Genesis chapter 3

Verse 1 – a member of the lower creation is used as Satan’s agent. Satan indwelt the serpent. The serpent was not like the snakes of today. Apparently it was the most beautiful of all of the creatures in lower creation, and apparently a pet of the woman. Satan uses agencies. The word subtle is not really a good translation; it was the smartest of all the animals.

“the Lord God” – Jehovah Elohim. Jehovah refers to the persons in he Godhead; Elohim refers to transcendence, essence.

“And he said to the woman” – as soon as we read “he said” we know that Satan is talking. All of a sudden the serpent begins to talk in the language of the woman. This is not unusual and has happened many times in history.

“Yea, hath God said” – Elohim, the name of the supreme being. The words Lord God through the second chapter refers to the Lord Jesus Christ, the second person of the Trinity. But notice what Satan says in his approach here: “Yea, hath Elohim said.” Nothing about Jehovah Elohim. In other words, Satan recognises a supreme being but he does not recognise the saviour. This has been his policy since the beginning. Satan is the author of all religious systems. Not all of them recognise God but many of them do, and Satan is great at promoting belief in God or trusting God, or any kind of man’s works in connection with God. What Satan hates and cannot stand is when people make it personal—the Lord Jesus Christ. And the woman fell right into the trap because she does not recognise the personal relationship which she has enjoyed, she does not say Lord God, she says God [Elohim]. Satan calls Him God and she repeats what Satan says. (2 Chron. 18:31—Jehoshaphat, a believer, has a relationship with God—Jehovah; the Syrians are unbelievers and have no relationship with God—Elohim moved them. This verse shows a very important distinction in scripture. The titles of God in scripture are important.) The woman recognises God as the supreme Being but she ignores any concept of relationship to man. This woman is in innocence and yet she adopts the principle of religion. When she does, she has had it because religion always hates, rejects, despises Jesus Christ and the principle: “the blood of Jesus Christ, God’s Son, cleanses from all sin.” There is another principle here. Satan attacks through loved ones. Adam loves the woman. So the principle is that Satan attacks us through loved ones. We are influenced by those whom we love.

“Ye shall not eat of every tree” – ye shall not eat is actually an imperative mood in the Hebrew. It should be translated, “Yea hath God said, ‘Thou shalt not eat’.” In other words, he is making God look bad now. It is subtle innuendo here: Here are all these lovely thing and God won’t let you have them. It is an attempt to malign God. Satan maligns and seeks to discredit the grace of God. We know from chapter two that there was only one tree which was prohibited, and that was simply as a test for volition. Free will is not free will without a test. There must be an object for the exercise of volition and that object was the forbidding of one tree. The innuendo here is that God was forbidding all of the trees and therefore God is very unkind, unfair. Satan is attacking the person of God, saying that He is unfair, unkind, and this helps to prepare the mental attitude of the woman for the sin. And the mental attitude preparation is resentment, bitterness toward God. One of the great enemies of mankind still is resentment and bitterness. This is why the Bible always emphasises that the mental sins are the worst sins.

Verse 2 – “We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden.” Satan knew that before she did. He wants her to say this because he is going to catch here with the next phrase.

Verse 3 – “But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden”—the tree of the knowledge of good and evil—“God.” And when she says God she has taken her lesson from Satan. Not Lord God, but God hath said.

“Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, let ye die.” What did God say actually? Genesis 2:17 –“But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof dying thou shalt die.” The woman added “neither shall ye touch it.” God didn’t say anything about touching the tree. Why did the woman add to what God said? Why did she add to the Word of God? The most obvious reason is because she did not interpret the Word properly.

Death does not lie in the tree. Death is in the woman, in her volition. Death is in the act of negative volition, the act of disobedience. Consequently the woman is now thoroughly confused; she doesn’t have her doctrine straight. She can only think in terms of the physical, that death is in the tree. But death isn’t in the tree, death is in her. Gen. 2:17: Dying (a participle), thou shalt die. Dying is mentioned twice because the first is spiritual death and the second is physical death which is the result. When the woman repeats this phrase she not only adds “neither shall ye touch it,” but she also only mentions physical death. She left out the participle which refers to spiritual death—the key to the whole thing.

Verse 4 – Satan utters the first lie. He puts it all in” “Dying thou shalt not die”—exactly what Jesus said in Genesis 2:17, but he adds the negative “not.” In other words, he distorted and contradicted what God had said. So the whole issue in the garden with this woman was, ‘Are you going to believe what God says in the realm of your human spirit, or are you going to believe in the realm of your soul what Satan said?’ The issue: Satan’s lie; God’s truth. Which will it be? This, again, puts volition right on the line. If you believe God’s truth it means the mental will dominate the emotional and the volitional will stay in line, you will refuse to take of the tree. But if you believe what Satan says the emotion of the soul will dominate the mental and therefore your volition will go negative instead of positive.

Verse 5 – the appeal to the ego. “For God doeth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes will be opened and ye shall be as God [as Elohim].” In other words, just like God. He arouses the ego of the woman. One of Satan’s great pushes in religion is the deification of man, the dignity of man, the greatness of man. The result of this is not that man will become like God, but that God will become man to provide eternal salvation, to get man out of the jamb which was started by the fall.

Verses 6-13, the fall of man.

Verse 6 – the act of sin, operation negative volition. “And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food.” This was a rationalisation. Every temptation when one begins to succumb always has the principle of rationalisation. You can always talk yourself into it on the basis of the fact that there is some justification for it.

“and that is was pleasant to the eyes” – this comes closer to the reality of her temptation. The word pleasant means literally delight. It was a delight to the eyes. Consequently, it became “a tree being desired.” The desire was already there, it was planted by a rationalisation. The desire was to be wise—“to make one wise” is the hiphil infinitive: to cause one to become wise. The principle being to become as wise as God and therefore wiser than man.

The next two verbs are very important: “she took; she did eat.” Literally from the Hebrew, “she took and she ate.” This is the same principle. This is the same procedure which is now followed in the principle of another tree. The moment the woman took and ate she died. Ever since that time eating has been one of the five great biblical illustrations for faith. The reason that eating is always a great illustration for faith is because all kinds of people eat—good, bad, immoral, moral, etc. All human beings have the ability to eat. So there is no particular merit in eating; no one is great because he eats. It required no effort on the part of the woman to eat in disobedience. Now there is another tree, and that tree is the cross. It is mentioned as such in 1 Peter 2:24. Eating of this tree in the garden was disobedience and it resulted in death. Eating of the other tree [the cross] which is faith is obedience to the will of God and it results in eternal life. In each case it was a non-meritorious procedure, in the garden and at the cross (salvation); it is the object that becomes important. In the garden the object was forbidden; now in life the object, which is the cross, is enjoined on the entire human race.

“and gave to her husband with her and he did eat” – the man looked upon the first sinner in the human race and immediately faced a great issue: fellowship with God in the garden or fellowship with the woman outside of the garden. He chose the woman outside of the garden. He knew exactly what he was doing; the woman was deceived. The man deliberately sinned. Cf. 1 Timothy 2:9-15.

Verse 7 – “And the eyes of them both were opened.” The moment they ate they died spiritually. Now they faced reality, their eyes were opened.

“they knew they were naked” – they are now naked but they were not naked before. “They knew they were naked” indicates they now have a conscience; they can distinguish between good and evil, and their conscience is a witness to them at this point that they are sinful and in a fallen condition. Their conscience is now going to be their judge and their tormentor. Notice, however, that their conscience does not bring them to God. Only the voice of the Lord Jesus Christ awakens them to their need of God. So if they weren’t naked, what did they wear? There are some verses which seem to imply the type of covering or clothing they had. First of all, “God is light” – 1 John 1:5; God clothes Himself in light – Psalm 104:2; Psalm 36:9, God’s light is identified with regenerate man. This means the concept of man being clothed in light is not foreign to the Word of God. 1 Timothy 6:16, God dwells in light which no man can approach; Romans 13:12, the believer is told to put on the armour of light. Putting all of these things together the implication is that man apparently was dressed in light—beautiful transparent light which made man a very beautiful translucent creature. This is so startling when we stop to remember that the Hebrew word for serpent—Genesis 3:1—is nachash, which means to be clothed with light. Apparently at least one member of lower creation was clothed with light up to this point. So when it says they knew they were naked apparently one of the immediate exterior manifestations of sin was the fact that they became naked and were no longer clothed with light.

It is very interesting at this point to follow the thought pattern of the first parents whose IQ was much higher than ours. Notice what conscience did for them. It caused them to recognise that they were in status quo evil. They were naked, and as far as they could tell this was not good for immediately they tried to do something about it. They are in this status quo because they have disobeyed God, but once they receive the knowledge of good and evil they do not think about God. The reason they do not think about God is because they are incapable of thinking about God. It was not that they had forgotten God, it was that they were incapable of thinking about God. In innocence every day Jesus Christ came in the garden and they had conversation with Him; now they are spiritually dead and they can’t even think about God. But they still have their souls and they can think about each other, and that is exactly what they did. They tried to adjust to each other, and this is man’s philosophy which has come down from the beginning—if I am right with my fellow man then I’m right with the supreme Being, if there is one! This is where internationalism and universalism is born. As far as the first parents are concerned they must solve man’s problems. Man tries to solve man’s problems by man’s ingenuity, and he fails. How are they going to solve this problem? How can they become properly adjusted again?

Their solution is clothing: “and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons.” The word sew means basically to take two things that are apart and put them together. In fact, this word sew is sometimes translated heal—“By His bruise we are healed,” Isaiah 53. The idea here was that they were to take these fig leaves and bring them together. We do not know that they actually sewed them. The word means they simply took these leaves and pulled them together. Apparently they tied them together. But the principle is the act of legalism. Here is an attempt to solve a problem by something you do [legalism] rather than by something that God does [grace]. Grace and legalism are always antithetical.

The word aprons is better translated loin cloths. The Hebrew says they made something which covered the loins. Wearing clothes does not make a person respectable, though it helps! It is what you think. The Bible does not emphasise the external, it emphasises the internal—what you think, how you are motivated. If your thinking is correct and if your motivation is proper then the externals will take care of themselves.

Verse 8 – “And they heard the voice of the Lord God [Jesus Christ] walking in the garden in the cool of the day.” They heard the sound of the voice of the Lord. Customarily they would come and fellowship with Him, but on this occasion: “Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.” Now for the first time trees become a hiding place. Why did they hide? Because, again, they are soulish. The human soul is incapable of fellowship with God. Internally something is wrong, and that internal wrong [spiritual death] makes it impossible for them to have fellowship with God. They hide but you can’t hide from omniscience and omnipresence. Their hiding indicates spiritual death. Spiritual death means no fellowship with God; it means being incapable of having fellowship with God.

Verse 9 – the first act of grace. The good news is that Christ broke the silence and spoke to them. That is grace, they didn’t earn or deserve it. “And the Lord God [Jesus Christ] called.”

Notice that Jesus Christ mentions the one who is responsible for the human race—Adam. He is the federal head of the human race, the responsible one. He didn’t call Eve. “Where thou?” The verb is not found in the original. The word thou is the second masculine singular personal pronoun—Where are you specifically, Adam. The implication of this question is, Why are you where you are?

Verse 10 – the response of Adam. “I naked,” literally; no verb. In other words, he is speaking in great shame. He is ashamed of himself. Notice also that he was afraid. Adam did not know fear of any kind until he sinned. There is a very definite correlation between sin and fear. Fear will always exist in the human race until one is properly related to God through regeneration. The place where you stop being afraid is not with the details of life but when you are no longer afraid of death—then you stop being afraid. The believer has no excuse for being afraid of death. Once you have no fear of death, which comes through knowledge of phase three, then you have confidence.

Notice a principle. Adam is first investigated. Adam passes the buck to the woman, and the woman passes the buck down to the serpent. When we get to the serpent the sequence of investigation stops and the judgment begins. There is the opposite sequence in judgment: He judged the serpent, then the woman, and finally the man. In between the judgment of the serpent and the woman we have the plan of salvation declared. This is because the serpent is not involved in the plan of salvation.

Verse 11 – “Who told thee that thou wast naked?” What do you know about such things? Then He asks the question.

Verse 12 – Adam blames it on God. “The woman thou gavest to be with me…” She gave him the fruit but he didn’t have to eat. It was his own volition, his own choice.

Verse 13 – the woman is not going to take the blame for this either and she passes the buck: “The serpent beguiled.” The Hebrew says the serpent deceived me…”

Now we have a principle: the serpent is judged in verse 14; salvation is promised in verse 15; the woman is judged in verse 16; man is judged in verses 17-19. God uses the opposite sequence. When Jesus Christ investigated the situation He started with the man; now he begins with the serpent. The serpent is cursed and then the plan of salvation is given because the plan of salvation belongs only to man and woman. There is a separation between the serpent and mankind because the serpent and Satan are not involved in the plan of salvation.

Verses 14-24, the results of the fall.

Verse 14 – the curse of the serpent. The serpent was the agent of Satan in deceiving the woman and the serpent, therefore, must be judged.

“thou cursed” – no verb here. The serpent must now move along the ground and they must eat off of the ground. The curse of the serpent is brought in for another reason at this point. Out of the curse of the serpent will come the first declaration of the gospel. Since the serpent is on the ground it is impossible for him to get up very high. There are some exceptions, of course. The serpent is vulnerable by being struck on the head. He can’t get his head very high off the ground and is very vulnerable to the attack of man. However, the serpent can also cause man death in some cases by striking the foot. Both of these similes are used now in verse 15.

Verse 15 – the first biblical declaration of the gospel. The gospel is absolutely necessary because of man’s fall. Jesus Christ is speaking” “I will put enmity between thee [Satan] and the woman.” Remember that Satan used the woman in the garden. Later on in Revelation 12 Satan is called the serpent. So we have a separation now between the woman on the one hand and Satan or the serpent’s seed on the other. Man is left out of it because man wilfully sinned. Both the woman and the man sinned and both are in the transgression but the difference in their sin forms the pattern and the basis of this verse.

“and between thy seed and her seed” – thy seed refers to every person coming into the human race; her seed refers to Jesus Christ. The principle: All members of the human race, because of Adam’s sin, are born in the slave market of sin. We are born sinners. We are sinners not because of personal acts of sin but we are sinners because we are born with an old sin nature and the imputation of Adam’s sin. That is why Ephesians 2:1 says we are born dead. We are born in the slave market of sin; we are slaves to sin by birth. The fact that we commit personal acts of sin is simply because we have an old sin nature. All sin comes from the old sin nature—as well, all good which comes from the natural man comes from the old sin nature. The sin nature is passed down through the male. If a virgin can become pregnant and not have a male being involved in the procreation then the result will be a person who comes into the world without the old sin nature, without the imputation of Adam’s sin. What this means is that there is no salvation without the virgin birth. The seed of the woman is the first title of Jesus Christ given to the human race. The first announcement of salvation emphasises the virgin birth and not the blood. Why? Adam brought the entire human race into sin—Romans 5:12, “Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.” That is aorist tense: in a point of time, when Adam sinned. The words “thy seed” refers to man in his unregenerate state; “her seed” is Jesus Christ born of a virgin.

“he [the Lord Jesus Christ] shall bruise thy head” – the word bruise is the Hebrew word which means to crush. Jesus Christ would crush the head. The serpent is vulnerable in the head and Jesus Christ will crush the head of Satan at the Second Advent. This is when Satan is imprisoned for 1000 years.

“and thou [Satan] shalt bruise [crush] his heel” – just as the serpent strikes the heel of man. The second bruise here has to do with the first advent, the cross. As the venom of the serpent spreads throughout the human body after he strikes, so sin spread throughout the entire human race. Christ, as it were, withdrew all the venom. “Thou shalt bruise his heel” was fulfilled—1 Peter 2:24; 2 Corinthians 5:21.

Notice the principle: salvation is promised before judgment is given. That is the principle that is found throughout the Bible: grace always precedes judgment. God never judges the human race without first of all offering the opportunity of grace, and remember that judgment is always the alternative of grace. In effect, judgment is always a rejection of grace. The principle behind this is that man is always given a chance by God and any man who is judged by God has it coming to him!

Verse 16 – the judgment of the woman. The woman was deceived in the fall, she did not deliberately sin and the sin nature was passed down through the man—Psalm 51:5.

“I will greatly multiply thy sorrow” –literally, thy pain; “and thy conception” should be even thy conception or pregnancy. So the woman is to have pain in pregnancy and in birth and this is a part of the woman’s discipline and a part of the woman’s curse.

“in sorrow [pain] thou shalt bring forth children” – the woman becomes a child-bearer. This is the first part of her discipline. This was the means of perpetuating the human race but it was also the means of bringing the saviour into the world and therefore the cursing is turned to blessing. Remember that Jesus Christ as God cannot save the human race because to save the human race you have to die for the human race and as God He cannot die.

“and they desire shall be to thy husband and he shall rule over thee” – the Hebrew word for desire means a craving, a strong craving. So since the woman had broken the divinely-appointed subordination to man God gives her a physiological subordination. No matter how a woman tries to be independent of man she can’t make it. Her desire for man will be insatiable and will be perpetuated to the human race as a judgment. The woman, therefore, is constructed as a responder to man. The cursing is turned to blessing by human love.

Verse 17-19, the judgment of the man. “Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife.” Here is part of his problem. Adam should have been ruling and he obeyed his wife. He was led when he should have been leading. At that point Adam lost control over the rest of creation. God gave him back control over the woman—physiological control. But Adam lost his domination of the animal creation, the lower creation.

The cursing of the ground brings up everything that had previously been under Adam’s domination was lost to him. The curse of the earth is on and therefore man must now work in order to bring food from the ground. The ground will now only bring forth food when man works for it, cultivates it. Otherwise if the ground is not worked, tilled, it will bring forth thorns and briars, etc. The curse upon the ground will only be removed at the Second Advent of Christ—Romans 8:19-22. Then Isaiah 35:1,2 says that the desert will blossom like a crocus. The curse of the ground is manifest by thorns, and remember that just before the cross Jesus Christ wore a crown of thorns. He was made a curse for us. There is a second phase to the curse on lower creation and that is, animals starting to have ferocity. Until the fall of man animals were not ferocious. Once man fell animals became carnivorous and wild. The wild animals will only be tamed again by the Second Advent of Christ—Isaiah 11:6-9; 65:25. Man’s physical deterioration will be removed—Isaiah 65:20.

“in sorrow [pain] shalt thou eat” – the pain is the pain that comes from labour; “all of the days of thy life” – in other words, Adam is going to live for a certain amount of time and then he will die physically.

“in the sweat of thy face” – the second phase of man’s punishment is physical death. He has to work for a living and then die: “till thou return unto the ground.”

“out of it wast thou taken” – this is a reference to the body. The soul and the spirit came directly from God—“the breath of lives [pl],” Genesis 2.

Six comparisons between man’s curse and the work of Christ on the cross

1. The ground was cursed, though innocent. 2. The earth brings forth thorns. 3. Man earns by the sweat of his face—Gen. 3:19. 4. Man returns to dust. 5. Man by sin died spiritually. 6. Man died twice: spiritually immediately, Gen. 3:6; physically later, Gen. 5:5

It was Christ who was cursed for us, though innocent--Gal. 3:13 Christ wore a crown of thorns—John 18:8. Before the cross Christ sweat great drops of blood—Luke 22:44. Christ is said to be brought out of the dust—Psalm 22:15. Christ by bearing our sins died spiritually. Jesus Christ died spiritually—Ps. 22:1; 2 Cor. 5:21; He died physically—John 19:30.

Verse 20 – the salvation testimony. “Adam called his wife Eve,” which means giver of life. Even though the penalty of sin is death Adam called his wife’s name Giver-of-life. Why? Because Adam had received the seed of the woman as his saviour. The seed of the woman is Jesus Christ; Jesus Christ is the giver of life. Because the giver of life would come into the world and die for Adam, Adam received Him and therefore called his wife Giver-of-life because He would come through the woman. In other words, the first person who was ever saved was Adam and his salvation was based upon believing the virgin birth. This was the emphasis in the first declaration of salvation. The seed of the woman emphasises the virgin birth.

“because she was the mother of all living” – the human race was to be perpetuated through the woman. Adam is the father of all dead. All members of the human race are born into this world dead because they get Adam’s nature which is the old sin nature—Romans 5:12. This is why in Isaiah 9:6 Jesus Christ is not called the everlasting Father, He is called the Father of eternal life or the author of eternal life because He is the provider of it.

Verse 21 – the coats of skins indicated that the first parents were born again. They accepted the coats of skins. These skins were taken by the shedding of blood—1 John 1:7; Hebrews 9:22; 1 Peter 1:18,19.

The expulsion from the garden. Man and woman were kicked out of the garden, verses 22-24. Man, after he had sinned, did not go to the tree of life. If man had eaten of the tree of life he would have been perpetuated in a sinful state and could not have been saved. There would be no salvation issue at all.

Verse 22 – “the man is become as one of us.” This means having one characteristic that God has, knowing good from evil.

“and now … lest he take – if man takes of the tree of life in a sinful state he is then perpetuated in a sinful state and volition no longer becomes an issue in the human race. After sin volition must be the issue to resolve the angelic conflict, and the only way to make volition the issue is to get man out of the garden and to give him another tree on which he can exercise his volition. That tree is the tree of death, the cross. But first of all he had to be cut off from the tree of life, and he was. Calvary’s cross is only an issue as long as man does not possess eternal life. If man possesses eternal life in a sinful status then the cross is not an issue. So by remaining in the garden and being perpetuated by the tree of life the salvation issue of man would be destroyed. Man would depend upon the tree of life rather than on the tree of Calvary.

If man had been perpetuated in a sinful state, what would God’s attitude be toward him forever? Judgment! Hence, the tree of life must be put out of man’s reach and the tree of death must be put into man’s reach so that man can exercise his volition on the tree of death. Adam had already made his choice but this precaution pertains to the progeny.

Verse 23 – “… the Lord God sent him forth from the garden.” He drove him out, piel stem. It was intensive, indicating man’s reluctance to go. In order to turn cursing into blessing man must be removed from the place where he can perpetuate the curse. If man remains in the garden the curing is perpetuated. Man must leave the garden in order that cursing can be turned to blessing by means of the tree of death, the cross. As a result of regeneration man will occupy a position higher and better than anything he possessed in innocence in the garden when he was perpetuated by the tree of life in status quo innocence. This is the subject of Hebrews chapters one and two. But before this will be realised in a resurrection body all vestiges of sin and the curse must be removed. This will ultimately be accomplished in resurrection. So the principle: Man becomes a gainer through grace. It was God’s grace that threw him out of the garden.