Chuck Larsen

Refusing to accept responsibility for one’s actions has been a frequently recurring theme in the Bible. Adam blames Eve for his disobedience. Aaron blames the Israelites for the golden calf; Saul blames his troops’ impatience and Samuel’s late arrival for his disobedience; Then Saul blames his soldiers for the failure to carry out God’s instructions; The man who buried his talent blames his action on his master’s hardness. I could go on, but I’m sure you get the picture. Adam blamed God and then Eve for his part and then Eve seems to be passing the buck to the serpent. Genesis 3:13 says, “Then the Lord God said to the woman, ‘What is this that you have done?’ The woman said, ‘The serpent deceived me, and I ate.’”

Beginning with another rhetorical question, God confronts Eve with her failure. He asks Eve what she has done and Eve’s answer contains two parts. First, she explained that the serpent deceived her. But Rosscup is right, “That is ‘passing the buck,’ yet an aspect very true even if not all of the picture. The serpent indeed hood-winked her. The Spirit of God later leads the apostle Paul to the commentary in I Timothy 2:12 that uses a special, stronger word for the woman’s being deceived. She was “really deceived,” not just “deceived” (apatao) but “profoundly deceived” (exapatao).” That means she was telling the truth. Yet, we cannot fail to see it’s in some way passing the buck also. Then Rosscup mentions the second part of her answer: “Second, Eve enlarges on the picture, and pours out her confession of guilt, ‘and I ate.’ She comes clean about her own culpability in the deviation. She, too, had acted out of harmony with what she realizes, sadly, God’s word had made clear as the way of obedience.”^[1]

In the Pseudepigrapha (False books) of the Old Testament is the Apocalypse of Moses. It tells a fanciful story of the life of Adam and Eve after they are thrown out of the Garden of Eden. In Chapter 14:3, Adam is said to have said to Eve, “O Eve, what have you done? You have brought a great wrath upon us, namely death which rules over our entire race.” He then commands her to tell their children how this came about. She and Adam weep together and finally Adam falls asleep. Their children gather around the bed and weep over their father and Eve decides to tell them the story.” ^[2] Who knows if this is true, but it adds a touch of humanity to their lives after the fall? Even in this story she still blames the serpent for her actions. To err is human, to deny responsibility is as old as our first parents. Adam blamed Eve; Eve blamed the serpent. Today we blame society or our parents’ upbringing or our economic condition. Will Rogers once said that there were only two eras in American History, the passing of the buffalo, and the passing of the buck. Harry Truman, the thirty-third president of the United States, had a sign on his desk in the Oval Office that read, “The Buck Stops Here,” reflecting his belief that the president must make decisions and accept responsibility for them. For the man who made the decision to drop the A-bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that was one grave action to take responsibility for. Adam, the first man, would have been well served had he demonstrated similar accountability.

^[1] Rosscup, James E. 2008. An Exposition on Prayer in the Bible: Igniting the Fuel to Flame Our Communication with God. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.

^[2] Jonge, Marinus de, and Johannes Tromp. 1997. The Life of Adam and Eve and Related Literature. Guides to Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha. Sheffield, England: Sheffield Academic Press.

In explaining himself and his decision to eat of the forbidden fruit, Adam brings into his address two other who seem to be who he’s blaming for his deed. First, it looks like he’s blaming God, who gave the woman to him, and then he’s blaming the woman.” Genesis 3:12 records Adam’s response: “The man said, ‘The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.’” About 10 years ago I wrote a personal entry in my Journal about a movie we watched. My comment says, “We ate pizza and watched a bunch of old pictures and old movies from my website and enjoyed that until the boys were getting bored out of their minds, so we shut it down and watched ‘The Grey.’ It’s a survival movie with Liam Neeson playing the lead role of airplane crash survivors in Alaska who are attacked and killed off one by one by wolves. It wasn’t a very good one and of course, God was to blame for all their problems.”^[1] Naomi, Ruth’s mother-in-law, blamed God for all her misfortune as well. In the midst of his pain and suffering, Job also appears to blame God. Criswell writes, “Job’s own sufferings, coupled with his strong belief in the sovereignty of God, led him temporarily to the intemperate view that God was to blame.”^[2]

I think there might be something to Lenski’s take on this. He says, “Adam says to God: ‘The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.’ God was to blame, for did he not create Eve for Adam? Adam certainly did not create her for himself! There are all manner of ways in which the blame can be shifted to God. Did he not make us with these bodily appetites of ours? Did he not create sex, for instance? Did he not make so many things so attractive to us? Does he not place them so dangerously near to us? So, the fallacious reasoning runs on.”^[3] Again, let me add, I don’t know about you, but these sayings are a bit too familiar!

I can’t help but think how these words of Adam affected his marital bliss that he so eagerly professed in Chapter 2. He said, “This is at least bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called woman because she was taken out of man.” Hughes says about these words, “These are the first human words recorded in Scripture and the initial poetic couplet. She was at once his sister, his daughter, and his one-flesh wife. Such a helper—such intimacy—such oneness—such joy. She was his human universe.” But now after partaking of the forbidden fruit, things are not so rosy for the two. Hughes goes on and says, “But now—’she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.’ What infamous treachery! ‘It’s her fault, God. Don’t blame me.’ Adam was so calculated and so cold. So long, marital bliss. Adam would live for nearly 930 years more.”^[4] I’m sure they would settle things and learn to live with each other but Milton was absolutely right when he named his ode, “Paradise Lost.”

^[1] Larsen, Charles. 2020. 2012 May Journals. MYJOURNALS. Larsen.

^[2] Criswell, W. A., Paige Patterson, E. Ray Clendenen, Daniel L. Akin, Mallory Chamberlin, Dorothy Kelley Patterson, and Jack Pogue, eds. 1991. Believer’s Study Bible. Electronic ed. Nashville: Thomas Nelson.

^[3] Lenski, R. C. H. 1938. The Interpretation of the Epistle to the Hebrews and of the Epistle of James. Columbus, OH: Lutheran Book Concern.

^[4] Hughes, R. Kent. 2004. Genesis: Beginning and Blessing. Preaching the Word. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books.

Finally, we hear from Adam. Eve and the serpent have been doing all the talking. Adam seems to have passively sat back and let Eve interact with the Devil without comment. The last thing we heard from Adam was his pronouncement of his wedding vows, so to speak, when God brought him Eve. He hasn’t said anything since. But God addresses him specifically after they ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God asks Adam, “where are you,” and in Genesis 3:10, Adam replies, “And he said, ‘I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.’” The UBS (United Bible Societies) Handbook for translators says it might be best to translate this as “I heard your footsteps in the garden.”

I have no idea how many movies or books I’ve read where someone is walking down a dark alley or narrow street and all you can hear is footsteps coming from behind them. We all know that something bad is going to happen. Jack the Ripper is coming for me! Some murderer is stalking me to kill me and rob me. I’ve lost sleep as a youngster over those movies. But the most ominous of footsteps were the ones I heard when my mother came down the basement steps and caught me and a neighbor girl when we were about 8 years old, showing each other our differences! We just knew what we were doing was wrong. I don’t remember my folks talking to me about any of that at that age, but something in me knew it was wrong and so did little Suzy (Not her real name). We got caught with our pants down doing our best to cover ourselves us. As we listened to the footsteps and scrambled to put ourselves together we knew we were done for. Walton sees the possibility of a different kind of translation for “the sound of God walking in the garden.” He says, “The Akkadian term is used in connection to the deity coming in a storm of judgment. If this is the correct rendering of the word here in Genesis 3, we can translate verse 8 in this way: ‘They heard the roar of the Lord moving about in the garden in the wind of the storm.’ If this rendering is correct, it is understandable why Adam and Eve are hiding. I do not offer this as the right translation.” He then adds, “…the logic of the context makes this new rendering a possibility, but one that can only be held tentatively.”^[1]

Adam’s answer had to do with his fear of the sound of God coming coupled with their nakedness that they were trying to cover up with fig leaves. Briscoe recognizes that “The fact that nakedness and fig leaves were so much a part of the shame felt by fallen mankind has led many to suppose that the original sin was in some way sexual. In fact, some older commentators seem to suggest that the forbidden fruit was sex.”^[2] But this is most unlikely because of God’s creating each of them “male and female” and then commanding them to be fruitful and multiply. I expect everyone has some kind of experience of being caught “red-handed.” God was about to cover their shame with something more substantial that fig leaves and he does something similar with us. Ross explains, “People disobey God’s word and then, because of their guilty fears, hide themselves. But God searches out the sinners, draws a confession from them, and then covers their guilt and shame with a symbol of his gracious provision. The gospel explains this symbol fully: In the fullness of time God accepted the death of Jesus for our sins, and on the basis of that sacrifice, he clothes us with righteousness.”^[3]

^[1] Walton, John H. 2001. Genesis. The NIV Application Commentary. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

^[2] Briscoe, D. Stuart, and Lloyd J. Ogilvie. 1987. Genesis. Vol. 1. The Preacher’s Commentary Series. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Inc.

^[3] Ross, Allen, and John N. Oswalt. 2008. Cornerstone Biblical Commentary: Genesis, Exodus. Vol. 1. Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers.

God is really good as asking “rhetorical” questions. He already knows the answers to these, but wants to see how the guilty party will answer. In Numbers 22 we’ll see God ask Balaam, “what do these people want from you?” He already knows the answer. He does this with Cain when he asks him where his brother Abel is. When Moses hesitated to accept God’s call to lead the children of Israel out of Egypt, God asks Moses, “What is that you have in your hand?” God knows it’s a staff!  Also in Genesis 18 we’ll see God ask Abraham “where is your wife Sarah?” All the while, he knew that she was in the tent. In Genesis 3:9 we see the first of such questions when we read, “But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, ‘where are you?’” God knows that Adam is hiding from him. He was calling out to bring to our attention that the couple had never hid from him before. It might be understood as a question regarding “why” they are hiding. Well, that’s the way Adam will answer the question.

Back in Genesis chapter two, God had given Adam the instructions about all the food in the Garden. Only Adam heard the restriction against eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. So, when God came to confront them, he called out to Adam alone. In the Hebrew text, the expression ‘the man’ and the pronouns ‘him’ and ‘you’ are all singular. Although it’s being heavily criticized today most commentators still see Adam as the responsible party. Dennis Rainey, in his family ministry says, “Even though Eve had sinned first, God first summoned Adam to give account for what had happened. This suggests that Adam was the one primarily accountable for what had happened in his family. …By contrast, the serpent spoke to Eve first (Gen. 3:1), trying to get her to take responsibility for leading the family into sin, thus inverting the order that God had established at creation.”^[1]

Many see the question itself as an accusation. But I think it has a different overtone. God is calling out to man with Grief. In Genesis six we read that God looked down upon the world of mankind and saw the wickedness and “it grieved him to his heart.” Gowan argues, “If the story is to have its proper effect on us, we ought to see ourselves there among the trees. That is, we ought to recognize our own pitiful defenses thrown up to attempt to justify ourselves against a God of whom … the relationship has not been broken off completely, for it is maintained by a sorrowing God.”^[2] In Hebrew the name “Adam” can refer to the entire human race. Neusner says to the question that God asks Adam, all “…human beings must render an answer. Any person can answer that question, and in that answer each one defines himself or herself as religious, atheistic, agnostic, or pantheistic.”^[3] Today, we can hear God calling to us in the universal invitation of Jesus. Wallmark writes, “Thus God’s call ‘Where are you?’ to the first Adam, becomes universalized in Jesus, the second Adam, through whom his redemptive pursuit of the entire race is consummated. That salvific mission is also revealed in the name Yeshua/Joshua/Jesus—’Jehovah is salvation’ (Matt. 1:21).”^[4]

^[1] Rainey, Dennis, ed. 2002. Building Strong Families. Foundations for the Family Series. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books.

^[2] Gowan, Donald E. 1988. From Eden to Babel: A Commentary on the Book of Genesis 1–11. International Theological Commentary. Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans Pub. Co.

^[3] Neusner, Jacob, Alan J. Avery-Peck, and William Scott Green, eds. 2000. In The Encyclopedia of Judaism, 2:1020. Leiden; Boston; Köln: Brill.

^[4] Wallmark, Leonard S. 1996. “Name.” In Evangelical Dictionary of Biblical Theology, electronic ed., 551. Baker Reference Library. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House.