Genesis — Chapter 3

THE SERPENT WAS MORE SUBTLE THAN ANY OF THE BEASTS OF THE EARTH. — In Hebrew, \"arum\" also means \"wrapped in many coils and spirals,\" which are signs of the serpent's internal craftiness. Three opinions on the serpent: (1) Cajetan: it was the devil, who tempted Eve only by internal suggestion, not through a real serpent. (2) Cyril and Eugubinus: the demon assumed only the species and form of a serpent, not a true one. (3) All other Fathers: this was a true serpent — naturally cunning and crafty — into which the wily devil entered and through its mouth, as an instrument moved and modulated by a certain rational method, formed a human voice (Chrysostom, Procopius, Augustine, De Civit. XIV, 20). Note: Eve did not recoil at the serpent's appearance because as mistress of animals she knew none could harm her. Did she recoil when it spoke? Josephus and Basil (following Plato) say animals in Paradise could speak; but Lapide answers better: Eve knew the serpent could not speak by nature and was astonished — but since she had not yet sinned, she had no fear, knowing she was under God's care. Satan fittingly used the form of a serpent: (1) the serpent is naturally cunning; (2) it is naturally hostile to man; (3) it creeps, spreads venom, and kills — as the demon does; (4) it clings wholly to the earth — so Adam, believing the serpent and devil, became entirely brutish and earthly.

NEITHER SHALL YE TOUCH IT, LEST PERHAPS YE DIE. — Ambrose (De Paradiso 12) thought Eve added \"nor touch it\" from distaste for the precept, thus invidiously exaggerating its hardness (God had forbidden only eating, not touching). But Eve, still unfallen and holy, seems rather to have said this from religious reverence for the divine precept — resolving, as it were, never even lightly to touch it, so as to be as far as possible from violating it. \"Lest perhaps\": God had said absolutely \"you shall die\"; the woman adds a note of futurity. But \"pen\" in Hebrew often indicates not doubt but certainty of a future event dependent on free will — \"lest we eat and thereby die\": if we eat, we shall certainly die.

YOU SHALL NOT DIE THE DEATH. — The serpent tempts Eve by removing the penalty and alluring with promises. Five splendid lies of the serpent: (1) \"You shall not die\"; (2) \"Your eyes shall be opened\"; (3) \"You shall be as gods\"; (4) \"Knowing good and evil\"; (5) \"God knows all this is true\" — insinuating God has withheld the fruit out of envy. Morally: even now the devil persuades nearly all men of \"you shall not die\" — dividing death into years and decades, persuading youth they will live another fifty years, scholars that they will live until their studies are finished, old men that they will live at least one more year. Hence: death is closer to each and all than each and all think — for in the very year each person dies, he imagines he will not die. Thomas à Kempis (De Imit. I, 23): \"Today man is, and tomorrow he appears not. So hold thyself each day as if thou wert to die — be prepared, and never let death find thee unprepared.\"

YOUR EYES SHALL BE OPENED. — \"Eyes\" here is of the mind, not the body (Aristotle: \"the intellect is a kind of eye\"). The serpent promises such clarity of intelligence that they will seem to have been blind before. YOU SHALL BE AS GODS — not in essence (impossible) but in a certain likeness of wisdom and omniscience. Note what was the first sin of Eve and Adam: Lapide (with Ambrose, Chrysostom, Augustine, Bernard) teaches it was pride — the desire to be like God in omniscience and self-direction, wishing to know good and evil by their own power, directing themselves by their own wisdom without dependence on God — just as Lucifer did. This pride then generated: impatience and indignation at the precept, curiosity, concupiscence of gluttony, error in the intellect (believing the serpent), and finally perfect disobedience and transgression. Both Adam and Eve were deceived and lost faith: Adam by believing the serpent's promise through Eve. Paul (1 Tim. 2:14) says Adam was \"not seduced\" — meaning Eve was seduced by the serpent intending to seduce her; Adam was enticed by his wife who did not intend to deceive him.

AND THE WOMAN SAW THAT THE TREE WAS GOOD TO EAT, AND FAIR TO THE EYES, AND DELIGHTFUL TO BEHOLD. — She had seen it before but without the concupiscence of eating; now, after the temptation, elevated into pride, she sees it in order to covet and eat — she looked upon it with lustful and alluring pleasure, dwelling upon it with a morally disordered gaze. Bernard (De Gradibus humilitatis, on curiosity): \"Keep what is entrusted to you, await what is promised, beware what is forbidden, lest you lose what is granted. Why do you gaze so intently on your death? Why cast wandering eyes so often upon it?\" AND SHE GAVE TO HER HUSBAND, WHO ATE. — Adam, hearing Eve's account of the serpent's promises and seeing she survived after eating, was elated by pride, desiring omniscience, consented to his wife, and ate. Eight sins of Adam (Pererius): (1) pride; (2) excessive love of pleasing his wife; (3) curiosity; (4) incredulity (thinking God threatened death only figuratively); (5) presumption (thinking it only a venial sin); (6) gluttony; (7) disobedience; (8) excuse-making. Thomas Aquinas: Eva sinned more seriously objectively (she sinned first and induced Adam); Adam sinned more seriously as to personal responsibility (he was more perfect and had received the precept directly from God).

AND THE EYES OF THEM BOTH WERE OPENED: AND WHEN THEY PERCEIVED THEMSELVES TO BE NAKED, THEY SEWED TOGETHER FIG LEAVES AND MADE THEMSELVES APRONS. — Five fruits and effects of sin: (1) their eyes were opened (to their misery); (2) nakedness — stripped of grace and original justice; (3) shame and confusion; (4) the worm of conscience; (5) dread and fear of divine judgment. Stripped of grace and original justice, they perceived their nakedness and the disordered motions of concupiscence, especially of lust, rebellious to reason. Augustine (Serm. 77 De Tempore): \"Gluttony is the mother of lust, as abstinence is the mother of chastity.\" They sewed fig leaves (Irenaeus: as a sign of penance, a kind of hair-shirt, since fig leaves sting and stimulate). Symbolically: fig leaves = the deceptive pleasures and words of sinners, which conceal shame only temporarily.

AND THEY HEARD THE VOICE OF THE LORD GOD WALKING IN PARADISE AT THE AFTERNOON AIR. — The \"voice\" was probably a terrible noise and crashing produced by God from the movement of trees — as though God were coming from afar and walking through the trees, the trees shook. Cajetan: the voice was of God speaking in anger. \"At the afternoon air\" — at the declining of the day, when gentle breezes blow and men worn by the heat of the day seek refreshment. Irenaeus (V): \"At the afternoon\" signifies that Christ was to come at the world's evening to redeem Adam and his descendants. Adam knew this to be God's voice: (1) he had spoken with God before; (2) the voice was immense and terrible, worthy of God; (3) Adam knew no other man who could produce such a voice; (4) his guilty conscience confirmed it.

WHERE ART THOU? — Not \"in what place?\" but \"in what state?\" (Ambrose, De Paradiso 14): \"Where is your well-conscioned confidence? This fear confesses your guilt; this hiding-place confesses your transgression. Where art thou? Not in what place do I ask, but in what state? Where have your sins brought you, that you flee from your God whom you once sought?\" God's question invites Adam to acknowledge his sin rather than continue to hide.

I HEARD THY VOICE IN PARADISE: AND I WAS AFRAID, BECAUSE I WAS NAKED. — \"I was afraid\" = I was ashamed, confounded at coming before Thee. Fear here is used for shame, for the reverence of modesty (cf. Heb. 12:28). Adam says he was naked — for although he had covered his pudenda with fig leaves, his body was otherwise still naked, as he confesses to God.

THE WOMAN WHOM THOU GAVEST ME TO BE MY COMPANION, SHE GAVE ME OF THE TREE, AND I DID EAT. — The just man accuses himself first (Prov. 18:17); but Adam, after sin, now full of concupiscence, pride, and self-love, leads the way in seeking excuses — he shifts blame to his wife for tempting him, and even (by implication) to God who gave him such a wife. Augustine (Serm. 19 De Sanctis): \"If Adam had not excused himself, he would not have been exiled from Paradise — and had he eaten of the Tree of Life, he would have recovered both immortality and original justice.\"

BECAUSE THOU HAST DONE THIS THING, THOU ART CURSED AMONG ALL CATTLE AND ALL BEASTS OF THE EARTH. — God turns first to the first and certain author of evil — the evil-counseling serpent — and curses it. Note: the punishments apply literally both to the real serpent (which was the instrument of Satan and the means of human ruin) and to the devil (who was the mover, speaker, and soul of the serpent). Six notes: (1) The serpent is cursed because abominable, horrible, venomous, and noxious above all animals, especially toward man. (2) Though before Eve's temptation the serpent crept naturally and ate dust (Basil: it walked erect — but Lapide doubts this), it was not then abominable; after the temptation it became loathed and infamous, and its natural mode of life became a punishment. (3) These punishments suit the crime: the serpent sought man's friendship and company — now it receives man's hatred; it had raised itself up to converse with the woman — now it is ordered to creep; it had persuaded the eating of the apple — now it is condemned to eat dust; it had looked at the woman's face — now it watches her heel. (4) Symbolically for the devil: he walks on his breast and belly because since his fall he thinks only of earthly and infernal things, and those who savour earthly things are his food.

I WILL PUT ENMITIES BETWEEN THEE AND THE WOMAN, AND THY SEED AND HER SEED: SHE SHALL CRUSH THY HEAD, AND THOU SHALT LIE IN WAIT FOR HER HEEL. — THE PROTOEVANGELIUM. Three readings of \"she/he/it shall crush\": (1) Hebrew (some MSS): \"ipsum\" — the seed (masculine pronoun) shall crush; so Leo and Lipomanus. (2) LXX and Chaldaic: \"ipse\" — he (the man, or Christ) shall crush. (3) Our Vulgate and nearly all Latin MSS, with Augustine, Chrysostom, Ambrose, Gregory, Bede, Alcuin, Bernard, Eucherius, Rupert: \"ipsa\" — she shall crush. Lapide: none of these readings is to be rejected; all are true. For God here sets woman and her seed against the serpent and his seed — consequently: the woman crushes through her seed, and the serpent lies in wait for both woman and seed. Hebrew \"iascuph\" = to crush, bruise suddenly and from ambush (cf. Job 9:17; Ps. 138:11). The literal sense (at the level of nature): after Adam's sin, a real antipathy, hatred, and war between serpents and mankind — men and women alike — began. The fuller sense: the woman is the Blessed Virgin Mary; her seed is Christ and Christians; the serpent is the devil; his seed is unbelievers and the impious. Therefore the Blessed Virgin crushed the serpent: always full of grace and victorious over the devil, she crushed all heresies (which are the head of the serpent) throughout the world — as the Church sings. Christ crushed him most perfectly on the Cross, stripping the devil of all his kingdom and spoils. From Christ, both the penitent Eve and the innocent Mary, and all of us, received the power to crush the devil and his seed (Ps. 90:13; Luke 10:19; Rom. 16:20). Chrysostom: \"Death through Adam, life through Christ; Eve was seduced by the serpent, Mary consented to Gabriel; Eve's seduction brought death, Mary's consent brought the world a Saviour. Through Mary is restored what was lost through Eve; through Christ is redeemed what was captive through Adam; through Gabriel is promised what was despaired of through the devil.\"

TO THE WOMAN ALSO HE SAID: I WILL MULTIPLY THY SORROWS, AND THY CONCEPTIONS: IN SORROW SHALT THOU BRING FORTH CHILDREN, AND THOU SHALT BE UNDER THY HUSBAND'S POWER, AND HE SHALL HAVE DOMINION OVER THEE. — Three punishments of Eve and all women: (1) multiplied sorrows and conceptions — the pangs of childbirth, which for Eve would have been painless in innocence (Thomas Aquinas, Augustine: birth without pain, as Christ was born); (2) subjection to her husband's authority — before sin, Adam and Eve were equal; after sin, the woman was placed under the man's dominion both as punishment and for the ordering of domestic life. Note: by \"conceptions\" (Hebrew: \"pregnancies\") is meant not that more children would be conceived than before, but that each conception would be accompanied by greater burdens, sickness, and danger; (3) the husband shall have dominion — not tyranny, but lawful authority, confirmed and increased by sin.

AND TO ADAM HE SAID: BECAUSE THOU HAST HEARKENED TO THE VOICE OF THY WIFE, AND HAST EATEN OF THE TREE, WHEREOF I COMMANDED THEE THAT THOU SHOULDST NOT EAT, CURSED IS THE EARTH IN THY WORK: WITH LABOUR AND TOIL SHALT THOU EAT THEREOF ALL THE DAYS OF THY LIFE. — God rebukes Adam on two counts: (1) hearkening to his wife rather than to God; (2) eating from the forbidden tree. The punishment: labor and toil in extracting food from the earth. Before sin, Adam worked pleasantly in Paradise without fatigue (Gen. 2:15). After sin, the earth itself is cursed in man's work — not that the earth lost its natural goodness, but it became harder, less cooperative, more given to weeds, thorns, and thistles. Morally: the whole order of fallen man's life involves toil — he must earn his bread by the sweat of his brow, which is both penalty and medicine, keeping him from worse sins.

THORNS AND THISTLES SHALL IT BRING FORTH TO THEE: AND THOU SHALT EAT THE HERBS OF THE EARTH. — Before sin: the earth produced only what was useful and pleasing. After sin: thorns, thistles, and briars abound. Morally: the \"thorns\" of anxieties, cares, temptations, and tribulations that infest human life — all are effects of Adam's sin. The \"herbs of the earth\" = a rougher, simpler diet: not the exquisite fruits of Paradise, but the common produce of a cursed earth.

IN THE SWEAT OF THY FACE SHALT THOU EAT BREAD TILL THOU RETURN TO THE EARTH OUT OF WHICH THOU WAST TAKEN: FOR DUST THOU ART, AND INTO DUST THOU SHALT RETURN. — The sentence of death: not only labor, but mortality itself is confirmed as the penalty for sin. Man was created from clay and to clay must return. This verse refutes those (Cicero, philosophers, Pelagians) who said death is natural — for though in terms of his material composition man was corruptible, by God's gift and protection he would not have died. Now death is sealed as punishment. The words \"sweat of thy face\" suggest all human labor and suffering between sin and death. \"Until thou return\" — death is not annihilation but a return: the soul returns to God, the body to dust, to be reunited at the resurrection. Note: this is the great memento mori of all Scripture. Augustine, Kempis, Jerome — all insisted on the daily meditation of death as the beginning of wisdom.

AND ADAM CALLED THE NAME OF HIS WIFE EVA: BECAUSE SHE WAS THE MOTHER OF ALL THE LIVING. — Adam named his wife only after God's sentence, not before — showing that he now understood the meaning of the punishment, the nature of death, and the promise of life through the woman's seed. \"Eva\" (Hebrew: \"Chavah\") = living, life-giver. She is called mother of all the living because all living men descend from her. Allegorically: the new Eve is Mary, mother of Christ who is the Life; and the Church, mother of all who live by grace.

AND THE LORD GOD MADE FOR ADAM AND HIS WIFE GARMENTS OF SKINS, AND CLOTHED THEM. — God made them tunics of animal skins — a sign of mercy amid punishment. Symbolically (Augustine, Ambrose): the skins signify mortality — the \"old man\" of concupiscence and death which Christ took on in the Incarnation, and which we must put off in Baptism and mortification. Allegorically: Christ clothes us with His own merits and grace. Lapide: the garments of skins show that before sin man had no need of clothing — nakedness without shame was the condition of original innocence; after sin, coverings became necessary both for modesty and against the elements.

BEHOLD ADAM IS BECOME AS ONE OF US, KNOWING GOOD AND EVIL. — Words of God the Father to the Son and Holy Spirit — ironic (Chrysostom, Theodoret, Rupert, Lyranus): \"Behold, what has the proud fool gained from his desire to be 'as gods knowing good and evil'? He has become merely mortal, ashamed, miserable — instead of omniscience he has gained the knowledge of his own wretchedness.\" Some take these words as sincere, meaning Adam had gained a certain experiential knowledge of good and evil (knowing by experience what he had before only known theoretically). LEST PERHAPS HE PUT FORTH HIS HAND AND TAKE ALSO OF THE TREE OF LIFE, AND EAT, AND LIVE FOREVER — i.e., lest, prolonging his bodily life by the Tree of Life, he not attend to the remedies of penance and grace and thereby lose eternal life. God therefore expelled him for his own good — preventing bodily immortality so that he might seek spiritual immortality through penance.

AND THE LORD GOD SENT HIM OUT OF THE PARADISE OF PLEASURE, TO TILL THE EARTH FROM WHICH HE WAS TAKEN. — Adam was expelled from Paradise to work the earth — not the pleasant, easy work of Paradise but the hard toil of a fallen world. The expulsion was immediate: there was no delay between sin and punishment. This teaches: sin brings swift and real consequences; God's mercy was shown in expelling Adam (to save him from eternal ruin); the world outside Paradise is itself a place of redemption.

AND HE CAST OUT ADAM; AND PLACED BEFORE THE PARADISE OF PLEASURE CHERUBIM, AND A FLAMING SWORD, TURNING EVERY WAY, TO KEEP THE WAY OF THE TREE OF LIFE. — The Cherubim and flaming sword: Cherubim are the highest order of angels — here stationed not only to guard the way to the Tree of Life, but also as signs of the divine majesty from which man is now excluded. Allegorically (Bede, Alcuin): the flaming sword = the sentence of death, ever turning, pursuing all Adam's posterity. Anagogically: Cherubim guard the way to heavenly Paradise — only through Christ (John 14:6: \"I am the way\") can we re-enter. The way is the Cross: the flaming sword = Christ's passion by which the way is both closed to the unworthy and opened to the penitent and redeemed. Morally: the purifying fire of tribulation and penance is placed before Paradise to guard it — none enter without passing through it. Lapide adds a final note that the burning sword may also signify the fire of Purgatory, which Ambrose, Origen, Lactantius, and Basil locate before the celestial paradise, through which all souls must pass after death.