Genesis 3:1-24
The Fall of Man
1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God 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 certainly 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, knowing good and evil.”
6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing 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.
8 Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?”
10 He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.”
11 And he said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?”
12 The man said, “The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.”
13 Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?”
The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”
14 So the Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this,
“Cursed are you above all livestock
and all wild animals!
You will crawl on your belly
and you will eat dust
all the days of your life.
15 And I will put enmity
between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and hers;
he will crush your head,
and you will strike his heel.”
16 To the woman he said,
“I will make your pains in childbearing very severe;
with painful labor you will give birth to children.
Your desire will be for your husband,
and he will rule over you.”
17 To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’
“Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat food from it
all the days of your life.
18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
and you will eat the plants of the field.
19 By the sweat of your brow
you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
and to dust you will return.”
20 Adam named his wife Eve, because she would become the mother of all the living.
21 The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. 22 And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us,knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” 23 So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. 24 After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.
One might ask why did the LORD put such a tempting tree with beautiful looking fruit in the middle of the garden where Adam and Eve would be tempted?...After all, Eden is Paradise...Did God want us to eat the fruit so we would open our eyes?...The fruit was good for food and also pleasing to the eye...And for some strange reason we are told the fruit was also desirable for gaining wisdom...Did God want us to gain this new wisdom, by putting this tree in the middle of the Garden of Eden?...Why was this particular tree, the one called the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, the one tree that Adam and Eve could not eat?...Why not another tree with fruit and place it outside the garden?...I had always thought that gaining wisdom was a good thing, but know I know that this is something one must ponder on...Are all types of knowledge good and is gaining wisdom or more wisdom better all the time...We can see that that maybe there are certain types of knowledge and wisdom, we do not need to have or to acquire and know...Especially, when it goes against God and we are disobeying God...Maybe this is less about knowledge and more about obedience to our Father...
God knows all things, so He knew that Adam and Eve would eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil even before it happened...And God had warned them not to eat from this tree, so He did not want them to eat from this particular tree...Because He already knew what the end result would be...He always knows what we will do, each and everyone of us...So He knew Eve and Adam would eat from the tree that He told them not to eat from, and He knew when they would eat from it...
And as the evil one talks to Eve, we see that he is trying for her to gain more knowledge...We know that the Garden of Eden is Paradise, and God has said that his creation is Good...So the knowledge that the evil one wants Eve and Adam to grasp from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, is all about the knowledge of evil and temptation...The evil one wants us to know about evil and/or more evil...The evil one tells Eve, “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”...But they already must know about good, because they are in Paradise...It is evil that the evil one is trying to teach her and to Adam...The evil one wants us to know about his evil...The evil one want us to disobey the God...Disobeying God is sin and is evil, and that is what the two did that day...The evil one wants our eyes to be open to evil...And after Adam and Eve ate the fruit their eyes were now open to evil...
God wants us to believe in Him and to trust Him and to follow Him...And often we learn different things from life itself and our experiences...We also can learn things from the daily choices we make daily, as Eve and Adam do here...Eve chose to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, as did Adam...And when they did, they did gain some new knowledge...They learned what is was like to disobey God...They now knew what sin was...They know knew what guilt feels like...And guilty they did feel now...Because when their eyes were opened, they for the first time they realized they were naked...They had never thought about being naked before, but now they did...So they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves...Guilt was now, maybe for the first time, around them...Then Adam and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as He was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden, because of what they had done...But the LORD God called to the man, “Where are you?”...Adam answered, “I heard You in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.”...Never before had he felt guilty and naked...He probably never felt afraid before in Paradise...And Adam and his wife had been in the garden for some time...But after eating the fruit, they felt guilty about eating the fruit and about being naked...And they also felt afraid...
Now for the first time Adam and Eve had lost their naivete...For the first time they participated in evil...It is like they were children and they had suddenly now grown up, after participating in evil...God had given the two first people of the world free choice, and in free choice, we are given the opportunity to learn and grow...And Adam and Eve grew up that day, and obtained more knowledge and wisdom...The day they ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil they learned somethings that were new to them...So Adam and Eve learned this day...They learned what it was like to participate in evil...And so they learned about evil...They also learned about guilt...And they learned about being afraid...
And God left Eden and Paradise intact...He could have destroyed their Paradise, their first home...But God left Paradise intact, and He made Adam and Eve depart from their Most Beautiful Home...And now we would like to get back to the Garden...And we can, but it takes a Savior, a Son, God's Son to return there...There will be no evil when we return to heaven...