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…continued from Genesis 3 - The Fall of Man (Part 6)

 ²¹ The LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them.

A loving act amidst their punishment.  It is curious that God made garments of skin for Adam and Eve.  The skins would have come from an animal.  Is it possible God killed a couple of animals for them?  I think He did.  Notice earlier in the chapter:

 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.

Why would they hide from a spirit?  What sound would that spirit make?  In my opinion, they were hiding from a Man, Christophony, a bodily appearance of Jesus on Earth.  I imagine Jesus did that a lot, enjoying the garden that Adam and Eve tended.  It would make it easy for them to think of hiding, if God’s manifestation in verse 8 were physical. It also means His interrogation and pronouncements of judgement were made “in person”, in the body of a man.  Knowing this, it lends insight to what was meant by verse 21… a physical manifestation of God, pre-incarnate Jesus, made them garments of skin.

Can we really know where Jesus got the skin from?  I believe we can, to some degree.  Remember Jesus’ miracles in the Gospels?  Where did He get wine He produced?  He transformed it from water.  Where did He get all that bread and fish?  He multiplied it from existing bread and fish.  And when God says in Genesis for the earth to produce fish and animals according to their kind, it suggests He created new fish and animals from existing fish and animals.  Scripture would appear to suggest that where God creates, He starts with something else.  He transforms it, He multiplies it, He changes it.  So, when it says He “made” garments of skin, I believe it means that God, Jesus, started with something, and produced garments of skin from it.  It seems merely logical to conclude that what He started with were live animals. 

And why not?  The sacrifice of live animals for covering of sin is a pattern that would repeat itself over and over in scripture.  In God’s acceptance of Abel’s sacrifice, in God’s test of Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, in the Sacrificial Law, and finally in Jesus own sacrifice on the Cross.  And so it would seem that the killing of these animals also was no sin.  And this could only be true if mere physical death was no sin.

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 23rd, 2010 at 6:34 pm and is filed under Bible Commentary, Jesus as Witness, Walking with God, Original Sin. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.