Genesis 3

Notes

Ver. 1-6. Serpents in general have a natural subtlety beyond other creatures. Mat. 10. 16, 'Be wise as serpents.' But this one had an extraordinary measure of it, being actuated by a fallen angel who had just apostatized from his holy and happy state. Re. 20. 2, 3, 8, 'The dragon, that old serpent, the devil and Satan, goeth out to deceive the nations;' 2 Co. 11. 3, 'The serpent beguiled Eve through his subtlety;' Jn. 8. 44, 'The devil was a murderer from the beginning, a liar, and the father of it;' 2 Co. 2. 11, 'We are not ignorant of his devices;' 11. 14, 'Satan is transformed into an angel of light.' In the temptation of our first parents, Satan acted with the utmost subtlety. (1) He chose a serpent, which was seemingly simple, but really subtle, and perhaps beautiful, which might make Eve take it for an angel, to be his instrument. (2) He accosted the woman—who perhaps had only heard the terms of the covenant from Adam—in the absence of her husband. (3) According to some, he improved their being more naked than the wild beasts of the earth, to render them discontented with their condition. But it is more certain that he moved the doubt relative to God's prohibitory charge in such ambiguous terms that it was hard to discern whether he intended merely to ask if God had really forbidden the use of that fruit,—or to insinuate that the forbidder could not be the true God, who had kindly created them but just before,—or to suggest that God was a hard master, who had forbidden them to eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden in which he had placed them. (4) Finding that the woman adhered to the command, he endeavoured to make her believe that the threatening was dark in its meaning, and uncertain or false with respect to its execution. (5) He pretended a great regard for her and her husband's welfare, as if he had been extremely desirous of promoting their knowledge and happiness. (6) Perhaps he pretended that himself had acquired what knowledge he had above other brutes by eating of that prohibited fruit. It is certain he attempted to confirm his contradiction of the threatening by a solemn appeal to God. (7) Having prevailed with the woman, he by her means tempted her husband, who complied, not from any such fondness for her as rendered him willing to transgress with her, but as deceived: and the rather as he saw she did not immediately die upon her eating of the fruit. This sin of our first parents, in eating this forbidden fruit, was exceeding great. It contained, (1) Horrid unbelief to such a degree that the devil, in the form of a beast, was believed in opposition to the solemn declaration of God. (2) The most presumptuous pride, ambition, and bold curiosity; they were in paradise, and lords of the lower world—they knew and enjoyed very much—but nothing would content them but to be as God in knowledge and happiness. (3) The most shocking ingratitude and discontent; God had given them everything proper for conveniency and delight—he had made them the lords of animals and earth, the companions of angels—and yet they revolted at the inconsiderable reserve of a tree. (4) The most contemptuous apostasy from and rebellion against God; they renounced his covenant of friendship, and threw off all subjection to and professed dependence on him. (5) In this one act the whole law of God was transgressed. The authority of God, which is the foundation of it, was trampled under foot; the love, which is the complete fulfilment of it, was neglected, and hatred established, Ja. 2. 10. The symbolical law, which was a summary of and a fence to the moral, was expressly contemned and violated. Nay, each of the moral precepts was plainly broken. The aggravations of this sin were no less remarkable. (1) It was committed by persons newly made after the image of God; perfectly without sin, and capable of continuing so. (2) It was committed by them just after he had graciously received them into the most honourable covenant of friendship with himself. (3) It was very early committed, perhaps on the same day they were created, Ps. 49. 12. (4) It was committed against God's most express command, and when they had the fullest warning of the danger thereby incurred to them and their seed. (5) It was committed in paradise, where God dwelt as in his temple; and where everything concurred to proclaim his infinite kindness to mankind, and invite to obedience. (6) It was committe upon a very slight and but one single temptation. (7) It was occasioned by an object of very small importance, which man had no need of in paradise. (8) It respected what had been solemnly separated to the service of God, and so amounted to a sacrilegious robbing of him. In this manner, 1 Ti. 2. 14, 'The woman being deceived, was first in the transgression;' Ro. 5. 12-19, 'By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for, or in whom, all have sinned.—Death reigned over them which had not sinned actually after the similitude of Adam's transgression. Through the offence of one many be dead.—The judgment was by one to condemnation.—By one man's offence death reigned by one.—By the offence of one, judgment came upon all men to condemnation.—By one man's disobedience many were made sinners;' 1 Co. 15. 22, 'In Adam, by his first sin, all die.'——[Ver. 1. The character of the temptation strikingly illustrates the wiliness of the 'old serpent.' There is nothing at first to awaken suspicion, or to shock the moral sense. There is a sly insinuation calculated to excite natural curiosity. Then there is an assertion embodying a direct lie, combined, however, with just enough of truth to give it plausibility: 'Ye shall not die; for God doth know,' &c. The temptations of Satan still exhibit the same fatal craftiness—the same knowledge of the weakness of human nature.—It will be observed that while by the historian God is called Jehovah Elohim, Satan only uses the one name, Elohim. P.——Ver. 3. Some have supposed that Eve here stated the first untruth, by adding to the commandment of God (ch. 2. 16, 17); but there is no reasonable ground for this charge, as God may have graciously added those other limitations which she here enumerates, though not previously recorded by Moses. C.——Ver. 5. The translation here tends to create a misconception in the mind of the English reader. It would leave the impression that polytheism was already known—'Ye shall be as gods.' The fact is, however, that it is the same Hebrew word which in the first clause of the verse is rendered 'God,' and in the second 'gods.' The proper translation is, 'Ye shall be as God.' P.]

Ver. 7-13. Here we have their wretched evasions after their fall. (1) When their eyes were opened—their consciences being touched with a sense of the heinousness of their sin, whereby they had defiled their souls, and of the greatness of that misery which they had brought upon themselves and their posterity, they began to be ashamed of their nakedness, which they now found to be an occasion of sinful motions and affections; and covered with fig-leaves those parts by which the corruption of nature is propagated, upon which, for that reason, God hath put the deepest impression of shame, that fruit of sin;—and to which he appointed circumcision, the sacrament of remission, regeneration, and mortification, to be applied, ch. 17. 11. (2) When the Son of God, probably in human shape, as a presage of his future incarnation, came to seek and to save them, they, sensible of guilt and dreading punishment, foolishly sought to hide themselves from him. But 'there is no darkness, nor shadow of death, where the workers of iniquity may hide themselves,' Job 34. 22; Am. 9. 3; Ps. 139. 7-9; Pr. 15. 3; Je. 23. 24. (3) When, to convince them further, he questioned them concerning their conduct, they attempted to excuse themselves, and shift the blame upon their tempters; and Adam appears inclined to lay the blame of his fault upon God himself, as if he had given him a tempter under the character of an helpmeet for him, Job 31. 33; Pr. 19. 3.——[Ver. 8. 'The voice of the Lord' may signify, as in Ps. 29. 3, some manifestation of his presence in terrible commotion of the elements, which filled the guilty pair with fear; or it may perhaps be the name of the second person of the blessed Trinity, and thus equivalent to the Greek Logos.—'The wind of the day' is in the East the evening, when a cool refreshing breeze always springs up, and makes walking agreeable. P.]

Ver. 14-19. In this condemnation of the criminals, the serpent, which had been only an irrational instrument, is cursed, as a mark of God's high detestation of the crime; as Ex. 21. 28, 29; Le. 20. 15. Perhaps he had formerly moved upon the hinder part of his body, and so was numbered among the wild beasts which eat herbs, and are distinguished from creeping things, ch. 1. 25, 30. But now he and all his kind must henceforth be reckoned most despicable and detestable. They must creep along the earth, take down part of its dust with their food, Is. 65. 25; Mi. 7. 17, and must be the stated objects of the hatred of mankind. But this sentence, directed against the serpent, chiefly respected Satan and his angels. He is cursed above all the irrational animals; is left under the power of invincible folly and malice; and is in disgrace depressed below the vilest of beasts, and appointed to misery, when they have perished in death. He goes on his belly, and eats dust. His actions are base and troublesome to himself: he can never ascend higher than this world. He is trampled under the feet of Christ and his people. His power is restricted to earthly men, or to killing of the bodies of believers—for their souls he cannot kill; nay, their temporal death promotes the destruction of sin in them. He takes such pleasure as he is capable of in seducing reprobates to the basest wickedness, and in vexing the godly with his abominable temptations. God further threatens that the very woman whom he had seduced, and many of her posterity, should, by their free justification and their reconcilement and conversion to God, be made stated enemies to him and his friends, and enabled, through Jesus Christ, to tread on his policy, power, and his life of permitted authority on earth, to his great grief and agony of mind, notwithstanding all he should be able to do to oppose them by temptation or persecution. But the principal part of Satan's curse lay in the ruin brought on him by Jesus Christ, the eminent seed of the woman, in his redemption of mankind. Jesus Christ is called the seed of the woman, not only to import the reality of his manhood, and his close connection with believers—who are also called her seed, as followers of her in faith and holiness—but chiefly to signify that he was none of Adam's natural posterity represented in the covenant of works, and that he would be born of a virgin. He, by fulfilling the broken law—which is the strength of sin—in our stead, by making atonement for sin, and by removing the curse, has undermined the whole power and authority which Satan had over the world as the executioner of God's justice. And as by the word of his power he dislodged him from the bodies of multitudes—and by the word of his grace in the ministration of the gospel did and will expel the worship of him from multitudes of nations; so by the powerful application of his word, Spirit, and blood, to men's consciences and hearts, he casts him and his works down from their throne in them, and by the influences of his grace enables his people to resist the devil, and make him flee from them; and to mortify the deeds of the body that they may live. Thus, 1 Pe. 5. 8, 'Our adversary the devil goeth about seeking whom he may devour;' Job 1. 7, 'Going to and fro in the earth, and walking up and down in it;' Jn. 8. 41, 44, 'Wicked men are of their father the devil, and the lusts of their father they will do;' Ac. 13. 10; 1 Jn. 3. 8, 10; Mat. 13. 38; Ro. 9. 8, 'Only the children of the promise are counted for Eve's seed;' Ga. 4. 29; Pr. 29. 27, 'An unjust man is an abomination to the just; and he that is upright in the way is an abomination to the wicked;' Jn. 15. 18; Mar. 13. 13; but, 1 Jn. 3. 5, 8, 'The Son of God was manifested to take away sin—to destroy the works of the devil;' Is. 7. 14, 'A virgin did conceive, and bring forth a Son—Immanuel;' Da. 9. 24, 26, 'The Messiah shall be cut off, not for himself, but to finish transgression, and make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in an everlasting righteousness;' Ps. 91. 13, 'The lion, adder, and dragon shall be trampled under feet;' Col. 2. 15, 'Having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in his cross;' He. 2. 14, 'That through death he might destroy him that hath the power of death, that is, the devil;' Jn. 12. 31, 'Now shall the devil, the prince of this world, be cast out,' of his kingdom and authority in and over men; Jn. 16. 11; Is. 49. 24-26; Lu. 10. 18, 19; Ro. 16. 20, 'God shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly;' 1 Jn. 2. 13, 'Ye have overcome the wicked one;' 1 Pe. 5. 9; Ja. 4. 7; Ps. 91. 13. While Satan receiveth the ruinous bruise in his head, he bruiseth the heel of the seed of the woman; that is, he assaults by temptations, stirs up persecution and trouble against the human nature of Christ, and against his people, while they continue on the earth: or their bodies, crushed to the dust of death by his influence, lie in the grave. But at the last day he and his agent death shall be quite overthrown and swallowed up in eternal victory. He. 4. 15; 2 Co. 13. 4; Is. 53. 4, 5; Jn. 16. 33; Ac. 14. 22; Is. 25. 8; 1 Co. 15. 25-57. The woman was condemned to a multitude of sorrows and pains, particularly in the conception, bearing, and bringing up of her children; and to a further degree of subjection to her husband, whom she had overlooked in parleying with the serpent as her instructor. 1 Ti. 2. 12, 15; 1 Co. 7. 28; 14. 34; Tit. 2. 5; 1 Pe. 3. 6; Ep. ii. iv.; Mat. 19. 8, &c. To punish Adam, the proprietor, the whole ground was cursed with respect to its soil and product. The whole lower world, being defiled under its inhabitants, was devoured by the curse, and subjected to the bondage of corruption. Is. 24. 5, 6; Ro. 8. 20-22; Ge. 5. 29; Job 31. 40; He. 6. 8; Je. 12. 13. Himself was condemned to much grief and sorrow. Ps. 127. 2. To eat the herbs of the field, instead of the delicious fruits of paradise; and to be occupied in hard labour in the cultivation of them till he died. 2 Th. 3. 10; Ep. 4. 28; Ec. 1. 1, 2, 13, 14; 2. 11, 17, 21, 26. Thus in these few verses we have a predictory description of the agency and success of Satan the destroyer, and of the incarnation, office, state, and work of Jesus our Redeemer; and in fine, of the whole fate of this lower world, particularly of mankind, from the fall of Adam till the end of time. Nor can any one seriously review the state of the world—of fields, of persons, of families, of churches, or nations, for almost six thousand years past, but he must perceive a constant and exact accomplishment thereof. Nor are the subsequent predictions, whether of mercies or judgments, anything else but a gradual opening and explication of this; the latter always pointing out more clearly and circumstantially what had been contained in the former; nor are the histories aught else but an account of the fulfilment. But one thing is remarkable, that in this declaration of Jehovah now before us the first intimation of a Saviour, and salvation through him for mankind, is not directed to Adam or Eve, but is included in a threatening directed to Satan, plainly intimating that the work of our redemption remarkably aggravates the misery of our original destroyer, and that we are not immediate parties in the covenant of our recovery, nor doth it, either in point of reality or application, depend on our work, but on the blood of Jesus Christ, and the faith we exercise in it. Ro. 5. 20, 21; Ep. 2. 1-8.——[Ver. 14. It is worthy of observation here, as elsewhere in Scripture, that the curses consequent upon sin are not pronounced or executed solely upon rational beings; irrational creatures, and even the fruits of the field, and the very earth itself, are visited by divine judgments. The serpent is cursed because Satan had assumed its form when tempting Eve. The earth is cursed because it is the habitation of sinful man—'Cursed is the ground for thy sake.' P.——Ver. 15. Bruise his heel. By coming behind him stealthily, and bruising him through his false followers, Ps. 49. 5; Jn. 13. 18. C.——It is a remarkable proof at once of the wisdom and of the love of God, that the first curse pronounced on account of sin embodied in it the first promised deliverance from sin. The words are prophetic, indicating first, a long and hard struggle between the children of the devil—'thy seed,' and the children of God—'her seed;' and second, a complete victory gained by the great seed of the woman over Satan—'It shall bruise thy head,' after a conflict. P.]

Ver. 20. Having heard, and perhaps believed, the promise relative to the seed of the woman, Adam gives his wife a new name, importing her being the mother of Jesus, the quickening spirit, and author of eternal life, and of his living members. Jn. 10. 10; 11. 25.

Ver. 21. The Lord, who had taught them to offer animals in sacrifice, as a figure of Jesus' oblation of himself for the salvation of men, taught them to make coats of the skins, as a memorial that by sinfully hearkening to the serpent they had made themselves as the beasts which perish, and that there could be no salvation from shame and danger but by the garment of Jesus' blessed atonement. Is. 61. 10; Ro. 13. 14.

Ver. 22. Perhaps we have here no ironical derision of man's folly in attempting to become wise as God: but God's affectionate lamentation over his ruined condition, and gracious resolution to turn him out of paradise, lest his vain hopes to fortify himself against death, by eating of the tree of life, should tempt him to neglect the great salvation which was offered to him in the covenant of grace. Ro. 9. 30-32; 10. 2, 3.—[One of us. When in ch. 1. 26 God said, 'Let us make man in our image,' the counsel of the Divine Elohim, or Holy Trinity, in the formation of man is revealed. When in ch. 3. 22 God says, 'The man is become as one of us, to know good and evil,' the word 'us' must refer as in the former case to the Godhead, but who in the Godhead had knowledge of good and evil? even the Son, whose eternal delights were with the children of men (Pr. 8. 31), who loved his people 'before the foundation of the world,' and who in the fulness of time was 'made a curse for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.' The word evil here does not signify moral evil, but that sorrow, toil, and death, inflicted as natural evils, with which alone he that 'knew no sin,' yet who 'bore our griefs, and carried our sorrows,' was acquainted. C.——The plural form of the name of God, Elohim; the expression, 'Let us make man;' and here again the statement, 'The man is become as one of us,' all appear to shadow forth the wondrous doctrine of plurality in unity—three persons, and yet one God.—It would undoubtedly appear from this statement that there was some inherent virtue in the fruit of the tree of life calculated to preserve life indefinitely. It would seem too as if man before the fall was rendered immortal by eating of the tree of life; for if he was created immortal, the tree of life was unnecessary. P.]

Ver. 23, 24. The words used for the turning of man out of paradise import that he was turned out as a divorced woman from the house of her husband, never to be admitted back to a state of happiness under the broken covenant of works. Perhaps while the flaming sword turned every way to keep men from the tree of life, the divine Majesty, as reconciled in Christ, manifested himself between the cherubims, as on his throne of grace, to encourage them to humble and familiar fellowship with himself. He. 4. 16.——[Ver. 24. Heb. The cherubim and the flaming sword which revolved. Cherubim is a plural form, and denotes an order of celestial beings distinct from angels, and apparently higher in dignity. They are represented as closely attached to God, standing beside his throne, and bearing him. Carved figures of cherubim with outspread wings covered the mercy-seat; hence God was said to dwell 'between the cherubim.' The exact form of these figures is unknown; but it has been conjectured that they had a human face, the body of an ox, and the wings of an eagle, and that they were thus similar to the great human-headed winged bulls which Layard discovered in the palaces of Nineveh. P.]

Reflections.—Be sober, be vigilant, my soul, lest thine adversary the devil get an advantage of thee, and beguile thee through his subtlety. Never encounter him, separated from Jesus, or in thy own strength. Never dally with, but boldly and immediately resist him, and he will flee from thee. Never indulge the smallest doubt of the veracity or importance of what the Lord hath spoken. Let me always be content with such things as I have. It is not in becoming a god, but in enjoying God, as my all and in all, that my happiness consists. In what shame, what misery, sin always issueth!—Behold how the offended majesty of heaven flies on the wings of infinite love and mercy for the immediate relief of self-ruined men, and to proclaim, offer, and bestow upon them redemption through the blood of his Son! But alas! how they flee from him, and by covering their transgression, endeavour even to evade his favours! Blessed Jesus, if thou arraignest me, let me always fly into thy bosom of mercy and kindness; let me gladly entertain thy convictions, and acknowledge my offence, that I may not fall into the condemnation of the devil! Let all the troubles which affect this world call my sin to my remembrance, and deeply affect me with it! Blessed be Jehovah that his only-begotten Son became the seed of the woman, Immanuel, God with us—that he had his heel bruised, travailed in pangs of woe at Love's delivery of a lost world, was made to endure suffering, a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief—was crowned with thorns, and being in an agony did sweat great drops of blood—that dust he was, and to dust he returned—and all for men—all for me! Let my naked soul put on, not the fig-leaves of my self-righteousness, but his law-magnifying atonement. Bewailing the tremendous fall of my race, and turning my back on the law as the ministration of death, and on this blasted world as emptied of all enjoyments, let me embrace the better covenant, founded on better promises, and seek a better paradise, where not merely angelical cherubims, but divine arms of infinite and everlasting love, shall for ever shut me up to the most immediate fellowship of Jesus the Tree of Life, which beareth twelve manner of fruits every month, and whose leaves are for the healing of the nations.