Charles Ellicott Commentary Genesis 3:1-24

"Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which Jehovah God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of any tree of the garden? 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. And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: 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. And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat; and she gave also unto her husband with her, and he did eat. 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. And they heard the voice of Jehovah God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of Jehovah God amongst the trees of the garden. And Jehovah God called unto the man, and said unto him, Where art thou? And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself. 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? And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat. And Jehovah God said unto the woman, What is this thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat. And Jehovah God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, cursed art thou 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: and I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed: he shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel. Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy pain and thy conception; in pain thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee. 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 toil shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field; 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. And the man called his wife`s name Eve; because she was the mother of all living. And Jehovah God made for Adam and for his wife coats of skins, and clothed them. And Jehovah 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- therefore Jehovah God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken. So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden the Cherubim, and the flame of a sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life." — Genesis 3:1-24 (ASV)

EXCURSUS C: ON THE DURATION OF THE PARADISIACAL STATE OF INNOCENCE.

The Bereshit Rabba argues that Adam and Eve remained in their original state of innocence for six hours only. Others have supposed that the events recorded in Genesis 2:4 to Genesis 3:24 took place in the course of twenty-four hours, and suppose that this is proved by what is said in Genesis 2:4: that the earth and heavens, with Adam and the garden, were all made in one day, before the end of which they suppose that he fell.

This view, like that which in Genesis 1 interprets each creative day as a similar period, really amounts to this: that the narrative of Holy Scripture is to be forced to bend to an arbitrary meaning placed upon a single word, drawn not from its meaning in Hebrew, but from its ordinary use in English. More correctly, we might venture to say that the use of the word day in Genesis 2:4 is a Divine warning against such a willful method of exposition.

Read intelligently, the progress of time is carefully marked. In Genesis 2:6 the earth is watered by a mist; in paradise there are mighty rivers. Now, mist would not produce rivers; and if there were mist in the morning and rain in the afternoon, a long period of time would still be necessary before the falling rains would form for themselves definite channels. A vast period of time must have elapsed between the mist period and that in which the Tigris and Euphrates rolled along their mighty floods.

And with this the narrative agrees. All is slow and gradual. God does not summon the Garden of Eden into existence by a sudden command, but He planted it, and out of the ground He made to grow such trees as were most remarkable for beauty, and whose fruit was most suitable for human food. In some favored spot, with soil fertile and fit for their development, God, by a special providence, caused such plants to germinate as would best supply the needs of a creature as feeble as man, until, by the aid of his reason, he invented those aids and helps which the animals possess in their own bodily organization.

The creation of full-grown trees belongs to the realm of magic. A book that gravely recorded such an act would justly be relegated to the Apocrypha, for the God of revelation works by law, and with such long ages of preparation that human eagerness is often tempted to cry, “How long?” and to pray that God would hasten His work.

And next, regarding Adam. Placed in a garden, two of whose rivers—the Tigris and the Euphrates—seem to show that the earth at his creation had already settled down into nearly its present shape, he is commanded to dress and keep it. The inspired narrator would scarcely have spoken in this way if Adam’s continuance in the garden had been only a few hours or days.

We find him living there so long that his solitude becomes wearisome to him, and the Creator eventually affirms that it is not good for him to be alone. Meanwhile, Adam is himself searching for a partner. In the hope of finding one, he studies all the animals around him, observes their ways, gives them names, discovers many valuable qualities in them, and makes several of them useful to him, but still finds none among them that meets his needs.

But when we read that Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowls of the air, and to every beast of the field, we must see that this careful study of the creatures around him must have continued for a long period before it could have resulted in their being thus generally classified and named in Adam’s mind. Eventually, Eve is brought, and his words express the lively pleasure of one who, after repeated disappointments, had at last found that for which he was searching. “This,” he says, “this time is bone of my bone.”

How long Adam and Eve enjoyed their simple happiness after their marriage is left untold, but this naming of the animals at least suggests that some time elapsed before the fall. Though Adam had observed their habits, he would scarcely have given many of them names before he had a rational companion with whom to converse. For some, indeed, he would have found names when trying to call them to him, but only for those that seemed fit for domestication. The rest he would pass by until there was someone to whom to describe them. Thus, Eve seems to have known something of the sagacity of the serpent.

She, too, as well as Adam, recognized the voice of Jehovah walking in the garden (Genesis 3:8); and the girdles spoken of in Genesis 2:7 seem also to indicate, by their elaboration, that the guilty pair remained in Paradise some time after the fall. The indications of time are, however, less numerous and definite after the creation of Eve than before. But certainly, Adam was for some considerable period a denizen of Paradise, and probably there was a longer time than is generally supposed spent in innocence by him and his wife, and also some delay between the fall and their expulsion from their happy home.