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?”
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Genesis 3:8-9 sits inside this longer paragraph.
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?”
Parallel Translations
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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?”
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And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God amongst the trees of the garden.
And the LORD God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou?
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And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden toward the cool of the day; and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God amongst the trees of the garden.
And the LORD God called unto the man, and said unto him: 'Where art thou?'
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Contradictions (2)
Questions where the Bible appears to say two different things, with the passages on each side set together.
Cross-references (22)
- Jeremiah 23:24 (v8) Can anyone hide himself in secret places so that I can’t see him?” says Yahweh. “Don’t I fill heaven and earth?” says Yahweh.
- Hebrews 4:13 (v8) There is no creature that is hidden from his sight, but all things are naked and laid open before the eyes of him to whom we must give an…
- Proverbs 15:3 (v8) Yahweh’s eyes are everywhere, keeping watch on the evil and the good.
- Genesis 4:9 (v9) Yahweh said to Cain, “Where is Abel, your brother?” He said, “I don’t know. Am I my brother’s keeper?”
- Job 34:21-22 (v8) “For his eyes are on the ways of a man. He sees all his goings. There is no darkness, nor thick gloom, where the workers of iniquity may…
Show all 22 cross-references
- Psalms 139:1-12 (v8) Yahweh, you have searched me, and you know me. You know my sitting down and my rising up. You perceive my thoughts from afar. You search…
- Genesis 3:10 (v8) The man said, “I heard your voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; so I hid myself.”
- Jonah 1:9-10 (v8) He said to them, “I am a Hebrew, and I fear Yahweh, the God of heaven, who has made the sea and the dry land.” Then the men were…
- Romans 2:15 (v8) in that they show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience testifying with them, and their thoughts among themselves…
- Amos 9:2-3 (v8) Though they dig into Sheol, there my hand will take them; and though they climb up to heaven, there I will bring them down. Though they…
- Genesis 16:8 (v9) He said, “Hagar, Sarai’s servant, where did you come from? Where are you going?” She said, “I am fleeing from the face of my mistress…
- Genesis 18:20-21 (v9) Yahweh said, “Because the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very grievous, I will go down now, and see whether…
- Joshua 7:17-19 (v9) He brought near the family of Judah, and he selected the family of the Zerahites. He brought near the family of the Zerahites man by man,…
- Job 31:33 (v8) if like Adam I have covered my transgressions, by hiding my iniquity in my heart,
- Jonah 1:3 (v8) But Jonah rose up to flee to Tarshish from the presence of Yahweh. He went down to Joppa, and found a ship going to Tarshish; so he paid…
- Genesis 11:5 (v9) Yahweh came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men built.
- Deuteronomy 4:33 (v8) Did a people ever hear the voice of God speaking out of the middle of the fire, as you have heard, and live?
- Deuteronomy 5:25 (v8) Now therefore, why should we die? For this great fire will consume us. If we hear Yahweh our God’s voice any more, then we shall die.
- Deuteronomy 23:14 (v8) for Yahweh your God walks in the middle of your camp, to deliver you, and to give up your enemies before you. Therefore your camp shall be…
- Job 38:1 (v8) Then Yahweh answered Job out of the whirlwind,
- Job 22:14 (v8) Thick clouds are a covering to him, so that he doesn’t see. He walks on the vault of the sky.’
- Revelation 20:12-13 (v9) I saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne, and they opened books. Another book was opened, which is the book of…
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
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John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain On vv8–9 8. And they heard the voice of the Lord…
8. And they heard the voice of the Lord God. As soon as the voice of God sounds, Adam and Eve perceive that the leaves by which they thought themselves well protected are of no avail. Moses here relates nothing which does not remain in human nature, and may be clearly discerned at the present day. The difference between good and evil is engraven on the hearts of all, as Paul teaches, (Romans 2:15;) but all bury the disgrace of their vices under flimsy leaves till God, by his voice, strikes inwardly their consciences. Hence, after God had shaken them out of their torpor, their alarmed consciences compelled them to hear his voice. Moreover, what Jerome translates, ‘at the breeze after midday,’ is, in the Hebrew, ‘at the wind of the day;’ the Greeks, omitting the word ‘wind,’ have put ‘at the evening.’ Thus the opinion has prevailed, that Adam, having sinned about noon, was called to judgment about sunset. But I rather incline to a different conjecture, namely, that being covered with their garment, they passed the night in silence and quiet, the darkness aiding their hypocrisy; then, about sunrise, being again thoroughly awakened, they recollected themselves. We know that at the rising of the sun the air is naturally excited; together, then, with this gentle breeze, God appeared; but Moses would improperly have called the evening air that of the day. Others take the word as describing the southern part or region; and certainly רוח (ruach) sometimes among the Hebrews signifies one or another region of the world. Others think that the time is here specified as one least exposed to terrors, for in the clear light there is the greater security; and thus, they conceive, is fulfilled what the Scripture declares that they who have accusing consciences are always anxious and disquieted, even without any danger. To this point they refer what is added respecting the wind, as if Adam was terrified at the sound of a falling leaf. But what I have advanced is more true and simple, that what was hid under the darkness of the night was detected at the rising of the sun. Yet I do not doubt that some notable symbol of the presence of God was in that gentle breeze; for although (as I have lately said) the rising sun is wont daily to stir up some breath of air, this is not opposed to the supposition that God gave some extraordinary sign of his approach, to arouse the consciences of Adam and his wife. For, since he is in himself incomprehensible, he assumes, when he wishes to manifest himself to men, those marks by which he may be known. David calls the winds the messengers of God, on the wings of which he rides, or rather flies, with incredible velocity. (Psalm 104:3.) But, as often as he sees good, he uses the winds, as well as other created things, beyond the order of nature, according to his own will. Therefore, Moses, in here mentioning the wind, intimates (according to my judgment) that some unwonted and remarkable symbol of the Divine presence was put forth which should vehemently affect the minds of our first parents. This resource, namely, that of fleeing from God’s presence, was nothing better than the former; since God, with his voice alone, soon brings back the fugitives. It is. written,
‘Whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I traverse the sea, if I take wings and ascend above the clouds, if I descend into the profound abyss, thou, Lord, wilt be everywhere,’ (Psalm 139:7.)
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This we all confess to be true; yet we do not, in the meantime, cease to snatch at vain subterfuges; and we fancy that shadows of any kind will prove a most excellent defense. Nor is it to be here omitted, that he, who had found a few leaves to be unavailing, fled to whole trees; for so we are accustomed, when shut out from frivolous cavils, to frame new excuses, which may hide us as under a denser shade. When Moses says that Adam and his wife hid themselves ‘in the midst of the tree of Paradise,’ I understand that the singular member is put for the plural; as if he had said, among the trees.
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 v8 Or, wind.
Or, wind.
The sinful conscience fleeth God’s presence.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv8–9 Gen 3:8 And they heard the voice of the…
Gen 3:8 And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God amongst the trees of the garden.
Ver. 8. And they heard the voice of the Lord.] Either speaking something by himself of that which Adam hath done against his command; as who should say, Hath he served me so indeed? or else calling to Adam in a mighty thunder, as to Pharaoh, {Exo 9:28} or in a terrible whirlwind, as to Job, {Job 38:1} the better to humble him, and prepare for a sermon of mercy and forgiveness. God poureth not the off of his grace, save only into broken vessels. Christ came to cure not the sound, but the sick with sin: the Holy Ghost is poured out upon thirsty souls only that are scorched and parched with the sense of sin and fear of wrath. {Isa 35:7; Isa 44:3} As the way to Zion was by Sinai, so, unless we desire rather to be carnally secured than soundly comforted, we must pass by Baca to Berachah, by a sight of our sin and misery, to a sense of God’s grace and mercy.
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Walking in the garden in the cool of the day.] God did not meet the man angrily, as he did Moses in the inn, when tie had much ado to forbear killing him; {Exo 4:24} nor as the angel did Balaam, with a drawn sword in his hand to destroy him; neither did he rush upon him, as David ran upon Goliath, and cut off his head; but, with a soft and slow pace {a} (as if he had no mind to it), he comes walking toward them, to do this, his work, "his strange work," {Isa 28:21} of sentencing sinners; and that in the cool of the day, too, or towards the evening, as St Ambrose {b} hath it, after the Septuagint. Whereas to show mercy, "behold, he comes leaping {c} upon the mountains, skipping upon the hills." Lo, "this is the voice," and the pace "of my beloved." {Son 2:8} God was but six days in making the whole world, yet seven days in destroying one city, Jericho, as Chrysostom long since observed. He scourgeth not his people, "till there be no remedy." {2Ch 36:16} He forbears us, though he "cry like a travailing woman," {Isa 42:14} to be delivered of his judgments.
And Adam and his wife hid themselves.] Their covering of fig-leaves, then, was too short; for here they ran with their aprons into the thicket to hide from God. A poor shift, God wot, but such as is still too much in use. "If I have covered my transgressions as Adam," or after the manner of men, saith Job, {Job 31:33} then let this and this evil befall me. The bad heart runs from God, and would run from its own terrors, {d} as the wounded deer from the deadly arrow that sticks in his side; but refusing ordinary trial, it is in danger to be pressed to death inevitably. We have no better refuge than to run from God to God. Bloodletting is a cure of bleeding, a burn of a burn. To close and get in, avoids the blow, &c. Our first parents here, in hiding themselves, did but as the fish which swimmeth to the length of the line, with a hook in the mouth, as one well observeth.
{a} מתהלך
{b} το δειλινον: ad vesperam diei .
{c} Gressu grallatorio.
{d} Faeti sunt a corde suo fugitivi. - Tertul.
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 vv8–9 The voice of the Lord God, mentioned Gen 3:9,…
The voice of the Lord God, mentioned Gen 3:9, or rather the sound, as the word voice is often taken in Scripture, as Psa 93:3; Rev 10:3; 19:6. Either God the Father, or rather God the Son, appeared in the shape of a man, as afterwards he frequently did, to give a foretaste of his incarnation. About evening, the time when men use to walk abroad to recreate themselves, when there was a cool and refreshing wind, whereby also the voice of the Lord was more speedily and effectually conveyed to Adam and his wife.
Adam and his wife hid themselves: being sensible of God’s approach, and filled with shame and conscience of their own guilt, and dread of judgment, instead of flying to God for mercy, they foolishly attempted to run away from him, whom it was impossible to avoid.
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 v9 We have here the arraignment of these deserters before…
We have here the arraignment of these deserters before the righteous Judge of heaven and earth, who, though he is not tied to observe formalities, yet proceeds against them with all possible fairness, that he may be justified when he speaks. Observe here,
I. The startling question with which God pursued Adam and arrested him: Where art thou? Not as if God did not know where he was; but thus he would enter the process against him. "Come, where is this foolish man?" Some make it a bemoaning question: "Poor Adam, what has become of thee?" "Alas for thee!" (so some read it) "How art thou fallen, Lucifer, son of the morning! Thou that wast my friend and favourite, whom I had done so much for, and would have done so much more for; hast thou now forsaken me, and ruined thyself? Has it come to this?" It is rather an upbraiding question, in order to his conviction and humiliation: Where art thou? Not, In what place? but, In what condition? "Is this all thou hast gotten by eating forbidden fruit? Thou that wouldest vie with me, dost thou now fly from me?" Note, 1. Those who by sin have gone astray from God should seriously consider where they are; they are afar off from all good, in the midst of their enemies, in bondage to Satan, and in the high road to utter ruin. This enquiry after Adam may be looked upon as a gracious pursuit, in kindness to him, and in order to his recovery. If God had not called to him, to reclaim him, his condition would have been as desperate as that of fallen angels; this lost sheep would have wandered endlessly, if the good Shepherd had not sought after him, to bring him back, and, in order to that, reminded him where he was, where he should not be, and where he could not be either happy or easy. Note, 2. If sinners will but consider where they are, they will not rest till they return to God.
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II. The trembling answer which Adam gave to this question: I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, Gen 3:10. He does not own his guilt, and yet in effect confesses it by owning his shame and fear; but it is the common fault and folly of those that have done an ill thing, when they are questioned about it, to acknowledge no more than what is so manifest that they cannot deny it. Adam was afraid, because he was naked; not only unarmed, and therefore afraid to contend with God, but unclothed, and therefore afraid so much as to appear before him. We have reason to be afraid of approaching to God if we be not clothed and fenced with the righteousness of Christ, for nothing but this will be armour of proof and cover the shame of our nakedness. Let us therefore put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and then draw near with humble boldness.
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 vv8–9 And they heard the voice of the Lord God,....…
And they heard the voice of the Lord God,.... Which they had heard before, and knew, though perhaps now in another tone, and very terrible, which before was mild and gentle, pleasant and delightful: some by it understand a clap of thunder, sometimes called the voice of the Lord, Psa 29:3 and the rather because mention is made afterwards of a wind; but rather the voice of the Son of God, the eternal Word, is here meant, who appeared in an human form, as a pledge of his future incarnation, and that not only as a Judge, to arraign, examine, and condemn the parties concerned in this act of disobedience to God, but as a Saviour of men, to whom, as such, he made himself known, as the event shows, and therefore they had no reason to entertain such terrible apprehensions of him, as to flee from him; and so the Targums of Onkelos and Jonathan paraphrase it, "the voice of the Word of the Lord God", the essential Word of God then with him, and since made flesh, and dwelt among men as the Saviour of them; and to him agrees what follows:
walking in the garden in the cool of the day; or "at the wind of the day" (q); of "that day" in which man was created and fell, as some conclude from hence; in the evening, at sun setting; for very often when the sun sets a wind rises, at least a gentle breeze; and this might bring the sound of the voice, and of the steps of this glorious Person, the sooner to the ears of Adam and his wife, which gave them notice of his near approach, and caused them to hasten their flight: some render it emphatically, "at the wind of that day" (r); as if it was a violent wind which arose at that time, as a sign and testimony of the indignation of God, as the sound of a violent wind was a testimony of the coming of the Spirit of God, Act 2:2.
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and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God, amongst the trees of the garden; conscious of their guilt, and vainly imagining they could flee from his presence, which is everywhere, and hide themselves from his sight, before whom every creature is manifest, be it where it will; and very foolishly fancying, that the thick trees and bushes in the garden would be a screen and shelter for them: and sad shifts do wretched mortals make to secure themselves from the wrath of God, who are ignorant of the justifying righteousness and atoning sacrifice of the Son of God: it is in the singular number in the original text, "in the midst of the tree of the garden" (s); which some understand of the fig tree, whose leaves they covered themselves with, and under the shade of which they hid themselves; and particularly of the Indian fig tree, which is so large, that it is said that fifty horsemen may shade themselves at noon day under it; nay, some say four hundred (t); but tree may be put for trees, the singular for the plural.
(q) "ad ventum diei", Munster, Vatablus, Cartwright, Schmidt. (r) "Ad ventum illius diei", Junius & Tremellius, Piscator, Picherellus. (s) "intra arborem", Fagius. (t) Strabo. Geograph. l. 15. p. 477.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On v9 Where art thou? - This enquiry after Adam may…
Where art thou? - This enquiry after Adam may be looked upon as a gracious pursuit in order to his recovery. If God had not called to him to reduce him, his condition had been as desperate as that of fallen angels.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On v8 Verse 8. The voice of the Lord] The voice…
Verse 8. The voice of the Lord] The voice is properly used here, for as God is an infinite Spirit, and cannot be confined to any form, so he can have no personal appearance. It is very likely that God used to converse with them in the garden, and that the usual time was the decline of the day, לרוח היום leruach haiyom, in the evening breeze; and probably this was the time that our first parents employed in the more solemn acts of their religious worship, at which God was ever present. The time for this solemn worship is again come, and God is in his place; but Adam and Eve have sinned, and therefore, instead of being found in the place of worship, are hidden among the trees! Reader, how often has this been thy case!
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 vv8–9 Gen 3:8. They heard the voice of the Lord…
Gen 3:8. They heard the voice of the Lord God walking, &c. — It is supposed he came in a human shape; in that wherein they had seen him, when he put them into paradise. For he came to convince and humble, not to amaze and terrify them. And they hid themselves, &c. — A sad change! Before they had sinned, if they heard the voice of the Lord God coming toward them, they would have run to meet him; but now God was become a terror to them, and then no marvel they were become a terror to themselves.
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 v8 - XVI. The Judgment
- XVI. The Judgment
15. שׁוּף shûp “bruise, wound.” τηρεῖν (=τερεῖν?) tērein ἐκτρίβειν ektribein Job 9:17, καταπατεῖν katapatein Psa 139:11, συντρίβειν suntribein Rom 16:20.
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16. תשׁוּקה teshûqâh “desire, inclination.” αποστροφή apostrofee, ἐπιστροφή epistrophē Son 7:11.
20. חוּה chavâh Eve, “the living, life, life-place, or village.”
This passage contains the examination of the transgressors, Gen 3:8-13; the sentence pronounced upon each, Gen 3:14-19; and certain particulars following thereupon, Gen 3:20-21.
Gen 3:8-9
The voice, we conceive, is the thunder of the approach of God and his call to Adam. The hiding is another token of the childlike simplicity of the parents of our race under the shame and fear of guilt. The question, “Where art thou?” implies that the Lord was aware of their endeavor to hide themselves from him.
Gen 3:10-12
Adam confesses that he was afraid of God, because he was naked. There is an instinctive hiding of his thoughts from God in this very speech. The nakedness is mentioned, but not the disobedience from which the sense of it arose. To the direct interrogatory of the Almighty, he confesses who made him acquainted with his nakedness and the fact of his having eaten of the forbidden fruit: “The woman” gave me of the tree, and “I did eat.”
Gen 3:13
The woman makes a similar confession and a similar indication of the source of her temptation. She has now found out that the serpent “beguiled her.” The result has not corresponded to the benefit she was led to anticipate.
There seems not to be any disingenuousness in either case. Sin does not take full possession of the will all at once. It is a slow poison. It has a growth. It requires time and frequent repetition to sink from a state of purity into a habit of inveterate sin. While it is insensibly gathering strength and subjugating the will, the original integrity of the moral nature manifests a long but fading vitality. The same line of things does not always occupy the attention. When the chain of events linked with the act of sin does not force the attention of the mind, and constrain the will to act a selfish part, another train of things comes before the mind, finds the will unaffected by personal considerations, and therefore ready to take its direction from the reason. Hence, the consciousness of a fallen soul has its lucid intervals, in which the conscience gives a verdict and guides the will. But these intervals become less frequent and less decisive as the entanglements of ever-multiplying sinful acts wind round the soul and aggravate its bondage and its blindness.
Gen 3:14-15
Here begins the judgment. Sentence is pronounced upon the serpent in the presence, no doubt, of the man and woman. The serpent is not examined, first, because it is a mute, unreasoning animal in itself, and therefore incapable of judicial examination, and it was the serpent only that was palpable to the senses of our first parents in the temptation; and, secondly, because the true tempter was not a new, but an old offender.
This sentence has a literal application to the serpent. The curse (Gen 9:25, see the note) of the serpent lies in a more groveling nature than that of the other land animals. This appears in its going on its belly and eating the dust. Other animals have at least feet to elevate them above the dust; the serpent tribe does not have even feet. Other animals elevate the head in their natural position above the soil: the serpent lays its head naturally on the sod, and therefore may be said to eat the dust, as the wounded warrior bites the dust in death. The earthworm is probably included in the description here given of the serpent group. It goes upon its belly, and actually does eat the dust. Eating the dust, like feeding upon ashes, is an expression for signal defeat in every aim. The enmity, the mode of its display, and the issue are also singularly characteristic of the literal serpent.
It is the custom of Scripture jurisprudence to visit brute animals with certain judicial consequences of injuries they have been instrumental in doing to man, especially if this has arisen through the design or neglect of the owner, or other responsible agent Gen 9:5; Exo 21:28-36. In the present case the injury done was of a moral, not a physical nature. Hence, the penalty consists in a curse; that is, a state of greater degradation below man than the other land animals. The serpent in the extraordinary event here recorded exercised the powers of human speech and reasoning. And it is natural to suppose that these exhibitions of intelligence were accompanied with an attitude and a gesture above its natural rank in the scale of creation. The effect of the judicial sentence would be to remand it to its original groveling condition, and give rise to that enmity which was to end in its destruction by man.
However, since an evil spirit must have employed the serpent, since the animal whose organs and instincts were most adapted to its purpose, and has accordingly derived its name from it as presenting the animal type most analogous to its own spiritual nature, so the whole of this sentence has its higher application to the real tempter. “Upon thy belly shalt thou go.” This is expressive of the lowest stage of degradation to which a spiritual creature can be sunk. “Dust shalt thou eat.” This is indicative of disappointment in all the aims of being. “I will put enmity.” This is still more strictly applicable to the spiritual enemy of mankind. It intimates a hereditary feud between their respective races, which is to terminate, after some temporary suffering on the part of the woman’s seed, in the destruction of the serpent’s power against man. The spiritual agent in the temptation of man cannot have literally any seed. But the seed of the serpent is that portion of the human family that continues to be his moral offspring, and follows the first transgression without repentance or refuge in the mercy of God. The seed of the woman, on the other hand, must denote the remnant who are born from above, and hence, turn from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God.
Let us now mark the lessons conveyed in the sentence of the serpent to our first parents, who were listening and looking on. First. The serpent is styled a mere brute animal. All, then, that seemed to indicate reason as inherent in its nature or acquired by some strange event in its history is thus at once contradicted. Second. It is declared to be lower than any of the other land animals; as being destitute of any members corresponding to feet or hands. Third. It is not interrogated as a rational and accountable being, but treated as a mere dumb brute. Fourth. It is degraded from the airs and attitudes which may have been assumed, when it was possessed by a serpent-like evil spirit, and falls back without a struggle to that place of debasement in the animal kingdom for which it was designed. Fifth. It is fated to be disappointed in its aims at usurpation. It shall bite the dust. Sixth. it is doomed to ultimate and utter defeat in its hostile assaults upon the seed of the woman.
All this must have made a deep impression on our first parents. But two things must have struck them with special force. First, it was now evident how vain and hollow were its pretensions to superior wisdom, and how miserably deluded they had been when they listened to its false insinuations. If, indeed, they had possessed maturity of reflection, and taken time to apply it, they would have been strangely bewildered with the whole scene, now that it was past. How the serpent, from the brute instinct it displayed to Adam when he named the animals, suddenly rose to the temporary exercise of reason and speech, and as suddenly relapsed into its former bestiality, is, to the mere observer of nature, an inexplicable phenomenon. But to Adam, who had as yet too limited an experience to distinguish between natural and preternatural events, and too little development of the reflective power to detect the inconsistency in the appearance of things, the sole object of attention was the shameless presumption of the serpent, and the overwhelming retribution which had fallen upon it; and, consequently, the deplorable folly and wickedness of having been misguided by its suggestions.
A second thing, however, was still more striking to the mind of man in the sentence of the serpent; namely, the enmity that was to be put between the serpent and the woman. Up to a certain point there had been concord and alliance between these two parties. But, on the very opening of the heavenly court, we learn that the friendly connection had been broken. For the woman said, “The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.” This expression indicates that the woman was no longer at one with the serpent. She was now sensible that its part had been that, not of friendship, but of guile, and therefore of the deepest and darkest hostility. When God, therefore, said, “I will put enmity between thee and the woman,” this revulsion of feeling on her part, in which Adam no doubt joined, was acknowledged and approved. Enmity with the enemy of God indicated a return to friendship with God, and presupposed incipient feelings of repentance toward him, and reviving confidence in his word. The perpetuation of this enmity is here affirmed, in regard not only to the woman, but to her seed. This prospect of seed, and of a godly seed, at enmity with evil, became a fountain of hope to our first parents, and confirmed every feeling of returning reverence for God which was beginning to spring up in their breast. The word heard from the mouth of God begat faith in their hearts, and we shall find that this faith was not slow to manifest itself in acts.
We cannot pass over this part of the sentence without noticing the expression, “the seed of the woman.” Does it not mean, in the first instance, the whole human race? Was not this race at enmity with the serpent? And though that part only of the seed of the woman which eventually shared in her present feelings could be said to be at enmity with the serpent spirit, yet, if all had gone well in Adam’s family, might not the whole race have been at enmity with the spirit of disobedience? Was not the avenue to mercy here hinted at as wide as the offer of any other time? And was not this universality of invitation at some time to have a response in the human family? Does not the language of the passage constrain us to look forward to the time when the great mass, or the whole of the human race then alive on the earth, will have actually turned from the power of Satan unto God? This could not be seen by Adam. But was it not the plain import of the language, that, unless there was some new revolt after the present reconciliation, the whole race would, even from this new beginning, be at enmity with the spirit of evil? Such was the dread lesson of experience with which Adam now entered upon the career of life, that it was to be expected he would warn his children against departing from the living God, with a clearness and earnestness which would be both understood and felt.
Still further, do we not pass from the general to the particular in the sentence, “He shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel?” Is not the seed of the woman here individualized and matched in deadly conflict with the individual tempter? Does not this phraseology point to some pre-eminent descendant of the woman, who is, with the bruising of his lower nature in the encounter, to gain a signal and final victory over the adversary of man? There is some reason to believe from the expression, “I have gotten a man from the Lord” Gen 4:1, that Eve herself had caught a glimpse of this meaning, though she applied it to the wrong party. The Vulgate also, in what was probably the genuine reading, “ipse” (he himself) points to the same meaning. The reading “ipsa” (she herself) is inconsistent with the gender of the Hebrew verb, and with that of the corresponding pronoun in the second clause (his), and is therefore clearly an error of the transcriber.
Lastly, the retributive character of the divine administration is remarkably illustrated in the phrase. The serpent, in a wily but dastardly spirit, makes the weaker sex the object of his attack. It is the seed of the woman especially that is to bruise his head. It is singular to find that this simple phrase, coming in naturally and incidentally in a sentence uttered four thousand years, and penned at least fifteen hundred years, before the Christian era, describes exactly and literally Him who was made of woman without the intervention of man, that He might destroy the works of the devil. This clause in the sentence of the tempter is the first dawn of hope for the human family after the fall. We cannot tell whether to admire more the simplicity of its terms, the breadth and comprehensiveness of its meaning, or the minuteness of its application to the far-distant event which it mainly contemplates.
The doom here pronounced upon the tempter must be regarded as special and secondary. It refers to the malignant attack upon man, and foretells what will be the issue of this attempt to spread disaffection among the intelligent creation. And it is pronounced without any examination of the offender, or investigation of his motives. If this had been the first offence against the majesty of heaven, we humbly conceive a solemn precognition of the case would have taken place, and a penalty would have been adjudicated adequate to the magnitude of the crime and analagous to the punishment of death in the case of man. The primary act of defiance and apostasy from the Creator must have been perpetrated without a tempter, and was, therefore, incomparably more heinous than the secondary act of yielding to temptation. Whether the presence of the tempter on earth intimates that it was the place of his abode in a state of innocence, or that he visited it because he had heard of the creation of man, or that he was there from some altogether different reason, is a vain and unprofitable inquiry.
Gen 3:16
The sentence of the woman Gen 3:16 consists of three parts: the former two regard her as a mother, the last as a wife. Sorrow is to be multiplied in her pregnancy, and is also to accompany the bearing of children. This sorrow seems to extend to all the mother’s pains and anxieties concerning her offspring. With what solicitude she would long for a manifestation of right feeling toward the merciful God in her children, similar to what she had experienced in her own breast! What unutterable bitterness of spirit would she feel when the fruits of disobedience would discover themselves in her little ones, and in some of them, perhaps, gather strength from year to year!
The promise of children is implicitly given in these two clauses. It came out also incidentally in the sentence of the serpent. What a wonderful conception is here presented to the minds of the primeval pair! Even to ourselves at this day the subject of race is involved in a great deal of mystery. We have already noticed the unity of the race in its head. But the personality and responsibility of individuals involve great and perplexing difficulties. The descent of a soul from a soul is a secret too deep for our comprehension. The first man was potentially the race, and, so long as he stands alone, actually the whole race for the time. His acts, then, are those not merely of the individual, but of the race. If a single angel were to fall, he falls alone. If the last of a race were to fall, he would in like manner involve no other in his descent. But if the first of a race falls, before he has any offspring, the race has fallen. The guilt, the depravity, the penalty, all belong to the race. This is a great mystery. But it seems to follow inevitably from the constitution of a race, and it has clear evidences of its truth both in the facts and the doctrines of the Bible.
When we come to view the sin of our first parents in this light, it is seen to entail tremendous consequences to every individual of the race. The single transgression has involved the guilt, the depravity, and the death, not only of Adam, but of that whole race which was in him, and thus has changed the whole character and condition of mankind throughout all time.
In the instructions going before and coming after are found the means of training up these children for God. The woman has learned that God is not only a righteous judge, but a forbearing and merciful Father. This was enough for her at present. It enabled her to enter upon the journey of life with some gleams of hope amidst the sorrows of the family. And in the experience of life it is amazing what a large proportion of the agreeable is mingled with the troubles of our fallen race. The forbearance and goodness of God ought in all reason and conscience to lead us back to a better feeling toward him.
The third part of her sentence refers to her husband - “Thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.” This is evidently a piece of that retributive justice which meets us constantly in the administration of God. The woman had taken the lead in the transgression. In the fallen state, she is to be subject to the will of her husband. “Desire” does not refer to sexual desire in particular. Gen 4:7. It means, in general, “turn,” determination of the will. “The determination of thy will shall be yielded to thy husband, and, accordingly, he shall rule over thee.” The second clause, according to the parallel structure of the sentence, is a climax or emphatic reiteration of the first, and therefore serves to determine its meaning. Under fallen man, woman has been more or less a slave. In fact, under the rule of selfishness, the weaker must serve the stronger. Only a spiritual resurrection will restore her to her true place, as the help-meet for man.
Gen 3:17-19
The keyword in the sentence of the man is the “soil.” The curse (Gen 9:25, see the note) of the soil is the desire of the fruit trees with which the garden was planted, and of that spontaneous growth which would have rendered the toil of man unnecessary. The rank growth of thorns and thistles was also a part of the curse which it occasioned to man when fallen. His sorrow was to arise from the labor and sweat with which he was to draw from the ground the means of subsistence. Instead of the spontaneous fruits of the garden, the herb of the field, which required diligent cultivation, was henceforth to constitute a principal part of his support. And he had the dreary prospect before him of returning at length to the ground whence he was taken. He had an element of dust in him, and this organic frame was eventually to work out its own decay, when apart from the tree of life.
It is to be observed that here is the first allusion to that death which was the essential part of the sentence pronounced on the fallen race. The reasons of this are obvious. The sentence of death on those who should eat of the forbidden fruit had been already pronounced, and was well known to our first parents. Death consisted in the privation of that life which lay in the light of the divine countenance, shining with approving love on an innocent child, and therefore was begun on the first act of disobedience, in the shame and fear of a guilty conscience. The few traits of earthly discomfort which the sentences disclose, are merely the workings of the death here spoken of in the present stage of our existence. And the execution of the sentence, which comes to view in the following passage, is the formal accomplishment of the warning given to the transgressor of the divine will.
In this narrative the language is so simple as to present no critical difficulty. And, on reviewing the passage, the first thing we have to observe is, that the event here recorded is a turning-point of transcendent import in the history of man. It is no less than turning from confidence in God to confidence in his creature when contradicting him, and, moreover, from obedience to his express and well-remembered command to obedience to the dictates of misguided self-interest. It is obvious that, to the moral character of the transaction, it is of no consequence who the third party was who dared to contradict and malign his Maker. The guilt of man consists simply in disobeying the sole command of his beneficent Creator. The only mitigating circumstance is the suggestion of evil by an external party. But the more insignificant the only ostensible source of temptation, the more inexcusable the guilt of man in giving way to it.
This act altered fundamentally the position and character of man. He thereby descended from innocence to guilt in point of law, and at the same time from holiness to sin in point of character. Tremendous was the change, and equally tremendous the consequence. Death is, like most scriptural terms, a pregnant word, and here to be understood in the full compass of its meaning. It is the privation, not of existence, as is often confusedly supposed, but of life, in all its plenitude of meaning. As life includes all the gratifications of which our human susceptibilities are capable, so death is the privation of all the sources of human enjoyment, and among them of the physical life itself, while the craving for ease and the sense of pain retain all their force in the spiritual part of our nature. These poignant emotions reach their highest pitch of intensity when they touch the conscience, the tenderest part of our being, and forebode the meeting of the soul, in its guilty state, with a just and holy God.
This event is real. The narrative expresses in its strongest terms its reality. The event is one of the two alternatives which must follow from the preceding statements concerning the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and affords an explanation of their nature. It is no less essential to account for what follows. The problem of the history and condition of man can only be solved by this primeval fact. Conscience still remains an imperishable monument, on the one hand, of his having been formed after a perfect model; and, on the other, of his having fallen from his high estate. And all the facts of his history carry up his fall as far as the traditions of human memory reach.
And the narrative here is a literal record of the details of this great event. So far as regards God and man, the literality has never been questioned by those who acknowledge the event to be real. Some, however, have taken the serpent to be, not a literal, but a figurative serpent; not an animal, but a spiritual being. The great dragon, indeed, is identified with “the ancient serpent called the devil and Satan.” And hence we know that a being of a higher nature than the mere animal was present and active on this occasion. And this spiritual being was with great propriety called the serpent, both from its serpentine qualities and from choosing the serpent as the most suitable mask under which to tempt our first parents. But we cannot thence infer that a literal serpent was not employed in the temptation. The serpent is said to be “more subtle than any beast of the field.” First. The obvious meaning of this is, that it was itself a beast of the field.
Thus, Joseph, whom Israel loved “more than all his children,” was one of his children Gen 37:8. He that was “higher than any of the people,” was himself one of the people 2Sa 9:2. Second. If the serpent be here figurative, and denote a spirit, the statement that it was subtle above all the beasts of the field is feeble and inadequate to the occasion. It is not so, that man is distinguished from the other animals. In much more forcible language ought the old serpent to be distinguished from the unreasoning brute. Third. We have seen a meetness in a being of flesh, and that not superior, or even equal to man, being permitted to be employed as the medium of temptation. Man was thereby put at no disadvantage. His senses were not confounded by a supersensible manifestation. His presence of mind was not disturbed by an unusual appearance. Fourth. The actions ascribed to the tempter agree with the literal serpent. Wounding the heel, creeping on the belly, and biting the dust, are suitable to a mere animal, and especially to the serpent. The only exception is the speaking, and, what is implied in this, the reasoning. These, however, do not disprove the presence of the literal serpent when accompanied with a plain statement of its presence. They only indicate, and that to more experienced observers than our first parents, the presence of a lurking spirit, expressing its thoughts by the organs of the serpent.
It may be thought strange that the presence of this higher being is not explicitly noticed by the sacred writer. But it is the manner of Scripture not to distinguish and explain all the realities which it relates, but to describe the obvious phenomena as they present themselves to the senses; especially when the scope of the narrative does not require more, and a future revelation or the exercise of a sanctified experience will in due time bring out their interpretation. Thus, the doings of the magicians in Egypt are not distinguished from those of Moses by any disparaging epithet Exo 7:10-12. Only those of Moses are greater, and indicate thereby a higher power. The witch of Endor is consulted, and Samuel appears; but the narrative is not careful to distinguish then and there whether by the means of witchcraft or by the very power of God. It was not necessary for the moral training of our first parents at that early stage of their existence to know who the real tempter was. It would not have altered the essential nature of the temptation, of the sentence pronounced on any of the parties, or of the hopes held out to those who were beguiled.
This brings into view a system of analogy and mutual relation pervading the whole of Scripture as well as nature, according to which the lower order of things is a natural type of the higher, and the nearer of the more remote. This law displays itself in the history of creation, which, in the creative work of the six days, figures to our minds, and, as it were, lays out in the distance those other antecedent processes of creative power that have intervened since the first and absolute creation; in the nature of man, which presents on the surface the animal operations in wonderful harmony with the spiritual functions of his complex being; in the history of man, where the nearer in history, in prophecy, in space, in time, in quality, matter, life, vegetative and animate, shadow forth the more remote. All these examples of the scriptural method of standing on and starting from the near to the far are founded upon the simple fact that nature is a rational system of things, every part of which has its counterpart in every other. Hence, the history of one thing is, in a certain form, the history of all things of the same kind.
The serpent is of a crafty instinct, and finds, accordingly, its legitimate place at the lowest step of the animal system. Satan seeks the opportunity of tempting Adam, and, in the fitness of things, turns to the serpent as the ready medium of his assault upon human integrity. He was limited to such a medium. He was not permitted to have any contact with man, except through the senses and in the way of speech. He was also necessitated to have recourse to the serpent, as the only creature suited to his purpose.
The place of the serpent in the scale of animals was in keeping with the crookedness of its instinct. It was cursed above all cattle, since it was inferior to them in the lack of those limbs which serve for rising, moving, and holding; such as legs and arms. This meaning of cursed is familiar to Scripture. “Cursed is the ground for thy seed” Gen 3:17. It needed the toil of man to repress thorns and thistles, and cultivate plants more useful and needful to man. “This people who knoweth not the law are cursed” Joh 7:49. This is a relative use of the word, by which a thing is said to be cursed in respect of its failing to serve a particular end. Hence, the serpent’s condition was a fit emblem of the spiritual serpent’s punishment for its evil doings regarding man.
Through the inscrutable wisdom of the Divine Providence, however, it was not necessary, or may not have been necessary, to change in the main the state of the natural serpent or the natural earth in order to carry out the ends of justice. The former symbolized in a very striking manner the helplessness and disappointment of the enemy of man. The latter exacted that labor of man which was the just consequence of his disobedience. This consequence would have been avoided if he had continued to be entitled to the tree of life, which could no doubt have been propagated beyond its original bounds. But a change in the moral relation of the heart toward God brings along with it in the unsearchable ways of divine wisdom a change as great in the bearing of the events of time on the destiny of man. While the heart is with God, all things work together for good to us. When the heart is estranged from him, all things as inevitably work together for evil, without any material alteration in the system of nature.
We may even ascend a step higher into the mysteries of providence; for a disobedient heart, that forms the undeserving object of the divine compassion, may be for a time the unconscious slave of a train of circumstances, which is working out its recovery from the curse as well as the power of sin through the teaching of the Divine Spirit. The series of events may be the same in which another is floating down the stream of perdition. But to the former these events are the turning points of a wondrous moral training, which is to end in reconciliation to God and restoration to his likeness.
A race, in like manner, that has fallen from communion with God, may be the subject of a purpose of mercy, which works out, in the providence of God, the return of some to his home and love, and the wandering of others away further and further into the darkness and misery of enmity with God.
And though this system of things is simple and uniform in the eyes of the only wise God, yet to human view parts of it appear only as special arrangements and retributions, exactly meeting the case of man and serving for his moral education. No doubt they are so. But they are also parts of a constant course of nature, pursued with undeviating regularity, yet ordered with such infallible wisdom as to accomplish at the same time both general and special ends. Hence, without any essential change in the serpent’s natural instincts, it serves for a striking monument of the defeat and destruction of the devil and his works. The ground, without any change in its inherent nature, but merely by the removal, it may be, of the tree of life, is cursed to man, as it demands that toil which is the mark of a fallen race.
The question of miracles, or special interpositions of the divine will and power which cross the laws of nature, is not now before us. By the very definition of miracles they transcend the laws of nature; that is, of that system of events which is known to us by observation. But it does not follow that they transcend a higher law of the divine plan, which may, partly by revelation and partly even by a deeper study of ourselves and things around us, be brought to light. By the investigations of geology we seem compelled to acknowledge a succession of creations at great intervals of time, as a law of the divine procedure on our globe. But, thousands of years before geology was conceived, one such creation, subsequent to the great primal act by which the universe was called into existence, was made known to us by divine revelation. And beside periodical miracle, we find recorded in the Book of Revelation a series of miracles, which were performed in pursuance of the divine purpose of grace toward the fallen race of man. These are certainly above nature, according to the largest view of it which has ever been current among our philosophers. But let us not therefore imagine that they are above reason or grace - above the resources and determinations of the divine mind and will concerning the development of the universe.
Gen 3:20
This verse and the next one record two very significant acts consequent upon the judgment: one on the part of Adam, and another on the part of God.
The man here no doubt refers to two expressions in the sentences he had heard pronounced on the serpent and the woman. “He,” the seed of the woman, “shall bruise thy head.” Here it is the woman who is to bear the seed. And this seed is to bruise the serpent’s head; that is, in some way to undo what had been done for the death of man, and so re-invest him with life. This life was therefore to come by the woman. Again, in the address of the judge to the woman he had heard the words, “Thou shalt bear children.” These children are the seed, among whom is to be the bruiser of the serpent’s head, and the author of “life”. And in an humbler, nearer sense, the woman is to be the mother of children, who are the living, and perpetuate the life of the race amid the ravages which death is daily committing on its individual members. These glimmerings of hope for the future make a deep impression upon the father of mankind. He perceives and believes that through the woman in some way is to come salvation for the race. He gives permanent expression to his hope in the significant name which he gives to his wife. Here we see to our unspeakable satisfaction the dawn of faith - a faith indicating a new beginning of spiritual life, and exercising a salutary influence on the will, faintly illuminating the dark bosom of our first parent. The mother of mankind has also come to a better mind. The high and holy Spirit has in mercy withdrawn the cloud of misconception from the minds of both, and faith in the Lord and repentance have sprung up in their new-born souls.
Gen 3:21
As Gen 3:20 records an instance of humble, apprehending faith in the divine word, so here we have a manifest act of mercy on the part of God, indicating the pardon and acceptance of confessing, believing man, rejoicing in anticipation of that future victory over the serpent which was to be accomplished by the seed of the woman. This act is also suitable to the present circumstances of man, and at the same time strikingly significant of the higher blessings connected with restoration to the divine favor. He had discovered his nakedness, and God provides him with a suitable covering. He was to be exposed to the variations of climate, and here was a durable protection against the weather. But far more than this. He had become morally naked, destitute of that peace of conscience which is an impenetrable shield against the shame of being blamed and the fear of being punished; and the coats of skin were a faithful emblem and a manifest guarantee of those robes of righteousness which were hereafter to be provided for the penitent in default of that original righteousness which he had lost by transgression. And, finally, there is something remarkable in the material out of which the coats were made. They were most likely obtained by the death of animals; and as they do not appear yet to have been slain for food, some have been led to conjecture that they were offered in sacrifice - slain in prefiguration of that subsequent availing sacrifice which was to take away sin. It is the safer course, however, to leave the origin of sacrifice an open question. Scripture does not intimate that the skins were obtained in consequence of sacrifice; and apart from the presumption derived from these skins, it seems to trace the origin of sacrifice to the act of Habel recorded in the next chapter.
This leads us to a law, which we find frequently exhibited in Sacred Scripture, that some events are recorded without any connection or significance apparent on the surface of the narrative, while at the same time they betoken a greater amount of spiritual knowledge than we are accustomed to ascribe to the age in which they occurred. The bare fact which the writer states, being looked at with our eyes, may have no significance. But regarded, as it ought to be, with the eyes of the narrator, cognizant of all that he has to record up to his own time, it becomes pregnant with a new meaning, which would not otherwise have been discovered. Even this, however, may not exhaust the import of a passage contained in an inspired writing. To arrive at the full sense it may need to be contemplated with the eyes of the Holy Spirit, conscious of all that is to become matter of revelation to the end of time. It will then stand forth in all the comprehensiveness of meaning which its relation to the whole body of revealed truth imparts, and under the guise of an everyday matter-of-fact will convey some of the sublimest aspects of divine truth. Hence, the subsequent scripture, which is the language of the Holy Spirit, may aid us in penetrating the hidden meaning of an earlier part of revelation.
God is the Prime Mover in this matter. The mercy of God alone is the source of pardon, of the mode in which he may pardon and yet be just, and of the power by which the sinner may be led to accept it with penitence and gratitude. In the brevity of the narrative the results only are noted; namely, the intimation and the earnest of pardon on the side of God, and the feelings and doings of faith and repentance on the side of the parents of mankind. What indications God may have given by the impressive figure of sacrifice or otherwise of the penalty being paid by another for the sinner, as a necessary condition of forgiveness, we are not here informed, simply because those for whom a written record was necessary would learn it more fully at a subsequent stage of the narrative. This suggests two remarks important for interpretation: First. This document is written by one who omits many things done and said to primeval man, because they are unnecessary for those for whom he writes, or because the principles they involve will come forward in a more distinct form in a future part of his work.
This practice speaks for Moses being not the mere collector, but the composer of the documents contained in Genesis, out of such preexistent materials as may have come to his hand or his mind. Second. We are not to import into the narrative a doctrine or institution in all the development it may have received at the latest period of revelation. This would be contrary to the manner in which God was accustomed to teach man. That concrete form of a great principle, which comported with the infantile state of the early mind, is first presented. The germ planted in the opening, fertile mind, springs forth and grows. The revelations and institutions of God grow with it in compass and grandeur. The germ was truth suited for babes; the full-grown tree is only the same truth expanded in the advancing development of people and things. They equally err who stretch the past to the measure of the present, and who judge either the past or the future by the standard of the present. Well-meaning but inconsiderate critics have gone to both extremes.
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 vv8–9 Afternoon air. God’s presence has often been indicated by…
Afternoon air. God’s presence has often been indicated by an unusual wind. (3 Kings xix. 12; Act. ii. 2.) The sovereign judge will not suffer the day to pass over, without bringing our first parents to a sense of their fault. They hid themselves, loving darkness now, because their works were evil.
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).
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On v8 they heard the voice of the Lord God walking…
they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden--The divine Being appeared in the same manner as formerly--uttering the well-known tones of kindness, walking in some visible form (not running hastily, as one impelled by the influence of angry feelings). How beautifully expressive are these words of the familiar and condescending manner in which He had hitherto held intercourse with the first pair.
in the cool of the day--literally, "the breeze of the day," the evening.
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hid themselves amongst the trees of the garden--Shame, remorse, fear--a sense of guilt--feelings to which they had hitherto been strangers disordered their minds and led them to shun Him whose approach they used to welcome. How foolish to think of eluding His notice (Psa 139:1-12).
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 vv8–9 8. Heard the voice of the Lord — Some…
8. Heard the voice of the Lord — Some interpreters understand this voice to have been the sound or noise made by the approach of Jehovah. Comp. “sound of a going” in 2Sa_5:24. But the two following verses imply that it was the voice of Jehovah calling, rather than the noise of his movement, that is here intended. Both ideas, however, may be combined, for the anthropomorphism here is a notable feature of the description. The voice that called was the well-known voice of One who had spoken to them before, and who now came walking to and fro in the garden as aforetime, but his voice now inspired fear rather than delight.
In the cool of the day — Literally, at the wind of the day. That is, at the time of the evening breeze. It was the closing day of Adam’s Eden life, and, as Delitzsch has observed, that hour is adapted to weaken the dissipating impressions and excitements of the day, and beget a stillness in the soul. Then arise in man’s heart the sentiments of sadness and loneliness, of longing, 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, while the darkness, as it comes rushing in upon them, makes them feel that their inner light has gone out.”
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Hid themselves — This action was on their part a confession of conscious guilt and shame.
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 vv8–9 8. the voice] Better, as R.V. marg., sound. The…
8. the voice] Better, as R.V. marg., sound. The man and woman are represented as hearing the sound of God’s footsteps in the garden.
in the cool of the day] Lit. “in the wind of the day”; that is, at the time of day when, in the East, a cool wind springs up, and people leave their houses. LXX τὸ δειλινόν, Vulg. ad auram post meridiem.
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hid themselves] Evidently it had hitherto been their custom to go with Jehovah when He “walked in the garden.” Now conscience makes cowards of them; and, like children who had done wrong, they hide themselves “in medio ligni Paradisi” (Vulg.).
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 v8 (8) And they heard the voice of the Lord…
(8) And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden.—The matter-of-fact school of commentators understand by this that there was a thunderstorm, and the guilty pair hearing for the first time the uproar of nature, hid themselves in terror, and interpreted the mighty peals as meaning their condemnation. Really it is in admirable keeping with the whole narrative; and Jehovah appears here as the owner of the Paradise, and as taking in it His daily exercise; for the verb is in the reflexive conjugation, and means “walking for pleasure.” The time is “the cool (literally, the wind) of the day,” the hour in a hot climate when the evening breeze sets in, and men, rising from their noontide slumber, go forth for labour or recreation. In this description the primary lesson is that hitherto man had lived in close communication with God. His intellect was undeveloped; his mental powers still slumbered; but nevertheless there was a deep spiritual sympathy between him and his Maker. It is the nobler side of Adam’s relationship to God before the fall.
Hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God.—This does not imply a visible appearance, for the whole narrative is anthropomorphic. The Fathers, however, saw in these descriptions the proof of a previous incarnation of the Divine Son (see Note on Gen_12:7). Next, we find in their conduct an attempt to escape from the further result of sin. The first result was shame, from which man endeavoured to free himself by covering his person; the second was fear, and this man would cure by departing still farther from God. But the voice of Jehovah reaches him, and with rebuke and punishment gives also healing and hope.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv8–9 And they heard the voice of the Lord God.…
CHAPTER 3:8-19
And they heard the voice of the Lord God. Either
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(1) the noise of his footsteps (cf. Lev_26:33; Num_16:34; 2Sa_5:24; Knobel, Delitzsch, Keil, Kalisch, Macdonald) or
(2) the thunder that accompanied his approach (cf. Exo_9:23; Job_37:4, Job_37:5; Psa_29:3, Psa_29:9; Murphy, Bush) or
(3) the sound of his voice (Calvin, Lange, Wordsworth); or
(4) probably all four. Walking in the garden. If the voice, then increasing in intensity; (cf. Exo_19:19; Bush) if Jehovah, which is better, then "wandering or walking about in a circle" within the garden bounds (Macdonald). In the cool (literally, the wind) of the day. The morning breeze (Calvin); the evening breeze (Kalisch, Macdonald); ton (LXX); auram post meridiem (Vulgate); cf. hom ha yom, "the heat of the. (Gen_18:1) And Adam and his wife hid themselves. Not in humility, as unworthy to come into God"s presence (Irenaeus); or in amazement, as not knowing which way to turn (Augustine); or through modesty, (Knobel Bohlen); but from a sense of guilt. From the presence of the Lord. From which it is apparent they expected a Visible manifestation.
Vers. 8-19.
The first judgment scene.
I THE FLIGHT Or THE CRIMINALS.
1. It is the instinct of sinful men to flee from God. "Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God" (ver. 8). So "Jonah rose up to flee unto Tarshish from the presence of the Lord". (Jon_1:3)
(1) Through a consciousness of guilt. A perception of their nakedness caused our first parents to seek the shelter of the garden trees (ver. 10). Doubtless it was the burden lying on Jonah"s conscience that sent him down into the ship"s hold. (Jon_1:5) So awakened sinners ever feel themselves constrained to get away from God.
(2) From a dread of pun ishment. Not perhaps so long as they imagine God to be either unacquainted with or indifferent to their offence, but immediately they apprehend that their wickedness is discovered. (cf. Exo_2:15) The sound of Jehovah"s voice as he came towards our first parents filled them with alarm. How much more will the full revelation of his glorious presence in flaming fire affright the ungodly.
2. It is Gods habit to pursue transgressors. As he pursued Adam and Eve in the garden by his voice (ver. 9), and Jonah on the deep by a wind, (Jon_1:4) and David by his prophet, (2Sa_12:1) so does he still in his providence, and through the ministry of his word, and by his Spirit, follow after fleeing sinners
(1) to apprehend them; (cf. Php_3:12)
(2) to forgive and save them; (Luk_19:10)
(3) if they will not be forgiven, to punish them. (2Th_1:8)
3. It is the certain fate of all fugitives to be eventually arrested. Witness Adam and Eve (ver. 9), Cain, (Gen_4:9) David, (2Sa_12:1 1Ki_21:20) Jonah. (Gen_1:6) Distance will not prevent. (Psa_139:7) Darkness will not hinder. (Psa_139:11) Secrecy will not avail. (Heb_4:13) Material defenses will not ward off the coming doom. (Amo_9:2, Amo_9:3) The lapse of time will not make it less certain. (Num_32:23)
II THE EXAMINATION OF THE CRIMINALS.
1. God s questions are always painfully direct and searching. "Adam, where art thou?" (ver. 9). "Who told thee thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree?"(ver. 11)., "What hast thou done?" (ver. 13).
(1) Because he knows the fact of the sinner s guilt. The nature and aggravation, the time, circumstances, manner, and reason of the sinner"s transgression are perfectly understood.
(2) Because he aims at the sinner"s conviction; i.e. he desires to bring sinners to a realization of the sinfulness of their behavior corresponding to that which he himself possesses.
(3) Because he wishes to elicit a confession from the sinner"s mouth. Without this there can be no forgiveness or salvation (Pro_28:13; 1Jn_1:9)
2. Man"s apologies are always extremely weak and trifling.
(1) As attempting to excuse that which must for ever be inexcusable, viz., disobedience to God"s commandment. Nothing can justify sin. God"s authority over man being supreme, no one can relieve man from his responsibility to yield implicit submission to the Divine precepts. Jehovah"s question rests special emphasis on the fact that Adam"s sin was a transgression of his commandment (ver. 11).
(2) As seeking to transfer the burden of guilt from himself to another. Adam blames his wife: Eve blames the serpent; and ever since, sinners have been trying to blame anything and everything except themselves the companions God has given them; the circumstances in which God has placed them; the peculiar temperaments and dispositions with which God has endowed them.
(3) As failing to obliterate the fact of transgression. Even Adam and Eve both discern as much as this. Beginning with apologies, they were obliged to end with avowal of their guilt. And if man can detect the worthlessness of his own hastily-invented pleas, much more, we may be sure, can God pierce through all the flimsy and trifling arguments that sinners offer to extenuate their faults.
(4) As not requiring to be answered. It is remarkable that Jehovah does not condescend to answer either Adam or his wife; the reason being, doubtless, that any reply to their foolish speeches was unnecessary.
3. The Divine verdict is always clear and convincing.
(1) Though in this case unspoken, it was yet implied. Adam and Eve did not require to be informed of their culpability. And neither will sinners need to be informed of their guilt and condemnation when they stand before the great white throne. It is a special mark of mercy that God informs sinners in the gospel of the nature of the verdict which has been Pronounced against them. (Joh_3:18, Joh_3:19)
(2) It was so convincing that it was not denied. Adam and Eve we can suppose were speechless. So was the disobedient wedding guest. (Mat_22:12) So will all the condemned be in the day of judgment. (Rev_6:17)
III THE SENTENCE OF THE CRIMINALS.
1. On the serpentjudgment without mercy.
(1) Degradation on both the reptile and the tempter.
(2) Hostility between the serpent"s brood and the woman"s seed.
(3) Ultimate destruction of the tempter by the incarnation and death of the woman"s seed.
2. On the sinning pair mercy, and then judgment.
(1) Mercy for both. Great mercy the restitution of themselves and of their seed (or at least a portion of it) by the complete annihilation of their adversary through the sufferings of a distinguished woman"s seed. Certain mercy the entire scheme for their recovery was to depend on God, who here says, "I will put Free mercy neither solicited nor deserved by Adam or his wife.
(2) Judgment for each. For the woman, sorrow in accomplishing her womanly and wifely destiny, combined with a position of dependence on and submission to her husband. For the man, a life of sorrowful labor, a doom of certain death.
Learn
1. The folly of attempting to hide from God. It is better to flee to God than to run from God, even when we sin. (Psa_143:9)
2. The expediency of confessing to God. It is always the shortest path to mercy and forgiveness. (Psa_32:5)
3. The gentle treatment which men receive from God. Like David, we have all reason to sing of mercy as well as, and even rather than, judgment. (Psa_101:1)
HOMILIES BY R.A. REDFORD Ver. 8.
The working of the sin-stricken conscience.
I GOD THE JUDGE REVEALING HIMSELF. The voice of the Lord God represents to men the knowledge of themselves, which, like light, would be intolerable to the shamefaced.
II MAN HIDING FROM THE JUDGE BECAUSE UNABLE TO MEET HIM. While the darkness of the thick foliage was regarded as a covering, hiding nakedness, it is yet from the presence of the Lord God that the guilty seek refuge.
III MAN"S SELF AGAINST HIMSELF. The instinctive action of shame is a testimony to the moral nature and position of man. So it may be said
IV GUILT is itself God"s witness, comprehending the sense of righteousness and the sense of transgression in the same being. (Perhaps there is a reference to the working of the conscience in the description of the voice of God as mingling in the facts of the natural world; "the cool of the day" being literally the "evening breeze," whose whispering sound became articulate to the ears of those who feared the personal presence of their Judge.) 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 vv8–9 They heard the voice of the Lord God
Gen_3:8
They heard the voice of the Lord God
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Gods voice in nature
Whether their ears as well as their hearts heard Gods voice does not much matter.
It would have mattered if their ears and not their hearts had heard. They doubtless often heard Him in the evening hour--the twilight which all the faiths of all cultivated nations have chosen as their special season of devotion. When they heard, and when men now hear Gods voice in garden, meadow, wood, of what does it tell?
I. OF GODS PRESENCE. Nature is a kingdom, in which the King resides as well as reigns: a house in which the Father dwells as well as which He supports.
II. OF GODS POWER AND WISDOM.
III. OF GODS BOUNTY AND LOVE. Profusion of life.
IV. OF MANS MORTALITY. Nature is a sepulchre as well as a shrine.
V. OF MANS RETRIBUTION FOR BROKEN LAW. (Urijah R. Thomas.)
Observations
I. IF MEN WILL NOT DRAW NEAR UNTO GOD, YET HE WILL FIND THEM OUT IN THEIR SINS, AND BRING THEM INTO JUDGMENT BEFORE HIM. Let all those that have sinned come and prepare to meet their God (Amo_4:12), who can neither be blinded not escaped, nor resisted, that they may take hold of His strength to make peace with Him, considering--
1. That it is more credit to come in voluntarily than to be drawn in by force.
2. A readier way to obtain pardon, as Benhadads lords found by experience (1Ki_20:32), and David much more in submitting unto Psa_32:5).
3. If we come not in voluntarily, God will bring us in by force, which will be worse for us every way.
II. GOD, WHO HATH ALL THE WRONG WHEN HE IS PROVOKED BY OUR SINS, IS THE FIRST THAT SEEKS TO MAKE PEACE WITH US.
1. He allures us by His mercies, as He promised to deal with His people Hos_2:14-15).
2. By the inward and secret persuasions of His Spirit, in giving them hearts to return (Zec_12:12).
3. By the effectual ministry of the gospel, wherein He doth not only offer unto us, but persuade and beseech us to embrace those terms of peace which He offers, as the apostle speaks (2Co_5:20).
The reason is--
1. Necessity, seeing we cannot turn our hearts unto Him unless He draws Joh_6:44), which moves the Church to pray, Turn us, and weshall be turned (Jer_31:18).
2. The fitness of this way, to advance the free mercy of God the more, that all mens boasting may be taken away (Eph_2:8-9), and that he that rejoiceth may rejoice in God alone (1Co_1:31), who, as He loves us first, so He seeks us first (Isa_61:1), and recovers us oftwhen we go astray.
III. GOD, WHEN HE DEALS WITH MEN, DELIGHTS TO BE HEARKENED UNTO WITH REVERENCE AND FEAR.
IV. GOD, IN REPRESENTING HIS MAJESTY TO MEN, SO DEALS WITH THEM THAT HE MAY HUMBLE BUT NOT CONFOUND THEM.
1. In dispensing His Word by the ministry of men (and not of angels, whose presence might affright us), and that, too, in such a manner, that whereas it is in itself like a hammer (Jer_23:29), mighty inoperation through God, sharper than any two-edged sword (2Co_10:5), able, if it were set on by the strength of His hand, to break the heart in pieces, yet is so tempered in the dispensation thereof, by men like unto ourselves, and therefore sensible by experience of human infirmities, that it only pricks the heart (Act_2:27), but cuts it not in pieces.
2. In the terrors of conscience, which being in themselves unsupportable Pro_18:14), yet are so moderated unto us, that though we be perplexed, we are not in despair (2Co_4:8), burned but yet not consumed, like Moses bush (Exo_2:2), walking safely in the flames of fire with the three children (Dan_3:25).
3. In afflictions, which God lays on us in such a measure proportioned to our strength (1Co_10:13) that they only purge us, but do not destroy us (Isa_27:8-9).
V. GOD MANY TIMES CALLS MEN TO ACCOUNT, AND PROCEEDS IN JUDGMENT AGAINST THEM IN THE MIDST OF THEIR DELIGHTS.
VI. IT IS VERY NEEDFUL TO OBSERVE A FIT SEASON IN DEALING WITH OFFENDERS AFTER THEY HAVE SINNED. VII. THE PRESENCE OF GOD IS TERRIBLE TO A SINNER.
1. Behold, then, the miserable condition into which sin hath brought us, which hath changed our greatest desire (Psa_42:2), and joy (16:11), and content (17:15), into the greatest terror, especially unto the wicked, who neither can fly from Gods presence (139:7) nor endure His revenging hand.
2. Behold the comfort of a good conscience, wherein we may behold the face of God with comfort and confidence (1Jn_3:21); but not in ourselves, but in the name of Jesus Christ, who hath by His mediation established with us a covenant of peace between God and us (Rom_5:1) and purchased unto us access with boldness to the throne of grace Heb_4:16), so that we can not only rejoice at present in Gods presence with us in His ordinances, but withal love and long for His appearance, when He shall come in His glory (2Ti_4:8; Rev_22:20).
VIII. WHEN MEN ARE ONCE FALLEN AWAY FROM GOD, THEY ARE LEFT TO MISERABLE AND UNPROFITABLE SHIFTS.
1. It cannot be otherwise when men are once gone away from God, in whom only is true comfort and safety, and His name a strong tower, which they that run unto are safe, and from whom is the efficacy of all means, which without Him can do neither good nor evil.
2. God, in His just judgment, when men honour Him not as God, deprives them of that wisdom.
IX. MEN ARE NATURALLY APT TO FLY FROM THE MEANS OF THEIR OWN GOOD. The reason is--
1. Mens ignorance of spiritual things, wherein their true good consists.
2. The wisdom of the flesh being enmity against God: as many as are of the flesh must needs hate Him, and therefore cannot submit unto Him.
3. The ways of attaining true good are by denial of ones self and all the lusts of the flesh, which is impossible for any man to do, remaining in his natural condition.
X. THE TERRORS OF GOD SHALL FIRST OR LAST SHAKE THE HEARTS OF ALL THOSE THAT DO MOST SLIGHT HIS JUDGMENTS. Indeed, unless God should in this manner deal with the wicked of the world, He should--
1. Suffer His honour to be trampled under foot, and His authority and power despised.
2. Harden the hearts of wicked men in mischief (Ecc_8:11).
3. There is no fitter judgment, nor more proportionable to the sin, than to punish security and contempt with fear and terror.
XI. A GUILTY CONSCIENCE IS FILLED WITH TERRORS UPON EVERY OCCASION.
XII. WHATSOEVER WE TRULY FEAR WE CANNOT BUT ENDEAVOUR TO FLY FROM AND AVOID.
XIII. THERE IS A WONDERFUL PRONENESS IN THE HEARTS OF MEN TO CONCEIVE OF GOD AS THEY DO OF A MORTAL MAN. (J. White, M. A.)
Gods call to Adam
Our text suggests--
I. MANS DEPARTURE FROM GOD. Adam was in a state of--
1. Alienation from God.
2. Fear of Him.
3. Delusion about Him.
4. Danger.
II. GODS CONCERN ABOUT MANS DEPARTURE. God is concerned about mans departure from Him, because it involves--
1. Evil; and He is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity.
2. Suffering; and He is love.
III. GODS PERSONAL DEALING WITH THE WANDERER. (H. J. Martyn.)
The garden of the Lord concealing the Lord of the garden
The garden of the Lord concealed from Adam and Eve the Lord of the garden. God did not turn Adam out of paradise till Adam had turned God out. It is a long lesson to learn to be able to keep the garden of the Lord, and the Lord of the garden both. Adams felicities were of an innocent nature, to be sure. There is no blessing so blessed that the unilluminated side of it will not fall off and darken down into a curse. All the planets that dance even about the sun are black on their off side. The better a thing is, the more harm it is capable of doing. The very results yielded by Christianity, in the shape of respectability, and wealth, and power, and culture, and elegant refinements, come in to obscure the root itself out from which they are sprung. It is like a tree shaded and hindered by its own verdure. It is like the sun waking up the mists in the morning; its beams, like so many nimble fingers, weaving a veil to hang across the face of the sun, till it defeats its brightness by its own shining. We become indifferent to the cause in our engrossment with its effects, and the old fact becomes true again, that the garden of the Lord conceals from us the Lord of the garden.
1. One of the trees behind which the face of the Lord becomes hidden from us is the tree of knowledge. We shall mention only two or three of these briefly; but there is propriety in mentioning that first. It is the first historic instance wherein a good thing demonstrated its capacity for mischief. The tree was of Gods planting, to be sure, and knowledge is no doubt good; but from the first the devil has been a learned devil, and has posed as the patron of erudition. That knowledge puffeth up was known by Satan before it was stated by Paul. Consciousness of knowledge is more stultifying than ignorance, and is essentially atheistic; atheistic in this sense: that it converts present cognitions into a barrier that blocks the entrance of the heavenly light and thwarts the Holy Ghost. The tree grew in Gods garden; so our schools have been planted and fostered by the Christian Church. Still, the multitudinousness of books, ideas, theories, and philosophies, out into which the schools have blossomed, tends to work that intellectual complacency, and that conceit of knowledge, which blurs every heavenly vision, discredits the wisdom that is from above, and routs the Redeemer. Not many wise men after the flesh are called. One single electric light out here on Madison Square extinguishes the stars, and the shining of the low-lying moon snuffs out all the constellations of the firmament. The garden of the Lord grows up at length into such prodigality of leaf and flower as to conceal the Lord of the garden.
2. Another tree behind which the face of the Lord becomes hidden from us is that of affluence. The tree of wealth, verily, like the tree of knowledge, has its best rooting in the soil of paradise. We should no sooner think of speaking a disparaging word of money than we should of knowledge. But as knowledge trails behind it its shadow (as we have seen), so money is regularly attended by its shadow. Money is just as holy a thing in one way as wisdom is in another. But it makes not the slightest difference how holy a thing is, if, like Adam, the Lord is on one side of it and you are on the other. And the more this consciousness of money is developed, the more truly the man becomes encased in a little world that is all his own, and the more impervious to any influences that bear upon him from without. The verdure becomes so thick that the sky gets rubbed out, and the tree so broad and massive that the Lord God shrinks into invisibility behind it.
3. I mention only one other tree in Gods garden, and that is the tree of respectability. More evidently, perhaps, than either of the others, it is the outcome of heavenly soil. The devil of decency is more incorrigible than the devil of dirt. (C. H. Parkhurst, D. D.)
No hiding from God
It was said of the Roman empire under the Caesars that the whole world was only one great prison for Caesar, for if any man offended the emperor it was impossible for him to escape. If he crossed the Alps, could not Caesar find him out in Gaul? If he sought to hide himself in the Indies, even the swarthy monarchs there knew the power of the Roman arms, so that they could give no shelter to a man who had incurred imperial vengeance. And yet, perhaps, a fugitive from Rome might have prolonged his miserable life by hiding in the dens and caves of the earth. But, O sinner, there is no hiding from God. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Sinner shuns God
A burglar, not long ago, rifled an unoccupied dwelling by the seaside. He ransacked the rooms, and heaped his plunder in the parlour. There were evidences that here he sat down to rest. On a bracket in the corner stood a marble bust of Guidos Ecce Homo--Christ crowned with thorns. The guilty man had taken it in his hands and examined it. It bore the marks of his fingers; but he replaced it with its face turned to the wall, as if he would not have even the sightless eyes of the marble Saviour look upon his deeds of infamy. So the first act of the first sinner was to hide himself at the sound of Gods voice. (Professor Phelps.)
A bad conscience embitters comforts
There is no friend so good as a good conscience. There is no foe so ill as a bad conscience. It makes us either kings or slaves. A man that hath a good conscience, it raiseth his heart in a princely manner above all things in the world. A man that hath a bad conscience, though he be a monarch, it makes him a slave. A bad conscience embitters all things in the world to him, though they be never so comfortable in themselves. What is so comfortable as the presence of God? What is so comfortable as the light? Yet a bad conscience, that will not be ruled, it hates the light, and hates the presence of God, as we see Adam, when he had sinned, he fled from God (Gen_3:8). A bad conscience cannot joy in the midst of joy. It is like a gouty foot, or a gouty toe, covered with a velvet shoe. Alas! what doth ease it? What doth glorious apparel ease the diseased body? Nothing at all. The ill is within. There the arrow sticks. (R. Sibbes.)
The sinner afraid of God
I once met a little boy in Wales, crying bitterly at his fathers door, afraid to go in. I asked him what was the matter. He told me that his mother had sent him out clean in the morning, but that he had got into the water, and made his clothes dirty. So he feared to go in, because his father would punish him. We have soiled our characters by sin, and therefore is it that we fear death--dread the meeting with our Father. (Thomas Jones.)
An ill conscience
An ill conscience is no comfortable companion to carry with thee. An ill conscience is like a thorn in the flesh. A thorn in the hedge may scratch you as you pass by it, but a thorn in the flesh rankles with you wherever you go; and the conscience, the ill conscience, the conscience that is ill at ease, it makes you ill at ease. You cannot have peace so long as you have an evil conscience, so long as there is that continual monition flashing across your mind: Judgment cometh, death cometh--am I ready? Many a time, when you go to your worldly scenes of pleasure, this conscience, like the finger writing on the wall of the palace of the king of Babylon, alarms and frightens you. You tell nobody about it. Strange thoughts strike across your mind. You have no rest. Can a man rest on a pillow of thorns? Can a man rest with the heartache? Can a man rest with his soul disturbed with the horrors of guilt? I tell thee there is no rest to thee till thou comest to Christ. He alone can calm a conscience. (S. Coley.)
A troubled conscience
As the stag which the huntsman has hit flies through bush and brake, over stock and stone, thereby exhausting his strength, but not expelling the deadly bullet from his body, so does experience show that they who have troubled consciences run from place to place, but carry with them wherever they go their dangerous wounds. (Gotthold.)
The voice of God
The voice of God was heard, it seems, before anything was seen; and as He appears to have acted towards man in His usual way, and as though He knew of nothing that had taken place till He had it from his own mouth, we may consider this as the voice of kindness, such, whatever it was, as he had used to hear beforetime, and on the first sound of which he and his companion had been used to draw near, as sheep at the voice of the shepherd, or as children at the voice of a father. The voice of one whom we love conveys life to our hearts; but, alas, it is not so now! Not only does conscious guilt make them afraid, but contrariety of heart to a holy God renders them averse to drawing near to Him. The kindest language to one who is become an enemy will work in a wrong way. Let favour be shewed to the wicked, yet will he not learn righteousness: in the land of uprightness will he deal unjustly, and will not behold the majesty of the Lord. Instead of coming at His call as usual, they hide themselves from His presence among the trees of the garden. Great is the cowardice which attaches to guilt. It flies from God, and from all approaches to Him in prayer or praise; yea, from the very thoughts of Him, and of death and judgment when they must appear before Him. But wherefore flee to the trees of the garden? Can they screen them from the eyes of Him with whom they have to do? Alas, they could not hide themselves and their nakedness from their own eyes; how, then, should they elude discovery before an omniscient God! (Gotthold.)
Suppose (what is not to be supposed) that they could have run from God, yet this would not do, unless they could have run from themselves too, for the wounded deer, whither ever he runs, carries with him the fatal arrow sticking fast in his sides. The guilt of their souls and the terror of their consciences went along with them, whither ever they went. So would only have been like the angled and entangled fish with the hook of the fisherman, that may indeed swim away all the length of the line, but the hook in her mouth hales her back again; so God summons in sinful man: Adam, where art thou? (Gen_3:9). (C. Ness.)
The cool of the day
Evening
I. THE PRIVILEGES OF EVENING.
1. Evening has calmness.
2. Evening has leisure.
3. Evening is social.
II. THE DUTIES OF EVENING.
1. It is a season for review.
2. It is a season for settlement.
3. It is a season for preparation.
III. THE TEACHING OF EVENING. A type of the close of life. Night is death, and the morrow the day which will break beyond the grave. (Homilist.)
God appearing, in the wind
It was in the wind of the day that Jehovah was heard. Meaning thereby, either at the time that the breeze was blowing, or in the breeze; or, more probably, both. It is generally in connection with the wind, or whirlwind, that Jehovah is said to appear Eze_1:4). In 2Sa_22:11 we read, He was seen upon the wings of the wind; in Psa_18:10 we read, He did fly upon the wings of the wind; in Psa_104:3 we read, Who walketh upon the wings of the wind. In these passages we note the difference of expression, yet the identity of the general idea--He was seen upon the wind; He did fly upon the wind; He did walk upon the wind; which last is the very expression in the passage before us. (H. Bonar, D. D.)
Evening the time for reflection
The cool of the day, which to God was the season for visiting His creatures, may, as it respects man, denote a season of reflection. We may sin in the daytime; but God will call us to account at night. Many a one has done that in the heat and bustle of the day which has afforded bitter reflection in the cool of the evening; and such in many instances has proved the evening of life. (A. Fuller.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain On v8 MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—Gen_3:8-12
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—Gen_3:8-12
THE SAD EFFECTS OF YIELDING TO TEMPTATION
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I. That yielding to temptation is generally followed by a sad consciousness of physical destitution. “And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig-leaves together and made themselves aprons” (Gen_3:7). Many a man has thought to enrich himself by yielding to the temptations of Satan, he has expected not merely to gain knowledge, but also social influence, commercial importance, and political advancement; but when the seduction has been accomplished, he has found himself poor, and blind, and naked. The best way to be rich is to be honest and good. The truest way to be socially influential is to be morally upright. The truest joys come to the purest souls. The great tendency of sin is to make men physically destitute, destitute of all that constitutes comfort. A sinner is exposed without any protecting garment to all the bitter experiences of life. Sin gives men many more wants than otherwise they would have. Upright souls have the fewest wants, and are the most independent of the external provisions of life. Most of the so-called civilization of nations is the outcome of sin, it is the apron of leaves to hide their nakedness.
II. That a yielding to temptation is generally followed by a grievous wandering from God. “And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves.” Adam and Eve had previously to this time held glad communion with God their Maker, but now they flee from Him. Sin makes men flee from the Infinite Being, and forsake the source of their truest spiritual joy. It introduces an element of fear into the soul. It makes men foolish in their attempts to hide from God. A forest of trees cannot conceal the guilty from the eye of heaven.
1. After yielding to temptation men often wander from God by neglecting prayer. When the fruit of the forbidden tree has been eaten men often begin to neglect their secret devotions. They try to banish all thought of God from their minds. The soul that holds converse with Satan, cannot long hold communion with God.
2. After yielding to temptation men often wander from God by neglecting His Word. When men have eaten the fruit of the forbidden tree they no longer like to read the Book which contains and makes known the restrictions they have violated. They are out of sympathy with the Book and its Author.
3. After yielding to temptation men often wander from God by increasing profanity of life. As the man first looked at the fruit of the forbidden tree, then touched it, then eat it; so now sin is a continued habit with him. He knows no shame. He feels no guilt. He responds not to the voice of God. We know not to what the first sin may lead.
III. That a yielding to temptation is generally followed by self vindication. “And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree and I did eat.”
1. We endeavour to vindicate ourselves by blaming others. The husband tries to vindicate himself by blaming his wife; the sister by blaming her brother; the employer by blaming his partner; the clerk by blaming his companion; and so it seems to be the way of life for one man to excuse himself by rendering others culpable.
(1). This course of conduct is ungrateful. Because all the relationships of life, whether domestic or commercial, are designed for our happiness. God gave Eve to Adam that she might be his companion and helpmeet. What could be more ungrateful than for man to charge his sin upon the woman who was designed to be a blessing to him, and in effect upon God?
(2). This course of conduct is ungenerous. It is ungenerous to our relations. True they are culpable for trying to lead us away, but we are more so by yielding ourselves to be influenced by them counter to the command of God. We knew the right, and are not justified in blaming them because we did the wrong.
(3). This course of conduct is unavailing. It will not excuse the sinner in the sight of God. It will not mitigate his guilt. It will not avert his punishment. It will not amend his doom. Let men honourably acknowledge the guilt of their own sin, and not strive to put it on the weaker party.
2. We endeavour to vindicate ourselves by blaming our circumstances. We indicate that our circumstances were unfavourable to our moral resistance. That Satan deceived us. That we were taken by surprise. That we were morally weak at the time. Man has Divine aid to enable him to overcome his circumstances however perplexing they may be.
IV. That in yielding to temptation we never realize the alluring promises of the devil.
1. Satan promised that Adam and Eve should become wise, whereas they became naked.
2. Satan promised that Adam and Eve should become gods, whereas they fled from God.
THE DAWN OF GUILT. Gen_3:7-13
Here is the dawn of a new era in the history of humanity. The eye of a guilty conscience is now opened for the first time, and God and the universe appeared in new and terrible forms. There are three things in this passage which have ever characterised this era of guilt.
I. A conscious loss of rectitude. They were “naked.” It is moral nudity—nudity of soul—of which they are conscious. The sinful soul is represented as naked (Rev_3:17). Righteousness is spoken of as a garment (Isa_61:3). The redeemed are clothed with white raiment. There are two things concerning the loss of rectitude worthy of notice.
1. They deeply felt it. Some are destitute of moral righteousness, and do not feel it.
2. They sought to conceal it. Men seek to hide their sins—in religious professions, ceremonies, and the display of outward morality.
II. An alarming dread of God. They endeavour, like Jonah, to flee from the presence of the Lord.
1. This was unnatural. The soul was made to live in close communion with God. All its aspirations and faculties show this.
2. This was irrational. There is no way of fleeing from omnipresence. Sin blinds the reason of men.
3. This was fruitless. God found Adam out. God’s voice will reach the sinner into whatever depths of solitude he may pass.
III. A miserable subterfuge for sin. “The woman,” &c. And the woman said, “The serpent beguiled me,” &c. What prevarication you have here! Each transferred the sinful act to the wrong cause. It is the essential characteristic of moral mind that it is the cause of its own actions. Each must have felt that the act was the act of self.—(Homilist.)
SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON THE VERSES
Gen_3:8. The incidents narrated in this chapter, though inconceivably important, follow each other in rapid succession. Man is here brought before us—created—holy—fallen—condemned—redeemed. The consequence is, that each sentence is unspeakably full of meaning.
I. The sense of guilt by which they were oppressed.
1. There were circumstances which aggravated their guilt—they knew God—His fellowship—were perfectly holy—happy—knew the obligations—knew the consequences of life and death.
2. They felt their guilt aggravated by these circumstances. Their consciences were not hardened. Their present feelings and condition were a contrast with the past. In these circumstances they fled. They knew of no redemption, and could make no atonement.
II. The melancholy change of character which had resulted from their fall.
1. Our moral attainments are indicated by our views of God—progressive. The pure in heart see God. Our first parents fell in their conceptions of God—omnipresence. “Whither shall I go,” &c. This ignorance of God increased in the world with the increase of sin, Rom_1:21-32. This ignorance of God is still exemplified. “The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God.” He may worship outwardly; and there are gradations of the foolish—some shut God within religious ordinances—some exclude Him.
III. That they had lost their communion with God.
1. One barrier interposed was guilt.
2. Another barrier was moral pollution.—(Outlines of Discourses by James Stewart.)
The voice of God pursueth sinners after guilt, sometimes inward and outward.
God hath His fit times to visit sinners.
Conscience hears and trembles at the voice of God.
Sin persuades souls as if it were possible to hide from God.
All carnal shifts will sin make to shun God’s sight; if leaves do not hide it, the trees must.
God who hath all the wrong when He is provoked by our sins, is the first that seeks to make peace with us:—
1. He allures us by His mercies.
2. By the sweet persuasions of His Spirit.
3. By the ministry of the Gospel. God in representing His Majesty to men so deals with them that he may humble but not confound them. God many times calls men to account, and proceeds in judgment against them in the midst of their delights. A guilty conscience is filled with terror, on every occasion we have no better refuge than to turn from sin to God.—(Trapp.)
Gen_3:9. Satan’s lie only gave occasion for the display 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 but in a world of sinners? God at the first, came down to create; and, then, when the serpent presumed to meddle with creation, God came down to save. This is 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 in 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. 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. (Notes on Genesis, C.H.M.)
The way to get our hearts affected with what we hear, is to apprehend ourselves to be spoken unto in particular.
God loves a free and voluntary acknowledgment of sin from his children when they have sinned against him.
God is full of mildness and gentleness in his dealings with offenders, even in their greatest sins.
All who desire to get out of their misery, must seriously consider what was the means that brought them into it.
Jehovah may suffer sinners to abuse His goodness, but he will call them to judgment.
God is not ignorant of the hiding places of sinners.
THE WANDERER FROM GOD
I. Where is man?
1. Distant from God.
2. In terror of God.
3. In delusion about God.
4. In danger from God.
II. God’s concern for him.
1. His condition involves evil—God is holy.
2. His condition involves suffering—God is love.
III. God’s dealings with him.
1. In the aggregate—“Adam,” the genus.
2. Personally. “Where art thou?” [Pulpit Germs, by Wythe].
Gen_3:10. All men are apt to colour and conceal all that they can even from God Himself.
One sin commonly draws on another:—
1. The first sin weakens the heart.
2. Sins are usually fastened to each other.
3. God punishes one sin with another.
God’s word is terrible to a guilty conscience.
It is a hard matter to get men to confess any more of their guilt than is self-evident.
Sinners pretend their fear rather than their guilt to drive them from God.
Sinners pretend their punishment rather than their crime to cause them to hide.
How hard it is to bring a soul to the true acknowledgment of sin.
Gen_3:11. The more sinners hide the more God sifteth them.
It is worth knowing by every man what discovers sin and shame. God therefore puts the question to Adam, to turn him to his own conscience, which told all God will bring sinners to a sense of sin before he leaves them, “Hast thou eaten?”:—
1. God’s command aggravates sin.
2. God’s small restriction aggravates sin.
3. God’s provision of mercy aggravates sin.
Man’s frowardness cannot overcome God’s love and patience.
God can easily, without any evidence, convince men by themselves.
God accepts no concession till men see and acknowledge their sin.
Men must be dealt with in plain terms before they will be brought to acknowledge their sin.
A breach of God’s commandment is that which makes any act of ours a sin.
Gen_3:12. When men’s sins are so manifest that they cannot deny them, they will yet labour by excuses to extenuate them.
Men may easily by their own folly turn the means ordained by God for their good into snares for their destruction.
Sin is impudent to reply against God’s conviction.
Sinners convicted, and not converted, are shifting of guilt from themselves.
God beareth long with the prevarications of sinners.
It was offensive to God that the woman should draw the man to sin.
ILLUSTRATIONS
BY
REV. WM. ADAMSON
Prayer! Gen_3:8. Had Adam and Eve but hearkened to the pleading voice of their King! Had they but cast themselves in contrition at the feet of their King! When we sin, let us fear—but not fiec. Let us denounce ourselves—but not despair. Let us approach the throne of that King who alone can help us. The throne to which we are invited is a “throne of grace,” i.e., favour. It is the source of power; but it is gracious power—merciful power—power to help in time of need. It is the highest pleasure of the King who sits upon this throne to dispense royal favour. Ancient kings could only be appointed on certain days; and then none dare come near on pain of death save those to whom the golden sceptre was extended. Our King sits upon the throne of grace day and night, and is always accessible—even to rebels against His government. Therefore let us come boldly—not run away to hide—that we may obtain mercy for the past rebellion, and grace to help us whenever again tempted to prefer Satan’s hollow proffers to God’s heavenly promises.
“Words cannot tell what blest relief
Here from my every want I find,
What strength for warfare—balm for grief;
What peace of mind.”—Elliott.
The First Step! Gen_3:9. Go, ask the culprit at the bar, or the felon in the prison, or the murderer awaiting the adjustment of the noose of the gallows-rope around his neck, to trace for you his wicked course of life; and, prominent in the black record, will stand out the story of his first act of disobedience to parents, of his first Sabbath-breaking, or of his first glass. Like links of a continuous chain, each act of iniquity in a wicked life connects the last and vilest with the “first false step of guilt.” Beware of the beginnings of evil. They are the most dangerous because seemingly so harmless. How immense the evils which followed upon Eve’s first false step! A few years ago, says Myrtle, a little boy told his first falsehood. It was a little solitary thistle-seed, and no eye but that of God saw him plant it in the mellow soil of his heart. But it sprung up—oh! how quickly! In a little time another and another seed dropped from it to the ground—each in turn bearing more seed and more thistles. And now his heart is overgrown with bad habits. It is as difficult for him to speak the truth as it is for a gardener to clear his land of the ugly thistle after it has gained a hold on the soil.
“Let no man trust the first false step
Of guilt; it hangs upon a precipice
Whose steep descent in last perdition ends.”
Self-knowledge! Gen_3:9. They knew their condition. The degenerate plant has no consciousness of its own degradation; nor could it, when reduced to the character of a weed or wild flower, recognize in the fair and delicate garden-plant the type of its former self. The tamed and domesticated animal, remarks Caird, 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 reduce a man ever so low, you cannot obliterate in his inner nature the consciousness of falling beneath himself. Low as Adam had sunk, there still remained, however dim and flickering, the latent consciousness and reminiscence of a nobler self, and so of the depths of degrading wickedness into which he had plunged himself.
“Exiled from home he here doth sadly sing,
In spring each autumn, and in autumn spring:
Far from his nest he shivers on a wall
Where blows on him of rude misfortune fall.”
Divine Vision! (Gen_3:8). Adam forgot that God could see him anywhere. Dr. Nettleton used to tell a little anecdote, beautifully illustrating that the same truth which overwhelms the sinner’s heart with fear, may fill the renewed soul with joy. A mother instructing her little girl, about four years of age, succeeded by the aid of the Holy Spirit in fastening upon her mind this truth, “Thou God seest me!” She now felt that she “had to do” with that Being “unto whose eyes all things are naked,” and she shrank in terror. For days she was in deep distress; she wept and sobbed, and would not be comforted. “God sees me, God sees me!” was her constant wail. At length one day, after spending some time in prayer, she bounded into her mother’s room, and with a heavenly smile lighting up her tears, exclaimed, “Oh, mother, God sees me, God sees me!” Her ecstacy was now as great as her anguish had been. For days her soul had groaned under the thought, “God sees me; He sees my wicked heart, my sinful life, my hatred to Him and to His holy law;” and the fear of a judgment to come would fill her soul with agony. But now a pardoning God had been revealed to her, and her soul exclaimed exultingly, “God sees me, takes pity on me, will guide and guard me.” No doubt Adam experienced this joy amid the briars and thorns of the wide, wide world (Gen_3:23), which was denied him, and the vernal beauties and swimming fragrance of Eden, in the knowledge that he had
“A Friend who will gather the outcasts,
And shelter the homeless poor;
A Friend who will feed the hungry
With bread from the heavenly store.”
Concealment! (Gen_3:9.) Adam hid himself; but not where God could not see him. God saw the fugitives. Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in His sight; but all things are naked and opened unto the eye of Him with whom we have to do. This verse is felt to be like a glance at the Heart-searcher’s eye if the conscience be quick, and the soul an object of interest. The most microscopic and the most mighty objects in creation are equally exposed to His scrutiny. Especially does He look man’s heart through and through. “Hast thou eaten?” He examines—turns over all its folds—follows it through all its windings, until a complete diagnosis is obtained. “Thou hast eaten.” God was a witness to it; so that the sinner in effect challenges the judgment of God:—
“For what can veil us from thy sight?
Distance dissolves before thy ray,
And darkness kindles into day.”—Peter.
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.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On v9 Where are you?
Where are you?
"Why are you trying to hide from me?" God knew where the man was. When the man answered, he did not say where he was but why he was hiding.
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you
In verses 9 and 11, God was speaking to the man. Languages that have a singular form of "you" would use that here. (See: Forms of You)
I heard you
"I heard the sound you were making"
Who told you
God knew the answer to this question. He asked it in order to force Adam to confess that he had disobeyed God. (See: Rhetorical Question)
Have you eaten ... from?
Again, God knew this had happened. Translate this question in a form that shows God was accusing Adam of disobedience. The sentence can be translated as a statement. AT: "You must have eaten ... from." (See: Rhetorical Question)
translationWords
Yahweh
fear
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 vv8–9 3:8 When the cool evening breezes were blowing: The…
3:8 When the cool evening breezes were blowing: The Hebrew has traditionally been interpreted as referring to the cool part of the day, most likely the evening. Others think that the language refers to a powerful manifestation of God’s presence (a theophany; see Exod 19:16-25; 1 Sam 7:10) as a storm. If this view is correct, the man and the woman were hiding from the sound of the Lord appearing in judgment (see 2 Sam 5:24; Ps 29). • God put trees in the garden as an environment for humanity to enjoy fellowship with God. Now the man and woman used them to evade the divine presence.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.