Chapter Three

The Serpent as Tempter.

Genesis 3:1. The serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. The nature of this serpent is rather puzzling: in certain respects—for instance, in the very name itself, in its belonging to the animal class, in the cunning that distinguished it (Matt 10:16) and in the punishment imposed upon it—crawling upon the earth (Gen 3:14)—it is, without question, presented in Scripture as an ordinary, natural serpent; but a whole series of other marks, such as: the gift of speech, knowledge of the existence of the commandment, extraordinary cunning and treachery, and also the assertion of a duration of existence extraordinary for a natural serpent—all this points us to some higher, consciously rational being. Therefore, the correct understanding of this serpent will be one which unites all these aforementioned characteristics, as for instance Saint John Chrysostom does, saying: “according to Scripture, we should reason that the words belonged to the devil, who was moved to this deception by envy (Wis 2:24), and he used this animal (that is, the ordinary serpent) as a convenient instrument” (John Chrysostom). The presence of the devil-tempter in this serpent is affirmed consistently by many other places of Sacred Scripture, in which the devil is called “a murderer from the beginning” (John 8:44), the first cause of evil on earth (1 John 3:8; Wis 2:24) and even directly “the ancient serpent” (Rev 12:9-10). And the serpent said to the woman: Has God truly said, The treacherous serpent addresses the woman, as the weaker vessel (1 Tim 2:14; 1 Pet 3:7), with good reason calculating that it would be easier to reach its goal through her; besides, the woman probably did not herself personally hear the commandment from God, but received it already from her husband and therefore knew it less firmly and steadfastly. “You shall not eat from any tree in the garden?” The seducer intentionally exaggerates the severity of the commandment, so as to thereby confuse the woman and sow in her displeasure both with the commandment itself and with its Giver.

Genesis 3:2–3. And the woman said to the serpent: “Of the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat, but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God said, you shall not eat of it and you shall not touch it, In Eve’s answer it is noteworthy that her formulation of God’s commandment was not sufficiently precise (cf. Gen 2:17), namely, the addition of the words: “and you shall not touch it.” In this many commentators see, as it were, a reproach to God from Eve for excessive severity and difficulty of His commandment and a mute dissatisfaction with it. “lest you die.” An accidental and outward motive for keeping the commandment (Gen 2:17) Eve here sets as the principal and even the only one. “From this one may infer,” as Philaret rightly remarks, “that the thought of the severity of the commandment and the fear of death had already begun to obscure in her the pure feeling of love and reverence for God the Lawgiver.”

Genesis 3:4. And the serpent said to the woman: “No, you shall not die, Justly discerning from Eve’s answer that in obedience to God she is restrained not so much by inner and moral motives as by the purely outward feeling of fear of death, the devil speaks outright falsehood: “No, you shall not die,” that is, your fears of losing your life, based on God’s threat, are entirely unfounded and vain.

Genesis 3:5. but God knows that on the day you eat of them, Seeing that Eve offers him no objection to this new, obvious falsehood (the denial of death), the devil resorts to gross slander against God, portraying Him as a jealous and cunning tyrant of the first humans, crudely exploiting their naive credulity, which serves as the basis of His dominion over them. your eyes will be opened, The opening of eyes is a common biblical figure of speech serving to denote the disclosure of the capacity for intellectual understanding and moral sensitivity (Gen 21:19; 2 Sam 6:17-20; Acts 26:18). and you will be like God, In the Hebrew text the last word is expressed by the term Elohim, which is one of the customary names for God. But since, by its philological composition, it is a plural form and properly means “powers,” “authorities,” “dominion,” the LXX translated it literally, that is, in the plural number “gods.” However, it would be more correct to maintain the usual biblical usage, that is, to translate it as “God”; for, in the first place, the first humans did not yet know any gods other than the one true God, and in the second place, only with this translation is that opposition between God and humans maintained, which is given in the text (God “knew,” but you will be like gods). An allusion to this bold striving to equal God in knowledge is given to us also by some other places of Sacred Scripture (Isa 14:13-14). knowing good and evil: —here, just as before (Gen 2:9), these are understood in the sense of universal knowledge, as if the utmost extent of it.

The Fall of the First Parents.

Genesis 3:6. And the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes and desirable, because it gives knowledge; When the devil had succeeded not only in destroying the fear of death in Eve, but also in awakening in her ambitious thoughts of broad knowledge and high power (like gods), then, strictly speaking, the process of mental fall had already occurred in her soul; it remained only for this sinful disposition to manifest itself outwardly, to express itself in transgressive action. Here the tempter was aided by the immediate impression of the very forbidden tree, which acted irritatingly upon all her senses. In this last, depicted so vividly and with such deep psychological insight in Scripture, act of Eve’s fall, interpreters rightly find all three main types of sin which the Apostle John (1 John 2:16) distinguishes: as the lust of the flesh (good for food), the lust of the eyes (pleasant to the eyes) and the pride of life (desirable, because it gives knowledge). and she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband, Seduced by the tempter’s beguiling speech and finally bewildered by the sensual stimulation from the tree, Eve plucks the forbidden fruit and tastes it (2 Cor 11:3). Having fallen herself, she hastens to involve her husband in her deed as well, doing this, in the opinion of most commentators, without any special malicious intent, since the poison of sin had not yet had time to penetrate her soul and corrupt the peace of her conscience. and he ate. If Eve in her fall was to some extent excused by her comparative natural weakness, by an exaggerated-formal and purely external understanding of the commandment, and finally by the immediate sensual impression of the tree, then Adam, who had received the terrible commandment directly from God Himself and who had experienced in himself so many manifestations of divine love, had no mitigating circumstances for his guilt, so that his sin is purely a spiritual transgression and heavier than Eve’s sin (Rom 5:12; 1 Cor 15:21-22; 1 Tim 6:14).

God’s Rebuke of Them.

Genesis 3:7. And the eyes of them both were opened, Thus the tempter’s prediction was fulfilled—but instead of a feeling of satisfaction and joy, the fall produced only palpable sorrow and disquietude. and they knew that they were naked, Inasmuch as formerly nakedness served as a synonym for the childlike innocence and purity of the first humans (Gen 2:25), so now the agonizing awareness of it became the triumphant sign of crude sensuality and sin (Rom 6:12-14; Col 3:5). “The external eye,” according to the profound expression of Origen, “opened after the inner eye had closed.” and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths. Such, according to Scripture, was the first clothing of humanity; and this is in perfect accord both with the universal tradition of antiquity and with the history of human culture.

Genesis 3:8. And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden, Clearly, this refers to one of those theophanies which characterize the primitive age—a time of special closeness and immediate dealings between God and humanity. As to the very character of this theophany, judging from the description, it had a character accessible to external senses, and therefore a concrete character, which is also confirmed by all the subsequent context. In this matter, finally, we are assured also by analogous expressions in Scripture (Lev 26:12; Deut 23:14-15; 2 Sam 5:24; Exod 9:23; Job 37:4-5; Ps 29:3 and others). in the cool of the day; or, in a translation closer to the Hebrew text, “in the breeze, in the evening of the day.” Some see here an indication of the time of the theophany—namely, the cool evening of the day; others—of its form (Job 38:1), that is, of God’s merciful willingness to forgive the fallen first parents in case of their sincere repentance. and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. The fear of the guilty conscience of the fallen humans, who had lost their innocence and purity, so darkened their mental capacities that they thought they could hide themselves from the All-seeing and Omnipresent One (Jer 21:14; Amos 9:3), seeking in their naive delusion shelter from Him beneath the leaves of the garden trees.

Genesis 3:9. And the Lord God called to Adam and said to him: “Adam, where are you? This question does not at all betray ignorance, but rather sounds only as a call of divine love, directed to the sinner for his repentance. According to the interpretation of Saint Ambrose, God asks Adam not so much about what place he is in, but about what state they are in.

Genesis 3:10. He said: “I heard Your voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I am naked, and I hid myself. Instead of sincere and wholehearted repentance, Adam resorts to false excuses—self-justification, which, of course, only aggravates the weight of his guilt.

Genesis 3:11. And He said: “Who told you that you are naked? Have you eaten of the tree from which I forbade you to eat? Divine mercy is unspeakable: meeting the false shame and sinful dullness of humanity, God Himself provisionally names his guilt; all that remained for humanity was, like the prodigal son of the Gospel parable, to cry out from the depths of a contrite heart: “I have sinned against heaven and before you, and I am no longer worthy to be called your son” (Luke 15:21). But humanity, through the action of sin, turned out to be incapable of this immediate repentance to rise from its fall.

Genesis 3:12. Adam said: “The woman whom You gave me, she gave me of the tree, and I ate. Instead of due repentance, Adam allows himself a crude self-justification, in which he even dares to as it were reproach God Himself for giving him what he had previously considered a desired good for himself (Gen 2:18).

Genesis 3:13. The woman said: “The serpent deceived me, and I ate. In the woman’s answer, although the very fact of breaking the commandment is not denied, nevertheless the responsibility for it is equally shifted and transferred to another. This self-justification of the fallen first parents is a very characteristic trait of all obstinate sinners, testifying to their moral hardening. The very fact of the woman’s seduction by the serpent is affirmed in Sacred Scripture very clearly (2 Cor 11:3; 1 Tim 2:14).

The Curse upon the Serpent.

Genesis 3:14. And the Lord God said to the serpent: “Because you have done this, cursed are you among all the beasts and among all the creatures of the field; Since in the person of the deceiving serpent two separate beings were united, as we have seen—an evil spirit and a natural serpent—all this simultaneously applies to both: to the serpent as the visible instrument—directly and immediately, and to the devil as its invisible agent—mediately and by analogy. In particular, the curse upon the natural serpent, which is preeminent in comparison with all the rest of creation, which was also subjected to the works of corruption (Rom 7:20), is as it were just retribution for its previous superiority over it (Gen 3:1). you shall crawl on your belly, and you shall eat dust all the days of your life; According to the opinion of most authoritative commentators, the crawling of the serpent on its belly was not some new miracle, but a natural property; but formerly this property had no special significance—now it becomes a symbol of humiliation and contempt (Deut 32:24; Mic 7:17) from a feeling of aversion to its bearer. The same essential thought is contained in the subsequent words of the text about eating the dust of the earth: they give figurative expression to the same idea of the serpent’s creeping, inasmuch as it inevitably leads to the inhaling of earthly dust and contact with its various impurities. In application to the devil, this latter metaphor indicates the humiliation of Satan, already cast down from heaven and thereby, as it were, condemned to crawl upon the earth, feeding himself there on human vices and wickedness, the direct consequences of his own treacherous suggestions.

The First Promise of the Messiah.

Genesis 3:15. and I will put enmity between you and the woman, This section is of paramount importance. It contains a prophecy that passes through the entire world history, up to the very end of the world, and at the same time is fulfilled on every page of the aforementioned history. The profound enmity mentioned here is that inner opposition which exists between good and evil, light and darkness (John 3:19-20; 1 John 2:15)—this enmity finds reflection even in the sphere of higher spirits (Rev 12:7-9). “The first woman in the world first fell into the snare of the devil, but she herself through her repentance (meaning the repentance of all subsequent life outside paradise) was the first to shake his power over her” (Vissarion). Many Church Fathers (Justin, Irenaeus, Cyprian, John Chrysostom, Jerome and others), basing themselves on various places of Sacred Scripture, refer this prophecy not so much to Eve as to that great Woman, who above all other women embodied in herself the “enmity” toward the kingdom of Satan, serving the mystery of the Incarnation (Rev 12:13; Gal 4:4; Isa 7:14; Luke 2:7; Jer 31:22). In place of the destructive friendship of the woman with the serpent, a saving enmity is set between them. Inasmuch as the wife of the first Adam was the cause of the fall, so the mother of the second Adam became the instrument of salvation. and between your seed and her seed; By the seed of the serpent, in the most immediate, literal sense, is understood the offspring of the natural serpent, that is, all future members of this species, with whom the offspring of the woman, that is, all humanity in general, wages an ancient and fierce war; but in the further, determined sense, through this analogy is symbolized the offspring of the deceiving serpent, that is, the children of the devil in spirit, who in the language of Sacred Scripture are called sometimes “broods of vipers” (Matt 3:7), sometimes “weeds in God’s field” (Matt 13:38-40), sometimes directly “sons of perdition, sons of disobedience, sons of the devil” (John 8:44; Acts 13:10). From among these children of the devil, Sacred Scripture especially singles out one “great adversary,” “the man of lawlessness and the son of perdition,” that is, the antichrist (2 Thess 2:3-4). In complete parallel with this, the interpretation of the woman’s seed is established: by it is first and foremost understood all her offspring—the entire human race; in the further, sense determined by the context, by it are understood the righteous representatives of humanity, who energetically fought the evil that reigned upon the earth; finally, from among this latter, Sacred Scripture gives us grounds to single out one Great Descendant, born of the woman (Gal 4:4; Gen 17:7), as the victorious adversary of the antichrist, the principal author of the victory over the serpent. He shall crush your head, and you shall strike His heel. The very process and character of the aforementioned enmity is vividly portrayed in an artistic picture of a great struggle between two warring sides, with a fatal outcome for one (crushing of the head) and a comparatively slight harm for the other (striking of the heel). Fairly close analogies to this image are found in other places of Sacred Scripture (Rom 16:20 and others). The mention here of the woman, the serpent and their offspring, of crushing the head and striking the heel—all this is nothing more than artistic images, but images full of profound meaning: in them is contained the idea of struggle between the kingdom of light, truth and good and the realm of darkness, falsehood and all evil; this highly dramatic struggle, having begun from the moment of the fall of our first parents, passes through the entire world history and is destined to be concluded only in the kingdom of glory with the complete triumph of good, when according to the word of Scripture, God will be “all in all” (1 Cor 15:28; cf. John 12:32). The conclusion of this struggle will be that spiritual duel spoken of here, when “He” (αὺτὸς—a masculine pronoun), that is, the Great Descendant, will enter into battle with the serpent itself or its chief offspring—the antichrist—and will crush the latter on the head (2 Thess 2:8-9; Rev 20:10). It is curious that pagan tradition preserved a rather firm memory of this important event and even portrayed this very picture of the struggle on various artistic monuments. If this divine promise of victory over the devil is a living source of comfort and joy for us, what a ray of life-giving hope it must have been for the fallen first parents, hearing from the lips of God Himself this most joyful news! Therefore this promise is quite deservedly called the “first Gospel,” that is, the first good news of the coming Deliverer from bondage to the devil.

The Punishment of the First Parents.

Genesis 3:16. To the woman He said: “I will greatly increase your sorrow in your pregnancy; in pain you shall bring forth children; In these words is pronounced the punishment of the woman, consisting in the fact that childbearing, the greatest act of human earthly life, which was the object of special divine blessing (Gen 1:28), is now transformed into a source of sorrow and suffering. However, these pains of childbirth are not something intentionally sent now by God as punishment for the woman, but are only the natural lawful consequence of the general weakness of the physical nature of fallen humanity, which has lost through the fall the normal balance of spiritual and physical forces and has fallen subject to diseases and death. and your desire shall be for your husband, In these words the whole tragedy of the woman’s position is expressed even more clearly: despite the fact that the woman in childbirth will experience the greatest pains, united with danger to her own life, she will not only not shrink from marital relations with her husband—this unwilling source of her sufferings—but will seek him all the more and all the more strongly than before. and he shall rule over you.” A new trait of the marital relations between husband and wife, establishing the fact of the complete rule of the former over the latter. If even before, the wife, in the capacity only of a helper to her husband, was placed in some dependence upon him, then now, after the first wife has proved unable to use her freedom properly, God by a defined law places her conduct under the supreme control of her husband. The whole history of the pre-Christian world serves as the best illustration of this, especially the ancient East with its debased and enslaved position of woman. Only in Christianity—the religion of redemption—is the woman restored to the rights she lost in the fall (Gal 3:28; Eph 5:25 and others).

Genesis 3:17. And to Adam He said: “Because you have hearkened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ The judgment upon the final culprit of the fall—Adam—is preceded by an elucidation of his doubled guilt, namely, by the indication of how he, instead of having a sobering effect upon the woman, himself fell under her seductive influence. cursed is the ground because of you; in sorrow you shall eat of it all the days of your life; The best explanation of this fact we find in Scripture itself, namely in the prophet Isaiah, where we read: “The earth is defiled under its inhabitants, for they have transgressed the laws, violated the statute, broken the everlasting covenant. For this reason the curse devours the earth, and those dwelling in it bear their punishment” (Isa 24:5-6). Consequently, in these words is given only a particular expression of the general biblical thought about the close connection between the fate of humanity and the life of all nature (Job 5:7; Eccl 1:2; Rom 8:20). With respect to the earth, this divine curse was expressed in the loss of its productive power, which in turn most strongly affects humanity, as it condemns it to hard, stubborn labor for daily sustenance.

Genesis 3:18–19. thorns and thistles shall it bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field; by the sweat of your face shall you eat bread, In these two verses a more detailed exposition is given of the preceding thought about the loss of earth’s fertility and the severity and unproductiveness of human labor. By this divine judgment, all of humanity’s earthly existence is, as it were, transformed into a continuous labor of hardship and is condemned to sorrows and sufferings, as is expressed much more clearly in the Slavic text: “in sorrows shall you eat it all the days of your life” (Gen 3:17) (cf. Job 5:7; Isa 55:2; Eccl 1:13 and others). until you return to the ground, from which you were taken, for dust you are and to dust you shall return.” The series of divine punishments is concluded with the fulfillment of the threat which was uttered in case of the breaking of the commandment, that is, with the proclamation of death. This law of destruction and death, as is evident from this text and also from a series of biblical parallels (Ps 103:29; Job 34:14-15; Eccl 12:7), concerned only the physical nature of humanity, formed from the earth and returning to its original condition; it did not extend to the human soul, which has its own highest source in God (Eccl 12:7; Prov 14:32; Isa 57:2 and others). With respect to the physical nature of humanity, death, if it can be considered a punishment for the fall, is not so much in the positive as in the negative sense of the word, that is, not as the introduction of something completely new and inappropriate to human nature, but only as the deprivation, the taking away of what constituted the gift of God’s supernatural grace, of which the tree of life was the conductor and symbol, which prevented the action of physical decay in the human organism. In this sense should be understood the well-known biblical expressions that “God did not create death” (Wis 1:13), that “God created (more precisely—destined) humanity for incorruption” (Wis 2:23) and that death was brought into the world by human sin (Rom 5:12).

Genesis 3:20. And Adam called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all living. Up to this point, as is evident from Scripture, she had no name of her own, but was designated only in relation to her husband by the word “woman.” The name given to her now, Hebrew: Hawwah, means “life,” or, properly, “she who produces life” (ζωογόνος—Symmachus). In the fact that even at the moment of God’s judgment about death, Adam did not doubt the immutability of the divine promise about the woman (and her Seed) as the restorer of life (“Eve”), the Church Fathers rightly see proof of the conscious, living and ardent faith of the fallen first parents in the promised Redeemer (Messiah).

The First Garments.

Genesis 3:21. And the Lord God made for Adam and his wife garments of skin and clothed them. In this brief biblical note, according to the opinion of the best exegetes, is given a silent indication of the divine establishment of the institution of sacrificial offerings, which excellently explains also the connection of the context, through the supposition of which the very connection of the text is restored: just as in the previous verse the naming of the first wife had a direct relation to the Messianic idea, so also the slaying of sacrificial animals symbolized the same idea; and the Lord indicated to humanity to use the skins of these sacrificial animals as clothing. Such, according to the data of Scripture as well as according to the history of human culture, is the second stage in the development of the gradation of human garments.

The Expulsion of the First Parents from Paradise.

Genesis 3:22. And the Lord God said: “Behold, Adam has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil; and now, lest he stretch out his hand and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever; It would be too crude and unworthy of God to see in these words of His merely simple irony over the unhappy fallen first parents. Therefore, those are more correct who see in them a strong antithesis to one of the earliest verses of this narrative, where mention was made of the tempter’s false promise to give the people equality with God (Gen 3:5). “Since,” remarks Blessed Theodoret, “the devil said: ‘you will be like gods, knowing good and evil,’ but to the one who transgressed the commandment a mortal judgment was uttered, God the Almighty spoke this in rebuke, showing the falsity of the devil’s promise.” Thus, if there is any irony here, it is in the facts themselves, not in the words.

Genesis 3:23–24. So He drove him out of the garden of Eden, that he might till the ground from which he was taken; The conclusion of all the history of paradise is served by the fact of the expulsion of the fallen first parents from paradise, with the chief purpose of depriving them of the possibility of using the fruits of the tree of life. And He drove Adam out, and He placed at the east of the garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life. In order completely to bar people’s access to paradise, God set one of the heavenly beings—a “cherub”—as a guard at the entrance to paradise, and in addition—sent a special heavenly fire, issuing from the depths of the earth and flashing like the blade of a rotating sword. * * * Notes By another reading: and between Her Seed; He shall crush you on the head, and you shall strike Him on the heel. Life