Genesis 3:1-5
So, the serpent was cunning, as Moses wrote based on what he saw. And now, we have a situation where the serpent is speaking. How can a serpent speak?
The serpent says to the woman: “Did God really say that you must not eat from any tree in the garden?” The first mistake made by the first woman, that is, Eve, was that she approached the forbidden tree. It’s the same as it is today. The first wrong step you can take is to go near places where problematic people gather. Once you get there, an invitation to destruction follows, because you’ve entered a zone where you shouldn’t have been, and then comes the invitation to take yet another step.
The woman replied to the serpent that they could eat the fruit from the trees in the garden, but that they must not eat the fruit from the tree in the middle of the garden because they would die. The serpent told the woman that they wouldn’t die if they ate the forbidden fruit, but that they would become like God.
We hear the same thing even today. If you smoke, if you do drugs, if you are promiscuous, immoral—everyone will pat you on the back, you’ll be seen as a god, everyone will bow to you, and people will applaud you. In other words, the bigger fool you are, the more applause you’ll get. When you try drugs, when you try alcohol, when you engage in premarital sex, “your eyes will be opened,” and you’ll be like a god or goddess. Even today, as throughout history, the greatest immoral women were called goddesses.
It’s very important to highlight here that a serpent cannot actually speak. The one who was speaking, though it seemed like the serpent was speaking, was Satan, the powerful angel who rebelled against God. The woman went to a place where she shouldn’t have been, and she was deceived—the serpent speaks. How can a serpent speak? The woman is fascinated.
In the same way, when a person goes to a nightclub, a bar, or a sporting event, they can be fascinated by what they see. From the later text, we understand that it was Satan, the rebel, who at this moment was speaking through the serpent, and this is something that would continue throughout history.
Many people have shared experiences where they saw animals talking, where objects in their house spoke, where paintings spoke, or where statues spoke. Even today, we see many people bowing to statues as if the statues were alive because, in certain situations, Satan and demons—demons being angels who sided with this rebellious angel—can perform miracles when people live immorally. They can speak through statues, through pictures, through objects, or even through animals, making it seem as if these things are speaking.
That’s exactly what happened here. The serpent itself wasn’t speaking, but Satan was speaking through the serpent.
Genesis 3:6-7
The woman went where she should not have gone, and even greater manipulation followed. The serpent speaks: “Your eyes will be opened,” “You will be like God.” Man was created to be a creature, but man now refuses to remain a creature and instead wants to be God. We will see that this concept is actually Satan’s concept. When we later read in the book of the prophet Isaiah, we will understand why Satan rebelled against God. It is written in the Bible that he wanted to ascend to God’s throne and make himself equal to God. He didn’t want to be a creature; he wanted to be the Creator. And now, through the serpent—who is merely a channel through which Satan speaks—he offers people the idea of becoming gods, of being more than what God gave them to be.
God desires that people be like Him in a spiritual and moral sense, but a person cannot be the Creator of the universe—that is absurd. The text says that the woman saw the fruit from the tree was good for food, appealing to the eye, and pleasant to look at. This is much like those unhealthy fast-food restaurants, where you see those advertised hamburgers—dead bodies of sick, slaughtered animals wrapped in those white-flour buns with no nutritional value. Yet, all that junk that people eat is nicely packaged.
The woman offered the forbidden fruit to her husband. He could have refused. The first man could have said he would not taste it, but he chose to taste it because he was attached to the woman. We see the same thing today. A husband should not follow a problematic wife—and vice versa. If a man makes a poor marriage choice, he doesn’t have to follow her into the abyss.
Genesis 3:8-15
The text says that they heard the voice of the Lord God (Yahweh Elohim),
it specifically mentions which God it is referring to, who was walking in the garden when it cooled down,
it was evidently sunset, and at night, the temperature was lower, somewhere near the end of the day.
God comes, and the man and woman hid because they were ashamed of having disgraced God.
The Lord God calls out to the man with the words, “Where are you?”
Of course, God knows where they are, but He calls him to see if he will come out of hiding.
The man accuses God, saying it’s His fault because He gave him the woman who persuaded him to eat the forbidden fruit.
From the Biblical text, we can’t really conclude that God gave him the woman.
Most likely, God fulfilled his desire because Adam asked for a partner.
The text very possibly suggests that Adam didn’t want to be like an angel but wanted to be like an animal; we leave this for reflection.
So, the man says that the woman is to blame, and this is the concept of the modern man – others are to blame for his suffering.
The woman says the serpent is to blame, meaning: “God, You created the serpent, and it’s her fault. If You hadn’t created the serpent, I wouldn’t have eaten the fruit. It’s Your fault, God.”
So, both Adam and Eve accuse God of being guilty, and this is something we will see throughout history – how people have constantly blamed God, saying that God is responsible for all the bad things that happen on Earth.
What does God say to the serpent? Actually, God is addressing Satan.
Animals are unconscious beings; you can’t talk to a snake.
You can talk to animals in the sense that you train them with simple and repetitive things.
You can’t train a snake the way you can train a dog.
With a snake, you can observe which sounds it reacts to and train it based on that, similarly to how mice are trained.
The Lord God speaks to the serpent; Moses writes down what he saw. God addresses the serpent but is actually addressing Satan, who is speaking through the snake, and says, “Because you have done this, you are cursed more than all livestock and more than every wild animal. You will crawl on your belly and eat dust all the days of your life.”
Whether the snake has wings or legs or crawls on the ground, it makes no difference to the snake.
The snake functions instinctively, in accordance with what God has given it, so the snake doesn’t suffer in its life because it crawls on the ground – it’s just that people find it unpleasant to look at.
Also, in this text, we see a “parallelism” that is used in the Hebrew language.
We will see it in Isaiah 14:12-14 and Ezekiel 28:12-15. God speaks with the king of Tyre, but at the same time, He speaks with Satan.
Tyre was a city known for trade, etc., and it was an enemy of Jerusalem.
Jerusalem is the city of the Great King, God’s city on Earth, and Tyre wanted to destroy Jerusalem.
When God speaks of Tyre, which opposes Jerusalem, in the same text, He also speaks of Satan, who opposes God. This is called “parallelism” in the Hebrew language.
We have that here as well. In the first part, in verse 14, God speaks to the serpent, and in verse 15, He speaks to Satan, but it is actually “parallelism” because the serpent is the channel through which Satan acts, just as the city of Tyre was the channel through which Satan wanted to destroy Jerusalem.
God says, “I will put enmity between you and the woman.” Satan used the woman against God, and now God will use the woman against Satan by placing enmity between her and Satan.
God places enmity between the offspring of Satan and the offspring of the woman.
“He will crush your head, and you will strike his heel,” and this is the first prophecy about the coming of the Messiah, the coming of the Savior, because now death has entered humanity.
“A descendant of the woman will come,” God says to Satan, “who will crush your head (who will destroy you).”
The strongest bone in the human body is the heel bone, and a snake is destroyed by being struck on the head, “and you will strike his heel,” referring to the event when Jesus will be mortally wounded on the cross.
As we know from history, He was in the grave for a short time and then was resurrected.
So, here we have the first prophecy given by God, describing how the course of human history will unfold and how the one who rebelled against God will meet his end.
Genesis 3:16
The first commandment that God gave is “Be fruitful and multiply.”
The most beautiful thing a woman can experience is to be a mother and to have children, but God said that the pains of childbirth will serve as a reminder of the event when the woman approached the forbidden tree.
Of course, studies show that childbirth can be painless or minimally painful, and it may not be unpleasant if the woman leads a healthy life.
Genesis 3:17-19
The word for earth in Hebrew is “adama,” and because he was created from the dust of the ground, from the earth, God gave man the name Adam. In the beginning, there were no thorns or thistles; trees and plants grew naturally without any special cultivation. The biblical text says that God placed man in the garden to work in it. He was probably doing light tasks, although it doesn’t specify which tasks. He likely wasn’t mowing the grass; he was picking fruits and was supposed to protect the garden from Satan. Thus, the first man knew about the rebellion in the universe and what could happen.
This is the first time that the term “field greens” is mentioned. Initially, we read that God created:
- Grass,
- Plants that bear seeds,
- Trees that bear seeds.
But now, we see the mention of:
4. Thorns,
5. Thistles, and
6. Field greens.
There were three types of plants in the beginning, and now three more types are added. It is evident that, in addition to seed-bearing plants and seed-bearing trees, people are also given field greens to eat. Field greens are the third type of food that God gave to humans, but all of them are plants.
In the beginning, people exclusively ate plants, and plants are the best food for humans. This is the diet that God recommends for people to eat until the end of history. We will later see when meat is introduced as food and under what circumstances it is allowed.
Man was created to develop, to enjoy life, not to be a laborer suffering all day but to grow spiritually, enjoy nature, engage in beautiful things, explore the universe, and marvel at the wonders of God’s creation, etc.
Now, he is forbidden from traveling through the universe and exploring its wonders; he can only investigate the wonders of God’s creation on planet Earth, but his opportunities are limited. In the end, he will return to the earth, he will die, and he will not be able to live forever—that is what is currently offered to him.
Genesis 3:20-24:
The text says that Adam gave his wife the name “Hava” or “Eve” because she became the mother of all the living, referring to humans. We say Eve. The Lord God made long garments of skin for Adam and Eve and clothed them, since their skin no longer shone and was no longer functioning as clothing but only as protection for the internal organs. Yahweh Elohim said, “Behold, man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil.” Here we again see that God speaks of Himself in the plural. We will later see, as the text unfolds, that this refers to a God who has multiple dimensions, multiple aspects.
The first people did not know what evil was; God knew what evil was because He had seen what Satan and the demons had done since their rebellion. Now man also knows what evil is, whereas up to that point, he knew only what was good. Since man rebelled, he would not be able to live forever as a rebel, and both the man and his wife were forbidden from consuming the fruit from the Tree of Life.
It is evident that part of the Earth was made as the Garden of Eden, which was supposed to expand over time as people multiplied. However, now man was expelled from the Garden of Eden and could no longer live there. Instead, he lived in another part where he had to cultivate the land and do other work he hadn’t had to do until then. “Cherubim” are a special group of the most powerful angels who guarded the way to the Tree of Life. Adam was expelled from his home, which God had made for him, and was driven out of the Garden of Eden.
Something similar can happen to any of us. If we don’t respect our parents, they may kick us out of the house. If we don’t respect the people whom God has appointed to lead the country, we may be expelled from the country. Many might ask why God created beings when He knew they would rebel and that death would follow. Every parent knows that the greatest joy is having a child, and true, serious parents are willing to make every sacrifice to protect that child, keep it alive, and live with it for as long as possible.
God chose to create His children to rejoice in them. He knew rebellion would happen and that He would have to witness the most terrible scenes in the universe for six thousand years: the rebellion of angels, murders on Earth, the opening of concentration camps, drug trafficking, killings, and wars between His children. God knew that in the end, He would have to be killed Himself to pay the ransom because that is the law God established in the universe.
God accepted being killed in the most painful way, as crucifixion is the most agonizing death. He chose to endure all of that for six thousand years, the span of human history, so that He could then live through eternity with a smaller number of His creations. A large percentage of people on Earth will be destroyed forever because they chose rebellion against God, and God will respect their decision to rebel and not want to live with Him.
However, God chose to be the greatest sacrifice. We see only a little of what happens in the world, and it already makes us sick. Imagine if someone offered us the chance to have children but only under the condition that we would have to watch them kill, murder, and rape each other for six thousand years and then be killed by those rebellious children in the most agonizing way on the cross. And after six thousand years, we would be left with just a small number of our children to live with through eternity. It’s unlikely anyone would agree to have children under those conditions.
God is willing to sacrifice to the utmost to gain what is most precious: true goodness. True goodness is love. Love can only come from beings with free will, and that is why God created beings in His image—humans and angels—who would be like Him, His children, with whom He would rejoice through eternity.
The names mentioned in the Bible are names in the Hebrew language: Adam from “adama” and Hava (or Eve) from “hajot.” These names make sense only in the Hebrew language. From what we are reading now, and what we will read soon, we see that the language spoken by the first people was the language in which God communicated with them. God gave the first man the name Adam because He created him from the earth, “adama.” So, we see that this is the language we call Hebrew today.
This language, in which God spoke to the first people and which the first people spoke, continued to be used until the Tower of Babel. Then, that language was divided into many languages when God split the tongues to slow down humanity’s rebellion against Him. A group of people continued to speak the language that Adam and Eve spoke and that God used to speak to the first people. Later, the Bible would also be written in that language.
For this reason, some theologians call this language, which we know as Hebrew today, “lashon ha-kodesh,” or “the holy language.” It is very useful for people to know the Hebrew language, as they can read the Bible in its original form and gain a much deeper understanding of its message. However, even those who read the Bible in translation can understand everything essential for living a quality and happy life.
From the book: Bible Commentaries, Part I – Torah (Teaching)
Publisher: Center for Natural Science Studies (CPS)
www.creation6days.com
(we are working on the book’s translation)