Rebellion
Rebellion
The Snake
Although the human and his wife were both naked, they were not ashamed. But the snake was the most cunning of all the wild animals Yahweh God made.
The tempter arrives on the scene abruptly and with little background information. The snake was a wild animal, a creature created by Yahweh and subordinate both to him and to his human representatives. But while the humans were ʿarummim (“naked”), the snake was ʿarum (“cunning”). The childlike innocence of the humans contrasts with the cunning wiles of the snake, setting the scene for the successful deception.
Outside of this brief introduction, Genesis reveals nothing about the snake or its motives. The rest of Scripture emphasizes nature’s obedient submission to Yahweh’s will.1 But from the moment the snake opens its mouth to talk, the story hints that it was not just a normal snake.
The only other talking animal in the Bible is Balaam’s donkey, and that was clearly a supernatural event.2 But while the donkey’s speech reveals its loyal devotion to its master, the snake’s speech reveals its rebellion against both Yahweh and humanity. In later Scripture, the snake represents the enemies of God’s people, including the nations of Egypt, Assyria, and Babylon.3 In Revelation, “the ancient snake” represents Satan, the ultimate enemy opposed to God’s reign.4
In Genesis 3 the snake is not a metaphor. The woman believed she was talking to a wild animal. But whether Satan disguised himself as a snake or influenced a real snake, he was the mastermind behind the tempter. He used an earthly creature to start a rebellion on earth, just as he started one in heaven.
The Debate
[The snake] said to the woman, “God really said, ‘You may not eat from all the trees in the garden’!”
The woman replied to the snake, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden. But God did say we may not eat fruit from the tree in the midst of the garden or even touch it. Otherwise we’ll die.”
“You certainly won’t die! Rather God knows that when you eat it, your eyes will be opened. Like God, you’ll be able to judge right and wrong.”
Image by Daly Hill from Creation Swap
The first theological debate began not with a question but with a statement of feigned disbelief.5 Rather than questioning what God said, the snake questioned God’s motive.
The snake’s paraphrase of God’s command reflects its cunning nature. It could mean God allowed the humans to eat from some but not all the trees or God forbade all the trees.6 This intentional ambiguity subtly implied a much harsher prohibition in a way the woman could not simply deny.
The woman’s response reveals she was not as familiar with God’s word as she should have been. In attempting to clarify the command, she also made it sound harsher by adding a prohibition against even touching the tree. The snake saw an opening and pounced. It straight up accused God of lying. God warned them they would die. The snake assured them they would not.7 As Derek Kidner says, “It is the serpent’s word against God’s, and the first doctrine to be denied is judgment.”8
The snake went on to accuse God of holding out on the humans by denying them the ability to judge right and wrong for themselves and control their own destiny.9 God claimed to have made them as his image, but without this ability, they were not truly “like God.” But they could be.
The snake’s well-laid trap convinced the woman God did not have her best interest in mind. She couldn’t trust him and needed to take the situation into her own hands. Once the snake separated the humans from the protection of God’s word, they didn’t stand a chance.
Sin
The woman saw that the tree was good for food and beautiful to look at. It was desirable because it could give understanding. So she took some of the fruit and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.
Image by Rebecca Matthews from Unsplash
The woman did not simply take the snake at its word and immediately grab some fruit. She had learned the lesson in mistrust well. Caught between God’s word and the snake’s, she turned to the only opinion she felt she could trust—her own. She looked and “saw that the tree was good.” Just as God judged his creation to be good, the woman now judged the tree and its fruit to be good.
This echo of the creation story reveals the true nature of the tree. The woman was perfectly capable of judging right and wrong before she ate the fruit. The fruit itself held no magical properties. It merely served as a test. Humanity needed the capacity to judge to fulfill their function as God’s representatives on earth, but they had to willingly trust God and exercise judgment only within the limits he set. The tree tested whether they would trust God’s judgment or their own. And they failed miserably.
The woman based her judgment on three factors: the tree was beautiful, its fruit looked delicious, and she desired the understanding she believed it would give her. Because she ignored the most important factor, God’s commandment, she was doomed to make the wrong choice. She took some fruit and ate it. The text then reveals that her husband was right there with her, silently watching the whole time. Not only did he fail to stop her, he ate the fruit she gave him, knowing full well where it came from. In doing so, he became a willing participant in the rebellion. Humanity chose independence and all its devastating consequences.
The Curse of Death
Suddenly, [the humans’] eyes were opened, and they realized they were naked. So they attached fig leaves together to make loincloths for themselves.
Image by Predra6_Photos from Pixabay
Although the humans did not die immediately, from the moment they ate the fruit the curse of death hung over the guilty couple.10 The curse not only made death inevitable but also brought a corresponding need for self-preservation that tarnished every relationship humanity was created to enjoy: their relationship with God, with the rest of creation, and with each other.
This unintended consequence became apparent when “they realized they were naked.” This doesn’t mean they previously thought they were clothed. It means they had never thought about it at all. What had never been an issue suddenly became a big problem. Removed from Yahweh’s protection, they realized they were exposed and vulnerable. The knowledge and understanding they desired did not bring the expected feeling of empowerment. Instead, they suddenly felt embarrassed and uncomfortable in each other’s presence.
Their shame should have taught them the foolishness of seeking their own well-being apart from God. But instead of running back to their Father, they tried to fix the situation themselves by cobbling together fig leaves to cover their private parts. Attempts to logically explain why they chose fig leaves miss the point. Such a garment would of course be pathetically inadequate. They had no hope of protecting themselves in a world that had suddenly turned hostile.
The Blame Game
In the evening, they heard Yahweh God walking around in the garden. So the human and his wife hid from him among the trees. Then Yahweh God called out to the human, “Where are you?”
He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I’m naked. That’s why I hid.”
“Who told you you’re naked? Did you eat from the tree I commanded you not to eat from?”
“It was the woman you gave me! She gave me some fruit from the tree, so I ate.”
Then Yahweh God asked the woman, “What have you done?”
“It was the snake! It tricked me, so I ate.”
The snake promised the humans the ability to judge right and wrong for themselves. But the moment Yahweh returned to the garden, their delusion of moral independence vanished. As evening fell, the humans heard him walking in the garden and frantically hid themselves.11 Their panicked helplessness contrasts with God’s calm authority. Despite humanity’s rebellion, he alone remained in complete control.
The rest of the scene plays out like a trial. As the rightful judge of right and wrong, God asked a series of questions that gave his children three chances to confess. Although they both technically told the truth, they refused to take responsibility for their actions.
God’s first question called for the humans to reveal themselves. He did not chase after them or search for them. He simply called and they came. Although God had not accused them of anything, the panicked man immediately began coming up with excuses. Even with the fig leaves draped across his body, he knew he was still naked. He admitted he hid in fear but blamed his nakedness, not his disobedience.
God refused to allow the humans’ nakedness to become a distraction. His next two questions drove at the heart of the real issue. He had never told them being naked was a problem, but they suddenly viewed it as one. Where had this opinion come from? Either someone else told them, or they made that judgment for themselves. If they had started judging right and wrong for themselves, they must have eaten from the forbidden tree.
Caught, the man tried to deflect responsibility. Not only did he blame the woman for giving him the fruit, he blamed God for giving him the woman! God then turned to the woman and gave her a chance to confess. But she also deflected responsibility, blaming the snake for tricking her.
The relationship between Yahweh and his children was broken. The guilty humans could only stand there and listen as Yahweh decreed their fate.
The Snake’s Punishment
So Yahweh God said to the snake, “Because you did this, you are more cursed than all the livestock and all the other wild animals. You will crawl on your belly and eat dust for as long as you live. I will create hostility between you and the woman, between your offspring and hers. He will strike your head, and you will strike his heel.”
Edited from Image by Júlia Orige from Pixabay
The account of the trial and punishment of the first humans uses a common biblical literary technique called a chiasm.12 A chiasm states a series of words or ideas and then restates them in reverse order. As Yahweh judged each of the three rebels, his focus shifted back and forth between them:
A. Yahweh questioned the man.
B. Yahweh questioned the woman.
C. Yahweh punished the snake.
Bʹ. Yahweh punished the woman.
Aʹ. Yahweh punished the man.
The placement of the snake’s punishment at the center of the chiasm marks it as the emphasis of the passage, more important than the punishment of the humans. This is appropriate since the snake instigated the whole affair.
Yahweh pronounced a two-part curse on the snake. First, he decreed that it would crawl on its belly and eat dust. This is often understood as an explanation for why snakes have no legs, but nothing suggests the snake suddenly changed form. More likely, it never had legs, and this passage merely takes that existing fact and assigns it a new significance.
Snakes usually coil and rear up before they strike, so a snake crawling on its belly is not ready to attack.13 Like a servant bowed low to the ground, it is in a position of submission. Eating or licking dust symbolized the subdued position of a defeated enemy.14 The curse made the snake’s unusual mode of locomotion a symbol of its ultimate defeat.15
The second part of the curse predicted continued hostility between the snake and the woman, which their offspring would inherit. Although this verse aptly describes the normal hostile relationship between humans and snakes, the wording requires looking beyond everyday experience.
The defeat of the snake would come through the woman’s zeraʿ (“offspring, seed”). Like the English word “offspring,” zeraʿ can refer to any number of descendants without being marked as plural. But the pronouns referring to the woman’s offspring are all singular. The pronouns “you” and “your” are also singular, referring to the snake alone, not its offspring. The curse of the snake doubled as a promise that an individual from among the woman’s offspring would engage the snake in a life-or-death struggle and emerge victorious, though not unscathed.16 In the midst of utter disaster, Yahweh extended a glimmer of hope to his rebellious children.
Innocent Suffering
So Yahweh God said to the snake, “Because you did this, you are more cursed than all the livestock and all the other wild animals.”
When God punished the snake, he declared it “more cursed” than any of the other animals. The obvious implication that the other animals were also cursed to a lesser degree seems unfair. Only the snake and the humans rebelled, so why would the innocent animals be cursed?
The curse referred to here is not the punishment of hostility and ultimate defeat that follows. That additional curse applied only to the snake. But the actions of those in authority affect those under authority. The rebellion of humanity, the rulers of creation, brought the curse of death on all creation, even the earth itself.17 That the curse of death affects the entire animal kingdom is self-evident. Animals die, not because they sinned but because humanity sinned.18
Genesis 3:14 is only the first of many passages of Scripture that affirm the reality of innocent suffering. There is no such thing as a victimless sin. All sin harms both the guilty and the innocent. Scripture doesn’t claim this is fair. It claims it’s true.
Ironically, it would take the death of the most innocent of all innocent victims, God himself, to reverse the curse of death. Through his crucifixion and resurrection, Jesus defeated the snake of Eden and redeemed all of creation from the consequences of humanity’s sin. Indeed it was his innocence that allowed him to serve as the perfect sin offering.19
The Woman’s Punishment
To the woman [God] said, “I will greatly increase your suffering during pregnancy. In pain you will give birth to children. You will still desire your husband, but he will have authority over you.”
The punishments for both the man and the woman highlight their failure in their God-given roles. The woman was created as man’s perfect counterpart, the companion he needed to help him carry out God’s command to fill the earth and subdue it. But instead of helping him serve God, she led him into rebellion.
The man she was made from became the source of her greatest suffering. The blessing of filling the earth with her own children became the curse of excruciating labor pains. The blessing of subduing the earth and ruling alongside her husband became the curse of subordination. The snake had promised her Godlike autonomy. Instead, she found herself under the authority of her husband.
Although the woman would still desire her husband, he would no longer satisfy her.20 She would long to be united with him once again, to return to the coequal partnership that provided for their emotional needs. But sin had destroyed their healthy relationship.
Their equality depended on mutual submission to God’s rule. The decision to live by their own judgments would result in chaos when his judgment inevitably conflicted with hers. Knowing this, God gave the man authority over his wife in order to preserve the marriage.
The Man’s Punishment
To the man [God] said, “Because you obeyed your wife by eating from the tree I commanded you not to eat from, the ground is cursed on your account. Through suffering you will eat for as long as you live. It will grow thorns and thistles for you, forcing you to eat crops. Through hard work you will eat food until you return to the ground from which you were taken. Because you are dust, you will return to dust!”
Image by FeatheredHatStudios from Pixabay
Just as the woman betrayed her purpose as man’s counterpart, the man betrayed his purpose as God’s image. He was created as God’s representative to rule over the earth. But instead of exercising authority to ensure the accomplishment of God’s will, he submitted to his wife’s decision to rebel against God’s command.
As a result, the curse of death came over all of creation, just as God had said it would. Even the ground itself would experience the gradual decay of death. No longer would it freely produce everything humanity needed. Instead, it would produce painful, inedible thorns and thistles.
The man’s punishment created division between him and the ground in the same way that the woman’s punishment created division between her and the man. The ground he was made from became the source of his greatest suffering. He would still eat, but instead of eating the fruit that the fertile ground freely produced, he would eat hard-won crops produced by the sweat of his brow.
Eve
The human named his wife Eve because she was the mother of everyone living.
Image by Andrae Ricketts from Unsplash
At some point after humanity’s rebellion, the man began calling his wife Eve. It’s highly unlikely he suddenly decided to name her in the middle of such a life-changing disaster. But the Israelites were far more interested in topical order than in chronological order. The naming of Eve is placed here to highlight its thematic relationship to the punishments, not to suggest it occurred before humanity’s expulsion from Eden. Eve’s name (hawwah) is likely derived from an archaic form of the verb hayah (“to live”) and means “life-giver.”21
During their time in the garden, the man called his wife woman, a title that celebrated her status as his perfect counterpart.22 Outside of the garden, he went from calling her woman to naming her Eve. As naming the animals reflected his authority over them, naming his wife reflected his newly acquired authority over her.23
As calling her woman highlighted her relationship to him, naming her Eve highlighted her relationship to their future children.24 Her name came tinged with both sorrow and hope. It served as a reminder of her broken relationship with her husband and of the pain she would endure to give life to their children. But at the same time, it carried the promise that she would bear children and that the human race would continue even after their deaths.
Exile
Yahweh God made tunics of animal skins for the human and his wife, and he clothed them. Then he said, “The human can now judge right and wrong, like one of us. Therefore, he must not also take fruit from the tree of life. If he eats it, he will live forever!”
So Yahweh God expelled him from the garden of Eden to work the ground he was taken from.
Image by John Paul Stanley/YoPlace.com from Free Bible Images, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
The humans’ final punishment was exile from their perfect home. Instead of expanding the garden as they gradually subdued the earth under their rule, they were suddenly thrust out into the untamed wilderness east of Eden. But before expelling them, Yahweh extended a measure of grace by making sure that they were properly clothed, not just covered in flimsy leaves. He did not send them away completely unprotected.
Yahweh’s purpose in expelling the humans was to cut off their access to the tree of life. Even with the curse of death introducing sickness, sorrow, and decay into the world, the tree could still continuously give life to those who ate its fruit.25 But it could not heal their hearts, and fallen humanity would certainly abuse the tree’s power. This would result in a miserable, twisted existence of never-ending pain and strife as humanity fought over control of the tree. Life itself would become a weapon in the hands of an elite few. This was not God’s plan for his children, so he drove them out of the garden and placed a guard to ensure they could never return.
From then on, humanity would have to work the ground. This obviously refers to cultivation as humanity’s primary source of food. But the Hebrew verb ʿavad means both “to work” and “to serve.” The same verb is used in 2:15 to describe the man’s service to Yahweh as his representative to care for the rest of creation.26 In a tragic irony, he who was created to serve Yahweh would now serve the ground instead.
Cherubs
After [God] drove the human out, he placed cherubs and a flaming sword turning to and fro on the east side of the garden of Eden to guard the path to the tree of life.
Image by Biblia Prints from Free Bible Images, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
For the first time, Genesis 3:24 mentions the existence of spiritual beings other than God. After driving the humans out of the garden, Yahweh placed some cherubs on the path to the tree of life to guard it alongside a strange flaming sword that seems to have moved about on its own. The text doesn’t say how many cherubs there were, but the Hebrew word keruvim is plural. So there was more than one.
Cherubs do not in any way resemble the chubby winged babies they are often portrayed as. Nor are they angels.27 Though both are part of the heavenly army that stands ready to carry out God’s will, they have very different roles. Angels serve as God’s messengers to humanity. As such, they usually appear in human form and are never described as having wings. Cherubs, on the other hand, serve as the guardians of sacred objects and do not interact with humanity.
Though as spiritual beings, they have no actual physical form, cherubs appear to humans who see them as winged beasts with multiple faces and eyes covering their bodies.28 This highly symbolic description reflects their role as fearsome guardians, swift and all-seeing. Nothing could overcome or even sneak past such powerful beings. In addition to guarding the way to the tree of life, they also guard the chest that housed the stipulations of the Sinaitic covenant,29 Yahweh’s throne,30 and the holy place and holiest place in God’s various dwellings among his people.31
- See Exodus 7:1–10:29; 2 Kings 20:9–11; Jonah 1:4, 15, 17; 2:10; 4:6–8; Matthew 8:26–27.
- Numbers 22:22–35.
- Isaiah 14:29; 27:1; Jeremiah 8:16–17; 46:22; Amos 9:3; Micah 7:16–17; Matthew 23:33; Luke 10:18–19.
- Revelation 12:7–9, 14–15; 20:2.
- The Hebrew is not marked as a question, and nothing in the context suggests it should be translated as one.
- See Double Entendre.
- Sadly, many believers agree with the snake, having exchanged the biblical doctrine of literal death for the satanic lie of innate immortality apart from God’s sustaining presence.
- Kidner, Genesis, 72.
- For a discussion on the meaning of the Hebrew phrase “to know good and evil,” see The Forbidden Tree.
- God never said the humans would die the same day they ate the fruit. The Hebrew word beyom (literally “in the day”) in Genesis 2:17 does not mean “on the day.” God’s warning emphasized the certainty of death, not the timing of it.
- The meaning of the Hebrew phrase leruah hayom (“to the wind of the day”) is uncertain, but it probably refers to the time of the cool evening breeze, the perfect time for a stroll through the garden.
- See Chiasm. Chiasms can vary greatly in length. Some commentators even claim that entire books of the Bible are written as giant chiasms.
- Snakes for Pets, “How Far Away Can a Snake Strike?,” by Lou Carter, last modified December 15, 2020, https://www.snakesforpets.com/how-far-away-can-a-snake-strike/#Striking_Position_of_Snakes; Walton, “Genesis,” 35–36; Walton et al., Bible Background Commentary, Genesis 3:14–15.
- Psalm 72:9; Isaiah 49:23; Micah 7:16–17; see also Isaiah 65:25.
- Hamilton, Book of Genesis: Chapters 1–17, 196–197; Walton, “Genesis,” 35; Walton et al., Bible Background Commentary, Gen. 3:15; Wenham, Genesis 1–15, 79.
- For this reason, Christian theologians have long considered Genesis 3:15 to be the first messianic prophecy in the Bible. It is called the protoevangelium, which means “first gospel” in Greek.
- Genesis 3:17.
- Romans 8:19–22.
- See A Soothing Aroma.
- Romantic desire between a husband and wife is not a curse or a result of the fall. The curse is that her desire would remain unfulfilled.
- Hamilton, Book of Genesis: Chapters 1–17, 205–206.
- See Woman.
- See Naming the Animals.
- The wording that she “was” the mother of everyone living reflects the perspective of Moses and the exodus generation, long after Eve’s death.
- See Revelation 22:2.
- See Humanity’s Purpose.
- Heiser, Angels, 26.
- Ezekiel 10:9–14.
- Exodus 25:18–20.
- Ezekiel 10:1.
- Exodus 26:1, 31–33; 1 Kings 6:23–35; 1 Chronicles 28:18; 2 Chronicles 3:7, 10–14; Ezekiel 41:17–25.