Genesis 3 - The Fall of Man (Part 2)
…continued from Genesis 3 - The Fall of Man (Part 1)
 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.
Notice that scripture doesn’t question whether eating the fruit was desirable for gaining wisdom. After all, Adam and Eve both got a healthy does of it! However, wisdom is best when it comes from the Fear of the Lord.
I find it interesting that the first thing they realized was their nakedness. I guess they hadn’t made a difference to them before. But it did now. I kind of wonder how that worked.
Between a married couple in a pure relationship, nudity is frankly no big deal. They see each other all the time, and it is what it is. However, add a dose of guilt, a bit of blame, a disagreement over who started it, and suddenly that nudity is a symbol of control. What he wants, what she has; feelings of inadequacy, and desire not to be judged. Could that be what happened here? Eve coerced Adam to disobey God, and now he needed to assert himself, to recover from his failure at her hand. Could it be that, among other things, they had their first spat and Adam tried to end it by taking advantage of their, uh, unclothed situation? Just wondering. It would certainly be a human thing to do. In any case, the whole thing was obviously quite overwhelming for them both. So, they covered themselves. With that out of the way, perhaps calming down from the flurry of emotion they both must have felt…
 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?”
Yikes. Now I’d be scared. From arguing between each other, I can easily see Adam and Eve go from adversaries to allies… hiding from their Lord together. Well, at least now Adam was willing to man up, confessing to what he did…
 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?”
Or maybe he hadn’t manned up as much as he thought…
 12 The man said, “The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.”
Did you catch that? “The woman **you** put here with me”!! He’s putting it on God! Wow! That fruit really did a number on Adam, didn’t it? Of course, Adam would probably just say, like any other man, “I was just giving God the facts!” Yeah. I suppose. Eve was created to be Adam’s helper. You can almost hear him saying to God, “And just look at how she helped!” But, God did see that Adam’s facts were technically correct, and so had to be addressed. That’s okay. He would come back to Adam later.
 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.”
More factual passing the buck. Again, technically correct, and so God addressed it… looks like he’ll have to come back to Eve later, too.
To be continued…