Chuck Larsen

When God explained the consequences that would fall upon Adam and Eve if they ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, he allowed the possibility. They were told not to eat and advised of the results, but they still had the “ability” to do so. After their expulsion from the Garden, God did not permit even the possibility of their eating from the tree of life. Genesis 3:24 says, “He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.” Kissling says, “This at first seems like another judgment, and in some senses it is. But in reality, this, too, is an act of grace. Not wanting humanity to be forever stuck in never-ending alienation with him, with each other, and with creation, the expulsion from the garden and the denial of access to eternal life prevents humanity being trapped.”^[1]

Butler suggests that one of the reasons for their expulsion from the Garden and access to the tree of life “…is a merciful one in that it would be awful for a man to live forever in his sinful condition. As Barnhouse says, ‘The only thing that makes this life bearable is the fact that it will end.’ A principle in this reason reminds us that sin kills. It does not give life. ‘The wages of sin is death’ (Romans 6:23).”^[2] John Bunyon, the author of ‘Pilgrim’s Progress,’ seems to suggest that the angel with the flaming sword was essential because Adam didn’t want to leave the garden and would have returned if allowed to. Adam tried to save himself. Coming back to God’s residence, he could take of the tree of life and save himself.  By barring the way into the presence of God, He made it clear that there was nothing in man’s power with which he could redeem himself. Bunyon writes, “Adam was loth to forsake the garden, loth to forsake his doing of something; but God sets a shaking sword against him, a sword to keep that way.”^[3]

According to Walton, “The cherubim are supernatural creatures who, referred to over ninety times in the Old Testament, usually function as guardians of God’s presence. From guarding the tree of life to the ornamental representation over the mercy seat on the ark of the covenant to the accompaniment of the chariot/throne in Ezekiel’s visions, cherubim are always closely associated with the person or property of deity.”^[4] The angel turns his flaming sword every way that’s necessary to prevent human access to the presence of God and the tree of life. Their banishment is complete. Helm describes it thus, “Adam and Eve are alone. Their souls are adrift. Their skies, so recently clear and blue, are now dark. The light has been taken from them. And thus, we come to Genesis’ explanation for our own sense of aloneness in the world. This is why we feel alone. It is because we have become disconnected from God.”^[5] In his “Paradise Lost” with unbridled passion, Milton speaks for Adam and says, “O unexpected stroke, worse than death! Must I thus leave Thee, Paradise? Thus leave Thee, native soil? these happy walks and shades.… How shall I part, and whither wander down Into a lower world.… How shall we breathe in other air less pure…?”¹⁵

^[1] Kissling, Paul J. 2004–. Genesis. The College Press NIV Commentary. Joplin, MO: College Press Pub. Co.

^[2] Butler, John G. 2008. Analytical Bible Expositor: Genesis. Clinton, IA: LBC Publications.

^[3] Bunyan, John. 2006. An Exposition of the First Ten Chapters of Genesis. Vol. 2. Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software.

^[4] Walton, John H. 2001. Genesis. The NIV Application Commentary. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

^[5] Helm, David R., and Jon M. Dennis. 2001. The Genesis Factor: Probing Life’s Big Questions. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books.

¹⁵ John Milton, “Paradise Lost,” in The Complete Poems of John Milton, Harvard Classics (New York: P. F. Collier, 1937), pp. 325–326.

With the fall of mankind, their lot in life was not death. Regardless of the number of years one might live, death is always the end. One wise old physician once said that he had watched all the modern medical advances and was astounded by the things that now could save people’s lives. There are even heart transplants as well as all the organs. But, he observed in spite of all our medical advances he still perceived that the mortality rate is still 100 percent. God in his grace had made provision for man to live eternally in close fellowship with him in the Garden. But once that fellowship was broken, and death was the specter hanging over every man God moved to save us. God says in Genesis 3:22, “Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat and live forever—Therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken.” God did not curse man to live forever in the shadow of death. Courson asks, “Can you imagine what you would look like at 30,000 years of age at your present rate of decay? It would be sad. So, God in His mercy ruled out that possibility.”^[1]

“Some interesting bits of evidence supporting the biblical account of the fall have been turned up by archaeologists. In the so-called Gilgamesh epic, an ancient Babylonian tale, the hero after a long and difficult quest obtains the plant of life only to have it stolen by a serpent. And in the vicinity of Nineveh two seals have been found, dating from 3000 B.C. and earlier, the one depicting a man, a woman, and a serpent, the other a tree in the center, a man on the right, a woman on the left plucking fruit, and a serpent standing erect behind her. However, the heathen nations may have twisted the details, it is evident that much of the truth about the origin of man and of sin remained widespread knowledge in ancient times.”^[2]

We all (figuratively speaking) ate of the forbidden fruit and came to a certain knowledge that we did not have before. Baxter thinks very specifically about what that knowledge could be. He suggests that the tree is named The Knowledge of Good and Evil “because it gave man a power to know his own nature.”^[3] It’s interesting that throughout the history of Israel the prophets had continually called the nation who had learned to put their confidence in religious externals, to repentance, i.e., the recognition and confession of a sinful nature. When Jesus observes two men praying in the temple, he uses it as a visual lesson for his followers. One of the prayers, a Pharisee, stood boldly before God and thanked God for making him such a good person, unlike the sinner who prayed beside him. The other man was a well-known sinner, a Publican, who recognized his sinfulness and prayed that God would have mercy on him. Surely part of the knowledge gained from sin is the corrupt nature of man. Remember, God sent Jesus for the sake of the sick, not the healthy. Jesus came for the sake of sinners, not for the righteous. It’s important for us to decide which we are.

^[1] Courson, Jon. 2005. Jon Courson’s Application Commentary: Volume One: Genesis–Job. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson.

^[2] Haines, Lee. 1967. “The Book of Genesis.” In Genesis-Deuteronomy, 1:1:36. The Wesleyan Bible Commentary. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.

^[3] Baxter, Richard, and William Orme. 1830. The Practical Works of the Rev. Richard Baxter. Vol. 11. London: James Duncan.

After clothing Adam and Eve with some kind of animal skin to “make atonement” or cover their sin, He then makes a very interesting comment. Genesis 3:22 begins, “Then the Lord God said, ‘Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil.’” Through eating the forbidden fruit, they somehow became “like” Elohim. I use the word “Elohim” because, as Constable points out, “Verse 22 shows that man’s happiness (good) does not consist in his being like God as much as it depends on his being with God ‘Like one of us’ may mean like heavenly beings (God and the angels).”^[1] The heavenly beings also know the difference between good and evil. Some of them chose evil and fell under the leadership of Satan. Some of them chose good and remained with God in Paradise, possibly under the leadership of Michael, the leading archangel.

Becoming like the heavenly beings is defined in only one way. Man is not like the heavenly beings in every way. And he is surely not like God. Like them, man now knows “good and evil.” Considering the use of the word “know” in the early chapters of the Bible we can surely glean that there is a special kind of intimacy involved in that knowledge. Adam “knew” his wife Eve and she conceived. This obviously involves more than just intellectual knowledge. There is an intimacy assumed. After eating the fruit of the forbidden tree, they were now intimate with good and evil. Before the fall mankind only knew life in an intimate relationship with their Creator. But afterward, he became intimate with evil as well. Moller says, “God knows good and evil, because He Himself is good while evil is in revolt against Him. However, man cannot apprehend good and evil like that. While God knows evil from a position of triumphing over it and condemning it, man got to know it as a power that enslaves and destroys him. That happened when he committed that which God had forbidden him to do. By so doing man came into rebellion against God. The consequence of this was that man came under the power of death and judgment. Through his fall into sin, the law of God was obscured in him, although not totally obliterated.”^[2]

Original sin put us all at odds with our creator and we know “good and evil” and are slaves to the lust of our flesh, the lust of our eyes and the pride of life. The only way for us around that is, as Jesus says, “You must be born again.” We must be, as Paul says, “A new creation.” We can’t cover our own sin. We need something drastic to happen. Lucado says, “Real change is an inside job. You might alter things a day or two with money and systems, but the heart of the matter is, and always will be, the matter of the heart. Allow me to get specific. Our problem is sin. Not finances. Not budgets. Not overcrowded prisons or drug dealers. Our problem is sin. We are in rebellion against our Creator. We are separated from our Father. We are cut off from the source of life. A new president or policy won’t fix that. It can only be solved by God. That’s why the Bible uses drastic terms like conversion, repentance, and lost and found. Society may renovate, but only God re-creates.”^[3]

^[1] Constable, Tom. 2003. Tom Constable’s Expository Notes on the Bible. Galaxie Software.

^[2] Möller, F. P. 1998. The Wonderful Christ and the Meaning of Humanness (Christology and Anthropology). Vol. 2. Words of Light and Life. Pretoria: Van Schaik Religious Books.

^[3] Lucado, Max. 1997. Life Lessons from the Inspired Word of God: Book of Genesis. Inspirational Bible Study Series. Dallas, TX: Word Pub.

After the judgments were pronounced on Eve with “hard labor” in child bearing and on Adam with “hard labor” in working the fields, God, in his wonderful grace, made provision for them. He replaced the flimsy leaf covering that they made for themselves with a covering made of skin. Genesis 3:21 says, “And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them.” In ancient Jewish tradition there are some weird commentaries regarding this verse. Rashi says, “Some midrashim say that garments as smoother as one’s fingernails were attached to their own skin. Rashbam says that the text simply means that God made clothes that were to cover their “skin.” Ibn Ezra suggests that man consisted of just flesh and bone, but now God covered them with skin. Kimhi says that some think God made their garments from the skin of the serpent. One argued it was the soft, smooth skin of rabbits. Although he acknowledges that the clothes were indeed garments of “skin”, Ephrem (An ancient Syrian commentator) suggests, “The garments of skin were probably created by God, and no animal was killed in the presence of Adam and Eve to provide them with clothes.”^[1] Gregory of Nyssa thinks that the practice of circumcision is related to this idea of “skin.” He says, “Circumcision means the casting off of the dead skins which we put on when we had been stripped of the supernatural life after the transgression.”^[2] I believe God killed an animal. The whole sacrificial system which Moses will introduce involves animal being sacrificed to make “atonement” for sin. That word “atonement” means “covering.” Regardless of what animal was used, we must remember that Adam had named them all. He knew the animal by name that God slaughtered, skinned, tanned, and clothed them with. This, in itself, must have been traumatic. Death, for the first time, has come to paradise! It came just as God said it would!

The text doesn’t tell us specifically what animal or animals were used to make clothes for them, but traditionally it has been believed that it was a lamb according to Christian history. John the Baptist pointed to Jesus and called him the “Lamb of God” which will make atonement for the sins of the whole world. Niehaus affirms this in his commentary. He writes, “The church has long understood the skins to anticipate the Mosaic sacrificial system and, ultimately, the sacrifice of Christ, because ‘without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins,’ and blood had to be shed for the skin garments to be prepared. Surely, this understanding has merit.”^[3]

We try to “cover” our sins with fig leaves. We think that we can make up for our weaknesses, sins and failures by making some kind of sacrifice ourselves or by doing some kind of good work. We revert to some religious observation thinking that God will forgive us based on our actions. But Kissling has this right: “The material used to meet that desire, fig leaves, is pitifully inadequate. When we as men and women try to fix our problems by ourselves which our sins against God have brought upon us, our remedies are just as pitiful. Fig leaves will serve as clothing no better than our own self-help strategies. ^[4] Boice explains this well. He writes, “But the glory of the gospel is that God deals with the guilt. He deals with it in Jesus Christ, who died for our sins, which is what the killing of the animals and the clothing of the man and the woman with their skins anticipate. Sin is real. But the atonement is also real. There has been a true restitution. The penalty accruing to sin has been paid. Now God clothes those who believe in Christ with Christ’s righteousness.”^[5]

^[1] Louth, Andrew, and Marco Conti, eds. 2001. Genesis 1–11. Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.

^[2] Gregory of Nyssa. 1978. Gregory of Nyssa: The Life of Moses. Edited by Richard J. Payne. Translated by Abraham J. Malherbe and Everett Ferguson. The Classics of Western Spirituality. New York; Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press.

^[3] Niehaus, Jeffrey J. 2014. Biblical Theology: The Common Grace Covenants. Vol. 1. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.

^[4] Kissling, Paul J. 2004–. Genesis. The College Press NIV Commentary. Joplin, MO: College Press Pub. Co.

^[5] Boice, James Montgomery. 1998. Genesis: An Expositional Commentary. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books.

Because of the thorns and thistles that will come up amongst the edible crops of the world, it will require hard work to produce and gather what we need to eat. Genesis 3:19 begins with this idea of strenuous labor. It reads, “By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread…” Nothing will be easy for the man. A Jewish commentator, Ben Ezra, wrote, “They will have to slave at winnowing and grinding and kneading and cooking—unlike the way the animals eat.” Another one, Hizkuni said, “Adam’s curse applies only to farmworkers, but Eve’s greater curse applies to all women; she not only sinned, but caused Adam to sin.”^[1] Well, that’s wrong! It doesn’t matter what work you do; it will become difficult and take effort because our nature will oppose it to some extent. The big issue is that man will have to do what he doesn’t want to do to stay alive. I would add that it’s true also for just staying healthy.

My Dad was a very hard laborer. He did plaster patching in the winters in order to stay out of the weather. He did external stonework whenever the weather permitted. Neither me nor my brother wanted to work for him. My cousins did better but they didn’t like it either. It required carrying 94 pound sacks of Portland cement, mixing cement in a mortar box, carrying 5 gallon buckets of water and sand and carrying the finished product to him so he could apply it. He would yell, “Mud! Mud!” That meant he was running out and we needed to hurry up. You were supposed to keep up with him. We all found that was nearly impossible! I did not want to “sweat” like that for a living so I got into office work. I wanted to do anything but “carry mud!” In the Navy I became a chief administrator and later a recruiter. When I retired, I became a pastor and preached for my living. But it didn’t take long to figure out that I needed to “sweat.” McCalip has it right when he writes, “God said that man would have to sweat for a living, and those who have cushy office jobs are recognizing that sweat is just what we need to be healthier.”^[2] You either lift buckets of mud, bales of hay, bags of cement or weights in the early morning or late evening. It doesn’t matter. God said you have to sweat! So, if you want to stay healthy, you better do some sweating.

But the curse is more than physical. There’s a social and psychological dimension to work. There is, as Solomon says in Ecclesiastes, “vanity of vanities.” It’s all useless outside of a connection with God. David Helm writes, “Man’s attempt to live outside the rule of God results not in his becoming like God, as the serpent promised; rather, it results in a never-ending struggle for survival. Without God, there is little more than futility in our work. The twentieth-century mystic Simone Weil put it this way: ‘He exhausts himself in order that he may eat, and he eats in order that he may have the strength to work, and after a year of toil, everything is as it was when he began.” Helm goes on to quote Studs Terkel’s book, “Working.” He says, “This book, being about work, is by its very nature, about violence—to the spirit as well as to the body. It is about ulcers as well as accidents. About shouting matches as well as fist fights. About nervous breakdowns as well as kicking the dog around. It is, above all (or beneath all) about daily humiliations.’”^[3] Is the only relief from such a fate death? No! Swindoll says, “The perspiration that dripped from his skin came because of his quest for independence, and it provided an ongoing reminder of the need to live in faithful dependence on God. That lesson may lie behind Luke’s reference to sweat in another garden, Gethsemane. In His most excruciating moment of submission to the will of the Father, Jesus’ sweat fell to the ground like drops of blood (Luke 22:44). He was identifying with fallen humanity…”^[4]

^[1] Carasik, Michael, ed. 2018. Genesis: Introduction and Commentary. Translated by Michael Carasik. The Commentators’ Bible. Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society.

^[2] McCalip, Steven Melvin. 2002. Where’d That Come From?. Chattanoga: AMG Publishers.

^[3] Helm, David R., and Jon M. Dennis. 2001. The Genesis Factor: Probing Life’s Big Questions. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books.

^[4] Swindoll, Charles R., and Roy B. Zuck. 2003. Understanding Christian Theology. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers.