Glorious and Depraved (11): The Fall of Mankind (Part One)

The Fall is “a term used in Christianity to describe the transition of the first man and woman from a state of innocent obedience to God to a state of guilty disobedience.” Or, as it is more colorfully expressed, “the descent of humanity from a state of innocence lived in the presence of God to a sinful world of misery and death.”

^3:1 Now the serpent was smarter than any of the animals of the field Yahweh Elohim had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”

² The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, ³ but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”

⁴ “You will not surely die,” the serpent said to the woman. ⁵ “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be, like God, knowers of good and evil.”

⁶ When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and attractive to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. ⁷ Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves. (Genesis 3:1-7)

Yahweh had told Adam that if he ate from the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, he would “surely” die, an adverb the serpent used that Eve did not. Eve added something Yahweh did not say, that to touch the tree would result in death. The serpent was an intelligent beast of the field, one we may suppose that Adam had named. There is no register of surprise on Adam’s or Eve’s part that this beast can talk. But boy can he talk! We see the evidence that the serpent is possessed by Satan.

The serpent’s tactic is to make Yahweh sound selfish and unreasonable. He starts with how ungenerous of God it is to prohibit Adam and Eve from eating from any tree in the garden, then contradicts God’s statement that they would die from eating from the Tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and finally insisting that God is withholding the opportunity for them to become like Him in knowing good and evil.

Adam and Eve are tempted to doubt the goodness of God and to believe that they are deserving of being more God-like than they are. Simply knowing of good and evil would not be much of an enticement, nor something that would make them more like God. But being able to determine what is good and evil would. It would make them the rulers of their own lives instead of God. God, who may not be all that good, would not be telling them what is right and wrong. They would not have to trust in Him, but trust in themselves, which seemed safer. They eat from the forbidden tree.

The moment they eat this fruit, something changes in them. Their eyes are “opened” in some sense, and the first thing they notice is that they are naked. They knew this before, but now being unclothed creates a sense of dis-ease. They feel vulnerable and in need of covering and take fig leaves (from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil?) and somehow sew them together to cover their nakedness. Something has died.