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.