5. Prov xii. 16, 23, al. 25 And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed. III. 1 And the serpent was more 'subtil than any beast of the field which God Jehovah had Job v. 12; xv made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of any tree of the garden? 2 And the woman said unto 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 hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. 4 And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not DIE: well pointed out, the opening of the following narrative. However solemn the purport of that narrative, the coherence of it is found in, (1) the fact of their nakedness (ii. 25); (2) the discovery of that nakedness (iii. 7); (3) the remedy of that nakedness (iii. 21). 25.] Of the whole of the account, it is hardly to be doubted that the solemn fact of man's temptation is conveyed to us in terms of parable and allegory. Reverence requires this conclusion, no less than reason. To suppose the narrative realistic and matter of fact is to degrade it from the higher spiritual reality. This view has been held without blame, both in ancient and modern times. Eusebius says, "There is present to each of us a wicked demon, lying in wait for us, a seducer, and a hater of good, and the same that from the beginning plotted against the salvation of man. He (Moses) calls this demon a dragon and a serpent, because he is black and allied to darkness, full of poison and malice. by his fraud our first parents also fell from their Divine estate; hereby plainly showing that in his view the spiritual and not the literal interpretation was to be taken. And Cardinal Cajetan says, "It is plain, both by the method of speech of all Scripture, and by that of this narrative, that under the name of the serpent we must not understand the reptile thus called, but the devil" With this interpretation we are content: not inquiring further whether the tempter of man is to be supposed to have assumed the form of a serpent, and in that form to have spoken with Eve, any more than whether the serpent is to be conceived as changing its physical character after the curse. Regarding the whole as a Divine parable setting forth to us the spiritual facts of the fall of man, we are not careful about such matters. See below on ver. 14. It is remarkable, in connection with our Lord's saying in John viii. 44, that the Samaritan Pentateuch has here liar instead of serpent: the two words in Hebrew differing only by one letter. Observe, that the name Jehovah is not used by the serpent, nor by the woman, but only by the sacred writer in the course of his narrative. Some commentators have found deep meaning in the non-use of "Jehovah " by the serpent: but they have omitted to observe that it is wanting in the woman's speech likewise. Those who have observed on this, have thought that it was to preserve the Holy name from the desecration of being uttered to the serpent. Observe that doubt is the beginning of temptation. Stress has also been laid on the fact that the woman's answer goes further than the Divine prohibition. Kalisch regards this as an exaggeration, showing "the fanaticism of passion and its self-deception;" but he thinks, as she did not receive the command, this may have arisen from its being misreported to her. Lange sees in this overdone obedience the first wavering of allegiance. But surely we may turn round such subjectivities as easily the other way, and suppose this additional particular to have been inserted in the ardent desire to obey. Not that I really take it so-but such a consideration serves to show the insecurity of such fine tracking of words to their supposed sources. The same may be said of almost all the minute inferences which have been drawn from this reply. The best exposure of their unsafeness is that some hold Eve's reply to be a sign of her unswerving loyalty, others of her incipient disloyalty to God. It is not easy to give in this verse the force of the original, which brings out into promi 4.] s Neh. viii. 13, marg. ix. 20. Dan. ix. 22, marg. t Job xvi. 15. Eccl. ii. 7. Ezek. xiii. 8. 5 for God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as God, knowing good and evil. 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 Pro XX of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat. 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 girdles. 8 And they heard the voice of God Jehovah walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of God Jehovah amongst the trees of the garden. 9 And God Jehovah called unto the man, and said unto him, Where art thou? 10 And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself. 11 And he said, Who told thee that thou art naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat? 12 And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat. 13 And God nence the threatened punishment as something utterly incongruous to the known effect of the fruit. It may best be done perhaps by laying strong emphasis on the word DIE. Our insertion in the A. V. of "surely" does not answer the purpose, because that adverb is apt to be taken with the whole, as if it were, "Surely ye shall not die:" which, though Kalisch thus renders, can hardly represent the meaning. 6.] to make one wise] There is considerable doubt about the meaning of this word. The LXX., Vulgate, the Targum of Onkelos, and some of the ancient versions, render it to look upon. But seeing that the word will certainly bear the other meaning (see reff.), and that the proposed one introduces almost a repetition of the preceding clause, I have kept the A. V. 7.] It seems better, with Kalisch and Gesenius, to take this as the ordinary fig, whose leaves would require uniting for this purpose, than, with Knobel, and others, as the banana or musa, one of whose leaves would be too large for the purpose. The ordinary fig is indigenous over the whole East. 8.] The anthropomorphism.of the narrative may be said here to reach its highest example. Eden is the garden of God, and He is represented as gone forth to walk in the cool, literally, the wind, of the day, i. e. in the breeze which springs up in the evening, and invites into the open air. Who can doubt that we are as much in the region of parable here, as when we read of the Householder who planted a vineyard and let it out, or the certain man who came seeking fruit on his fig-tree? 11.] Literally, Of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat, of that hast thou eaten? 12, 13.] Kalisch's remarks here are well worth extracting: "God was in familiar intercourse with man in the happy days of his innocence. He was loved as a father; fear was unknown: the severe rule, 'nobody beholds God and lives,' did not yet exist. As man was scarcely aware of his superiority over the animal creation, so he was hardly impressed with that awe of God which the consciousness of His grandeur inspires. His eyes were not yet opened. He knew neither pride nor humility. He walked in simplicity, careless, but sure of the right path. Jehovah said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat. 14 And God Jehovah 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: 15 and I will put enmity between thee and the u But now he was awakened to a sense of duty. He cannot bear the presence of God: it overwhelms his spirit. He hears His step; he hides himself; he answers timidly to the question of God; he fears His anger; he tries to avert it, by laying the fault partly upon his wife and partly upon God himself; 'the woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat'; and Eve, not less terrified, accuses the serpent as the cause of the transgression. The voice of conscience troubled for the first time the internal peace. The harmony of the mind was disturbed. We abstain from developing the many and important practical truths contained in this narrative; we cannot wonder that many have here abandoned themselves to the strains of the preacher; it is indeed tempting to pursue the inimitable and unparalleled description of the consequences of sin, the uneasiness and timidity, the cowardice, the internal wretchedness which, as a last resource, impeaches even God as the primary cause of the offence. It is sufficient for us to have indicated the general course of ideas which our section suggests, and to have pointed out the successive stages of innocence, temptation and conflict, sin, remorse, and banishment, which are represented by the Paradise, the serpent, the forbidden fruit, the concealment, and the curse." I may add to these admir able remarks, that if, in the majestic simplicity of the former cosmogony in ch. i., one felt that we were listening to Him who in the beginning made the heavens and the earth, we here feel that every word of the mysterious parable is inspired by Him who "needed not that any should testify of man; for He knew what was in man." 14, 15.] As, long after, the rainbow, a phenomenon which must have always subsisted since the creation of light and water, was consecrated to a symbol of the covenant between God and man, u Isa. lxv. 25. Micah vii. 17. See Ps. Ixxii, 9. Isa. xlix. 23; also Ps. cii. 9. Num. XXXV. 21, 22. Ezek. XXV. 15; XXXV.5, only. so here the serpent, which must always since its creation have maintained its present form and habits, was in that form and those habits appointed a symbol of the deceiver's punishment; and so was that enmity between it and mankind, which issues in the wounds of man's lowest part, followed by the crushing out of the serpent's life, consecrated as a pledge of the ultimate triumph of man in the person of the great seed of the woman, over the tempter of souls. Cleave to the letter as historical fact, and all this is lost. Admit the divine parable, and the reference is indisputable. The LXX. have here "upon thy breast and upon thy belly shalt thou go," combining the reading "upon thy breast," which the Vulgate also follows, with the received one. dust shalt thou eat] As crawling in the dust, deeper and more abundant in the dry East than with us (see reff.); and thus necessarily mingling all it eats with dust. 15.] The Messianic import of this curse is recognized in the Targums. The Targum of Jonathan says: "it will be, when the children of the woman observe the commandments of the Law, that they will tread thee on thy head, and when they forsake the commandments of the Law, thou wilt be able to bite them. on their heels; but they will be healed, and thou wilt not be healed: and they will, in the days of the Messiah, be able to make a bruise with the heel." Kalisch. Observe, it is it, or he, viz. the woman's seed, that shall bruise the serpent's head, not she, as the Vulgate and the Church of Rome have it here. Even were it she, no such application of the words could be made as that Church makes to the Virgin Mary, for it would mean she, the woman then present, by means of her seed which is to come. The deeper or parabolic sense of the words is veiled under that which is ordinary and physical as regards the common relation of the serpent to man. с w Job ix. 17. Ps. cxxxix. 11 (cover) only. x ch. v. 29. y iv. 7. only. W woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise its heel. 16 Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy pain and thy conception; in pain thou shalt bring forth children; and ch. 10, thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee. 17 And unto the man 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 *pain shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; 18 thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field; 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. 20 And the man called his wife's 16.] thy pain and thy conception, i. e. the pain which accompanies thy pregnancy. Some, as Knobel, take the "and" as meaning especially: thy pain (through out life, in the physical troubles incident to the sex), and especially thy pregnancy. And yet, though this shall be so, the woman, as a second curse, shall desire again the occasion of this pain; and, thirdly, though thus the subject of all the suffering which accompanies the propagation of the race, she shall be the subordinate, and ruled over by the man. 17-19.] To the man is appointed penal labour, and death for his sin. Before, he was put into the garden, to till it and keep it; but now the soil is to be stubborn, and to defy his labour, and cause him pain and disappointment. Before, he had access to the tree of life, which was to make him immortal (and this was not forbidden him, see on ver. 22): now he is to be driven out from access to it, and to return to the earth again. The word which we render for thy sake is, by the differing apprehension of a single turn in a Hebrew letter, translated "in thy works" by the LXX., and "in thy work" by the Vulgate. 18.] And this labour will be hindered by the curse of the soil, overpowering his tillage with noxious growths. He will eat, not the rich spontaneous fruits of Eden, but the herb of the field-the lesser growths sown by his own toil. 19.] the sweat of thy face, because it is on the : face that that effect of labour is first and 20 20.] The connexion of this verse here has been thought somewhat dif ficult to assign. Its place has to some appeared to be after ch. iv. 1. Perhaps it is inserted here, because here the man and his wife are first reunited in the narrative after the separate account of their parts in the act of disobedience and its consequences, and in connection with the words of God to the woman, relative to her conception of children. Murphy remarks, "The man here refers to two expressions in the sentences he had heard pronounced on the serpent and the woman... It is the woman who is to bear the seed, and this seed is . . to undo what had been done for the death of man, and so re-invest him with life. This life was to come by the woman. Again, in the address of the Judge to the woman, he had heard the words, thou shalt bear children.' These children are the seed, among whom is to be the bruiser of the serpent's head, and the author of life... He gives permanent expression to his hope in the name which he gives to his wife." Similarly Delitzsch: rendering "for she is become the mother of all living," viz. by the name Eve; because she was the mother of all living. 21 Job xli. 7, al. Unto the man also and to his wife did God Jehovah make garments of "skin, and clothed them. 22 ¶ And God Jehovah zch. xxvii. 16. 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: 23 therefore God Jehovah sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken. 24 So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden the Cherubim, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life. a words concerning child-bearing just pronounced by God: and regarding the name as given in faith and hope. Knobel thinks the connection is by way of contrast to the preceding verse, which seemed to imply the extinction of the species; but still thinks that after iv. 1 would be its more appropriate place. Eve] Chauah, i. e. living; rendered by the LXX. Zoë, i. e. life; but in chap. iv. 1 by Eua. 21.] The first act of Divine mercy, in answer to man's first word of faith-healing the first wound which the consciousness of good and evil had inflicted. It is hardly allowable to assume, as some have done, that these "coats of skins" were the skins of animals slain in sacrifice. But it is to be observed, that the Targum of Onkelos paraphrases the words as "garments of honour upon the skin of their flesh" (see 1 Cor. xii. 23), thus understanding the skin as their skin, which the garment covered. 22.] God is again (see i. 26) introduced as taking counsel, speaking to Himself: here, perhaps, more evidently than there in a communicative sense, seeing that one of us widens those addressed by Him, at least to the higher order of spirits, who minister round His throne. To see here, with some of the Fathers, an argument for the Trinity of Persons in the Godhead, is surely far-fetched, and but ill calculated to serve the cause of Christian orthodoxy. This even Delitzsch confesses, and Wordsworth merely states the fact timidly. lest he put forth his hand...] Then our narrative implies, as St. Paul asserts, 1 Cor. xv. 47, that man was created subject to death, but would by the use of the tree of life have gained immortality. This a Exod. xxv.18, &c. Num. vii. 89. 1 Sam. iv. 4. 2 Sam. xx. 11 (Ps. xvii.10). 1 Kings vi. 23, &c. (2 Chron. ii. 7, &c.) 1 Chron. Xxvii. 18. Ezek. ix. 3; x. 1, &c.; X1.22; xxviii. b Job xxxvii. 12; xxxvii. 14. use was not forbidden him, nor would it have been precluded even after the fall, had he remained in the garden. Some commentators (e. g. Keil and Delitzsch) suggest that in that case, the "living for ever" would have been to him not eternal life, but eternal persistence in the present sinful state but surely we cannot gather so much from the mysterious narrative. 23, 24.] Heaven and earth are now disjoined by the sin of man. Paradise was the symbolic setting forth of God's unity with, and dwelling among, man. And now this presence of God on earth is not altogether withdrawn, but is set up to the exclusion of men from its most holy place. As in the temple afterwards, so here, the Holy Place is westward: it is at the east of Paradise that the barrier to God's presence is set up. For the Cherubim, here mentioned, are in Scripture evermore the attendants, and bearers up, of the throne of God (see reff.). The cherubic forms (Ezek. x. 14) are the same as those borne by the four living beings, who surrounded the throne in Rev. iv. 6-8. I have dealt with this matter in my Hulsean Lectures for 1841, and am still of the same opinion, that the placing of these Cherubim at the east of Eden was indicative of ordinances of worship, and a form of access to the Divine presence still open to man, though he was debarred from entrance into paradise. See further on chap. iv. 3, and Smith's Biblical Dict., under "Cherub." flaming sword] lit. the flame of the sword, not borne in the hands of the Cherubim, but separate from them, which turned every way-i. e. continually flashing, or coruscant, in all directions. Evidently, from the the |