Genesis 3:9-24 -- In the state of innocence, being nude was simply a fact of life. Every other creature was nude, as well. Once Adam and Eve had taken the Forbidden Fruit, they were suddenly aware of good and evil by a direct participation in evil. What Satan had promised was a half truth: While not like God, they did indeed know good and evil. They also knew they had done evil and couldn't hide it from God.
At some point in our human development, we all gain a sense of privacy and modesty. This reflects our fallen nature, but the principle here goes much deeper. For so long as they were obedient, Adam and Eve had no sense of exposure. When man sins, he must hide from the wrath of God. To survive that wrath requires a covering. The concept of covering is completely missing in our Western culture, but looms large in Eastern thinking. It is a picture of our desperate need of protection from God's judgment against sin. At the same time, literal nudity outside private sexual intimacy remains shameful and sinful because the world remains fallen. Reasoning away the fact or the symbolism is rejection of God's revelation.
While both cultures recognize that all behavior has consequences, that sin behavior often has bad consequences, there is much more to it than that. The primary truth of human existence is that we are designed to fellowship with God and with each other, by extension. Sin breaks that fellowship; it transgresses the covenant boundaries. Sinners violate a sacred trust, whether it is persons or property. In this case, the judgment of good and evil is God's private reserve. The implied Covenant of Creation requires humbling oneself before God as Lord and Creator; this was an injury to God Himself.
To make amends for transgressing a covenant requires healing the damage, of giving a part of oneself to restore what was lost. In this case, the damage was irrevocable; the change to human nature cannot be revoked on the human plane of existence. The knowledge, once gained, could not be returned or removed. The fruit could not be reattached to the tree. Innocence could not be restored; Adam and Eve knew this instinctively. They knew that they were wholly exposed before God and sought to avoid the pain of that exposure as transgressors, as those who had wounded God. There was no place to hide, of course. Their attempt to cover themselves with fig leaves was pointless, but typical of human behavior ever since then. It is our nature to attempt building layers between ourselves and our justified suffering. Today we call it "neurosis."
Hiding from the pain of their sin before the presence of God only emphasized the inadequacy of their abilities to deal with it. If there was to be a restoration of fellowship, it would have to come from God, the injured party. That is the nature of justice. Even between equal parties, to clean up the mess by meeting the demands of the injuried party may still fail to make him forget. Things can never be the same. So it was in this case. Both man and Satan had stepped into the curses of sin.
The author used myth as an image of God's judgment. The term "The Serpent" should not be taken as literal; it should be taken as literary. We know that literal snakes appear to us as crawling whips with fangs and scales and were created that way from the start. We cannot hold the morally accountable for our natural repulsion. The myth that snakes were once upright is ancient, used here by the writer to declare that Satan would not be taken in trust so easily by mankind again, that sane people would avoid him at all costs. The only people who would embrace him voluntarily would be those who also embrace evil, for he would be known as evil personified. This was a change in status, as Eve had treated him respectfully before. Further, the seed of the woman would be his greatest enemy and would eventually strike a killing blow.
Scholars refer to this line as the "Proto-Evangelium" -- the first promise from God to deal decisively with sin, once and for all. As is well known, it was Jesus Christ who had an earthly mother, but no earthly sire. He was the seed of a woman who struck that fatal blow on the Cross. The best Satan could hope for was to hobble Christ's reign at times, not to stop it by any means.
Much has been made of the curse on woman from all angles. Most of it misses the point. First the obvious: One would look long and hard to identify any creature that risks so much in childbirth and suffers as much pain. More than that, nurturing is both, a woman's greatest strength and her greatest misery. How many normal women are eager for their progeny to leave home? The inevitable conflicts arising from this add to her misery. It is the source of great conflict in childrearing between husband and wife, yet she would have a built in desire for a man and he would take authority over her.
Whatever it is that changed for man, it is certain that getting food by the sweat of the brow, implying manual labor against a reluctant natural world, was not the original plan. Work would become the primary feature of a man's life and would end with his death. Afterward, he would be forgotten, just another pile of dust. All his labor would blow away with the next strong gust of wind. In ancient times, the greatest blessing was to be able to leave a legacy that kept your name alive in human memory.
Because of sin, life became ugly. Intended for intimate fellowship, husband and wife would struggle to be on the same sheet of music. Futility would take over as the dominant factor of human existence. But all was not lost, in that a measure of fellowship could be restored by God's provision. In the provision of animal hides to serve as a covering, we recognize the shedding of blood was necessary. Thus established is the principle of shed blood to answer for sin.
Yet all could not be fully restored. The immortality of innocence was gone forever; mankind was forbidden access to the Tree of Life. The path back was the Flaming Sword, a terrifying symbol of the Word of God, of God's revelation of His holiness to fallen mankind. Eternal life required death of self and this is clearly prefigured in the story. Mortality was also a new and permanent feature of human life.
Eden is not some place hidden in the sands of time, a literal location on earth. It is hidden as a parallel universe -- it's right there, everywhere, but not accessible. That is, it's inaccessible unless we pass the Flaming Sword. It must cut off from us death and sin. Without the change inherent in a revelation of God, there is no going back to Paradise, whence we came and for which we were designed.
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Ed Hurst
04 December 2003, revised 08 January 2013
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