Gotten

Ok, before we move onto chapter 4, let's summarize all the evil things God did during the course of the garden of Eden story.

1. Making people naked.  Clearly the author viewed nudity as fundamentally wrong, but God created Adam and Eve naked and placed them naked in the garden, without the knowledge that they should dress themselves.  That's straight-out evil from the author's viewpoint.
2. Keeping the knowledge of good and evil from Adam and Eve.  This not only kept them from getting dressed, but also from being able to do good or avoid evil, at least intentionally.  Aside from being generally sneaky, I think this is evil because it prevented good and encouraged evil.
3. Lying to them.  God claimed the fruit of the tree of knowledge was poisonous, when he knew it was not.
4. Punishing them and the serpent unjustly.  It was unjust because (1) they didn't know right from wrong when they ate and (2) because he never even said it was wrong to eat, just that they shouldn't because it was dangerous, which wasn't even true.  Not to mention (3) that eating was in fact good because it is good to know right from wrong.  And the serpent didn't even eat, he just told them the truth.  So punishing them was unfair.  And just to guarantee that it was unjust, God also punished their children, which makes no sense.
5. Killing some animals for no reason but to make coats for the people wearing aprons.  It's not entirely clear that God killed the animals; perhaps they just happened to die conveniently.  Anyway, the animals had done nothing to deserve becoming clothing.
6. Throwing the people out of the garden just to preserve God's power.  God was afraid that if they ate from the tree of life and lived forever it would somehow be bad for him.
7. Various sexual perversions: trying to get Adam to mate with every animal under the sun, and keeping naked children locked in his walled garden where he walked around watching them.
   

All in all, this Lord God seems to be morally bankrupt at best.  The garden story goes from 2:4 to 3:24, for a total of 46 verses.  And in that short span, God racked up a pretty impressive list of sins.  Yet somehow, people interpret this as God is good.  In contrast, the serpent's entire little part in the story was telling the truth and getting punished; and people interpret this as the serpent is evil.  Two conclusions completely unsupported by the text.

4:1 And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from the LORD. 

The first phrase suggests that Adam and Eve did not have sex in the garden.  That would be consistent with them being children, or just with them being innocent.

With her punishment in mind, I'd expect Eve to say, "I have gotten great pain from the Lord."  This phrasing suggests that the God is as likely as Adam to have impregnated Eve.

Note that this use of the word "man" clearly means "male infant".  So back when God first created Adam, calling him a man told us nothing about his age.

Cain is apparently the first person to be born.  That's an accomplishment of sorts.

Have I mentioned that the author has a bit of an obsession with procreation?

Flaming sword

3:24 So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.

I like the fact that we are given directions to Eden earlier, and it should just be somewhere with some Cherubs guarding it and a cool spinny flaming sword.  And there's only one way in.

A Cherub is a kind of angel.  The word "Cherubim" is the plural.  I'm not sure what "Cherubims" is supposed to be, exactly.

All this trouble explicitly because God is afraid that man might live forever.  How does that threaten him?

Forth

3:23 Therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken. 

Again, the woman is not mentioned here.

This is strongly agricultural.  The punishment is being sent from a garden to a farm.  One way to interpret this is as being about the start of agriculture.  It started in a place where you didn't have to know much about agriculture to farm; it was easy.  That's fairly obvious, because nobody had any technical agricultural knowledge before they engaged in agriculture.  But as they gradually ruined the soil with bad technique, they also learned better technique.  Still, agriculture became more and more difficult.  Where once they could grow things easily, as in a garden, later it was hard, as on a farm.

Iraq is a desert today.  That is the result of one of mankind's worst environmental disasters.  Before we started farming there, it was one of the most fertile places on earth.

One of us

3:22 And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever:

You may recall that back in 3:5, the serpent asserted that God had lied to Adam and Eve about the tree of knowledge being deadly because God was afraid that they would eat from it and become like gods, knowing good and evil.  And this verse is basically God admitting that the serpent was exactly right.

So, in summary.  God lies.  Serpent tells the truth and explains God's motives in lying.  God gets mad and punishes everyone.  No wonder we commonly consider the serpent evil.

Now God is afraid again about man, specifically that Adam will eat from the tree of life and live forever.  He doesn't here seem particularly concerned about Eve, despite the fact that she ate first from the tree of knowledge.

Here's a question: to whom is God speaking?  He says "One of us".  This implies that the "gods" the serpent hinted at are real; that God is not a lonely being, but one of a class.

Skins

3:21 Unto Adam also and to his wife did the LORD God make coats of skins, and clothed them.

This is several levels of strange. 

First, God takes a break for punishing Adam and his wife, and instead gives them gifts.

Second, it presents a particularly odd image of God sitting on a log, sewing coats.

Third, it suggests that some random animals were slaughtered at this point, but doesn't mention them.

Fourth, it again ignores the leaf aprons; they apparently don't count as clothing.

Fifth, it refers to Eve as "his wife" immediately after she got her name.

Eve

3:20 And Adam called his wife's name Eve; because she was the mother of all living.

This verse is placed completely at random.  It makes no sense with what went before; nor with what immediately follows.  This would have made sense towards the end of chapter 2, but it's very strange here.

Adam, if you recall, wasn't named.  His name just suddenly appeared and is not explained.  All through this chapter, Eve is referred to as "the wife" or "the woman".  Except for this verse, her name is never used.  Not to give away the ending, from what I can tell, it is used once more at the very beginning of chapter 4, and then never again.

Sweat

3:19 In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.


Your name is mud.

Beyond agricultural to completely obsessed with dirt.

Thistles

3:18 Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field;

More details on the agricultural punishment.

Cursed

3:17 And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life;

God's punishment for Adam is that it's going to be hard work farming.  Very agricultural.

Sorrow

3:16 Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.

The woman gets it as bad as the serpent, or worse.  Her crime, of course, is eating good food, and sharing it with her husband.  Her punishment is pain and oppression.

Enmity

3:15 And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.

God is clearly awfully angry at the serpent.

And the translator is referring to some imaginary child of the woman first as "it" and later as "his".

Again, there's no real way to take this all that literally.

Dust

3:14 And the LORD God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life:

The serpent doesn't get a chance to defend itself, blame the truth, or anything.

Do people who take this literally believe that serpents eat dust?

Oddly enough, God fails to take away the serpent's ability to speak.

So what exactly is the serpent being punished for?  For speaking the truth when God had lied.

Beguiled

3:13 And the LORD God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.

This is a lovely pass the buck.  Did he do it? No, she did it.  No, it did it.

The tricky point here is that what Adam said was technically true, while what the woman says here isn't quite.  The serpent didn't beguile her; it didn't lie to her or mislead her in any way.  Instead, the serpent simply told her the truth.  And she ate, which was the right thing to do.  So what's the problem?

The problem, of course, is that God didn't want her to do the right thing.

Gave

3:12 And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat. 

On the one hand, this is passing blame.  He had the choice to eat or not.  On the other hand, it's strictly honest, at least in the sense of being consistent with what we were told before.

It's interesting that he seems to think of his wife as a literal gift from God.

I have to note that Adam's dialogue, aside from the convoluted sentence structures which I'll attribute to the author and translator, reads like a guileless child.

Eaten

3:11 And he said, Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat?

In context, it is clear that the speaker ("he") is God.

Again, he seems not to know what happened, although he does guess that Adam knew it was wrong to be naked because Adam knew right from wrong because Adam had eaten of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Even better, he clearly isn't surprised about what happened when Adam ate from the tree.  He doesn't expect Adam to be dead.  In other words, God knowingly lied to Adam.  God knew that eating from the tree would cause Adam to realize he was naked; but God told Adam that he would die if he ate from the tree.  God didn't want Adam to know he was naked, and essentially threatened him to try to keep him from finding out.

The first question (Who told you that you were naked?) is an interesting one.  First, it probably doesn't literally mean that.  When it said earlier that "they knew that they were naked", that also wasn't literally true.  They presumably knew they were naked all along; that's a basic factual issue.  It's not like they were hallucinating clothes.  It just means that they realized it was wrong to be naked.  So the question is really "Who told you it's wrong to be naked?"  And that is what God didn't want Adam to know: that it's wrong to be naked.  And presumably God didn't want this for fear that Adam would get dressed.  That is, God wanted Adam to be naked, which is wrong; and to stay naked, which is wrong.  And God knew good from evil, so God knew that he wanted something which was wrong.  But he did it anyway.  In short, God is clearly acting evil here.

It's also interesting that the first question doesn't really have an answer.  It's just God's first guess.  Adam knows he's naked (or rather, that it's wrong to be naked) because ... someone told him.  But that's not true.  Second guess: because he ate of the tree.  Ok, right the second time.  But this certainly isn't describing a God that's infallible or all-knowing, or perhaps even the most subtil of creatures.

The clause in the second question is also telling: "that I commanded you not to eat", not "that I said you'd die if you ate".  This phrasing is because God knows that the lie is no longer convincing.  (I mean "God knows" rather literally here, of course, not as emphasis.)

So this tells us (1) that God needs to guess about what happened, and (2) that God knowingly and deliberately lied to Adam, and (3) that God specifically lied to prevent Adam from finding out it was wrong to be naked.

Also, this tells us that the serpent was correct when he said, "For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." in 3:5.  So not only did God lie, and the serpent tell the truth about the fruit, the serpent also nailed God's motivation for lying.  Although it's not clear here that "knowing good and evil" is quite the same as "as gods".

This leaves us again wondering about the usual interpretation of this story.  Why is it so backwards?  Alternately, why is the story so weird?

Afraid

3:10 And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.

Adam seems brutally honest here.

But I think the correct interpretation is a little subtle.  What exactly does "Because I was naked" mean?  We know that when he hid, he wasn't naked; he was wearing a fig leaf apron.  But he was naked before that, when God put him in the garden.  He's saying, "Because I realized that I was naked, that you put me here naked."  "I was afraid of you, because you wanted me to be naked" is more or less what he means.

God likes naked little boys and makes them afraid.  This is one weird story we're reading.

Where

3:9 And the LORD God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou?

More information about God.  It's apparently possible to successfully hide from him.  At this point, God clearly doesn't know yet what has happened.

Hid

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.

This certainly tells us a lot about the God of this chapter.  First, he has a voice, and thus one would presume a mouth.  Second, he walks, and thus presumably has legs.  Third, it is at least implied that he sweats, or why would he wait for evening ("the cool of the day") to go for a walk in the garden?  This suggests a God who is more a wealthy landowner than some supernatural being.

It also tells us one more thing about God, what Adam and his wife thought of him.  Imagine that today is the first day you know good from evil.  You hear someone coming, and you know that they're good.  Do you hide?  You hear someone coming, and you know that they're evil.  Do you hide?

Right after taking up sewing, the way Adam and his wife demonstrate their knowledge of good and evil is to hide from God.  Because they are afraid of God.  Because they know that God is the sort of person who lies to a couple young children.  The sort of person who locks naked children in his garden.  The sort of person who tries to persuade a young boy to take a goat as a mate.  In short, they now know that God is evil.

I know, you're thinking I've got some wacky agenda, saying things like that.  But those are the words; you can look them up yourself.  I didn't write the Bible; I'm just reading it carefully, without preconceptions.  I think this all means that the source of the preconceptions must be people with some sort of agenda of their own.  But I honestly can't say I really understand why the actual text is at such variance with the common interpretation.

Fig

3:7 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.

I know, you've always been taught that God is good, so he must be honest, so you were figuring that he was telling the truth and the serpent was lying.  So, you figured this verse would say "And the mouths of them both were opened, and they knew that they were coughing up blood; and they convulsed on the ground together, and made themselves dead."  Or something like that.

But the serpent was telling the truth: their eyes were opened, and they knew right from wrong, at least as the author's culture saw it, with the whole nudity=bad thing.  They also quickly figured out how to sew.  And no one fell over dead that day, as God said they surely would.

Let's just suppose for a minute that God, who we know lies, isn't necessarily good.  Then we can ask these question: if it's wrong for people to be naked, why did he put naked people in the garden?  And if the fruit was just symbolic of coming of age, what sort of Lord locks a couple of naked children in a walled garden?  And if the serpent was aware of this, was he not helping the children?  And if the third chapter of the first book of the Bible suggests that God is some lying pervert, why is nobody aware of it?

Wise

3:6 And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.

The woman doesn't believe the serpent just because.  She examines the tree, considers the evidence, and find that it supports the serpent more than it supports God.  The serpent didn't force her; the serpent didn't even persuade her; the serpent just let her judge for herself.

Maybe her husband just ate because she gave him some fruit; or maybe he also saw that it was good, etc.

So, the suspense is killing me.  Do they both die on that very day, proving God right?  Or do they become wise, like gods, knowing good and evil, proving the serpent and their own judgment right?

I'm disappointed that it says nothing about what the fruit tasted like.

As gods

3:5 For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.

The serpent is not only asserting that God is lying about the fruit being poisonous, but that God is doing so for petty motives.  Either God is trying to maintain power, or God is afraid of people,  or perhaps God just enjoys watching people living in ignorance.

Further, the serpent is ascribing impressive magic powers to the fruit; the tree, according to the serpent, lives up to its name.

This strongly suggests that God is not alone, not single, but one of gods, a group who know good and evil.

If this is all a metaphor or a story of childhood, then "gods" are adults, and God is an adult who doesn't want these children to grow up.  So God lies to keep the children from the fruit, which presumably represents experience.

The phrase "your eyes shall be opened" is clearly metaphorical.  This again means that it really isn't possible to take the Bible entirely literally.

One interesting note is that the phrase "in the day ye eat thereof" here parallels
"for in the day that thou eatest thereof" from God's admonition in 2:17.  Again, this suggests that the serpent was somehow aware of that.

Ok, we all know that lying is wrong, that honesty is the best policy.  And either God is lying or the serpent is (or perhaps both), so clearly one of them is bad.

Not surely

3:4 And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:

Another verse ending in a colon.  I'd tack on a second verse here, but I have dinner plans.

First, she didn't say "Surely" in 3:3, although God did back in 2:17.  This suggests that the serpent already knew what the response would be (and knew it more accurately than the actual response).  Of course, it could just be the author getting sloppy.

The serpent is outright contradicting God.  In 2:17, God said, "In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die."  Now, if Adam eats and dies, it's not clear, since "not surely" isn't quite as strong as "surely not".  But, should he survive, the only way to interpret it is that the serpent was right and God was wrong.  Or that the serpent was honest, and God was lying.

Touch

3:3 But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.

The second half of the woman's response, however, does not correspond to earlier verses at all.

First, Adam was commanded not to eat of the tree of knowledge (in 2:16), while in 2:9 the tree of life is "in the midst of the garden".  As it soon becomes clear that we're still talking about the tree of knowledge, apparently it has changed places with the tree of life.  If we are still talking about knowledge, I want to emphasize that there is then no prohibition against eating the tree of life.

Second, there was no prohibition against touching it in 2:16.  Lots of possibilities here.  (1) There was a warning about touching back in the scene recounted in 2:16, but the author chose to leave it out. (2) God added it later.  (3) Adam added it when telling the woman.  (4) The woman added it when telling the serpent. (5) The author added it here for his own reasons.

Why are there discrepancies?  Do they have any significance?  I have no idea.

Woman said

3:2 And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden:

I like the fact that she doesn't even seem to think it's strange that a snake is asking her questions.  Ah, to be freshly created.

She answers with "We".  It is not clear if she means herself and Adam, or herself and the serpent, or something else.

This faithfully matches verse 2:16 "Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat:", right down to the colon.

Shall not eat

3:1 Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?

Hey!  We made it to the third chapter.  And there's a talking snake here.

I'm sure everyone immediately recognizes "subtil" as the archaic spelling of "subtle".  It's not clear if that means "tricky" or "manipulative" here or just "smart".

I should mention that there's a sense of lost time here.    I would think that there was some period where Adam and his woman were living happily and more or less uneventfully in the garden before this, although that's never mentioned.

It's interesting that the serpent doesn't use the title "LORD" when referring to God.  There's also a possible subtle (heh!) hint that God did not create the serpent;  it does not say "than any other beast".


There are many ways of interpreting this question.  The serpent could just be making conversation.  He could be curious about contrasting the rules he has with the ones the woman has.  He could want clarification on what he's supposed to eat.  He could be trying to learn more about the woman.  He could be trying to learn more about God.

Note that the story jumps from having random excessive detail about the rivers to being so sparse that: there are four characters (God, Adam, the woman, the serpent); that God has given one commandment (don't eat the knowledge fruit) to Adam; and the serpent is asking the woman about that one commandment.  It's like there used to be more to the story, but it was stripped out.

Was the one commandment mentioned early only because it matters later; were there lots of commandments which didn't come up?  Don't bathe in the Pison; bathe in the Euphrates.  Don't ride the donkeys before noon.  Bring me a pie made from the tree of life every evening at 7.  If there was only one rule, how did the serpent know which one it was?

For that matter, it's not even explained how the woman knows the commandment.  It was given to Adam before she was created, even before the animals were created.  So, if God created the serpent, it was before the serpent was created.  But, maybe God didn't create the serpent.

Or maybe that rule was one of the mainstays of conversations between Adam and the woman, and the serpent had subtly overheard them talking once.

Naked

2:25 And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.

Let me pose a strange question.  How old were Adam and his as-yet-unnamed wife at this point?

It sounds like a trick question.  Of course, his wife was freshly created from a rib, and he'd been molded from mud just a few days ago, give or take.

But that's not what I mean.  How old did they appear?  I usually picture them being around 22 years old, young but full-grown.  And, you know, naked.  But, from what we've read so far, they could be pretty nearly any age.

We can rule out old and decrepit.  Perhaps not so much from what we've had so far, but they've got work to do later on, an entire planet to populate.

But they could easily be 42, like me.  Or 14, like Romeo and Juliet.  Or, and this is where it gets weird, 4 years old.  Adam is referred to as 'the man' rather than 'the boy', which you wouldn't normally do for a 4 year old.  But, if the 4 year old were the only male of its species, perhaps.  Adam can talk and make decisions, but so can 4 year olds.  Four year olds don't usually get married, but there's no discussion of passionate sex right here.

I know, the 4 year old thing is pretty weird, but this is what half-sells it for me: 4 year olds are not ashamed to wander around naked.  That's something it takes a while for us to teach them.

Now, there's a strong sense in this passage that it's obviously fundamentally evil to be naked.  Or at least to be naked and unashamed.  I don't want to get bogged down in a discussion of whether that's valid, so I'll just go with it, except to note that it's another insight into the author's culture.  But little kids don't have that sense of shame because they're too young and innocent to know better.

Which brings us around to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  We generally accept that young children are lacking in their ability to distinguish right from wrong, good from evil.  If we want to go all metaphorical, as you grow up, society (your parents, teachers, etc.) feeds you the fruit of the tree, by teaching you right from wrong, the commonly accepted social values, and so on.  Maybe the whole Garden of Eden is just a metaphor for childhood.

Or maybe Adam and his wife were naked little children whom some wealthy landowner had locked into a large walled garden for his own amusement.

Cleave

2:24 Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.

Apparently this whole rib story is some sort of justification for a son abandoning his parents when he gets married.

But this interpretation (the one offered by this verse) is not really justified by the preceding verses.  If Adam had no parents, how can we read anything from his story into a relationship between a son and his parents?  If this verse starts "Therefore" and draws a conclusion from the last few verses, it should be: "Therefore shall a man refuse a nice goat, so as to marry his elbow."

If we look past the parts about marrying your rib, we can perhaps learn something here of the author's culture.  This verse suggests monogamy, family homes, children leaving to marry.

Some people claim that they believe the Bible is literally true.  Apparently their experience of marriage involves actually fusing together the flesh of spouses; that is the literal interpretation of this verse.

By the way, "cleave" is one of those bizarre English words which is its own opposite; it can mean either "split apart" or "join together".  So, a son will cleave himself from his parents before cleaving to his wife.

Bones, and flesh

2:23 And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.

Ok, so here's Adam, all excited about meeting his rib.  And, so he names her Woman, rather than Eve, and calls himself Man.

Why is she flesh of his flesh?  Verse 2:21 specifies the rib, not the flesh.

The word "now" makes it seem like he was impatient, meeting all the animals, to find something made out of his bones.

He a woman

2:22 And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.

So, rather than making a woman out of mud, God makes a woman out of a man's rib.  This explains why a typical woman is roughly the height and shape of a typical man's rib.  Or it explains why women cause so much heartache.  Or maybe Adam just was the sort of guy who was attracted to his own bones.  Wait, that's not even a fetish.

I have no idea what to say.  This is completely surreal.

Were all the female animals made from ribs from the male animals?  Was God only bringing male animals to Adam before?  What about animals without ribs; where did the females come from then?

Ribs

2:21 And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof;

Having failed to mold any animals out of mud that met Adam's high standards for a mate, God next tried ... one of Adam's ribs.  And he used general anesthesia for the surgery.

I'm sorry, I have no idea what this is about.  It makes no sense to me whatsoever.  Why not a big toe?  Or, more rationally, why not just make another person out of mud?

Could this possibly be any more random?