Genesis 3

3 ¹The serpent was shrewder than any field animal our Father had made. He asked the woman, "Did God really say, 'You must not eat from any tree in the garden'?" ^a a v1 Having rejected our Father, the serpent reframes him as a distant, withholding deity — the foundational lie that hides the Father's heart from his children.

²The woman said to the serpent, "We may eat the fruit from the trees in the garden, ³but God said, 'Don't eat the tree's fruit in the garden's middle, or touch it, or you'll die.'"

⁴But the serpent said to the woman, "You will certainly not die. ⁵God knows that when you eat from it, your eyes will open and you'll be like God, knowing good and evil." ^b b v5 They already bore his likeness (1:27). The lie is that it must be seized behind his back rather than received from his hand.

⁶The woman saw the tree was good for food, delightful to the eyes, and desirable for wisdom. She took its fruit, ate, gave some to her husband with her, and he ate. ⁷Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew they were naked; they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings.

⁸They heard the sound of our Father walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid from his presence among the garden's trees.

⁹But our Father called to the man and said to him, "Where are you?"

¹⁰The man said, "I heard you in the garden and was afraid, for I was naked, so I hid."

¹¹Our Father said, "Who told you you're naked? Did you eat from the tree I forbade you to eat from?"

¹²The man said, "The woman you put with me gave me fruit from the tree, and I ate."

¹³Then our Father asked the woman, "What have you done?" She said, "The serpent deceived me, and I ate."

¹⁴So our Father said to the serpent, "Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all wild animals; on your belly you will go, and dust you will eat all the days of your life. ¹⁵And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel." ^c c v15 From the very first promise after the fall, our Father pointed to Jesus — the offspring who would crush the serpent and rescue his children.

¹⁶To the woman he said, "I will greatly increase your pain in childbirth; in pain you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you."

¹⁷And to Adam he said, "Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree that I commanded you, saying, 'You must not eat from it,' cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat from it all the days of your life. ¹⁸It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. ¹⁹By the sweat of your brow you will eat your bread until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are, and to dust you will return."

²⁰The man named his wife Eve, because she would become the mother of all the living. ^d d v20 The name Eve means "living" — she is the mother of all the living.

²¹Our Father made garments of skin for Adam and his wife, and he clothed them. ^e e v21 After their failure, our Father provides for his children a covering better than what they made for themselves — the first picture of his heart to clothe them with what only he can give.

²²Then our Father said, "Look, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil. Now, so he doesn't reach out, take from the tree of life too, eat, and live forever…" ^f f v22 The Hebrew sentence stops here unfinished — our Father never says what would follow. Scripture leaves the thought incomplete.

²³So our Father sent him out of the garden of Eden to work the ground he was taken from. ²⁴He drove out the man and placed cherubim and a whirling, flaming sword east of Eden's garden, guarding the way to the tree of life. ^g g v24 Cherubim in Scripture are not the tiny cherub-figures of Renaissance art but powerful heavenly guardians our Father assigned to protect the sacred way back to life.