We are continuing in our study of Genesis with The Trap and the Fall. We have already discussed God and creation. The last verse of Genesis 2 in our last issue left us with a foreshadowing. It told us that the man and his wife were naked and were not ashamed (Genesis 2:25).

Everything was going so well in the garden of Eden. Adam and Eve were enjoying every new experience they had. They were enjoying marital bliss and getting to know one another. All of that comes to a smashing halt in Genesis 3.

Perhaps without realizing it, Adam and Eve will change the course of the human race forever. We will see how the themes we have traced like the image of God, obedience to God’s commands, and other themes that will be turned on their head.

The Serpent Lays the Trap

Genesis 3:1-5: Now the serpent was more subtle than all the creatures of the field that the Lord God made, and he said to the woman, “Did God say thus, ‘You shall not eat of any tree of the garden’?” And the woman replied to the serpent, “From the fruit of any tree of the garden we may eat, but from the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God said, ‘You shall not eat from it, neither shall you touch it lest you die.’” But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die, for God knows on that the day you eat from it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

This part of our passage raises questions of imagination. The serpent can talk to Eve. I’m taken back to the Chronicles of Narnia with one of my favorite authors, C. S. Lewis. Could all the animals talk before this fateful event? Or was the serpent inhabited by Satan? We have no way of knowing the answers to these questions.

But it’s still fun to think about. The serpent shows up 31 times in the Bible. Five of those instances happen in Genesis 3. Another familiar place the serpent appears is touring Moses’ challenges to the Egyptian magicians. His staff became a serpent (Exodus 4:3; 7:15).

The serpent appears again when the Israelites are in the wilderness and defy God yet again. He sends fiery serpents among them to bite them and they die. At God’s instruction, Moses makes a bronze serpent on a pole that can bring salvation to the people bit by the fiery serpents (Numbers 21:4-9). Jesus references this account in the New Testament in John.

Certain almost mythical creatures like Leviathan and the great dragon with armor are referred to as serpents. Indeed, Satan is referred to as a dragon in Revelation 12 when he is cast out of heaven in the war with the angels (Revelation: 12: 7-9)..

Through the rest of the Old Testament, and even in the New Testament, serpents have a negative connotation. It all started right here in the garden. The first characteristic given for the serpent is that it is the most cunning, crafty, and clever. It appears 11 times as an adjective in the Old Testament.

This is not a positive trait. The Bible considers craftiness deception. That’s exactly what the serpent is for the woman. We must not forget that God made the serpent. I’m inclined to think that the serpent was inhabited by Satan.

If Satan has already fallen from heaven, he is roaming the earth. He can only go to God’s abode when summoned to present himself before the Lord (Job 1:6; 2:13). Deceiving humans is his goal. Jesus calls him the father of lies (John 8:44). It would make sense that Satan inhabits the serpent to deceive Adam and Eve.

The serpent is not merely striking up a conversation with the woman. He has a goal in mind and it starts with the very first words out of its mouth. “Did God really say you shall not eat of any tree in the garden?” It’s a bait and switch tactic.

He calls into question God’s words and command. But look at the last part of the question. It’s one of those mostly right with one small piece of information missing. “Of any tree in the garden?” Is not what God had commanded. He turns the freedom of eating from any tree except for one into questioning if they were allowed to eat from the trees.

So, there are two forms of trickery and craftiness in his question. First, he questions God’s word. Then he turns eating all trees into any tree. The woman may not have caught what he said. She answers almost correctly. She corrects the serpent by saying that they can eat from any tree except the one in the midst of the garden.

See how the serpent used the same wording of “any tree” but put it in “cannot eat” instead of “can eat”? He was very sly and what he said. She over corrects God’s wording. This is where she does what humans have been doing for centuries and millennia. She says, “You shall not eat from it, neither shall you touch it.”

Go back to Genesis 2:17 and look at what God actually told the man. He said the man could not eat of it. He didn’t say anything about touching it. Since the woman was that there when God gave this command, did Adam add the words, “do not touch it” or did Eve think that to keep her from even getting close to it?

The Pharisees in Jesus’s day are masters at this. They added a fence of ceremonial laws made by man around the 613 laws God gave in the old covenant. But their fences around God’s commandments actually broke some of those commandments. In their attempt to put distance between coming close to breaking the commandment they violated God’s laws.

No matter how it was started, Eve adds this commandment to something God never said. I’m not saying she and Adam should go and touch the tree and its fruit. I’m only saying the woman added more to God’s command then God gave. It could’ve been a good fence and kept them from doing what God had commanded them not to do.

Remember I said there would be no way for Adam or Eve to know what dying was. They just knew that to disobey God would bring on consequences that were not good. In that sense, they still have the prohibition and could understand its implications in that sense.

Notice the serpent does not question her adding “do not touch it.” Instead, he goes after God’s consequence for breaking His commandment. “You shall not surely die.” In the Hebrew text, the word for die appears twice, making it emphatic.

Satan wants to tell you that the consequences of sin really aren’t that bad. He will challenge what God has commanded and made for consequences every time. And for a while, he has the power to make you believe it.

Adam and Eve had no reason to distrust God. No matter how long they lived in the garden until this moment, they had never questioned God. They had never strayed from His absolute rule of their lives. They were at peace with God and enjoyed His good favor. No one until the serpent challenged or questioned God before.

Why did Eve listen to the serpent? I propose that the serpent presented a new perspective to her she never heard before. He hung a temptation in front of her for the first time. Because she didn’t fully understand the implications of death, his challenge to God’s word was like a new piece of wisdom to her.

The temptation was to test what the serpent said and see if it was true. What they experience this “death” God told them would happen? There was only one way to find out, and that is all the devil needs to tempt us into a position we cannot undo. He is still crafty today.

Why would Eve and the serpent no better than God if they would die or not? All he had to do was placed out in her mind. This new wisdom, which the Bible refers to as earthly and foolish, got her thinking, questioning God. To have questions for God about things is not temptation or sin. But to question God’s words is.

In a tempting question, “Did God really say…” Satan challenges God’s authority, truthfulness, and faithfulness. He questions God’s good desire for you and be to live within the bounds of life He has created for us. To desire what God does not want us to have (which is always dangerous to us) is to question God’s goodness, faithfulness, trustworthiness, and love for us.

The serpent tells the woman in his new wisdom God is holding them hostage. He explains why he said they would not die, “for God knows that on the day you eat of it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good from evil.

First, he is appealing to their pride. He tells them they will be like God if they eat from this fruit of this tree. The funny thing is that if I understand the Tree of Life properly, as we will see at the end of Genesis 3, it gives life for as long as you eat its fruit. It is essentially the tree of eternal life, the fountain of youth. That is what makes them like God, along with bearing His image.

Satan wants them to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil because they will take God’s place in deciding what is good and evil for themselves. It will be the undoing of humanity to make morality in our image instead of the image of God. We will claim His perfect perspective for our own and destroy it. We will get lost in the darkness without looking to God’s light to find our way back.

Since Adam and Eve do not know what death is, they cannot know if the serpent tells the truth. The serpent tells half-truths. When they eat the fruit, their eyes will be opened. But they will not be like God in the same sense of knowing good from evil. He makes God sound like He is holding back something good from Adam and Eve.

The trap is sprung and shortly after will be the Fall. It’s like a trapdoor Satan wants Eve to step on. She will fall further from God than she can imagine. When we question God’s trustworthiness and goodness, our eyes are opened to how wrong we really were. But you can’t just put Pandora back in the box.

Covering Up

Genesis 3:6-7: So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and it was desirable to the eyes and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, then she took the fruit and ate it, and gave it also to her husband who was with her, and they ate. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked, and they sewed fig leaves together and made loin coverings for themselves.

Next comes a further step into the temptation. The woman inspects the tree and fruit for herself. This gives me the image of people in the produce aisle looking for whatever is left that doesn’t look like it’s been there too long.

What she discovers from her inspection is that it looks good, and the tree seems like it could make one wise. How can a tree or a piece of fruit make you wise? Consider that this is a literal account of what happened in the Garden of Eden. But there is figurative language in this verse.

The fruit would not make a person lives. But the temptation the serpent placed before her was that she would gain wisdom and know what good is. She is inspecting food from a tree called the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Let’s take that literally.

This tree gives that person knowledge of moral choices and actions. You must have a sort of wisdom to understand what the right decision and action is for different situations. This tree was offering Adam and Eve moral wisdom so they could discern between good and evil. That was the trap that brought the Fall.

When you think of the tree as it is named and her inspection to yield the decision that the fruit looked good and was edible, that the tree looked like it could yield fruit that would give you this wisdom of good and evil, it makes sense. In other words, what the serpent promised didn’t seem too far off.

To her and Adam, the tree did not seem poisoned. It was not as if the fruit seemed like it would hurt them. What’s so bad about being able to have the discernment between good and evil? That was where Adam and Eve got off track. The moment they began questioning God’s word, they wondered why they could not have this one tree out of all the other ones.

This is the craftiness of Satan. He makes it seem like nothing bad will happen even if God has decreed it to be so. He gets you? God. And once you have done that, you start to question everything God has ever said. You question God’s character why He has said you cannot have this one thing.

Now that Adam and Eve have been tempted about this one tree in the garden full of trees they could have, they got greedy. They wanted to have the one thing they couldn’t have. This is where free will has always been. The only way for you to have free will is to have at least two options.

However many trees were in the garden were theirs. They could choose between any number of trees that were safe and God-ordained for them to have and to eat. It was when this serpent tempted them to wonder, “Why can’t we have this tree also?” That was the danger.

Let me ask you, after at least 6000 years of human history, what has given you the faintest trust in our ability to rightly know the difference between good and evil? The way I see human history, we show more often than not that even if we get morality right and know the difference between right and wrong, do we always choose it? I submit that the world on fire as it has been since the beginning as evidence to the latter.

So we did not become like God, knowing good and evil. We became like the serpent, like Satan, so messed up we can’t know good from evil, and if we could, still choosing evil. You can see why Jesus had to come, and we will see the first promise of His coming and mission soon.

The greatest why the double ever told was that we would know good and evil as God knows them. And just that little book the trap and the Fall are inevitable. The woman decided that she was right about the fruit and ate it, and then became complicit in Adam’s eating the food as she handed it to him.

Now I must point out something important here. Men will read what I’ve written so far and blame their wives or women for leading all of humanity down this path of rebellion. Women will be defensive about my analysis of this passage. So let me lay all that to rest.

Let me quote from my own translation the ending of Genesis 3:6. “She ate of it, and gave it also to her husband, WHO WAS WITH HER, and they ate.” Yes, we are all guilty. Adam was standing right beside her and heard everything that was said. He still ate the fruit.

Adam is just as guilty as Eve no matter who ate first. In fact, Paul lays the guilt of that day on Adam, not Eve (Romans 5: 12, 14, etc.). God gave this command to Adam first. He had to share it with her. He knew just as well as she did that they were doing wrong. He didn’t stop the wife he loved. He didn’t stop himself.

Adam and Eve gave their God-given right to have dominion over all the creatures up. Instead of telling the serpent what was right, they let the serpent tell them something they haven’t heard before. Part of bearing the image of God is to have dominion over creation.

I’m not saying they gave their authority over to the serpent, to Satan, and can’t give it back. I’m saying they made the choice to let the creature lower them into a trap and then the Fall because they did not take dominion over the serpent that day. Things go disastrously wrong when we do not fulfill our place in bearing the image of God.

What the serpent said what happed happened. As soon as they ate the fruit and rebelled against God’s commandment not to this one thing when they could have done an infinite number of other things, their eyes were opened. Their innocence was gone. That’s what sin and rebellion due to us.

I suggest that “they knew that they were naked” does not only refer to their bodies. Sin has a way of making us feel exposed. Yes, we made clothes and cover ourselves up in public. If you are blessed to be married, your spouse may be the only person to ever see you that way.

We cover up a lot more than our bodies and feel naked relationally, emotionally, socially, and spiritually. We don’t like to be vulnerable or exposed in any way. We put up every mask and red herring to keep others for sickness for we really are. Sin has done this to us. You cannot be intimate with any other human being, sometimes even your spouse.

Sin and rebellion takes this intimacy away. It leaves you with every possible covering you can make for yourself that really doesn’t cover you the way you hope it does. Even though we hide ourselves away from one another, we still feel that people can see right through our coverings. No covering we make for ourselves can ever really do the job.

Only Jesus can show us that He has made the covering for us, sacrificed Himself in our place. He is the one person we can be vulnerable and allow Him in past our coverings. You might have to wear a mask with Jesus. If you try, He can see through it. For the first time since the trap and the Fall happened, we can have intimacy with God just as Adam and Eve had.

“Where Are You?”

Genesis 3:8-10: Then they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. And the Lord God said to the man and his wife, “Where are you?” And he replied, “I heard your sound in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid.”

We have seen the trap and the Fall. But we have not seen how God reacts to this rebellion in the paradise He created for humanity. I suspect it was an everyday occurrence for the Lord God to have intimate moments with Adam and Eve, walking with them in the garden in the cool of the day.

Why do I believe this? They knew the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden. They knew it because they had heard it before. They knew it because when they heard His sound, they knew He was looking for them. That means this is a regular, repeated happening.

But this day was different. For the first time, Adam and Eve are not waiting for God to arrive and walk and talk with them. They are not where they should have been. Sin and rebellion do that to us. We end up in a place we would never have seen ourselves or thought we would go.

What is God’s sound like? Many of us will never know this side of the judgment and heaven. The cool of the day must’ve been the perfect time, and yet that blissful existence is now shattered. Instead of being ready to walk with God, Adam and Eve hid themselves.

Even the loincloths they sowed together with fig leaves were not enough to keep them from feeling naked in the Lord’s presence. They had to go hiding so that He had to point out the obvious to them. If they didn’t think there fig leaves would hide their sin and rebellion, what made them think trees would do it?

When God asked, “Where are you,” do you think He didn’t know exactly where they were? God did not ask the question because He couldn’t find them or didn’t know where they were. God asked the question they should have been asking themselves.

“Where am I? Not in the Lord’s presence. A place I found joy, peace, openness, and friendship now scares me.” No wonder no man can look upon God’s face or presence and live. Sin robbed us of that glorious experience. They fell from more than the trap.

We can hide all we want, but God knows where we are at all times. There’s nowhere we can run from Him. David asks, “Where can I go from your presence” (Psalm 139:7-12)? He concludes that if he goes into the dark, God is still there because darkness is not darkness to Him.

This thought that we can’t even hide from God in the dark should be exhilarating. God knows where we are at all times, and that’s a great thing. Unless your sin makes you cringe that you can’t hide even when you think you are hidden. That’s what sin does.

Adam and Eve could have never known that death would be the end of so much that they once loved. That’s something else we don’t usually understand in our Western culture about death. God told Adam and Eve that in the moment they hate from that tree, they would die.

But when you read Genesis 3, Adam and Eve are still alive after they eat the fruit from. They didn’t die. Oh, but they did. When you hear the word “death” in the Bible, think first of spiritual death, and then physical death. Exchange the word “death” with “separation.”

We don’t see Adam and Eve stopped reading and dropped to the ground. But we do see them realize they are naked, lose that innocence, intimacy, and vulnerability with one another and God. Their death was spiritual, a separation from one another and God. That was the death God was talking about.

Please realize that a person is dead spiritually, but if they physically die while spiritually dead, their eternity is fixed. We have only this short lifetime to help people find the life Jesus gives in exchange for their death.

Adam and Eve realized it the moment it happened. They knew they could not just act like they couldn’t see God coming over that they were still hidden away. I would imagine His presence looked their way as He asked the first question.

Adam knew he could not hide from the living God, so he answered Him. It was time for them to face the music. At least he was honest with the Lord. He told Him he hid because he was naked. But we are all different before the Lord since that taste of rebellion.

Many of us are not honest with ourselves, let alone God. We think of recovering is still doing its job. We think if we are not completely honest with God that He won’t notice. That’s not how it works, and thanks be to God it doesn’t work.

“Who Told You Your Naked?”

Genesis 3:11: Then He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat from it?”

Adam told the truth about being naked, but it was never an issue before. God already knew what it happened to His beloved creatures. Notice that the question God asks are not for His benefit of gathering information. They are more for the benefit of Adam and Eve and us who read it today.

“Who told you that you were naked?” is God’s question to us. God wanted us to live in freedom, innocence, and bliss, enjoying the beauty of all His creation. The separation sin brings into our lives make us ask ourselves, “Who told you that you were naked?”

If I may ask it a different way, “Who told you to cover up? Who told you that you couldn’t be open and honest? Who stole your innocence and let you know it wasn’t okay to be intimate or vulnerable?” Sadly, we learn by experience, social “norms” that tell us what to do, and people who take away our innocence.

God’s questions are deafening let. He didn’t want this for you or me. We thought we knew better, but we have made things so much worse. We may never feel that intimacy and vulnerability again. God’s not finished with His penetrating questions and presence.

“Have you eaten from the tree I had commanded you not to eat of?” God already knows the answer. The question is for us. Have you done what God commanded you not to do? Have you broken His commandments? Have you thought you knew better than Him?

It really gets to the heart of our pride, rebellion, and sin. God doesn’t pull any punches. He wants us to understand what we have done to Him, ourselves, and every relationship we have.

Isn’t it refreshing when someone acts like Jesus and doesn’t condemn us when they find out the truth about us? Isn’t it refreshing when we can share our struggles with someone who isn’t more disgusted with what we share than we already are of ourselves? And it’s great when we can be Jesus to someone who needs Him in their life.

The Blame Game

Genesis 3:12-13: And the man said, “This woman which You gave to be with me, she gave to me from the tree, and I ate.” Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this that you have done?” And the woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”

Adam and Eve started it, but we continue the tradition. The blame game. When we get caught, it’s somebody else’s fault. God addressed Adam’s rebellion with Adam but he didn’t want to face the music, so he blamed Eve. Remember, Paul says Adam was ultimately at fault, and Eve was a blessing from God to him.

All that went out the window when Adam was under pressure. God’s presents was too much for him in this new state of sinful and rebellious living. So he did what we all do. He blamed Eve. Even when God addressed him about his issue to his face, Adam couldn’t fess up.

It’s almost like he spits in God’s face. “This woman You gave to me.” God, why would you give me a woman who would lead me into sin? Why do I have to experience separation from her and you? Oh yeah, that’s right. Your gift to me, she is the one.

It didn’t work with God then, and it doesn’t work now. Instead of coming to grips with our rebellion, we pass the buck. Don’t be too hard on Eve. She blamed the serpent who deceived her. It’s the serpent’s fault. Maybe the serpent was thinking, “The devil made me do it!”

Can you imagine how sad God was that none of them would take responsibility? God was the only adult in the garden. Adam didn’t have to eat the fruit his wife handed him. Eve did not have to eat the fruit after inspecting it. Satan is the devil you imagine him to be. He just likes to watch the world burn.

The trap, and then the Fall. That’s how God’s perfect creation fell into disrepair and decay, and still suffers today. The blame continues to be shifted from person-to-person. The innocence is gone until we meet Jesus. Even after we meet Him, we are prone to hide, cover up, and pass the buck to someone else.

The Saga Continues…

Don’t worry! The trap and the Fall are still part of the beginning. More things have to happen, and we’ll talk about them in our next issue. It will be the final issue to this first volume on God, Creation, and the Fall. I will continue to look at Genesis 3 and see what happens because of the rebellion, pride, and sinfulness of Adam and Eve that carries through to this day.