poison in nature. “There are, in inorganic nature, a class of substances which destroy life, not through any mechanical injury and rending, but rather by insinuating themselves smoothly and gently into the organs of the living thing;—thus forcing their way in with a subtle and malignant power, they invade the life in its most interior and invisible laboratories, throwing into disorder all their functions, and thereby bringing in sickness and most painful death. And so, too, are there beasts that never attack their foe with plain and open weapons, killing the organs by mechanically breaking them up; but, on the other hand, with weapons concealed, underhand, sly-darting, and apparently weak, seem to inflict only a slight injury upon their foe, and, in fact, to be only playing with him, whilst, at the same time, through this insignificant hurt introducing a horrible power of destruction, ever inwardly growing, until finally it breaks out in tormenting sickness, and ends in a wretched death. These beings and products of nature which thus destroy life, not mediately through an outer breaking of its parts and organs, but by a hostile effect upon the very life functions, and which, consequently, must possess an enmity directly aiming at the life itself,—we denote by the name of poisonous.”—“Schubert has well remarked, that the poisonous beasts are beings that appear to be placed ambiguously and doubtfully between two otherwise quite distinct classes, each of which, in their own sphere, present a distinct, perfect, and free individuality. In such middle beings there necessarily lies a striving for a higher form, though ever cleaving to the lower. Thus shows itself in them, often, an aberration from an otherwise sound natural tendency, whilst their very enjoyment is, for the most part, attended with pain and disgust. On their bodily side they exhibit a nature, ever, in some respects, infirm and sickly, and never rightly attaining to repose.”—“It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that in the collected organism of nature, as well as in individual creatures, there comes in, at the transition point, an infirm, ambiguous organization, interpenetrated by evil fluids, which are able to inoculate other creatures with the malady of their own confusion and disorder. And this is nothing else than poison. Since each poison is a sensible substance, or so presented, which has become an original cause of disease.” Under this point of view the author now treats of arsenic, of mercury, of prussic acid, of spiders, and of snakes. “All poisonous animals carry with them a sluggish, and apparently loathing life. The most of them seldom or never set themselves in motion towards the object of their passion, although there is no failure in them, either of strength or swiftness, when they let out upon their prey. This strong contrast of sluggish rest and angry vehemence, produces upon us the impression of some irreconcilable biformity in their nature. They are lurking beasts, lying in the darkest and most unclean recess. Along with this they seem especially to love the damp and mouldy place where death riots. Thus, for example, do the rattlesnakes love to lay themselves behind some foul stump, whilst others seek the old mouldy wall, or the pile of ruins, or the foul dusty corner. It is worth remarking that almost all of them have for the lower organization of the belly a greatly disproportioned extension, whilst, on the other hand, the breast and heart, or the organs that correspond to these, are shrivelled and contracted. In the most dangerous and most poisonous among them, the last trace of any interior breast formation has disappeared, whilst they show not the least rudiments of any shoulder bones. We see them dart with fury upon their prey, then laboring under it with infinite pain and distress, whilst for each gorging they pay with feebleness and torpidity. In this condition they gaze around them stupid and blear-eyed, whilst they suffer themselves to be killed with sticks without making any defence.”—“These giant serpents, the crocodiles and the alligators, have generally, and in an extraordinary degree, the look of a former world. They are the Titans that, under the dominion of the new created race of gods, are thrust down into the deep, and into darkness, whence many a time still there spits forth the fire of their rage. The croaking of the frogs, the grunting of the toads, the shrill sharp piping of the lizard, the hiss of the serpent, give none of them any special conception of the emotions of which they are the expression. The serpents are without doubt the most wonderful, and, so to speak, the most like fable, of any beings of the present creation.” Next follows the depicting of the singular contrasts in the nature of the serpent: its rude elementary form and its fine, spiritual expression, its subtle look, which never carries itself out in action, its enchantment or fascination of its prey, and its capability of becoming transported whilst itself in a state of fascination and torpidity (p. 67, etc.). (See the above remarks and the article “Serpent,” by Winer, Wörterbuch für das Christliche Volk.—Satan. Between the two contradictory suppositions, one of which is that our text recognizes only a temptation of the serpent, but not, at all, of any evil spirit expressing itself through it, and the other, representing it to contain a full knowledge of Satan, lies the hypothesis that corresponds to the idea of an organic unfolding of biblical doctrine; it is, that we have here the first germ of the doctrine of Satan, as we also have before us the first germ of a soteriological Christology—that is, of a Christ of salvation. Both germs are throughout placed in a remarkable relation to each other; the destroyer of the serpent is announced in the seed of woman. But the actual conscious knowledge, which is here expressed in a symbolical form, consists in this, that it represents the serpent as a malignant spirit, crafty, lying, and rejoicing in mischief, who shows himself, and will continue to show himself, the foe of man and the foe of God. Concerning the farther development of the doctrine of Satan, see the exegetical annotations.
4. The Temptation of Christ in the Wilderness an antetype of the temptation of Adam in Paradise.
5. The Origin of Sin. Our text gives us the ground of supposing, in the first place, a distinct origin of sin, in opposition to the system which would make the origin of sin to happen concurrently with the initial constitution of human nature itself. It gives us occasion to distinguish a threefold origin of sin: 1. The cosmical-demonic; 2. the physiological genesis of sin; 3. the Adamic-historical. 1. Evidently is the first human sin to be referred back to a preceding demoniacal temptation; therefore, also, to a preceding demoniacal sin, and accordingly, too, to an earlier fall in the spirit-world. Nevertheless, the essential origin of sin is not thereby explained, for there comes up the further question: how sin originated in the spirit-world? According to the Apocryphal books, the essential root of sin is mainly pride, ὑπερηφανία, which is always an assuming of a false god, that is, of idolatry. (This is expressed somewhat obscurely, Sir_10:15 : ἀρχὴ ὑπερηφανίας ἁμαρτία. Book of Wis_14:12; Wis_5:27: ἀρχὴ πορνείας ἐπίνοια εἰδώλων.—ἡ γὰρ τῶν ἀνωνύμων εἰδώλων θρησκεία παντὸς ἀρχὴ κακοῦ καὶ αἰτία καὶ πέρας ἐστίν). According to this the first motive to the leading astray, through temptation or seduction, was envy (Book of Wis_2:24). With this agrees also, 2. the psychological origin of sin as our text brings it before us. It certainly does not commit itself to the crude, elementary representation, that the beginning of sin is to be explained from any overbalance of sensuality or materiality. The process of sin’s development proceeds from a spiritual self-disordering, wherein doubt, together with self-exaltation, constitutes the ground-form which develops itself into an enviously malignant pride, and unbelief, that it may become complete in superstition and sensual concupiscence, in lawlessness and seduction. Concerning the ground-form of sin, how it degenerates from the demoniacal into the bestial,
from the spiritual self-exaltation to the sensual self-degradation, see Lange’s Dogmatik, p. 437. But our text, moreover, 3. would recognize the psychological completion of sin, regarded as the historical beginning of the same in the human world. This is proved by the continuation of the first sin in the guilt-consciousness of the first man, by his self-deception and self-hardening, by his exculpations and his criminations. Most fully is it shown in the announcement of the conflict between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman, in the banishment of man from Paradise, and in the fratricidal murder of Cain, that follow so soon after. Confronted by the simple greatness and clearness of our tradition of the genesis of sin, stand the most diversely varying views, such as the doctrine of the pre-existent ghostly fall into sin (Plato, Origen, Schelling, Steffens, J. Müller), of the pre-existent corporeal sinfulness (Rationalism, R. Rothe), of the idealistic origin of the conception of sin in the element of repentance (Schleiermacher), or in the element of the advancing consciousness (Hegel), or of its monstrous cosmical ground in nature (Martensen),—and others of a similar kind.
6. Sin, Sinfulness—Original Sin. Our history tells us plainly that sin in its formal relation is, before all things, a transgression of the divine command; whilst in its material relation it is a wounding of the proper personal life, even unto death, and, in consequence thereof, a hostile turning away from God, a self-entanglement in the love of self and of the world, as flowing from the abuse of the freedom of the will to an apparent freedom which degenerates into bondage. That sin, after it becomes fixed, is especially to be regarded as selfishness, is prominently taught by Zwingli; see Farrago, “Annotationum in Genesin ex ore Zwingli,” p. Genesis 56: habemus nunc prœvaricationis fontem, φιλαυτίαν videlicet, hoc est sui ipsius amorem. The signs of the sinfulness (status corruptionis) that come in with sin are clearly presented in our account. At its proper focus appears the consciousness of guilt, in which, at the same time with alienation from God, there becomes fixed the dependence on the sinful appetite. The essential cause is the vacuum that comes into the soul, the failing of life in the spirit, the physically unbridled and ungoverned behavior whereby the predominance is given to the flesh over the power of the spirit. Out of the permanence of a sinfulness which contradicts the idea as well as the original nature of man, there comes the necessary consequence of the doctrine of original sin, whose point of gravity, misapprehended by Pelagius, lies in the organic unity of humanity, but whose limitation, moreover, misapprehended by Augustine, lies in the personal, voluntary, human individuality. On the one side, humanity is no more an atomistic pile of spirit, than it is capable of being disintegrated atomistically into its isolated sinnings. And so, again, on the other side, it is no more a massa in the general, than it can be a massa perditionis. The whole weight of the organic connection, as it appears to have overwhelmed the born Cretin (and yet not wholly so, since he is irresponsible according to the measure of his imbecility), hath revealed itself in the fact, that the burden of human guilt has fallen on the sinless Jesus. The whole importance of the individual freedom of choice is, in like manner, to be recognized in the personal position of the man in its various degrees of advancement from the lowest step of the human gradation even to the highest, that is, the holiness of Christ. Within the organic connection, which, with its historical curse, winds round all, there still remains room for the contrast between good and evil (Book of Wisdom, Gen_10:1), and for genealogies of blessing as well as for repeated falls, or special genealogies of the curse. This contrast connects itself with the contrast of human conduct in guilt consciousness and in shame. Shame and the consciousness of sin draw men towards God, just as they also draw them from him. On this it depends whether the man, through the aid of the gratia prœveniens, should encourage himself to follow the drawings of God, or in cowardly flight from the divine penal righteousness should give himself up to an unholy repulsion.
7. The First Judgment, and, in the same time, the First Promise of Salvation. It must be observed, that the first presented judgment of God remains the type for all following judgments. The holy Scripture does not separate in an abstract, dogmatical manner, between the rule of the divine righteousness and that of the divine love and mercy. The judgments of God which avail for the separation of the lost, are ever the purifying and the deliverance of the elect. For the judgments of God are separations. Thus here, they separate between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman. Farther on, there is a separation between the house of Noah and the first lost race. Still farther, and another takes place between the heathen at the Babylonian tower-building, and Abraham with his race, the heirs of the blessing. Next it was between the unbelieving Israelites who fell in the desert, and the preserved remnant which came into the possession of Canaan. A similar crisis is made by the Assyrian and Babylonian captivities. The highest and the deepest crisis is presented by the cross of Christ; it is the division that takes place between the believing and the unbelieving. The last is that which takes place at the end of the world; it is the judgment that divides between the blessed and the damned. This, then, is the ground-reason why the divine promises, and the beginnings of salvation, break forth from the sentences of judgment. Such is the case here in the sentences pronounced on the guilt in Paradise. In the very front stands the obscure yet mighty promise of the so-called protevangel. Moreover, the pronunciation of judgment against the woman has likewise its blessing and its promise. With pain shalt thou—bear children; this curse has the New Testament changed into a blessing (1Ti_2:15); and so it is with her dependence upon man (Eph_5:22). The judgment pronounced on Adam burdened the field with the curse of thorns and thistles; but thorns and thistles are the progenitors of the rose and of the wonderful cactus-flower. The primitive sentence of Adam to the hard labor of his life’s calling is become a blessing to the human race. The calling and the labor become the ground-forms for the education of man (Psa_90:10). And, finally, the return to earth through death contains not only a judgment, but also, in the judgment, the prospect of deliverance from the sufferings of the earthly sojourn (2Co_5:8; Philip, Gen_1:23). The separation of man from the tree of life, by means of the cherubim, prevented him from looking backwards to the lost paradise; it impels him to look forward, and to aspire to the new paradise and its trees of life (Rev_22:2). The banishment from Paradise lays the foundation for the religion of the future, or, as it has been called, the theocratic faith in God of pious Jews (Heb_11:8).
The protevangel, moreover (see the Exegetical annotations), contains the germ of all later Messianic prophecies; therefore is it so universal, so comprehensive, so dark, and yet so striking and distinct in its fundamental features. As the ground outline of the future of salvation, it denotes: 1. The religious ethical strife between good and evil in the world, and the sensible presentation of this strife through natural contrasts—the serpent, the woman. 2. The concrete form of this strife and its gradual genealogical unfoldings: the seed of the serpent, the seed of the evil one, and the children of evil; the seed of the good and the children of salvation. 3. The decision to be expected: the wounding of the woman’s seed in the heel, that is, in his human capability of suffering, and its connection with the earth, the treading down, or the destruction, not of the serpent’s seed merely, but of the serpent himself, and that too in his head, the very centre of his life. The whole is, therefore, the prediction of an universal conflict for salvation, with the prospect of victory. From this basis the promise proceeds in ever-narrowing circles, until it passes over from the general seed of the woman to the ideal seed, and from that again draws out in ever-widening circles, together with the self-unfolding promise of the kingdom of God. Thereby, too, does the conception of the promise assume an ever deeper and richer form.
1. General promise of salvation.
a. The posterity of the woman: battle and victory, Gen_3:15.
b. Noah and his race: rest and Sabbath, Gen_5:29.
c. Shem and his tabernacle, Japhet and his enlargement: the name of God and the conquest of the world, Gen_9:26-27.
d. Abraham and his race: the race of blessing, the promised land, the blessing of the nations, Gen_12:2; Gen_12:7; Gen_13:15-16; Gen_15:4; Gen_17:2-5; Gen_18:10; Gen_22:15.
e. Isaac and his descendants, Gen_15:4; Gen_17:19; Gen_26:3-4.
f. Jacob. His blessing and his dominion over his brother, Gen_25:23; Gen_27:29.
g. Judah and his sceptre: prince in war, prince of peace, Gen_49:8.
2. Typical promise of the Messiah: Israel and the sacerdotal kingdom, Exo_19:6. The star out of Jacob, Num_24:17.
a. The typical prophet, Deu_18:5.
b. The typical Levite, Deu_33:9-11.
c. The typical king, 2Sa_7:12.
3. The transition from the typical to the ideal promise of the Messiah in the Psalms.
4. Ideal promise of the Messiah.
FIRST
The glorious appearing.
a. The ideal Messiah. Hosea, Joel, Amos.
b. The ideal Messiah as prophet, priest, and king. Isaiah, Micah.
c. The ideal Messianic prophecy and the ideal prophet. Jeremiah.
d. The ideal high priest. Ezekiel.
e. The ideal king. Daniel.
SECOND
The conflict. The Christ and the Antichrist. Apocalyptic forms in Obadiah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, with isolated examples in all the prophets, especially Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel.
THIRD
The suffering and the triumphant Messiah, Isaiah 53; Daniel 2; Gen_7:9, Gen_7:25-26; Zechariah 9-14
8. The earthly calling of the woman, and its subjective form (see Exegetical annotations).
9. The earthly calling of the man, and its objective form (see Exegetical annotations).
10. The nature of the vanity to which the creation was made subject in hope for man’s sake (Rom_8:18; Lange’s Miscellaneous Writings, i. p. Genesis 217: Pelagianism; Delitzsch, p. 186). Here, however, we must disregard the theosophic extravagances, p. 187, for example, such sayings as that of Jacob Böhme: “rage hath got the upper hand and made war upon the government above.” Here it may be remarked, that we cannot, in a purely outward way, as Delitzsch and Hofmann have done, make a distinction between God’s dwelling in heaven and on earth (Delitzsch, p. 177).
11. Death, in the light of Paradise, the end of punishment; in the light of the Gospel, the beginning of redemption (1Co_15:55). It must be remarked that the separate judgments upon the woman and the man are, at the same time, a common judgment upon both. Delitzsch finds it worthy of note that the divine sentence says nothing about the immortality of the soul. “But the whole Scripture,” he says, “knows nothing of any immortality grounded in the nature of the soul” (p. 190), therefore their dona superaddita, gifts superadded, in Paradise! See to the contrary, Act_17:28.
12. The banishment from Paradise was in a special sense a sending forth to the cultivation of the field (see the Exegetical explanations). The divine clothing of the first man. The doctrine of Gratia prœveniens (see Lange’s “Dogmatics”). The clothing of man referred back to the divine revelation and regulation. And yet we cannot, on this account, say with Delitzsch, that “a pure delight in the beauty of the divine-formed human figure is now no more possible; that nakedness is full of sin and tempting to sin.” If this is so then all pure interest in the human beauty has become impossible.
13. The cherubim. See the Exegetical explanations.
14. The disclosure of a spirit-world. With the consciousness of guilt there is also disclosed to the human consciousness the demoniac deep of its being. Man has entered the spirit-world, he has partaken of its knowledge, and has now the first foreboding look into the angel-world, and the world of fallen spirits (“Dogmatics,” p. 550). In this place, too, the Scripture opens up to us a glimpse of a spirit-world created before man. Especially is there introduced the doctrine of the angels, although we must not regard the cherubim as personal primarily, but only as symbolical angel-forms.
15. That with the judgment of God upon man, that is, with the ceasing of the paradisaical covenant, God’s covenant of grace begins, is perceived with especial clearness by Cocceius: Summa doctrinœ de fœdere et testamento dei, 1648. Correctly has Zwingli laid stress upon the idea, that the promise of salvation, as given to Adam and Eve, carries us back to the conclusion that even up to them there extended a retroacting power of redemption.
16. The divine appearings in Paradise form the point of commencement for all theophanies before Christ, and, as such, are not to be identified with the actual incarnation (or man-becoming) of God in Christ. They are, however, to be regarded, perhaps, as typical pre-representations of the same, and as having had, therefore, in the idea of Christ, their principle. Compare Keil, p. 55, where, however, the vision-side of the theophanies does not appear to be properly appreciated.
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
See the literature of which a catalogue is before given, and the remarks, Doctrinal and Ethical. Homilies on the whole section under the general point of view: Paradise lost, or the fall, or the origin of sin and evil, or the solemn beginning of human history, or the origin of the earthly order of things, or the first disclosure of a spirit-world and the connection between the spirit-world and the human, or, finally, the beginning of the kingdom of grace, that is, the gospel.—The end of the paradisaical covenant, the beginning of the covenant of redemption.—The beginning of the revelation of preventing grace, or the gratia prœveniens.—The first history of sin and judgment, and, at the same time, the first history of punishment and of compassion.—The call to humanity: onwards. 1. The ideal progress (directed towards the image of God in the obedience of life). 2. The false progress (ye shall become as gods). 3. The health-bringing progress (on the field and in death, yet still towards the redemption).—Religion in its relations to the world-time: 1. A very ancient reminiscence (knowledge of the original destiny, and a knowledge of sin back to the fall and beyond). 2. A religion of the present as made clear in our history through God’s word. 3. A religion of the future in a special sense, as consisting in the prospect of the future salvation.—Particular sections and verses. Gen_3:1-13 : The sin and the guilt. Gen_3:1-6 : The fall: a. the temptation of the serpent; b. the sinful looking of the wife; c. the seduction of the man.—The threefold origin of sin.—The serpent the instrument and the form of the devil’s temptation: 1. The demoniac subtlety of the evil one in its beastly grounding. 2. The tempting words; lying perversions of the truth.—The probation and the temptation.—The murderer from the beginning (Joh_8:44).—The elements of the temptation: lies, hate, death, in contrast to truth, love, and life.—The progress of sin’s development from the first evil doubt to the completed evil act.—The mongrel duplicity of sin as it perverts truth into lies: 1. The question pious in form, yet so evil in the doubt implied. 2. The element of truth and the lies in the promise: ye shall be as gods.—How sin perverts the human relations: It makes out of the obedient wife a directress of the husband, out of the helper a temptress, out of marriage a fountain of mischief, out of the man’s call to watchfulness an easy corruptibility, out of Paradise itself a state of guilt.—Sin as seen in the fall, or the mournful effects of the first sin: 1. The guilt and the guilt-consciousness. 2. The divine judgment suspended over them and the punishment inflicted.—The features of the sinful tendency in the conduct of the first man after the fall: evil terror, blinding loss of love, &c.—The evil conscience and its fears.—The ground-feature in the calamity of human sin: the mingling and confusion of sin and evil, in that, 1. evil is made to become sin, 2. sin becomes naked evil; therefore the redemption, that is, the separation between sin and evil (cross).—The imperfect confession, which is, nevertheless, through the grace of God, a turning back towards spiritual health. How God’s compassion brings the first man to the knowledge and the confession.—God’s righteousness in his first judgment: 1. The arraignment; 2. the consequences of the judgment-deed; 3. the appointment of punishment according to the guilt; 4. the division of the one common judgment into its separate sentences.—The revelation of God’s grace in his judgment.—The first gospel: 1. The root of all the Old Testament promises of salvation; 2. of the New Testament gospel itself; 3. of the history of the kingdom of God, and of the announcements of the end of the world.—The sorrows of the woman in their connection with sin and sinfulness of the woman.—The sorrows of the man in their connection with the sin and sinfulness of the man.—The suffering of one party, a suffering also of the other.—How every human calling has its own special burden, or its conflict with its own special curse.—The blessing in the curse.—The humiliation of the human race the pre-condition of its exaltation.—The loss of Paradise a sending forth into the world.—The divine preparation of man for his state of exile.—The looking back of man to Paradise, a beholding of the cherubim and of the flaming sword of an indignant righteousness.—With the separation from the outer tree of life the protevangel becomes the germ of a new tree of life for them and their race.—The prospect of the first man in the future according to its signification for us: 1. A prospect of immeasurable sorrow, and yet, 2. a prospect of an endless hope.
Starke:
Gen_3:1. Luther: So did the devil draw and tear them from the word of God. As long as the word stood in their heart, so long was the life and the prospect of its continuance.
Gen_3:3 Vulgate: Ne forte moriamini. Were this the true sense of the words, Eve must have already treated the sentence of death as something most uncertain.
Gen_3:4. It was a great sin that Eve turned away from God and his word, and listened to the devil; but it was a much greater that she fell in with the devil, who gave God the lie, and as it were struck at him with his fists.
Gen_3:5. Satan the first author and predecessor of Antichrist, who is a disputing adversary and exalteth himself above all that is called God or worshipped (2Th_2:4; Dan_11:36).—Behold now, in the midst of the fair Paradise there appears a crafty and poisonous serpent! It is here, it may be even by thy side. Be on thy guard against it (Sir_21:2). Unbelief and doubt of God’s word are the sins by which the devil at first sought to cast men down (Mat_4:3). Hast thou already obtained the victory over the devil? be not too secure.—The word of the Lord is truth, but that of the devil is lies.—Lange: The conceits of “opened eyes,” and of some strange wisdom, are the snares whereby Satan especially seeks to stumble the learned.
Ver 6. Lust of the flesh, lust of the eye, pride. The garment of righteousness and holiness was put off.—The fig-leaves. It is not yet proved that they were fig-leaves that Eve gave to her husband. The Hebrew word denotes twigs as well as leaves.—Untimely curiosity brings commonly great sorrow of heart.—God is not the cause of man’s fall.—The guile and cozening of woman can often entice the strongest men (Jdg_16:15).—Man is ever seeking fig-leaves to hide his shame and cover his sins, but they are ever visible to the all-seeing eyes of God (1Sa_15:15).
Gen_3:8. The interpreting “the voice of God,” of the thunder.—Parallel of the Garden of Adam and the Garden of Christ: 1. Adam’s sleep in Paradise and his gain, the wife; Christ’s death-sleep in the garden of Joseph, and its fruit in the resurrection, his bride the church. 2. In Paradise Adam was bound with the cords of the devil; in Gethsemane Christ was bound, to free the human race from their imprisonment. 3. In the garden of Eden sin began; in another garden was it buried in Christ’s grave.
Gen_3:9. Luther: Adam and Eve are ruined in themselves, they can no longer help themselves, they are forsaken of all creatures; the reason can form no other judgment than that there is no help for them in heaven and earth. Yet here, from this very example, may we learn that God will help though we may be forsaken of all creatures. And yet He gives such help only for his Son’s sake, whom even here He has promised to send to the human race.—God called to Adam. Lange: A proof of the pre-eminency of the male sex, and, therefore, also, of the higher obligation which Adam had laid upon him, not to follow his wife into evil, but rather to hold her back.—Though God a long time winks at the sinner, and keeps silence in respect to his sins, yet at the right time does He let him hear his voice, and seeks to awaken him out of his sleep.
Gen_3:13. So it ever goes; disobedience follows unbelief in all the faculties and members of men.; after this comes concealment, exculpation, and, perhaps, apology for sin; finally, man complains of God and would make him the cause of his sins. A frightened conscience ever mistakes itself the worst (Wisdom of Solomon Gen_17:12). Man never, God always, has the blame (Jer_2:35).
Gen_3:15. Luther: Christ crushes the serpent’s head, that is, his kingdom of death, sin, and hell; the devil bites him in the heel, that is, he slays and tortures him and his in the body (Rom_8:7). Since the woman sinned first (1Ti_2:14), so is she also here named first, and first assured of the gospel. Therefore here, also, to this proud and mighty foe, and for his greatest ignominy and shame, there is opposed, not Adam specially, although he is not excluded, but, in preference, the weaker vessel. Such a piercing of the heel is more largely described Psalms 22; Isaiah 53. Among other places this first gospel is described in the 110. Psalm; also in Isa_27:1; Joh_14:30; Col_1:13-14; 1Ti_2:6; 1Jn_3:8; Rev_12:4-5.
Gen_3:16. The experience here described was that of Rachel, Thamar, the daughter-in-law of Eli, and the wife of Phinehas (1Sa_4:19-20). [The question whether Mary was born without pain is one that does not pertain to our salvation; individuals may affirm whilst others deny it.]
Gen_3:19. Since human nature, through sin, is so frail and perishable, it is a good and wise act of God, that he lets the separation of soul and body continue for so long a time, even to the reunion and resurrection that is to endure.—It is a great consolation for women in child-bearing that their pains before, and during, and after the birth, are laid upon them by God. He who smites can also heal again (Col_3:18; 1Pe_3:1). Man, fear not death, but keep the thought, rather, that it is ordained by the Lord of all flesh (Sir_41:4),
Gen_3:20. In view of the death incurred, the woman might rather have been called the dead, and the mother of the dead. Her having been called by Adam havah (Eve), the living and the mother of the living, is grounded on the foregoing promise of the Messiah (Mar_3:35).—It is a consolation for the poor and the low, that God clothed our first parents with skins.—As often as thou puttest off thy garments, think on Jesus Christ’s coat of righteousness, and aspire that thou mayest be clothed therewith (Isa_61:10; Rev_3:17-18; Rom_13:14).—[Adam is become like one of us; here is indicated his justification, the justitia imputata.]
Gen_3:23. The punishment here declared was also benevolently intended; for though it is bitter to man to obtain his food from the labor of the field, still does this labor, while it supports him, contribute to the promotion of his health, and to his avoidance of many sins, such as those that proceed from idleness.
Gen_3:24. Paradise was an image; 1. Of the kingdom of grace; 2. of the kingdom of glory. The tree of life pre-eminently typifies Christ.—Comparisons between Adam and Christ.—Agriculture is holy.—O man, what art thou? Earth, and again to become earth. Bethink thee oft and diligently of this; so shall every proud thought be gone. The earthly joy has ceased, yet still we have a heavenly.
Valer. Herberger: Magnalia Dei: Ye shall not die at all; that was the first lie in the world; the devil told it; therefore Christ rightly calls him a liar and a murderer from the beginning (Joh_8:44).—“I was afraid.” That was the first lamentation in the world, and came from sin.—O how often must we, poor men, now say with Eve, the serpent beguiled me!
Schröder: Every creature created for endless perfectibility is also exposed to corruption (Job_4:18; Job_15:14). Some would place the fall of angels in Genesis 1, between Gen_3:1 and Gen_3:2, since they suppose an original creation in Gen_3:1, and, as a consequence of the fall of the spirits in the same, would read instead of the words, “the earth was waste,” etc., Gen_3:2, “the earth became waste.” Others look for the angel-fall in the intimation supposed to be conveyed in the account of the second day’s work by the omission of the words, “And God saw that it was good.” To others again, by reason of Gen_1:31, the time immediately after the completed world-creation seems more suitable for this. And some fathers, again, bring the fall of the evil angels into connection with the temptation of man, meaning that the former happened by means of the latter (Gen_3:14). God bears, with inexpressible long-suffering, the devil and his kingdom, because to him the good and right of the development, even in its perversion, is a holy thing. The good is not to be forced. God’s power and love bears now the unfolding of the creaturely life, educates it freely and gradually.
Gen_3:1-6. Herder: Eve knew not yet that the subtlety of the serpent was an evil subtlety; it was to her only shrewdness and cunning. She took the serpent for her tutor. The serpent turns it all round, makes the prohibition greater than the gifts, or allows her only to hear the former. The sly attack of Satan is directed against the spiritual citadel of the soul, against faith in God; since with faith obedience stands or falls, Mat_4:3 (Psa_78:19). The lusts follow after of themselves.
Gen_3:6-7. Luther: Unbelief is the primitive cause and source of all sin, and whenever the devil can succeed, either, in getting away the word from the heart, or in falsifying it, and thus bringing the soul to unbelief, he can easily do in the end what he pleases. Such subtlety and wickedness follow all false teachers, who, under the appearance of good, would pluck out the eyes of the people of God, blinding them to his word, or painting before them another god who has no existence. Whenever, therefore, God’s word is changed or falsified, then, as Moses says in his song, do there come in new gods, which our fathers never reverenced. He would have man regard his service to God as servile bondage, in order, by deluding him with the phantom of his own proper sovereignty, to make him the slave of sin, and, in this way, like himself. This gives us a glimpse, perhaps, of the cause of Satan’s ruin. Through the desire of sovereignty it may be that he himself became a fallen being.—Rambach: The learned snap at such doubts of God’s word as the cat snaps at the mouse, regarding them as most excellent dainties, when, in fact, it is a feeding on death. Out of envy must the prohibition have flowed; thus would he make God to be Satan (Wisdom of Solomon Gen_2:24), and himself to be God. Satan’s promise begins like God’s threatening: “in the day ye eat thereof,” etc.—Baco: Man allowed himself to fancy that the command and prohibition of God were not the rules of good and evil, but that good and evil must have their own principles and beginnings, and so he lusts after a knowledge of these fancied principles, that he may be no more dependent on God’s revealed will, but only on himself and his own proper light rather than on God. Pride has overthrown itself (that is, Satan). His words invite to a false self-sufficiency, and to a bold independence; he preaches rebellion, his most interior being.—Herder: Though here an apple lay, and there the death, whilst in God’s hands the balance hung suspended, as soon as it came to subtle, casuistical reasoning, down weighed the apple; the light word die flew up, and in the apple Eve saw nothing less than divinity. No tree in all the garden round had a look so fair or so desirable to the woman as the one forbidden. Now is her unbelief decided.—The same: To lust after. To have the soul over-powered by the senses, to be allured or fascinated, to be in a state of fluttering or throbbing agitation. No longer in thy control; they are beyond; the soul is off to the other side; thou wilt, thou must away to thy parted self, which dwells there in the beloved fruit. Wherefore, at first, an inward selfish turning away of the soul from that divine conformity which sustains its destination to a higher godlikeness. Pride and self-sufficiency. Of this inner state the origin appears as unbelief in God’s word, and, thereby, as an erroneous or superstitious belief in an unknown being. Desire follows the tickling of the sense. The first female sinner becomes, after Satan’s fashion, the first temptress.—Krummacher: In the first sin lie concealed the three cardinal sins, lust of the flesh, lust of the eye, and pride (that is, of unrighteous coveting of possession, enjoyment, and power.—(Concerning the time when the fall took place, see p. 47).
Gen_3:7. By experience, alas! did they become aware that what they had lost was the good, that that into which they had fallen was the evil.—They would have become lords, like God, and now they are no longer masters even of their own bodies. Man fell towards evening. At this season, in later times, the paschal lambs were slain as types of Christ (Exo_12:16). Their hiding under the trees in the garden stands parallel to their making themselves aprons. What the one was in the small, the same was the other in the greater, account. The one betrays their ignorance of the great power and depth of sin, the other their lost knowledge of the omnipotence and omniscience of God (Psalms 139; Sir_14:2; Book of Wis_17:10-13). Both are a symbol and a sign of their falling away, and, therewith, of their shame. Both, moreover, are a symbol and a sign of their divine original, and, therewith, of a glimmering hope of redemption from the body of death. Satan is not at all ashamed of himself; Satan does not hide himself before God.
Gen_3:9-13. The voice of God still reaches the sinner (Psa_139:7-13). Adam and Eve show themselves in their pure sin-nakedness. Dissatisfied with and unjust towards his nearest friend and towards his God,—they who before had been his joy and his desire,—so does sinner complain of sinner, yea, of God himself, on account of his free ordaining and his very kindness (Lam_3:39; Psa_18:27).—Luther: God calls to Adam, since to him alone had come the word of God, on the sixth day, not to eat of the forbidden fruit. As, therefore, he alone had heard the command of God, so is he the first summoned to judgment. The most loving gifts of God (Gen_2:18; Gen_2:20) become an occasion to the sinner, and are used as weapons against the giver. Sin loosens all bands, even the most excellent and the most holy. He calls her no longer, my wife.
Gen_3:14-15. Luther: He calls not upon the serpent; he asks him no questions respecting sins that are past; there is nothing of this kind to bring him to repentance; but he is condemned on the spot. (It would appear from this, that a previous fall of Satan is already here supposed.)—Krummacher: After its work is finished, then is lust divested of its garment of light, then does it appear in its true form of a sneaking, earth-eating worm, ever crawling upon its belly. He shall be given up (for that is the force of the language as applied to Satan) to the most extreme contempt, to the deepest shame and degradation, and shall become, in all respects, like a serpent, etc., until, at last, he is cast into the fiery lake. There is a difference between the fallen man and the fallen angel; the former is lyingly seduced, the latter is the lying seducer; the one becomes evil from without; the other is the author of evil from himself. The fiend has struck us only on the heel; therefore shall his head be crushed: the wounds which he inflicts are curable; the wounds inflicted on him must bring him unto death.
Gen_3:16-19. The desire becomes a burden. Through pain does lust revenge itself upon the senses; and yet, too, immediately on these pains there follows great joy (Joh_16:21). With gentle force would the wife rule and mislead the man to sin. Therefore is she cast into subjection, into a state of constant dependence upon the man. The field upon the small scale is a speaking symbol of man’s earthly condition on the greater. Adam’s transgression was a breaking of the whole ten commandments taken together (then follows the manner in which this is deduced, p. 63).
Gen_3:20. Here, as earlier, the wife has her name from the man. In a similar manner does the wife, at the present day, exchange the paternal name for that of the man.—Luther: It is the world, moreover, that in these signs of wretchedness becomes mad and foolish; for who can easily tell how much of care and expense people incur on account of clothing? Were the self-made and fig-leaf aprons a figure of our own righteousness, which exposes more than it covers our nakedness, so are the clothings made of skins the symbols of the righteousness which comes through the life, and sufferings, and death of the Redeemer and Mediator (Isa_61:10; Rev_3:17-18). A sharp contrast that between the first Adam who would, robber like, demand of God, and the second Adam, who thought it no robbery to be like God (Php_2:6). God now undertakes the charge of the garden. Earlier it was to be guarded by men; now it is to be guarded against them,—There came the day of salvation. It opened again the door to the fair Paradise.
Gerlach: The immediate consequence of the fall is the awaking the feeling of shame, that is, the consciousness that now the spirit, torn away from God, can no more have power over the flesh. In this feeling of shame the awakened conscience now clothes itself; it is the fear that would hide from God, who now appears as an adversary. The devil, whose corporeal appearance is not mentioned in the Scripture (and which, therefore, may be generally said to be impossible),—what constrained him to speak through the beast? It (that is, the serpent) took advantage of man’s divinely imparted consciousness, that he was destined to a higher godlikeness, in which he should attain to perfect security against every temptation; this was for the purpose of blinding him by a deceptive appearance, giving him a false glimpse of the glory of this godlikeness in the freedom of choice (that is, an apparent freedom). The origin of sin lies, therefore, not in the sensitivity, as this history shows, but in the spiritual aspiration after a false self-sufficiency, independent of God.
Augustine: After they were fallen out of their lordly state, and the body had now received into itself a sickly and death-bearing concupiscence, even then, in the midst of the punishment, the rational soul gave witness to its noble origin, and was ashamed of its beastly inclination. Still, behind this feeling of shame, it evidently seeks to hide the guilt of disobedience. The first sin shows itself immediately as the mother of a new one. Instead of acknowledging his guilt, Adam puts it upon the woman, yea, even upon God himself, when he adds the words, “whom thou gavest to me for a companion.” The woman carries it on in the same way of sinful exculpation. At that time, the labor of the field afforded the single example of man’s outward calling upon the earth; on every condition, nevertheless, on every calling, on every occupation of earth, is laid the curse, that is, great necessity and tribulation, great vanity and disappointment in the most painful toil. Since that time, moreover, a great change has passed upon nature. The death of the body is the visible emblem and type of the everlasting destruction. It is the dark curtain hung before the world beyond, and which, to the unconverted sinner, covers nothing else than hopeless misery.
Lisco, B. Genesis 1 : It is no less satanic when Satan uses language respecting God’s word and revelation similar to that which is found in the Holy Scriptures.—Sin from sin.—In place of wretched lies, man ought to confess; in place of sinful exculpation he ought the more to seek forgiveness.—Calwer, Handbook: Christ the serpent-crusher. Gen_3:19 : Here, too, again, are punishment and redemption. Gen_3:20 : Man clothed in the skins of slain beasts; how solemn now to him is death thus contemplated !—As in Gen_3:15, the beginning of prophecy, so in Gen_3:21, the beginning of sacrifice.—Comparison of the three first chapters in the Bible with the last.—Bunsen: [The true tree of life is the knowledge of limitations, that is, in the moral government of the natural world, etc. And this tree would grow ever more in Paradise (?). The limitation of the law (positive law) lay rather in the tree of knowledge.] The nature-side of the figure is the great historical event that laid waste every territory of the earth, which had been previously blessed, and drove out the inhabitants to wander forth to other lands. Every word must be taken as the indication of a great igneous phenomenon in nature. Natural science has recognized in those regions the effects of such an old volcanic power, though falling in the historical time. The old traditions of the Bactains, too, seem to speak of the upheaving of the mountains, when they tell us that the evil spirit of their fathers made the lovely climate almost if not wholly uninhabitable by reason of the shuddering cold.—Michow (“The Primitive History of the Human Race,” 1858): The fall. We distinguish three degrees: 1. The preparation; 2. the carrying out; 3. the nearest effects.—Taube (“Sermon on Genesis,” 1855): Marriage. 1. How it was established in a state of innocence; 2. what changes it underwent in consequence of the fall; 3. how it is again restored by Christ.—How Adam is the type and an antitype of Christ: 1. Wherein we see the type; 2. wherein the antitype.—The history of the fall: 1. How exactly it represents the way sin takes in all men; 2. how it predicts, moreover, the way that grace takes in us.—W. Hoffmann (“Voices of the Watchmen in the Old Testament,” 1856): The primitive word of the divine promise (Gen_3:15). It brings us, 1. curse in the blessing; 2. blessing in the curse. [Curse in the blessing: it goes throughout the outward and the inner strife. Blessing in the curse: the restoration of Paradise.]
Footnotes:
[1][Gen_3:1.—נחש. Primary sense: keen sight (secondary : intuition, divining). Greek: δράκων (δέρκω) ὅφις (ὅψομαι). אף כי; expressing great surprise: yea truly, can it be possible? Comp. Greek μὴ ὅτι with its simplicity and abruptness.—T. L.]
[2][Gen_3:6.—תַּאֲוָה rendered desirable: strictly a noun: a desire, a beauty, a lovely thing.—T. L.]
[3][Gen_3:7.—וידעו, and they knew. Before it was the verb ראה, to see; a higher knowledge than that of sense—con-science.—T. L.]
[4][Gen_3:8.—מתהלך may refer to קול—the voice going. It would suit very well the interpretation which would make קול יהוה here a name for the thunder, as in Psa_29:3-5; Psa_29:7-9; Psa_46:7; Psa_68:34; Job_37:2. This is the view of Aben Ezra, who cites Jer_46:22; Exo_19:19 (voice of the trumpet, going and waxing) as examples of הלך joined with קול. It is thus expressly applied to inanimate things, Gen_8:3 (the waters going, etc.), in other places to the light, as Pro_4:18. Even in the Hithpael form it would suit the description of a long roll of thunder, which seems to go all round the horizon, comp. Job_37:3. What follows can only be interpreted of an actual speaking, but this may have been the first thunder they ever heard, coming in black clouds, perhaps, towards the evening of their sinning day, and it would have been very startling, even as it has been ever since to guilty consciences. Some of the Rabbis (see Aben Ezra) would connect מתהלך with Adam: He heard the voice as he was walking in the cool of the day; but the grammar is directly against this.—T. L.]
[5][Gen_3:14.—מכל הבהמה; Lange rightly renders it: among all cattle.—T. L.]
[6][Gen_3:15.—ישופך; for a discussion of this rare and difficult word, see the Exegetical and Critical, p.—.—T. L.]
[7][Gen_3:16.—תשוקתך. The sense of this word is not libido, or sensual desire, like תאוה, but want, dependence, and, in this sense, a looking to or running after one (see the uses of the root שוק). Comp. Gen_4:7, where it cannot have the sense of libido. So in Son_7:11 it does not mean carnal desire as Gesenius would render, but the willing conjugal dependence, or submission to the conjugal rule; עלי תשוקתו, LXX. well renders it: ἀποστροφή; Vulgate: sub viri potestate eris.—T. L.]
[8][Gen_3:17.—חייך; for remarks on the plural form of the word for life in Hebrew, see Note, p. 163.—T. L.]
[9][Gen_3:21.—חַוָּהּ, Havvah. LXX. have translated the word by the Greek Ζωή: He called her Zoe, life; Vulgate: Heva.—T. L.]
[10][Gen_3:22.—פֶּן, lest—only the particle without any verb. This silence, or aposiopesis, is very expressive; compare the similar Greek use of μὴ for an imperative of caution.—T. L.]
[11][Gen_3:23.—וַיְשַׁלְּחֵהוּ. Lange regards the Piel form as intensive, to denote a violent sending forth, a thrusting out; but there is no need of that, the Piel differing but little, if any, from the Kal, and being used for an ordinary sending. The word following, וַיְגָרֶשׁ, may have that sense, but there is nothing in the context of harshness, or anything to carry it beyond the general idea of dismissal.—T. L.]
[12][So Gesenius—a sibilando. It is far more likely, however, to have had for its primary sense that from which comes the secondary meaning of brass, or rather of bronze—shining metal. This gives, as the primary, the idea of splendor, glistening. The name may have been given to the serpent from its glossy, shining appearance, or more likely from the bright glistening of the eye. This would bring it into analogy with the Greek δράκων from δερκ–δέρκομαι—sharp piercing sight. There is the same derivation from the eye in the Greek ὄφις, or from the general shining appearance (ὄψις) as a striking and beautiful though terrible object. And to this correspond well the epithets which in the Greek poets are so constantly joined with it, such as αἰόλος, ποικιλόνωτος, ἀργηστής. The Latin serpens is simply a generic name—reptile. The first impressions of mankind in regard to the serpent were of the splendid and terrible kind—beauty and awe.—T. L.]
[13][Lange’s German translation of the passage is stronger, or rather more peremptory, than our own: Mit nichten werdet ihr des Todes sterben. Our Version, Ye shall not surely die, makes the rendering the same as it is in the prohibition, and seems to have reference to the fulness or completeness of the dying rather than to the certainty of it. The woman had not repeated the words of the prohibition, and of the penalty, in its doubled or intensive Hebrew form, but Satan repeats it in blasphemous mockery, as though he had heard it in some other way. The German does not seem to give this.—T. L.]
[14][Another example of the way in which this class of commentators love to pervert things—making a hysteron proteron, or a putting the later first, in their endeavor to educe Bible ideas from Egyptians, Greeks, and Persians. No one can carefully study this Greek maxim φθονερὸν τὸ θεῖον (the divine is envious), which so frequently meets us in the Greek poets and in Herodotus, without seeing in it a fall from a higher and holier idea. The marks of human degeneracy are upon it. It has become a superstitious or fatalistic fear of the gods as jealous of mere human prosperity per se. High state, in their view, was dangerous, not because of its leading to “pride which God resisteth” for man’s good, but simply as threatening a reverse destiny (see Herodotus’ “Story of Polycrates of Samos and King Amasis,” Herod. 3:40). It was unlucky, and foreboded evil. There was in it a consciousness of something very wrong in man, but how different this mere jealousy of human prosperity from the holy attribute of jealousy against human pride and sin ascribed to God in the Bible! Herodotus, as he was more oriental in his style and feeling than the fatalistic dramatic poets, comes nearer the Scripture representation, or the Scripture original, we may say, of the great truth thus distorted. Especially is this the case in the speeches of Artabanus dissuading Xerxes from his expedition against Greece, Lib. Gen_7:10; Gen_7:5. He talks there of the jealous God (ὁ Θεὸς φθονὴσας), and his bringing down of human pride, almost in the style of Isaiah.—T. L.]
[15][Compare Psa_104:34 : “My meditation of Him shall be sweet, יערב”—literally, like the calm evening hour. So the Greek poets called the night εὐφρόνη—the time of calm sober thought.—T. L.]
[16][This does not appear in our translation, which, like most other versions, ancient or modern, renders it in the passive. It has arisen from a desire to avoid the, apparent harshness; but it is strictly in the Hebrew of Job_3:20 as Lange gives it, and it shows his careful observance of every thing in the biblical text. It is characteristic of the temper of mind in which Job is represented. He grudges to name God, though there is no other subject for the verb יתן—“why does he give light to the wretched?” It is the language of sullen complaint, afraid or ashamed to name the one complained of. So Adam here says: She gave it to me, the woman gave it to me. The other examples correspond.—T. L.]
[17][Lange’s translation here is: “Wherefore hast thou done this?” Our version, “What hast thou done.?” would seem, at first view, to be a more literal rendering of the Hebrew מה, but that given in the Vulgate (quare hoc fecisti) and by Luther, as well as by Lange, is more in accordance with the spirit of the question, since מה may be taken as a general as well as a particular interrogatory. Or it may he regarded as exclamatory: What a thing have you done! How could you do it !—T. L.]
[18][In the Targum, and by Maimonides in his More Nevochim, Lib. 2. chap, 30., Sammael is called the angel of death, מלאך דמותח. Says Maimonides: “He took the ancient serpent for his vehicle, and seduced Eve.” Elsewhere he says, that he is no other than Satan, who caused death to the world.—T. L.]
[19][The general sense in this passage is plain, but there is great difficulty in fixing on the precise action intended by the word שוּף, in consequence of its occurring but three times in the Hebrew Bible; and one of these places, Psa_139:11, is most probably a wrong reading for ישׂוכני (from שכך), differing from it very slightly, and exactly suiting the context. The sense of bruising will do, as used of the storm, Job_9:17, but is quite alien to any effect of darkness, as used Psalms 139. The difficulty is shown by the variety of special interpretations, though all agreeing in the general thought. Onkelos has two different words for it: “He shall be mindful (דכיר) of what thou hast done to him of old (taking ראשׁ paraphrastically for beginning), but thou shalt be watchful (נטיר) for him in the end.” From this probably, or from some older Targum, came the LXX. rendering. The Arabic translation, commonly called Arabs Erpenianus, made by an ancient and learned Jew, and generally very accurate, also uses two words: “He shall break thy head, and thou shalt sting him on the heel,”—as though in the 2d clause he had read תשוכנו (long vowel) from נשך to bite; and such also is the conjecture of Jarchi, who thinks that the variation was made originally to render the expression memorable from such a suggested paronomasia, or resemblance in sound. Head and heel are evidently used to denote a strong contrast, but not the one, we think, pointed out by Calvin and Lange. May it not rather denote that the fight against sin and the serpent is to be a bold and manly one? “He shall strike thee on the head.” So Paul says: ὑπωπιάζω, “I strike under the eye,” I knock my body down—I fight face to face. The biting the heel, on the other hand, denotes the mean, insidious character of the devil’s warfare, not only as carried on by the equivocating appetites, but also as waged by infidels, and self-styled rationalists in all ages, who never meet Christianity in a frank and manly way.—T. L.]
[20][This is an expression that Dr. Lange is fond of. He seems to mean by it something representing humanity concretely and centrally—or some aspect of humanity; as Judah in the prophecy, Gen_49:10.—T. L.]
[21][Knobel has a gross sensual view in respect to this word, which its etymology and use do not warrant. See Etymological Notes, p. 227.—T. L.]
[22][Anakoloutha and other idiomatic expressions belong to the simple as well as to the rhetorical or animated diction. They may therefore occur in Genesis as well as in Isaiah or Job. The objection of anthropomorphism is to be disregarded. It is in just such forms of speech that the strength of language is brought out. The ellipsis shows that the thought is too great, or too strong, for the words. There is more force in the simple particle פֶּן (lest = beware lest) than in the fullest or most correctly guarded diction. The cases cited, Isa_36:18, and Job_32:13, are of the same kind, and instead of being opposed to, confirm the propriety of calling it an anakolouthon, or rather, an aposiopesis, or expressive silence, here.—T. L.]
[23][We prefer this apparently uncouth Anglo-Saxon coining, for Lange’s unsterblichkeit, instead of the word immortality, which, although etymologically the same, has, in general, obtained too high and spiritual a sense to suit the idea intended. This is especially the case in our English version of such passages as 1Co_15:53-54; 1Ti_6:16; where it is used for the Greek ἀθανασία.—T. L.]
[24][In view of this position of Lange and Keil, the anthropomorphic expression of the divine solicitude by the elliptical particle פֶן becomes perfectly startling. It is as though the thought of the awful consequences of one in such a state of death eating of the tree of life, and thereby making his ruin irreparable, or his death incurable, was so overpowering as to hide for a moment from the divine mind the consciousness of his perfect foreknowledge. As though the thought had suddenly occurred, and with it a sense of the awful danger—What if he should put forth his hand! And now lest he put forth his hand in some rash moment as he put it forth to the tree of knowledge! And then the remedy promptly follows, that there may be no delay in preventing a catastrophe that would have been greater than the other, even as making it remediless. Take away the anthropomorphisms from the Bible, and a large share of its power is destroyed.—T. L.]
[25][As far as etymology is concerned, Dr. Lange, we think, is wrong here. Such a metathesis, although it seems simple, would be contrary to clear phonetic principles. Had the guttural come first, it would have been more plausible, but such a syllable as רַך (rak) would hardly pass into כַר (kar). Besides, the primary sense of רכב is nor riding nor motion at all, but position—superposition, from whence comes the other idea, as secondary or implied. This is most clearly shown in the same word in the Arabic and Syriac, although it quite plainly appears also in the Hebrew. It is far more easy and natural to derive the name כרוב, not from anything in the form or office of the cherubim, but from their being remarkable engraved figures, hence called pre-eminently the engravings. See the account of these representations in the temple of Solomon. This would bring them very naturally from כרב, the sense of which in the Syriac is, to plough, cut, engrave. It is then, clearly, the same root with the Greek γραφ—grave—G R P, Lat. S(C R i B o). They are the remarkable forms, figures, sculptures—engravings.—T. L.]
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv2, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 12 the woman said, We may eat of the fruit…
the woman said, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden--In her answer, Eve extolled the large extent of liberty they enjoyed in ranging at will amongst all the trees--one only excepted, with respect to which, she declared there was no doubt, either of the prohibition or the penalty. But there is reason to think that she had already received an injurious impression; for in using the words "lest ye die," instead of "ye shall surely die" [Gen 2:17], she spoke as if the tree had been forbidden because of some poisonous quality of its fruit. The tempter, perceiving this, became bolder in his assertions.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv1–12 1. The serpent is here represented as a beast…
1. The serpent is here represented as a beast of the field which the Lord God had made, and, therefore, must have been good, as all the rest of the creation. Gen_1:25. Hence we should not understand the word ערום, subtile, in a bad sense, implying malignant craftiness, as some expositors have done. This term is frequently employed in the Old Testament in a good sense, as meaning prudent, or sagacious. Such is the import of the Septuagint, φρονιμος. Our Lord enjoined upon his disciples to be “wise as serpents.” Mat_10:16. The serpent’s sagacity is seen in its keen eye, its power to charm birds and men, its prudence in avoiding danger, its skill in shielding the head, its most vulnerable part, from the attack of man. The words more subtile do not imply that all other beasts of the field were also subtile, but rather that this feature separated or distinguished the serpent from them. As to the prominence which the serpent holds in the religious symbolism of ancient peoples, Lenormant observes: “These creatures are there used with the most opposite meanings, and it would be contrary to all the rules of criticism to group together and in confusion, as has been done by scholars of former times, the very contradictory notions attached in this way to the different serpents in the ancient myths, in such wise as to create a vast ophiolatric system, derived from a single source, and made to harmonize with the narration of Genesis. But side by side with divine serpents of an essentially favourable and protective character, oracular, or allied with the gods of health, of life, or of healing, we find in all mythologies a gigantic serpent, personifying the nocturnal, hostile power, the evil principle, material darkness, and moral wickedness.” — Beginnings of History, pp. 107, 108.
He said unto the woman — The serpent spoke in an intelligible way. Le Clerc (after some of the rabbies) supposes that the serpent tempted Eve, not by language audibly spoken, but by significant signs, and by repeatedly eating the fruit in her sight. Others imagine she was charmed into a visionary or ecstatic condition in which the movements of the serpent seemed to her like words. Some, as we have seen, deny that any real serpent was connected with the event, and hold that the temptation was purely spiritual; while others have denied the agency of Satan in this temptation, and affirmed that the tempter of Eve was nothing but a serpent, which, by repeatedly using the forbidden fruit before her eyes, at length induced her to follow its example. Less strained, and far more compatible with the general doctrine of the Scriptures, is that ancient interpretation which has been commonly received by Christian scholars, namely, that Satan made use of a serpent in his work of falsehood and ruin. There is no sufficient ground for denying the possibility of Satan speaking through the organs of a serpent. Mind and spirit are superior to matter, and control it. A fallen spirit is, in intellect, untold degrees above a brute. The mystery of demoniacal possession is too great for us to allow any a priori assumptions to govern our interpretation. According to the New Testament records, evil spirits usurped the powers of human speech, and entered also into swine. Mar_5:1-17. Why the Almighty should have permitted Satan to make such an approach to the first woman is as idle as to ask why he permits any sin or sinners to exist in his universe. We regard this first temptation and transgression as a great mystery, and a momentous event, but not a myth nor a fable. The mystery of God in Christ, by which God himself becomes flesh and redeems sinful man, implies other mysteries that may well surpass our knowledge. The incarnation, temptation, righteousness, death, and resurrection of the One who accomplishes the work of redemption, furnish to our thought a series of stupendous events; if we believe them, why do we stagger over that which appears startling and wonderful in the offence of the one by whom “judgment came upon all men to condemnation?” Rom_5:18.
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Yea, hath God said — Or, as the Hebrew strictly implies: Really, is it true that God has said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden? The language seems like the continuation of a conversation, the previous part of which is not given. The question was adapted to awaken doubt in the woman’s mind, and the tempter shrewdly addressed himself to the woman first, as the one more easily to be deceived than the man. Chrysostom thus expands the thought in the serpent’s words: “What good is life in Paradise if we may not enjoy the things which are found therein, but must feel the pain of seeing before our eyes what we are forbidden to take and eat?” Critics have raised a needless and profitless question over the serpent’s use of the name Elohim, rather than Jehovah. Keil thinks, that the tempter felt it necessary to ignore the personality of God by this omission of his covenant name in order to work distrust in the woman’s mind. Lange says, that the demon could not utter the name of the covenant-God Jehovah, not knowing him in that relationship. According to Knobel, the writer omitted the name of Jehovah from fear of profaning it in such a connexion. All which seems far-fetched and worthless. See Introd., pp. 51-54.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv1–12 1. Now the serpent] The abrupt mention of the…
1. Now the serpent] The abrupt mention of the serpent is characteristic of this narrative. Vivid and picturesque as it is, the story leaves many things omitted and unexplained. The present verse is an illustration. It makes no mention of time; whether the interval between the Creation and the Fall was one of days, months, or years, is not stated. The serpent is brought upon the scene without explanation, though he is gifted with speech and is able, by means of knowledge superior to that of the woman, to tell her what will be the results of eating of the forbidden fruit; cf. Gen_3:5 with Gen_3:22.
Ch. 3, though one of the same group of narratives as ch. Gen_2:4 b–25, has no appearance of being the immediate continuance of ch. 2, but rather of being a distinct and independent story. The connecting link is the mention of the tree “in the midst of the garden.”
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The serpent is (1) one of “the beasts of the field” (cf. Gen_2:19), “formed out of the ground”; (2) more “subtle” than any of them; (3) not identified with a spirit, or any personal power, of evil. For this development of the narrative, belonging to a late period of Jewish literature, cf. Wis_2:23, “by envy of the devil death entered into the world,” Rev_20:2, “the dragon, the old serpent, which is the Devil and Satan.”
more subtil] i.e. more sly, clever, and mischievous. For the wisdom of the serpent, cf. the proverbial expression quoted by our Lord, “Be ye wise (φρόνιμοι) as serpents,” Mat_10:16. Here the LXX has ὁ δὲ ὄφις ἦν φρονιμώτατος πάντων τῶν θηρίων.
Yea, hath God said] The serpent, in order to secure success, addresses the woman, who (a) was the weaker, (b) was apparently alone, and (c) had not herself received the Divine command respecting the fruit of the tree (Gen_2:16).
Observe that in the serpent’s mouth the general name, “God” (Elohim), is used, and not the sacred name “Jehovah” (Lord), and that the woman replying takes up the serpent’s words.
The method which the serpent adopts is insidious. He knows the prohibition; he feigns ignorance, and asks to be instructed. The question suggests a doubt of Divine goodness. It takes the tone of indignant surprise at the injustice and harshness of a prohibition which had forbidden the man and the woman to eat of any tree of the garden. Such a suggestion, however easily refuted, might instill into the mind of the unsuspicious woman a grain of doubt, whether even any limitation was consonant with perfect justice and kindness. Compare the first temptation: “If thou art the Son of God,” Matthew 4, Luk_4:3.
The versions, misunderstanding the Hebrew particles, give a slightly different turn to the serpent’s question: LXX τί ὅτι, Lat. cur, making the serpent ask, not as to the fact, but as to the reason of the prohibition.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv1, 5, 6, 7, 8, 11, 12 (1) Now the serpent.—Literally, And. The Hebrew language, however,…
III.
(1) Now the serpent.—Literally, And. The Hebrew language, however, is very poor in particles, and the intended contrast would be made plainer by rendering “Now they were both naked (arumim) . . . but the serpent was subtil (arum), more than every beast of the field.” This quality of the serpent was in itself innocent, and even admirable, and accordingly the LXX. translate prudent; but it was made use of by the tempter to deceive Eve; for, it has been remarked, she would not be surprised on finding herself spoken to by so sagacious a creature. If this be so, it follows that Eve must have dwelt in Paradise long enough to have learnt something of the habits of the animals around her, though she had never studied them so earnestly as Adam, not having felt that want of a companion which had made even his state of happiness so dull.
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And he said unto the woman.—The leading point of the narrative is that the temptation came upon man from without, and through the woman. Such questions, therefore, as whether it were a real serpent or Satan under a serpent-like form, whether it spake with a real voice, and whether the narrative describes a literal occurrence or is allegorical, are better left unanswered. God has given us the account of man’s temptation and fall, and the entry of sin into the world, in this actual form; and the more reverent course is to draw from the narrative the lessons it was evidently intended to teach us, and not enter upon too curious speculations. We are dealing with records of a vast and hoar antiquity, given to man when he was in a state of great simplicity, and with his intellect only partly developed, and we cannot expect to find them as easy to understand as the pages of modern history.
Yea, hath God said . . .?—There is a tone of surprise in these words, as if the tempter could not bring himself to believe that such a command had been given. Can it really be true, he asks, that Elohim has subjected you to such a prohibition? How unworthy and wrong of Him! Neither the serpent nor the woman use the title—common throughout this section—of Jehovah-Elohim, a sure sign that there was a thoughtful purpose in giving this appellation to the Deity. It is the impersonal God of creation to whom the tempter refers, and the woman follows his guidance, forgetting that it was Jehovah, the loving personal Being in covenant with them, who had really given them the command.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
C. H. Mackintosh 1880 · Public Domain On v1 Genesis 3
Genesis 3
This section of our book sets before us the breaking up of the whole scene on which we have been dwelling. It abounds in very weighty principles; and has, very justly, been, in all ages, resorted to as a most fruitful theme for those who desired to set forth the truth as to man’s ruin and God’s remedy. The serpent enters, with a bold question as to divine revelation - terrible model and forerunner of all infidel questions since raised by those who have, alas! too faithfully served the serpent’s cause in the world questions which are only to be met by the supreme authority and. divine majesty of Holy Scripture.
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"Yea, hath God said, ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?" This was Satan’s crafty enquiry; and had the word of God been dwelling richly in Eve’s heart, her answer might have been direct, simple, and conclusive. The true way in which to meet Satan’s questions and suggestions, is to treat them as his, and repel them by the word. To let them near the heart, for a moment, is to lose the only power by which to answer them. The devil did not openly present himself and say, "I am the devil, the enemy of God, and I am come to traduce Him, and ruin you." This would not be serpent-like; and, yet, he really did all this, by raising questions in the mind of the creature. To admit the question, "hath God said?" when I know that God has spoken, is positive infidelity; and the very fact of my admitting It, proves my total incapacity to meet it. Hence, in Eve’s case, the form of her reply evidenced the fact that she bad admitted to her heart serpent’s crafty enquiry. Instead of adhering strictly to the exact words of God, she, in her reply, actually adds thereto.
Now, either to add to, or take from, God’s word, proves very clearly, that His word is not dwelling in my heart, or governing my conscience. If a man is finding his enjoyment in obedience, if it is his meat and his drink, if he is living by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of Jehovah, he will, assuredly, be acquainted with, and fully alive to, His word. He could not be indifferent to it. The Lord Jesus, in His conflict with Satan, accurately applied the word, because He lived upon it, and esteemed it more than His necessary food. He could not misquote or misapply the word, neither could He be indifferent about it. Not so Eve. She added to what God had said. His command was simple enough, "Thou shalt not eat of it." To this Eve adds her own words, "neither shall ye touch it." These were Eve’s words, and not God’s. He had said nothing about touching; so that whether her misquotation proceeded from ignorance, or indifference, or a desire to represent God in an arbitrary light, or from all three together, it is plain that she was entirely off the true ground of simple confidence in, and subjection to, God’s holy word. "By the words of thy mouth, I have kept me from the paths of the destroyer."
Nothing can possess more commanding interest than the way in which the word is everywhere put forward throughout the sacred canon, together with the immense importance of strict obedience thereto. Obedience is due from us to God’s word, simply because it is His word. To raise a question, when He has spoken, is blasphemy. We are in the place of the creature. He is the Creator; He may, therefore, justly claim obedience from us. The infidel may call this "blind obedience;" but the Christian calls it intelligent obedience, inasmuch as it is based upon the knowledge that it is God’s word to which he is obedient. If a man had not God’s word, he might well be said to be in blindness and darkness, for there is not so much as a single ray of divine light, within or around us, but what emanates from God’s pure and eternal word. ALL that we want to know is that God has spoken, and then obedience becomes the very highest order of intelligent acting. When the soul gets up to God, it has reached the very highest source of authority. No man, nor body of men, can claim obedience to their word, because it is theirs ; and hence the claims of the Church of Rome are arrogant and impious. In her claiming obedience, she usurps the prerogative of God; and all who yield it, rob God of His right. She presumes to place herself between God and the conscience; and who can do this with impunity? When God speaks, man is bound to obey. Happy is he if he does so. Woe be to him if he does not. Infidelity may question if God has spoken; superstition may place human authority between my conscience and what God has spoken; by both I like I am effectually robbed of the word, and, as a consequence, of the deep blessedness of obedience.
There is blessing in every act of obedience; but the moment the soul hesitates, the enemy has the advantage; he will, assuredly, use it, to thrust the soul further and further from God. Thus, in the chapter before us, the question, "Hath God said?" was followed up, "Ye shall not surely die." That is to say, there was first the question raised, as to whether God had spoken, and then followed the open contradiction of what God had said. This solemn fact is abundantly sufficient to show how dangerous it is to admit near the heart a question as to divine revelation, in its fullness and integrity. A refined rationalism is very near akin to bold infidelity; and the infidelity that dares to judge God’s Word is not far from the atheism that denies His existence. Eve would never have stood by to hear God contradicted, if she had not previously fallen into looseness and indifference as to His word. She, too, had her "phases of Faith," or, to speak more correctly, her phases of Infidelity: she suffered God to be contradicted by a creature, simply because? His word had lost its proper authority over her heart, her conscience, and her understanding.
This furnishes a most solemn warning to all who are in danger of being ensnared by an unhallowed rationalism. There is no true security, save in a profound faith in the plenary inspiration and supreme authority of "ALL SCRIPTURE." The soul that is endowed with this has a triumphant answer to every objector, whether he issue from Rome or Germany. "There is nothing new under the sun." The self-same evil which is now corrupting the very springs of religious thought and feeling, throughout the fairest portion of the continent of Europe, was that which laid Eve’s heart in ruins, in the garden of Eden. The first step in her downward course was her hearkening to the question, "Hath God said." And then, onward she went, from stage to stage, until, at length, she bowed before the serpent, and owned him as her god, and the fountain of truth. Yes, my reader, the serpent displaced God, and the serpent’s lie God’s truth. Thus it was with fallen man; and thus it is with fallen man’s posterity. God’s word has no place in the heart of the unregenerated man; but the lie of the serpent has. Let the formation of man’s heart be examined, and it will be found that there is a place therein for Satan’s lie, but none whatever for the truth of God. Hence the force of the word to Nicodemus, "Ye must be born again."
But, it is important to observe the mode in which the serpent sought to shake Eve’s confidence in God’s troth, and thus bring her under the power of infidel "reason." It was by shaking her confidence in God’s love. He sought to shake her confidence in what God had said by showing that the testimony was not founded in love. "For," said he, "God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods knowing good and evil." (Ver. 6.) In other words, "There is positive advantage connected with the eating of that fruit of which God is seeking to deprive you; why, therefore, should you believe God’s testimony? you cannot place confidence in one who, manifestly, does not love you, for, if He loved you, why should He prohibit your enjoying a positive privilege?’
Eve’s security against the influence of all this reasoning, would have been simple repose in the infinite goodness of God. She should have said to the serpent, "I have the fullest confidence in God’s goodness, therefore, I deem it impossible that He could withhold any real good from me. If that fruit were good for me, I should surely have it; but the fact of being forbidden by God proves that I would be no better, but much worse off by the eating of it. I am convinced of God’s love and I am convinced of God’s truth, and I believe, too, that you are an evil one come to draw my heart away from the fountain of goodness and truth. Get thee behind me, Satan." This would have been a noble reply. But it was not given. Her confidence in truth and love gave way, and all was lost; and so we find that there is just as little place in the heart of fallen for God’s love, as there is for God’s truth. The heart of man is a stranger to both the one and the other, until renewed by the power of the Holy Ghost.
Now, it is deeply interesting to turn from Satan’s lie in reference to the truth and love of God, to the mission of the Lord Jesus Christ, who came from the bosom of the Father in order to reveal what He really is. "Grace and truth" - the very things which man lost, in his fall - "came by Jesus Christ." (John 1: 17) He was "the faithful witness" of what God was. (Rev. 1: 5) Truth reveals God as He is; but this truth is connected with the revelation of perfect grace; and thus the sinner finds, to his, unspeakable joy, that the revelation of what God is, instead of being his destruction, becomes the basis of his eternal salvation. "This is life eternal, that they might know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent." (John 17: 3.) I cannot know God and not have life. The loss of the knowledge of God was death; but the knowledge of God is life. This, necessarily, makes life a thing entirely outside of ourselves, and dependent upon what God is. Let me arrive at what amount of self-knowledge I may, it is not said that "this is life eternal, to know themselves;" though, no doubt, the knowledge of God and the knowledge of self-will go very much together; still, "eternal life" is connected with the former, and not with the latter. To know God as He is, is life; and "all who know not God" shall be "punished with everlasting destruction from His presence."
It is of the utmost importance to see that what really stamps man’s character and condition is his ignorance or knowledge of God. This it is that marks his character here, and fixes his destiny hereafter. Is he evil in his thoughts, evil in his words, evil in his actions? It is all the result of his being ignorant of God. On the other hand, is he pure in thought, holy in conversation, gracious in action? It is but the practical result of his knowledge of God. So also as to the future. To know God is the solid ground of endless bliss - everlasting glory. To know Him not is "everlasting destruction." Thus the knowledge of God is everything. It quickens the soul, purifies the heart, tranquillises the conscience, elevates the affections, sanctifies the entire character and conduct.
Need we wonder, therefore, that Satan’s grand design was to rob the creature of the true knowledge of the only true God? He misrepresented the blessed God: he said He was not kind. This was the secret spring of all the mischief. It matters not what shape sin has since taken it matters not through what channel it has flowed, under what head it has ranged itself, or in what garb it has clothed itself; it is all to be traced to this one thing, namely, ignorance of God. The most refined cultivated moralist, the most devout religionist, the benevolent philanthropist, if ignorant of God, is as far from life and true holiness, as the publican and harlot. The prodigal was just as much a sinner, as positively awry from the Father, when he had crossed the threshold, as when he was feeding swine in the far country. (Luke 15: 13-15.) So, in Eve’s case. The moment she took herself out of the hands of God, out of the position of absolute dependence upon, and subjection to, His word, she abandoned herself to the government of sense, as used of Satan for her entire overthrow.
The sixth verse presents three things; namely, "the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life:" which three, as the apostle states, comprehend "all that is in the world." These things necessarily took the lead, when God was shut out. If I do not abide in the happy assurance of God’s love and truth, His grace and faithfulness, I shall surrender myself to the government of some one, or it may be all, of the above principles; and this is only another name for the government of Satan. There is, strictly speaking, no such thing as man’s free-will. If man be self-governed, he is really governed by Satan; and if not, he is governed by God.
Now, the three great agencies by which Satan works are "the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life." These are the things presented by Satan to the Lord Jesus, in the temptation. He began by tempting the Second Man to take Himself out of the position of absolute dependence upon God. "Command these stones that they be made bread" He asked Him to do this, not, as in the case of the first man, to make Himself what He was not, but to prove what He was. Then followed the offer of the kingdoms of the world, with all their Glory. And, finally, conducting Him to a pinnacle of the temple, he tempted Him to give Himself, suddenly and miraculously, to the Admiration of the assembled people below. (Comp. Matt. 4: 1-11 with Luke 4: 1-13.) The plain design of each temptation was to induce the Blessed One to step from the position of entire dependence upon God, and perfect subjection to His will. But all in vain. "it is written," was the unvarying reply of the only dependent, self-emptied, perfect man. Others might undertake to manage for themselves; none but God should manage for Him.
What an example for the faithful, under all their circumstances! Jesus kept close to scripture, and thus conquered; without any other weapon, save the sword of the Spirit, He stood in the conflict, and gained a glorious triumph. What a contrast with the first Adam! The one had everything to plead for God; the other had everything to plead against Him. The garden, with all its delights, in the one case; the wilderness, with all its privations, in the other: confidence in Satan, in the one case; confidence in God in the other: complete defeat in the one case; complete victory in the other. Blessed for ever be the God of all grace, who has laid our help on One so mighty to conquer - mighty to save!
Let us now inquire how far Adam and Eve realised the serpent’s promised advantage. This inquiry will lead us to a deeply important point in connection with the fall of man. The Lord God had so ordered it, that in and by the fall, man should get, what previously, he had not, and that was, a conscience, a knowledge of both good and evil. This, man, evidently, could not have had before. He could not have known ought about evil, inasmuch as evil was not there to be known. He was in a state of innocence, which is a state of ignorance of evil. Man got a conscience in, and by, fall; and we find that the very first effect of conscience was to make him a coward. Satan had utterly deceived the woman. He had said, "your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil! But he had left out a material part of the truth, that they should know good, without the power to do it; and that they should know evil, without the power to avoid it. Their very attempt to elevate themselves in the scale of moral existence, involved the lose of true elevation. They became degraded, powerless, Satan-enslaved, conscience-smitten, terrified, creatures. "The eyes of them both were opened," no doubt; but alas! to what a sight! It was only to discover their own nakedness. They opened their eyes upon their own condition, which was "wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked." "They knew that they were naked" - sad fruit of the tree of knowledge! It was not any fresh knowledge of divine excellence they had attained, no fresh beam of divine light from the pure and eternal fountain thereof - alas! no; the very earliest result of their disobedient effort after knowledge, was the discovery, that they were naked.
Now, it is well to understand this; well, too, to know how conscience works, - to see that it can only make cowards of us, as being the consciousness of what we are. Many are astray as to this; they think that conscience will bring us to God. Did it operate thus, in the case of Adam and Eve? Assuredly not, nor will it, in the case of any sinner. How could it? How could the sense of what I am ever bring me to God, if not accompanied by the faith of what God is? Impossible; it will produce shame, self-reproach, remorse, anguish. It may, also, give birth to certain efforts, on my part, to remedy the condition which it discloses; but these very efforts, so far from drawing us to God, rather act as a blind to hide Him from our view. Thus, in the case of Adam and Eve, the discovery of their nakedness was followed by an effort of their own to cover it. "They sewed fig-leaves together and made themselves aprons." This is the first record we have of man’s attempt to remedy, by his own device, his condition; and the attentive consideration thereof will afford us not a little instruction as to the real character of human religiousness in all ages. In the first place we see, not only in Adam’s case, but in every case, that man’s effort to remedy his condition is based upon the sense of his nakedness. He is, confessedly, naked, and all his works are the result of his being so. This can never avail. I must know that I am clothed, before I can do anything acceptable in the sight of God.
And this, be it observed, is the difference between true Christianity and human religiousness. The former is founded upon the fact of a man’s being clothed; the latter, upon the fact of his being naked. The former for its starting post what the latter has for its goal. that a true Christian does, is because he is clothed - perfectly clothed; all that a mere religionist does, in order that he may be clothed. This makes a vast difference. The more we examine the genius of man’s religion, in all its phases, the more we shall see its insufficiency to remedy his state, or even to meet his own sense thereof. It may do very well for a time. It may avail so long as death, judgement, and wrath of God are looked at from a distance, if at all; but, when a man comes to look these realities straight in the face, he will find, in truth, that his religion is a bed too short for him to stretch himself upon, and a covering too narrow for him wrap himself in.
The moment Adam heard the voice of the Lord in Eden, "he was afraid," because, as he himself confessed, "I was naked." Yes, naked, although he had his apron on him. 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. "If our heart condemn us not, then have we confidence toward God." (1 John 3: 20, 21.) But if even the human conscience cannot find repose in man’s religious efforts, how much less can the holiness of God. Adam’s apron could not screen him from the eye of God; and he could not stand in His presence naked; therefore he fled to hide himself. This is what conscience will do at all times. It will cause man to hide himself from God; and, moreover, all that his own religiousness offers him is a hiding-place from God. This is a miserable provision, inasmuch as he must meet God, some time or other; and if he has nought save the bad Conscience of what he is, he must be afraid - yea, he must be wretched. Indeed, nothing is needed, save hell itself, to complete the misery of one who feels he has to meet God, and knows only his own unfitness to meet Him.
Had Adam known God’s perfect love, he would not have been afraid. "There is no tear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear, because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love." (1 John 4: 17, 18.) But Adam knew not this, because he had believed the serpent’s lie. He thought that God was anything but love; and, therefore, the very last thought of his heart would have been to venture into His presence. He could not do it. Sin was there, and God and sin can never meet; so long as there is sin on the conscience, there must be the sense of distance from God. "He is of purer eyes than to behold evil, and cannot look upon iniquity." (Hab. 1: 13) Holiness and sin cannot dwell together. Sin, wherever it is found, can only be met by the wrath of God.
But, blessed be God, there is something beside the conscience of what I am. There is the revelation of what He is; and this latter the fall of man really brought out. God had not revealed Himself, fully, in creation: He had shown "His eternal power and Godhead,"* Theiotes but He had not told out all the deep secrets of His nature and character. Wherefore Satan made a grand mistake in coming to meddle with God’s creation. He only proved to be the instrument of his own eternal defeat, and confusion, and "his violent dealing" shall for ever "come down upon his own pate." His lie Only gave occasion for the displays of the full ’truth in reference to God. Creation never could have brought out what God was. There was infinitely more in Him than power and wisdom. There was love, mercy, holiness, righteousness, goodness, tenderness, long-suffering. Where could all these be displayed, in a world of sinners? God, at the first, came to create; and, then, when the serpent presumed to meddle with creation, God came down to save. This brought out in the first words uttered by the Lord God, after man’s fall. "And the Lord God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou?" 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 art thou?" Amazing faithfulness? Amazing grace Faithfulness, to disclose, in the very question itself, the truth as to man’s condition: grace, to bring out, in the very fact of God’s asking such a question, the truth as to His character and attitude, in reference to fallen man. Man was lost; but God had come down to look for him - to bring him out of his hiding place, behind the trees of the garden, in order that, in the happy confidence of faith, he might find a hiding place in Himself. This was grace. To create man out of the dust of the ground was power; but to seek man in his lost estate was grace. But who can utter all that is wrapped up in the idea of God’s being a seeker? God seeking a sinner? What could the Blessed One have seen in man, to lead Him to seek for him? Just what the shepherd saw in the lost sheep; or what the woman saw in the lost piece of silver; or what the father saw in the lost son. The sinner is valuable to God; but why he should be so eternity alone will unfold.
{*There is a profoundly interesting thought suggested by comparing the word Theiotes (Rom. 1: 20) with the word Theotes (Col. 2: 9 They are both rendered "Godhead;" but they present a very different thought. The heathen might have seen that there was something superhuman, something divine, in creation; but pure, essential, incomprehensible Deity dwelt in the Adorable Person of the Son.}
How, then, did the sinner reply to the faithful and gracious inquiry of the Blessed God? alas! the reply only reveals the awful depth of evil into which he had fallen. "And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself. And he said, Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat? And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat." Here, we find him actually laying the blame of his shameful fall on the circumstances in which God had placed him, and thus, indirectly, upon God Himself. This has ever been the way with fallen man. Everyone and everything is blamed but self. In the case of true conviction, the very reverse is exhibited. "Is it not I that have sinned" is the inquiry of a truly humbled soul. Had Adam known himself, how different would have been his style! But he neither knew himself nor God, and, instead of throwing the blame entirely upon himself, he threw it upon God.
Here, then, was man’s terrible position. He had lost all. His dominion - his dignity - his happiness - his purity - his peace - all was gone from him; and, what was still worse, he accused God of being the cause of it.* There he stood, a lost, ruined, guilty, and yet, self-vindicating, and, therefore, God-accusing sinner.
{*Man not only accuses God of being the author of his fall, but also blames Him for his non-recovery. How often do we hear persons say that they cannot believe unless God give them the power to believe; and, further, that unless they are the subjects of God’s eternal decree, they cannot be saved.
Now it is perfectly true, that no man can believe the gospel, except by the power of the Holy Ghost; and it is also true, that who so believe the gospel are the happy subjects of God’s eternal counsels. But does all this set aside man’s responsibility to believe a plain testimony set before him in God’s Word. It most certainly does no such thing. But it does reveal the sad evil of man’s heart, which leads him to reject Gods testimony which is plainly revealed, and to give as a reason for so doing God’s decree which is a profound secret, known only to Himself However it will not avail, for we read in 1 Thess. 1: 8, 9, that those "Who obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, shall be punished with everlasting destruction." Men are responsible to believe the gospel, and they will be punished for not believing it. They are not responsible to know anything about God’s counsels, inasmuch as they are not revealed, and, therefore, there can be no guilt attached to ignorance concerning them. The apostle could say to the Thessalonians, "knowing brethren beloved, our election of God." How did he know it? Was it by having access to the page of God’s secret and eternal decrees? By no means. How then? "Because (hoti) our gospel came not unto you in word only, but also in power." (1 Thess. 1: 4, 5) This is the way to know the election of any. When the gospel comes in power, it is a plain proof of God’s election.
But, I doubt not, the people who draw a plea from the divine counsels for rejecting the divine testimony, only want some flimsy excuse to continue in sin. They really do not want God; and it would be far more honest in them to say so, plainly, than to put forward a plea which is not merely flimsy, but positively blasphemous. Such a plea will not avail them much amid the terrors of the day of judgement now fast approaching.}
But, just at this point, God began to reveal Himself, and His purposes of redeeming love; and herein lay the true basis of man’s peace and blessedness. when man has come to the end of himself, God can show what He is; but not until then. The scene must be entirely cleared of man, and all his vain pretensions, empty boastings, and blasphemous reasonings, ere God can or will reveal Himself. Thus it was when man was hidden behind the trees of the garden, that God unfolded His wondrous plan of redemption through the instrumentality of the bruised seed of the woman. Here we are taught a valuable principle of truth as to what it is which alone will bring a man, peacefully and confidingly, into the presence of God.
It has been already remarked that conscience will never effect this. Conscience drove Adam behind the trees of the garden; revelation brought him forth into the presence of God. The consciousness of what he was terrified him; the revelation of what God was tranquillised him. This is truly consolatory for a poor sin burdened heart. The reality of what I am is met by the reality of what God is; and this is salvation.
There is a point where God and man must meet, whether in grace or judgement, and that point is where both are revealed as they are. Happy are they who reach that point in grace! Woe be to them who will have to reach it in judgement! It is with what we are that God deals; and it is as He is that He deals with us. In the cross, I see God descending in grace to the lowest depths, not merely of my negative, but my positive condition, as a sinner. This gives perfect peace. If God has met me, in my actual condition, and Himself provided an adequate remedy, all is eternally settled. But all who do not thus, by faith, see God, in the cross, will have to meet Him, by and by, in judgement He will have to deal, according to what He is, with what they are.
The moment a man is brought to know his real state, he can find no rest until He has found God, in the cross, and then he rests in God Himself. He, blessed be His name is the rest and hiding-place of the believing soul. This at once, puts human works and human righteous in their proper place. We can say, with truth, that those who rest in such things cannot possibly have arrived at the true knowledge of themselves. It is quite impossible that a divinely quickened conscience can rest in ought save the perfect sacrifice of the Son of God. All effort to establish one’s own righteousness must proceed from ignorance of the righteousness of God. Adam might learn, in the light of the divine testimony about "the seed of the woman," the worthlessness of his fig-leaf apron. The magnitude of that which had to be done, proved the sinner’s total inability to do it. Sin had to be put away Could man do that? Nay, it was by him it had come in. The serpent’s head had to be bruised Could man do that? Nay, he had become the serpent’s slave. God’s claims had to be met. Could man do that? Nay, he had, already, trampled them under foot. Death had to be abolished. Could man do that? Nay, he had, by sin, introduced it, and imparted to it its terrible sting.
Thus, in whatever way we view the matter, we see the sinner’s complete impotency, and, as a consequence, the presumptuous folly of all who attempt to assist God in the stupendous work of redemption, as all assuredly do who think to be saved in any other way but "by grace, through faith."
However, though Adam might, and, through grace, did, see and feel that he could never accomplish all that had to be done, yet God revealed Himself as about to achieve every jot and tittle thereof, by the seed of the woman. In short, we see that He graciously took the entire matter into His own hands. He made it, altogether, a question between Himself and the serpent; for although the man and the woman were called upon, individually, to reap, in various ways, the bitter fruits of their sin, yet it was to the serpent that the Lord God said, "Because thou hast done this." The serpent was the source of the ruin; and the seed of the woman was to be the source of the redemption. Adam heard all this, and believed it; and, in the power of that belief, "he called his wife’s name the mother of all living. This was a precious fruit of faith in God’s recreation. Looking at the matter from nature’s point of view, Eve might be mother called, "the mother of all dying." But, in the judgement of faith, she was the mother of all living. "His mother called him Ben-oni; (the son of my sorrow;) but his father called him Benjamin (the son of my right hand)."
It was through the sustaining energy of faith that Adam was enabled to endure the terrible results of what he had done. It was God’s wondrous mercy to allow him to hear what He said to the serpent, before he was called to listen to what He had to say to himself. Had it not been so, he must have been plunged in despair. It is despair to be called upon to look at myself, without being able to look at God, as revealed in the cross, for my salvation. There is no child of fallen Adam who could bear to have his eyes opened to the reality of what he is, and what he has done, without being plunged in despair, unless he could take refuge in the cross. Hence, in that place to which all who reject Christ must finally be consigned, hope cannot come. There, men’s eyes will be opened to the reality of what they are, and what they have done; but they will not be able to find relief and refuge in God. What God is, will, then, involve hopeless perdition; as truly as what God is, doth, now, involve eternal salvation. The holiness of God will, then, be eternally against them; as it is now that in which all who believe are called to rejoice. The more I realise the holiness of God, now, the more I know my security; but, in the case of the lost, that very holiness will be but the ratification of their eternal doom. Solemn - unspeakably solemn - reflection!
We shall, now, briefly glance at the truth presented to us in God’s providing a coats for Adam and Eve. "Unto Adam, also, and to his wife, did the Lord God make coats of skins, and clothed them." We have here, in figure, the great doctrine of divine righteousness set forth. The robe which God provided was an effectual covering, because He provided it just as the apron was an ineffectual covering, because man had provided it. Moreover, God’s coat was founded upon blood-shedding. Adam’s apron was not. So also, now God’s righteousness is set forth in the cross; man’s righteousness is set forth in the works, the sin-stained works of his own hands. When Adam stood clothed in the coat of skin he could not say, "I was naked,’’ nor had he any occasion to hide himself. The sinner may feel perfectly at rest, when, by faith, he knows that God has clothed him: but to feel at rest till then, can only be the result of presumption or ignorance. 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. There can be no true, permanent rest in ought else.
The closing verses of this chapter are full of instruction. Fallen man, in his fallen state, must not be allowed to eat of the fruit of the tree of life, for that would entail upon him endless wretchedness in this world To take of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever, in our present condition, would be unmingled misery. The tree of life can only be tasted in resurrection. To live for ever, in a frail tabernacle, in a body of sin and death, would be intolerable. Wherefore, the Lord God "drove out the man." He drove him out into a world which, everywhere, exhibited the lamentable results of his fall. The Cherubim and the flaming sword, too, forbid fallen man to pluck the fruit of the tree of life; while God’s revelation pointed him to the death and resurrection of the seed of the woman, as that wherein life was to be found beyond the power of death.
Thus Adam was a happier and a safer man, outside the bounds of Paradise, than he had been within, for this reason - that, within, his life depended upon himself whereas, outside, it depended upon another, even a promised Christ. And as he looked up, and beheld "the Cherubim and the flaming sword," he could bless the hand that had set them there, "to keep the way of the tree of life," inasmuch as the same hand had opened a better, a safer, and a happier way to that tree. If the Cherubim and flaming sword stopped up the way to Paradise, the Lord Jesus Christ has opened "a new and living way" into the holiest of all. "I am the way, the truth, and the life; no man cometh unto the Father, but by me." (Compare John 14: 6; Heb. 10: 20.) In the knowledge of this, the believer now moves onward through a world which is under the curse - where the traces of sin are visible on all hands. He has found his way, by faith, to the bosom of the Father; and while he can secretly repose there, he is cheered by the blessed assurance that the one who has conducted him thither, is gone to prepare a place in the many mansions of the Father’s house, and that he will soon come again and receive him unto Himself, amid the glory of the Father’s kingdom. Thus, in the bosom, the house, and the kingdom of the Father, the believer finds his present portion, his future home and reward.
C. H. Mackintosh, Notes on the Pentateuch — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11 Vers. 1-7. How long the paradisiacal state of innocence…
Vers. 1-7. How long the paradisiacal state of innocence and felicity continued the historian does not declare, probably as not falling within the scope of his immediate design. Psa_49:12 has been thought, though without sufficient reason, to hint that man"s Eden life was of comparatively short duration. The present chapter relates the tragic incident which brought it to a termination. Into the question of the origin of moral evil in the universe it does not enter. The recta-physical problem of how the first thought of sin could arise in innocent beings it does not attempt to resolve. It seeks to explain the genesis of evil with reference to man. Nor even with regard to this does it aim at an exhaustive dissertation, but only at such a statement of its beginnings as shall demonstrate that God is not the author of sin, but that man, by his own free volition, brought his pristine state of purity and happiness to an end. A due regard to this, the specific object of the Mosaic narrative, will go far to answer not a few of the objections which have been taken to its historic credibility. Like the Mosaic record of creation, the Biblical story of the fall has been impugned on a variety of grounds.
1. The doctrine of a fall, which this chapter clearly teaches, has been assailed as inconsistent with the dictates of a speculative philosophy, if not also with the tenets of a Scriptural theology. While in the present narrative the origin of sin is distinctly traced back to the free volition of man acting without constraint, though not without temptation, in opposition to the Divine will, a more exact psychological analysis, it is alleged, declares it to have been from the first a necessity, either
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(1) metaphysically, as being involved in the very conception of a finite will (Spinoza, Leibnitz, Baur); or
(2) historically, as the expression of the necessary transition of the human race from the state of nature to that of culture" (Fichte, Kant, Schiller), or as developing itself in obedience to the law of antagonism and conflict (John Seotus Erigena, Hegel, Sehleiermacher, Schelling); or
(3) theologically, as predetermined by a Divine decree (supralapsarianism). Without offering any separate refutation of these anti-Scriptural theories, it may suffice to say that in all questions affecting man"s responsibility, the testimony of the individual consciousness, the ultimate ground of appeal, apart from revelation, affirms moral evil to be no all-controlling necessity, but the free product of the will of the creature.
2. The narrative of the fall has been impugned
(1) On the ground of its miraculous character. But unless we are prepared to equate the supernatural with the impossible and incredible, we must decline to admit the force of such objections.
(2) On the ground of its mythical form, resembling as it does, in some slight degree, Oriental traditions, and in particular the Persian legend of Ormuzd and Ahriman (vide infra, "Traditions of the Fall"). But here the same remark will apply as was made in connection with the similarity alleged to exist between the Mosaic and heathen cosmogonies: it is immeasurably easier and more natural to account for the resemblance of Oriental legend to Biblical history, by supposing the former to be a traditional reflection of the latter, than it is to explain the unchallengable superiority of the latter to the former, even in a literary point of view, not to mention ethical aspects at all, by tracing both to a common source the philosophic or theologic consciousness of man.
(3) There are also those who, while neither repudiating it on the ground of miracle, nor discrediting it as a heathen myth, yet decline to accept it as other than a parabolic or allegorical narration of what transpired in the spiritual experience of the first pair. History is often a parable of truth.
Now (literally, and) the serpent. Nachash, from nachash
(1) in Kal, to hiss (unused), with allusion to the hissing sound emitted by the reptile (Gesenius, Furst), though it has been objected that prior to the fall the serpent could hardly have been called by a name derived from its present constitution (Delitzsch);
(2) in Piel, to whisper, use sorcery, find out by divination, (Gen_30:27) suggestive of the creature"s wisdom (Bush), Which, however, is regarded as doubtful (Furst);
(3) to shine (unused, though supplying the noun nechsheth, brass, (Gen_4:22) referring to its glossy shining appearance, and in par-titular its bright glistening eye: cf. drakwn from derkomai, and ofiv from optomai (T. Lewis);
(4) from an Arabic root signifying to pierce, to move, to creep, so that nachash would be Latin serpens (Furst). The presence of the article before nachash has been thought to mean a certain serpent, but "by eminent authorities this is pronounced to be unwarranted" (Macdonald). Was more subtle. Arum
(1) Crafty; (cf. Job_5:12 Job_15:5)
(2) prudent, in a good sense, (cf. Pro_12:16) from aram
(a) To make naked; whence atom, plural arumim, naked. (Gen_2:25)
(b) To crafty. (1Sa_23:22) If applied to the serpent in the sense of panourgov (Aquila, Keil, Lange, Macdonald), it can only be either
(1) metaphorically for the devil, whose instrument it was; or
(2) proleptically, with reference to the results of the temptation; for in itself, as one of God"s creatures, it must have been originally good. It seems more correct to regard the epithet as equivalent to fronimov (LXX), and to hold that Moses, in referring to the subtlety of this creature, "does not so much point out a fault as attribute praise to nature" (Calvin), and describes qualities which in themselves were good, such as quickness of sight, swiftness of motion, activity of the self-preserving instinct, seemingly intelligent adaptation -of means to end, with perhaps a glance, in the use of arum, at the sleekness of its glossy skin; but which were capable of being perverted to an unnatural use by the power and craft of a superior intelligence (cf. nesqe Mat_10:16: gi oun fronimoi w). Than any (literally, was subtil more than any) beast of the field which the Lord God had made. The comparison here instituted is commonly regarded as a proof that the tempter was a literal serpent, though Macdonald finds in the contrast between it and all other creatures, as well as in the ascription to it of pre-eminent subtlety, which is not now a characteristic of serpents, an intimation that the reptile was no creature of earth, or one that received its form from God," an opinion scarcely different from that of Cyril (100. Julian., lib. 3), that it was only the simulacrum of a serpent. But
(1) the curse pronounced upon the serpent (Gen_3:14) would seem to be deprived of all force if the subject of it had been only an apparition or an unreal creature; and
(2) the language of the New Testament in referring to man"s temptation implies its literality. (cf. 2Co_11:3) "We are perfectly justified in concluding, from this mention of the fall, that Paul spoke of it as an actual occurrence" (Olshausen). Adam Clarke contends with much enthusiasm that the tempter was not a serpent, but an ape or orangutan. And he said. Not as originally endowed with speech (Josephus, Clarke), or gifted at this particular time with the power of articulation ("Ephrem., lib. de paradiso," c. 27, quoted by Willet), but simply as used by the devil (Augustine, Calvin, Rosenm et alii), who from this circumstance is commonly styled in Scripture The serpent," "the old serpent," "that old serpent". (cf. Rev_12:9 Rev_20:2) Nor is it more difficult to understand the speaking of the serpent when possessed by Satan, than the talking of Balaam s ass when the Lord opened its mouth. (Num_22:28-30) Equally with the idea that the devil was the only agent in man s temptation, and that the serpent is purely the allegorical dress in which the historian clothes him (Eusebius, Cajetan, Quarry, Alford), must the notion be rejected that there was nothing but a serpent (Aben Ezra, Kalisch, Knobel). Why, if there was an evil spirit manipulating the reptile, the historian did not say so has been explained
(1) on the ground that the belief in the devil was then foreign to the Hebrews (Knobel);
(2) that up to this point in the narrative there is no mention of the devil (White of Dorchester);
(3) that Moses simply wished to be rei gestae scriptor non interpres (Pererins);
(4) that it was unnecessary, those for whom he wrote being sufficiently capable of discerning that the serpent was not the prime mover in the transaction (Candlish);
(5) that "by a homely and uncultivated style he accommodates what he delivers to the capacity of the people" (Calvin);
(6) that his object being merely to show that God had no hand in man"s temptation, but that Adam sinned of himself, it was not needful to do more than recite the incident as it appeared to the senses (White);
(7) that he wished to avoid encouraging the disposition to transfer the blame to the evil spirit which tempted man, and thus reduce sin to a mere act of weakness" (Keil).
Unto the woman. As the weaker of the two, and more likely to be easily persuaded (1Ti_2:14; 1Pe_3:7) Cf. Satan"s assault on Job through his wife. (Job_2:9) Milton"s idea that Eve desired to be independent, and had withdrawn herself out of Adam"s sight, it has been well remarked, sets up a beginning of the fall before the fall itself" (Lunge). Yea. yK pa. Is it even so that? (Gesenius). Is it really so that! (Ewald, Furst, Keil). Etiamne, vel Itane (Calvin). A question either
(1) spoken in irony, as if the meaning were, "Very like it is that. God careth what you eat!" or
(2) inquiring the reason of the prohibition (LXX, ti oti ei+penoJ qeov; Vulgate, cur praecepit vobis Deus); or
(3) simply soliciting information (Chaldee Paraphrase); but
(4) most likely expressing surprise and astonishment, with the view of suggesting distrust of the Divine goodness and disbelief in the Divine veracity (Ewald, Rosenm Kalisch, Keil, Macdonald, Lunge). The conversation may have been commenced by the tempter, and the question "thrown out as a feeler for some weak point where the fidelity of the woman might be shaken" (Murphy); but it is more likely that the devil spoke in continuation of a colloquy which is not reported (Kalisch, Macdonald), which has led some, on the supposition that already many arguments had been adduced to substantiate the Divine severity, to render "yea" by quanto mary"s," as if the meaning were, "How much more is this a proof of God"s unkindness!" (Aben Ezra, Kimchi). Hath God said. "The tempter felt it necessary to change the living personal God into a merely general numen divinum" (Keil); but the Elohim of Genesis 1. He was not a mere numen divinum As much astray is the observation that Satan wished to avoid profaning the name of Jehovah (Knobel). Better is the remark that the serpent could not utter the name Jehovah as his assault was directed against the paradisiacal covenant of God with man (Lange). By using the name Elohim instead of Jehovah the covenant relationship of God towards man was obscured, and man"s position in the garden represented as that of a subject rather than a son. As it were, Eve was first placed at the furthest distance possible from the supreme, and then assailed. Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden. Ie. either accepting the present rendering as correct, which the Hebrew will bear, there any trees in the garden of which you may not eat?" Is it really so that God hath prohibited you from some?" (Calvin), or, translating lo-kol as not any Latin, nullus (Gesenius, 1) God said ye shall not eat of any?" (Macdonald, Keil). According to the first the devil simply seeks to impeach the Divine goodness; according to the second he also aims at intensifying the Divine prohibition. The second rendering appears to be supported by the fitness of Eve"s reply.
HOMILIES BY W. ROBERTS Ver. 1.
The tempter.
I WHO TEMPTS?
1. Not the mere serpent.
2. A higher power of evil.
3. This higher power a person.
4. The leader of the fallen angels.
II WHY PERMITTED? Easy to see why moved; why permitted, a mystery. But we may note
1. That the intercourse of mind with mind is a general law of nature. To exclude the devil, therefore, from gaining access to man might have involved as great a miracle as preventing one mind from influencing another.
2. That the good as well as the evil angels have access to us. Can we estimate their influence, or be sure that Adam"s position or the world"s would have been better if both had been excluded?
3. That possibly by this sin under temptation we were saved from a worse sin apart from temptation.
4. That God magnifies his grace and vindicates his power against the devil"s in raising fallen man above his first place of creature-ship into that of sonship.
III WHY EMPLOY THE SERPENT?
1. Because not permitted to assume a higher form his masterpiece of craft, "an angel of light", (2Co_11:14) or his masterpiece of power, a mighty prince. (Mat_4:1)
2. Because of all animals the serpent seemed the fittest for his purpose. W.
HOMILIES BY R.A. REDFORD Vers. 1-7.
The moral chaos before the moral restoration.
Hitherto the moral nature of man may be said to be absorbed in his religious nature. He has held intercourse with his Creator. He has ruled earth as "the paragon of animals." The introduction of a helpmeet was the commencement of society, therefore of distinctly moral relations. It is in the moral sphere that sin takes its origin, through the helpmeet, and as a violation at the same time of a direct Divine commandment, and of that social compact of obedience to God and dependence upon one another which is the root of all true moral life. The woman was away from the man when she sinned. Her sin was more than a sin against God; it was an offence against the law of her being as one with her husband. There are many suggestive points in the verses (1-7) which we may call the return of man"s moral state into chaos, that out of it may come forth, by Divine grace, the new creation of a redeemed humanity.
I As it is only IN THE MORAL SPHERE THAT SIN IS POSSIBLE, SO IT IS BY THE CONTACT OF A FORMER CORRUPTION WITH MAN that the evil principle is introduced into the world. The serpent"s subtlety represents that evil principle already in operation.
II While the whole transaction is on the line of moral and religious responsibility IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO DISCONNECT THE ANIMAL NATURE FROM THE FIRST TEMPTATION. The serpent, the woman, the tree, the eating of fruit, the pleasantness to taste and sight, the effect upon the fleshly feelings, all point to the close relation of the animal and the moral. There is nothing implied as to the nature of matter, but it is plainly taught that the effect of a loss of moral and spiritual dignity is a sinking back into the lower grade of life; as man is less a child of God he is more akin to the beasts that perish.
III THE TEMPTATION IS BASED ON A LIE; first soliciting the mind through a question, a perplexity, then passing to a direct contradiction of God"s word, and blasphemous suggestion of his ill-will towards man, together with an excitement of pride and overweening desire in man"s heart. The serpent did not directly open the door of disobedience. He led the woman up to it, and stirred in her the evil thought of passing through it. The first temptation is the type of all temptation. Notice the three points:
(1) falsification of fact and confusion of mind;
(2) alienation from God as the Source of all good and the only wise Ruler of our life;
(3) desire selfishly exalting itself above the recognized and appointed limits. Another suggestion is
IV THE IMPOSSIBILITY THAT SIN SHOULD NOT FRUCTIFY IMMEDIATELY THAT IT BECOME A FACT OF THE LIFE. Temptation is not sin. Temptation resisted is moral strength. Temptation yielded to is an evil principle admitted into the sphere of its operation, and beginning its work at once. The woman violated her true position by her sin; it was the consequence of that position that she became a tempter herself to Adam, so that the helpmeet became to Adam what the serpent was to her. His eating with her was, as Milton so powerfully describes it, at once
(1) a testimony to their oneness, and therefore to the power of that love which might have been only a blessing; and
(2) a condemnation of both alike. The woman was first in the condemnation, but the man was first in the knowledge of the commandment and in the privilege of his position; therefore the man was first in degree of condemnation, while the woman was first in the order of time.
V THE WORK OF SIN UPON THE WHOLE NATURE IS IMMEDIATE. The knowledge of good and evil is the commencement of a conflict between the laws of nature and the laws of the human spirit in its connection with nature, which nothing but the grace of God can bring to an end in the "peace which passeth understanding." That springing up of shame in the knowledge of natural facts is a testimony to a violation of God"s order which he alone can set right. "Who told thee," God said, "that thou wast naked?" God might have raised his creature to a position in which shame would have been impossible. He will do so by his grace. Meanwhile the fall was what the word represents a forfeiture of that superiority to the mere animal nature which was man"s birthright. And the results of the fall are seen in the perpetual warfare between the natural world and the spiritual world in that being who was made at once a being of earth and a child of God. "They sewed fig-leaves together, and made themselves aprons." In the sense of humiliation and defeat man turns to the mere material protection of surrounding objects, forgetting that a spiritual evil can only be remedied by a spiritual good; but the shameful helplessness of the creature is the opportunity for the gracious interposition of God. R.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On vv1, 7, 8, 9 Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast…
Gen_3:1-6
Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field
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The first great temptation
I.
THAT THE HUMAN SOUL IS FREQUENTLY TEMPTED BY A DIRE FOE OF UNUSUAL SUBTLETY.
1. The tempter of human souls is subtle.
2. Malignant.
3. Courageous.
II. THAT THE TEMPTER SEERS TO ENGAGE THE HUMAN SOUL IN CONVERSATION AND CONTROVERSY.
1. He seeks to hold controversy with human souls, that he may render them impatient of the moral restrictions of life.
2. That he may insidiously awaken within them thoughts derogatory to the character of God.
3. That he may lead them to yield to the lust of the eye.
III. THAT THE TEMPTER SEEKS TO MAKE ONE SOUL HIS ALLY IN THE SEDUCTION OF ANOTHER.
IV. THAT THE HUMAN SOUL SOON AWAKENS FROM THE SUBTLE VISION OF TEMPTATION TO FIND THAT IT HAS BEEN DELUDED AND RUINED (see Gen_3:7).
1. That the human soul soon awakes from the charming vision of temptation. Temptation is a charming vision to the soul. The tree looks gigantic. The fruit looks rich and ripe, and its colour begins to glow more and yet more, then it is plucked and eaten. Then comes the bitter taste. The sad recollection. The moment of despair. To Adam and Eve sin was a new experience. No man is the better for the woeful experience of evil.
2. That the human soul, awakening from the vision of temptation, is conscious of moral nakedness. Sin always brings shame, a shame it deeply feels but cannot hide. How sad the destitution of a soul that has fallen from God.
3. That the human soul awakening from the vision of temptation, conscious of its moral nakedness, seeks to provide a clothing of its own device. Adam and Eve sewed fig leaves together to make them aprons. Sin must have a covering. It is often ingenious in making and sewing it together. But its covering is always unworthy and futile. Man cannot of himself clothe his soul. Only the righteousness of Christ can effectually hide his moral nakedness. (J. S. Exell, M. A.)
How could God justly permit satanic temptation?
We see in this permission not injustice but benevolence.
1. Since Satan fell without external temptation, it is probable that mans trial would have been substantially the same, even though there had been no Satan to tempt him.
2. In this case, however, mans fall would perhaps have been without what now constitutes its single mitigating circumstance. Self-originated sin would have made man himself a Satan.
3. As, in the conflict with temptation, it is an advantage to objectify evil under the image of corruptible flesh, so it is an advantage to meet it as embodied in a personal and seducing spirit.
4. Such temptation has in itself no tendency to lead the soul astray. If the soul be holy, temptation may only confirm it in virtue. Only the evil will, self determined against God, can turn temptation into an occasion of ruin. As the suns heat has no tendency to wither the plant rooted in deep and moist soil, but only causes it to send down its roots the deeper and to fasten itself the more strongly, so temptation has in itself no tendency to pervert the soul. The same temptation which occasions the ruin of the false disciple stimulates to sturdy growth the virtue of the true Christian. Contrast with the temptation of Adam the temptation of Christ. Adam had everything to plead for God, the garden and its delights, while Christ had everything to plead against Him, the wilderness and its privations. But Adam had confidence in Satan, while Christ had confidence in God; and the result was in the former case defeat, in the latter victory. How could a penalty so great be justly connected with disobedience to so slight a command.
To this question we may reply:
1. So slight a command presented the best test of the spirit of obedience.
2. The external command was not arbitrary or insignificant in its substance. It was a concrete presentation to the human will of Gods claim to eminent domain or absolute ownership.
3. The sanction attached to the command shows that man was not left ignorant of its meaning or importance.
4. The act of disobedience was therefore the revelation of a will thoroughly corrupted and alienated from God--a will given over to ingratitude, unbelief, ambition, and rebellion. The motive to disobedience was not appetite, but the ambition to be as God. The outward act of eating the forbidden fruit was only the thin edge of the wedge, behind which lay the whole mass--the fundamental determination to isolate self and to seek personal pleasure regardless of God and His law. So the man under conviction for sin commonly clings to some single passion or plan, only half-conscious of the fact that opposition to God in one thing is opposition in all.
Consequences of the fall, so far as respects Adam
1. Death. This death was two fold. It was partly--
(1) Physical death, or the separation of the soul from the body. The seeds of death, naturally implanted in mans constitution, began to develop themselves the moment that access to the tree of life was denied him. Man from that moment was a dying creature. But this death was also, and chiefly--
(2) Spiritual death, or the separation of the soul from God. In this are included--
(a) Negatively, the loss of mans moral likeness to God, or that underlying tendency of his whole nature toward God which constituted his original righteousness.
(b) Positively, the depraving of all those powers which, in their united action with reference to moral and religious truth, we call mans moral and religious nature; or, in other words, the blinding of his intellect, the corruption of his affections, and the enslavement of his will. Seeking to be a god, man became a slave; seeking independence, he ceased to be master of himself. In fine, man no longer made God the end of his life, but chose self instead. While he retained the power of self-determination in subordinate things, he lost that freedom which consisted in the power of choosing God as his ultimate aim, and became fettered by a fundamental inclination of his will toward evil. The intuitions of the reason were abnormally obscured, since these intuitions, so far as they are concerned with moral and religious truth, are conditioned upon a right state of the affections; and--as a necessary result of this obscuring of reason--conscience, which, as the moral judiciary of the soul, decides upon the basis of the law given to it by reason, became perverse in its deliverances. Yet this inability to judge or act aright, since it was a moral inability springing ultimately from will, was itself hateful and condemnable.
2. Positive and formal exclusion from Gods presence. This included--
(1) The cessation of mans former familiar intercourse with God, and the setting up of outward barriers between man and his Maker (cherubim and sacrifice).
(2) Banishment from the garden, where God had specially manifested His presence. Eden was perhaps a spot reserved, as Adams body bad been, to show what a sinless world would be. This positive exclusion from Gods presence, with the sorrow and pain which it involved, may have been intended to illustrate to man the nature of that eternal death from which he now needed to seek deliverance. (A. H. Strong, D. D.)
The temptation
Observe, in general, its nature and subtlety
1. He concealed his true character as the enemy of God. He appears to pay a deference to the Creator, not presuming to insinuate any question about His right to give laws, such laws as seemed good in His sight, to His intelligent creatures. He does not begin to tell of his own fall, and to speak boastfully of his own rebellion. He pretends great regard and friendly wishes for them, and at the same time carefully conceals his enmity against God.
2. He assails Eve, as would appear, when alone; in the absence of Adam. He thus took her at the greatest disadvantage, knowing well that in such a case two are better than one; that what was yielded by one might have been resisted by them both.
3. There is a probability, amounting as nearly as possible to certainty, that he assaulted her at a moment when she was near the tree, so that there might be no length of time allowed her for reflection and deliberation.
4. Mark the ingredients included in the temptation itself. There is, first, an insinuation of unkindness of an unnecessary and capricious restriction, put in the form of a question of surprise, as if it were a thing be found difficult to believe, and for which he could imagine no reason. There was, secondly, a direct contradiction of the assurance she gave him of the consequence of eating, as having been intimated to them by Jehovah. (R. Wardlaw, D. D.)
The nature of the test to which Adams allegiance was put
1. So far as we are capable of judging, it was a thing in itself indifferent, having nothing in it of an intrinsically moral character. Now, in this view of it, it was peculiarly appropriate. It was a test of subjection to the Divine will; a test, simply considered, of obedience to God.
2. It has been remarked that the circumstances in which Adam was, at his creation, were such as to remove him from all temptations to, and, in some instances, from all possibility of, committing those sins which now most frequently abound amongst his posterity; which is one thought of considerable importance to vindicate the Divine wisdom in that constitution under which he was placed.
3. We further observe that it was specially appropriate in this, that, from the comparatively little and trivial character of the action prohibited, it taught the important lesson that the real guilt of sin lay in its principle, the principle of rebellion against Gods will; not in the extent of the mischief done, or of the consequences arising out of it.
4. I might notice also its precision. The language of Dr. Dwight on another part of this subject may be fairly applied here. It brought the duty which he (Adam) was called to perform up to his view in the most distinct manner possible, and rendered it too intelligible to be mistaken. No room was left for doubt or debate. The object in question was a sensible object, perfectly defined, and perfectly understood. No metaphysical or philosophical discussion was demanded or admitted.
5. A test of this particular kind being once admitted to be suitable, the one actually selected was one which, from its obvious connection with the condition in which our first parents were placed, was, in the highest degree, natural. Considering they were placed in a garden, what so natural, what so suitable to their situation, as forbidding them to eat of the fruit of a certain tree in that garden? The liberal grant of food was the extent of their liberty; this single limitation the test of their obedience.
6. It was, besides, an easy test. It was neither any mighty thing they were to do, nor any mighty indulgence they were to deny themselves, that was made the criterion of their subjection to God. (R. Wardlaw, D. D.)
Observations
I. IT IS THE USUAL CUSTOM OF SATAN TO ATTEMPT MEN BEFORE THEY BE CONFIRMED, AND SETTLED IN A COURSE OF GODLINESS.
II. SATAN CONTRIVES MISCHIEF, EVEN AGAINST SUCH AS NEVER PROVOKED HIM. Hope not for peace with wicked men, who being Satans seed, must needs resemble his nature, as our Saviour testifies they do Joh_8:44), seeing a good mans peace with them is--
1. Impossible, because of the contrariety between good and evil men every way. As,--
(1) In their very disposition a good and wicked man are an abomination one to another (Pro_29:27).
(2) And are employed in the service of contrary masters, Christ and Belial 2Co_6:15).
(3) They follow, and are guided by contrary rules, the law of sin (as the apostle terms it, Rom_7:23), and the law of righteousness, as Gods law is termed (Psa_119:172).
(4) And are carried in all their ways and actions to contrary ends: whence it necessarily follows that they must continually cross one another in all the course of their conversation.
III. NO PLACE NOR EMPLOYMENT CAN FREE US FROM SATANS ASSAULTS.
IV. THOUGH SATAN BE THE AUTHOR AND PERSUADER TO EVERY SINFUL MOTION, YET HE LOVES NOT TO BE SEEN IN IT. In casting of evil thoughts into the heart, he makes use of inward and indiscernible suggestions; that though we find the motion in our hearts, yet we cannot discover how they entered into our minds. Thus he stirred up David to number the people 1Ch_21:1), entered into Judas (Luk_22:3), was a lying spirit in the mouth of Zedekiah, though he knew not which way he entered into him (1Ki_22:23-24). But oftentimes he makes use of some outward instruments by which he conveys his counsels, sometimes taking on him the shape of unreasonable creatures, as he always doth in dealing with witches and conjurers, and as we see he dealt with Eve in this place, although more usually he makes use of men to beguile men by, as he did in tempting Ahab by Jezebel his wife (1Ki_21:25), and by his false prophet.
V. SATAN USUALLY MAKES CHOICE OF THOSE INSTRUMENTS WHICH HE FINDS FITTEST FOR THE COMPASSING OF HIS OWN WICKED ENDS. Thus he makes use of the wise and learned to persuade, of men of power and authority to command, and to compel men to evil practices, of beautiful women to allure to lust, of great men to countenance, and of men of strength and power to exercise violence and oppression. And this he doth upon a double reason.
1. That whereas God hath therefore given great abilities to some above others, to enable them the better for His service, that He might have the more honour thereby, Satan, as it were, to despite God the more, turns his own weapons against himself to dishonour him all he can in that wherein he seeks, and out of which he ought to receive his greatest glory.
2. Necessity enforceth him to make the best choice he can of able instruments, because carrying men in sinful courses, he must needs have the help of strong means, the work being difficult in itself, as crossing all Gods ways.
VI. CUNNING AND SUBTLE PERSONS ARE DANGEROUS INSTRUMENTS TO DECEIVE AND THEREBY TO DO MISCHIEF. Such a one was Jonadab, to show Amnon the way to defile his own sister (2Sa_13:1-39). Ahitophel to further Absaloms treason against his own father (2Sa_15:1-37; 2Sa_16:23). Such were the scribes and Pharisees, our Saviours enemies, and murderers at last, whom He everywhere taxeth for their pride, covetousness, and subtle dissimulation: with whom we may join Elymas the sorcerer, fall of all subtilty, whom the devil made use of, to turn away the peoples hearts from receiving Pauls ministry. But what are those to Satan himself, that sets them all on work, called the old serpent, more subtle, and consequently more dangerously mischievous than all his agents?
VII. NO ADVANTAGE CAN ASSURE A CHILD OF GOD FROM THE ASSAULTS AND TEMPTATIONS OF SATAN.
VIII. OUR WEAKNESS IS SATANS ADVANTAGE.
IX. SOLITARINESS IS OFTEN A SNARE.
1. It yields advantage to temptations (as appears in Davids entangling himself with lust after Bath-sheba when he was alone); whence it was, that our Saviour, to give Satan all the advantage that might be, that thereby He might make His victory over him the more glorious, went out to encounter with him in the solitary wilderness.
2. Solitariness gives the greater opportunity to commit sin unespied of men; an advantage upon which Josephs mistress attempts him to commit adultery with her (Gen_39:11-12).
3. It deprives men of help, by advice and counsel to withstand the temptation. So, Ecc_4:10; Ecc_4:12.
4. Man was ordained for society, and fitted with abilities for that purpose, and as he is most serviceable that way, so he is most safe, as being secured by Gods protection in that way and employment, to which the Lord hath assigned him.
X. SATANS MAIN END IS MANS DESTRUCTION, BY TURNING AWAY HIS HEART FROM GOD.
XI. IT IS USUAL WITH SATAN AND HIS INSTRUMENTS TO PRETEND THE GOOD OF THOSE WHOM THEY INTEND WHOLLY TO DESTROY.
XII. SATAN AND HIS AGENTS IN TEMPTING MEN TO SIN, ARE VERY WARY IN DISCOVERING THEIR FULL INTENTIONS AT FIRST, TILL THEY SEE HOW THEY WILL BE ENTERTAINED.
XIII. DISCRETION AND WARINESS IN MENS ACTIONS OUGHT NOT TO HINDER THE EFFECTUAL PROSECUTION OF THAT WHICH THEY INTEND.
XIV. THE FORGETTING OF GODS MERCIES IS A GREAT MEANS TO TAKE OFF A MANS HEART FROM CLEAVING TO HIM.
XV. IT IS A DANGEROUS SNARE TO A MAN TO HAVE HIS EYES TOO MUCH FIXED UPON HIS WANTS.
XVI. THE NATURE OF MAN, BY THE ART AND POLICY OF SATAN, IS APT TO BE CARRIED AGAINST ALL RESTRAINT AND SUBJECTION.
XVII. AMBIGUOUS AND DOUBTFUL EXPRESSIONS MAY BE AND MANY TIMES ARE DANGEROUS SNARES. If they be purposely used. As--
1. Betraying an ill mind and affection in him that proposeth them, seeing men that think well and sincerely have no cause to cover their intentions with the darkness of doubtful terms.
2. And being dangerous means to lead men into error, if they be not wisely and heedfully observed. (J. White, M. A.)
But why did God give Adam this law, seeing God did foresee that Adam would transgress it?
I. It was Adams fault that he did not keep the law; God gave him a stock of grace to trade with, but he of himself broke.
II. Though God foresaw Adam would transgress, yet that was not a sufficient reason that Adam should have no law given him; for, by the same reason, God should not have given His written word to men, to be a rule of faith and manners, because He foresaw that some would not believe, and others would be profane. Shall not laws be made in the land, because some break them?
III. God, though He foresaw Adam would break the law, He knew how to turn it to a greater good, in sending Christ. The first covenant being broken, He knew how to establish a second, and a better. (T. Watson.)
The woman and the serpent
I. THE WISDOM OF THE WORLD. Among the maxims of this wisdom are these--
1. That happiness is the end of human existence.
2. That nature is a sufficient source of happiness.
3. That mans chief happiness lies in forbidden objects.
4. That God is what we fancy or desire Him to be.
II. THE QUALITIES OF SIN.
1. The elements of all sin are here--sensuality, covetousness, ambition.
2. Sin originates in unbelief.
3. It wears a specious appearance of goodness.
III. THE RESULTS OF SIN. It--
1. Transforms its victims into Satanic incarnations.
2. Reveals its own deceptiveness.
3. Covers its victims with confusion. (J. A. Macdonald.)
Little sins, if not prevented, bring on greater, to the ruin of the soul
Thieves, when they go to rob a house, if they cannot force the doors, or that the wall is so strong that they cannot break through, then they bring little boys along with them, and these they put in at the windows, who are no sooner in, but they unbolt the doors and let in the whole company of thieves. And thus Satan, when by greater sins he cannot tell how to enter the soul, then he puts on and makes way by lesser, which, insensibly having got entrance, set open the doors of the eyes and the doors of the ears, and then comes in the whole rabble: there they take up their quarters, there, like unruly soldiers, they rule, domineer, and do what they list, to the ruin of the soul so possessed. (J. Spencer.)
The great danger of not keeping close to Gods Word
It is a thing very well known in the great and populous city of London, that when children, or some of bigger growth newly come out of the country, and so not well acquainted with the streets, are either lost or found straying from their home, there is a sort of lewd, wicked people (commonly called spirits) that presently fasten upon them, and, by falsehood and fair language, draw them further out of their way, then sell them to foreign plantations, to the great grief of their parents and friends, who, in all likelihood, never afterwards hear what is become of them. Thus it is that, when men and women are found straggling from God their Father, the Church their mother, and refuse to be led by the good guidance of the blessed Spirit--when they keep not to the Law and to the Testimony, nor stick close to the Word of God, which is in itself a lantern to their feet and a light unto their paths--then no marvel if they meet with wicked spirits, seducers and false teachers, that lead them captive at their will, and that, not receiving the truth in the love of the truth, God gives them over to strong delusions, to believe a lie. (J. Spencer.)
The serpent
Here is the devil--that apostate spirit--that accursed being--that arch rebel--that daring adversary of God--that merciless foe of man. Edens serpent truly is the devil. His work declares him. Gods Word denounces him.
1. The devil is a real person. This relation is no myth--no dream--no vision--no fable--no allegory. It narrates the real conduct of a real person. Works prove a workman. Acts show an agent. So real performances stamp a real devil. Watch then, and pray. He is always personally near; for he walketh about seeking whom he may devour 1Pe_5:8). Bar the portals of your heart. He seeks to make that heart his personal home. He is the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience (Eph_2:2).
2. The devil is a hater of God. Who hates God most? Surely he who most contravenes His will. Of the devils antecedent rebellion nothing should be said, for nothing can be proved. But here a patent fact evidences his enmity. He aims directly to upset Gods plans. He arms himself in the panoply of bold opposition. Thus he schemes; thus he uplifts his arm boldly to fight against God. See, then, how he hates God. Reader, you profess to love God. Where is your evidence? Do you abhor the fiend, who from the beginning has strained his every power to subvert Gods kingdom?
3. The devil is a hater of man. Who hates man most? Surely he who most contrives his misery. In Eden there was sweet bliss. Every faculty was the inlet of God. Every thought--full of Him--was only joy. Satan beholds and writhes. What I shall man share the peace which he has lost: and joy in joys, which never can be his again? Such bliss is torture to him. He will not rest till he uproot it. Sad that the sons of men should ]end their ears so gladly to their deadliest foe, and drink so readily this vipers poison! What madness to court the embrace of such an enemy--to admit the sure murderer to our abode--to open the door to the known robber!
4. The devil is most daring. Truly nothing daunts him. His case is hopeless, therefore he is reckless.
5. The devil is consummate in skill. He watches for the fit opportunity; and then applies the fit snare.
6. The devil shrinks not from the blackest sin. His first appearance shows that there is no iniquity so foul, but he will handle it; no depth of evil so profound, but he will fathom it. He commences with trampling down all truth. Ye shall not surely die. He rises upon earth the meridian orb of crime. He blushes not--nor trembles--nor pauses--nor scruples. His earliest words are the lie of lies. So now he allures each victim to the extremest extremity of evil.
7. The devil has awful power. Weak agents fail. Difficulties baffle them. But he is not baffled. His first victory was hard to win. But he quickly won it. Reader, beware. All his mighty arts plot your destruction. (Dean Law.)
Original state of man
Now, in respect of this I cannot but believe that we often impose upon ourselves, and cherish a picture which is not consonant with the reality, and foster an illusion which is not a little heightened and strengthened by the strong language commonly used in speaking or writing of mans condition paradise as one of absolute perfection. From such language we are apt to carry away the notion that Adam was a being not only physically complete and perfect, but also a being whose intellectual and moral nature was in its highest degree developed,--a being, in short, to whom nothing needed to be added to render him perfect in all his parts. Along with this, we are apt to fancy that his condition in paradise was one of the most perfect felicity which the human nature is capable of enjoying. Now, that this is an illusive view of mans primitive condition, will, I think, appear from the following considerations:
1. On a mere general survey, and looking at man simply in his physical and intellectual aspect, it must strike one that the highest state of man is not and cannot be that of a naked animal, with nothing to do but to keep a garden, already richly furnished with all that is pleasant to the eye and good for food. It is inconceivable that with capacities for thought and work, such as man even in the lowest state of civilization is seen to possess, the perfection of his nature and his supreme felicity can have been realized in a state of such simplicity and in a sphere so limited as that which paradise afforded to our first parents.
2. It must also, I think, strike one that if Adam was the perfect being intellectually and morally he is often represented as having been, it is inconceivable that he should have fallen before so slight a temptation, or yielded to so trifling an impulse as that by which he was led to transgress the Divine prohibition.
3. The law of mans nature is that he reaches perfection only by a slow process of growth and gradual development, secured through the due exercise of his faculties. This is inseparable from his constitution as a free intelligent agent. That God could create an intelligent being from the first absolutely perfect, so that he neither needed to become nor could become more complete either intellectually or morally than he was at the moment of his creation, is not to be denied, for with God all things are possible. But such a being would not be like any of those whom God has formed. It was not so that God made man. Man, as he came from the hand of his Maker, was a free, intelligent, self-governing agent, capable of development, and needing experience, trial, and use in order to attain both the proper growth of his physical and mental faculties, and the strengthening, maturing, and perfecting of his moral nature. Of every such being it is in a very important sense true that he is his own maker. From God he receives the faculties and capacities by which he is to be enabled to fulfil the functions of his position; but he must himself use these, and use them wisely and well, if he is really to advance in culture and rise towards the perfection of his being. Now, we have no reason to believe that it was otherwise with our first parents. Their nature was the same as ours, and it is to be presumed that the same law applied to them in this respect as to us. They could reach perfection only by the continuous use of the faculties they possessed. It would seem even that their moral perceptions needed the discipline of evil before it could be fully developed; for it was after they had sinned that God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil, i.e., to make moral distinctions, to discern between good and evil Gen_3:22). Not that they needed personally to sin in order to attain to this, but that it was only by experience that they could arrive at an apprehension of the distinction between good and evil. And as it was only by experience that their moral nature could be fully matured, so we may safely affirm of their whole nature that it could reach perfection only by the free and intelligent use of those faculties, physical, intellectual, and moral, with which God had endowed them. Mere animal natures are finished from the first; God took everything that concerned them upon Himself, and left them nothing to do. But it was His will that man should be His fellow worker in the great feat of his own creation, and thereby in the completion of all creation; the Father left the mighty work unfinished, so to speak, until the child should set his seal on it. We must think of man, then, in his first estate, as he came from the hand of his Creator, not as a perfect, fully matured being, but rather as a man-child,--a man with noble capacities, but these as yet undeveloped, and with everything to learn--an innocent, pure, guileless being, with no bias to evil, without any knowledge of evil, with affections tending naturally to good, and with a soul capable of rising to a freedom like that of God, who is of purer eyes than to behold sin, and who cannot be tempted of evil. Adam was placed in paradise as in a school, a training place suited to a beginner, and where the lessons and the discipline were such as his almost infantile condition required. (W. L. Alexander, D. D.)
Probation, temptation, and fall of man
1. The probation.
(1) This assumed the form of a restriction upon their absolute right to do as they would with the place in which God had placed them.
(2) To some it has appeared as if there was something in this arrangement unworthy of the dignity of the parties involved in it, or unbecoming the wisdom and beneficence of Him to whom it is ascribed; and hence doubts have been cast on the historical integrity of this part of the Mosaic narrative.
1. And, first, there are some who seem to stumble at the littleness of the trial to which man was thus exposed, and on which such mighty results were made to depend. If so, they must be prepared to object to one of the most manifest of those laws under which this world is administered; for nothing can be more obvious and certain than that the mightiest and most permanent effects are constantly resulting from the most apparently trivial and transient causes. Or do they object to so feeble a test of mans obedience being imposed? If this be their meaning, it is obvious to reply that so much the more was the arrangement favourable to man, and therefore beneficent and gracious. The more insignificant the self-denial required in order to obedience, the easier the obedience and the more probable the success of the probationer. Never, we may say, was a moral experiment conducted under circumstances more favourable to the subject of it.
2. As others advance this objection, it assumes the shape of a protest against the dishonour which it is alleged is done to God by the representation of Him as a being who would make a condition of spiritual advantage dependent on an external act. A mere physical act as such has no moral character at all; and though it may be the index of a mans moral state or tendencies, it is not, nor ever can be, an adequate test of them. The test to which Adam and Eve were subjected was not so much whether they would eat or not eat this particular fruit, but whether they would respect and obey or neglect and transgress Gods prohibition. It was not, therefore, on any mere external act that mans fate depended; it was on such an act as connected with, flowing from, and giving evidence of a particular state of mind. The hinge in Adams testing turned really not so much on his eating or abstaining from this fruit or that, but on his obeying or transgressing
Gods commandment. Was such a test unfair to man? Was it unworthy of God?
3. Another form in which the objection to the Mosaic account of the trial of our first parents is presented is that in which stress is laid on the purely positive and apparently arbitrary character of the test by which their obedience was to be tried. This was the only arrangement possible; for how is the virtue of a sinless being to be tested but by means of some positive precept? In such a being moral truth is so perfectly a part of the inner life, that it is only when a positive duty is enjoined that the mind comes to a consciousness of objective law and extrinsic government so as to render obedience. But even supposing a moral test could have been proposed, was it not much more in Adams favour that his obedience should have been tested by a positive enactment? What God required of him was thus clearly and unmistakably brought before him.
4. Some profound thinkers have started the doubt whether it be possible for a limited intelligence, left to the freedom of its own will, to avoid transgressing the boundaries of duty, and so falling into sin. Without entering at present into so difficult a speculation, we may admit that a limited intelligence is, from the very fact of its limitation, very likely to be exposed to a strong inducement from mere curiosity, not to speak of other motives, to pass beyond the limits within which it may be confined. What lies on the other side of this barrier which I am forbidden to pass? Why am I forbidden to pass it? What will be the result to me if I do pass it? These and such like questionings, working in the mind, are very likely to result in a daring attempt to remove the barrier, or to overleap it, and thereby, if it be a moral barrier, to plunge into sin. Obviously, therefore, the kindest and best arrangement for man in his state of primeval probation was one which should reduce the action of such provocative curiosity to the lowest possible form, which should hem him in by no vague, mystic, uncertain prohibition, but by one perfectly single and intelligible, and which should leave him in no doubt as to the certain misery into which he would bring himself if he suffered any motive to carry him beyond the limits which that prohibition prescribed. Such an arrangement the wisdom and the goodness of God instituted for our first parents in their probationary state; their continuance in happiness was made to depend on their submission to one simple and most intelligible restriction; they had but to refrain from the fruit of one tree, while of all the others they might freely eat; and they knew beforehand what the consequences would be of their violating this restriction. (W. L. Alexander, D. D.)
Eastern ideas regarding the serpent
1. Almost throughout the East, the serpent was used as an emblem of the evil principle, of the spirit of disobedience and contumacy. A few exceptions only can be discovered. The Phoenicians adored that animal as a beneficent genius; and the Chinese consider it as a symbol of superior wisdom and power, and ascribe to the kings of heaven (tien-hoangs)
bodies of serpents. Some other nations fluctuated in their conceptions regarding the serpent. The Egyptians represented the eternal spirit Kneph, the author of all good, under the mythic form of that reptile; they understood the art of taming it, and embalmed it after death; but they applied the same symbol for the god of revenge and punishment (Tithrambo), and for Typhon, the author of all moral and physical evil; and in the Egyptian symbolical alphabet the serpent represents subtlety and cunning, lust and sensual pleasure. In Greek mythology, it is certainly, on the one hand, the attribute of Ceres, of Mercury, and of AEsculapius, in their most beneficent qualities; but it forms, on the other hand, a part of the terrible Furies or Eumenides: it appears, in the form of Python, as a fearful monster, which the arrows of a god only were able to destroy; and it is the most hideous and most formidable part of the impious giants who despise and blaspheme the power of heaven. The Indians, like the savage tribes of Africa and America, suffer and nourish, indeed, serpents in their temples, and even in their houses; they believe that they bring happiness to the places which they inhabit; they worship them as the symbols of eternity; but they regard them also as evil genii, or as the inimical powers of nature which is gradually depraved by them, as the enemies of the gods, who either tear them to pieces, or tread their venomous head under their all-conquering feet. So contradictory is all animal worship. Its principle is, in some instances, gratitude, and in others fear; but if a noxious animal is very dangerous, the fear may manifest itself in two ways, either by the resolute desire of extirpating the beast, or by the wish of averting the conflict with its superior power: thus the same fear may, on the one hand, cause fierce enmity, and, on the other, submission and worship. Further, the animals may be considered either as the creatures of the powers of nature, or as a production of the Divine will; and those religious systems, therefore, which acknowledge a dualism, either in nature or in the Deity, or which admit the antagonism between God and nature, must almost unavoidably regard the same animals now as objects of horror, and now of veneration. From all these aberrations, Mosaism was preserved by its fundamental principle of the one and indivisible God, in whose hands is nature with all its hosts, and to whose wise and good purposes all creatures are subservient. (M. M.Kalisch, Ph. D.)
Yea, hath God said
The devils questions
I. IT IS DANGEROUS TO LAY OPEN OURSELVES FREELY TO PERSONS UNKNOWN, OR SUCH OF WHOM WE HAVE NO ASSURANCE.
II. IT IS A DANGEROUS THING TO QUESTION OR DEBATE EVIDENT AND KNOWN TRUTHS. Principles in all sciences are exempted from dispute, much more should they be in divinity. Amongst which we may account--
1. The dictates of nature, written by the finger of God in all mens hearts, as, that there is a God (Rom_1:19-20); that He judgeth the world Psa_58:11), and that in righteousness, which is a principle that Jeremy will not dispute (Jer_12:1); and that consequently it shall be well with the good, and ill with the wicked at last (Ecc_12:13), as being truths, which every mans conscience within his own breast gives testimony unto.
2. Such truths as are delivered by God Himself, either recorded in His Word (as the creation of the world and that great mystery of mans redemption by Jesus Christ, etc.), or made known unto us by any special message from God. And by this assenting unto the truths of God, without questioning or admitting them into debate,
(1) We seal unto His truth (Joh_3:33), and give him the honour of a God, to be believed upon His own testimony; whereas we believe not men upon their word without some further evidence.
(2) And by the same means we provide for our safety, who having our minds full of ignorance, and by their corrupt disposition, more inclinable to embrace lies rather than truth, might be endangered by admitting known truth to debate, to be mislead by the mists of human reasonings into error, to the endangering or overthrowing of our faith. These were Eves gross oversights in entertaining conference with Satan, a person unknown, and that about such a manifest and evident truth.
III. BLASPHEMOUS AND FOUL SUGGESTIONS OUGHT NOT TO BE HEARD WITHOUT INDIGNATION AND DETESTATION.
1. To manifest our zeal for Gods honour and for His truth.
2. By it we secure ourselves from a farther assault, which we easily invite when we bear such blasphemies with too much softness of spirit and patience.
3. And harden our own hearts against such wicked suggestions by abhorring the very mention of them.
4. And oftentimes terrify the suggesters themselves, or at least put them to shame.
IV. WHEN GODS MERCIES ARE MENTIONED WE MUST WITHAL BE CAREFUL TO REMEMBER HIS NAME THAT BESTOWS THEM.
1. That by entitling God unto, and prefixing His own name before His works of mercy, wherewith mens hearts are most affected, He may be highly advanced above all things, and held out and proclaimed to the world as the fountain of all goodness, when all the good things which we enjoy, and in which we rejoice, are still laid down at His foot.
2. There is an evil disposition in mens hearts to forget God in His mercies Deu_32:18; Psa_106:21), and to ascribe them to themselves (Dan_4:25).
V. GODS MERCIES OUGHT NOT, WHEN THEY ARE SPOKEN OF, TO BE REPRESENTED IN COLD AND WEAK EXPRESSIONS.
1. Because they, having their hearts enlarged in the apprehension of them inwardly, cannot but speak as they think of them.
2. It is our duty to advance the Lord by all the means we can, that His name alone may be excellent (Psa_148:13), and great (Mal_1:11). Now, nothing advanceth His name more than His mercies, which therefore must be set out as the mercies of God, high, and without comparison.
3. When all is done, and we have made use of all our art and abilities, to set out Gods mercies in the largest manner that we can devise, all our words come infinitely short of the full extent of those things which we desire to represent.
4. In the meantime, while we strive to set out things in the fullest measure, we warm our own hearts, and quicken our affections the more, and fill our hearts with the greater admiration of those things which exceed all our expressions. (J. White, M. A.)
Satans question
I. SATANS TEMPTATIONS BEGIN BY LAYING A DOUBT AT THE ROOT. He does not assert error; he does not contradict truth; but he confounds both. He makes his first entries, not by violent attack, but by secret sapping; he endeavours to confuse and cloud the mind which he is afterwards going to kill.
II. THE PARTICULAR CHARACTER OF THESE TROUBLESOME AND WICKED QUESTIONINGS OF THE MIND VARIES ACCORDING TO THE STATE AND TEMPERAMENT AND CHARACTER OF EACH INDIVIDUAL.
1. In order to combat them, everyone should have his mind stored and fortified with some of the evidences of the Christian religion. To these he should recur whenever he feels disquieted; he should be able to give a reason for the hope that is in him, and an answer to that miserable shadow that flits across his mind, Yea, hath God said?
2. A man must be careful that his course of life is not one giving advantage to the tempter. He must not be dallying under the shadow of the forbidden tree, lest the tempter meet him and he die.
III. THE FAR END OF SATAN IS TO DIMINISH FROM THE GLORY OF GOD. To mar Gods designs he insinuated his wily coil into the garden of Eden; to mar Gods designs he met Jesus Christ in the wilderness, on the mountain top, and on the pinnacle of the temple; to mar Gods design he is always leading us to take unworthy views of Gods nature and Gods work. (J. Vaughan, M. A.)
The temptation, the fall, and the promise
I. THE PARTIES TO BE TESTED.
II. THE TEMPTER.
1. The instrument was a serpent.
2. The real agent was Satan.
III. THE TEMPTATION. Literally the tempter says, Then it is so that God hath said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden. As if so incredible a report could be believed only on the positive assertion of Eve herself. He then insinuates that God had issued this prohibition from other motives than love. He hints at something strange, if not unjust or unkind, on the part of God. Like other trees, Eve perceives that the forbidden one is good for food and pleasant to the sight. Unlike other trees, she is now informed that it is capable of affording wisdom; that eating from it gives knowledge of good and evil; that while other trees minister to the sense, this ministers also to the reason. Thus all parts of Eves sensitive nature are wrought upon; her fancy is aroused, curiosity awakened, desire for knowledge excited.
IV. THE SIN. Eve sought knowledge in a way foreign to Gods will. He would have her know good by adopting it, and evil by resisting it. By disobedience she came to know good as a forfeited possession, and evil as a purchased bane. She found that unlawful knowledge was dearly bought, and that a stolen likeness to God brought sorrow.
V. THE NATURAL CONSEQUENCES OF SIN. Conscious of their sin, they fancy that their guilty bosoms are open to every eye. But the accuser is in their own breasts. They have opened the door, and the sweet-songed bird of innocence has flown.
VI. THE SENTENCE. In Gods dealings with the human pair there was a mingling of justice and mercy. By their sin they had become spiritually dead--had died in the sense in which God declared they should. Their true life--that of holiness--was gone. Existence now was but partial andabnormal. For this altered moral state God made for them a change externally. The world which they and their sinful seed were to inhabit, must be adapted to a race of sinners. Hence God made it, not a place of punishment, but of discipline; the end being to restore to the race their lost holiness. Bodily fatigue, the thorn-infested ground, and the dread of dying (an event which, but for the Fall, would have had no terror), all these were designed as chastisements for mans sins, and at the same time as agencies to reclaim him from it.
VII. THE PROMISE OF A DELIVERER. (P. B. Davis.)
Mans enemy makes his appearance
The passage takes for granted that there was already an enemy in existence. There had been sin before, somewhere, though where is not said. There had been an enemy somewhere; but how he had become so, or where he had hitherto dwelt, or how he had found his way to this world, is not recorded. That he knew about our world, and that he had some connection with it, is evident; though whether as its original possessor, or a stranger coming from far in search of spoil, we cannot discover. All that is implied in the narrative is, that there did exist an enemy--one who hated God, and who now sought to get vent to that hatred by undoing His handiwork. This enemy now makes his appearance. He has not been bound; he has not been prohibited entrance: he gets free scope to work. He shall be bound hereafter, when the times of restitution of all things commence, but not yet. He shall not be permitted to enter the new earth, but he is allowed to enter and do his work of evil in the first earth. (H. Bonar, D. D.)
God not the author of sin
Thus we learn, even at the outset, that God is not the author of sin. It is the creature that introduces it. God, no doubt, could have hindered it, but for wise ends He allows it. We know also how sin spreads itself. It is always active. It multiplies and propagates itself. Every fallen being becomes a tempter, seeking to ruin others--to drag them down to the same death into which he has himself been driven. (H. Bonar, D. D.)
The process of temptation
1. We may consider that the fact is established that man was created with a nature capable of temptation, and placed in the highest possible probation for the discipline of that nature. Our first parents stood as a stately oak upon a plain, beat upon by an impetuous storm, but meeting it with all the vigour and power of original uprightness. The hurricane beneath which they sunk may have been more severe than ours, but the bias of their nature made their probation less difficult. What, then, is that nature in us to which temptation addresses itself?
2. Who is the being that applies that temptation? And what are the instruments and modes of his attacks, and of our self-defence? These are questions of no small moment. Temptation implies the existence of two natures to which adverse powers and influences appeal, and in Holy Scripture these two natures in us are called the flesh and spirit; that they exist in more or less activity in every one of us an examination of ourselves will prove. We all know it; but more than this, they are contrary one to the other. It is this very perverseness in our nature which shows more than anything the contradictoriness of sin, and the warfare between the flesh and the spirit.
3. The personality and individuality of the tempter are points which it is most important to establish. That tempter is our constant companion, he has gauged his word to bring his one victim a bound captive to the gate of hell. The only solace, if we may use such a term, to his miserable eternity will be the consciousness that by his side is one who shares forever the intensity of his agony, though not one throb of anguish will be alleviated in himself. It will be something that every throe is but a reflex of the torture of his companion; his delight is in suffering, his sympathy is in woe; he rejoices, if joy can be felt in hell, in iniquity and pain. That tempter, if he loses his one victim, has no other which he can effect, unless he can regain his entrance into the home from which he has been expelled.
4. But I pass on to the next point, the medium through which the tempter acts. That he has power to affect every portion of our being, and to cast the deepest shadow over it, as an evening cloud can obscure the radiance of the setting sun on the marble columns of some eastern temple, there is no doubt. The lustful thought, the disrelish for heaven, the positive dislike for goodness, the deep despondency, are, with a thousand other infirmities and sins, traceable to the connection of the spirit with the body; and in proportion as that body is subjugated by discipline, the power of those sins will be weakened, and when the spirit will be freed from the present corruptible body, it will be wholly liberated. But all this is widely different from the doctrine which would teach that the bodies of men or matter generally are materially and actually wicked. They are instruments, and that is all. We have the same kind of power over them as we have over the staff we lean on, or the glass we use to aid the eyesight. Let us conceive the case of some instrument which has the greatest possible degree of connection with ourselves, and the greatest possible power to influence us, yet over which we have perfect control: such a case will be a very fair analogy for our relation with the body. Our bodies are temples; we may neither worship them nor despise them. They are instruments, as we use them, for good or evil. They are given for the discipline of the soul; for its aid, or for its hindrance. They are its school house, in which it is taught to spell the syllables of heaven. But more, it is manifest that Satan affects the spirit independently of the body. There are dreams when the soul realizes that awful state of separation from its physical condition, and ranges unfettered up and down the universe. Then sometimes Satan pursues it in its flight, and suggests awful thoughts. There are sudden unaccountable bursts of passion; injuries long since forgotten; exciting feelings for vengeance; dislikes for holiness, for good men; unaccountable desires to swear; without a cause to curse; for its own sake to steal, though the next instant the object for which honesty was bartered is thrown unvalued aside to rot and decay; there are strange wanderings when we would pray, in the church, in the chancel, at the altar, the spirit yet wings her flight to every region of the imagined universe, the corners furthest removed from God: all these are influences of Satan. Satan does tempt the spirit independently of the body; for these temptations, many of them, show no trace of physical cause. But that spirit, too, is in our power to bear us heavenward, or to the gate of hell, as we would have it. It may be the wing of the archangel soaring to the gate of paradise, or, it may be as the waxen wing of Icarus bringing us down to destruction. It is as we would have it. Has Satan ever power to tempt body or spirit in such a manner as we have no power to resist? It seems that he has. There are faint foreshadowings of that power in the cases of Pharaoh and Judas. There are cases in the experience of most of us, where the drunkard, after years of resisted conscience, has so entirely become the victim of the tempter, that the resolution formed daily with the bitter weeping of remorse, pales off each evening before the fire of the tempter, until at last, he passes from the hell on earth to the hell of eternity.
5. Satan binds us first with cords of silk; ere long they have become coils of rope; a little while and they are cables, scarcely to be bent; another interval, and the rope has become a chain, and the chain a bar of iron which no human power can resist. He creeps upon us.
6. Another favourite mode of his attack will be, as Jeremy Taylor quaintly illustrates, through the outward circumstances of a man. Adam, says he, so fascinated by the beauty and meekness of his new wife, was easily ensnared by her solicitations, and Satan consequently made use of her as the instrument of the fall of man. Over the stumbling stones of their partial affection for their younger born, even Rebecca and Jacob successively fell; and the same overweening love which the mother bore to her child was inherited and transmitted to its cost to Joseph and Benjamin. To us a favourite scheme, an idolized child, a friend on whom we lean, an honest calling, a noble aim, a brilliant yet well-directed talent, may, each one of them, from at first being planets clear and radiant in our sky, turn into baseless meteors and falling stars. They may be the fire damps of our ruin when they were the guiding stars of our salvation.
7. But I must mention a third mode through which the tempter will affect our spiritual nature independently alike of disposition or circumstance. He often acts, as was suggested above, in a sudden and unaccountable manner, and, as the Arab who kneels at the muezzin on the sand of the desert, over whose crimson sea the setting sun is shedding its ray without a cloud in the sky or an object on the earth, would be startled at the sight of a shadow fleeting over the bosom of the wilderness; so we are often startled by the sudden suggestion of lust, of doubt, of anger, of intense pride, of ruthless bitterness against another, of dislike to God, when within five minutes of the passing shade we thought we were kneeling in the cloudless sunshine of prayer, meditation, or communion. Nothing so shows the actual existence of the tempter as this. Against these unexpected attacks the habit of holiness and prayer can alone be a protection. We cannot tell where the weed will grow in the most highly cultivated garden; at any point may spring couch grass and the nettle; it is only by a state of general cultivation and purity that we can depend on the produce of our soil. The fever, the pestilence, may fall on the best ordered house and the most abstemious body, yet we know cleanliness and temperance are the best preservers. Apply the same rule to your spiritual life. One word of high encouragement and I have done. The eyes that watch us like lamps around our path; the watching eyes of the holy and the just, like starlight gleaming above us; the quiet gaze of the blessed in paradise, beaming like the moon that shines in softness with its borrowed lustre; the hosts of unfallen angels, like the sun that shines in its strength; the eye of Jesus and the Father from the great white throne, watch us daily. The page of mans brief annals teems with instances of suffering, borne to its last throb without a sigh, and all because the world around or the generations to come would smile on or admire the deed. The eyes that gaze on us are more radiant and more holy; they are the eyes of eternity; let us not disappoint them, they watch us. Perhaps but another day and our strife may be ended! (E. Monro, M. A.)
Temptation of the first and of the second man
I invite you to notice how exactly parallel the temptation of the second Adam was to the temptation of the first. This cannot fail to concern us very greatly: for it is a clear intimation, afforded us by the person best qualified to make it, viz., by the devil, of our special liability, through certain avenues of choice, to fall away from God.
1. We are to note that the rebellion of the lower appetites against the powers of reason and the dictates of conscience, must be the prevailing form of human sin: for it was the seductiveness of the fruit of one particular tree which originally moved our first mother to disobey. And this is what the beloved disciple calls the lust of the flesh.
2. There is the illusion produced in our higher nature when outward things are seen otherwise than in the light of God. Eve was seduced by the prospect of enlarged views, and the promise that her eyes should be opened. And this is that lust of the eyes of which the same apostle speaks.
3. There is the spiritual snare of becoming to oneself the highest object, the standard to which all other things are to be referred. Man thus becomes a god to himself, and straightway directs his proceedings by reference to himself instead of to God. And to this, Eves desires tended when her pride (that special work of the devil) was called forth by the representation ye shall be as gods. St. John calls this the pride of life.. . .God doth know (said the tempter) that in the day ye eat thereof--here was the first seduction: your eyes shall be opened--there was the second: and ye shall be as gods--there was the third. Accordingly, it was when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, that she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat. How exactly in our Lords case Satan addressed himself to the same three instincts, seeking first to inspire sensual distrust; next spiritual presumption; lastly worldly ambition; needs hardly to be pointed out. The order of the last two temptations was however inverted in the case of the second Adam. And why? I presume because the first of the three temptations had been resisted. Accordingly, from the seduction of sensuality the transition is made at once to the seduction of pride, these being the two extremes between which the fallen nature of man oscillates continually. Let us further note, in both cases (in paradise, I mean, and in the wilderness), that the instrument with which the reason is plied is still the same, namely, calumnious insinuation. A misrepresentation of the truth, and that couched in the modest form of an inquiry, was the tempters device. He at first asserted nothing. He asked, as if for information. He might have known, he did know, the truth . . . I am much mistaken if something very similar to this is not Satans method still. It is most important to observe this first origin of evil. It is in the form of a question. It is not a direct denial of Gods truth or faithfulness, but a questioning of it. Because faith in God is the foundation of all good, it is to unsettle the foundation that this attempt is made. The poison is inserted in the way the question is stated. Thus also in dealing with our Divine Lord, Satan begins with a like questioning of what God had just declared. If Thou be, which implies, Art Thou then indeed the Son of God? And next, he insinuated what he dared not openly to proclaim: for by calumniously imputing to God a base motive for withholding the fruit of the one forbidden tree, he misrepresented Gods whole nature. But he did it by insinuation. And here, again, I recognize a favourite device of the enemy of souls in these last days. And then, the point to which his seductive speech tended, was, to make the creature desire to be as God: to be himself the standard, himself supreme, himself as God unto himself. It was a suggestion that the bondage of external law should be thrown aside, and that the conscience should henceforth become a law unto itself. Further--You are invited to note how the mischief began with an attempt to tamper with Gods Word. Yea, hath God said? But God had not said it! And then you will note that Satan beguiled Eves understanding by the seductive avenue of an increase of knowledge in prospect . . . Knowledge--that first appetite of man--and his last!. . .And is not knowledge good then? Yea, surely, most good: for indeed what were life without it? But like every other creature of God, it is good only when it subordinates to Gods revealed mind and will. Yet once more, and for the last time, death was the penalty of all; and yet, Ye shall not surely die, was the promise wherewith Satan sought to silence the fears of our first mother What but that, what but the assurance Ye shall not surely die, is Satans cry at this very hour to a willing world? (Dean Burgon.)
The temptation
There are in this question two things equally dangerous to the soul of Eve, a fatal doubt of the truth of the Word of God, and a perfidious exaggeration, calculated to insinuate distrust. I say, first, a doubt of the truth of the Word of God. Hath God said? Here is an insinuation calculated to sap the foundation of all faith, all obedience, all morality, all established order. Here is the most powerful weapon of the devil and of our own wicked heart; the weapon by which thousands and thousands are smitten and plunged into ruin. Hath God said that the friendship of the world is enmity against God; and that whosoever will be the friend of the world is the enemy of God? Hath God said that we must forsake all and follow Him, bearing our cross; that if we love father or mother, or sister or brother, or house, or lands, more than Him, we are not worthy of Him? Hath God said that the whole world lieth in wickedness, that we have within us an evil and corrupt heart, that the carnal mind in us is not subject to the law of God, that our life is polluted with sin? Hath God said that He doth not hold the sinner guiltless, that He hateth sin, that the broad road leadeth to destruction? No, no, God is not so severe; He is too good a Father to punish the weaknesses of His children; beware of taking in the letter, the figurative language of the threatenings of the Bible, or at least, reserve them for the wicked or great criminals. God well knows that we are weak; be honest, repent of your faults, and all will go well. When doubt has thus despoiled the Word of God of its immutable sanctity, weakened the obligation and responsibility of the creature towards the Creator, opened a wide door to passion, which hurries us along and paves the way for temptation; these same truths, which the deadly breath of doubt has not yet been able to destroy, because they contain aid immortal force, are presented to the already wavering soul with an exaggeration which shall soon engender distrust. Hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden? These delicious fruits which the earth produces, which seem to have been placed before you to spread in your abode abundance, beauty, and well being, shall ye not taste of any of these gifts? Are they only here to excite in you useless desires? Has He whom you adore as your God imposed upon you such hard laws? It is thus in the present day also; they who insinuate doubts of the truths of Gods Word, guard against presenting them faithfully and in their true light. They are skilful in disfiguring them, in showing that observance to the laws of God is incompatible with our weakness, that the morality of the gospel is not made for men, and that there would be injustice in chastisement inflicted upon those who do not conform their lives to them. They are skilful in throwing ridicule upon those who let the Bible speak for itself, believe it in its whole extent, and abandon the multitude to range themselves under the banner of obedience to their God. They are skilful in presenting, under a false light, the vital doctrines of the gospel, in showing that they are contrary to reason, and that we must, as soon as possible, apply to them the amendments of human wisdom. They are skilful in persuading those who hear them, that a living and a true faith is a renunciation of reason, that filial submission is bondage, and that to give up the world, its joys, and its vanities, is to throw a veil of gloom and melancholy over the whole life. They would willingly say to the God of the Bible, if they were as sincere as the unprofitable servant in the parable, I know that thou art an austere master, reaping where thou hast not sown, and gathering where thou hast not strawed. Now let the temptation present itself; everything in the heart of the unhappy being who has lent an ear to the lying insinuations of the tempter, is prepared for the fatal hour of seduction . . . and of ruin. Know ye, my brethren, the power of temptation? It is present, it presses the poor heart, in which it finds but too much sympathy: it draws it along by the charm of sin, decked in seducing colours; conscience lifts up its voice; the conflict begins; you resist, for the thunders of Gods word against sin echo from afar, and bring trouble into the depths of your soul. But, in the head of the conflict, a doubt arises; Hath God said? Will He be offended at this weakness? Will He care for it? Will He punish? Thus is broken the last restraint imposed upon the impetuosity of the temptation; the barrier of the Word of God is overthrown: you yield . . . And thus you are delivered over to the torments of remorse; you come forth from a vortex, to taste all the bitterness of that which, a moment before, appeared to you so sweet! (L. Bonnet.)
After God comes the devil
In the former chapters we have heard nothing but the Lord said, the Lord said; but now come we to hear the serpent said, and the serpent said. So see we plainly how after the Word of God cometh the word of the devil. It was not so then only, but it hath so continued ever since. When the Lord hath spoken by the mouth of His minister, prophet, apostle, pastor, or teacher, then speaketh Satan by his serpents contrary. They in the Church, these as soon as they be out of the Church, yea, many times even in the Church they will be hissing in their ears that sit next them. If God have spoken to a child by his parents, to a servant by his master, to a man by his friend what is true and good, straight cometh a serpent, one or other, and overthroweth all, leading them captive to a contrary course. What, say these serpents, wilt thou be thus used, will you bear all this? you are now no child, do this and do that, you shall not die, but you shall live and be like gods, knowing good and evil, etc. But as Eve sped by this serpent, so shall you by those, if you avoid them not. Such serpents were those counsellors that made Rehoboam, Solomons son, do contrary to the advice of the old counsellors, to his great loss. Again, mark here which was first, the word of God or the word of Satan. Dixit Dominus, the Lord said, goeth before Dixit serpens, the serpent said, and so you see truth is elder than falsehood, and Gods Word before Satans lies: that is Tertullians rule to know truth by, namely, to look which was first; Quodcunque primum illud verum, quodcunque posterius illud falsum. Whatsoever was first, that is true, whatsoever was latter that is false, and that is first that was from the beginning, and that was from the beginning, that in the writings of the apostles may find his warrant. Let it not blind you then that such an error hath continued a thousand years, if it be to be proved that a contrary truth is elder far. (Bp. Babington.)
Satan attacks the weakest point
Satan tempteth the woman as the weaker vessel, and if you have anything wherein you are weaker than in another, beware, for he will first assault you there. It is his manner like a false devil to take his advantage. Happily you are easier drawn to adultery than murder: that then shall please him, he will begin there. So did he with David, and then brought him to murder after. David was weaker to resist the one than the other. Think of your frailties and be godly wise, where the wall is lowest he will enter first. (Bp. Babington.)
Satans subtlety in tempting
Satan did break over the hedge, where it was weakest; he knew he could more easily insinuate and wind himself into her by a temptation. An expert soldier, when he is to storm or enter a castle, observes warily where there is a breach, or how he may enter with more facility; so did Satan the weaker vessel. (T. Watson.)
A crafty question
With well-feigned surprise and incredulity he puts the question, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden? meaning thereby to insinuate the harshness of the injunction which he pretended hardly to believe. Is it possible that God can have said so? Is it conceivable that He who has just made you, and provided you with such abundance, should grudge you a little fragment of that plenty, and debar you from the gardens choicest fruits; making you lords of creation, yet not allowing you to put forth your lordship; nay, refusing you access to that tree, the fruit of which would enable you rightly to exercise wise dominion? In this his object was to calumniate God; at least, cunningly to suggest an idea which would misrepresent His character to man. He keeps out of sight all that God had done for man, all the proofs of love, so manifold, so vast; he fixes on one thing which seemed inconsistent with this; he brings up this before man in the way most likely to awaken evil thoughts of God. His object is to isolate the one fact, and so to separate it from all Gods acts of love as to make it appear an instance of harsh and unreasonable severity. Man had hitherto known the prohibition; but he had put no such construction on it; he had not imagined it capable of being so interpreted. Now Satan brings it up, and sets it out in an aspect likely to suggest such constructions as these: God is not your friend after all; He but pretends to care for you. He is a hard Master, interfering with your liberty, not leaving you a free agent, but constraining you, nay, fettering you. He mocks you, making you creations head, yet setting arbitrary limits to your rule; placing you in a fair garden, yet debarring you from its fruits. He grudges you His gifts, making a show of liberality, while withholding what is really valuable. Thus Satan sought to calumniate God, to malign His character, to represent Him as the enemy, not the friend, of man. If he can succeed in this, then man will begin to entertain hard thoughts of God, then he will become alienated from Him; then he will disobey; and then comes the fall, the ruin, the guilt, the doom, the woe! Man is lost! Hell gets another inmate. The devil gets another companion. (H. Bonar, D. D.)
The woman said unto the serpent
Eve parleying with the tempter
We wish on the present occasion to examine with all carefulness the workings of Eves mind at that critical moment, when the devil, under the form of a serpent, sought to turn her away from her allegiance unto God. This is no mere curious examination; as it might indeed be, had Eve, before she yielded to temptation, been differently constituted from one of ourselves. But there was not this different constitution. A piece of mechanism may have its springs disordered, and its workings deranged, but it is not a different piece of mechanism from what it was whilst every part was in perfect operation. And we may find, as we go on, that the workings of Eves mind were wonderfully similar to those of our own; so that we may present our common mother as a warning, and derive from her fall instruction of the most practical and personal kind. Now the point of time at which we have to take Eve, is one at which she is evidently beginning to waver. She has allowed herself to be drawn into conversation with the serpent, which it would have been wise in her, especially as her husband was not by, to have utterly declined; and there is a sort of unacknowledged restlessness and uneasiness of feeling, as though God might not be that all-wise and all-gracious Being, which she had hitherto supposed. She has not yet, indeed, proceeded to actual disobedience, but she is certainly giving some entertainment to doubts and suspicions; she has not yet broken Gods commandment, but she is looking at that commandment with a disposition to question its goodness, and to depreciate the risk of setting it at nought. There are certain preludes, certain approaches, towards sin, which, even in ourselves, are scarcely to be designated sin, and which must have been still further removed from it in the unfallen Eve. You remember how St. James speaks: Every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust and enticed; then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin. The apostle, you observe, does not give the name of sin to the first motions. If these motions were duly resisted, as they might be, the man would have been tempted, but he would not have actually sinned. And if so much may be allowed of ourselves, in whom the inclinations and propensities are corrupted and depraved through original sin, much more must it have been true of Eve, when, if not fallen, she was yet tottering from her first estate. She was then still innocent; but there were feelings at work which were fast bringing her to the very edge of the precipice; and it is on the indications of these feelings, that for the sake of warning and example we wish especially to fix your attention.
I. IT WAS A LARGE AND NOBLE GRANT, WHICH THE ALMIGHTY HAD MADE TO MAN OF THE TREES OF THE GARDEN. Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat. It is true, indeed, there was one exception to this permission. Man was not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; but of every other tree he might not only eat, he was told to eat freely, as though God would assure him of their being all unreservedly at his disposal. Now observe, that when Eve comes to recount this generous grant, she leaves out the word freely, and thus may be said to depreciate its liberality. It is a disposition in all of us to think little of what God gives us to enjoy, and much of what He appoints us to suffer. It may be but one tree which He withholds, and there may be a hundred which He grants; but, alas! the one, because withheld, will seem to multiply into the hundred; the hundred, because granted, to shrink into the one. If He take from us a single blessing, how much more ready are we to complain, as though we had lost all, than to count up what remains, and give Him thanks for the multitude! He may but forbid us a single gratification, and presently we speak as though He had dealt with us in a churlish and niggardly way; though, were we to attempt to reckon the evidences of His loving kindness, they are more in number than the hairs of our head. And when we suffer ourselves in any measure to speak or think disparagingly of the mercies of God, it is very evident that we are making way for, if not actually indulging suspicions as to the goodness of God; and it cannot be necessary to prove, that he who allows himself to doubt the Divine goodness, is preparing himself for the breach of any and of every commandment. Learn, then, to be very watchful over this moral symptom. Be very fearful of depreciating your mercies.
II. But we may go further in tracing in Eve the workings of a dissatisfied mind--of a disposition to suspect God of harshness, notwithstanding the multiplied evidences of His goodness. You are next to observe HOW SHE SPEAKS OF THE PROHIBITION WITH REGARD TO THE TREE OF THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOOD AND EVIL. She left out a most important and significant word in stating Gods permission to eat of the trees of the garden, and thus did much to divest that permission of its generous character; but she put in words when she spoke of the prohibition, and thereby invested it with strictness and severity. You would have argued from her version of the prohibition, that God had altogether closed and shut up the tree, guarding it with the most extreme jealousy and rigour, so that there was no possibility of detecting any of its properties; whereas the restriction was only on examining the fruit in and through that sense, which would make it bring death, and there was the warrant of the Divine word, that to taste would be to die. All that could be learnt--and it was very considerable--from sight and touch and scent, Adam and Eve were at liberty to learn, whilst what the taste could have taught was distinctly revealed; and thus the single prohibition did not so much withhold them from the acquisition of knowledge, as from the endurance of disaster. But now, then, was Eve single in the misrepresenting the prohibition of God? Was she not rather doing what has been done ever since; what is done every day by those, who would excuse themselves from the duties and the obligations of religion? As though He had given them appetites, which were never to be gratified; desires, which were only to be resisted, and yet, all the while, had surrounded them with what those appetites craved, and those desires sought after. Whereas, there is nothing forbidden by the Divine law, but just that indulgence of our appetites and desires, which because excessive and irregular, would from our very constitution, be visited with present disappointment and remorse, and, from the necessary character of a retributive government, with future vengeance and death.
III. It was bad enough to depreciate Gods permission, or to exaggerate His prohibition; BUT IT WAS WORSE TO SOFTEN THE THREATS. This showed the workings of unbelief; and there could have been but a step between our common mother and ruin, when she brought herself to look doubtingly on the word of the Lord. And this symptom was more strongly marked than even those which we have already examined. The declaration of God had been, Thou shalt not eat of it; for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. But what is Eves version of this strong and unqualified declaration? Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. Lest ye die! This is what she substitutes for--In the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die. Lest ye die! An expression which implies a sort of chance, a contingency, a bare possibility; what might happen, or might not happen; what might happen soon, or might not happen for years. It is thus she puts a denunciation as express, as explicit, as language can furnish, In the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die. Alas! now, for Eve. Harbouring the thought that God would not carry His threatenings into execution--and this she must have harboured, ere she could have softened His threatening into lest ye die,--no marvel that she gave a ready ear to the lie of the serpent, Ye shallnot surely die. She had whispered this lie to herself, before it was uttered by Satan. The devil could do little then, and he can do little now, except as openings are made for him by those upon whom he endeavours to work. It was probably the incipient unbelief manifested by the Lest ye die of Eve, which suggested, as the mode of attack, the Ye shall not surely die of Satan. The devil may well hope to be believed, as soon as he perceives symptoms of Gods being disbelieved. And if we could charge upon numbers in the present day, the imitating Eve in the disparaging Gods permission, and the exaggerating Gods prohibition, can we have any difficulty in continuing the parallel, now that the thing done is the making light of His threatenings? Why, what fills hell, like the secretly cherished thought, that perhaps, after all, there may be no hell to fill? What is a readier or more frequent engine for the destruction of the soul, than the false idea of the compassion of God, as sure to interfere, either to shorten the duration, or mitigate the intenseness of future punishment, if not altogether to prevent its inflictions? God hath said, The soul that sinneth it shall die. When men come to give their version of so stern and solemn a denunciation, they put it virtually into some such shape as this: The soul should not sin lest it die. Christ hath said, He that believeth and is baptised, shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned. Men often practically throw this sweeping and startling affirmation into a much smoother formula: Believe upon Christ lest ye die. Lest ye die! Is this, then, all? Is there any doubt? Is it a contingency? Is it a maybe? Lest ye die!--when God hath said, Ye shall surely die! Lest ye die! when God hath said, The wicked shall be turned into hell and all the people that forget God! Lest ye die! when God hath said, Be not deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolators, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners shall inherit the kingdom of God! Nay, sirs, ye may give the paragraph a smoother turn, but ye cannot give the punishment a shorter term. Ye may soften away the expression; ye can neither abbreviate nor mitigate the vengeance. If we believe not, says Paul, yet He abideth faithful: He cannot deny Himself. (H. Melvill, B. D.)
Observations
I. MENS WORDS AND SPEECHES ARE USUALLY PROPORTIONED ACCORDING TO THE MEASURE OF THE AFFECTIONS OF THE HEART.
1. First, because words being ordained to be the means of representing the thoughts of the heart within, it is agreeable to all reason that they should express them in their full proportion, as the glass doth the face.
2. Secondly, because although the understanding be, or at least should, hold the reins of the tongue, yet the affections add the spurs unto it, as indeed they do many times give the measure to our actions themselves, as we run according to our fear, fight according to our anger, and wake according to our hope and desire; and so in many other of our actions.
II. WHEN WE REMEMBER ANY LAW OF GOD, WE OUGHT WITHAL TO SET BEFORE US THE SANCTION ANNEXED THEREUNTO.
1. Together with Gods name is represented unto us His authority, and withal both His wisdom and goodness, which will be an effectual means to stay and silence all carnal reasonings, which otherwise will very hardly be answered, considering how hard a matter it is for the wisdom of the flesh to submit to the law (Rom_8:7). But against God Himself, who dare dispute with the apostle (Rom_9:20).
2. By the same means we are quickened to obedience with cheerfulness, when we consider that they are the commandments of that God who gave us our being and in whom we subsist, to whom we owe ourselves and all we have, and from whom we expect glory and immortality and eternal life. See Davids answer to his scoffing wife (2Sa_6:21).
3. Only this looking upon God in all His commandments makes our services duties of obedience when they are performed at the command and in submission to the will of Him whose we are, whereby we acknowledge both His authority and besides His will to be the rule of righteousness. Lastly, it wonderfully stirs us up to watchfulness, diligence, and sincerity in all our carriage, when we behold the presence, majesty, and holiness of Him to whom we perform our duties, serving Him with reverence and fear and with a single heart, as being the God who sees in secret, and whose eyes are purer than to behold evil.
III. WHEN WE LAY THE LAW OF GOD BEFORE US, WE MUST WITHAL FIX OUR THOUGHTS UPON HIM THAT GIVES IT.
1. For Gods honour, that all our obedience may be tendered to Him, both in faith and fear.
2. For our own necessity, whose dead hearts need such effectual means to quicken us.
IV. IT IS A HARD MATTER TO BRING MANS HEART TO SUBMIT UNTO AND BEAR WITH PATIENCE AND CHEERFULNESS ANY YOKE OF RESTRAINT.
V. WHOSOEVER WILL NOT BE ENTANGLED BY ALLUREMENTS TO SIN, MUST NOT COME NEAR THEM. We may not stand in the council of the ungodly Psa_1:1), nor come near their paths, as Solomon adviseth Pro_4:14); and we are commanded to hate the very garment spotted with the flesh (Jud_1:23). And this we must do--
1. Out of the conscience of the weakness of our corrupt nature, which as easily takes fire by the least allurement to sin as gunpowder doth by any spark that falls into it, or rather of itself draws towards it, as iron doth towards an adamant: now we know that he that will not be burnt must carry no coals in his bosom (Pro_6:27).
2. That we may manifest our perfect detestation of evil, which every man that will approve himself to be a lover of God must hate (Psa_97:10).
VI. THE SLIGHTING OF THE CURSE OF THE LAW MAKES WAY TO THE TRANSGRESSION OF THE LAW. (J. White, M. A.)
Deceitfulness of sin
It is not only a crime that men commit when they do wrong, but it is a blunder. The game is not worth the candle. The thing that you buy is not worth the price you pay for it. Sin is like a great forest tree that we sometimes see standing up green in its leafy beauty, and spreading a broad shadow over half a field; but when we get round on the other side there is a great dark hollow in the very heart of it, and corruption is at work there. It is like the poison tree in travellers stories, tempting weary men to rest beneath its thick foliage, and insinuating death into the limbs that relax in the fatal coolness of its shade. It is like the apples of Sodom, fair to look upon, but turning to acrid ashes on the unwary lips. It is like the magicians rod that we read about in old books. There it lies; and if tempted by its glitter or fascinated by the power that it proffers you, you take it in your hand, the thing starts into a serpent, with erect crest and sparkling eyes, and plunges its quick barb into the hand that holds it, and sends poison through all the veins. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
Danger of the eye
Satan turned Eves eye to the apple; Achans eye to the wedges of gold; Ahabs eye to Naboths vineyard; and then what work did he make of them! (Alleine.)
Use of the eye
The eye, as it is used, will either be a help or a snare; either it will let in the sparks of temptation, or enkindle the fire of true devotion. These are the windows which God hath placed in the top of the building, that man from them may contemplate Gods works and take a prospect of heaven, the place of an eternal residence. (T. Manton, D. D.)
Tests designed for the strengthening of virtue
I know not whether all soldiers love the thought of war, but there are many who pant for a campaign. How many an officer of low rank has said, There is no promotion, no hope of rising, no honours, as if we had to fight. If we could rush to the cannons mouth, there would be some hope that we might gain promotion in the ranks. Men get few medals to hang upon their breasts who never knew the smell of gunpowder. The brave days, as men call them, of Nelson and Trafalgar have gone by, and we thank God for it; but still we do not expect to see such brave old veterans, the offspring of this age, as those who are still to be found lingering in our hospitals, the relics of our old campaigns. No, brethren, we must have trials if we are to get on. Young men do not become midshipmen altogether through going to the school at Greenwich and climbing the mast on dry land; they must go out to sea. We must go out to sea and really be on deck in the storm; we must have stood side by side with King David; we must have gone down into the pit to slay the lion, or have lifted up the spear against the eight hundred. Conflicts bring experience, and experience brings that growth in grace which is not to be attained by any other means.
A talk about temptation
So paradise had a tempter in it. Then, one thing is quite certain--get where we may in this world, we cannot get beyond temptation. Do you think that life would have been a great deal better if there had been no possibility of evil? Certainly we might have been made without any will, blindly obeying instinct, an animated machine. Then we should never have fallen. But as certain is it that then we could never have risen. Or we might have been placed in circumstances where the will could never have exerted itself; where no temptation could have met us. Then, again, we could not have fallen; and then, again, we should not have risen. Innocence is not a virtue until it has had temptation and opportunity to sin; then innocence is strengthened by resistance, and exalted by victory into virtue. Everywhere and in everything that is a poor, languid, sickly kind of life, which knows no resistance; a flabby thing, not worthy the name of a man, is he who has never had a chance of overcoming. Temptation overcome is the way, the only way, to the very throne of God. Amongst the brave men of old there was a notion that when one conquered an enemy the strength of the enemy went into the conqueror, and he became so much stronger by every conquest, and thus went on from strength to strength. It is thus that God grows His heroes, by overcoming.
Is not this the great law of all success? A young man comes to London for business or for study. He does not expect to get on without any struggle. He knows that if he would succeed he must be watchful, hard working, ready to resist and to overcome. If he is worth his salt he rejoices in real difficulties rightly dealt with; in real hard work to be done. It knits the muscle of his character; it developes in him courage, resoluteness, heroism. Again, there was a serpent in paradise--one. But there are a great many in the wilderness outside--fiery flying serpents! So then all men know the devil on one side or the other. On the resisting side they know him as a tempter only; but on the other side, the yielding side, they know him as infinitely more than that--as the cruel tyrant, the bitterly hard master, Apollyon the Destroyer. Today the saddest people in the world, the hardest worked, who spend most and earn least, who find life an awful weariness, are those who have let the tempter lead them furthest by his promises of pleasure. It is true, there is one serpent in the garden of God--but there are a great many outside. Learn the lesson of his devices. Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field. Subtlety is his stock-in-trade. He is a doctor in philosophy, a master in logic; and if he were subtle and skilful at the first, how much more so today, when for six thousand years he has been diligently practising his art and perfecting it? Whenever any course wants a very clever man to defend it, be quite sure that is not the path for you. The way of God is a narrow way, but it is not a crooked way, nor is it a by-path; it is a highway. Trace his subtlety in his methods. He comes to the woman first; perhaps because she is less suspicious; possibly because she was less able to withstand his wiles; probably because he knew the best way to get the man was to get the woman. The tempter finds her near to the tree, looking at it and desiring it; so her eyes and her longing were on the side of the enemy. If we would keep free from the tempter, keep out of the way of temptation. Some do really tempt the tempter to destroy them. The tempter begins by questioning--for he knows how innocently to begin--So, is it true that God hath said that ye may not eat of every tree of the garden? It is written, Thou shalt; it is written, Thou shalt not. The absolute surrender of ourselves to God for an utter obedience is our perfect safety. But to loosen the authority of the law is to fall an easy prey to the adversary. It is to come forth from our stronghold and to stand unharmed and helpless, face to face with the old Lion. I really am quite concerned about you, he seems to say, to see such gifted and noble creatures as you are kept from your true position and sacred rights? See how Eve might have reasoned if only she had kept in mind the goodness of God. What, then, hast thou done for us, sir, since thou art so concerned for our welfare? Where are the tokens and proofs of thine eagerness to serve us? He who said, Thou shalt not eat of this tree, hath made this fair earth and all that is therein. He planted this paradise, and hath given us all things richly to enjoy. Canst thou be more generous, more gracious than He? Against thy single word, behold, He sets ten thousand glorious assurances of His regard. If thou, indeed, wert seeking our good, wouldst thou beget these doubts of Him whom we have found all love, and who hath so perfect a claim upon us? This completes our safety, when to our utter obedience to His law there is added this abiding confidence in His love. (M. G. Pearse.)
Longing for the forbidden
Speaking of the craving of colonists for dispossessing the Indians of their lands, a modern writer says: On their way to the Kansas border, they passed over thousands of desirable acres, convenient to markets and schools, which they might have had at low rates and on long credits. But they had a special craving for Indian lands, and lands kept out of market; the simple desire to enter this territory is sufficient to make them think it the fairest portion of the universe.
Sin, a deceiver
Martha Browning, a young woman, aged twenty-four, was executed many years ago for murder. The fatal deed was committed to obtain possession of a £5 note; but when the tempting bait was at last really possessed, it proved to be not a note of the Bank of England, but a flash note of the Bank of Elegance!
Ye shall not surely die
The first lie
I. THE AUTHOR OF THIS FIRST LIE. Satan. Devil. Deceiver.
II. THE NATURE OF THE LIE UTTERED. Direct falsification of Gods threatening.
III. A MOST DARING AND PRESUMPTUOUS LIE. A challenge of the Almighty.
IV. A MOST MALIGNANT AND ENVIOUS LIE.
V. A DESTRUCTIVE, MURDEROUS LIE. It slew our first parents: destroyed their innocency--blinded their minds--defiled their consciences--and overspread their souls with leprous defilement and guilt.
VI. THE GERM OF ALL UNREALNESS AND DECEPTION THAT SHOULD CURSE MANKIND.
VII. A LYING ENTANGLEMENT FROM WHICH HUMANITY COULD NOT EXTRICATE ITSELF.
VIII. JESUS, THE DIVINE TRUTH, CAME TO DELIVER US FROM THIS LIE AND ITS RESULTS.
IX. THE GOSPEL IS THE DELIVERING POWER FROM SATANS FALSEHOODS. (J. Burns, D. D.)
Satans counter-assertion
I. THERE ARE MANY THINGS AGAINST WHICH GOD HAS UTTERED HIS VOICE IN EVERY MANS HEART; in which, even independently of written revelation, He has not left Himself without witness. He who lives in concealed or open sin knows full well that God hath said he shall surely die. But in the moment of temptation the certainty of ruin is met by a counter assertion of the tempter--Thou shalt not surely die: Do the act and cast the consequences to the winds. We have a notable instance of this in the case of the prophet Balaam. Men with the full consciousness that God is against them persist in opposition to Him, till they perish; persuading themselves, from one step to another, that matters shall not turn out so badly as Gods words and Gods monitor within tell them that they shall.
II. THERE ARE OTHER CLASSES OF PERSONS, BESIDES NOTORIOUS PROFLIGATES WHO ARE CAUGHT BY THIS DEVICE, Thou shalt not surely die.
1. God has declared, To be carnally minded is death. To be carnally minded is to be of the mind of the children of this world, to view things through a worldly medium, to pass day by day without a thought beyond this world, and as if there wore no life after this life. Of this kind of life God has said that it is death, that those who live it shall surely die--nay, are dying now; and by this is meant that such a life is the immortal spirits ruin, that it breaks up and scatters and wastes all mans best and highest faculties. Ye shalt not surely die is the tempters fallacy with which he deludes the carnally minded. He persuades them that they can give this life to Gods enemy, and yet inherit life eternal.
2. God has said, He that hath the Son hath life; but he that hath not the Son of God hath not life--i.e., If ye have not the Son of God ye shall surely die. How many of us have any persuasion of the reality of this sentence of death? How many have eared enough about it to ascertain what it is to have the Son of God? Whosoever has not by his own personal act taken Christ as his, has not life, and must certainly die eternally: first by the very nature of things, for the desire for God has never been awakened in his heart, the guilt of sin has not been removed from him, nor its power over him broken; and then by solemn declarations of the God of truth--He that believeth not the Son shall not see life, for the wrath of God abideth on him.
III. Mysterious as the history of our fall is, its greatest wonder is this: THAT GOD OUT OF RUIN DROUGHT FORTH FRESH BEAUTY; out of mans defeat, his victory; out of death, life glorious and eternal. Thou shalt surely live is now the Divine proclamation to mans world. Behold the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the world. (Dean Alford.)
Satans character shown by the first temptation
I. SUBTLE.
1. Tempted the woman.
2. When alone.
3. Concealed himself, and spoke through the serpent.
II. A LIAR. Ye shall not surely die.
III. A SLANDERER. God doth know, etc.
IV. A DECEIVER. Ye shall be as gods, etc. (J. McConnell.)
Satans temptations
Eve was vanquished by three crafty thrusts. Three poisoned arrows gave the deadly wounds. The flesh was seduced to lust--the eyes to long--and pride to covet. The forbidden fruit was exhibited first, as good for food--next, as pleasant to the eyes--then, as desirable to make one wise. Now, just as in the acorn, the monarch of the forest lives; as a small seed contains the planks for mansions, ships, and mighty works--so, in the earliest temptation there lies the embryo of sins whole progeny.
I. THE FLESH IS MIGHTY TO CORRUPT THE INNER MAN. Its doors are countless. Its casements are seldom closed. Through these there is quick access to the heart. It also is our encompassing mantle. We cannot escape its close embrace. We never move but in its company. There is no time when it is absent. Hence its prodigious power.
II. THE EYE IS ALSO AN INLET OF SOLICITATIONS. Eve warns again. She fixed her eyes upon the fruit, and soon its beauty put forth fearful fascination. The attraction strengthened. Resistance melted, as snow before the sun. The enchanting appearance bewitched. The outward show injected sparks of longing. The fire kindled. The bait was taken. The eye betrayed. From that day he has been diligent to exhibit fascinating scenes, to gild externals with bewitching beauty, and to lead through them into sins vilest paths.
3. There is another broad road open for temptations feet. It is the desire to be great--the ambition to be distinguished--the lust of admiration. The Spirit names it, The pride of life (1Jn_2:16). This net too was first spread in Eden. The devil showed the fruit--and whispered that the taste would enlarge the faculties--give nobler wings to intellect--communicate new stores of knowledge. While she beheld, the poisonous thought took root, the tree is to be desired to make one wise. But was not her intelligence enough? She knew God. In that knowledge is the joy of joys, and life for evermore. (Dean Law.)
Lessons
1. Once yielding to the tempters charm gives him boldness to greater violence.
2. It is the devils method to draw souls from doubting of Gods truth to deny it.
3. It is a strong delusion of Satan to persuade a sinner that he shall not die.
4. It is the initial property of the tempter to be a lair, to deny what God affirms (Gen_3:4).
5. It is Satans wile to deceive by urging God against God; and so make him vain.
6. It is Satans falsehood to persuade that God either allows mans sin, or envies mans good and comfort.
7. The tempter dealeth in equivocations with double words and senses.
8. The time and cause of misery set by God is made the time and cause of good by Satan. That days eating shall bring you good.
9. It is a strong temptation on man to persuade inlightning by sinning.
10. In all the light pretended, Satan intends nothing but experience of nakedness and shame.
11. Parity to God in place, not in nature, is a shrewd argument for Satan to tempt with.
12. In such arguments the devil intends to make sinners like himself.
13. Knowledge of all states and things is a powerful engine to draw man to sin (Gen_3:5).
14. Experience of all evil and miseries is the mark that Satan aims at in it. (G. Hughes, B. D.)
Is death a reality?
1. Let us first consult reason. It says, God is good, and as to die would be painful, and to be attended with all the ills of sickness, confinement, abstinence--as it necessarily includes the privation of accustomed pleasures, the abandonment of gay associates--the absence of every eye to admire, and every tongue to praise--it is not reasonable to suppose that He would inflict it whose name is love. He is just--must the righteous be slain with the wicked? Must the infant and the aged perish together? But what is death? Has anyone ever seen or heard it? Can any tell where it is? Till all these difficulties be removed, reason rebels against the assumption that we must all die.
2. It is true, Scripture asserts It is appointed unto men once to die, and that Death has passed upon all men, but is it not also said in Scripture, Ye shall not surely die? David plainly says in Psa_118:1-29; Psa_17:1-15 th verse, I shall not die, and Habakkuk, giving extension to the opinion and including his brethren, exclaims, We shall not die (Hab_1:12). In what other sense are we to receive the declaration of St. Paul, We shall not all sleep? (1Co_15:51) and does not God Himself assure us that He has no pleasure in the death of a sinner, much less therefore in the death of the righteous? Now, my friends, I have quoted for you Scripture for Scripture--You may impugn my manner of doing it--you may say I mould and mutilate it for my purpose--that I sacrifice its spirit to its letter, and make the one contradict the other. To this I answer, whatever contrivance my method exhibits, it is not mine--it is in use by thousands and millions of rational beings for the settlement of every question involving the paramount interests of their immortal souls.
3. Passing from Scripture, let us turn to the last test by which I propose to try the validity of my assumption--general observation. Were there such a formidable enemy as death to be encountered by all, it would be but natural to expect to find it the subject of general conversation and the object of universal alarm, its very name filling all faces with dismay, and occupying all heads with devices either to evade or successfully resist it. Can there therefore be such an enemy as death, not only in existence, but continually in our very neighbourhood, and not a whisper regarding it issue from the lips of its assumed victims in their most crowded assemblies, or an apprehension of its approach blanch for an instant the cheek or interrupt the ceaseless smile of the most sensitive among the daughters of mirth, who nightly record their satisfaction with the joys of time, and their scepticism regarding those of eternity? Both reason and precedent reject the supposition. Now, my friends, let us suppose the position established, that death is only an empty name--a bugbear to terrify the ignorant and superstitious; what do you suppose would be its effect on yourselves? Doubtless, you would consider it expedient to erase every serious impression which your mind had received, under the discipline of an imaginative subject of apprehension--to shake off the trammels of a vulgar superstition, and assert the freedom of a more enlightened judgment. How would you proceed? Considering the world now as your inalienable possession--you would rush freely into the intoxication of business, pleasure, or ambition. Self would be your only idol, earth its capacious temple, and every achievable gratification its justly due and most appropriate offering: to ensure the admiration of your fellows would be your highest ambition, and to evade their censure your most anxious solicitude. The All-wise and All-gracious Being who created you and the world you inhabit, who bestowed upon you all the sources of gratification you possessed, and the ability to enjoy them, would naturally be disregarded. Oh, my friends, what an awful picture have I permitted my imagination to draw! Surely it could never be realized, except on the supposition that there was no death--no judgment--no eternity! What if I undertake to convince you that such a supposition must prevail now? But meanwhile the besom of a long-insulted, but long suffering God, is sweeping our land. Wrath has gone out from the Lord, and hundreds are dying in the plague; but where are the evidences of its recognition--of the hand from whence it issues, or the object for which it is sent? Where is the ear, attentive to the lesson of mortality it conveys?--where the fleeing, under the convictions it awakens, for refuge to lay hold on the hope set before us? Where the awaking of the soul from its slumber of ignorance and death? You have heard the fiat of Jehovah--The wages of sin is death. To this Satan replies, addressing the soul, as he did before the body--You shall not surely die; and here again he employs reason, Scripture,and experience, to substantiate his assertion.
I. Reason testifies that the God with whom we have to do, is merciful, loving, and just, but when under the dominion of Satan, it exacts as the price of this admission the privilege of representing Him in an attitude of falsehood--as too tenderly alive to the well-being of His creatures, to expend a thought upon what is due to his own Divine attributes--upon the demands of His justice, holiness, and truth. Its solution of a human difficulty is the degradation of Him who dwelleth in light which no man can approach unto.
II. Let us now advert to the mode by which Scripture is made to countenance a practical denial of Gods repeated admonition to the wicked--thou shalt surely die. This, then, is two fold.
1. By taking refuge behind particular characters or occurrences which bear a fancied analogy to ourselves and our actions, in some case under reprehension, and from their acknowledged exemption from Divine censure, feeling satisfied that we establish our own. The character and conduct of Him who was holy, harmless, undefiled and separate from sinners (Heb_7:26), are, strange to say, the most usual refuge of revellers, banqueters, and such like, from an assumption that He indulged on particular occasions in the society of the worldly and profane--engaging in their festivities and partaking of their cheer.
2. Another and very common mode of arguing the point with Jehovah out of His own Scriptures, is by reminding Him of such examples of his long suffering mercy and forbearance, as they represent to have been admitted by a late repentance to the forgiveness of their accumulated guilt, and thence asserting a claim to similar indulgence to be followed by a similar result.
III. The sect of the Sadducees, as it existed in our Saviours time, is now fully represented by the generality of professing Christians, in their notions of that spiritual kingdom of which Christ is the head. Still earth and its constitutions, its laws, its maxims, and its incidents, supply to them their only conceivable model of the things which must be hereafter; and, consequently, Satan finds a ready basis for his falsehood, in the apparent discrepancy between the character of God, as revealed in His providences here, and such as it is represented in the Bible. Here His hatred of sin is but faintly delineated, and His vengeance against the sinner by no means strikingly displayed: many who confine their view to the results of conduct here, are ready to exclaim--The ways of the Lord are not equal, since His chastisements do not seem proportioned to the number or depravity of the offences committed. From this the believers of the tempter often infer, that there is no positive law to regulate the adjudications of eternal punishment. (S. A. Walker, B. A.)
The subtlety of the first temptation, as impeaching the goodness, justice, and holiness of God
The art of this temptation is very much the same as that which still prevails over men in whom there is an evil heart of unbelief, leading them to depart from the living God (Heb_3:12). It is by arguments of unbelief that the tempter solicits Eve to sin.
I. Thus, in the first instance, he insinuates his DOUBTS REGARDING THE EQUITY AND GOODNESS OF GOD AS A BENEFACTOR, and the liberality of His gifts--Yea, hath God said, ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden? (Gen_3:1). Can it be? Has He really subjected you to so unreasonable a restraint? And the insinuation takes effect. Suspicion begins to rankle in the womans breast.
II. Then, again, in the second place, the tempter suggests DOUBTS REGARDING THE RIGHTEOUSNESS AND TRUTH OF GOD AS A LAWGIVER: Ye shall not surely die. And for this he seems to find the woman already more than half prepared. She has very faintly and inadequately quoted the threat.
III. And, thirdly, he has A PLAUSIBLE REASON TO JUSTIFY DOUBT AND UNBELIEF ON THIS POINT. It cannot be that ye shall be so harshly dealt with, for God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil (Gen_3:5). This, then, was the order of the temptation: First, The goodness of God must be disbelieved; secondly, His justice; and, lastly, His holiness. It begins with a rebellion of the will, or the heart, against the moral attributes of God, as the Governor of His creatures. It ends in blindness of the understanding, or the mind, as to His natural and essential perfections as the infinite and eternal Creator. God ceases to be recognized as good, and just, and holy. Man, at the suggestion of Satan, would himself be as good, as just, as holy as God. (R. S. Candlish, D. D.)
Observations
I. A LITTLE YIELDING TO SATAN IN HIS TEMPTATIONS, INVITES AND ENCOURAGETH HIM TO A STRONGER AND MORE VIOLENT ASSAULT. If a man yield so far as to stand in sinners counsels, Satan will not leave till he have brought him to walk in sinners ways, till at last he sit down in the seat of scorners. The first reason hereof may be taken from Satans diligence and vigilancy, to make the best of, and pursue to the uttermost all advantages (like Benhadads messengers-- 1Ki_20:23), as waters, where the bank begins to yield, lie upon it with the greater weight, especially if we join with his diligence his malice, which sets him on, and is never satisfied till he have brought men to destruction (1Pe_5:8). Secondly, it is just with God to punish mens haltings and want of zeal with more dangerous errors and backslidings. Let us then be careful to resist Satan strongly in his first encounters, as we are advised (1Pe_5:9), with resolute denials. This resolute opposing of sinful motions--
1. Keeps our hearts free from all defilement by sin.
2. Moves God to strengthen us with a greater measure of grace, as did St. 2Co_12:9).
3. And daunts the devil, and makes him fly from us when he is readily opposed and resisted (Jam_4:7).
II. EVEN THOSE WHO SEEM MODEST IN SIN AT THE FIRST, GROW BOLD AND SHAMELESS IN IT AT THE LAST.
1. Because use and custom makes sin so familiar unto men, that it takes away, first the sense, and then the shame that follows it, which as they feel not in themselves, so they fear it not from others.
2. By this means God brings all evils to light, that the committers of them may be abhorred of all men, and His justice may be the more clearly manifested in their deserved punishment.
III. THERE IS NO TRUTH OF GOD SO CLEAR AND MANIFEST, WHICH SATAN AND HIS AGENTS DARE NOT TO CONTRADICT.
1. Seeing Satan is both a liar, and the father of lies (Joh_8:44), so that by his own nature he must needs be opposite to the truth.
2. Besides, it concerns him above all things to contradict fundamental truths, upon which Gods honour and mans salvation most depend, both which Satan labours to overthrow with all his power.
3. And lastly, he well understands by experience, the corruption of mans nature, which inclines him to embrace darkness rather than light, to believe lies rather than to love the truth, which gives him great hope of prevailing, even in suggesting the foulest untruths to such favourable hearers.
IV. SATAN AND HIS AGENTS NEVER MAKE USE OF GODS WORK BUT FOR MISCHIEF. (J. White, M. A.)
Satans commentary
Said a quaint New England preacher: Beware of Bible commentators who are unwilling to take Gods words just as they stand. The first commentator of that sort was the devil in the Garden of Eden. He proposed only a slight change--just the one word not to be inserted--Ye shall not surely die. The amendment was accepted, and the world was lost. Satan is repeating that sort of commentary with every generation of hearers. He insists that God couldnt have meant just what he said. To begin with, Satan induced one foolish woman to accept his exegesis; now he has theological professors who are of his opinion on these points; and there are multitudes of men and women who go on in the ways of sin because they believe Satans word, and do not believe the Word of God.
A serpent-like trick
A clever serpent, truly, to begin using words in a double sense! That is preeminently a serpent-like trick. Observe how the word die is played upon. It is used by the serpent in the sense of dropping down dead, or violently departing out of this world; whereas the meaning, as we all know by bitter experience, is infinitely deeper. We lose our life when we lose our innocence; we are dead when we are guilty; we are in hell when we are in shame. Death does not take a long time to come upon us; it comes in the very day of our sin--in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. (J. Parker, D. D.)
Dearth
A heathen exercised his genius in the formation of a goblet, in the bottom of which he fixed a serpent, whose model he had made. Coiled for the spring, a pair of gleaming eyes in its head, and in its open mouth fangs raised to strike, it lay beneath the ruby wine. As Guthrie says: Be assured that a serpent lurks at the bottom of guilts sweetest pleasure. (W. Adamson.)
Treachery of sin
Anthony Burgess says that sin is a Delilah, a sweet passion tickling while it stabs. Eve saw that the tree was pleasant to the eye, and from its fragrance likely to be good for food, a delicious morsel. Dr. Cuyler forcibly illustrates this by reference to the Judas tree. The blossoms appear before the leaves, and they are of a brilliant crimson. The flaming beauty of the flowers attracts innumerable insects; and the wandering bee is drawn after it to gather honey. But every bee which alights upon the blossom, imbibes a fatal opiate, and drops dead from among the crimson flowers to the earth. Well may it be said that beneath this tree the earth is strewn with the victims of its fatal fascinations. (W. Adamson.)
Ye shall be as gods.
Observations
I. SATAN IN ALL HIS PROMISES, GIVES MEN NO GROUND TO BUILD UPON, BUT HIS OWN BARE WORD. It is true, that God Himself doth affirm things upon His own Word alone, and justly may, seeing His Word is the standard of truth, and therefore the only ground of faith: but this is a peculiar privilege to Him alone, incommunicable to any creature, not to men who are all liars (Rom_3:4), much less to Satan, who is the father of lies Joh_8:44). Indeed Satan sometimes imitates God in this way, and offers also, and makes show, to confirm by experiments what he suggests, as that proud men are happy because they prosper (Mal_3:15), by which means he prevails much upon wicked men, to harden their hearts Ecc_8:11; Jer_44:17-18). Yea, and sometimes shakes the faith of the godly themselves, as he did Davids (Psa_73:2-3; Psa_73:13). But therein he plays the notable sophister.
1. In representing wicked mens prosperity so as if it were the reward of their wickedness, whereas, it is either the blessing of God upon their provident care and industry, in managing their affairs according to His own decree (Pro_10:4; Pro_14:23), or for the manifesting of His goodness to all (Mat_5:45), and His justice in their condemnation who abuse His mercies, and provoke Him by their sins, when He doth them good; or for the fatting of them against the day of slaughter (Jer_12:3), and raising them up on high unto eminent places, their casting down into sudden and horrible destruction may be the more observed (Psa_73:18).
2. He deceives men, by making the world believe that to be their happiness which is indeed their plague, as Solomon had found it in his own experience (Ecc_5:13).
II. IT IS SATANS CUSTOM AND POLICY TO CAST SUSPICIONS OF EVIL ENDS, ON THAT WHICH HE CANNOT BLAME OR DISCREDIT OTHERWISE. In the like manner he hath dealt with the Church of God in all ages, and cloth unto this day. The reasons whereof may be--
1. Because evil intentions are, in true estimation, the greatest of all evils, wherewith men can be charged.
2. Because nothing can be laid unto mens charge (especially where their lives and actions are without offence) with so much advantage, because things that appear not in themselves may with as much probability be affirmed as they can be denied.
III. IT IS USUAL WITH SATAN AND HIS AGENTS TO CHARGE UPON OTHER MEN THOSE EVILS FALSELY WHEREOF THEMSELVES ARE TRULY GUILTY.
1. Those who have false and evil hearts of their own, are apt to suspect that to be in other men which they find in themselves.
2. By casting suspicions upon other men, they hope in some measure to clear themselves, as if they might in all probability be free from those evils which they tax in other men; or at least they hope to gain thus much, that their own evils may seem the less heinous, when other men appear to be little better then they.
IV. DISCONTENT AT OUR PRESENT CONDITION IS A DANGEROUS TEMPTATION OF SATAN. It is indeed directly contrary to Gods express direction (1Ti_6:8; Heb_13:5), and unto the practice of all godly men (see the apostles example, Php_4:11); and is the daughter of pride and self-love, which makes us think ourselves worthy of much more than we have, and is the parent--
1. Of unthankfulness to God for what we have received, which proceeds from an undervaluing of those blessings which we enjoy.
2. Of unquietness in our hearts, when our desires are not satisfied, as Ahab had no rest in himself, when he could not get Naboths vineyard (1Ki_21:3-4).
3. Of envy at and contention with our neighbours, who possess that which we desire to enjoy, and are consequently looked on by us with an evil eye, as standing in our way to the obtaining of that which we aim at.
4. Of unconscionable dealing, and taking up ways of dishonest gain, that we may purchase that by any means, without which we think ourselves not sufficiently supplied, according to our worth.
V. BLINDNESS AND IGNORANCE IS A GREAT MISERY.
1. Ignorance abases a man to the condition of a beast.
2. Ignorance makes a man unuseful and unserviceable every way, in all his undertakings, for only a wise mans eyes are in his head, but a fool walks in darkness (Ecc_2:14), which we know hinders all manner of employments.
3. Ignorance leaves a man without comfort, for it is the light that is sweet, that is comfortable (Ecc_11:7), and the light of the eyes rejoiceth the heart (Pro_15:30).
VI. IT IS GREAT INJUSTICE IN ANY MAN, TO KEEP UNDER AND HINDER OTHERS FOR HIS OWN ADVANTAGE.
VII. IT IS FALSE LIBERALITY TO WITHHOLD THINGS THAT ARE OF TRUE VALUE AND TO BESTOW THAT WHICH IS OF LITTLE WORTH. Let us, upon this ground admire the infinite and incomprehensible love of God unto man, upon whom He hath bestowed His own beloved Son, His choicest jewel, His delight daily (Pro_7:30), and that from all eternity.
VIII. MANS LEANING TO THE CREATURE MUST NECESSARILY UTTERLY DIVIDE HIS HEART FROM GOD. Let us therefore in this sin consider--
1. The indignity, both in respect of God, whom we abase below His own creatures (see Jer_2:12-13), and in relation to ourselves, when we stoop to those things, which are either far below us, or at the best but equal to us.
2. The folly, in forsaking the fountain of living waters, and digging cisterns that hold no water, which makes them prove fools in the event Jer_17:11-13).
3. The danger of provoking Gods jealousy, which no man is able to endure.
IX. SELF-LOVE AND SEEKING IS ONE OF SATANS MOST DANGEROUS SNARES.
1. First, because it most easily seizeth upon mans heart, as it is clearly manifested unto any that will take notice of mens ways, and of the scope whereat they aim, not only men that live without God in this present world, or without any form of godliness, whose character is to be lovers of themselves (2Ti_3:2), inquiring after nothing else, but who will show them any good (Psa_4:6), referring all unto themselves with the king of Babylon (Dan_4:30).
2. Secondly, as this evil disposition easily seizeth upon us, and possesseth us strongly, so is it of all others most injurious.
(1) To God, against whom we lift up ourselves, advancing ourselves above Him, in seeking ourselves more than His honour, for which we were created, and preferring our own lusts before His righteous and holy will.
(2) To men, whom we must neglect in all offices and services of love, when we seek only ourselves, and our own advantages.
(3) But most of all to ourselves, who neglecting both our duty to Him, when we respect ourselves more than His honour, and towards our brethren, must therefore lose all our reward, which is promised only to such as serve God according to His will, and one another through love.
X. SATAN USUALLY LAYETH HIS SNARES FOR MEN IN THOSE THINGS WHEREIN THEY NATURALLY TAKE MOST DELIGHT.
1. First, because by this means he prevails upon men much more easily, as having a help within our own breasts, to let in those temptations wherewith he assails us.
2. And secondly, because such snares, when they have entangled us, hold us of all others most strongly, as indeed love is strong as death (Son_8:6).
XI. SATAN TEMPTS US TO SIN, NOT ONLY IN OUR PLEASURES AND DELIGHTS, BUT EVEN IN OUR DUTIES TOO.
1. Because we are in such ways most secure, and therefore most easily ensnared.
2. Satan desires most to corrupt our best endeavours, for the greater dishonour to God and religion.
3. Because there be many easy and dangerous errors in circumstances of duty, even where the substance of the action is warrantable in itself.
XII. THE SEARCHING AFTER THE KNOWLEDGE OF UNNECESSARY THINGS, IS ONE OF SATANS SNARES, AND UNPROFITABLE TO US. Let us then learn to be wise to sobriety (as the words, Rom_12:3, may not improperly be rendered), contenting ourselves with the knowledge--
1. Of such things as God hath revealed in His Word, which belong to us Deu_29:29).
2. Which are most proper and useful to us, as our Saviour intimates in His answer to St. Peter (Joh_21:21-22).
3. As are profitable to edification both of ourselves and others (see Eph_4:29). These the apostle calls wholesome words (1Ti_6:3). As for the searching after the knowledge of future events, which God hath sealed up in His own breast, and oppositions of sciences 1Ti_6:20), they must needs occasion--
(1) Unprofitable expense of time.
(2) Needless distraction of our thoughts.
(3) The neglect of searching into things more useful and needful for ourselves and others.
(4) And tends to ungodliness; the nourishing of pride, contention, and the like, and are the very baits and snares of Satan.
XIII. THE PROMISES OF SATAN, OR HIS AGENTS, ARE OF SUCH THINGS AS ARE EITHER EVIL OR UNPROFITABLE.
XIV. THE SPECIAL END THAT SATAN PERSUADES WICKED MEN TO AIM AT IS THAT THEY MAY BE AS GODS. This was not only the high thought of the proud king of Babel (Isa_14:13-14), or of antichrist his antitype (2 Thessalonians it. 4), but is the desire of every wicked man, to have or do that which is peculiar to God Himself.
1. To excel alone, and to get themselves a name, that may be admired and spoken of by all men, not only the builders of Babel (Gen_11:4), and Absalom (2Sa_18:18), but generally all proud men, as they are described unto us (Psa_49:11).
2. To be independent, and to have sufficiency in their own hand, as that fool thought himself to have (Luk_12:19), which is the desire of all covetous persons.
3. To be commanded by none, but to be their own lords (Psa_12:4), to follow only their own counsel, and be guided by their own wills Jer_44:16).
4. To give account to none but themselves, with those rebellious Jews, that desire to have the Holy One of Israel cease from them (Isa_30:11), and Amaziah, who will not be called to account by the prophet (2Ch_25:16).
5. To refer all to themselves, and to their own glory, with proud Nebuchadnezzar (Dan_4:30), and to do well to themselves (Psalm xlix. 18).
XV. IT IS SATANS POLICY TO DRAW MEN TO DEPEND UPON THE CREATURE, FOR THAT WHICH ONLY GOD CAN GIVE. Let all that are wise take notice of the least motion of their hearts, that tends that way, abhorring the very least inclination of our affections that way, as a dangerous evil.
1. Dishonourable both to God and ourselves.
2. Uncomfortable, when our hearts cannot be assured of that which we depend upon, as having no firm ground to support our hopes.
3. Unprofitable, when men gain nothing by such a kind of dependence, more than they do by a dream of a great feast, who find themselves empty and hungry when they are awake.
4. Most dangerous, by drawing us from the service of God, to the service of the creature, upon which we have our dependence.
XVI. SELF-SEEKING AND DEPENDENCE ON THE CREATURE ARE EVILS THAT BE INSEPARABLE. Now this comes to pass--
1. By necessity, because man as well as all other creatures, wanting sufficiency in himself for self-subsistence, having now in a sort departed from God, and thereby lost his dependence upon Him, hath nothing else left him but the creature to fly unto for his support.
2. Because God by His just judgment cannot bring upon a man a fitter plague to avenge the dishonour done to Him, by lifting up ourselves against Him, than by abasing us to submit to things below ourselves.
XVII. SATANS PREFERMENTS ARE IN TRUE ESTIMATION ABASEMENTS AND BASE SLAVERIES.
XVIII. HASTY RESOLUTIONS PROVE COMMONLY DANGEROUS IN THE ISSUE.
1. Because in the thoughts of our heart natural motions, which are full of error, come first to hand; upon which if we settle our resolutions, we must needs be mistaken, and err dangerously ere we be aware.
2. Because our understanding, being weak in itself, is not able at once to take in, and lay before it all things, upon which a well-grounded judgment should be settled; so that we need some time to search out and lay together all those circumstances and evidences which must guide us in all that we take in hand.
XIX. THE NEARER THINGS ARE TO BE ENJOYED, THE MORE STRONGLY THE HEART IS AFFECTED TOWARDS THEM.
1. Let us be careful to fix our eyes upon the present examples of mercies or judgments upon ourselves or others, especially upon those which are inward and spiritual, laying hold of eternal life, upon the sense of Gods present favours, as the Prophet David seems to do (Psa_73:24), and beholding and trembling at the very face of hell in present judgments.
2. Labour to work those experiments upon our hearts, till they awaken faith by which only those things which are to come are made present Heb_11:1), so that they affect men with joy, as if they were possessed already (1Pe_1:8), and with like fear on the other side.
3. Let us often recount with ourselves the shortness of this present life. Meditation may and will show a mans life unto him but a span long, and may make a thousand years seem unto him, as God accounts them, but as one day. (J. White, M. A.)
A poisoned honour
If we are to credit the annals of the Russian empire, there once existed a noble order of merit, which was greatly coveted by the princes and noblesse. It was, however, conferred only on the peculiar favourites of the Czar, or on the distinguished heroes of the kingdom. But another class shared in its honour in a very questionable form. Those nobles or favourites who either became a burden to the Czar or who stood in his way, received this decoration only to die. The pin point was tipped with poison--and when the order was being fastened on the breast by the imperial messenger, the flesh of the person was accidentally pricked. Death ensued, as next morning the individual so highly honoured with imperial favour was found dead in bed from apoplexy. Satan offered to confer a brilliant decoration upon Adam and Eve--Ye shall be as gods. It was poisoned; the wages of sin is death. (W. Adamson.)
The devils bait
He telleth her, they shall be like gods, etc. And it is his continued practice still with hope of higher climbing, to throw down many a man and woman. He will tickle you with honour, with wealth, with friends, and many gay things that you shall get by yielding to him, but whilst you so look to mount aloft to better your state, and to enjoy promises, down shall you fall from heaven to hell, and find a false serpent when it is too late to call again yesterday, that is, to undo what you have done. Our mother Eve whilst she looked to become like God, and her husband with her, she became like the devil, and cast away her husband also; even so shall you if any vain hope, promise, or speech tickle your heart to offend the Lord, and to undo yourself and your friends. (Bp. Babington.)
She took of the fruit thereof
The moral aspect of the senses
I. THAT MAN REQUIRES A BOUNDARY FOR HIS SENSES. By prohibiting one tree, God declares that there must be a limitation to the gratification of the senses. This is a most important doctrine, and fearfully overlooked. But why should the senses be restricted?
1. Because an undue influence of the senses is perilous to the spiritual interests of men. The senses, as servants, are great blessings; as sovereigns, they become great curses. Fleshly lusts war against the soul.
2. Because man has the power of fostering his senses to an undue influence. Unlike the brute, his senses are linked to the faculty of imagination. By this he can give new edge and strength to his senses. He can bring the sensual provisions of nature into new combinations, and thereby not only strengthen old appetites, but create new ones. Thus we find men on all hands becoming the mere creatures of the senses--intellect and heart running into flesh. They are carnal.
II. THAT MANS MORAL NATURE IS ASSAILABLE THROUGH THE SENSES. Thus Satan here assailed our first parents, and won the day. Thus he tempted Christ in the wilderness, and thus ever. His address is always to the passions. By sensual plays, songs, books, and elements, he rules the world. Lust, when it is finished, bringeth forth sin. This fact is useful for two purposes:
1. To caution us against all institutions which aim mainly at the gratification of the senses. We may rest assured, that Satan is in special connection with these.
2. To caution us against making the senses the source of pleasure. It is a proof of the goodness of God that the senses yield pleasure; but it is a proof of depravity when man seeks his chief pleasure in them. Man should ever attend to them rather as means of relief than as sources of pleasure. He who uses them in this latter way, sinks bruteward.
III. THAT MANS NIGHEST INTERESTS NAVE BEEN RUINED BY THE SENSES. She took of the fruit. Here was the ruin. History teems with similar examples. Esau, the Jews in the wilderness, and David, are striking illustrations. Mens highest interests--of intellect--conscience--soul--and eternity--are everywhere being ruined by the senses. (Homilist.)
Stages to ruin
In Gen_3:1-7 are indicated the human stages through which evil entered the world.
I. INDETERMINATION. This afforded the tempter an opportunity of doing three things.
1. Insinuating a doubt as to the truth of the prohibition.
2. Contradicting the sanction of the prohibition.
3. Impiously reflecting on the kindness of the prohibition. Parleying with the tempter has ever been the ruin of man.
II. SELFISM. Two impulses arose within her to an undue power.
1. Appetite.
2. Ambition.
III. SEDUCTIVENESS. Eve no sooner falls, than she becomes a tempter. (Homilist.)
The fatal choice
I. THE PROCESS OF TEMPTATION AND FALL.
1. The first step towards ruin was, and is, willingness to parley with the tempter.
2. Desire.
3. Change of opinion regarding the expediency or morality of the sin.
4. The overt act of sin.
II. THE TRAIN OF CONSEQUENCES.
1. The tempted becomes at once a tempter of others.
2. Knowledge of sin works shame.
3. Knowledge of sin makes one especially afraid of God.
4. Sin brings the sentence of Divine displeasure.
III. THE INTERVENTION OF DIVINE GRACE. (The Homiletic Review.)
Temptation and Fall of man
I. THE CIRCUMSTANCES.
1. The instrument used for the temptation. A tree.
2. The agent in conducting the temptation. The serpent.
3. The mode by which the temptation was conducted to its issue.
II. THE MORAL CHANCE which the success of this great temptation produced and perpetuated.
1. The nature of the change. A change of character. Depravity and alienation from God.
2. The extent and application of this change beyond those who submitted to it. Universal.
III. THE PENAL INFLICTIONS which in consequence of the success of the great temptation and its attendant moral changes have been incurred.
1. Exclusion from paradise.
2. Corporeal sorrow and toil.
3. The consignment of the body to death.
4. Exposure to future and eternal punishment.
CONCLUDING LESSONS:
1. The voluntariness of sin. Let no one for a moment suppose that man sins by decree; he is saved by decree, but he is not lost by decree. Besides the voluntariness of sin which is one truth which requires to be acknowledged, another is the universality of sin. All have sinned and come short of the glory of God.
2. But it is vastly important, that the remedy provided against the consequences of mans fall should be at once and gratefully embraced. (James Parsons, M. A.)
Observations
I. THINGS USUALLY APPEAR UNTO US AS WE STAND AFFECTED TOWARDS THEM IN OUR HEARTS.
II. SIN PROCEEDS NOT FROM THE OUTWARD OBJECT, BUT FROM THE CORRUPTION OF THE HEART WITHIN.
III. IT IS DANGEROUS TO A MAN TO FIX HIS SENSES UPON ENTICING OBJECTS.
IV. MEN BY NATURE ARE MORE APT TO GIVE CREDIT UNTO LIES THAN UNTO THE TRUTH OF GOD.
V. MEN ARE EASILY DRAWN TO BELIEVE AND HOPE ANYTHING OF THAT WHICH THEY AFFECT AND DESIRE.
VI. THE TERRORS OF WRATH TO COME CANNOT PREVAIL AGAINST STRONG AND VIOLENT AFFECTIONS TO THINGS THAT ARE PRESENT.
VII. OUTWARD SENSE IS AN ILL AND A DANGEROUS GUIDE.
1. Sense was never given men for a judge or counsellor to determine and direct, but only for an informer.
2. Sense can show us nothing but the outward forms of such things as it represents, upon which we shall never be able to lay the ground of a right judgment: wherefore judgment according to appearance, is opposed to Gods true and infallible judgment (1Sa_16:7).
VIII. A MAN CANNOT NATURALLY DESIRE ANYTHING BUT UNDER A SHOW AND APPEARANCE OF GOOD.
IX. MAN IS AN ILL CHOOSER OF HIS OWN GOOD.
X. IT IS A GROSS EVIL TO CHOOSE NOT WHAT IS GRANTED US, BUT WHAT WE LIKE ESPECIALLY, OUT OF RESPECT TO OURSELVES IN PARTICULAR.
XI. LUST, ONCE CONCEIVED, WILL AT LAST BRING FORTH ACTUAL SIN IN FULL PERFECTION. First, it cannot be otherwise, because inward desires and affections are the ground of all outward actions and performances, as Solomon tells us (Pro_4:23), which therefore must needs follow, unless there be some impediment cast in the way, especially in this corruption of mans nature, wherein they bear all the sway. Secondly, God is pleased it shall be so, that men may be made known by their actions, as a tree is known by his fruit.
XII. IT IS NOT IN THE POWER OF SATAN HIMSELF, TO DRAW ANY MAN TO SIN WITHOUT HIS CONSENT.
XIII. THEY THAT SIN THEMSELVES, ARE COMMONLY SEDUCERS OF OTHERS TO SIN.
XIV. ONE WHO HAS FALLEN INTO SIN, IS OFTEN MOST DANGEROUS TO HIS NEAREST FRIENDS.
XV. IT IS THE PROPERTY OF TRUE LOVE TO COMMUNICATE TO OTHERS WHATSOEVER ITSELF EMBRACETH AS GOOD.
XVI. THE STRONGEST MAN IS NOT ABLE TO STAND AGAINST SATAN, IF GOD LEAVE HIM TO HIMSELF. (J. White, M. A.)
Temptation and Fall
Should it occur to any to ask, how it can be consistent with the Divine wisdom and goodness to place creatures in the beginning of their life in a condition of such exposure and peril, we must allow that the question is not unattended with difficulty. We know it, however, to be a fact, imperfectly as we may be able to reconcile it with the acknowledged character of God, that the beginning or early part of every human life, and probably of the life of every moral being, is especially fraught with temptations and dangers. The sacred writer may have had this idea in his mind when he said, Better is the end of a thing than the beginning thereof. Childhood and youth are, in most cases, seasons of temptation. The entrance on early manhood is a time of temptation. Principles are then to be settled and habits to be formed, which will do much toward shaping the character for all the future life. Viewed in relation to God and religion, the first part of life is important. It is the period of moral formation; and the principles which then gain an ascendency are likely to be permanent. Hence the solicitude which parents feel in relation to their children, and especially their sons, when they go from them to enter on a course of study in a public institution, or to engage as clerks and apprentices in the employment of others, or to begin life for themselves. The young cannot wholly escape these trials and dangers; and they greatly resemble the temptations through which Adam and Eve passed. They are inseparable from the responsibilities of self-government, until a stable and well-tried character is formed. Men are put into the world to meet its duties, and to discipline themselves, amidst difficulties and moral hazards, for a better state. The sooner in life they learn this truth, the better will it be for them. The plan of God is not to shield any of us from temptation; but to teach us to pass through it undamaged and with advantage. But it may help somewhat to reconcile us to this part of the Divine government, if we inquire whether it is possible for us to conceive of a better constitution? All creatures must begin to exist. They must therefore either be as perfect as they ever can be at first, or they must have scope to grow and to unfold themselves. Would we, any of us, choose to be created so perfect at the beginning, as to preclude the idea of any improvement, or even of any change? Would we be in favour of a constitution, supposing it possible, which would permit no increase of knowledge, of virtue, or of happiness? Would we prefer to be wholly without hope? Would we account a dead, stagnant monotony, an unvarying sameness of existence, an improvement on our present state? I cannot think we should any of us so elect, were the election in our power. And yet all these ideas belong to the notion of a creature made at the outset as perfect as he ever can be. (D. N. Sheldon.)
The husband tempted through the wife
Agrippina poisoned the Emperor Commodus with wine in a perfumed cup; the cup being perfumed and given him by his wife, it was the less suspected. Satan knew a temptation coming to Adam from his wife, would be more prevailing, and would be less suspected: O bitter! Sometimes relations prove temptations: a wife may be a snare, when she dissuades her husband from doing his duty, or enticeth him to evil. Ahab, which did sell himself to work wickedness, whom his wife Jezebel stirred up. She blew the coals and made his sin flame out the more. Satans subtlety was in tempting Adam by his wife, he thought she would draw him to sin. (T. Watson.)
The Fall of man
I. MANS FALL FROM A STATE OF INNOCENCE. Mark the steps of the transgression. She saw: she should have turned away her eyes from beholding vanity; but she enters into temptation by looking with pleasure on the forbidden fruit. She took: it was her own act and deed. Satan may tempt, but he cannot force us into sin. She did eat: when first she looked, perhaps she meant not to touch, or if she took, not to eat; but who can say, So far I will go in sin, and no further? It is a downward road. Our only safety is to stop the first thought, the first beginning. She gave also unto her husband with her. No sooner was Eve a sinner than, like the devil, she became a tempter. Adam, it seems, had joined her now; and he listened to her persuasion, and he did eat. And will any dare to think the sin a small one? God had given him a plain and easy command; had made him with a will free, a nature holy and good. His act, then, showed unbelief in Gods word, discontent with his state, aspiring pride; in a word, it was disobedience. He sinned against the clearest light, the highest knowledge, the greatest goodness, the dearest love. He turned aside quickly. And will any ask, as men do now, What great harm was there?
II. THE UNHAPPY CONSEQUENCES OF THE FALL.
1. Shame.
2. Fear.
3. Pride. Adam attempts to hide his offence from God.
4. Judgment. Sorrow, misery, death. Every sinner finds it so.
III. THE ONLY REMEDY PROVIDED--in Jesus Christ our Saviour. God has stooped from heaven to redeem man. (E. Blencowe, M. A.)
Sin and death
This narrative teaches us great facts regarding temptation and sin.
I. REGARDING TEMPTATION.
1. Temptation often comes through Satanic influence. As in the cases of Eve, Judas, Ananias, so today Satan is busy in placing temptation before us. How he does it we know not, but he evidently has supernatural power to instill evil thoughts into our minds.
(1) Satans method is to start doubts and queries in mens minds. By parleying with temptation Eve was lost.
(2) The narrative shows the subtilty of temptation. Satan was careful in this narrative not to lie outright. All error begins in one-sided truths.
(3) But with this presentation of a part of the truth, Satan took care that doubts should be awakened regarding Gods motives.
2. But the narrative teaches that, though there be Satanic influence from without, there is a greater temptation from within (see Jam_1:14). Eve thought she should be as God if she ate the forbidden fruit. She reasoned as do so many foolish young people in these days who say about places of evil resort: I want to see for myself. It isnt going to do me any harm, and I want to know about it. And so young men--bent on being as smart as their fellows and on knowing as much of the world as any body, and seeing the gilded apple, fair to look upon and promising temporal advantage, hanging in the liquor saloon, or the gambling resort, or the house of death--pluck and eat.
II. REGARDING SIN.
1. The question at once arises--Why did God forbid the eating of the fruit of this tree? The injunction was not arbitrary, we may be sure. The inherent wrong we do not know, but we are certain that it was essential to the character and destiny of man that there should be something prohibited. There must be law: first, because some things are inherently right and others inherently wrong; second, because without law, enjoining or forbidding, character can neither be tested nor developed.
2. We see again from the narrative that the essence of sin consists in unbelief. Why does God forbid this and enjoin that? Because He loves us and knows a contrary course would do us harm. What subtle conviction justifies us when we allow ourselves in disobedience to Gods laws? Either that we know better than God, or that God lays His commands on us from selfish and ungenerous motives. It is hard to tell which conviction is the worse, but probably the latter is the more common. At any rate, it is clear that all sin originates in distrust of God. Doubting His wisdom or His truthfulness, or above all, His love, we rush on, heedless of His warnings, to our destruction.
3. There is a lesson in this narrative regarding the propagation of sin. No sooner did Eve eat the forbidden fruit than she offered it to Adam and persuaded him to be a sinner also. In this she did but carry out instinctively an inevitable law of sin. Sin is a contagious disease.
4. The penalty of sin is death. (A. P. Foster, D. D.)
The first sin
I. THE CHARACTER OF THE FIRST SIN. The strength of the first sin was the law of God. There was no intrinsic poison in the forbidden fruit, for God cannot produce an essentially evil thing; the creatures disobedience gave to it its deadly power.
II. THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE FIRST SIN. So long as the creatures love for God was perfect, the first law remained unbroken; but even as in Elijahs days, there arose out of the sea a vapour, not larger than a mans hand, which gathered unto itself other clouds, until the whole heaven was covered with blackness; so there arose in the horizon of Eden, as a little cloud, a doubt of Gods love, and behold now the sky is overcast above our heads, even with the shadow of death. Yes, Eve began to think that her Maker had withholden from her that which was good. She, looking upon the forbidden tree, formed an independent judgment upon its qualities; she pronounced that it was good for food, pleasant to the sight, and of a nature to communicate wisdom to the partaker thereof. This was the first step in the development of her sin. Next, she desired it. It was a tree to be desired. There is something wonderful in the typicality of the first sin; how distinctly do we see the shadow of that, which is now in the world, as the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of an intellectual life. In the full and final development of sin the woman took of the fruit and ate. The deed of wickedness followed the unholy thought; and the ruin of the world was completed.
III. THE PROLIFIC NATURE OF THE FIRST SIN. Gave unto her husband, and he did eat. No sooner is one sin truly born, or brought forth in its maturity, than it becomes the parent of a thousand or a million of other transgressions. There is no point which should make us dread sin more than its hydra-like multiplication. It branches forth in every direction; it is impossible to check its rapidity of reproduction.
IV. THE PERPETUITY OF ITS EFFECT ON POSTERITY. (The Protoplast.)
I. THE NATURE OF THE SIN.
1. Ingratitude.
2. Disbelief.
3. Disobedience.
The first sin
II. THE CONSEQUENCES OF THE SIN.
1. Our first parents were not the same afterwards.
2. That one sin paved the way for other sins. For insincerity and untruth.
3. It estranged them from God.
4. It broke up the home.
5. It shut them out of life.
III. THE REMEDY FOR SIN. In Christ. (J. Ogle.)
Ten sins in Adams disobedience
1. Incredulity. Our first parents did not believe what God had spoken was truth.
2. Unthankfulness, which is the epitome of all sin. Adams sin was committed in the midst of paradise.
3. In Adams sin was discontent: had he not been discontented, he would never have sought to have altered his condition. How wide was Adams heart, that a whole world could not fill it.
4. Pride, in that he would be like God. But, by climbing too high, he got a fall.
5. Disobedience. How could God endure to see His laws trampled on before His face? This made God place a flaming sword at the end of the garden.
6. Curiosity: to meddle with that which was out of his sphere, and did not belong to him. Adam would be prying into Gods secrets, and tasting what was forbidden.
7. Wantonness: though Adam had a choice of all the other trees, yet his palate grew wanton, and he must have this tree. Adam had not only for necessity, but for delight; yet his wanton palate lusted after forbidden fruit.
8. Sacrilege: the tree of knowledge was none of Adams, yet he took of it, and did sacrilegiously rob God of His due. Sacrilege is a double theft.
9. Murder: Adam was a public person, and all his posterity were involved.
10. Presumption. One sin may have many sins in it. As in one volume there may be many works bound up, so there may be many sins in one sin. The dreadfulness of the effect: it hath corrupted mens nature. How rank is that poison a drop whereof could poison a whole sea! And how deadly is that sin of Adam, that could poison all mankind, and bring a curse upon them, till it be taken away by Him who was made a curse for us. (T. Watson.)
The first sin
I. THE GRADUAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE FIRST SIN.
1. Creating uncertainty in the mind as to duty towards God.
2. Nourishing the hope that God is not in earnest.
3. Producing a doubt as to Gods goodness and sincerity.
II. THE SOCIAL ASPECTS OF THE FIRST SIN.
1. Contaminating.
2. Destructive to human love.
3. Bringing men morally to the same level.
4. The precursor of physical suffering.
III. THE IMMEDIATE EFFECT OF THE FIRST SIN.
1. Burdening the soul with guilt.
2. Disturbing its peace with fear.
3. Obliterating its true conceptions of God.
IV. THE PUNISHMENT OF THE FIRST SIN.
1. Its punishment shows that sin is foreign to our nature.
2. That sin and punishment are linked together.
3. That God is just in its punishment.
4. That God is willing to pardon sin.
5. That liberty is not without its attendant risks.
6. That knowledge without holiness is dangerous. (Homilist.)
I. THE TEST OF OBEDIENCE WHICH GOD INSTITUTED.
1. It was just and reasonable.
2. Simple and plain.
3. Practicable and easy.
The Fall
II. THE MANNER OF ITS VIOLATION.
1. The serpent tempted.
2. The woman transgressed.
3. She gave also to Adam, and he did eat.
III. THE MORAL EVIL IT INVOLVED.
1. Great credulity, yet great unbelief.
2. Great discontent.
3. Great pride.
4. Great disobedience and presumption.
5. Great ingratitude.
IV. THE CALAMITOUS RESULTS IT PRODUCED.
1. Overwhelming fear and shame.
2. Open exposure and correction.
3. The Divine displeasure and punishment.
(1) On the serpent (see Gen_3:15).
(2) On the woman; subjection and sorrow in child-bearing (verse
16).
(3) On Adam. Ground cursed; toil, etc. (Gen_17:18-19). On both death, though not immediately executed.
APPLICATION:
1. Learn the origin of human sin.
2. Its disastrous effects.
3. Our natural connection with it.
4. The only way of deliverance from it.
By faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was manifested in the flesh to destroy the work of the devil (see Rom_5:12-17). (J. Burns, D. D.)
Mans moral conflict
I. THE GREAT MORAL CONFLICT APPOINTED FOR MAN. In Eden and in every human history there is a collision between appetite and conscience, between right and wrong, between Gods will and human wilfulness. Things know nothing of such oppositions. In self-governments and to wills they are inevitable.
1. That it was waged between powers both good in themselves for the exclusive rule and supremacy of the lower over the life.
2. It begins with a suggestion from without and from beneath.
3. We are assailed from the most unlikely quarters, and are injured by the most unlikely instruments.
4. The danger in this case arose from a lawless desire for knowledge,
II. THE CONSEQUENCES OF MANS MORAL DEFEAT. Given the fact of sin, the fact of a fatal change in the condition and circumstances follows of necessity.
1. The harmonious and beautiful subordination of the powers of the human constitution is destroyed.
2. Native innocence is lost.
3. Sin shuts out the light of heaven and prevents the enjoyment of the vision of God.
4. Sin changes the face of nature to the guilty, and banishes the spirit from the regions of Divine joy. Men in the first consciousness of guilt dare not pray. (The Preachers Monthly.)
Lessons from the Fall of man
I. TEMPTATION LIES IN THE DIRECTION OF PLEASURE.
II. GUILT OPENS MENS EYES.
III. GUILT VAINLY TRIES TO HIDE ITS DEFORMITY. (The Homiletic Review.)
A warning from Eves Fall
She was thus tempted, seduced, and overthrown in paradise; and it may well admonish us, that if that paradise could not free them from temptation, surely our paradises here shall never do it. But even in our princely palaces, our glittering chambers, our dainty and delicate gardens, the devil will be chatting with us, and seeking to work our woe forever and ever if he can. Nay, would God these painted paradises were not rather the places and means of our woful falls than poorer places be, we giving ourselves so much to the pleasures of them that God is forgotten, and the passage to Satans pleasure laid open a thousand ways. Oh, how have they fallen swimming in pleasures, that stood most holy when they had fewer delights! Oh, how have courts of princes robbed them of virtue, whom in country and meaner places no devil could violate or defile! Beware we then of Satan even in our paradises, yea, rather I say, than in poorer cots: when everything about us is bright and brave, beware we that enemy that is black and foul. Many pleasures should effect many desires to please the Giver, God Almighty, and no pleasures should make me wanton, lusting and longing for unlawful things. Let Eve be remembered where she was deceived, and I say no more, it was in paradise. (Bp. Babington.)
A three-fold temptation
There were three things that wrought upon her.
1. The tree was good for food. A strong reason, had she been famishing, but none when surrounded with the plenty of the rich garden. Strange that she should have cared for it on such an account! She is in no need of food, yet it is on this account that she covets it! She is without excuse in her sin. It was the lust of the flesh that was at work (Eph_2:3; 1Jn_2:16). She saw in the tree the gratification of that lust, and in God a hinderer of it. Thus she fell.
2. It was a desire of the eyes. And had she no other objects of beauty to gaze upon? Yes; thousands. Yet this forbidden one engrossed her, as if it had acquired new beauty by having been prohibited. Or can she not be satisfied with looking? Must she covet? Must she touch and taste? It is plain that hers was no longer the natural and lawful admiration of a fair object, but an unlawful desire to possess what she admired. It was the lust of the eye.
3. It was a tree to be desired for imparting wisdom. This was the crowning allurement. She must have wisdom, and she must have it at all risks, and she must have it without delay. She made haste to be wise. She would not in faith wait for Gods time and way of giving wisdom. Such was the desire (or lust) of the mind (Eph_2:3). These three reasons prevailed. She plucked the fruit, and did eat. Nay, more, she gave also to her husband, who was with her, and he did eat. She was not content to sin alone. Even the dearest on earth must be drawn into the same snare.
Let us mark here such lessons as the following:--
1. The danger of trifling with objects of temptation. To linger near them; to hesitate about leaving them; to think of them as harmless--these are the sure forerunners of a fall.
2. The three sources of temptation: the lust of the flesh, of the eye, of the mind. Strictly speaking, they are not in themselves sinful, but in their excess, or disorderly indulgence.
3. The swift progress of temptation. She listened, looked, took, ate! These were the steps. All linked together, and swiftly following each other. The beginning how small and simple; the end how terrible! (Jam_1:25). You begin with a look, you end in apostasy from God. You begin with a touch, you end in woe and shame. You begin with a thought, you end in the second death. Yet of all these steps God protests solemnly that He is not the Author (Jam_1:13). It is man that is his own ensnarer and destroyer. Even Satan cannot succeed unless seconded by man himself.
4. The tendency of sin to propagate itself. No sooner has the tempted one yielded than he seeks to draw others into the snare. He must drag down his fellows with him. There seems an awful vitality about sin; a fertility in reproduction, nay, a horrid necessity of nature for self-diffusion. It never lies dormant. It never loses its power of propagation. Let it be the smallest conceivable, it possesses the same terrific diffusiveness. Like the invisible seeds that float through our atmosphere, it takes wing the moment it comes into being, flying abroad, and striking root everywhere, and becoming the parent of ten thousand others. (H. Bonar, D. D.)
Apostasy
I. THE TEMPTATION BY WHICH ADAM WAS ASSAILED.
II. THE GREATNESS OF HIS GUILT. A fearful complication.
1. Disbelief of the Creator.
2. Rebellion against the highest authority.
3. The most criminal ambition.
4. The basest and vilest ingratitude.
5. A sin against his own soul, and against all his posterity.
III. THE SCRUTINY TO WHICH HE WAS SUBJECTED.
IV. THE SENTENCE PRONOUNCED ON ADAM.
1. Exclusion from paradise must have been a painful evil considered in itself.
2. But the sentence included death also. The death of the body, the precursor, if grace prevent not, of the death of the soul. (H. Burder, M. A.)
Paradise lost; or, mans Fall
I. THE SUBTLE TEMPTER. Changed the tree of probation into a tree of temptation.
II. THE FATAL TRANSGRESSION. Eve hesitated, and was drawn into the tempters net. Then sin reproduces sin.
III. THE SAD DISCOVERY. Innocence gone: in its place was shame. LESSONS:
1. To obey Gods word, even when it contradicts our own inclinations.
2. To be humble and patient, waiting Gods time and will, as to His secret things.
3. To refuse to listen to temptation from without, and to evil lusts in ourselves. (W. S. Smith, B. D.)
Temptation and Fall of man
Corroborative of the Mosaic account of the Fall are numerous ancient corrupted traditions. Thus--
1. On an ancient bas-relief of the story of Prometheus and Pandora, a man and woman are represented standing naked and disconsolate under a tree; and a figure seated on a rock is strangling a serpent.
2. Apollo destroys the serpent Python, and is crowned with laurel.
3. Hercules--who in his infancy had destroyed a serpent--gathered the apples of Hesperides, having killed the serpent that kept the tree.
4. Many gems, etc., represent Hercules killing a serpent entwined about a fruit-laden tree.
I. THE FIRST TEMPTATION.
1. To be tempted, and to sin, two different things. Christ was tempted but did not sin (Heb_4:15).
2. Its source--
(1) Not man, who was holy, innocent, happy. A solicitation to sin could come only from without.
(2) Not from God. He tempteth no man (Jam_1:13).
(3) But from the devil. Disarmed suspicion by assuming a familiar form. No living creature, not even the serpent, then inspired fear.
3. Appeared thus to Eve, whose knowledge was partial. Speech used by a serpent would have opened the eyes of Adam, who had named the beasts according to their nature.
4. Concealed the real death that would be introduced. Told a partial truth: your eyes shall be opened. Half truths are the devils most successful lies. Thus Tennyson says:--
That a lie, which is part a truth, is ever the blackest of lies;
That a lie, which is all a lie, may be met, and fought with, outright;
But a lie, which is part a truth, is a harder matter to fight.
II. THE FIRST SIN. Apparently small, and by the thoughtless often spoken lightly of, as such. But as all sin is a violation of principle, injures the moral sense, imperils the soul, and dishonours God, no transgression can be truly called a little sin. Sin is the transgression of law (1Jn_3:4). This was the only sin that could be committed, since there was but one law Rom_4:15). It was great, because the only one possible. It contained the elements of all evil: disobedience (Rom_5:19), pride, unbelief, blindness, ingratitude, selfishness, covetousness, etc. As from small fountains, mighty rivers nave their beginning; so from this sin, all transgression took its rise and character (Rom_5:12; 1Co_15:22). (J. C. Gray.)
Adam; or, human nature
I. ADAM, OR MAN. First, to trace this path in that world of thought and will which is within; for, to this day, when we sin nothing else is done but what is here set forth in the man, the woman, and the serpent. In this view the man is the understanding, the woman the will, the serpent some animal faculty or emotion in us--good when in subjection, but which may be a means, under the influence of the evil spirit, to tempt the will and lead it to disobedience and independence, and so to misery. For the will, not the understanding is that in us which is first assailed, seduced by some lower sense or emotion, which seems to promise more happiness. But for the will, the emotions would not be felt, but only thought about: but they are felt: hence they are passions; for we really suffer, though we should command, them. Only thus is man led away.
II. MANS WAY. From God to self and independence.
III. THE FRUIT OF MANS WAY.
1. A bad conscience.
2. An attempt to hide from God.
3. An attempt to clear self by throwing blame on some other one.
4. But there are other fruits of sin, more external, and having to do with mans body and his dwelling place. The earth is cursed, and henceforth sorrow and toil are to be mans due portion until he return to the dust whence he was taken; a lot which seems hard, and yet is mercy; by toil to draw man out of self, and then by death to destroy him that hath the power of death, that is the devil.
5. One consequence of sin remains, characteristic of the lot of man as man, namely, exclusion from paradise. Fallen man is driven out, lest as fallen he eat and live forever. This, too, is love. Old Adam is shut out, but the Seed can enter through the flaming sword and past the cherubim.
IV. THE REMEDY FOR MAN. This too has stages, all of God; first a call, then a promise, then a gift, from Him.
1. First comes a call, a voice which will be heard, to convince man of his state, saying, Where art thou? A voice which may sound in different ways, but which in all is crying to draw man back again; at first only convicting of sin, yet by this very conviction laying the foundation for mans recovery; leading man to come to himself before it is too late, that he may come to his Father, and from Him receive another life; and asking, though man oft turns a deaf ear, why we are not with Him, who still loves and yearns over us.
2. Then comes a promise, full of grace and truth, touching the womans Seed; a promise not to old Adam, for the old man is fallen and must pay the penalty--no reprieve is given to the flesh: the cross which saves us is Adams condemnation--but a promise to the Seed or New Man, who shall be born, in and by whom man shall regain paradise.
3. God adds a gift--The Lord God made them coats of skins and clothed them. Again He works, for sin had broken His rest; working, as ever, to restore blessedness; to cover not with fig-leaf screens only that part of our nakedness which is before each of us; but to give us, upon us, in token of our state--for the skins spoke of death, and so confessed trespass--a covering which, while it puts us in our place as sinful creatures, yet shelters us. (A. Jukes.)
The peril of capacity
Why did God make man capable of falling? Because God could not have made man upon any other condition: He made the sun incapable of falling, and all the stars incapable of falling; but the moment you pass from matter to life you multiply your danger; increased life means increased risk. I drive a nail into this piece of wood to hold some article until I return for it; I also request a child to watch another article for a time. On my return I find the nail where I put it, I also find the child where I left him, do I say to the nail, You are very good for doing what I wanted to have done? Certainly not. But I may say to the child, You have been good, and I thank you for doing me this kindness. But why not express my thanks to the nail? Simply because the nail had no will in the matter. The child had a will, and could have foregone his charge; and by so much as he could have broken his promise he was honourable in keeping it. But put the case the other way. Suppose that on my return I discovered that the child had abandoned his position; then I should see that in passing from matter to life I pass from comparative certainty to probable uncertainty; yet even the bad child is greater than the nail, for his capacity of badness is also his capacity of goodness. (J. Parker, D. D.)
Man fallen
You see a beautiful capital still bearing some of the flowers and some of the vestiges of the foliage which the sculptors chisel had carved upon the marble. It lies on the ground, half-buried under rank weeds and nettles, while beside it the headless shaft of a noble column springs from its pedestal. Would you not at once conclude that its present condition, so base and mean, was not its original position? You say the lightning bolt must have struck it down; or an earthquake had shaken its foundations; or some ignorant barbarian had climbed the shaft, and with rude hand hurled it to the ground. Well, we look at man, and arrive at a similar conclusion. (T. Guthrie, D. D.)
Original sin
A minister having preached on the doctrine of original sin, was afterwards waited on by some persons, who stated their objections to what he had advanced. After hearing them he said, I hope you do not deny actual sin too? No, they replied. The good man expressed his satisfaction at their acknowledgment; but, to show the absurdity of their opinions in denying a doctrine so plainly taught in Scripture, he asked them, Did you ever see a tree growing without a root?
Consciousness of the Fall
The degenerate plant has no consciousness of its own degradation, nor could it, when reduced to the character of a weed or a wild flower, recognize in the fair and delicate garden plant the type of its former self. The tamed and domesticated animal, stunted in size, and subjugated in spirit, could not feel any sense of humiliation when confronted with its wild brother of the desert, fierce, strong, and free, as if discerning in that spectacle the noble type from which itself had fallen. But it is different with a conscious moral being, Reduce such an one ever so low, yet you cannot obliterate in his inner nature the consciousness of falling beneath himself; you cannot blot out from his mind the latent reminiscence of a nobler and bettor self which he might have been, and which to have lost is guilt and wretchedness. (J. Caird.)
The Fall
1. Temptation comes like a serpent; like the most subtle beast of the field; like that one creature which is said to exert a fascinating influence on its victims, fastening them with its glittering eye, stealing upon them by its noiseless, low, and unseen approach, perplexing them by its wide circling folds, seeming to come upon them from all sides at once, and armed not like the other beasts with one weapon of offence--horn or hoof, or teeth--but capable of crushing its victim with every part of its sinuous length.It lies apparently dead for months together, but when roused it can, as the naturalist tells us, outclimb the monkey, outswim the fish, outleap the zebra, outwrestle the athlete, and crush the tiger.
2. Temptation succeeds at first by exciting our curiosity. It is a wise saying that our great security against sin lies in being shocked at it. Eve gazed and reflected when she should have fled. The serpent created an interest, excited her curiosity about this forbidden fruit. And as this excited curiosity lies near the beginning of sin in the race, so does it in the individual. I suppose if you trace back the mystery of iniquity in your own life and seek to track it to its source, you will find it to have originated in this craving to taste evil. No man originally meant to become the sinner he has become. He only intended, like Eve, to taste. It was a voyage of discovery he meant to make; he did not think to get nipped and frozen up and never more return from the outer cold and darkness. He wished before finally giving himself to virtue, to see the real value of the other alternative.
3. Through this craving for an enlarged experience unbelief in Gods goodness finds entrance. In the presence of forbidden pleasure we are tempted to feel as if God were grudging us enjoyment. The very arguments of the serpent occur to our mind. No harm will come of our indulging; the prohibition is needless, unreasonable, and unkind; it is not based on any genuine desire for our welfare.
4. If we know our own history we cannot be surprised to read that one taste of evil ruined our first parents. It is so always. The one taste alters our attitude towards God and conscience and life. It is a veritable Circes cup.
5. The first result of sin is shame. The form in which the knowledge of good and evil comes to us is the knowing we are naked, the consciousness that we are stripped of all that made us walk unabashed before God and men. The promise of the serpent while broken in the sense is fulfilled to the ear; the eyes of Adam and Eve were opened, and they knew that they were naked. Self-reflection begins, and the first movement of conscience produces shame.
6. But when Adam found he was no longer fit for Gods eye, God provided a covering which might enable him again to live in His presence without dismay. Man had exhausted his own ingenuity and resources, and exhausted them without finding relief to his shame. If his shame was to be effectually removed, God must do it. It is also to be remarked that the clothing which God provided was in itself different from what man had thought of. Adam took leaves from an inanimate, unfeeling tree; God deprived an animal of life, that the shame of His creature might be relieved. This was the last thing Adam would have thought of doing. To us life is cheap and death familiar, but Adam recognized death as the punishment of sin. Death was to early man a sign of Gods anger. And he had to learn that sin could be covered not by a bunch of leaves snatched from a bush as he passed by and that would grow again next year, but only by pain and blood. Sin cannot be atoned for by any mechanical action nor without expenditure of feeling. Suffering must ever follow wrong-doing. From the first sin to the last, the track of the sinner is marked with blood. (M. Dods, D. D.)
The allurements of the temptation
If we translate these words in a language more metaphysical, we shall find that they include the three elements which are considered to constitute perfection: goodness, beauty, and truth. Goodness in that which pleases the taste, beauty in that which delights the sight, truth in that which gives knowledge or wisdom. And remark, that in seeking this perfection the woman obeyed an impulse which God Himself had given to her nature. Yes, it was the eternal destination of man to love, admire, and appropriate to himself all that is good, all that is beautiful, all that is true. It was his destination to grow in that perfection which he already possessed by nature, but which might be developed to infinity by his union with Him who is Goodness, Beauty, Truth, and Sovereign Perfection. It was, therefore, in Him alone, and in the harmony of their will with His, that our first parents were to seek perfection. The commandment which God had given them was intended to lead them to this perfection, by placing them in a state of dependence and responsibility. It was designed to unite them to their Creator and to give them the consciousness of all that is good, beautiful, and true in the moral, as well as in the visible world, which was their habitation. But, alas! a doubt has entered into the mind of Eve, already guilty through the admission of it; the word of her God is no longer her light and the sole object of her confidence; she is going to seek out of God, goodness, beauty, and truth; yea, she expects to find them in the very object whose enjoyment has been forbidden her under pain of death, in disobedience, and in sin! Henceforward all is changed in the objects of her desires, because all is changed in her heart; henceforward we see in her pursuit of a false perfection and of a false happiness, nothing but what St. John calls, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life. (L. Bonnet.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Expositor's Bible 1887 · Public Domain On v1 Genesis 3
THE FALL
Genesis 3
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PROFOUND as the teaching of this narrative is, its meaning does not lie on the surface. Literal interpretation will reach a measure of its significance, but plainly there is more here than appears in the letter. When we read that the serpent was more subtile than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made, and that he tempted the woman, we at once perceive that it is not with the outer husk of the story we are to concern ourselves, but with the kernel. The narrative throughout speaks of nothing but the brute serpent; not a word is said of the devil, not the slightest hint is given that the machinations of a fallen angel are signified. The serpent is compared to the other beasts of the field, showing that it is the brute serpent that is spoken of. The curse is pronounced on the beast, not on a fallen spirit summoned for the purpose before the Supreme; and not in terms which could apply to a fallen spirit, but in terms that are applicable only to the serpent that crawls. Yet every reader feels that this is not the whole mystery of the fall of man: moral evil cannot be accounted for by referring it to a brute source. No one, I suppose, believes that the whole tribe of serpents crawl as a punishment of an offence committed by one of their number, or that the whole iniquity and sorrow of the world are due to an actual serpent. Plainly this is merely a pictorial representation intended to convey, some general impressions and ideas. Vitally important truths underlie the narrative and are bodied forth by it; but the way to reach these truths is not to adhere too rigidly to the literal meaning, but to catch the general impression which it seems fitted to make.
No doubt this opens the door to a great variety of interpretation. No two men will attach to it precisely the same meaning. One says, the serpent is a symbol for Satan, but Adam and Eve are historical persons. Another says, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is a figure, but the driving out from the garden is real. Another maintains that the whole is a picture, putting in a visible, intelligible shape certain vitally important truths regarding the history of our race. So that every man is left very much to his own judgment, to read the narrative candidly and in such light from other sources as he has, and let it make its own impression upon him. This would be a sad result if the object of the Bible were to bring us all to a rigid uniformity of belief in all matters; but the object of the Bible is not that, but the far higher object of furnishing all varieties of men with sufficient light to lead them to God. And this being so, variety of interpretation in details is not to be lamented. The very purpose of such representations as are here given is to suit all stages of mental and spiritual advancement. Let the child read it and he will learn what will live in his mind and influence him all his life. Let the devout man who has ranged through all science and history and philosophy come back to this narrative, and he feels that he has here the essential truth regarding the beginnings of mans tragical career upon earth.
We should, in my opinion, be labouring under a misapprehension if we supposed that none even of the earliest readers of this account saw the deeper meaning of it. When men who felt the misery of sin and lifted up their hearts to God for deliverance, read the words addressed to the serpent, "I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel" - is it reasonable to suppose that such men would take these words in their literal sense, and satisfy themselves with the assurance that serpents, though dangerous, would be kept under, and would find in the words no assurance of that very thing they themselves were all their lifetime striving after, deliverance from the evil thing which lay at the root of all sin? No doubt some would accept the story in its literal meaning, -shallow and careless men, whose own spiritual experience never urged them to see any spiritual significance in the words, would do so; but even those who saw least in the story, and put a very shallow interpretation on its details, could scarcely fail to see its main teaching.
The reader of this perennially fresh story is first of all struck with the account given of mans primitive condition. Coming to this narrative with our minds coloured by the fancies of poets and philosophers, we are almost startled by the check which the plain and sober statements of this account give to an unpruned fancy. We have to read the words again and again to make sure we have not omitted something which gives support to those glowing descriptions of mans primitive condition. Certainly he is described as innocent and at peace with God, and in this respect no terms can exaggerate his happiness. But in other respects the language of the Bible is surprisingly moderate. Man is represented as living on fruit, and as going unclothed, and, so far as appears, without any artificial shelter either from the heat of the sun or the cold of night. None of the arts were as yet known. All working of metals had yet to be discovered, so that his tools must have been of the rudest possible description; and the arts, such as music, which adorn life and make leisure enjoyable, were also still in the future.
But the most significant elements in mans primitive condition are represented by the two trees of the garden; by trees, because with plants alone he had to do. In the centre of the garden stood the tree of life, the fruit of which bestowed immortality. Man was therefore naturally mortal, though apparently with a capacity for immortality. How this capacity would have actually carried man on to immortality had he not sinned, it is vain to conjecture. The mystical nature of the tree of life is fully recognised in the New Testament, by our Lord, when He says: "To him that overcometh wilt I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the Paradise of God"; and by John, when he describes the new Jerusalem: "In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month: and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations." Both these representations are intended to convey, in a striking and pictorial form, the promise of life everlasting. And as of the tree of life which stands in the Paradise of the future it is said "Blessed are they that do His commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life"; so in Eden mans immortality was suspended on the condition of obedience. And the trial of mans obedience is imaged in the other tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. From the child-like innocence in which man originally was, he was to pass forward into the condition of moral manhood, which consists not in mere innocence, but in innocence maintained in presence of temptation. The savage is innocent of many of the crimes of civilised men because he has no opportunity to commit them; the child is innocent of some of the vices of manhood because he has no temptation to them. But this innocence is the result of circumstance, not of character; and if savage or child is to become a mature moral being he must be tried by altered circumstances, by temptation and opportunity. To carry man forward to this higher stage trial is necessary, and this trial is indicated by the tree of knowledge. The fruit of this tree is prohibited, to indicate that it is only in presence of what is forbidden man can be morally tested, and that it is only by self-command and obedience to law, and not by the mere following of instincts, that man can attain to moral maturity. The prohibition is that which makes him recognise a distinction between good and evil. He is put in a position in which good is not the only thing he can do; an alternative is present to his mind, and the choice of good in preference to evil is made possible to him. In presence of this tree childlike innocence was no longer possible. The self-determination of manhood was constantly required. Conscience, hitherto latent, was now evoked and took its place as mans supreme faculty.
It is in vain to think of exhausting this narrative. We can, at the most, only remark upon some of the most salient points.
(1) Temptation comes like a serpent; like the most subtile beast of the field; like that one creature which is said to exert a fascinating influence on its victims, fastening them with its glittering eye, stealing upon them by its noiseless, low, and unseen approach, perplexing them by its wide circling folds, seeming to come upon them from all sides at once, and armed not like the other beasts with one weapon of offence-horn, or hoof, or teeth - but capable of crushing its victim with every part of its sinuous length. It lies apparently dead for months together, but when roused it can, as the naturalist tells us, "outclimb the monkey, outswim the fish, out-leap the zebra, outwrestle the athlete, and crush the tiger." How naturally in describing temptation do we borrow language from the aspect and movements of this creature. It does not need to hunt down its victims by long-continued pursuit, its victims come and put themselves within its reach. Unseen, temptation lies by our path, and before we have time to think we are fascinated and bewildered, its coils rapidly gather round us and its stroke flashes poison through our blood. Against sin, when once it has wreathed itself around us, we seem helpless to contend; the very powers with which we could resist are benumbed or pinned useless to our side-our foe seems all round us, and to extricate one part is but to become entangled in another. As the serpent finds its way everywhere, over every fence or barrier, into every corner and recess, so it is impossible to keep temptation out of the life; it appears where least we expect it and when we think ourselves secure.
(2) Temptation succeeds at first by exciting our curiosity. It is a wise saying that "our great security against sin lies in being shocked at it. Eve gazed and reflected when she should have fled." The serpent created an interest, excited her curiosity about this forbidden fruit. And as this excited curiosity lies near the beginning of sin in the race, so does it in the individual. I suppose if you trace back the mystery of iniquity in your own life and seek to track it to its source, you will find it to have originated in this craving to taste evil. No man originally meant to become the sinner he has become. He only intended, like Eve, to taste. It was a voyage of discovery he meant to make; he did not think to get nipped and frozen up and never more return from the outer cold and darkness. He wished before finally giving himself to virtue, to see the real value of the other alternative.
This dangerous craving has many elements in it. There is in it the instinctive drawing towards what is mysterious. One veiled figure in an assembly will attract more scrutiny than the most admired beauty. An appearance in the heavens that no one can account for will nightly draw more eyes than the most wonderful sunset. To lift veils, to penetrate disguises, to unravel complicated plots, to solve mysteries, this is always inviting to the human mind. The tale which used to thrill us in childhood, of the one locked room, the one forbidden key, bears in it a truth for men as well as for children. What is hidden must, we conclude, have some interest for us-else why hide it from us? What is forbidden must have some important bearing upon us. Else why forbid it? Things which are indifferent to us are left in our way, obvious, and without concealment. But as action has been taken regarding the things that are forbidden, action in view of our relation to them, it is natural to us to desire to know what these things are and how they affect us.
There is added to this in young persons, a sense of incompleteness. They wish to be grown up. Few boys wish to be always boys. They long for the signs of manhood, and seek to possess that knowledge of life and its ways which they very much identify with manhood. But too commonly they mistake the path to manhood. They feel as if they had a wider range of liberty and were more thoroughly men when they transgress the limits assigned by conscience. They feel as if there were a new and brighter world outside that which is fenced round by strict morality, and they tremble with excitement on its borders. It is a fatal delusion. Only by choosing the good in presence of the evil are true manhood and real maturity gained. True manliness consists mainly in self-control, in a patient waiting upon nature and Gods law, and when youth impatiently breaks through the protecting fence of Gods law, and seeks growth by knowing evil, it misses that very advancement it seeks, and cheats itself out of the manhood it apes.
(3) Through this craving for an enlarged experience unbelief in Gods goodness finds entrance. In the presence of forbidden pleasure we are tempted to feel as if God were grudging us enjoyment. The very arguments of the serpent occur to our mind. No harm will come of our indulging; the prohibition is needless, unreasonable, and unkind; it is not based on any genuine desire for our welfare. This fence that shuts us out from knowing good and evil is erected by a timorous asceticism, by a ridiculous misconception of what truly enlarges human nature; it shuts us into a poor narrow life. And thus suspicions of Gods perfect wisdom and goodness find entrance; we begin to think we know better than He what is good for us, and can contrive a richer, happier life than He has provided for us. Our loyalty to Him is loosened, and already we have lost hold of His strength and are launched on the current that leads to sin, misery, and shame. When we find ourselves saying Yes, where God has said No; when we see desirable things where God has said there is death; when we allow distrust of Him to rankle in our mind, when we chafe against the restrictions under which we live and seek liberty by breaking down the fence instead of by delighting in God, we are on the highway to all evil.
(4) If we know our own history we cannot be surprised to read that one taste of evil ruined our first parents. It is so always. The one taste alters our attitude towards God and conscience and life. It is a veritable Circes cup. The actual experience of sin is like the one taste of alcohol to a reclaimed drunkard, like the first taste of blood to a young tiger, it calls out the latent devil and creates a new nature within us. At one brush it wipes out all the peace, and joy, and self-respect, and boldness of innocence, and numbers us among the transgressors, among the shame-faced, and self-despising, and hopeless. It leaves us possessed with unhappy thoughts which lead us away from what is bright, and honourable, and good, and like the letting out of water it seems to have tapped a spring of evil within us. It is but one step, but it is like the step over a precipice or down the shaft of a mine; it cannot be taken back, it commits to an altogether different state of things.
(5) The first result of sin is shame. The form in which the knowledge of good and evil comes to us is the knowing we are naked, the consciousness that we are stripped of all that made us walk unabashed before God and men. The promise of the serpent while broken in the sense is fulfilled to the ear; the eyes of Adam and Eve were opened and they knew that they were naked. Self-reflection begins, and the first movement of conscience produces shame. Had they resisted temptation, conscience would have been born, but not in self-condemnation. Like children they had hitherto been conscious only of what was external to themselves, but now their consciousness of a power to choose good and evil is awakened and its first exercise is accompanied with shame. They feel that in themselves they are faulty, that they are not in themselves complete; that though created by God, they are not fit for His eye. The lower animals wear no clothes because they have no knowledge of good and evil; children feel no need of covering because as yet self-consciousness is latent, and their conduct is determined for them; those who are re-made in the image of God and glorified as Christ is, cannot be thought of as clothed, for in them there is no sense of sin. But Adams clothing himself and hiding himself were the helpless attempts of a guilty conscience to evade the judgment of truth.
(6) But when Adam found he was no longer fit for Gods eye, God provided a covering which might enable him again to live in His presence without dismay. Man had exhausted his own ingenuity and resources, and exhausted them without finding relief to his shame. If his shame was to be effectually removed, God must do it. And the clothing in coats of skins indicates the restoration of man, not indeed to pristine innocence, but to peace with God. Adam felt that God did not wish to banish him lastingly from His presence, nor to see him always a trembling and confused penitent. The self-respect and progressiveness, the reverence for law and order and God, which came in with clothes, and which we associate with the civilised races, were accepted as tokens that God was desirous to cooperate with man, to forward and further him in all good.
It is also to be remarked that the clothing which God provided was in itself different from what man had thought of. Adam took leaves from an inanimate, unfeeling tree; God deprived an animal of life, that the shame of His creature might be relieved. This was the last thing Adam would have thought of doing. To us life is cheap and death familiar, but Adam recognised death as the punishment of sin. Death was to early man a sign of Gods anger. And he had to learn that sin could be covered not by a bunch of leaves snatched from a bush as he passed by and that would grow again next year, but only by pain and blood. Sin cannot be atoned for by any mechanical action nor without expenditure of feeling. Suffering must ever follow wrongdoing. From the first sin to the last, the track of the sinner is marked with blood. Once we have sinned we cannot regain permanent peace of conscience save through pain, and this not only pain of our own. The first hint of this was given as soon as conscience was aroused in man. It was made apparent that sin was a real and deep evil, and that by no easy and cheap process could the sinner be restored. The same lesson has been written on millions of consciences since. Men have found that their sin reaches beyond their own life and person, that it inflicts injury and involves disturbance and distress, that it changes utterly our relation to life and to God, and that we cannot rise above its consequences save by the intervention of God Himself, by an intervention which tells us of the sorrow He suffers on our account.
For the chief point is that it is God who relieves mans shame. Until we are certified that God desires our peace of mind we cannot be at peace. The cross of Christ is the permanent witness to this desire on Gods part. No one can read what Christ has done for us without feeling sure that for himself there is a way back to God from all sin-that it is Gods desire that his sin should be covered, his iniquity forgiven. Too often that which seems of prime importance to God seems of very slight importance to us. To have our life founded solidly in harmony with the Supreme seems often to excite no desire within us. It is about sin we find man first dealing with God, and until you have satisfied God and yourself regarding this prime and fundamental matter of your own transgression and wrong-doing you look in vain for any deep and lasting growth and satisfaction. Have you no reason to be ashamed before God? Have you loved Him in any proportion to His worthiness to be loved? Have you cordially and habitually fallen in with His will? Have you zealously done His work in the world? Have you fallen short of no good He intended you should do and gave you opportunity to do? Is there no reason for shame on your part before God? Has His desire to cover sin no application to you? Can you not understand His meaning when He comes to you with offers of pardon and acts of oblivion? Surely the candid mind, the clear-judging conscience can be at no loss to explain Gods solicitous concern for the sinner; and must humbly own that even that unfathomable Divine emotion which is exhibited in the cross of Christ, is no exaggerated and theatrical demonstration, but the actual carrying through of what was really needed for the restoration of the sinner. Do not live as if the cross of Christ had never been, or as if you had never sinned and had no connection with it. Strive to learn what it means; strive to deal fairly with it and fairly with your own transgressions and with your present actual relation to God and His will.
William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain On vv1, 8 MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—Gen_3:1-7
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—Gen_3:1-7
THE FIRST GREAT TEMPTATION
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It is well for the military general to study the plan and the history of great battles that have been fought in the past, in order that he may learn how best to order and arrange his troops in the event of war. So human life is a great moral campaign. The battle-field is the soul of man. The conflicting powers are Satan and humanity, good and evil. In the history of the first great temptation of our first parents we have a typical battle, in which we see the methods of satanic approach to the soul, and which it will be well for us to contemplate. It is well to learn how to engage in the moral conflicts of life, before we are actually called into them. Every day should find us better warriors in the service of right.
I. That the human soul is frequently tempted by a dire foe of unusual subtlety. “Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field.”
1. The tempter of human souls is subtile. He presents himself to the soul of man in the most insidious forms, in the most fascinating ways, and with the most alluring promises. He endeavours to make men think when in the service of God, that they are ignorant of the grand mysteries of the universe, that the tree of knowledge, of which they dare not eat, contains the secret of their lives, and that if they will, contrary to the Divine command, partake of it, they will step into the Supreme temple of wisdom. Hence the curiosity of man is awakened. A strange fascination takes possession of his spirit. He is led to violate the Divine behest. Or, the devil will tell men that in the service of God, they are deprived of liberty; and for the freedom of goodness he offers them the wild license of sin, and lured by this hope he gets them to eat forbidden fruit. Satan has many schemes by which to lead men contrary to the will of God, and in opposition to their own moral welfare. He can adapt himself to any circumstance. He can make use of any agency. He often comes to us when we are lonely. He has access to our most beautiful Edens.
2. The tempter of human souls is malignant. God had just placed Adam and Eve in the lovely garden of Eden. These two progenitors of the race were made in His image, were prepared for healthful toil, and for all innocent pleasure. They were happy in each other. They were supremely happy in their God. The new creation was their heritage. How malignant the person who can seek artfully to dim a picture so lovely, or destroy a happiness so pure. Only a fallen angel could have conceived the thought. Only a devil could have wrought it into action. He is unmoved by pity. His mission is the interruption of human enjoyment. And we see him fulfilling it on every page of human life and history.
3. The tempter of human souls is courageous. We almost wonder that Satan dared to venture into the new and lovely paradise which God had made for our first parents. Would not God expel him at once? Would not Eve instinctively recognize him notwithstanding his disguised appearance, and his bland approach to her. Might not such thoughts as these pass within his mind. If they did he would not long yield to them. Satan is bold and adventuresome. He will approach the first parents of the race, to seek their ruin, even though heaven may be their helper. He will tempt the Lord of the universe with the kingdoms of this world. He knows no tremor. He is best met by humility.
II. That the Tempter seeks to engage the human soul in conversation and controversy.—“And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden.” Life is a beautiful garden in which man must find work, and in which he may find pleasure. But there are trees in it which are environed by Divine and requisite restrictions. The forbidden plants are known to man. They are revealed to him by the Word of God, and by his own conscience. Hence there can be no mistake. Man need not be taken unawares. But in reference to certain phases of human life Satan seeks to hold controversy with the human soul.
1. He seeks to hold controversy with human souls that he may render them impatient of the moral restrictions of life. He does not seek to talk to Eve about the tillage of the garden, or about the many trees of which she was at liberty to eat, but only about this one tree of which she and her husband were forbidden to partake. In this we see the devil’s knowledge of human nature, and also the cunning of his fallen intellect. Men are far more impatient of their restrictions than they are mindful of their liberty, and hence are sensitive to any reference made thereto. Hence the great effort of Satan is to lead men astray not chiefly by questioning the theology of the Bible, but by directing their attention to the limits that it places upon their conduct. When you begin to question the right or wrong of any action, that is the first indication that Satan is seeking to hold a controversy with your soul, as you need never have a doubt as to whether you should eat the fruit of the forbidden tree. Never let the devil make you impatient of the laws of moral rectitude. When he reminds you of the one tree of which you may not eat, then show him all the other trees in the garden which are at your entire disposal. The restrictions of life are few, but they are real and far reaching. They relate to the destiny of the soul.
2. He seeks to hold controversy with human souls that he may insidiously awaken within them thoughts derogatory to the character of God. The woman in response to the serpent said that God had forbidden them to eat of the tree. Satan continues the argument from the same point. He states that God had told her a lie! Sin always commences here. The moment a soul holds controversy about the moral character of God, is the moment of its fall. The man who believes God to be untruthful, must and will be untruthful himself. We are good and safe in proportion as we reverence and love the character of God. Satan intimates to Eve that he knows as much about the tree as God did, and that she was justified in crediting his statement as much as the Divine. This is the one effort of the devil, to substitute himself to the human soul, in the place of God. He still seeks to make men worship him. 3 He seeks to hold controversy with human souls that he may lead them to yield to the lust of the eye. “For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes,” &c. This is the artifice of Satan, to get men to remove from the true basis of moral life. The true basis of moral conduct is, as Eve had just intimated, the Word of God. But now she is making desire the basis of her conduct. In the processes of temptation there are not merely the solicitations of the devil to lead the soul away from right, but there are also the brilliant appearances of the things we see. The tree is often pleasant to the eyes. Temptation always furnishes its dupe with an excuse. Eve saw that the tree was good for food. There is a gradual progress to sin. First you talk with the devil. Then you believe the devil. Then you obey the devil. Then you are conquered by the devil. Never make lust the basis of life. If you do you will fall irretrievably.
III. That the Tempter seeks to make one soul his ally in the seduction of another. “She took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.” Eve little thought at the commencement of her interview with the serpent, what would be its end. One conversation with the devil may eternally ruin a soul. He is a pleasing interlocutor. But he is false. We observe that he tempted Eve first. He probably thought that he would the more readily win the weak one to his design. And when the devil lures a man’s wife to evil, it is a bad omen for her husband. She will probably become his tempter. The domestic relationships of life are fraught with the most awful possibilities of good or evil to human souls. A wicked wife may be the moral ruin of a family. See the crafty policy of hell. Never join yourself in league with Satan to tempt another soul to evil. Satan is after all sadly effective in his work.
IV. That the human soul soon awakes from the subtle vision of temptation to find that it has been deluded and ruined. “And the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.”
1. That the human soul soon awakes from the charming vision of temptation. Temptation is a charming vision to the soul. The tree looks gigantic. The fruit looks rich and ripe, and its colour begins to glow more and yet more, then it is plucked and eaten. Then comes the bitter taste. The sad recollection. The moment of despair. To Adam and Eve sin was a new experience. It was an experience they would have been better and happier without. No man is the better for the woful experience of evil.
2. That the human soul, awakening from the vision of temptation, is conscious of moral nakedness. The tempter promised that Adam and Eve should become wise and divine, whereas they became foolish and naked. In the strange effort to become divine they became mortal. Sin always brings shame, a shame it deeply feels but cannot hide. How sad the destitution of a soul that has fallen from God.
3. That the human soul awakening from the vision of temptation, conscious of its moral nakedness, seeks to provide a clothing of its own device. Adam and Eve sewed fig leaves together to make them aprons. Sin must have a covering. It is often ingenious in making and sewing it together. But its covering is always unworthy and futile. Man cannot of himself clothe his soul. Only the righteousness of Christ can effectually hide his moral nakedness.
Jesus, thy Blood and Righteousness
My beauty are, my glorious dress;
’Midst flaming worlds, in these array’d,
With joy shall I lift up my head.
LESSONS:—1, To beware of the subtlety of the devil.
2. Never to hold converse with Satan.
3. Never to yield to the lust of the eye.
4. Never to tempt another to evil.
SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON THE VERSES
Gen_3:1. The Serpent.
Almost throughout the East the serpent was used as an emblem of the principle of evil. Some writers deny that the evil spirit is to be understood in this narrative of Genesis. Yet not only did the East in general look on the serpent as an emblem of the spirit of evil, but the earliest traces of Jewish or Christian interpretations all point to this. The evil one is constantly called by the Jews “the old serpent” (Rev_12:9). Some have thought that no serpent appeared, but only that evil one, who is called the serpent; but then he could not have been said to be “more subtil than all the beasts of the field.” The reason why Satan took the form of a beast remarkable for its subtlety may have been that so Eve might be the less upon her guard. New as she was to all creation, she may not have been surprised at speech in an animal which apparently possessed almost human sagacity [Speakers’ Commentary].
“Fit vessel, fittest imp of fraud …
… For in the wily snake
Whatever sleights none would suspicion mark,
As from his wit and nature subtlety
Proceeding, which in other beasts observed,
Doubt might beget of diabolic power,
Active within, beyond the sense of brute.”—Paradise Lost.
But to anyone who reads the narrative carefully in connection with the previous history of the creation, and bears in mind that man is here described as exalted far above all the rest of the animal world, not only by the fact of his having been created in the image of God and invested with dominion over all the creatures of the earth, but also because God breathed into him the breath of life, and no helpmeet for him was found among the beasts of the field, and also that this superiority was manifest in the gift of speech, which enabled him to give names to all the rest—a thing which they, as speechless, were unable to perform—it must be at once apparent that it was not from the serpent, as a sagacious and crafty animal, that the temptation proceeded, but that the serpent was simply the tool of that evil spirit who is met with in the further course of the world’s history under the name of Satan. When the serpent, therefore, is introduced as speaking, and that just as if it had been entrusted with the thoughts of God Himself, the speaking must have emanated, not from the serpent, but from a superior spirit, which had taken possession of the serpent for the sake of seducing man.… The serpent is not a merely symbolical term applied to Satan; nor was it only the form which Satan assumed; but it was a real serpent, perverted by Satan to be the instrument of his temptation [Keil and Delitzsch.]
It has been supposed by many commentators that the serpent, prior to the Fall, moved along in an erect attitude, as Milton (Par. L. ix. 496):
“Not with indented wave
Prone on the ground, as since, but on his rear,
Circular base of rising folds that tower’d
Fold above fold, a surging maze.”
But it is quite clear that an erect mode of progression is utterly incompatible with the structure of a serpent, whose motion on the ground is beautifully effected by the mechanism of the vertebral column and the multitudinous ribs, which, forming as it were so many pairs of levers, enable the animal to move its body from place to place; consequently, had the snakes before the fall moved in an erect attitude, they must have been formed on a different plan altogether. It is true that there are saurian reptiles, such as the Saurophis tetradactylus and the Chamae-saura anguina of South Africa, which in external form are very like serpents, but with quasi-feet; indeed, even in the boa-constrictor, underneath the skin near the extremity, there exist rudimentary legs; some have been disposed to believe that the snakes before the Fall were similar to the Saurophis. Such an hypothesis, however, is untenable, for all the fossil ophedia that have hitherto been found differ in no essential respect from modern representations of that order; it is, moreover, beside the mark, for the words of the curse, “Upon thy belly shalt thou go,” are as characteristic of the progression of a saurophoid serpent before the Fall as of a true ophidian after it. There is no reason whatever to conclude from the language of Scripture that the serpent underwent any change of form on account of the part it played in the history of the Fall. The sun and the moon were in the heavens long before they were appointed “for signs and for seasons, and for days and years.” The typical form of the serpent and its mode of progression were in all probability the same before the Fall as after it; but subsequent to the Fall its form and progression were to be regarded with hatred and disgust by all mankind, and thus the animal was cursed “above all cattle,” and a mark of condemnation was for ever stamped upon it [Students’ Old Testament History, by Dr. Smith].
The trial of our first progenitors was ordained by God, because probation was essential to their spiritual development and self-determination. But as He did not desire that they should be tempted to their fall, He would not suffer Satan to tempt them in a way which should surpass their human capacity. The tempted might therefore have resisted the tempter. If, instead of approaching them in the form of a celestial being, in the likeness of God, he came in that of a creature, not only far inferior to God, but far below themselves, they could have no excuse for allowing a mere animal to persuade them to break the commandment of God. For they had been made to have dominion over the beasts, and not to take their own law from them. Moreover, the fact that an evil spirit was approaching them in the serpent could hardly be concealed from them. Its speaking alone must have suggested that; for Adam had already become acquainted with the nature of the beasts, and had not found one among them resembling himself—not one, therefore, endowed with reason and speech. The substance of the address, too, was enough to prove that it was no good spirit which spake through the serpent, but one at enmity with God. Hence, when they paid attention to what he said, they were altogether without excuse [Keil and Delitzsch].
Wit unsanctified is a fit tool for the devil to work withal [Trapp].
1. The time of this temptation.
2. The place of this temptation.
3. The issue of this temptation.
The devil’s advice:—
1. It is freely given.
2. It is wofully misleading.
3. It is counter to the Divine command.
4. It is blandly proffered.
5. It is often taken.
It is the usual custom of Satan to tempt men before they are confirmed by habit in the course of goodness:—
1. Because he envies man’s happiness.
2. Because he hopes more readily to effect his mischief.
3. Let the newly converted prepare for him.
Satan contrives mischief against those who never provoke him.
No place nor employment can free us from the assault of Satan:—
1. He tempted our first parents in Paradise.
2. Eli’s sons in the tabernacle.
3. Christ in the wilderness.
Though Satan is the author of temptation he cares not to be seen as such.
Satan usually makes choice of those instruments which he finds fittest for the compassing of his own wicked ends.
Cunning persons are dangerous.
No advantage can assure a child of God from the temptations of Satan:—
1. Not holiness.
2. Not the experience of God’s mercies.
3. Not victories in past spiritual contests.
Satan:—
1. His power.
2. His malice.
3. His cunning.
4. His diligence.
The devil’s assistants:—
1. Our lusts within.
2. Our world without.
3. Our own moral weakness.
Solitariness is many times a snare:—
1. It yields advantage to temptation.
2. It gives the greater opportunity to commit sin unseen by men.
3. It deprives men of help by advice.
Satan’s main end is man’s destruction by turning away his heart from God.
It is usual with Satan and his instruments to pretend the good of those they intend to destroy:—
1. Consider the being who makes the promise.
2. Seriously consider whether it is a real good promise.
3. Contemplate under what condition they tender the things to us.
It is a dangerous snare for a man to have his eyes too much fixed upon his wants.
The nature of man is apt by the art and policy of Satan to be carried against all restraint and subjection.
Man’s fall is as needful to be known as his best estate.
The devil may give forth a human voice to dumb and speechless creatures.
It is the devil’s great plot in tempting man to destruction, to corrupt the mind.
Gen_3:2. It is dangerous to talk freely to persons of whom we have no knowledge.
It is a dangerous thing to debate evident and known truths.
Blasphemous suggestions ought not to be heard without indignation:—
1. To manifest our zeal for God’s honour and truth.
2. To secure ourselves from a further assault.
3. To prevent the hardening of the soul against wicked suggestions.
The goodness and bounty of God to men is a sad aggravation of sin.
Creatures must vindicate God’s goodness, though Satan detract from it.
Man knows the innocent pleasures of life.
Gen_3:3. When we remember the law of God, we must set before us the sanction annexed thereto:—
1. For God’s honour.
2. For our necessity.
3. For our victory.
When we recall the law of God, we should remember the giver of it.
It is hard to bring man’s heart to submit to, and bear with patience any yoke of restraint.
Whoever will not be entangled by allurements to sin, must not come near them.
The slighting of the curse of the law, makes way to the transgressing of the law.
Acknowledgement of God’s law will more heartily condemn the soul that sinneth.
The least doubt about the truth of God’s threatenings makes the soul more bold to sin.
“Neither shall ye touch it.” This is of the woman’s own addition, and of a good intention doubtless. For afterwards, when she had drunk in more of the serpent’s deadly poison, from gazing upon the fruit, she fell to gaping after it, from touching to tasting [Trapp].
THE FIRST LIE. Gen_3:4
Sin entered our world by falsehood. As sin was thus introduced, so it has been very mainly sustained and propagated by lies; so says the Apostle John, and gives evidences of its truth.
I. At the author of this first lie. Satan—the devil—the deceiver—are the titles given him in Scripture, and Jesus says of him, He is a liar, and the father of lies, Joh_8:44. No doubt this was scenic or dramatic, with the tree in sight, as the conversation was held. Here is the earthly fountain of falsehood, and the author of the first lie.
II. The nature of the lie uttered. “Ye shall not surely die.” Observe, it was the direct falsification of God’s threatening, in absolute contradiction of God’s own Word. (Gen_2:17.)
III. It was a most daring and presumptuous lie. The height of desperate effrontery. A challenge of the Almighty. Bold collision with the God and Creator of the universe.
IV. It was a most malignant and envious lie. There can be no doubt that Satan saw and envied, and then hated the first human pair in their innocency and blessedness; and now, serpent like, he fascinates, and throws his horrid spell with fatal accuracy over the ready listeners, and then inserts the poisonous and venemous iniquity and ruin into the soul.
V. It was a destructive, murderous lie. So Jesus connects the first lie with the murder it effected. It slew our first parents—destroyed their innocency—blinded their minds—defiled their consciences—and overspread the soul with leprous defilement and guilt; and, as God had said, death not only arrested our first parents, and bound them with chains and fetters as guilty and condemned before Him.
VI. It was the germ of all unrealness and deception that should curse mankind. Now crookedness, illusion and deceit began their career. The false in all its forms and shades is traceable to this first lie. All ignorance—all error—all superstition—all base fear—all inward treason of heart, took their rise here. It poisoned the moral blood, degenerated the race, and introduced every hideous deformity and foul impurity into the human family and species.
VII. It was a lying entanglement from which humanity could not extricate itself. Man could rush into darkness, but could not find his way back to light and day—he could fall, but not restore himself—he could die, by choosing to do so, but he could not resuscitate or raise himself again to life. The Divine image was effaced—the Divine Spirit exorcised—the soul in its original glory destroyed.
VIII. Jesus, the Divine Truth, came to deliver us from this lie and its results. He was immediately promised as the woman’s conquering seed—He came, and was manifested to destroy the works of the devil—He overcame him in the wilderness, cast him and his demons out of the bodies and souls of men—He overthrew him on the Cross, entered his domains of death, and opened a royal passage through the tomb, and opened the gates of the second paradise to all believers. Hence, observe—
IX. The Gospel is the delivering power from Satan’s falsehoods. Christ is the Author and Prince of truth—His Word is truth—He makes this Word His own power to salvation. This is the remedy for Satan’s falsehood and malignity. By the Spirit and Word of Truth. He regenerates, sanctifies, and makes meet for eternal glory. By this His saved people defy Satan, and overcome his machinations and lies. The kingdom of Christ is the kingdom of truth—this truth of Christ is to destroy the kingdom of Satan, and renew the world in true holiness, and bring down the Tabernacle of God from heaven to earth.—(Dr. Burns.)
Gen_3:4. Once yielding to the tempter’s charm gives him greater boldness.
It is the devil’s method to draw souls from doubting God’s truth to deny it.
It is a strong delusion of Satan to persuade a sinner that he shall not die.
It is the initial property of the tempter to be a liar, to deny what God affirms.
The tempter deals in equivocations with double words and senses.
There is no truth of God so clear and manifest which Satan dare not contradict:—
1. Because he is a liar.
2. Because it concerns him to contradict fundamental truths.
3. Because he understands the corruption of the human heart.
Satan never makes use of God’s word, but for mischief.
Gen_3:5. Satan in all his promises gives men no ground to build upon but his own bare word.
Discontent at our present condition is a dangerous temptation of Satan:—
1. Of unthankfulness to God.
2. Of disgust to our own heart.
3. Of envy with our neighbours.
Self love and seeking is one of Satan’s most dangerous snares.
Satan tempts us to sin, not only in our pleasures and delights, but also in our duties:—
1. Because then we feel most secure.
2. Because then he will corrupt our best endeavours.
3. Let us look carefully at the motive of our best duties.
The searching after the knowledge of unnecessary things is one of Satan’s snares.
The special end that Satan persuades wicked men to aim at is that they may be as gods:—
1. To excel alone.
2. To be independent.
3. To be commanded by none.
4. To give account to none.
It is Satan’s policy to draw men to depend upon the creature, for that which only God can give.
Satan’s preferments are abasements.
Hasty resolutions prove commonly dangerous in the issue.
The nearer things are to be enjoyed, the more strongly the heart is affected by them:—
1. Then let us fix our eyes on our mercies.
2. Try to make the future present to our vision.
3. Think of the shortness of this present life.
It is a strong temptation on man to persuade enlightening by sinning.
In all the light pretended, Satan intends nothing but experience of nakedness and shame.
Gen_3:6. Man brought by Satan to unbelief is prepared for any wickedness.
Hearts slighting God’s word are given up to Satan to believe lies.
Hearts so seduced call that good which God calls evil.
Unbelief makes souls judge that meat which is poison and death by God’s word.
Unbelief stirs up lust in the eye, to that which we should loathe.
Forbidden things soonest stir up sinful desires.
Lust persuadeth there is wisdom to be had, where there is nothing but experience of evil.
The woman was first in the transgression, but the man equal.
Aggravated beyond all sin is the first transgression, being done wilfully, against such a God and such endowments.
Just is it with God to suffer men to fall, that choose it rather than steadfastness in his word.
Things usually appear to us as we stand affected toward them in our hearts.
It is dangerous to a man to fix his senses upon enticing objects.
Men are easily drawn to believe, and hope anything of that which they desire.
Man is an ill chooser of his own good.
It is not in the power of Satan to draw any man to sin without his own consent.
They that sin themselves are commonly seducers of others to sin.
One that is fallen into sin is many times most dangerous to his nearest friends:—
1. Because they are apt to communicate the evil.
2. Because they are powerful to prevail with friends.
3. In daily commerce.
THE MORAL ASPECT OF THE SENSES
Eden, whatever its geography, or physical characteristics, must be ever an interesting spot in the associations of humanity. Thither we trace our origin, our primitive greatness, our golden age, our ruin, and the first dawnings of redeeming love. Amongst the many suggestions with which this chapter is fraught, is the one contained in the text: The moral aspect of the senses.
I. That man requires a boundary for his senses. By prohibiting one tree, God declares that there must be a limitation to the gratification of the senses. This is a most important doctrine, and fearfully overlooked. But why should the senses be restricted?
1. Because an undue influence of the senses is perilous to the spiritual interests of men. The senses, as servants, are great blessings; as sovereigns, they become great curses. Fleshly lusts “war against the soul.”
2. Because man has the power of fostering his senses to an undue influence. Unlike the brute, his senses are linked to the faculty of imagination. By this he can give new edge and strength to his senses. He can bring the sensual provisions of nature into new combinations, and thereby not only strengthen old appetites, but create new ones. Thus we find men on all hands becoming the mere creatures of the senses—intellect and heart running into flesh. They are carnal.
II. That man’s moral nature is assailable through the senses. Thus Satan here assailed our first parents, and won the day. Thus he tempted Christ in the wilderness, and thus ever. His address is always to the passions. By sensual plays, songs, books, and elements, he rules the world. “Lust, when it is finished, bringeth forth sin.” This fact is useful for two purposes:—
1. To caution us against all institutions which aim mainly at the gratification of the senses. We may rest assured, that Satan is in special connection with these.
2. To caution us against making the senses the source of pleasure. It is a proof of the goodness of God that the senses yield pleasure; but it is a proof of depravity when man seeks his chief pleasure in them. Man should ever attend to them rather as means of relief than as sources of pleasure. He who uses them in this latter way, sinks brute-ward.
III. That man’s highest interests have been ruined by the senses, “She took of the fruit.” Here was the ruin. History teems with similar examples. Esau, the Jews in the wilderness, and David, are striking illustrations. Men’s highest interests—of intellect—conscience—soul—and eternity—are everywhere being ruined by the senses.—(Homilist.)
Gen_3:7. It is a great folly in men not to foresee evil before it be too late to help it.
Even those who discover not beforehand the evils which the error of their ways lead them into, yet they shall in the end feel deep misery:—
1. To bring them to repentance.
2. To make them more watchful in the future.
3. To give them a sweeter taste of God’s mercy.
Sin is able to make the most excellent and glorious of all God’s creatures vile and shameful:—
1. It defaces the image of God.
2. It separates man from God.
3. It disorders all the faculties of the soul.
Men are more apt to be sensible of, and to be more affected by, the outward evils that sin brings upon them, than with the sin that causeth them.
Garments are but the covers of our shame:—
1. For necessity—to keep off injury from the weather.
2. For distinction—of sexes—offices—degrees—nations.
Most of our necessities are brought upon us by shame.
Sin makes men fools.
All the care that men take is usually to hide their sin rather than to take it away.
Sin makes men very knowing in misery.
Sin strips stark naked of spiritual and bodily good.
Sin is ashamed of itself.
Sin is foolish in its patchings.
ILLUSTRATIONS
BY
REV. WM. ADAMSON
Death! Gen_3:1-7. A heathen exercised his genius in the formation of a goblet, in the bottom of which he fixed a serpent, whose model he had made. Coiled for the spring, a pair of gleaming eyes in its head, and in its open mouth fangs raised to strike, it lay beneath the ruby wine. As Guthrie says: Be assured that a serpent lurks at the bottom of guilt’s sweetest pleasure:—
“One drop of wisdom is far better
Than pleasures in whole bottomless abysses:
For sense’s fool must wear remorse’s fetter,
When duty’s servant reigns where endless
bliss is.”—Oriental.
Sin! Gen_3:1-7. Anthony Burgess says that sin is a Delilah, a sweet passion tickling while it stabs. Eve saw that the tree was pleasant to the eye, and from its fragrance likely to be good for food, a delicious morsel. Dr. Cuyler forcibly illustrates this by reference to the Judas tree. The blossoms appear before the leaves, and they are of a brilliant crimson. The flaming beauty of the flowers attracts innumerable insects; and the wandering bee is drawn after it to gather honey. But every bee which alights upon the blossom, imbibes a fatal opiate, and drops dead from among the crimson flowers to the earth. Well may it be said that beneath this tree the earth is strewn with the victims of its fatal fascinations: Yet
“ ‘How can it be,’ say they, ‘that such a thing,
So full of sweetness, e’er should wear a sting?’
They know not that it is the very spell
Of sin, to make men laugh themselves to hell.”
Open Eyes! Gen_3:1-7. Sometime ago passengers in the streets of Paris were attracted to the figure of a woman on the parapet of a roof in that city. She had fallen asleep in the afternoon, and under the influence of somnambulism had stepped out of an open window on to the edge of the house. There she was walking to and fro to the horror of the gazers below, who expected every moment to witness a false step and terrible fall. They dared not shout, lest by awakening her inopportunely they should be only hastening on the inevitable calamity. But this came soon enough; for moving, as somnambulists do, with open eyes, the reflection of a lamp lit in an opposite window by an artisan engaged in some mechanical operation, all unconscious of what was going on outside, aroused her from sleep. The moment her eyes were opened to discover the perilous position in which she had placed herself, she tottered, fell, and was dashed below. Such is the sleep of sin; it places the soul on the precipice of peril, and when the spell is broken it leaves the sinner to fall headlong into the gulf of woe. Thus—
“No thief so vile nor treacherous as sin,
Whom fools do hug, and take such pleasure in.”
Nakedness! Gen_3:1-7. Their eyes were opened to see that they were not what they had been before. And we come to the same conclusion as we survey ourselves, that man is not the same creature with which God crowned the glorious work of creation. There is moral nakedness. He is like a creature of the air which a cruel hand has stripped of its silken wings. How painfully he resembles this hapless object which has just fallen on the pages of a book that we read by the candle on an autumn evening! It retains the wish, but is conscious that it has lost the power to fly:—
Soul, thou art fallen from thine ancient place,
Mayest thou in this mean world find nothing great,
Nor ought that shall the memories efface
Of that true greatness which was once thine own.”—Trench.
Watchfulness! Gen_3:1. I have read of a monarch that, being pursued by the enemy, threw away the crown of gold on his head, in order that he might run the faster. So, that sin, which thou dost wear as a crown of gold, throw it away, that thou mayest run the faster to the kingdom of heaven. Oh! if you would not lose glory be on your guard, mortify the beloved sin; set it as Uriah in the forefront of the battle to be slain. By plucking out this right eye you shall see the better to go to heaven. By cutting off this right arm you will be the more prepared for Satan. In such case you may confidently expect aid, for—
“Behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above His own.”—Lowell.
Conditions! Gen_3:1. No man is truly prosperous whose mortality is forfeited. No man is rich to whom the grave brings eternal bankruptcy. No man is happy on whose path there rests but a momentary glimmer of light shining out between clouds that are closing over him for ever. Satan makes many promises, but his conditions are equally numerous—and vastly more serious than his promises are precious. The Lord’s temptation in the wilderness: Fall down and worship me! Ye shall be as gods! Such are the promise and condition—the one false, because the other devilish. His promises allure, and if we do not consider the conditions, the chances are against our resistance.
“The simple boy—far from his father’s care,
Is well nigh taken with the gilded snare.”—Holmes.
Association! Gen_3:2. Evil communications corrupt good manners! One day Robert’s father saw him playing with some boys who were rude and unmannerly. In the evening he brought from the garden six rosy-cheeked apples, put them on a plate, and presented them to his son, who was much pleased, and thanked his father. “But you must lay them aside for a few days that they may become mellow.” This was done, his father at the same time placing a seventh apple, which was quite rotten. To this the boy demurred on the ground that the decayed fruit would spoil all the others; but the father remarked: “Why should not the fresh apples make the rotten ones fresh?” Eight days afterwards the apples were brought forth—all of them equally decayed; whereupon Robert reminded his father of what he had said. “My boy, have I not told you often that bad companions will make you bad? See in the condition of the apples what will happen to you if you keep company with the wicked.” Exactly so was it with Satan. Eve held intercourse with him, but did not make him better:—
“The tempting fruit outspread before her eyes,
Filled her with rapture and complete surprise;
Nor hidden dangers will she wait to see,
But onward hastens to the fatal tree.”
Dread of Sin! Gen_3:3. Holy fear is the doorkeeper of the soul. As a nobleman’s porter stands at the door and keeps out vagrants, so the fear of God stands and keeps all sinful temptations from entering. And if we only learn to fear God—i.e., to stand in awe and sin not—in the right way, we shall learn at the same time never to fear anything else. The righteous are bold as a lion.
“Fear Him, ye saints, and ye will then
Have nothing else to fear.”
Contamination! Gen_3:4. In Adam all die. As the electric shock passes through the frames of all who are linked hand in hand, so passed the shock of sin’s magnetic power of death through all the human race. As the poison imbibed by the lips flows through every vein of the body—penetrating its every vital part till death ensues, so the sin committed by our first parents has flashed its virus through every member of the human race:—
“One little sin that mystic cup did fill,
And yet it poured on, and poureth still
The tainting horrors of all pain and ill.”—Alger.
Indecision! Gen_3:4. Some months ago, says a New York writer, I met a young Englishwoman who came to this city to marry a young man to whom she had been betrothed in England, and who had come to this country two years previous to engage in business. She was to marry him at the home of a friend of her mother’s with whom she was staying. During the time she was making up her wedding outfit, he came to see her one evening when he was just drunk enough to be foolish. She was shocked and pained beyond measure. She afterwards learned that he was in the habit of drinking to excess. She immediately stopped her preparations, and told him she could not marry him. He protested that she would drive him to distraction; promised never to drink another drop, &c. “No,” said the young maiden, “I dare not trust my future happiness to a drunkard. I came 3,000 miles, and I will return 3,000 miles.” And she did. Had Eve but said: “No, I will not trust my future happiness to a maligner of God; get thee hence, Satan”—how different would this once fair world be now at this distant date! Yield to no offer, however tempting, which depends on, or is allied with, dishonour to God, disobedience to His statutes, or destructive to our immortal welfare.
“See yon tall shaft; it felt the earthquake’s thrill,
Clung to its base, and greets the sunrise still”—Wendell.
Gods! Gen_3:5. If we are to credit the annals of the Russian empire, there once existed a noble order of merit, which was greatly coveted by the princes and noblesse. It was, however, conferred only on the peculiar favourites of the Czar, or on the distinguished heroes of the kingdom. But another class shared in its honour in a very questionable form. Those nobles or favourites who either became a burden to the Czar or who stood in his way, received this decoration only to dic. The pinpoint was tipped with poison—and when the order was being fastened on the breast by the imperial messenger, the flesh of the person was accidentally pricked. Death ensued, as next morning the individual so highly honoured with imperial favour, was found dead in bed from apoplexy. Satan offered to confer a brilliant decoration upon Adam and Eve; Ye shall be as Gods. It was poisoned: the wages of sin is death. As Bunyan says, look to thyself, then, keep it out of doors.
“’Tis like the panther, or the crocodile,
It seems to love, and promises no wile,
It hides its sting, seems harmless as a dove;
It hugs the soul, and hates when ’t vows most love.”
Vain Regrets! Gen_3:7. A pointsman was on duty somewhere in America. The express was due; but instead of turning the points as he ought, and as day after day for many years he had done, he neglected his duty—the train rushed past in safety, as the engine-driver, guard, and passengers supposed. Alas! not so. In less time than you can read it all was a hopeless wreck, and not one of all that number in the train survived. And what of the poor pointsman, who that once (perhaps the only time) had neglected his duty? He rushed from the spot a hopeless maniac, and his incessant cry since that terrible event has been, “Oh! if I only had!” Nothing else has he said since; and probably for years to come that one sentence will ring through the room of the asylum where he is now confined.
“By the dark shape of what he is, serene
Stands the bright ghost of what he might have been.”—Lytton.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Sermon Bible 1900 · Public Domain On v1 I. Satan’s temptations begin by laying a doubt at…
Gen 3:1
I. Satan’s temptations begin by laying a doubt at the root. He questions; he unsettles. He does not assert error; he does not contradict truth; but he confounds both. He makes his first entries, not by violent attack, but by secret sapping; he endeavours to confuse and cloud the mind which he is afterwards going to kill.
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II. The particular character of these troublesome and wicked questionings of the mind varies according to the state and temperament and character of each individual. (1) In order to combat them, every one should have his mind stored and fortified with some of the evidences of the Christian religion. To these he should recur whenever he feels disquieted; he should be able to give "a reason for the hope that is in him," and an answer to that miserable shadow that flits across his mind, "Yea, hath God said?". (2) A man must be careful that his course of life is not one giving advantage to the tempter. He must not be dallying under the shadow of the forbidden tree, lest the tempter meet him and he die.
III. The far end of Satan is to diminish from the glory of God. To mar God’s design he insinuated his wily coil into the garden of Eden; to mar God’s design he met Jesus Christ in the wilderness, on the mountain top, and on the pinnacle of the temple; to mar God’s design he is always leading us to take unworthy views of God’s nature and God’s work.
J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons, 1874, p. 172 (Good Words, 1867, p. 310).
The tempter effected his purpose in Eden: (1) by a question; (2) by a negation; (3) by a promise.
I. By a question. (1) Have we ever reflected on the tremendous power of a question? Some of the most important social and intellectual revolutions have sprung from a question. And it was through a question that the greatest of all revolutions was effected, by which man, made in the image of God, was seduced from his allegiance—a question that has carried with it consequences of which no man can foresee the end. (2) Mark the subtlety of the question. It aimed at destroying the blessed fellowship between God and man. "Men ask in vain," says Luther, "what was the particular sin to which Eve was tempted." The solicitation was to all sins when she was tempted to doubt the word and the goodwill of God.
II. The tempter makes the way to sin easy by removing all fear of the consequences. There is the negation, "Ye shall not surely die." We listen to the lie, and we stake our all, for time and for eternity, upon this blank and cruel negation.
III. The Satanic promise, Gen 3:5. (1) It is malevolent: "God doth know"; He has a reason for the restriction; He dreads a rival. (2) It is fascinating: "Ye shall be as gods." The perverted pride of man’s heart is the tempter’s best ally.
J. J. S. Perowne, Anglican Pulpit of To-day, p. 209. (See also Contemporary Pulpit, vol. v., p. 119; and Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxiii., p. 13.)
References: Gen 3:1.—B. Waugh, Sunday Magazine (1887), p. 348; Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxv., p. 113. Gen 3:1-5.—C. J. Vaughan, Voices of the Prophets, p. 237; D. Wilson, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxv., p. 113; Bishop Harvey Goodwin, Parish Sermons vol. v., p. 17; Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. xii., p. 78, xviii., p. 83; Parker, vol. i., p. 132; R. S. Candlish, Book of Genesis, vol. i., p. 60; N. Blackwood, Sunday Magazine (1885), p. 235. Gen 3:1-13.—Homiletic Quarterly, vol. iv., p. 551. Gen 3:1-16.—Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. iv., p. 146. Gen 3:2, Gen 3:3.—H. Melvill, Sermons on Less Prominent Facts, vol. ii., p. 107. Gen 3:3.—J. Keble, Sermons for the Christian Year, vol. iii., p. 118.
Gen 3:4
I. There are many things against which God has uttered His voice in every man’s heart; in which, even independently of written revelation, He has not left Himself without witness. He who lives in concealed or open sin knows full well that God hath said he shall surely die. But in the moment of temptation the certainty of ruin is met by a counter assertion of the tempter, "Thou shalt not surely die": "Do the act and cast the consequences to the winds." We have a notable instance of this in the case of the prophet Balaam. Men with the full consciousness that God is against them persist in opposition to Him, till they perish; persuading themselves, from one step to another, that matters shall not turn out so badly as God’s words and God’s monitor within tell them that they shall.
II. There are other classes of persons, besides notorious profligates who are caught by this device, "Thou shalt not surely die. (1) God has declared, "To be carnally minded is death." To be carnally minded is to be of the mind of the children of this world, to view things through a worldly medium, to pass day by day without a thought beyond this world, and as if there were no life after this life. Of this kind of life God has said that it is death, that those who live it shall surely die—nay, are dying now; and by this is meant that such a life is the immortal spirit’s ruin, that it breaks up and scatters and wastes all man’s best and highest faculties. What can await those who frustrate the best ends of their being but misery and ruin? "Ye shall not surely die" is the tempter’s fallacy with which he deludes the carnally minded. He persuades them that they can give this life to God’s enemy, and yet inherit life eternal. (2) God has said, "He that hath the Son hath life; but he that hath not the Son of God hath not life"—i.e., "If ye have not the Son of God ye shall surely die." How many of us have any persuasion of the reality of this sentence of death? How many have cared enough about it to ascertain what it is to have the Son of God? Whosoever has not by his own personal act taken Christ as his, has not life, and must certainly die eternally: first by the very nature of things, for the desire for God has never been awakened in his heart, the guilt of sin has not been removed from him, nor its power over him broken; and then by solemn declarations of the God of truth—"He that believeth not the Son shall not see life, for the wrath of God abideth on him."
III. Mysterious as the history of our fall is, its greatest wonder is this: that God out of ruin hath brought forth fresh beauty; out of man’s defeat, His victory; out of death, life glorious and eternal. Thou shall surely live is now the Divine proclamation to man’s world. "Behold the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the world."
H. Alford, Quebec Chapel Sermons, vol. i., p. 100.
References: Gen 3:4.—B. Waugh, Sunday Magazine (1887), p.211. Gen 3:4, Gen 3:5.—E. B. Pusey, Lenten Sermons, p. 107. Gen 3:4-6.—E. Blencowe, Plain Sermons to a Country Congregation, 2nd series, p. 101. Gen 3:5.—J. Van Oosterzee, The Year of Salvation, vol. ii., p. 326; Expositor, 3rd series, vol. ii., p. 399; Parker, vol. i., p. 362. Gen 3:6.—H. Thompson, Concionalia, vol. i., p. 76; Sermons for the Christian Seasons (1853), 1st series, vol. i., p. 217; G. Calthrop, Pulpit Recollections, p. 1. Gen 3:6-21.—R. S. Candlish, Book of Genesis, vol. i., p. 71. Gen 3:6-8.—J. A. Macdonald, The Pulpit Analyst, vol. i., p. 301. Gen 3:7.—J. Van Oosterzee, The Year of Salvation, vol. ii., p. 326; Homiletic Magazine, vol. xv., p. 239.
Gen 3:8
I. That which strikes us first of all is, that Adam represents the average sinner. A man may do worse than Adam. Many men have done and do worse than hide themselves from God after outraging Him by sin. Adam’s conduct proves that the sense of God’s presence, awfulness, greatness, was still intact in his soul.
II. "They hid themselves." It was not the result of a consultation; it was an instinct. Two motives would concurrently have determined the action of Adam. (1) Fear. God’s greatness was now the measure of the terror of the creature who had dared to disobey Him. (2) Shame. Adam had felt a fear of God in his unfallen life which differed from the cowering fear of his guilty conscience much as a healthy circulation of the blood might differ from the pulse of fever. But shame was an absolutely new thing, unlike any other capacity or experience in himself with which our first father had been previously acquainted. As the greatness of God was the measure of Adam’s fear, so his own lost greatness was the measure of Adam’s shame.
III. "Amongst the trees of the garden." The trees beneath the shade of which the human soul seeks refuge from its God are: (1) pleasure; (2) occupation; (3) moral rationalism.
IV. We have no difficulty in characterising this act of Adam as foolish and irrational. It was so: (1) because it was to attempt the impossible; and (2) because it was to fly from the one hope and opening for restoration and safety.
H. P. Liddon, Cambridge Lent Sermons, 1864, p. 23.
References: Gen 3:8.—H. Hayman, Rugby School Chapel, p. 159; W. Meller, Village Homilies, p. 212; G. Matheson, Moments on the Mount, p. 1; H. Macmillan, The Olive Leaf, p. 241; C. Kingsley, Gospel of the Pentateuch, p. 41; Spurgeon, Evening by Evening, p. 184; J. H. Blunt, Miscellaneous Sermons by Clergymen of the Church of England, p. 93; B. Waugh, Sunday Magazine (1887), pp. 138, 209; G. Calthrop, Pulpit Recollections, p. 16.
Gen 3:8-9
As the account of Eve’s temptation and fall truly represents the course of corruption and sin, so the behaviour of our first parents afterwards answers exactly to the feelings and conduct of those who have forfeited their innocence and permitted the devil to seduce them into actual sin. Shame makes the sinner shrink and draw back, and not endure to have his thoughts and doings watched by any eye whatever. As often as he sins wilfully, he must secretly wish there were no God to see him, and he will be tempted to do all he can to forget God, and so hide himself for a time from His presence.
I. Any one sin, wilfully indulged, leads to profaneness and unbelief, and tends to blot the very thought of God out of our hearts.
II. Much in the same way are backsliding Christians led to invent or accept notions of God and His judgment, as though He in His mercy permitted them to be hidden and covered, when in truth they cannot be so.
III. The same temper naturally leads us to be more or less false towards men also, trying to seem better than we are; delighting to be praised, though we know how little we deserve it. Among particular sins it would seem that two especially dispose the heart towards this kind of falsehood: (1) sensuality; (2) dishonesty.
IV. When any Christian person has fallen into sin and seeks to hide himself from the presence of the Lord, God is generally so merciful that He will not suffer that man to be at ease and forget Him. He calls him out of his hiding-place, as He called Adam from among the trees. No man is more busy in ruining himself, and hiding from the face of his Maker, than He, our gracious Saviour, is watchful to awaken and save him.
Plain Sermons by Contributors to "Tracts for the Times," vol. viii., p. 34.
References: Gen 3:8, Gen 3:9.—J. Keble, Sermons for the Christian Year, vol. iii., p. 139; T. Birkett Dover, A Lent Manual, p. 1.
Gen 3:9
I. Note here the anticipative sentence of the human conscience pronouncing doom on itself. The guilty rebel hides from the Divine Presence.
II. The inexorable call which brings him immediately into the Divine Presence.
III. The bringing to light of the hidden things of darkness.
The soul has many hiding-places. There are: (1) The hiding-place of self-complacent propriety; (2) the hiding-place of the reasoner; (3) the hiding-place of theological dogmas. But the true hiding-place for the soul is Jesus.
W. Hay Aitken, Mission Sermons, 2nd series, p. 1.
I. The speaker is God; the person spoken to is the representative of us all.
II. The call is: (1) individual; (2) universal.
III. God calls in three ways: (1) in conscience; (2) in providence; (3) in revelation.
IV. His call is: (1) to attention; (2) to recognition of God’s being; (3) to reflection on our own place and position.
V. It is a call which each must answer for himself, and which each ought to answer without delay.
C. J. Vaughan, Penny Pulpit, No. 3263.
Here God asks an important question: "Where art thou?" (1) Where are you?—are you in God’s family or out of it? When you are baptised, you are put into God’s family upon certain conditions—that you will do certain things; and it depends upon you how you live, because if you do not love God you cannot be God’s child. (2) Supposing you are one of God’s children, "Where art thou?"—near to thy Father or far from Him?—because some children are nearer to their fathers than others. Mary and Martha were sisters, and they were both Christians, but one was much nearer to Christ than the other. Mary sat at Jesus’ feet, Martha was "troubled about many things." If we delight to tell Jesus everything, then we shall be near God. (3) Are you in the sunshine or the shade? If you follow Christ you will always be in the sunshine, because He is the Sun. (4) Are you in the path of duty? Are you where you ought to be? The path of duty is a narrow path, sometimes a steep path. God could say to many of us, as He said to Elijah, "What doest thou here?"—thou art out of the path of duty. (5) How have you progressed? The surest way to know that we get on is to be very humble. When the wheat is ripe it hangs down; the full ears hang the lowest.
J. Vaughan, Sermons to Children, 1875, p. 177.
References: Gen 3:9.—J. Keble, Sermons for the Christian Year, vol. iii., p. 129; J. Van Oosterzee, The Year of Salvation, vol. i., p. 5; Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. vii., No. 412; G. Brooks, Five Hundred Outlines of Sermons (1887), p. 276.
Gen 3:10
How deep are the lessons involved in the story of the fall, and how little are they affected by any of the numerous criticisms to which it has given rise! The lessons to be here learnt are moral, not ethnological; spiritual, not scientific. For even if the facts be not literal, they remain divinely and unalterably true. The history is no dead letter, but a living symbol; it contains the very essence and principle of the whole matter, and he who would have a thorough insight into the origin of sin may learn more from these few and simple verses than from all else that the united energy of mankind has ever discovered on the subject with which they deal.
I. The first lesson from the story of the fall is the necessity for constant watchfulness. None, not even the oldest warrior, can ever in this world lay aside one piece of his panoply; for our warfare is a warfare in which there is no discharge. At the door of your hearts, no less than at that of the first murderer, sin is crouching like some wild beast of prey; but "subject unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him."
II. Beware of underrating the exceeding sinfulness of sin. Echo not the scornful and faithless question, "Yea, hath God said?" Woe be to the man who dares to exalt his petty impotence against the divine majesty of the moral law! To violate it is a peril, to deny it a blasphemy which brings its own crushing Nemesis behind.
III. Beware of the theory that sin indeed may be sinful, but that no strict notice will be taken, no stern account exacted for the sins of your youth; beware of the wicked and perilous theory that you can sow your wild oats now. Reverence yourselves in reverencing the high and merciful commands of God. You are called by this high calling to be holy and pure.
F. W. Farrar, The Fall of Man and other Sermons, p. I
Gen 3:10
(with Psa 143:9).
I. Consider, first, the sinner hiding himself. Some common retreats of the sinner are: (1) complete thoughtlessness; (2) the occupations of life; (3) the moralities of life; (4) the forms and observances of religion.
II. Adam is the type of the fleeing sinner. David is the type of the fleeing saint: "I flee unto Thee to hide me," (1) from the terrors of the law; (2) from the hostility and the hatred of men; (3) from the trials and calamities of life; (4) from the fear and the tyranny of death.
A. Raleigh, Quiet Resting-places, p. 235.
Reference: Gen 3:11.—J. Purchas, Miscellaneous Sermons by Clergymen of the Church of England, p. 25.
Gen 3:12
I. Adam, we find, was not content to be in the image of God. He and his wife wanted to be as gods, knowing good and evil. He wanted to be independent, and show that he knew what was good for him: he ate the fruit which he was forbidden to eat, partly because it was fair and well-tasted, but still more to show his own independence. When he heard the voice of the Lord, when he was called out, and forced to answer for himself, he began to make pitiful excuses. He had not a word to say for himself. He threw the blame on his wife. It was all the woman’s fault,—indeed, it was God’s fault. "The woman whom Thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat."
II. What Adam did once we have done a hundred times, and the mean excuse which Adam made but once we make again and again. But the Lord has patience with us, as He had with Adam, and does not take us at our word. He knows our frame and remembers that we are but dust. He sends us out into the world, as He sent Adam, to learn experience by hard lessons, to eat our bread in the sweat of our brow till we have found out our own weakness and ignorance, and have learned that we cannot stand alone, that pride and self-dependence will only lead us to guilt and misery and shame and meanness; that there is no other name under heaven by which we can be saved from them, but only the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
C. Kingsley, The Good News of God, p. 347.
Reference: Gen 3:12.—Bishop Armstrong, Parochial Sermons, p. 85
Gen 3:13
I. The record before us is the history of the first sin. It needed no revelation to tell us that sin is, that mankind is sinful. Without, within, around, and inside us, is the fact, the experience, the evidence, the presence of sin. It is sin which makes life troublous and gives death its sting. The revelation of the fall tells of an entrance, of an inburst of evil into a world all good, into a being created upright,—tells, therefore, of a nature capable of purity, of an enemy that may be expelled, and of a holiness possible because natural. From man’s fall we infer a fall earlier yet and more mysterious. Once sin was not; and when it entered man’s world it entered under an influence independent, not inherent.
II. The first sin is also the specimen sin. It is in this sense, too, the original sin, that all other sins are copies of it. Unbelief first, then disobedience; then corruption, then self-excusing; then the curse and the expulsion,—turn the page and you shall find a murder!
III. The original sin is also the infectious sin. The New Testament derives this doctrine from the history, that there is a taint or corruption in the race by reason of the fall; that it is not only a following of Adam by the deliberate independent choice of each one of us which is the true account of our sinning; but this rather,—an influence and infection of evil, derived and inherited by us from all that ancestry of the transgressor. Not one man of all the progeny of Adam has drawn his first breath or his latest in an atmosphere pure and salubrious. Before, behind him, around and above, there has been the heritage of weakness, the presence and pressure of an influence in large part evil. Fallen sons of a fallen forefather, God must send down His hand from above if we are to be rescued ever out of these deep, these turbid waters.
C. J. Vaughan, Half-hours in the Temple Churchy p. 55 (also Good Words, 1870, p. 331).
References: Gen 3:13.—J. E. Vaux, Sermon Notes, 1st series, p. 32; J. H. Newman, Oxford University Sermons, p. 136; Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. xviii., p. 83.
Gen 3:14-15
Several important difficulties suggest themselves in the text.
I. The scientific difficulty. The serpent really bears no trace of degradation; its structure is as beautifully adapted to its place in nature as that of the lion or the eagle. Neither can it be said to eat dust: its food consists of the small animals which are its prey.
II. The moral objection. Why was the serpent punished for what he did not do? Shall God visit the craft of the devil on his helpless and unconscious victim?
The answer is, These two objections neutralise each other. If the moralist tells us that God could not have meant to punish the serpent for what the serpent did not do, the man of science assures us that in fact He did not punish him. The real severity of the sentence lighted on the real offender, the devil, while the mere form of it was accommodated to the apparent structure and habits of the serpent.
III. If it was the tempter that sinned, why did not the Almighty sentence him openly as the tempter? Because there is a very marked reserve in the Old Testament on the subject of the personal author of evil. The reason of this is obvious: men were not able to bear the knowledge of their great spiritual enemy until their Deliverer was at hand. If we perceive that it was not the will of God at that time to reveal to man the existence of the evil one, we can readily understand why He permitted him to retain his serpent guise.
R. Winterbotham, Sermons and Expositions, p. 8
References: Gen 3:14, Gen 3:15.—Expositor, 2nd series, vol. vii., p. 56; Homiletic Quarterly, vol. iii., p. 199. Gen 3:14-24.—J. Cumming, Church before the Flood, pp. 133, 156.
Gen 3:15
I. The first intention of the work of Christ upon this earth is a declaration of war: His warfare and our warfare; the warfare of persons and the warfare of "seeds"; of the two great principles of good and evil.
II. Christ did bruise and crush the serpent’s head—his strength, his being, his whole vitality. He fought alone in each great single combat. When the cross was reared against the power of the arch-enemy the crushing was complete; and when He, Conqueror over the conquered grave, rose again, then the crushed head had received its death-blow.
III. The worst possible position in which men can be placed is a state in which there is no inward spiritual conflict. Quiet in the soul is the quiet of the grave. Where there is conflict there is life.
J. Vaughan, Sermons, 9th series, p. 53.
I. Notice the fall as a history. The consequences of the fall were: (1) shame; (2) fear; (3) self-excusing; (4) punishment; (5) an exclusion from the original Paradise and from the tree of immortal life within it.
II. Notice the fall in its typical and representative character. (1) Something is presented for consideration. Ponderings of sin, parleyings with temptation—these are the things which we must resist, if we would keep ourselves unspotted and pure in the great matter of the soul’s life. (2) For see how bold the tempter becomes who has once got a hearing. He ventures upon challenging God’s prohibition; says out, "Ye shall not surely die." (3) Sin cannot rest till it has drawn others in. The woman must make her husband eat; the friend corrupts his friend; the brother entices his brother; and so a deluge of misery enters the world in one drop of sin. (4) Man, even fallen man, differs from the evil spirit in this,—that he still, at least in the early days, is conscious to himself of his own sin; is but half its friend; has many misgivings and many self-reproaches, even though his life is defiled and spoilt with transgression; and herein lies for man a possibility of redemption, which for fallen angels is not.
III. Notice the fall in its reversal. (1) Read as a reversal of Adam’s fall the record of our Lord’s temptation. Then did the "strong man armed" meet a stronger than himself, and retire from the encounter foiled and vanquished. (2) Thus has it been in a lower degree with all who in Christ’s name have gone forth to the conflict with temptation. (3) Read finally in this light the last chapters of the Book of God.
C. J. Vaughan, Christ the Light of the World, p. 112.
This text contains: (1) a promise of Christ; (2) a prophecy of His sufferings; (3) a prophecy of His final triumph.
R. W. Dibdin, Penny Pulpit, No. 1872.
I. The first time Prophecy opened her lips, it was to pronounce these words. To our first parents they were full of hope and consolation. In some mysterious way their loss was to be repaired; a Deliverer was to be provided. This promise was all their Bible. What, in truth, is all the rest of Scripture but the development of this great primeval promise of a Redeemer?
II. Never for an instant was this tremendous announcement absent from the recollection of the enemy of our race. Thoroughly versed in Scripture (as the history of the Temptation proves), he watched with intense anxiety the progress of prophetic announcement to mankind concerning One that was to come.
III. It is not to be supposed for an instant that Satan understood the mystery of our Lord’s Incarnation. Caught in the depths of that unimaginable mystery, he did not know until it was too late that it was Very and Eternal God with whom he had entered into personal encounter. Repulsed in the wilderness, he was made fully aware of the personal advent of his great Enemy. At the death of Christ the kingdom which he had been consolidating for four thousand years was in a single moment shattered to its base.
IV. The history of the fall plainly intimates that on the side of the flesh man is most successfully assaulted by temptation, Four thousand years of warfare have convinced the enemy of our peace that on this side the citadel is weakest, is most easily surprised, is most probably captured.
J. W. Burgon, Oxford and Cambridge Undergraduates’ Journal, Feb. 19th, 1880.
References: Gen 3:15.—Phillips Brooks, Twenty Sermons, p. 93; S. Leathes, Truth and Life, p. 14; J. Monro Gibson, The Ages before Moses, p. 98; H. Melvill, Sermons, p. 1; J. G. Murphy, The Book of Daniel, p. 3; Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxii., No. 1326; T. Arnold, Sermons, vol. vi., p. 9; C. H. Bromby, Good Words (1879), p. 169; W. Arnot, The Anchor of the Soul, p. 68; B. Waugh, Sunday Magazine (1887), pp. 351, 352; R. Glover, By the Waters of Babylon, p. 218, A. B. Grosart, Congregationalist, vol. ii., p. 170.
Gen 3:17
The ground is our first lesson-book. Notice (1) A man does not cultivate the land by waving his hand majestically over it. The land says, "If you want anything out of me you must work for it. I answer labour, I respond to industry, I reply to the importunity of toil." That is the great law of social progress. (2) The ground does not obey the dashing and angry passions of any man. The green field does not turn white, though you curse over it till you foam again at the mouth. We cannot compel nature to keep pace with our impatience; man cannot hasten the wheel of the seasons; he cannot drive nature out of its calm and solemn movement; his own fields keep him at bay. (3) Then I see God stooping and writing with His finger on the ground, and when He erects Himself and withdraws, behold the Bible He has written. "Behold the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he receive the early and the latter rain"; "Be not deceived, God is not mocked, for whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap." See the earth inscribed with terms like these, and learn from the land how to live. (4) Spiritual cultivation, like the culture of the land, cannot be hastened. You cannot extemporise moral greatness; it is a slow growth. (5) Spiritual cultivation is sometimes very hard.
Circumstances are heavily against us; we are not placed in favourable localities, or under very gracious conditions. Let us be thankful to God if, though faint, we are still pursuing.
Parker, vol. i., p. 138.
I. The text suggests some of the mysteries by which we are surrounded. There is (1) the universal fact of sin everywhere existing; (2) the sorrow which is stamped upon the whole race; (3) the toil that is a condition of humanity.
II. The text supplies a solution by which these mysteries are brought into reconciliation with right views of the nature and character of the Eternal. Out of man’s evil and man’s transgression God contrives blessing. Sorrow in itself is an apparent evil; as God manages it, it is the harbinger of joy. It was the curse, but it also brings the blessing. There is hardness and difficulty in toil, but in occupation God has given us enjoyment. It keeps the mind and heart in active and energetic power. Even the curse of sin becomes in God’s hands a blessing. There is no brighter happiness for man than the sense of being forgiven.
A. Boyd, Penny Pulpit, No. 209.
References: Gen 3:17, Gen 3:18.—H. Macmillan, Two Worlds are Ours, p. 62; E. Irving, Sermons, vol. iii., p. 1025. Gen 3:17-19.—G. Calthrop, Pulpit Recollections, p. 29.
Gen 3:17-19
This was almost the first curse revealed to us as pronounced by God, and yet it is almost the first blessing.
I. At first sight we are not prepared to admit that labour is a blessing. We shrink from the misery of task-work, which must be got through when we are least fitted to carry it on; the very word repose suggests all that is most coveted by men. It was a true instinct which led the old mythologist to invent the fable of Sisyphus and his stone, and to see in that punishment an image of horrible torture. Labour which is only laborious is and always must be grievous to endure.
II. On all the sons of Adam there is an absolute necessity of labour imposed. We may recognise the necessity and submit to it with gratitude, and then we find in it every hour a blessing; or we may rebel against it, and then we turn it as far as we can into a curse. The sweetness of leisure consists in the change from our ordinary employments, not in a cessation of all employment.
III. Lying side by side with the blessing of labour there is also a curse. "Thorns also and thistles shall the earth bring forth," says God. Work is grievous and irksome when it is unfruitful—when, after much toil, there is nothing to show. But let us be sure that if the work is done for God’s glory, and in His name, the fruit will spring up in His time.
A. Jessopp, Norwich School Sermons, p. 253. Reference: Gen 3:17-19.—J. J. S. Perowne, Sermons, p. 189.
Gen 3:19
(with Psa 16:6)
Notice:—
I. The necessity of toil, of hard, stern, constant strain, is at first connected with transgression. Like death, it is the child of sin. This broad fact of human experience is symbolised in the narrative of the expulsion from Eden, and the sentence on earth as well as on man (Gen 3:17). There is blessing in toil to him who can get up into the higher regions and see how out of the very extremity of human pain and endurance God can bring forth fruits which shall be rich and fair throughout eternity. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, of toil or suffering which is other than blessed to the man who believes.
II. Consider what is the fundamental principle of this ordinance of toil. (1) It is ordained to restore man to a true and living relation with the whole system of things around him. Transgression placed him in a false relation to everything within and around him—to the constitution of his own nature, to the world, to man, and to God. He thought to be master in this world: God made him serve with a hard service, to break his strong, imperious will to obedience again. Toil is the beginning of obedience; it is a submission to the Divine law. On this sentence of labour God bases all His culture of our spirits; by this He keeps alive the desire and the hope of deliverance. (2) Toil is ordained to draw forth the full unfolding of the whole power and possibility of man’s being, with a view to the system of things before him, the world of his eternal citizenship, his perfect and developed life. Be sure that it is the last strain that drags out the most precious fibre of faculty, or trains the organs to the keenest perception, the most complete expansion, the most perfect preparation for the higher work and joy of life.
J. Baldwin Brown, The Christian World Pulpit, vol. v., p. 321.
Gen 3:19
I. Men know not that they shall die, even though they confess it with their lips almost daily. If we consider what death is, we see that men who know its approach will act in all things as in the fear of it. There is no more startling paradox in the wonders of our nature than this, that men in general are thoughtless about death. When our own turn comes and there is no escape, then, for the first time, we really believe in death.
II. Death is a fearful thing, because of the great change that it implies in all our being. Life is that power by which we act and think and love and intend and hope. And suppose that all our energies have been wasted on things that cannot follow us into the grave, then how can we conceive of any life at all beyond this? When we know that we must die, we feel about for something in us that shall not perish, some thread of continuity to knit our present and future life into one; and if we have never lived for God, never realised the difference between treasures of earth and treasures of heaven, we find nothing that shall assure us of that other life. We start back in horror from a grave so dark and so profound.
III. If these two terrors were all, some at least would not fear to die, would even court death as a repose. But there is yet another terror. Death means judgment. To die is to meet God. You tremble because you stand before a Judge of infinite power, whose wrath no man can resist; before a Judge of infinite wisdom, who shall call back your acts out of the distant past and lay bare the secret thoughts of your spirit.
IV. Accept the salvation purchased for you with Christ’s passion, then death cannot come suddenly upon you, for the thought of it will have sobered all your days. The day of account will still be terrible, but the belief that you are reconciled to God through the blood of Jesus will sustain you.
Archbishop Thomson, Life in the Light of God’s Word, p. 25.
References: Gen 3:19.—H. Alford, Sermons, p. 228; Bishop Harvey Goodwin, Parish Sermons, vol. v., p. 32; S. Baring-Gould, Village Preaching for a Year, 2nd series, vol i., p. 137; B. Waugh, Sunday Magazine (1887), p. 487. Gen 3:20.—L. D. Bevan, Christ and the Age, p. 227.
Gen 3:21
An ancient interpreter of Scripture has not scrupled to declare that there are in the Book of Revelation as many mysteries as there are words. True as the words are as applied to that wonderful book, they are truer still in regard of the first three chapters of Genesis, above all in regard of this third chapter; for this assuredly is the most important chapter in the Bible. Among all its mysteries I must limit myself to the one contained in the words of the text. These words have a sense upon the surface, but also a sense below the surface. As a record of the kindness of God they would indeed be precious; but how infinitely more precious when we read in them and draw out of them what better they contain even than this; when they reveal to us the deeper mystery which lies behind!
The whole mystery of justification is wrapped up in the details of this story.
I. We have the fact as in a parable that man is utterly impotent to bring to pass any satisfying righteousness of his own. He can see his shame, but he cannot effectually cover or conceal it. The garments of our own righteousness are fig-leaves all, and we shall prove them such. Let God once call to us, and we shall find how little all these devices of our own can do for us. We shall stand shivering, naked and ashamed, before Him.
II. While we thus learn that man cannot clothe himself, we learn also that God undertakes to clothe him. As elsewhere He has said in word, "I am the Lord that healeth thee," so here He says in act, "I am the Lord that clotheth thee." He can yet devise a way by which His banished shall return to Him.
III. We note in this Scripture that the clothing which God found for Adam could only have been obtained at the cost of a life, and that the life of one unguilty, of one who had no share or part in the sin which made the providing of it needful. We have here the first institution of sacrifice; God Himself is the institutor. It is a type and shadow, a prelude and prophecy of the crowning sacrifice on Calvary.
Are not the lessons which we may draw from all this plain and palpable enough? (1) There is no robe of our own righteousness which can cover us and conceal our shame. (2) That righteousness which we have not in ourselves we must be content and thankful to receive at the hands of God. (3) Not Christ by His life, but by His life and death, and mainly by His death, supplies these garments for our spirits’ need.
R. C. Trench, Sermons preached in Westminster Abbey, p. 118.
References: Gen 3:21.—J. Keble, Sermons for the Christian Year, vol. iii., p. 181; B. Waugn, Sunday Magazine (1887) p. 210; L. D. Bevan, Christ and the Age, p. 209.
Gen 3:22
The temptation under which man fell in paradise was an ambitious curiosity after knowledge which was not allowed him; next came the desire of the eyes and the flesh; but the forbidden tree was called the tree of knowledge; the tempter promised knowledge, and after the fall Almighty God pronounced, as in the text, that man had gained it. What is so miserably seen in the history of our first parents has been the temptation and sin of their posterity ever since,—indulgence in forbidden, unlawful, hurtful, unprofitable knowledge. (1) Notice that evil curiosity which stimulates young persons to intrude into things of which it is their blessedness to be ignorant. (2) The pursuit of science, which characterises these times, is very likely to draw us aside into sin of this particular kind, if we are not on our guard. (3) There are persons who boast themselves of what they call their knowledge of the world and of life. There are men who look upon acquaintance with evil as part of their education. (4) Another very different class of persons who study evil and pride themselves upon it, and are degraded by it, are those who indulge themselves in contemplating and dwelling on the struggle between right and wrong in their own minds. Even when used rightly, the knowledge of sin is not without its danger. The love of God alone can give such knowledge its right direction.
Reflections such as these show how different is our state from that for which God made us. He meant us to be simple, and we are unreal; He meant us to think no evil, and a thousand associations, bad, trifling, or unworthy, attend our every thought. But Christ has purchased for us what we lost in Adam, our garment of innocence. He has bid us and enabled us to become as little children. He has purchased for us the grace of simplicity. Let us pray God to give us this great and precious gift.
Plain Sermons by Contributors to the "Tracts for the Times," vol. v., p. 335. (See also J. H. Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons, vol. viii., p. 256.)
References: Gen 3:22.—J. Martineau, Endeavours after the Christian Life, p. 313; T. Arnold, Sermons, vol. iv., p. 1; R. S. Candlish, Book of Genesis, vol. i., p. 86; L. D. Bevan, Christ and the Age, pp. 193, 243. Gen 3:23.—Homiletic Magazine, vol. xiv., p. 115.
Gen 3:24
(and Rom 7:24-25)
I. Man’s fallen life, viewed externally and internally. (1) Externally. Man was condemned to toil and sorrow, no longer fed by the sacramental fruit of the tree of life, exiled from the garden and debarred from entering the gate, which was closed against him by mysterious shapes and by points of flickering fire. The echoes of sin and sorrow, of care and business and pleasure, that are wakened up for us in the fourth chapter, are the beginning of the moral and physical history of man as he now is. (2) Internally. Strange and terrible possibilities of sin lurk in this human nature of ours. Who can measure the possible distance between himself now and himself twenty years hence? There seem evermore to be two wills in the mystery of the one will. There seem to be two men in the one man,—the two wills and two men of whom the apostle speaks in our text.
II. The redeemed life. As we have placed Adam at the head of the fallen life, we place Christ at the head of the redeemed life. Christ is here in these opening chapters of Genesis. Dim and indistinct the promise must be admitted to be; just as on some pale winter morning we see a shape dimly in the mirror, and yet recognise it because we have known it before, so in that dim winter morning of prophecy we can see Christ in that first promise, because we have met Him before in the Gospel and the Church.
The redeemed life includes: (1) forgiveness; (2) an emancipated will. In Christ Jesus the fallen life may pass into the redeemed life; in Him, exiles as we are, we may win a right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates and pass into the city which is our home.
Bishop Alexander, Norwich Cathedral Discourses, 4th series, No. 4. (See also Contemporary Pulpit, vol. v., p. 65.)
The world was created (1) that it might be a place to exhibit the Lord Jesus Christ; (2) that it might be a system of probation. Adam was placed in probation; Christ was placed in probation; the life of every man is probation.
I. The temptation of Adam and the temptation of Christ were in the main the same. Both had their trial in three great seductions: the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life.
II. In both the sin, if they had committed it, would have been one and the same.
III. While the probation and the guilt were the same in both, Christ’s temptation was severer than Adam’s. Adam had nothing resting upon him but his own responsibility; Christ was carrying the burden of a world. Adam was invited to the mere gratification of his own appetite; Christ had set before Him a specious miracle—the glory of God and the advancement of an empire which might be held for mighty ends. Yet Adam fell and Christ rose. Adam’s falling dragged us down; Christ’s rising drew us up.
IV. Note the exceeding mercy which placed at the east of the garden of Eden "Cherubim and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life." Eating of that tree after the fall would have perpetuated a being marred and disgraced. Love barred the way, that man might not go on with his self-destruction.
J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons, 10th series, p. 122.
Genesis 3
Consider: (1) some of the consequences, and (2) some of the corroborative proofs of the fall.
I. Beside and behind the outward consequences, there were inward results far more terrible. A disease had appeared on earth of the most frightful and inveterate kind. This disease was (1) a moral disease. The grand disease of sin combines all the evil qualities of bodily distempers in a figurative yet real form, and turns not the body, but the soul, into a mass of malady. (2) The disease is universal in its ravages. The entire being is encrusted with this leprosy. The whole head is sick and the whole heart faint. (3) This disease is deep-seated in its roots. Its roots are in the very centre of the system, and it infects all the springs of life. It makes us cold and dead and languid in the pursuit of things that are good. The enemy, through the subtle power of this disease, has penetrated into the very citadel of man, and waves his flag of victory upon its highest battlements. (4) This disease is hereditary. It is within us as early as existence; it descends from parent to child more faithfully than the family features or disposition or intellect. (5) This is a disease which assumes various forms and aspects. Its varieties are as numerous as the varieties of men and of sinners. In that great hospital, that magnificent madhouse called the earth, we find all kinds and degrees of moral disease, from the fever of ambition to the consumption of envy, from the frantic fury of the conqueror to the dull idiocy of the miser. (6) This is a disease which defies all human means of cure, and a disease which, if not cured, will terminate in everlasting destruction.
II. Apart from the declarations of God’s word, there are strong and startling proofs of a fall. (1) There are all those dreadful phenomena mentioned above, which are connected with man’s present diseased moral condition. (2) The doctrine of a fall alone explains the anomalous and ambiguous condition of man. The fracture he has suffered has, in its very fierceness and depth, opened up a light into his structure. From the great inequality of human character we cannot but conclude that a catastrophe must have overwhelmed the whole mass of mankind and reduced them to a medley of confusion. We find the echo of man’s fall in every strain of primeval song and in every breath of old tradition.
G. Gilfillan, Alpha and Omega, vol. i., pp. 98, 130.
References: Gen 3—F. W. Robertson, Notes on Genesis, p. 24.; J. Wells, Bible Echoes, p. 19; J. Brown, Good Words (1885), p. 676; Homiletic Magazine, vol. xii., p. 79.
Gen 4:3-5
Heb 11:4
We learn from our text:
I. That religion actuated men in the very earliest times. (1) Religion as a principle was found in the members of the first human family. The most prominent thing connected with Cain and Abel was their religion. (2) All nations of men have practised religion. Conscience, like the unresting heart that sends its crimson streams through the system, and so perpetuates its life, is untiringly impelling men to die to sin and live to God. (3) The religious is the most perfect type of manhood known. Humanity at its best is to be found only in the highest Christian state.
II. That mere natural religion is essentially defective. (1) In its offerings. Cain recognised only a God of providence in his offering; he did not feel that he needed to sacrifice as a sinner. (2) In the power which it exercises over the passions of man. Cain held a religion, but his religion did not hold him. (3) In its sympathy. Cain’s heartless question "Am I my brother’s keeper?" marks him out as a stranger to grace.
III. That spiritual religion alone commends a man to God. This is illustrated in the life of Abel. (1) He possessed faith. (2) He offered an acceptable sacrifice to God. (3) Spiritual religion has a favourable influence on character. The quality of Abel’s piety, its depth and spirituality, cost him his life, and made him at the same time the first martyr for true religion.
D. Rhys Jenkins, The Eternal Life, p. 49.
References: Gen 4:1.—B. Waugh, Sunday Magazine (1887), p. 277. Gen 4:2.—Spurgeon, Morning by Morning, p. 20. Gen 4:3-5.—M. G. Pearse, Some Aspects of the Blessed Life, p. 62.
The Sermon Bible, ed. William Robertson Nicoll (1888–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
F. W. Grant 1903 · Public Domain On v1 Subdivision 1. (Gen 3:1-24) Adam.
Subdivision 1. (Gen 3:1-24) Adam.
The promise of life in Christ Jesus. The new birth, in grace. (Light, the first day.)
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1.
Solemn as is the subject of this section, and tremendous as have been its issues, it does not need much comment. It is man’s awful new beginning as away from God, and we may easily find in it our own birthplace morally as sinners.
2.
In this second section, we have very plainly the discovery of the breach between God and the soul, the announcement of the conflict between good and evil beginning on the earth, and with this, the announcement of salvation. We have four subsections. —
1. The call of God: a call of mercy to repentance and confession. The serpent therefore has no call, as for him no recovery is possible.
2. The sentence upon the enemy, in which the conflict is announced and the salvation: though, in effecting this, the heel of the woman’s Seed is crushed. This has doubtless a secondary accomplishment (such as we find in the fourth chapter) in all that are born of God. The strife with which the world has been filled since was first sealed with the blood of Abel, -a type of Him whose blood "speaks better things."
3. The woman is destined to conceive in sorrow, but thus life -as Adam expresses it in the name he gives his wife, Eve, Chavah, "life," -springs out of travail-pains; already a gospel-hint of resurrection.
4. To man, there is toil upon a cursed earth, and death as the end of it: a picture without relief, whose light must come in from elsewhere.
3.
And now we have what indeed manifests God; for this it is the glory of the gospel to do, though here it is as yet a type-gospel, the time of plain speech being not yet come. Faith acts in Adam in the name he gives his wife. He has heard of life from her, and so he calls her Life; and God answers his faith, clothing them both with the spoils of death, and thus putting away the shame of their nakedness. The conscience of sin, which is what made them flee from God, is removed, God’s hand removing it. The sanctuary, so to speak, is open to them once more, and inward healing and restoration are implied.
4.
But the world-trial now begins outside of paradise.
{Critical Notes
The Tempter.
Scripture leaves not the slightest doubt as to who the tempter was, although here again there is a vail which only the New Testament fully removes. Revelation (Rev 12:9; Rev 20:2) is explicit: "The ancient serpent" is "the devil and Satan." That he was not permitted to come in his own angelic form was clearly a lessening of the temptation, and still more his coming in bestial form. Adam had looked over all the beast-creation, and found no help for him in any. How great was his sin, and what renunciation of his higher place, then, in listening to a beast!
The curse upon the serpent had (and has) plainly its expression outwardly, while, as plainly, this only symbolizes the deeper reality. How this and similar things which the Word of God abundantly declares should open our eyes to this language of nature, and enable us to read upon its face the truths of revelation! See the affirmation of this curse in Isaiah (Isa 65:25), "Dust shall be the serpent’s meat."
Notice, again, that as Satan fell by pride, it is pride especially by which he would work in the woman: "Ye shall be as God." And in him whose coming is after the working of Satan, this is developed as far as in man it can be: "He sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God." (2Th 2:4.) Repentance, the undoing of this pride in self-abasement, is thus the way of escape out of his hands.
The Temptation.
Notice, that while the woman was deceived, and not the man, yet the man falls as the woman does. Nor is the woman suffered to be assailed with open evil until she has already invited it. The first question might have been answered innocently. The woman’s heart was her strong point, and not her head, and her heart should have answered easily in paradise! But she makes the question put to her a question in her own mind, and it then becomes a question of God’s love, and a prelude to the open disobedience. She tampers with God’s word, adds to the prohibition, trifles with the penalty -as to the certainty of it, and the bold attack of the wicked one naturally follows.
"The Promise of Life."
The prophetic announcement of the Seed of the woman and of His victory is plainly the "promise of life which is in Christ Jesus," "which God, that cannot lie, promised before the world began." (2Ti 1:1; 2Ti 1:9; Tit 1:2.) The last expression, "before the world began," found in both passages, is a peculiar one (pro kronon aionion), which is only found once beside in Scripture. (Rom 16:25.) The R.V. gives "before eternal times," the word being one every where else rightly translated by "eternal;" but here, "times" can hardly be eternal! The truth is, that as the noun, (aion), from which aionios is derived, has two senses in the New Testament, -"eternity" and "age," -the adjective here follows the latter meaning, and the expression should be rendered "before the age-times," -the dispensations of which this earth has been the theatre.
It is a "promise in Christ Jesus" -the Seed of the woman, -not to Christ Jesus, as many practically make it. "God, that cannot lie," and "given to us," are expressions which speak with perfect plainness as to the recipients of the promise. The name "Eve," or "Life," given by Adam to his wife just after, shows that to his faith some "promise of life" had been made; and it is consequent upon this confession of it that God clothes them both with the fruit of death. Death becomes their minister, and this, too, is assurance that life has become victorious over it.
The "promise," though in the unusual form of a sentence upon the serpent, has been none the less known to man’s heart as such ever since. The heathen religions are full of remembrances of it, recognizable amid all their distortion. Nor need we confound this promise with any setting up of the first-Adam head again. It is a promise in Christ, -not the first man, but the Second. And He is just what the first man was not -the Seed of the woman.
The texts we are considering require us to omit the period of innocence from these "age-times," or dispensations; and so the six days’ work in its typical aspect decides also. The first day answers to the time before the flood, and is plainly a first step in restoration.
The Knowledge of Good and Evil.
The common idea that Adam was created holy -"upright" he was -would make the knowledge of good and evil to have existed before the fall. On the other hand, the thought of what innocency of this kind involves which some have, would really make the fall "a fall upward." Certainly man was a moral being from the outset, and it is a distinctive mark which separates him from the beast. The fall did not create a moral faculty: nay, if he had not had this before, he could not have fallen.
Moreover, Adam, at least, was not deceived. His eyes were indeed opened by the shock of the fall, but not in this respect. A moral judgment he had of the evil as soon as it was presented to him, spite of his yielding to it. He yielded in the face of the protestation of his moral consciousness.
In what sense, then, did they not know good and evil before the fall? and how is it that God says after it, "The man is become as one of Us, to know good and evil? In what way was the tree the tree of knowledge in relation to these? and was it only by the fall that it became so?
There is another question which must be asked first: Does the "knowledge of good and evil" mean the knowledge of good in itself and evil in itself, or of these in relation to one another? And again, is it possible to know good in itself without knowing it as in opposition to evil? For many tell us that all knowledge is the knowledge of difference -that you cannot know a thing without knowing its opposite; and that if Adam had not the knowledge of evil as distinct from good, he could not have known good either! In this case, the fall must be a "fall upward."
Must we not seek to put ourselves, difficult as it may be, into Adam’s position, in order to realize the truth of the matter?
He was in a world where as yet evil was not, for in himself it was not, and he was the only moral being there. But the witness of good was all around him: did Eden speak nothing to him of the hand that had planted and the love that had provided it? How, then, did God make man upright? and is nothing but insensibility innocence?
Holy, it is true, Adam was not; for holiness speaks of the repulsion of evil, and there was as yet no evil. All was good, and the prohibition good also, and all they had to do was to abide in it as good, -to receive it as the love-gift of their glorious Maker. Their safe-guard was in this, -most easy as it seems and was made to them, -to abide in the good. Evil was not permitted really to assail them, until themselves invited it; and this, as we have seen, the woman did. The first open appearance of it is in her own words, her light dealing with the divine command.
The question might in itself have been an innocent one, and have been answered without the suspicion of evil. To have no suspicion was to be safe. She suffers the question to become
suspicion, and is in heart already fallen. Here is indeed a great mystery -the origin of evil in an upright soul. We will not spend words over it. But this shows, at any rate, how the conception of evil became, in fact, the entertainment of evil with the woman. The beginning of the breach was here which the taking of the tree of knowledge consummated.
But if the tree became thus fatal, could it not, as a gift from God to them, prohibition and all, have become the very opposite, and been, -nay, must it not have been, if used aright, an instruction in holiness to spiritual beings?
The transgression of the prohibition was the only thing that, abiding in the good, they might yet realize as evil. To abide in the good and know evil would be holiness. But Satan points the question so as to make it a question of God, though it would seem to one in Eden a point dull enough after all. But it was all that was permitted him: so carefully and well were these first human beings guarded. Yet they fell; and the knowledge of evil to them came as the knowledge of an inner experience, -it became conscience, and the sense of guilt shows itself as knowledge of their nakedness.}
F. W. Grant, The Numerical Bible (4th ed., 1903) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain On v1 Gen 3:1 - Gen 3:15.
Genesis
HOW SIN CAME IN
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Gen 3:1 - Gen 3:15.
It is no part of my purpose to enter on the critical questions connected with the story of ‘the fall.’ Whether it is a legend, purified and elevated, or not, is of less consequence than what is its moral and religious significance, and that significance is unaffected by the answer to the former question. The story presupposes that primitive man was in a state of ignorant innocence, not of intellectual or moral perfection, and it tells how that ignorant innocence came to pass into conscious sin. What are the stages of the transition?
1. There is the presentation of inducement to evil. The law to which Adam is to be obedient is in the simplest form. There is restriction. ‘Thou shalt not’ is the first form of law, and it is a form congruous with the undeveloped, though as yet innocent, nature ascribed to him. The conception of duty is present, though in a very rudimentary shape. An innocent being may be aware of limitations, though as yet not ‘knowing good and evil.’ With deep truth the story represents the first suggestion of disobedience as presented from without. No doubt, it might have by degrees arisen from within, but the thought that it was imported from another sphere of being suggests that it is alien to true manhood, and that, if brought in from without, it may be cast out again. And the temptation had a personal source. There are beings who desire to draw men away from God. The serpent, by its poison and its loathly form, is the natural symbol of such an enemy of man. The insinuating slyness of the suggestions of evil is like the sinuous gliding of the snake, and truly represents the process by which temptation found its way into the hearts of the first pair, and of all their descendants. For it begins with casting a doubt on the reality of the prohibition. ‘Hath God said?’ is the first parallel opened by the besieger. The fascinations of the forbidden fruit are not dangled at first before Eve, but an apparently innocent doubt is filtered into her ear. And is not that the way in which we are still snared? The reality of moral distinctions, the essential wrongness of the sin, is obscured by a mist of sophistication. ‘There is no harm in it’ steals into some young man’s or woman’s mind about things that were forbidden at home, and they are half conquered before they know that they have been attacked. Then comes the next besieger’s trench, much nearer the wall-namely, denial of the fatal consequences of the sin: ‘Ye shall not surely die,’ and a base hint that the prohibition was meant, not as a parapet to keep from falling headlong into the abyss, but as a barrier to keep from rising to a great good; ‘for God doth know, that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods.’ These are still the two lies which wile us to sin: ‘It will do you no harm,’ and ‘You are cheating yourselves out of good by not doing it.’
2. Then comes the yielding to the tempter. As long as the prohibition was undoubted, and the fatal results certain, the fascinations of the forbidden thing were not felt. But as soon as these were tampered with, Eve saw ‘that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes.’ So it is still. Weaken the awe-inspiring sense of God’s command, and of the ruin that follows the breach of it, and the heart of man is like a city without walls, into which any enemy can march unhindered. So long as God’s ‘Thou shalt not, lest thou die’ rings in the ears, the eyes see little beauty in the sirens that sing and beckon. But once that awful voice is deadened, they charm, and allure to dally with them.
In the undeveloped condition of primitive man temptation could only assail him through the senses and appetites, and its assault would be the more irresistible because reflection and experience were not yet his. But the act of yielding was, as sin ever is, a deliberate choice to please self and disobey God. The woman’s more emotional, sensitive, compliant nature made her the first victim, and her greatest glory, her craving to share her good with him whom she loves, and her power to sway his will and acts, made her his temptress. ‘As the husband is, the wife is,’ says Tennyson; but the converse is even truer: As the wife is, the man is.
3. The fatal consequences came with a rush. There is a gulf between being tempted and sinning, but the results of the sin are closely knit to it. They come automatically, as surely as a stream from a fountain. The promise of knowing good and evil was indeed kept, but instead of its making the sinners ‘like gods,’ it showed them that they were like beasts, and brought the first sense of shame. To know evil was, no doubt, a forward step intellectually; but to know it by experience, and as part of themselves, necessarily changed their ignorant innocence into bitter knowledge, and conscience awoke to rebuke them. The first thing that their opened eyes saw was themselves, and the immediate result of the sight was the first blush of shame. Before, they had walked in innocent unconsciousness, like angels or infants; now they had knowledge of good and evil, because their sin had made evil a part of themselves, and the knowledge was bitter.
The second consequence of the fall is the disturbed relation with God, which is presented in the highly symbolical form fitting for early ages, and as true and impressive for the twentieth century as for them. Sin broke familiar communion with God, turned Him into a ‘fear and a dread,’ and sent the guilty pair into ambush. Is not that deeply and perpetually true? The sun seen through mists becomes a lurid ball of scowling fire. The impulse is to hide from God, or to get rid of thoughts of Him. And when He is felt to be near, it is as a questioner, bringing sin to mind. The shuffling excuses, which venture even to throw the blame of sin on God {‘the woman whom Thou gavest me’}, or which try to palliate it as a mistake {‘the serpent beguiled me’}, have to come at last, however reluctantly, to confess that ‘I’ did the sin. Each has to say, ‘I did eat.’ So shall we all have to do. We may throw the blame on circumstances, weakness of judgment, and the like, while here, but at God’s bar we shall have to say, ‘Mea culpa, mea culpa.’
The curse pronounced on the serpent takes its habit and form as an emblem of the degradation of the personal tempter, and of the perennial antagonism between him and mankind, while even at that first hour of sin and retribution a gleam of hope, like the stray beam that steals through a gap in a thundercloud, promises that the conquered shall one day be the conqueror, and that the woman’s seed, though wounded in the struggle, shall one day crush the poison-bearing, flat head in the dust, and end forever his power to harm. ‘Known unto God are all his works from the beginning,’ and the Christ was promised ere the gates of Eden were shut on the exiles.
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. R. Dummelow 1909 · Public Domain On v1 The Temptation and the Fall of Man
The Temptation and the Fall of Man
This chapter describes how 'by one man sin entered into the world and death by sin' (Rom_5:12). Although there is here no ambitious attempt to search out the origin of evil in the universe, the biblical account of the Fall pierces the depth of the human heart, and brings out the genesis of sin in man. The description, as already said, is true to life and experience.
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There is no certain Babylonian counterpart to the biblical narrative of the Fall.
1. The serpent] The writer here sets himself to answer the question how evil came into the heart of man, who was created pure. His answer is that it came from without; it did not originate with man. And herein lies the hope of victory. The wrong approaches us from outside ourselves, and is not the native product of our own heart. There are present in our world beings and objects which, consciously or unintentionally, draw us towards that which is wrong; channels of sense, intellect, aspirations by which we may be touched The narrative tells us that man was tempted by some evil power, whose personality remains in the background. But this power must have made use of a medium, which could not have been another human being, seeing there were as yet only Adam and Eve. That it was an animal was therefore a natural assumption. On two grounds the writer was left to fix upon the serpent as the medium of the temptation. One was the natural habits of the creature, its stealthy movements, its deadly venom, and the instinctive feeling of repulsion which the very sight of it provokes. These things are all suggestive of the insidious approach and fatal power of temptation. The other was the fact that already the serpent in older mythologies was associated with the powers of darkness. In Babylonian belief Tiamat, the power of darkness and chaos, and the opponent of the god of light, was represented as a gigantic dragon, also known as Rahab and Leviathan (Job_9:13; RV Job_26:12; RV Psa_74:13-14; Psa_89:10; Isa_27:1; Amo_9:3); while to the Persians the serpent was the emblem of AngraMainyu, the hostile god. In later times, when the power of evil was more definitely personified by the Israelites as Satan, the serpent remained as the symbol under which he was popularly conceived. See e.g. Rev_12:9; Rev_20:2.
*A. von Dillmann, the greatest of all commentators on Genesis.
There can be no doubt that our author intended to teach that an actual serpent was the tempter. As one of our deepest thinkers puts it: 'There was an animal nature in Eve to which the animal nature in an inferior animal could speak.' We who have been taught that 'our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places,' are almost irresistibly led to think of the serpent as a mere agent of him that is called the Devil and Satan (Rev_12:9); but we shall miss something of the instructiveness of the narrative if we do not, in the first instance, take the simple view originally intended. St. Paul, we must remember, adhered to it: 'The serpent beguiled Eve in his craftiness' (2Co_11:3).
And he said] An ancient Jewish legend represents all the animals as having had the gift of speech, and using one language, until the day when Adam was expelled from Eden.
The woman] She is first addressed, as an easier prey to temptation (cp. 1Ti_2:14). Observe that the serpent exaggerates the prohibition, and suggests that it is an undue curtailment of liberty. Sin usually begins as a revolt against authority.
2, 3. The woman denies that the prohibition extends to every tree. It applies only to one, and its object is man's own safety. She also adds that the danger is such that they are forbidden even to touch the tree. Evil is to be kept at arm's length.
4. The serpent grows bolder on seeing that the woman is willing to argue the matter, and now flatly denies the truth of the divine warning. It. is due not to a solicitude for man's safety, but to an ulterior motive, the envy or jealousy of God. The serpent avers that the threatened penalty will not be exacted, that God has selfishly kept out of their sight a great boon which men may gain; that He is unwilling to see them rise too high. So the serpent sows discord between man and his Maker, by misrepresenting God's character.
5. As gods] RV 'as God.' It probably means here, as divine beings, like the angels. Cp. Gen_3:22.
6. 'Our great security against sin consists in our being shocked at it. Eve gazed and reflected when she should have fled' (Newman). Here we see the physical basis of temptation, the lust of the flesh, which 'when it hath conceived bringeth forth sin' (Jam_1:15). She gave also unto her husband] It is not in malice, but with a sincere view to his advantage, that she persuades the man to eat of the fruit.
7. They knew that they were naked] The serpent's promise (Gen_3:5) is fulfilled, but not in the way expected. 'To the pure all things are pure' (cp. Gen_2:25), but the act of sin is immediately followed by the sense of guilty shame. 'To innocence, standing in undisturbed union with God, everything natural is good and pure (Gen_2:25). So soon as, however, by the act of disobedience, the bond of union with God is broken, and the sensuous nature of man has released itself from the dominion of the spirit which rests in God, it stands there naked and bare and calls forth in its possessor inevitably the feeling of weakness, unworthiness and impurity' (D.). The first result of disobedience is the awakening of conscience. 'They lost Eden and they gained a conscience' (Newman). The whole story of the Fall is a parable of every sinner's experience. In every temptation there are an exciting cause without and an answering inclination within: every act of submission to temptation is a choice exercised by the will: and the result of sin is an uneasy conscience and a haunting sense of shame. Aprons] RM 'girdles.' There is a Jewish legend to the effect that at the moment of the Fall the leaves dropped off all the trees but the fig.
8-13. Conscience is a witness-bearer to God. Accordingly the accusing voice of conscience is followed by that of God in judgment.
8. On the anthropomorphism of this v. see intro. to Gen_2:4 to Gen_3:24. Cool of the day] lit. 'in the evening breeze,' i.e. in the evening when the heat of the day is tempered with a cool breeze, enabling Orientals to walk abroad; cp. Gen_24:63; Son_2:17. Adam] RV 'the man': see on Gen_2:7. Hid themselves] Hitherto they have been able to meet God in trustful simplicity: now conscious guilt moves them to hide from His presence. But the attempt is vain.
10. The man's answer shows that a change has come over him. He was not wont to be afraid of God.
11. The question does not imply that God does not already know what has occurred. But He compels the man to make a full confession.
12. Instead of frankly confessing his sins, the man lays the blame upon the woman. Observe also that he even tries to lay part at least of the blame upon God Himself (whom Thou gavest to be with me). This is a most life-like touch in the picture of the moral state which sin produces.
13. The woman in turn blames the serpent. Man is always inclined to blame the outward incitement to sin, rather than the inward inclination.
14-19. The Judgment.
14. The serpent, being the tempter and prime mover in the transgression, is judged first. It would appear that the writer conceived of the serpent as originally walking on feet. Its crawling in the dust, and taking dust into its mouth with its food (cp. Isa_65:25; Mic_7:17 and the figurative expression 'to lick the dust,' Psa_72:9; Isa_49:23) are marks of its degradation.
15. Nature's social union is also broken. The serpent race is an object of abhorrence, even though many kinds of serpents possess a remarkable beauty and grace. The curse, however, goes beyond this. There is a mingling of the literal and the allegorical in the sentence. The serpent, as representing the spirit of revolt from God, will continue to be the tempter of man. Man and the power of evil will be at constant feud. It shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel] cp. Rom_16:20. While each will hurt the other, it is here implied that man will have the best of the serpent in the end. The seed of the woman means the human race as sprung from her. But in the course of history it becomes more and more evident that mankind is unable of itself to gain the complete victory over evil. This has been achieved by One alone, in whom this word of hope has been fulfilled. It is, therefore, with justice that Christians read in this promise the Protevangelium, or first proclamation of the Good Tidings of the final victory over sin. It is in Christ that the seed of the woman crushes the serpent.
16. The woman is now judged. Her doom is pain, chiefly the pain of child-bearing, and a position of subjection to and dependence on man. There is abundant evidence in human nature of the close connexion of sin and suffering, though our Lord warns us against uncharitably arguing back from the fact of suffering to previous sin, in special instances, and in the case of others. See e.g. Luk_13:1-5; Joh_9:1-3, and cp. the whole argument of the book of Job. In the case of child-bearing, it is not unreasonable to suppose that the pain and danger connected with it have been increased by the accumulated wrongdoing of mankind. Among the lower animals the process of birth is much easier.
17. The judgment on the man. Work had already been appointed as the duty of men (Gen_2:15). But it was not laborious. The change from innocence to sin is marked by the change of order from the keeping of the garden to the tilling of the ground (Gen_3:23). Henceforth work is to be done under adverse conditions. The connexion between the sin of man and the productiveness of the earth is not so easily traced, but the conditions of labour are undoubtedly made harder by the evils and inequalities of human society due to man's sin and selfishness.
19. Till thou return unto the ground] The story does not assume that man was created physically immortal. But the inevitable certainty of death is now seen to increase the sadness of his earthly lot. It is sin which gives death its sting (1Co_15:56); and though the Redemption of Christ has not abolished physical death, yet it gives victory over death, by removing the guilt and fear that make it so appalling and hopeless: cp. Heb_2:14, Heb_2:15.
20. Eve] Heb. Havvah, 'life.'
21. God does not cease to care for man, even though he has rebelled against Him: cp. Mat_5:45.
22-24. Now that man has used his power of free-will to disobey God and become alienated from Him, a perpetuation of his sinful life would have been a curse rather than a blessing. Physical immortality which, according to the writer, he might have gained by eating of the tree of life, is therefore denied to him. But the blessing forfeited 'by one man's offence' is restored 'by the obedience of one' (Rom_5:12-21). In Christian thought Adam is 'a figure of Him that was to come.' Adam and Christ are the originators of two different streams of humanity; and as those descended from Adam by physical generation inherit the consequences of his disobedience, in virtue of an undoubted law or principle of heredity, or of the solidarity of the human race, so those regenerated in spirit through Christ enjoy the fruit of His perfect obedience, and have a right to the tree of life. 'As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.'
24. Cherubims] RV 'the Cherubim' (plur. of 'Cherub'). These mystic beings are mentioned as attendants of God in various passages of the OT. (Psa_18:10; Ezekiel 1, 10). Here they appear as the guardians of God's abode: cp.
Eze_28:13-17, also on Exo_25:18; Exo_32:4. When the Psalmist says that 'Jehovah rode upon a cherub and did fly,' he is obviously describing a thunderstorm with its swift storm-clouds; and when he goes on to speak of the 'brightness before Him,' he suggests a connexion between the flaming sword of this v. and the lightningflash.
To keep the way of the tree of life] Man, it would appear, had not yet eaten of the tree of life, not having felt the need of it. But now, when his knowledge of evil has brought him the fear of death, and he has realised the value of this tree, he is prevented even from approaching it. The tree of life, however, though denied to man on this side the grave, will be found by those who overcome in the conflict with evil, in the midst of the Paradise of God (Rev_2:7; Rev_22:2).
J. R. Dummelow, A Commentary on the Holy Bible (Macmillan, 1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
C. I. Scofield 1917 · Public Domain On v1 The serpent
The serpent
The serpent, in his Edenic form, is not to be thought of as a writhing reptile. That is the effect of the curse Gen 3:14. The creature which lent itself to Satan may well have been the most beautiful as was the most "subtle" of creatures less than man. Traces of that beauty remain despite the curse. Every movement of a serpent is graceful, and many species are beautifully coloured. In the serpent, Satan first appeared as "an angel of light" 2Co 11:14.
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Arno C. Gaebelein 1922 · Public Domain On v1 The Fall of Man
CHAPTER 3
The Fall of Man
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1. The serpent and the woman (Gen 3:1-5)
2. The fall and the immediate results (Gen 3:6-7)
3. Jehovah Elohim questions Adam (Gen 3:8-12)
4. His question to the woman (Gen 3:13)
5. The curse upon the serpent (Gen 3:14-21)
6. The first prophecy (Gen 3:15)
7. The sentence upon the woman (Gen 3:16)
8. The sentence upon the man (Gen 3:17-19)
9. The faith of Adam and God’s answer (Gen 3:20-21)
10. The expulsion and the guardian cherubim (Gen 3:22-24)
Another actor is now introduced, the adversary of God. His person and his history are not revealed here. The last book of the Bible speaks of him as “the great dragon, that old serpent, called the Devil and Satan” (Rev 12:9). Our Lord called him “the murderer from the beginning and “the father of lies.” He used a creature of the field to deceive the woman and to ruin the restored creation by the introduction of sin, The word “serpent” is in the Hebrew “nachash,” which means “a shining one.” It is evident that this creature was not then a reptile like the serpent of today. The curse put the serpent into the dust. This creature Satan possessed and perhaps made still more beautiful so as to be of great attraction to the woman. He transformed himself in this subtle way, “The serpent beguiled Eve through his subtlety” (2Co 11:3), “And no marvel; for Satan himself transforms himself into an angel of light” (2Co 11:14). Of this marvellous being having access to the garden of Eden we read in Eze 28:13.
Some brand the opening verses of Genesis 3 as myth. If it were, all else in God’s Word concerning man and his redemption would collapse. Others look upon it as an allegory, but it is a historical fact and this revelation gives the only explanation of the origin of evil and its existence.
Speaking to the woman Satan awakened doubt in God’s Word. In speaking of God he avoided the word “Jehovah,” but only spoke of God. Then he acts as the accuser of God and uttered his lie, which, as the father of lies he still continues, “ye shall not surely die.” The crime of the devil by which he fell, that is, pride, is also shown in the words “ye shall be as gods.” The woman listened to the tempter’s voice. She saw it was good and that it was pleasant; she desired, she took, she ate and gave unto her husband. It is the beginning of the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life. (Compare with the temptations of the last Adam, the Lord Jesus, in the wilderness.)
Their eyes were opened at once. They discovered their nakedness and made themselves coverings from fig leaves. When they heard the voice of Jehovah Elohim they hid themselves. Shame and fear were the immediate results of the fall. What the first parents did to hide their nakedness by sewing fig leaves together is still the natural man’s occupation. Man attempts by the labor of his hands, by his religious profession and morality to cover his nakedness.
Jehovah Elohim came to seek that which was lost. Adam did not seek the Lord, but the Lord sought him and Eve.
The curse was then pronounced upon the serpent and the earth was cursed on account of man and sentence pronounced upon the man and the woman, The evidences of all this are about us. The sentence “dying thou shalt die,” that is physical death, the wages of sin, was not executed at once.
The first prophecy in Gen 3:15 announces the seed of the woman, Christ, and His triumphant work over the serpent and his work as well as the death of the seed. Out of this first prediction all prophecy is developed. Space forbids to enlarge upon this great verse.
Adam believed God’s Word for he called now his wife “Eve.” The word Eve is Chavah in Hebrew, and means “life.” God answered his faith by making unto Adam and Eve clothes of skin. Jehovah Elohim must have slain an animal, perhaps a lamb, to provide the skin. The first blood must then have been shed and the Lord provided the covering for Adam and Eve. Its meaning as a type needs no further comments.
They were driven out of Eden so as to avoid the possibility of taking of the tree of life and live forever. This is used as an argument that man through the fall lost his immortal soul. It only refers to the body. If they had eaten of the tree of life they would have lived forever in the body and physical death would then not have been possible.
The cherubim are not symbols but actual beings. We find them elsewhere revealed, Psa 18:10; Eze 1:5; Eze 10:1; Rev. 4-5. The flaming burning sword is symbolic of the holiness of God.
With the third chapter of Genesis the waiting of the heavens and of the earth began: Heaven waiting to send Him forth to deal with the question of sin and the earth waiting for redemption and deliverance. What marvellous chapters these first three chapters of the Bible are! The entire Word of God rests upon them and is linked with them.
Arno C. Gaebelein, The Annotated Bible (1913–1922) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On vv1, 7 The Temptation and Fall
The Temptation and Fall
v. 1. Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. In Paradise man had everything that he needed for the proper development of his nature and for the fulfillment of his object in life. But now temptation came to him from outside. Just as in other parts of the Bible animals are characterized by certain physical or mental features, so the serpent is here described as being cunning or crafty by nature, this fact distinguishing it from the other animals of the field. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden? The devil, or Satan, chief among the fallen angels, made use of the natural cunning of the serpent and spoke out of her mouth in order to seduce man. The words of the Tempter are: Should God really have made such a statement? or: Even if God did make that statement,—intending to add that such a prohibition on God’s part was unbelievable. He is interrupted before he has finished his thought:
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v. 2. And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden. The devil had implied that God’s command referred to every tree, to all trees of the garden. This appeared especially in the tone and form of questioning surprise, which was intended to excite doubt. The woman corrected this statement by limiting it: of the fruit of the trees of the garden we eat. That was good enough, as far as it went. But the next words are less positive:
v. 3. But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. By exaggerating the prohibition of God, the devil intended to shake the woman’s trust in God, to create doubts in her heart concerning the truth of His word. He succeeded inasmuch as the woman allowed herself to be drawn into an argument with the Tempter, not only stating that God had forbidden them to eat of the fruit of the tree in the midst of the garden, but adding also: And do not even touch it, lest ye die. This exaggeration of God’s command showed that the woman felt it to be harsh and severe, that her love toward God, her trust in God had been undermined. That was the beginning of her sin, the setting aside of God’s Word and command; for doubt, unbelief, is the root of all sin. The devil was alert to take advantage of her weakening:
v. 4. And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die;
v. 5. for God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. Not satisfied with having awakened doubt in the woman’s heart, the Tempter now boldly denies the truth of the divine threat and casts suspicion upon the genuineness of the divine love: Ye most assuredly will not die. He insinuates that God is a jealous tyrant, withholding from man some of the advantages to which he was entitled, by means of an empty threat. Instead of becoming subject to death, so the devil asserts, the man and his wife would have their eyes opened for a greater and better understanding of both good and evil. Like untold numbers of tempters since that time, the devil suggested that they would then be able to choose the good and follow it always, while they would certainly shun that which was wicked. But this condition is not brought about by the transgression of God’s commands, for such a course, as in this instance, results in driving the fear, the love, the trust in God away, making the carnal mind enmity toward God.
v. 6. And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat. The evil was done; the woman’s heart was turned from the Lord. The lust appeared in her eyes: she saw what had never struck her before, that good was the tree for food as well as pleasant to the eyes. The striving after a false independence and liberty further incited the desire for the forbidden fruit; the longer she looked, the more desirable it seemed to her to gain understanding of the kind which she deemed hidden from her, to feel the pleasure of possessing forbidden secrets. Thus in the heart of natural man, who has turned from God, there grows every form of evil lust and desire, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes. And this lust brings forth sin. The woman took of the fruit and ate. Then, sin having taken her captive, she persuaded her husband to eat of the fruit also. The sinner seeks company and tries to seduce others.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv1, 4, 7, 9, 12 The writer is beginning a new part of the…
Now
The writer is beginning a new part of the story.
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more shrewd
"more cunning" or "smarter at getting what he wanted by telling lies"
Has God really said, 'You ... garden'?
The snake is pretending to be surprised that God has made this rule. This rhetorical question can be translated as a statement. AT: "I am surprised that God said, 'You ... garden.'" (See: Rhetorical Question)
You must not eat
The word "you" is plural and refers to the man and the woman. (See: Forms of You)
We may eat ... God said, 'You may not eat it
Eve told the serpent what God had permitted them to do first and then what God had told them not to do. Some languages would say what they were told not to do first and then say what they were allowed to do, as in the UDB.
We may eat
"We are allowed to eat" or "We have permission to eat"
You may not ... nor may you ... you will die
The word "you" is plural and refers to the man and the woman. (See: Forms of You)
You may not eat it
"You must not eat it" or "Do not eat it"
nor may you touch it
"and you must not touch it" or "and do not touch it"
translationWords
serpent
Yahweh
die
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv1, 2, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 12 3:1-24 The rebellion of the man and the woman…
3:1-24 The rebellion of the man and the woman shattered their unity and harmony with earth, animals, each other, and God.
3:1 Genesis describes the deceiver as a serpent, one of the animals God created (see also 3:14 and study note). He is later identified as Satan, the great enemy of God’s people (Rev 12:9; 20:2). His manipulative language and his disguise as a serpent, the shrewdest of all creatures, show him as a master deceiver. Satan has various methods for opposing God’s people (see 1 Chr 21:1; Zech 3:1-2); deception remains among his key strategies (cp. 2 Cor 11:3, 14). The Hebrew term for shrewd (‘arum) can be positive (“prudent,” Prov 14:8) or negative (as here; see Job 5:12). It forms a wordplay with “naked” (‘arummim) in Gen 2:25. Adam and Eve were naked and vulnerable; the serpent was shrewd and cunning. • Probably the serpent asked the woman because the prohibition was given to Adam prior to Eve’s creation (see 2:16-17). Adam was probably aware of the serpent’s cunning, having assessed and named all the animals before Eve was created (2:19-20, 23). • Did God really say? The deceiver began by twisting God’s language to cast doubt on God’s goodness. God’s original prohibition applied to only one tree (2:16-17), not to all (any) of them.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.