And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God amongst the trees of the garden.
8. the voice ] Better, as R.V. marg., sound. The man and woman are represented as hearing the sound of God’s footsteps in the garden.
in the cool of the day ] Lit. “in the wind of the day”; that is, at the time of day when, in the East, a cool wind springs up, and people leave their houses. LXX , Vulg. ad auram post meridiem.
hid themselves ] Evidently it had hitherto been their custom to go with Jehovah when He “walked in the garden.” Now conscience makes cowards of them; and, like children who had done wrong, they hide themselves “in medio ligni Paradisi” (Vulg.).
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
– XVI. The Judgment
15. shup bruise, wound. (=?) terein ektribein Job 9:17, katapatein Psa 139:11, suntribein Rom 16:20.
16. teshuqah desire, inclination. apostrofee, epistrophe Son 7:11.
20. chavah Eve, the living, life, life-place, or village.
This passage contains the examination of the transgressors, Gen 3:8-13; the sentence pronounced upon each, Gen 3:14-19; and certain particulars following thereupon, Gen 3:20-21.
Gen 3:8-9
The voice, we conceive, is the thunder of the approach of God and his call to Adam. The hiding is another token of the childlike simplicity of the parents of our race under the shame and fear of guilt. The question, Where art thou? implies that the Lord was aware of their endeavor to hide themselves from him.
Gen 3:10-12
Adam confesses that he was afraid of God, because he was naked. There is an instinctive hiding of his thoughts from God in this very speech. The nakedness is mentioned, but not the disobedience from which the sense of it arose. To the direct interrogatory of the Almighty, he confesses who made him acquainted with his nakedness and the fact of his having eaten of the forbidden fruit: The woman gave me of the tree, and I did eat.
Gen 3:13
The woman makes a similar confession and a similar indication of the source of her temptation. She has now found out that the serpent beguiled her. The result has not corresponded to the benefit she was led to anticipate.
There seems not to be any disingenuousness in either case. Sin does not take full possession of the will all at once. It is a slow poison. It has a growth. It requires time and frequent repetition to sink from a state of purity into a habit of inveterate sin. While it is insensibly gathering strength and subjugating the will, the original integrity of the moral nature manifests a long but fading vitality. The same line of things does not always occupy the attention. When the chain of events linked with the act of sin does not force the attention of the mind, and constrain the will to act a selfish part, another train of things comes before the mind, finds the will unaffected by personal considerations, and therefore ready to take its direction from the reason. Hence, the consciousness of a fallen soul has its lucid intervals, in which the conscience gives a verdict and guides the will. But these intervals become less frequent and less decisive as the entanglements of ever-multiplying sinful acts wind round the soul and aggravate its bondage and its blindness.
Gen 3:14-15
Here begins the judgment. Sentence is pronounced upon the serpent in the presence, no doubt, of the man and woman. The serpent is not examined, first, because it is a mute, unreasoning animal in itself, and therefore incapable of judicial examination, and it was the serpent only that was palpable to the senses of our first parents in the temptation; and, secondly, because the true tempter was not a new, but an old offender.
This sentence has a literal application to the serpent. The curse (Gen 9:25, see the note) of the serpent lies in a more groveling nature than that of the other land animals. This appears in its going on its belly and eating the dust. Other animals have at least feet to elevate them above the dust; the serpent tribe does not have even feet. Other animals elevate the head in their natural position above the soil: the serpent lays its head naturally on the sod, and therefore may be said to eat the dust, as the wounded warrior bites the dust in death. The earthworm is probably included in the description here given of the serpent group. It goes upon its belly, and actually does eat the dust. Eating the dust, like feeding upon ashes, is an expression for signal defeat in every aim. The enmity, the mode of its display, and the issue are also singularly characteristic of the literal serpent.
It is the custom of Scripture jurisprudence to visit brute animals with certain judicial consequences of injuries they have been instrumental in doing to man, especially if this has arisen through the design or neglect of the owner, or other responsible agent Gen 9:5; Exo 21:28-36. In the present case the injury done was of a moral, not a physical nature. Hence, the penalty consists in a curse; that is, a state of greater degradation below man than the other land animals. The serpent in the extraordinary event here recorded exercised the powers of human speech and reasoning. And it is natural to suppose that these exhibitions of intelligence were accompanied with an attitude and a gesture above its natural rank in the scale of creation. The effect of the judicial sentence would be to remand it to its original groveling condition, and give rise to that enmity which was to end in its destruction by man.
However, since an evil spirit must have employed the serpent, since the animal whose organs and instincts were most adapted to its purpose, and has accordingly derived its name from it as presenting the animal type most analogous to its own spiritual nature, so the whole of this sentence has its higher application to the real tempter. Upon thy belly shalt thou go. This is expressive of the lowest stage of degradation to which a spiritual creature can be sunk. Dust shalt thou eat. This is indicative of disappointment in all the aims of being. I will put enmity. This is still more strictly applicable to the spiritual enemy of mankind. It intimates a hereditary feud between their respective races, which is to terminate, after some temporary suffering on the part of the womans seed, in the destruction of the serpents power against man. The spiritual agent in the temptation of man cannot have literally any seed. But the seed of the serpent is that portion of the human family that continues to be his moral offspring, and follows the first transgression without repentance or refuge in the mercy of God. The seed of the woman, on the other hand, must denote the remnant who are born from above, and hence, turn from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God.
Let us now mark the lessons conveyed in the sentence of the serpent to our first parents, who were listening and looking on. First. The serpent is styled a mere brute animal. All, then, that seemed to indicate reason as inherent in its nature or acquired by some strange event in its history is thus at once contradicted. Second. It is declared to be lower than any of the other land animals; as being destitute of any members corresponding to feet or hands. Third. It is not interrogated as a rational and accountable being, but treated as a mere dumb brute. Fourth. It is degraded from the airs and attitudes which may have been assumed, when it was possessed by a serpent-like evil spirit, and falls back without a struggle to that place of debasement in the animal kingdom for which it was designed. Fifth. It is fated to be disappointed in its aims at usurpation. It shall bite the dust. Sixth. it is doomed to ultimate and utter defeat in its hostile assaults upon the seed of the woman.
All this must have made a deep impression on our first parents. But two things must have struck them with special force. First, it was now evident how vain and hollow were its pretensions to superior wisdom, and how miserably deluded they had been when they listened to its false insinuations. If, indeed, they had possessed maturity of reflection, and taken time to apply it, they would have been strangely bewildered with the whole scene, now that it was past. How the serpent, from the brute instinct it displayed to Adam when he named the animals, suddenly rose to the temporary exercise of reason and speech, and as suddenly relapsed into its former bestiality, is, to the mere observer of nature, an inexplicable phenomenon. But to Adam, who had as yet too limited an experience to distinguish between natural and preternatural events, and too little development of the reflective power to detect the inconsistency in the appearance of things, the sole object of attention was the shameless presumption of the serpent, and the overwhelming retribution which had fallen upon it; and, consequently, the deplorable folly and wickedness of having been misguided by its suggestions.
A second thing, however, was still more striking to the mind of man in the sentence of the serpent; namely, the enmity that was to be put between the serpent and the woman. Up to a certain point there had been concord and alliance between these two parties. But, on the very opening of the heavenly court, we learn that the friendly connection had been broken. For the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat. This expression indicates that the woman was no longer at one with the serpent. She was now sensible that its part had been that, not of friendship, but of guile, and therefore of the deepest and darkest hostility. When God, therefore, said, I will put enmity between thee and the woman, this revulsion of feeling on her part, in which Adam no doubt joined, was acknowledged and approved. Enmity with the enemy of God indicated a return to friendship with God, and presupposed incipient feelings of repentance toward him, and reviving confidence in his word. The perpetuation of this enmity is here affirmed, in regard not only to the woman, but to her seed. This prospect of seed, and of a godly seed, at enmity with evil, became a fountain of hope to our first parents, and confirmed every feeling of returning reverence for God which was beginning to spring up in their breast. The word heard from the mouth of God begat faith in their hearts, and we shall find that this faith was not slow to manifest itself in acts.
We cannot pass over this part of the sentence without noticing the expression, the seed of the woman. Does it not mean, in the first instance, the whole human race? Was not this race at enmity with the serpent? And though that part only of the seed of the woman which eventually shared in her present feelings could be said to be at enmity with the serpent spirit, yet, if all had gone well in Adams family, might not the whole race have been at enmity with the spirit of disobedience? Was not the avenue to mercy here hinted at as wide as the offer of any other time? And was not this universality of invitation at some time to have a response in the human family? Does not the language of the passage constrain us to look forward to the time when the great mass, or the whole of the human race then alive on the earth, will have actually turned from the power of Satan unto God? This could not be seen by Adam. But was it not the plain import of the language, that, unless there was some new revolt after the present reconciliation, the whole race would, even from this new beginning, be at enmity with the spirit of evil? Such was the dread lesson of experience with which Adam now entered upon the career of life, that it was to be expected he would warn his children against departing from the living God, with a clearness and earnestness which would be both understood and felt.
Still further, do we not pass from the general to the particular in the sentence, He shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel? Is not the seed of the woman here individualized and matched in deadly conflict with the individual tempter? Does not this phraseology point to some pre-eminent descendant of the woman, who is, with the bruising of his lower nature in the encounter, to gain a signal and final victory over the adversary of man? There is some reason to believe from the expression, I have gotten a man from the Lord Gen 4:1, that Eve herself had caught a glimpse of this meaning, though she applied it to the wrong party. The Vulgate also, in what was probably the genuine reading, ipse (he himself) points to the same meaning. The reading ipsa (she herself) is inconsistent with the gender of the Hebrew verb, and with that of the corresponding pronoun in the second clause (his), and is therefore clearly an error of the transcriber.
Lastly, the retributive character of the divine administration is remarkably illustrated in the phrase. The serpent, in a wily but dastardly spirit, makes the weaker sex the object of his attack. It is the seed of the woman especially that is to bruise his head. It is singular to find that this simple phrase, coming in naturally and incidentally in a sentence uttered four thousand years, and penned at least fifteen hundred years, before the Christian era, describes exactly and literally Him who was made of woman without the intervention of man, that He might destroy the works of the devil. This clause in the sentence of the tempter is the first dawn of hope for the human family after the fall. We cannot tell whether to admire more the simplicity of its terms, the breadth and comprehensiveness of its meaning, or the minuteness of its application to the far-distant event which it mainly contemplates.
The doom here pronounced upon the tempter must be regarded as special and secondary. It refers to the malignant attack upon man, and foretells what will be the issue of this attempt to spread disaffection among the intelligent creation. And it is pronounced without any examination of the offender, or investigation of his motives. If this had been the first offence against the majesty of heaven, we humbly conceive a solemn precognition of the case would have taken place, and a penalty would have been adjudicated adequate to the magnitude of the crime and analagous to the punishment of death in the case of man. The primary act of defiance and apostasy from the Creator must have been perpetrated without a tempter, and was, therefore, incomparably more heinous than the secondary act of yielding to temptation. Whether the presence of the tempter on earth intimates that it was the place of his abode in a state of innocence, or that he visited it because he had heard of the creation of man, or that he was there from some altogether different reason, is a vain and unprofitable inquiry.
Gen 3:16
The sentence of the woman Gen 3:16 consists of three parts: the former two regard her as a mother, the last as a wife. Sorrow is to be multiplied in her pregnancy, and is also to accompany the bearing of children. This sorrow seems to extend to all the mothers pains and anxieties concerning her offspring. With what solicitude she would long for a manifestation of right feeling toward the merciful God in her children, similar to what she had experienced in her own breast! What unutterable bitterness of spirit would she feel when the fruits of disobedience would discover themselves in her little ones, and in some of them, perhaps, gather strength from year to year!
The promise of children is implicitly given in these two clauses. It came out also incidentally in the sentence of the serpent. What a wonderful conception is here presented to the minds of the primeval pair! Even to ourselves at this day the subject of race is involved in a great deal of mystery. We have already noticed the unity of the race in its head. But the personality and responsibility of individuals involve great and perplexing difficulties. The descent of a soul from a soul is a secret too deep for our comprehension. The first man was potentially the race, and, so long as he stands alone, actually the whole race for the time. His acts, then, are those not merely of the individual, but of the race. If a single angel were to fall, he falls alone. If the last of a race were to fall, he would in like manner involve no other in his descent. But if the first of a race falls, before he has any offspring, the race has fallen. The guilt, the depravity, the penalty, all belong to the race. This is a great mystery. But it seems to follow inevitably from the constitution of a race, and it has clear evidences of its truth both in the facts and the doctrines of the Bible.
When we come to view the sin of our first parents in this light, it is seen to entail tremendous consequences to every individual of the race. The single transgression has involved the guilt, the depravity, and the death, not only of Adam, but of that whole race which was in him, and thus has changed the whole character and condition of mankind throughout all time.
In the instructions going before and coming after are found the means of training up these children for God. The woman has learned that God is not only a righteous judge, but a forbearing and merciful Father. This was enough for her at present. It enabled her to enter upon the journey of life with some gleams of hope amidst the sorrows of the family. And in the experience of life it is amazing what a large proportion of the agreeable is mingled with the troubles of our fallen race. The forbearance and goodness of God ought in all reason and conscience to lead us back to a better feeling toward him.
The third part of her sentence refers to her husband – Thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee. This is evidently a piece of that retributive justice which meets us constantly in the administration of God. The woman had taken the lead in the transgression. In the fallen state, she is to be subject to the will of her husband. Desire does not refer to sexual desire in particular. Gen 4:7. It means, in general, turn, determination of the will. The determination of thy will shall be yielded to thy husband, and, accordingly, he shall rule over thee. The second clause, according to the parallel structure of the sentence, is a climax or emphatic reiteration of the first, and therefore serves to determine its meaning. Under fallen man, woman has been more or less a slave. In fact, under the rule of selfishness, the weaker must serve the stronger. Only a spiritual resurrection will restore her to her true place, as the help-meet for man.
Gen 3:17-19
The keyword in the sentence of the man is the soil. The curse (Gen 9:25, see the note) of the soil is the desire of the fruit trees with which the garden was planted, and of that spontaneous growth which would have rendered the toil of man unnecessary. The rank growth of thorns and thistles was also a part of the curse which it occasioned to man when fallen. His sorrow was to arise from the labor and sweat with which he was to draw from the ground the means of subsistence. Instead of the spontaneous fruits of the garden, the herb of the field, which required diligent cultivation, was henceforth to constitute a principal part of his support. And he had the dreary prospect before him of returning at length to the ground whence he was taken. He had an element of dust in him, and this organic frame was eventually to work out its own decay, when apart from the tree of life.
It is to be observed that here is the first allusion to that death which was the essential part of the sentence pronounced on the fallen race. The reasons of this are obvious. The sentence of death on those who should eat of the forbidden fruit had been already pronounced, and was well known to our first parents. Death consisted in the privation of that life which lay in the light of the divine countenance, shining with approving love on an innocent child, and therefore was begun on the first act of disobedience, in the shame and fear of a guilty conscience. The few traits of earthly discomfort which the sentences disclose, are merely the workings of the death here spoken of in the present stage of our existence. And the execution of the sentence, which comes to view in the following passage, is the formal accomplishment of the warning given to the transgressor of the divine will.
In this narrative the language is so simple as to present no critical difficulty. And, on reviewing the passage, the first thing we have to observe is, that the event here recorded is a turning-point of transcendent import in the history of man. It is no less than turning from confidence in God to confidence in his creature when contradicting him, and, moreover, from obedience to his express and well-remembered command to obedience to the dictates of misguided self-interest. It is obvious that, to the moral character of the transaction, it is of no consequence who the third party was who dared to contradict and malign his Maker. The guilt of man consists simply in disobeying the sole command of his beneficent Creator. The only mitigating circumstance is the suggestion of evil by an external party. But the more insignificant the only ostensible source of temptation, the more inexcusable the guilt of man in giving way to it.
This act altered fundamentally the position and character of man. He thereby descended from innocence to guilt in point of law, and at the same time from holiness to sin in point of character. Tremendous was the change, and equally tremendous the consequence. Death is, like most scriptural terms, a pregnant word, and here to be understood in the full compass of its meaning. It is the privation, not of existence, as is often confusedly supposed, but of life, in all its plenitude of meaning. As life includes all the gratifications of which our human susceptibilities are capable, so death is the privation of all the sources of human enjoyment, and among them of the physical life itself, while the craving for ease and the sense of pain retain all their force in the spiritual part of our nature. These poignant emotions reach their highest pitch of intensity when they touch the conscience, the tenderest part of our being, and forebode the meeting of the soul, in its guilty state, with a just and holy God.
This event is real. The narrative expresses in its strongest terms its reality. The event is one of the two alternatives which must follow from the preceding statements concerning the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and affords an explanation of their nature. It is no less essential to account for what follows. The problem of the history and condition of man can only be solved by this primeval fact. Conscience still remains an imperishable monument, on the one hand, of his having been formed after a perfect model; and, on the other, of his having fallen from his high estate. And all the facts of his history carry up his fall as far as the traditions of human memory reach.
And the narrative here is a literal record of the details of this great event. So far as regards God and man, the literality has never been questioned by those who acknowledge the event to be real. Some, however, have taken the serpent to be, not a literal, but a figurative serpent; not an animal, but a spiritual being. The great dragon, indeed, is identified with the ancient serpent called the devil and Satan. And hence we know that a being of a higher nature than the mere animal was present and active on this occasion. And this spiritual being was with great propriety called the serpent, both from its serpentine qualities and from choosing the serpent as the most suitable mask under which to tempt our first parents. But we cannot thence infer that a literal serpent was not employed in the temptation. The serpent is said to be more subtle than any beast of the field. First. The obvious meaning of this is, that it was itself a beast of the field.
Thus, Joseph, whom Israel loved more than all his children, was one of his children Gen 37:8. He that was higher than any of the people, was himself one of the people 2Sa 9:2. Second. If the serpent be here figurative, and denote a spirit, the statement that it was subtle above all the beasts of the field is feeble and inadequate to the occasion. It is not so, that man is distinguished from the other animals. In much more forcible language ought the old serpent to be distinguished from the unreasoning brute. Third. We have seen a meetness in a being of flesh, and that not superior, or even equal to man, being permitted to be employed as the medium of temptation. Man was thereby put at no disadvantage. His senses were not confounded by a supersensible manifestation. His presence of mind was not disturbed by an unusual appearance. Fourth. The actions ascribed to the tempter agree with the literal serpent. Wounding the heel, creeping on the belly, and biting the dust, are suitable to a mere animal, and especially to the serpent. The only exception is the speaking, and, what is implied in this, the reasoning. These, however, do not disprove the presence of the literal serpent when accompanied with a plain statement of its presence. They only indicate, and that to more experienced observers than our first parents, the presence of a lurking spirit, expressing its thoughts by the organs of the serpent.
It may be thought strange that the presence of this higher being is not explicitly noticed by the sacred writer. But it is the manner of Scripture not to distinguish and explain all the realities which it relates, but to describe the obvious phenomena as they present themselves to the senses; especially when the scope of the narrative does not require more, and a future revelation or the exercise of a sanctified experience will in due time bring out their interpretation. Thus, the doings of the magicians in Egypt are not distinguished from those of Moses by any disparaging epithet Exo 7:10-12. Only those of Moses are greater, and indicate thereby a higher power. The witch of Endor is consulted, and Samuel appears; but the narrative is not careful to distinguish then and there whether by the means of witchcraft or by the very power of God. It was not necessary for the moral training of our first parents at that early stage of their existence to know who the real tempter was. It would not have altered the essential nature of the temptation, of the sentence pronounced on any of the parties, or of the hopes held out to those who were beguiled.
This brings into view a system of analogy and mutual relation pervading the whole of Scripture as well as nature, according to which the lower order of things is a natural type of the higher, and the nearer of the more remote. This law displays itself in the history of creation, which, in the creative work of the six days, figures to our minds, and, as it were, lays out in the distance those other antecedent processes of creative power that have intervened since the first and absolute creation; in the nature of man, which presents on the surface the animal operations in wonderful harmony with the spiritual functions of his complex being; in the history of man, where the nearer in history, in prophecy, in space, in time, in quality, matter, life, vegetative and animate, shadow forth the more remote. All these examples of the scriptural method of standing on and starting from the near to the far are founded upon the simple fact that nature is a rational system of things, every part of which has its counterpart in every other. Hence, the history of one thing is, in a certain form, the history of all things of the same kind.
The serpent is of a crafty instinct, and finds, accordingly, its legitimate place at the lowest step of the animal system. Satan seeks the opportunity of tempting Adam, and, in the fitness of things, turns to the serpent as the ready medium of his assault upon human integrity. He was limited to such a medium. He was not permitted to have any contact with man, except through the senses and in the way of speech. He was also necessitated to have recourse to the serpent, as the only creature suited to his purpose.
The place of the serpent in the scale of animals was in keeping with the crookedness of its instinct. It was cursed above all cattle, since it was inferior to them in the lack of those limbs which serve for rising, moving, and holding; such as legs and arms. This meaning of cursed is familiar to Scripture. Cursed is the ground for thy seed Gen 3:17. It needed the toil of man to repress thorns and thistles, and cultivate plants more useful and needful to man. This people who knoweth not the law are cursed Joh 7:49. This is a relative use of the word, by which a thing is said to be cursed in respect of its failing to serve a particular end. Hence, the serpents condition was a fit emblem of the spiritual serpents punishment for its evil doings regarding man.
Through the inscrutable wisdom of the Divine Providence, however, it was not necessary, or may not have been necessary, to change in the main the state of the natural serpent or the natural earth in order to carry out the ends of justice. The former symbolized in a very striking manner the helplessness and disappointment of the enemy of man. The latter exacted that labor of man which was the just consequence of his disobedience. This consequence would have been avoided if he had continued to be entitled to the tree of life, which could no doubt have been propagated beyond its original bounds. But a change in the moral relation of the heart toward God brings along with it in the unsearchable ways of divine wisdom a change as great in the bearing of the events of time on the destiny of man. While the heart is with God, all things work together for good to us. When the heart is estranged from him, all things as inevitably work together for evil, without any material alteration in the system of nature.
We may even ascend a step higher into the mysteries of providence; for a disobedient heart, that forms the undeserving object of the divine compassion, may be for a time the unconscious slave of a train of circumstances, which is working out its recovery from the curse as well as the power of sin through the teaching of the Divine Spirit. The series of events may be the same in which another is floating down the stream of perdition. But to the former these events are the turning points of a wondrous moral training, which is to end in reconciliation to God and restoration to his likeness.
A race, in like manner, that has fallen from communion with God, may be the subject of a purpose of mercy, which works out, in the providence of God, the return of some to his home and love, and the wandering of others away further and further into the darkness and misery of enmity with God.
And though this system of things is simple and uniform in the eyes of the only wise God, yet to human view parts of it appear only as special arrangements and retributions, exactly meeting the case of man and serving for his moral education. No doubt they are so. But they are also parts of a constant course of nature, pursued with undeviating regularity, yet ordered with such infallible wisdom as to accomplish at the same time both general and special ends. Hence, without any essential change in the serpents natural instincts, it serves for a striking monument of the defeat and destruction of the devil and his works. The ground, without any change in its inherent nature, but merely by the removal, it may be, of the tree of life, is cursed to man, as it demands that toil which is the mark of a fallen race.
The question of miracles, or special interpositions of the divine will and power which cross the laws of nature, is not now before us. By the very definition of miracles they transcend the laws of nature; that is, of that system of events which is known to us by observation. But it does not follow that they transcend a higher law of the divine plan, which may, partly by revelation and partly even by a deeper study of ourselves and things around us, be brought to light. By the investigations of geology we seem compelled to acknowledge a succession of creations at great intervals of time, as a law of the divine procedure on our globe. But, thousands of years before geology was conceived, one such creation, subsequent to the great primal act by which the universe was called into existence, was made known to us by divine revelation. And beside periodical miracle, we find recorded in the Book of Revelation a series of miracles, which were performed in pursuance of the divine purpose of grace toward the fallen race of man. These are certainly above nature, according to the largest view of it which has ever been current among our philosophers. But let us not therefore imagine that they are above reason or grace – above the resources and determinations of the divine mind and will concerning the development of the universe.
Gen 3:20
This verse and the next one record two very significant acts consequent upon the judgment: one on the part of Adam, and another on the part of God.
The man here no doubt refers to two expressions in the sentences he had heard pronounced on the serpent and the woman. He, the seed of the woman, shall bruise thy head. Here it is the woman who is to bear the seed. And this seed is to bruise the serpents head; that is, in some way to undo what had been done for the death of man, and so re-invest him with life. This life was therefore to come by the woman. Again, in the address of the judge to the woman he had heard the words, Thou shalt bear children. These children are the seed, among whom is to be the bruiser of the serpents head, and the author of life. And in an humbler, nearer sense, the woman is to be the mother of children, who are the living, and perpetuate the life of the race amid the ravages which death is daily committing on its individual members. These glimmerings of hope for the future make a deep impression upon the father of mankind. He perceives and believes that through the woman in some way is to come salvation for the race. He gives permanent expression to his hope in the significant name which he gives to his wife. Here we see to our unspeakable satisfaction the dawn of faith – a faith indicating a new beginning of spiritual life, and exercising a salutary influence on the will, faintly illuminating the dark bosom of our first parent. The mother of mankind has also come to a better mind. The high and holy Spirit has in mercy withdrawn the cloud of misconception from the minds of both, and faith in the Lord and repentance have sprung up in their new-born souls.
Gen 3:21
As Gen 3:20 records an instance of humble, apprehending faith in the divine word, so here we have a manifest act of mercy on the part of God, indicating the pardon and acceptance of confessing, believing man, rejoicing in anticipation of that future victory over the serpent which was to be accomplished by the seed of the woman. This act is also suitable to the present circumstances of man, and at the same time strikingly significant of the higher blessings connected with restoration to the divine favor. He had discovered his nakedness, and God provides him with a suitable covering. He was to be exposed to the variations of climate, and here was a durable protection against the weather. But far more than this. He had become morally naked, destitute of that peace of conscience which is an impenetrable shield against the shame of being blamed and the fear of being punished; and the coats of skin were a faithful emblem and a manifest guarantee of those robes of righteousness which were hereafter to be provided for the penitent in default of that original righteousness which he had lost by transgression. And, finally, there is something remarkable in the material out of which the coats were made. They were most likely obtained by the death of animals; and as they do not appear yet to have been slain for food, some have been led to conjecture that they were offered in sacrifice – slain in prefiguration of that subsequent availing sacrifice which was to take away sin. It is the safer course, however, to leave the origin of sacrifice an open question. Scripture does not intimate that the skins were obtained in consequence of sacrifice; and apart from the presumption derived from these skins, it seems to trace the origin of sacrifice to the act of Habel recorded in the next chapter.
This leads us to a law, which we find frequently exhibited in Sacred Scripture, that some events are recorded without any connection or significance apparent on the surface of the narrative, while at the same time they betoken a greater amount of spiritual knowledge than we are accustomed to ascribe to the age in which they occurred. The bare fact which the writer states, being looked at with our eyes, may have no significance. But regarded, as it ought to be, with the eyes of the narrator, cognizant of all that he has to record up to his own time, it becomes pregnant with a new meaning, which would not otherwise have been discovered. Even this, however, may not exhaust the import of a passage contained in an inspired writing. To arrive at the full sense it may need to be contemplated with the eyes of the Holy Spirit, conscious of all that is to become matter of revelation to the end of time. It will then stand forth in all the comprehensiveness of meaning which its relation to the whole body of revealed truth imparts, and under the guise of an everyday matter-of-fact will convey some of the sublimest aspects of divine truth. Hence, the subsequent scripture, which is the language of the Holy Spirit, may aid us in penetrating the hidden meaning of an earlier part of revelation.
God is the Prime Mover in this matter. The mercy of God alone is the source of pardon, of the mode in which he may pardon and yet be just, and of the power by which the sinner may be led to accept it with penitence and gratitude. In the brevity of the narrative the results only are noted; namely, the intimation and the earnest of pardon on the side of God, and the feelings and doings of faith and repentance on the side of the parents of mankind. What indications God may have given by the impressive figure of sacrifice or otherwise of the penalty being paid by another for the sinner, as a necessary condition of forgiveness, we are not here informed, simply because those for whom a written record was necessary would learn it more fully at a subsequent stage of the narrative. This suggests two remarks important for interpretation: First. This document is written by one who omits many things done and said to primeval man, because they are unnecessary for those for whom he writes, or because the principles they involve will come forward in a more distinct form in a future part of his work.
This practice speaks for Moses being not the mere collector, but the composer of the documents contained in Genesis, out of such preexistent materials as may have come to his hand or his mind. Second. We are not to import into the narrative a doctrine or institution in all the development it may have received at the latest period of revelation. This would be contrary to the manner in which God was accustomed to teach man. That concrete form of a great principle, which comported with the infantile state of the early mind, is first presented. The germ planted in the opening, fertile mind, springs forth and grows. The revelations and institutions of God grow with it in compass and grandeur. The germ was truth suited for babes; the full-grown tree is only the same truth expanded in the advancing development of people and things. They equally err who stretch the past to the measure of the present, and who judge either the past or the future by the standard of the present. Well-meaning but inconsiderate critics have gone to both extremes.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Gen 3:8
They heard the voice of the Lord God
Gods voice in nature
Whether their ears as well as their hearts heard Gods voice does not much matter.
It would have mattered if their ears and not their hearts had heard. They doubtless often heard Him in the evening hour–the twilight which all the faiths of all cultivated nations have chosen as their special season of devotion. When they heard, and when men now hear Gods voice in garden, meadow, wood, of what does it tell?
I. OF GODS PRESENCE. Nature is a kingdom, in which the King resides as well as reigns: a house in which the Father dwells as well as which He supports.
II. OF GODS POWER AND WISDOM.
III. OF GODS BOUNTY AND LOVE. Profusion of life.
IV. OF MANS MORTALITY. Nature is a sepulchre as well as a shrine.
V. OF MANS RETRIBUTION FOR BROKEN LAW. (Urijah R. Thomas.)
Observations
I. IF MEN WILL NOT DRAW NEAR UNTO GOD, YET HE WILL FIND THEM OUT IN THEIR SINS, AND BRING THEM INTO JUDGMENT BEFORE HIM. Let all those that have sinned come and prepare to meet their God (Amo 4:12), who can neither be blinded not escaped, nor resisted, that they may take hold of His strength to make peace with Him, considering–
1. That it is more credit to come in voluntarily than to be drawn in by force.
2. A readier way to obtain pardon, as Benhadads lords found by experience (1Ki 20:32), and David much more in submitting unto Psa 32:5).
3. If we come not in voluntarily, God will bring us in by force, which will be worse for us every way.
II. GOD, WHO HATH ALL THE WRONG WHEN HE IS PROVOKED BY OUR SINS, IS THE FIRST THAT SEEKS TO MAKE PEACE WITH US.
1. He allures us by His mercies, as He promised to deal with His people Hos 2:14-15).
2. By the inward and secret persuasions of His Spirit, in giving them hearts to return (Zec 12:12).
3. By the effectual ministry of the gospel, wherein He doth not only offer unto us, but persuade and beseech us to embrace those terms of peace which He offers, as the apostle speaks (2Co 5:20).
The reason is–
1. Necessity, seeing we cannot turn our hearts unto Him unless He draws Joh 6:44), which moves the Church to pray, Turn us, and weshall be turned (Jer 31:18).
2. The fitness of this way, to advance the free mercy of God the more, that all mens boasting may be taken away (Eph 2:8-9), and that he that rejoiceth may rejoice in God alone (1Co 1:31), who, as He loves us first, so He seeks us first (Isa 61:1), and recovers us oftwhen we go astray.
III. GOD, WHEN HE DEALS WITH MEN, DELIGHTS TO BE HEARKENED UNTO WITH REVERENCE AND FEAR.
IV. GOD, IN REPRESENTING HIS MAJESTY TO MEN, SO DEALS WITH THEM THAT HE MAY HUMBLE BUT NOT CONFOUND THEM.
1. In dispensing His Word by the ministry of men (and not of angels, whose presence might affright us), and that, too, in such a manner, that whereas it is in itself like a hammer (Jer 23:29), mighty inoperation through God, sharper than any two-edged sword (2Co 10:5), able, if it were set on by the strength of His hand, to break the heart in pieces, yet is so tempered in the dispensation thereof, by men like unto ourselves, and therefore sensible by experience of human infirmities, that it only pricks the heart (Act 2:27), but cuts it not in pieces.
2. In the terrors of conscience, which being in themselves unsupportable Pro 18:14), yet are so moderated unto us, that though we be perplexed, we are not in despair (2Co 4:8), burned but yet not consumed, like Moses bush (Exo 2:2), walking safely in the flames of fire with the three children (Dan 3:25).
3. In afflictions, which God lays on us in such a measure proportioned to our strength (1Co 10:13) that they only purge us, but do not destroy us (Isa 27:8-9).
V. GOD MANY TIMES CALLS MEN TO ACCOUNT, AND PROCEEDS IN JUDGMENT AGAINST THEM IN THE MIDST OF THEIR DELIGHTS.
VI. IT IS VERY NEEDFUL TO OBSERVE A FIT SEASON IN DEALING WITH OFFENDERS AFTER THEY HAVE SINNED. VII. THE PRESENCE OF GOD IS TERRIBLE TO A SINNER.
1. Behold, then, the miserable condition into which sin hath brought us, which hath changed our greatest desire (Psa 42:2), and joy (16:11), and content (17:15), into the greatest terror, especially unto the wicked, who neither can fly from Gods presence (139:7) nor endure His revenging hand.
2. Behold the comfort of a good conscience, wherein we may behold the face of God with comfort and confidence (1Jn 3:21); but not in ourselves, but in the name of Jesus Christ, who hath by His mediation established with us a covenant of peace between God and us (Rom 5:1) and purchased unto us access with boldness to the throne of grace Heb 4:16), so that we can not only rejoice at present in Gods presence with us in His ordinances, but withal love and long for His appearance, when He shall come in His glory (2Ti 4:8; Rev 22:20).
VIII. WHEN MEN ARE ONCE FALLEN AWAY FROM GOD, THEY ARE LEFT TO MISERABLE AND UNPROFITABLE SHIFTS.
1. It cannot be otherwise when men are once gone away from God, in whom only is true comfort and safety, and His name a strong tower, which they that run unto are safe, and from whom is the efficacy of all means, which without Him can do neither good nor evil.
2. God, in His just judgment, when men honour Him not as God, deprives them of that wisdom.
IX. MEN ARE NATURALLY APT TO FLY FROM THE MEANS OF THEIR OWN GOOD. The reason is–
1. Mens ignorance of spiritual things, wherein their true good consists.
2. The wisdom of the flesh being enmity against God: as many as are of the flesh must needs hate Him, and therefore cannot submit unto Him.
3. The ways of attaining true good are by denial of ones self and all the lusts of the flesh, which is impossible for any man to do, remaining in his natural condition.
X. THE TERRORS OF GOD SHALL FIRST OR LAST SHAKE THE HEARTS OF ALL THOSE THAT DO MOST SLIGHT HIS JUDGMENTS. Indeed, unless God should in this manner deal with the wicked of the world, He should–
1. Suffer His honour to be trampled under foot, and His authority and power despised.
2. Harden the hearts of wicked men in mischief (Ecc 8:11).
3. There is no fitter judgment, nor more proportionable to the sin, than to punish security and contempt with fear and terror.
XI. A GUILTY CONSCIENCE IS FILLED WITH TERRORS UPON EVERY OCCASION.
XII. WHATSOEVER WE TRULY FEAR WE CANNOT BUT ENDEAVOUR TO FLY FROM AND AVOID.
XIII. THERE IS A WONDERFUL PRONENESS IN THE HEARTS OF MEN TO CONCEIVE OF GOD AS THEY DO OF A MORTAL MAN. (J. White, M. A.)
Gods call to Adam
Our text suggests–
I. MANS DEPARTURE FROM GOD. Adam was in a state of–
1. Alienation from God.
2. Fear of Him.
3. Delusion about Him.
4. Danger.
II. GODS CONCERN ABOUT MANS DEPARTURE. God is concerned about mans departure from Him, because it involves–
1. Evil; and He is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity.
2. Suffering; and He is love.
III. GODS PERSONAL DEALING WITH THE WANDERER. (H. J. Martyn.)
The garden of the Lord concealing the Lord of the garden
The garden of the Lord concealed from Adam and Eve the Lord of the garden. God did not turn Adam out of paradise till Adam had turned God out. It is a long lesson to learn to be able to keep the garden of the Lord, and the Lord of the garden both. Adams felicities were of an innocent nature, to be sure. There is no blessing so blessed that the unilluminated side of it will not fall off and darken down into a curse. All the planets that dance even about the sun are black on their off side. The better a thing is, the more harm it is capable of doing. The very results yielded by Christianity, in the shape of respectability, and wealth, and power, and culture, and elegant refinements, come in to obscure the root itself out from which they are sprung. It is like a tree shaded and hindered by its own verdure. It is like the sun waking up the mists in the morning; its beams, like so many nimble fingers, weaving a veil to hang across the face of the sun, till it defeats its brightness by its own shining. We become indifferent to the cause in our engrossment with its effects, and the old fact becomes true again, that the garden of the Lord conceals from us the Lord of the garden.
1. One of the trees behind which the face of the Lord becomes hidden from us is the tree of knowledge. We shall mention only two or three of these briefly; but there is propriety in mentioning that first. It is the first historic instance wherein a good thing demonstrated its capacity for mischief. The tree was of Gods planting, to be sure, and knowledge is no doubt good; but from the first the devil has been a learned devil, and has posed as the patron of erudition. That knowledge puffeth up was known by Satan before it was stated by Paul. Consciousness of knowledge is more stultifying than ignorance, and is essentially atheistic; atheistic in this sense: that it converts present cognitions into a barrier that blocks the entrance of the heavenly light and thwarts the Holy Ghost. The tree grew in Gods garden; so our schools have been planted and fostered by the Christian Church. Still, the multitudinousness of books, ideas, theories, and philosophies, out into which the schools have blossomed, tends to work that intellectual complacency, and that conceit of knowledge, which blurs every heavenly vision, discredits the wisdom that is from above, and routs the Redeemer. Not many wise men after the flesh are called. One single electric light out here on Madison Square extinguishes the stars, and the shining of the low-lying moon snuffs out all the constellations of the firmament. The garden of the Lord grows up at length into such prodigality of leaf and flower as to conceal the Lord of the garden.
2. Another tree behind which the face of the Lord becomes hidden from us is that of affluence. The tree of wealth, verily, like the tree of knowledge, has its best rooting in the soil of paradise. We should no sooner think of speaking a disparaging word of money than we should of knowledge. But as knowledge trails behind it its shadow (as we have seen), so money is regularly attended by its shadow. Money is just as holy a thing in one way as wisdom is in another. But it makes not the slightest difference how holy a thing is, if, like Adam, the Lord is on one side of it and you are on the other. And the more this consciousness of money is developed, the more truly the man becomes encased in a little world that is all his own, and the more impervious to any influences that bear upon him from without. The verdure becomes so thick that the sky gets rubbed out, and the tree so broad and massive that the Lord God shrinks into invisibility behind it.
3. I mention only one other tree in Gods garden, and that is the tree of respectability. More evidently, perhaps, than either of the others, it is the outcome of heavenly soil. The devil of decency is more incorrigible than the devil of dirt. (C. H. Parkhurst, D. D.)
No hiding from God
It was said of the Roman empire under the Caesars that the whole world was only one great prison for Caesar, for if any man offended the emperor it was impossible for him to escape. If he crossed the Alps, could not Caesar find him out in Gaul? If he sought to hide himself in the Indies, even the swarthy monarchs there knew the power of the Roman arms, so that they could give no shelter to a man who had incurred imperial vengeance. And yet, perhaps, a fugitive from Rome might have prolonged his miserable life by hiding in the dens and caves of the earth. But, O sinner, there is no hiding from God. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Sinner shuns God
A burglar, not long ago, rifled an unoccupied dwelling by the seaside. He ransacked the rooms, and heaped his plunder in the parlour. There were evidences that here he sat down to rest. On a bracket in the corner stood a marble bust of Guidos Ecce Homo–Christ crowned with thorns. The guilty man had taken it in his hands and examined it. It bore the marks of his fingers; but he replaced it with its face turned to the wall, as if he would not have even the sightless eyes of the marble Saviour look upon his deeds of infamy. So the first act of the first sinner was to hide himself at the sound of Gods voice. (Professor Phelps.)
A bad conscience embitters comforts
There is no friend so good as a good conscience. There is no foe so ill as a bad conscience. It makes us either kings or slaves. A man that hath a good conscience, it raiseth his heart in a princely manner above all things in the world. A man that hath a bad conscience, though he be a monarch, it makes him a slave. A bad conscience embitters all things in the world to him, though they be never so comfortable in themselves. What is so comfortable as the presence of God? What is so comfortable as the light? Yet a bad conscience, that will not be ruled, it hates the light, and hates the presence of God, as we see Adam, when he had sinned, he fled from God (Gen 3:8). A bad conscience cannot joy in the midst of joy. It is like a gouty foot, or a gouty toe, covered with a velvet shoe. Alas! what doth ease it? What doth glorious apparel ease the diseased body? Nothing at all. The ill is within. There the arrow sticks. (R. Sibbes.)
The sinner afraid of God
I once met a little boy in Wales, crying bitterly at his fathers door, afraid to go in. I asked him what was the matter. He told me that his mother had sent him out clean in the morning, but that he had got into the water, and made his clothes dirty. So he feared to go in, because his father would punish him. We have soiled our characters by sin, and therefore is it that we fear death–dread the meeting with our Father. (Thomas Jones.)
An ill conscience
An ill conscience is no comfortable companion to carry with thee. An ill conscience is like a thorn in the flesh. A thorn in the hedge may scratch you as you pass by it, but a thorn in the flesh rankles with you wherever you go; and the conscience, the ill conscience, the conscience that is ill at ease, it makes you ill at ease. You cannot have peace so long as you have an evil conscience, so long as there is that continual monition flashing across your mind: Judgment cometh, death cometh–am I ready? Many a time, when you go to your worldly scenes of pleasure, this conscience, like the finger writing on the wall of the palace of the king of Babylon, alarms and frightens you. You tell nobody about it. Strange thoughts strike across your mind. You have no rest. Can a man rest on a pillow of thorns? Can a man rest with the heartache? Can a man rest with his soul disturbed with the horrors of guilt? I tell thee there is no rest to thee till thou comest to Christ. He alone can calm a conscience. (S. Coley.)
A troubled conscience
As the stag which the huntsman has hit flies through bush and brake, over stock and stone, thereby exhausting his strength, but not expelling the deadly bullet from his body, so does experience show that they who have troubled consciences run from place to place, but carry with them wherever they go their dangerous wounds. (Gotthold.)
The voice of God
The voice of God was heard, it seems, before anything was seen; and as He appears to have acted towards man in His usual way, and as though He knew of nothing that had taken place till He had it from his own mouth, we may consider this as the voice of kindness, such, whatever it was, as he had used to hear beforetime, and on the first sound of which he and his companion had been used to draw near, as sheep at the voice of the shepherd, or as children at the voice of a father. The voice of one whom we love conveys life to our hearts; but, alas, it is not so now! Not only does conscious guilt make them afraid, but contrariety of heart to a holy God renders them averse to drawing near to Him. The kindest language to one who is become an enemy will work in a wrong way. Let favour be shewed to the wicked, yet will he not learn righteousness: in the land of uprightness will he deal unjustly, and will not behold the majesty of the Lord. Instead of coming at His call as usual, they hide themselves from His presence among the trees of the garden. Great is the cowardice which attaches to guilt. It flies from God, and from all approaches to Him in prayer or praise; yea, from the very thoughts of Him, and of death and judgment when they must appear before Him. But wherefore flee to the trees of the garden? Can they screen them from the eyes of Him with whom they have to do? Alas, they could not hide themselves and their nakedness from their own eyes; how, then, should they elude discovery before an omniscient God! (Gotthold.)
Suppose (what is not to be supposed) that they could have run from God, yet this would not do, unless they could have run from themselves too, for the wounded deer, whither ever he runs, carries with him the fatal arrow sticking fast in his sides. The guilt of their souls and the terror of their consciences went along with them, whither ever they went. So would only have been like the angled and entangled fish with the hook of the fisherman, that may indeed swim away all the length of the line, but the hook in her mouth hales her back again; so God summons in sinful man: Adam, where art thou? (Gen 3:9). (C. Ness.)
The cool of the day
Evening
I. THE PRIVILEGES OF EVENING.
1. Evening has calmness.
2. Evening has leisure.
3. Evening is social.
II. THE DUTIES OF EVENING.
1. It is a season for review.
2. It is a season for settlement.
3. It is a season for preparation.
III. THE TEACHING OF EVENING. A type of the close of life. Night is death, and the morrow the day which will break beyond the grave. (Homilist.)
God appearing, in the wind
It was in the wind of the day that Jehovah was heard. Meaning thereby, either at the time that the breeze was blowing, or in the breeze; or, more probably, both. It is generally in connection with the wind, or whirlwind, that Jehovah is said to appear Eze 1:4). In 2Sa 22:11 we read, He was seen upon the wings of the wind; in Psa 18:10 we read, He did fly upon the wings of the wind; in Psa 104:3 we read, Who walketh upon the wings of the wind. In these passages we note the difference of expression, yet the identity of the general idea–He was seen upon the wind; He did fly upon the wind; He did walk upon the wind; which last is the very expression in the passage before us. (H. Bonar, D. D.)
Evening the time for reflection
The cool of the day, which to God was the season for visiting His creatures, may, as it respects man, denote a season of reflection. We may sin in the daytime; but God will call us to account at night. Many a one has done that in the heat and bustle of the day which has afforded bitter reflection in the cool of the evening; and such in many instances has proved the evening of life. (A. Fuller.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 8. The voice of the Lord] The voice is properly used here, for as God is an infinite Spirit, and cannot be confined to any form, so he can have no personal appearance. It is very likely that God used to converse with them in the garden, and that the usual time was the decline of the day, leruach haiyom, in the evening breeze; and probably this was the time that our first parents employed in the more solemn acts of their religious worship, at which God was ever present. The time for this solemn worship is again come, and God is in his place; but Adam and Eve have sinned, and therefore, instead of being found in the place of worship, are hidden among the trees! Reader, how often has this been thy case!
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
The voice of the Lord God, mentioned Gen 3:9, or rather the sound, as the word voice is often taken in Scripture, as Psa 93:3; Rev 10:3; 19:6. Either God the Father, or rather God the Son, appeared in the shape of a man, as afterwards he frequently did, to give a foretaste of his incarnation. About evening, the time when men use to walk abroad to recreate themselves, when there was a cool and refreshing wind, whereby also the voice of the Lord was more speedily and effectually conveyed to Adam and his wife.
Adam and his wife hid themselves: being sensible of Gods approach, and filled with shame and conscience of their own guilt, and dread of judgment, instead of flying to God for mercy, they foolishly attempted to run away from him, whom it was impossible to avoid.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
8. they heard the voice of the LordGod walking in the gardenThe divine Being appeared in the samemanner as formerlyuttering the well-known tones of kindness,walking in some visible form (not running hastily, as one impelled bythe influence of angry feelings). How beautifully expressive arethese words of the familiar and condescending manner in which He hadhitherto held intercourse with the first pair.
in the cool of thedayliterally, “the breeze of the day,” the evening.
hid themselves amongst thetrees of the gardenShame, remorse, feara sense ofguiltfeelings to which they had hitherto been strangers disorderedtheir minds and led them to shun Him whose approach they used towelcome. How foolish to think of eluding His notice (Ps139:1-12).
Ge3:10-13. THEEXAMINATION.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
And they heard the voice of the Lord God,…. Which they had heard before, and knew, though perhaps now in another tone, and very terrible, which before was mild and gentle, pleasant and delightful: some by it understand a clap of thunder, sometimes called the voice of the Lord, Ps 29:3 and the rather because mention is made afterwards of a wind; but rather the voice of the Son of God, the eternal Word, is here meant, who appeared in an human form, as a pledge of his future incarnation, and that not only as a Judge, to arraign, examine, and condemn the parties concerned in this act of disobedience to God, but as a Saviour of men, to whom, as such, he made himself known, as the event shows, and therefore they had no reason to entertain such terrible apprehensions of him, as to flee from him; and so the Targums of Onkelos and Jonathan paraphrase it, “the voice of the Word of the Lord God”, the essential Word of God then with him, and since made flesh, and dwelt among men as the Saviour of them; and to him agrees what follows:
walking in the garden in the cool of the day; or “at the wind of the day” q; of “that day” in which man was created and fell, as some conclude from hence; in the evening, at sun setting; for very often when the sun sets a wind rises, at least a gentle breeze; and this might bring the sound of the voice, and of the steps of this glorious Person, the sooner to the ears of Adam and his wife, which gave them notice of his near approach, and caused them to hasten their flight: some render it emphatically, “at the wind of that day” r; as if it was a violent wind which arose at that time, as a sign and testimony of the indignation of God, as the sound of a violent wind was a testimony of the coming of the Spirit of God, Ac 2:2
and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God, amongst the trees of the garden; conscious of their guilt, and vainly imagining they could flee from his presence, which is everywhere, and hide themselves from his sight, before whom every creature is manifest, be it where it will; and very foolishly fancying, that the thick trees and bushes in the garden would be a screen and shelter for them: and sad shifts do wretched mortals make to secure themselves from the wrath of God, who are ignorant of the justifying righteousness and atoning sacrifice of the Son of God: it is in the singular number in the original text, “in the midst of the tree of the garden” s; which some understand of the fig tree, whose leaves they covered themselves with, and under the shade of which they hid themselves; and particularly of the Indian fig tree, which is so large, that it is said that fifty horsemen may shade themselves at noon day under it; nay, some say four hundred t; but tree may be put for trees, the singular for the plural.
q “ad ventum diei”, Munster, Vatablus, Cartwright, Schmidt. r “Ad ventum illius diei”, Junius & Tremellius, Piscator, Picherellus. s “intra arborem”, Fagius. t Strabo. Geograph. l. 15. p. 477.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
Verses 8-13:
Jehovah God was accustomed to commune with man in the “cool of the day” in Eden. Following man’s partaking of the forbidden fruit, God came as was His custom to walk with man. This time, something was different. Adam was not to be found. He had heard God’s voice as he walked in the Garden, and hid himself. This was not from any sense of humility or reverence: it was from a sense of his guilt.
God called to Adam, “Where art thou?” God was not unaware of Adam’s hiding place. This call was to bring Adam to confession of his disobedience. Adam’s responses to God’s questions reflect man’s tendency to shift the blame for his sin to something or someone else. At first Adam tried to explain his hiding from God as due to his insufficient clothing. Adam’s awareness of the effects of his sin was greater than his sense of guilt because he had sinned. God’s response was to ask two other questions, both designed to awaken a sense of guilt and to cause him to admit that what he had done was in direct violation of the Divine command.
Adam then sought to shift the blame to God Himself, by saying “The woman whom thou gavest to be with me.” was responsible for his deed. Then in a mild, apologetic admission he added, “I did eat.” This indicates no sense of real shame, no personal admission of guilt, but an attempt to cover his sin.
The woman followed Adam’s example, in trying to shift the blame to the serpent, rather than admitting her own personal guilt.
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
8. And they heard the voice of the Lord God. As soon as the voice of God sounds, Adam and Eve perceive that the leaves by which they thought themselves well protected are of no avail. Moses here relates nothing which does not remain in human nature, and may be clearly discerned at the present day. The difference between good and evil is engraven on the hearts of all, as Paul teaches, (Rom 2:15😉 but all bury the disgrace of their vices under flimsy leaves till God, by his voice, strikes inwardly their consciences. Hence, after God had shaken them out of their torpor, their alarmed consciences compelled them to hear his voice. Moreover, what Jerome translates, ‘at the breeze after midday,’ (180) is, in the Hebrew, ‘at the wind of the day;’ (181) the Greeks, omitting the word ‘wind,’ have put ‘at the evening.’ (182) Thus the opinion has prevailed, that Adam, having sinned about noon, was called to judgment about sunset. But I rather incline to a different conjecture, namely, that being covered with their garment, they passed the night in silence and quiet, the darkness aiding their hypocrisy; then, about sunrise, being again thoroughly awakened, they recollected themselves. We know that at the rising of the sun the air is naturally excited; together, then, with this gentle breeze, God appeared; but Moses would improperly have called the evening air that of the day. Others take the word as describing the southern part or region; and certainly רוח ( ruach) sometimes among the Hebrews signifies one or another region of the world. (183) Others think that the time is here specified as one least exposed to terrors, for in the clear light there is the greater security; and thus, they conceive, is fulfilled what the Scripture declares that they who have accusing consciences are always anxious and disquieted, even without any danger. To this point they refer what is added respecting the wind, as if Adam was terrified at the sound of a falling leaf. But what I have advanced is more true and simple, that what was hid under the darkness of the night was detected at the rising of the sun. Yet I do not doubt that some notable symbol of the presence of God was in that gentle breeze; for although (as I have lately said) the rising sun is wont daily to stir up some breath of air, this is not opposed to the supposition that God gave some extraordinary sign of his approach, to arouse the consciences of Adam and his wife. For, since he is in himself incomprehensible, he assumes, when he wishes to manifest himself to men, those marks by which he may be known. David calls the winds the messengers of God, on the wings of which he rides, or rather flies, with incredible velocity. (Psa 104:3.) But, as often as he sees good, he uses the winds, as well as other created things, beyond the order of nature, according to his own will. Therefore, Moses, in here mentioning the wind, intimates (according to my judgment) that some unwonted and remarkable symbol of the Divine presence was put forth which should vehemently affect the minds of our first parents. This resource, namely, that of fleeing from God’s presence, was nothing better than the former; since God, with his voice alone, soon brings back the fugitives. It is. written,
‘
Whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I traverse the sea, if I take wings and ascend above the clouds, if I descend into the profound abyss, thou, Lord, wilt be everywhere,’ (Psa 139:7.)
This we all confess to be true; yet we do not, in the meantime, cease to snatch at vain subterfuges; and we fancy that shadows of any kind will prove a most excellent defense. Nor is it to be here omitted, that he, who had found a few leaves to be unavailing, fled to whole trees; for so we are accustomed, when shut out from frivolous cavils, to frame new excuses, which may hide us as under a denser shade. When Moses says that Adam and his wife hid themselves ‘in the midst of the tree (184) of Paradise,’ I understand that the singular member is put for the plural; as if he had said, among the trees.
(180) “ Ad auram post meridiem.” Vulgate.
(181) לרוח היום, ( leruach hayom).
(182) Τὸ δειλινόν. Sept.
(183) This criticism, it is presumed, cannot be maintained. It seems to derive no countenance whatever but from some passages of Scripture, which speak of God as scattering his people to the four winds of heaven. (See Jer 49:32, and Jer 52:23.) The common interpretation given in our version, “the cool of the day,” as applied to evening, is supported by the highest authorities, such as Cocceius, Schindler, Gesenius, and Lee. Le Clerc, however, adopts the same interpretation as Calvin. — Ed.
(184) בתיך עץ הגו. ( Betok aitz haggan.) “ In medio ligni Paradisi.” — Vulgate. Εν μέσω του ξύλου του παραδείσου — Sept. Where the singular number is used in each case. It may be translated, “in the midst of the wood of Paradise;” and wood may be, as in English, used collectively for a number of trees, a forest, or a thicket. Calvin, in his version, translates the clause, “ in medio arborum horti.”
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.Gen. 3:8-12
THE SAD EFFECTS OF YIELDING TO TEMPTATION
I. That yielding to temptation is generally followed by a sad consciousness of physical destitution. And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig-leaves together and made themselves aprons (Gen. 3:7). Many a man has thought to enrich himself by yielding to the temptations of Satan, he has expected not merely to gain knowledge, but also social influence, commercial importance, and political advancement; but when the seduction has been accomplished, he has found himself poor, and blind, and naked. The best way to be rich is to be honest and good. The truest way to be socially influential is to be morally upright. The truest joys come to the purest souls. The great tendency of sin is to make men physically destitute, destitute of all that constitutes comfort. A sinner is exposed without any protecting garment to all the bitter experiences of life. Sin gives men many more wants than otherwise they would have. Upright souls have the fewest wants, and are the most independent of the external provisions of life. Most of the so-called civilization of nations is the outcome of sin, it is the apron of leaves to hide their nakedness.
II. That a yielding to temptation is generally followed by a grievous wandering from God. And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves. Adam and Eve had previously to this time held glad communion with God their Maker, but now they flee from Him. Sin makes men flee from the Infinite Being, and forsake the source of their truest spiritual joy. It introduces an element of fear into the soul. It makes men foolish in their attempts to hide from God. A forest of trees cannot conceal the guilty from the eye of heaven.
1. After yielding to temptation men often wander from God by neglecting prayer. When the fruit of the forbidden tree has been eaten men often begin to neglect their secret devotions. They try to banish all thought of God from their minds. The soul that holds converse with Satan, cannot long hold communion with God.
2. After yielding to temptation men often wander from God by neglecting His Word. When men have eaten the fruit of the forbidden tree they no longer like to read the Book which contains and makes known the restrictions they have violated. They are out of sympathy with the Book and its Author.
3. After yielding to temptation men often wander from God by increasing profanity of life. As the man first looked at the fruit of the forbidden tree, then touched it, then eat it; so now sin is a continued habit with him. He knows no shame. He feels no guilt. He responds not to the voice of God. We know not to what the first sin may lead.
III. That a yielding to temptation is generally followed by self vindication. And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree and I did eat.
1. We endeavour to vindicate ourselves by blaming others. The husband tries to vindicate himself by blaming his wife; the sister by blaming her brother; the employer by blaming his partner; the clerk by blaming his companion; and so it seems to be the way of life for one man to excuse himself by rendering others culpable.
(1). This course of conduct is ungrateful. Because all the relationships of life, whether domestic or commercial, are designed for our happiness. God gave Eve to Adam that she might be his companion and helpmeet. What could be more ungrateful than for man to charge his sin upon the woman who was designed to be a blessing to him, and in effect upon God?
(2). This course of conduct is ungenerous. It is ungenerous to our relations. True they are culpable for trying to lead us away, but we are more so by yielding ourselves to be influenced by them counter to the command of God. We knew the right, and are not justified in blaming them because we did the wrong.
(3). This course of conduct is unavailing. It will not excuse the sinner in the sight of God. It will not mitigate his guilt. It will not avert his punishment. It will not amend his doom. Let men honourably acknowledge the guilt of their own sin, and not strive to put it on the weaker party.
2. We endeavour to vindicate ourselves by blaming our circumstances. We indicate that our circumstances were unfavourable to our moral resistance. That Satan deceived us. That we were taken by surprise. That we were morally weak at the time. Man has Divine aid to enable him to overcome his circumstances however perplexing they may be.
IV. That in yielding to temptation we never realize the alluring promises of the devil.
1. Satan promised that Adam and Eve should become wise, whereas they became naked.
2. Satan promised that Adam and Eve should become gods, whereas they fled from God.
THE DAWN OF GUILT. Gen. 3:7-13
Here is the dawn of a new era in the history of humanity. The eye of a guilty conscience is now opened for the first time, and God and the universe appeared in new and terrible forms. There are three things in this passage which have ever characterised this era of guilt.
I. A conscious loss of rectitude. They were naked. It is moral nuditynudity of soulof which they are conscious. The sinful soul is represented as naked (Rev. 3:17). Righteousness is spoken of as a garment (Isa. 61:3). The redeemed are clothed with white raiment. There are two things concerning the loss of rectitude worthy of notice.
1. They deeply felt it. Some are destitute of moral righteousness, and do not feel it.
2. They sought to conceal it. Men seek to hide their sinsin religious professions, ceremonies, and the display of outward morality.
II. An alarming dread of God. They endeavour, like Jonah, to flee from the presence of the Lord.
1. This was unnatural. The soul was made to live in close communion with God. All its aspirations and faculties show this.
2. This was irrational. There is no way of fleeing from omnipresence. Sin blinds the reason of men.
3. This was fruitless. God found Adam out. Gods voice will reach the sinner into whatever depths of solitude he may pass.
III. A miserable subterfuge for sin. The woman, &c. And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, &c. What prevarication you have here! Each transferred the sinful act to the wrong cause. It is the essential characteristic of moral mind that it is the cause of its own actions. Each must have felt that the act was the act of self.(Homilist.)
SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON THE VERSES
Gen. 3:8. The incidents narrated in this chapter, though inconceivably important, follow each other in rapid succession. Man is here brought before uscreatedholyfallencondemnedredeemed. The consequence is, that each sentence is unspeakably full of meaning.
I. The sense of guilt by which they were oppressed.
1. There were circumstances which aggravated their guiltthey knew GodHis fellowshipwere perfectly holyhappyknew the obligationsknew the consequences of life and death.
2. They felt their guilt aggravated by these circumstances. Their consciences were not hardened. Their present feelings and condition were a contrast with the past. In these circumstances they fled. They knew of no redemption, and could make no atonement.
II. The melancholy change of character which had resulted from their fall.
1. Our moral attainments are indicated by our views of Godprogressive. The pure in heart see God. Our first parents fell in their conceptions of Godomnipresence. Whither shall I go, &c. This ignorance of God increased in the world with the increase of sin, Rom. 1:21-32. This ignorance of God is still exemplified. The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God. He may worship outwardly; and there are gradations of the foolishsome shut God within religious ordinancessome exclude Him.
III. That they had lost their communion with God.
1. One barrier interposed was guilt.
2. Another barrier was moral pollution.(Outlines of Discourses by James Stewart.)
The voice of God pursueth sinners after guilt, sometimes inward and outward.
God hath His fit times to visit sinners.
Conscience hears and trembles at the voice of God.
Sin persuades souls as if it were possible to hide from God.
All carnal shifts will sin make to shun Gods sight; if leaves do not hide it, the trees must.
God who hath all the wrong when He is provoked by our sins, is the first that seeks to make peace with us:
1. He allures us by His mercies.
2. By the sweet persuasions of His Spirit.
3. By the ministry of the Gospel. God in representing His Majesty to men so deals with them that he may humble but not confound them. God many times calls men to account, and proceeds in judgment against them in the midst of their delights. A guilty conscience is filled with terror, on every occasion we have no better refuge than to turn from sin to God.(Trapp.)
Gen. 3:9. Satans lie only gave occasion for the display of the full truth in reference to God. Creation never could have brought out what God was. There was infinitely more in Him than power and wisdom. There was love, mercy, holiness, righteousness, goodness, tenderness, long suffering. Where could all these be displayed but in a world of sinners? God at the first, came down to create; and, then, when the serpent presumed to meddle with creation, God came down to save. This is brought out in the first words uttered by the Lord God after mans fall, And the Lord God called unto Adam, and said unto him, where art thou? This question proved two things. It proved that man was lost, and that God had come to seek. It proved mans sin, and Gods grace. Where art thou? Amazing faithfulness! Amazing grace! Faithfulness, to disclose, in the very question itself, the truth as to mans condition in grace, to bring out, in the very fact of Gods asking such a question, the truth as to His character and attitude, in reference to fallen man. Man was lost; but God had come down to look for himto bring him out of his hiding-place, behind the trees of the garden, in order that, in the happy confidence of faith, he might find a hiding-place in Himself. This was grace. But who can utter all that is wrapped up in the idea of Gods being a seeker? God seeking a sinner? What could the Blessed One have seen in man, to lead him to seek for him. Just what the shepherd saw in the lost sheep; or what the woman saw in the lost piece of silver; or what the father saw in the lost son. The sinner is valuable to God; but why he should be so, eternity alone will unfold. (Notes on Genesis, C.H.M.)
The way to get our hearts affected with what we hear, is to apprehend ourselves to be spoken unto in particular.
God loves a free and voluntary acknowledgment of sin from his children when they have sinned against him.
God is full of mildness and gentleness in his dealings with offenders, even in their greatest sins.
All who desire to get out of their misery, must seriously consider what was the means that brought them into it.
Jehovah may suffer sinners to abuse His goodness, but he will call them to judgment.
God is not ignorant of the hiding places of sinners.
THE WANDERER FROM GOD
I. Where is man?
1. Distant from God.
2. In terror of God.
3. In delusion about God.
4. In danger from God.
II. Gods concern for him.
1. His condition involves evilGod is holy.
2. His condition involves sufferingGod is love.
III. Gods dealings with him.
1. In the aggregateAdam, the genus.
2. Personally. Where art thou? [Pulpit Germs, by Wythe].
Gen. 3:10. All men are apt to colour and conceal all that they can even from God Himself.
One sin commonly draws on another:
1. The first sin weakens the heart.
2. Sins are usually fastened to each other.
3. God punishes one sin with another.
Gods word is terrible to a guilty conscience.
It is a hard matter to get men to confess any more of their guilt than is self-evident.
Sinners pretend their fear rather than their guilt to drive them from God.
Sinners pretend their punishment rather than their crime to cause them to hide.
How hard it is to bring a soul to the true acknowledgment of sin.
Gen. 3:11. The more sinners hide the more God sifteth them.
It is worth knowing by every man what discovers sin and shame. God therefore puts the question to Adam, to turn him to his own conscience, which told all God will bring sinners to a sense of sin before he leaves them, Hast thou eaten?:
1. Gods command aggravates sin.
2. Gods small restriction aggravates sin.
3. Gods provision of mercy aggravates sin.
Mans frowardness cannot overcome Gods love and patience.
God can easily, without any evidence, convince men by themselves.
God accepts no concession till men see and acknowledge their sin.
Men must be dealt with in plain terms before they will be brought to acknowledge their sin.
A breach of Gods commandment is that which makes any act of ours a sin.
Gen. 3:12. When mens sins are so manifest that they cannot deny them, they will yet labour by excuses to extenuate them.
Men may easily by their own folly turn the means ordained by God for their good into snares for their destruction.
Sin is impudent to reply against Gods conviction.
Sinners convicted, and not converted, are shifting of guilt from themselves.
God beareth long with the prevarications of sinners.
It was offensive to God that the woman should draw the man to sin.
ILLUSTRATIONS
BY
REV. WM. ADAMSON
Prayer! Gen. 3:8. Had Adam and Eve but hearkened to the pleading voice of their King! Had they but cast themselves in contrition at the feet of their King! When we sin, let us fearbut not fiec. Let us denounce ourselvesbut not despair. Let us approach the throne of that King who alone can help us. The throne to which we are invited is a throne of grace, i.e., favour. It is the source of power; but it is gracious powermerciful powerpower to help in time of need. It is the highest pleasure of the King who sits upon this throne to dispense royal favour. Ancient kings could only be appointed on certain days; and then none dare come near on pain of death save those to whom the golden sceptre was extended. Our King sits upon the throne of grace day and night, and is always accessibleeven to rebels against His government. Therefore let us come boldlynot run away to hidethat we may obtain mercy for the past rebellion, and grace to help us whenever again tempted to prefer Satans hollow proffers to Gods heavenly promises.
Words cannot tell what blest relief
Here from my every want I find,
What strength for warfarebalm for grief;
What peace of mind.Elliott.
The First Step! Gen. 3:9. Go, ask the culprit at the bar, or the felon in the prison, or the murderer awaiting the adjustment of the noose of the gallows-rope around his neck, to trace for you his wicked course of life; and, prominent in the black record, will stand out the story of his first act of disobedience to parents, of his first Sabbath-breaking, or of his first glass. Like links of a continuous chain, each act of iniquity in a wicked life connects the last and vilest with the first false step of guilt. Beware of the beginnings of evil. They are the most dangerous because seemingly so harmless. How immense the evils which followed upon Eves first false step! A few years ago, says Myrtle, a little boy told his first falsehood. It was a little solitary thistle-seed, and no eye but that of God saw him plant it in the mellow soil of his heart. But it sprung upoh! how quickly! In a little time another and another seed dropped from it to the groundeach in turn bearing more seed and more thistles. And now his heart is overgrown with bad habits. It is as difficult for him to speak the truth as it is for a gardener to clear his land of the ugly thistle after it has gained a hold on the soil.
Let no man trust the first false step
Of guilt; it hangs upon a precipice
Whose steep descent in last perdition ends.
Self-knowledge! Gen. 3:9. They knew their condition. The degenerate plant has no consciousness of its own degradation; nor could it, when reduced to the character of a weed or wild flower, recognize in the fair and delicate garden-plant the type of its former self. The tamed and domesticated animal, remarks Caird, could not feel any sense of humiliation when confronted with its wild brother of the desertfierce, strong, and freeas if discerning in that spectacle the noble type from which itself had fallen. But reduce a man ever so low, you cannot obliterate in his inner nature the consciousness of falling beneath himself. Low as Adam had sunk, there still remained, however dim and flickering, the latent consciousness and reminiscence of a nobler self, and so of the depths of degrading wickedness into which he had plunged himself.
Exiled from home he here doth sadly sing,
In spring each autumn, and in autumn spring:
Far from his nest he shivers on a wall
Where blows on him of rude misfortune fall.
Divine Vision! (Gen. 3:8). Adam forgot that God could see him anywhere. Dr. Nettleton used to tell a little anecdote, beautifully illustrating that the same truth which overwhelms the sinners heart with fear, may fill the renewed soul with joy. A mother instructing her little girl, about four years of age, succeeded by the aid of the Holy Spirit in fastening upon her mind this truth, Thou God seest me! She now felt that she had to do with that Being unto whose eyes all things are naked, and she shrank in terror. For days she was in deep distress; she wept and sobbed, and would not be comforted. God sees me, God sees me! was her constant wail. At length one day, after spending some time in prayer, she bounded into her mothers room, and with a heavenly smile lighting up her tears, exclaimed, Oh, mother, God sees me, God sees me! Her ecstacy was now as great as her anguish had been. For days her soul had groaned under the thought, God sees me; He sees my wicked heart, my sinful life, my hatred to Him and to His holy law; and the fear of a judgment to come would fill her soul with agony. But now a pardoning God had been revealed to her, and her soul exclaimed exultingly, God sees me, takes pity on me, will guide and guard me. No doubt Adam experienced this joy amid the briars and thorns of the wide, wide world (Gen. 3:23), which was denied him, and the vernal beauties and swimming fragrance of Eden, in the knowledge that he had
A Friend who will gather the outcasts,
And shelter the homeless poor;
A Friend who will feed the hungry
With bread from the heavenly store.
Concealment! (Gen. 3:9.) Adam hid himself; but not where God could not see him. God saw the fugitives. Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in His sight; but all things are naked and opened unto the eye of Him with whom we have to do. This verse is felt to be like a glance at the Heart-searchers eye if the conscience be quick, and the soul an object of interest. The most microscopic and the most mighty objects in creation are equally exposed to His scrutiny. Especially does He look mans heart through and through. Hast thou eaten? He examinesturns over all its foldsfollows it through all its windings, until a complete diagnosis is obtained. Thou hast eaten. God was a witness to it; so that the sinner in effect challenges the judgment of God:
For what can veil us from thy sight?
Distance dissolves before thy ray,
And darkness kindles into day.Peter.
Fuente: The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary Edited by Joseph S. Exell
(8) And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden.The matter-of-fact school of commentators understand by this that there was a thunderstorm, and the guilty pair hearing for the first time the uproar of nature, hid themselves in terror, and interpreted the mighty peals as meaning their condemnation. Really it is in admirable keeping with the whole narrative; and Jehovah appears here as the owner of the Paradise, and as taking in it His daily exercise; for the verb is in the reflexive conjugation, and means walking for pleasure. The time is the cool (literally, the wind) of the day, the hour in a hot climate when the evening breeze sets in, and men, rising from their noontide slumber, go forth for labour or recreation. In this description the primary lesson is that hitherto man had lived in close communication with God. His intellect was undeveloped; his mental powers still slumbered; but nevertheless there was a deep spiritual sympathy between him and his Maker. It is the nobler side of Adams relationship to God before the fall.
Hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God.This does not imply a visible appearance, for the whole narrative is anthropomorphic. The Fathers, however, saw in these descriptions the proof of a previous incarnation of the Divine Son (see Note on Gen. 12:7). Next, we find in their conduct an attempt to escape from the further result of sin. The first result was shame, from which man endeavoured to free himself by covering his person; the second was fear, and this man would cure by departing still farther from God. But the voice of Jehovah reaches him, and with rebuke and punishment gives also healing and hope.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
8. Heard the voice of the Lord Some interpreters understand this voice to have been the sound or noise made by the approach of Jehovah . Comp . “sound of a going” in 2Sa 5:24. But the two following verses imply that it was the voice of Jehovah calling, rather than the noise of his movement, that is here intended . Both ideas, however, may be combined, for the anthropomorphism here is a notable feature of the description. The voice that called was the well-known voice of One who had spoken to them before, and who now came walking to and fro in the garden as aforetime, but his voice now inspired fear rather than delight.
In the cool of the day Literally, at the wind of the day. That is, at the time of the evening breeze. It was the closing day of Adam’s Eden life, and, as Delitzsch has observed, that hour is adapted to weaken the dissipating impressions and excitements of the day, and beget a stillness in the soul. Then arise in man’s heart the sentiments of sadness and loneliness, of longing, and of the love of home. “Thus with our first parents: when evening comes, the first intoxication of the Satanic delusion subsides, stillness reigns within; they feel themselves isolated from the communion of God, parted from their original home, while the darkness, as it comes rushing in upon them, makes them feel that their inner light has gone out.”
Hid themselves This action was on their part a confession of conscious guilt and shame.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Gen 3:8 a
‘And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze (ruach – literally “‘in the wind of the day”)’.
It may well be that they had communed with God each evening, and that the sound in the trees had indicated to them His presence. It would have brought to them the thrill and joy of worship. But now the overtones are different. Now the sound is to them the approach of a vengeful God which is made known to them by the sound of the wind in the trees, and the would be filled with terror. Compare 2Sa 5:24 where God is known by ‘the sound of marching in the tops of the balsam trees’. (See also 2Sa 22:11, ‘he was seen upon the wings of the wind’; Job 38:1, ‘the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind’; Psa 18:10, ‘he came swiftly on the wings of the wind’; also Psa 104:3; Eze 1:4; Joh 3:8; Act 2:2). This is no stroll. To their guilty consciences it is the sound of the approach of God to tackle them over what they have done.
Gen 3:8 b
‘And the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.’
Like the scrabbling together of coverings from fig leaves, this was another desperate and foolish attempt to hide from the all-seeing eyes of God. They were almost frozen with fear. They sought out the darkest place they could find among the trees of the garden, the trees which God had provided as a blessing and which had now become their only hope of hiding from Him. Possibly they hoped that if they could not be seen God would pass them by. How foolish we are when we think that we can hide anything from God or avoid facing up to Him.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
EXPOSITION
Gen 3:8
And they heard the voice of the Lord God. Either
(1) the noise of his footsteps (cf. Le Gen 26:33; Num 16:34; 2Sa 5:24; Knobel, Delitzsch, Keil, Kalisch, Macdonald); or
(2) the thunder that accompanied his approach (cf. Exo 9:23; Job 37:4, Job 37:5; Psa 29:3, Psa 29:9; Murphy, Bush); or
(3) the sound of his voice (Calvin, Lange, Wordsworth); or
(4) probably all four. Walking in the garden. If the voice, then increasing in intensity (cf. Exo 19:19; Bush); if Jehovah, which is better, then “wandering or walking about in a circle” within the garden bounds (Macdonald). In the cool (literally, the wind) of the day. The morning breeze (Calvin); the evening breeze (Kalisch, Macdonald); (LXX.); auram post meridiem (Vulgate); cf. hom ha’ yom, “the heat of the day” (Gen 18:1). And Adam and his wife hid themselves. Not in humility, as unworthy to come into God’s presence (Irenaeus); or in amazement, as not knowing which way to turn; or through modesty, (Knobel Bohlen); but from a sense of guilt. From the presence of the Lord. From which it is apparent they expected a Visible manifestation.
Gen 3:9, Gen 3:10
And the Lord God called unto Adam. Adam’s absence was a clear proof that something was wrong. Hitherto he had always welcomed the Divine approach. And said unto him, Where art thou? Not as if ignorant of Adam’s hiding-place, but to bring him to confession (cf. Gen 4:9). And I was afraid, because I was naked. Attributing his fear to the wrong causethe voice of God or his insufficient clothing; a sign of special obduracy (Calvin), which, however, admits of a psychological explanation, viz; that” his consciousness of the effects of sin was keener than his sense of the sin itself” (Keil), “although all that he says is purely involuntary self-accusation” (Delitzsch), and “the first instance of that mingling and confusion of Bin and punishment which is the peculiar characteristic of our redemption-needing humanity” (Lange). And I hid myself.
Gen 3:11, Gen 3:12
And he said. “To reprove the sottishness of Adam” (Calvin); “to awaken in him a sense of sin” (Keil). Who told thee that thou wast naked? Delitzsch finds in an indication that a personal power was the prime cause of man’s disobedience; but, as Lange rightly observes, it is the occasion not of sin, but of the consciousness of nakedness that is here inquired after. Hast thou eaten of the tree (at once pointing Adam to the true cause of his nakedness, and intimating the Divine cognizance of his transgression) whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat? “Added to remove the pretext of ignorance” (Calvin), and also to aggravate the guilt of his offence, as having been done in direct violation of the Divine prohibition. The question was fitted to carry conviction to Adam’s conscience, and halt the instantaneous effect of eliciting a confession, though neither a frank one nor a generous. And the man said (beginning with apology and ending with confession, thus reversing the natural order, and practically rolling back the blame on God), The woman whom thou gavest to be with me (accusing the gift and the Giver in one), she gave me of the tree. Cf. with the cold and unfeeling terms in which Adam speaks of Eve the similar language in Gen 37:32; Luk 15:30; Joh 9:12. “Without natural affection” is one of the bitter fruits of sin (cf. Rom 1:31). Equally with the blasphemy, ingratitude, unkindness, and meanness of this excuse, its frivolity is apparent; as if, though Eve gave, that was any reason why Adam should have eaten. And I did eat. Reluctantly elicited, the confession of his sin is very mildly stated. “A cold expression, manifesting neither any grief nor shame at so foul an act, but rather a desire to cover his sin” (White).
Gen 3:13
And the Lord said unto the womanwithout noticing the excuses, but simply accepting the admission, and passing on, “following up the transgression, even to the rootnot the psychological merely, but the historical (Lange): What is this that thou hast done? Or, “Why hast thou done this?” (LXX; Vulgate, Luther, De Wette). “But the Hebrew phrase has more vehemence; it is the language of one who wonders as at something prodigious, and ought rather to be rendered, ‘ How hast thou done this?'” (Calvin). And the woman said (following the example of her guilty, husband, omitting any notice of her sin in tempting Adam, and transferring the blame of her own disobedience to the reptile), The serpent beguiled me. Literally, caused me to forget, hence beguiled, from , to forget a thing (Lam 3:17), or person; or, caused me to go astray, from (unused in Kal), kindred to , perhaps to err, to go astray (Gesenius, Furst); (LXX.), (2Co 11:3). And I did eat. “A forced confession, but no appearance of contrition. ‘It’s true I did eat, but it was not my fault'” (Hughes).
Gen 3:14
Confession having thus been made by both delinquents, and the arch-contriver of the whole mischief discovered, the Divine Judge proceeds to deliver sentence. And the Lord God said unto the serpent. Which he does not interrogate as he did the man and woman, “because
(1) in the animal itself there was no sense of sin, and
(2) to the devil he would hold out no hope of pardon” (Calvin); “because the trial has now reached the fountain-head of sin, the purely evil purpose (the demoniacal) having no deeper ground, and requiring no further investigation” (Lange). Because thou hast done this. I.e. beguiled the woman. The incidence of this curse has been explained as
1. The serpent only (Kalisch).
2. The devil only (Macdonald).
3. Partly on the serpent and partly on Satan (Calvin).
4. Wholly upon both (Murphy, Bush, Candlish).
The difficulties attending these different interpretations have thus been concisely expressed:
1. Quidam statuunt maledictioncm latam in serpentem solum, quia hic confertur cum aliis bestiis, non in diabolum, quid is antea maledictus erat.
2. Alii in diabolum solum, quid brutus serpens non poterat juste puniri.
3. Alii applicant Gen 3:14 ad serpentem, Gen 3:15 in diabolum. At vero tu et te idem sunt in utroque versu.
4. Alii existimant earn in utrumque latam” (Medus in ‘Poll Commentsr.,’ quoted by Lange). The fourth opinion seems most accordant with the language of the malediction. Thou art cursed. The cursing of the irrational creature should occasion no more difficulty than the cursing of the earth (Gen 3:17), or of the fig tree (Mat 11:21). Creatures can be cursed or blessed only in accordance with their natures. The reptile, therefore, being neither a moral nor responsible creature, could not be cursed in the sense of being made susceptible of misery. But it might be cursed in the sense of being deteriorated in its nature, and, as it were, consigned to a lower position in the scale of being. And as the Creator has a perfect right to assign to his creature the specific place it shall occupy, and function it shall subserve, in creation, the remanding of the reptile to an inferior position could not justly be construed into a violation of the principles of right, while it might serve to God’s intelligent creatures as a visible symbol of his displeasure against sin (cf. Gen 9:5; Exo 21:28-36). Above. Literally, from, i.e. separate and apart from all cattle (Le Clerc, Von Bohlen, Tuch, Knobel, Keil); and neither by (Gesenius, De Wette, Baumgarten) nor above (Luther, A.V; Rosenmller, Delitzsch), as if the other creatures were either participators in or the instruments of the serpent’s malediction. All cattle, and above (apart from) every beast of the field. The words imply the materiality of the reptile and the reality of the curse, so far as it was concerned. Upon thy belly. (LXX.); “meaning with, great pain and, difficulty.” As Adam’s labor and Eve’s conception had pain and sorrow added to them (Gen 3:16, Gen 3:17), so the serpent’s gait” (Ainsworth). Shalt thou go. “As the worm steals over the earth with its length of body,” “as a mean and despised crawler in the dust,” having previously gone erect (Luther), and been possessed of bone (Josephus), and capable of standing upright and twining itself round the trees (Lange), or at least having undergone some transformation as to external form (Delitzsch, Keil); though the language may import nothing more than that whereas the reptile had exalted itself against man, it was henceforth to be thrust back-into its proper rank,” “recalled from its insolent motions to its accustomed mode of going,” and “at the same time condemned to perpetual infamy” (Calvin). As applied to Satan this part of the curse proclaimed his further degradation in the scale of being in consequence of having tempted man. “Than the serpent trailing along the ground, no emblem can more aptly illustrate the character and condition of the apostate spirit who once occupied a place among the angels of God, but has been cast down to the earth, preparatory to his deeper plunge into the fiery lake (Rev 20:10; Macdonald). And dust shalt thou eat, I.e. mingling dust with all it should eat. “The great scantiness of food on which serpents can subsist gave rise to the belief entertained by many Eastern nations, and referred to in several Biblical allusions (Isa 65:25; Mic 7:17)that they cat dust” (Kalisch). More probably it originated in a too literal interpretation of the Mosaic narrative. Applied to the devil, this part of the curse was an additional intimation of his degradation. To “lick the dust” or “eat the dust” “is equivalent to being reduced to a condition of meanness, shame, and contempt” (Bush); “is indicative of disappointment in all the aims of being” (Murphy); “denotes the highest intensity of a moral condition, of which the feelings of the prodigal (Luk 15:16) may be considered a type’ (Macdonald; cf. Psa 72:9). All the days of thy life. The degradation should be perpetual as well as complete.
Gen 3:15
And I will put enmity between thee and the woman. Referring
1. To the fixed and inveterate antipathy between the serpent and the human race (Bush, Lange); to that alone (Knobel).
2. To the antagonism henceforth to be established between the tempter and mankind (Murphy); to that alone (Calvin, Bonar, Wordsworth, Macdonald). And between thy seed and her seed. Here the curse manifestly outgrows the literal serpent, and refers almost exclusively to the invisible tempter. The hostility commenced between the woman and her destroyer was to be continued by their descendantsthe seed of the serpent being those of Eve’s posterity who should imbibe the devil’s spirit and obey the devil’s rule (cf. Mat 23:33; 1Jn 3:10); and the seed of the woman signifying those whose character and life should be of an opposite description, and in particular the Lord Jesus Christ, who is styled by preeminence “the Seed” (Gal 3:16, Gal 3:19), and who came “to destroy the works of the devil” (Heb 2:4; 1Jn 3:8). This we learn from the words which follow, and which, not obscurely, point to a seed which should be individual and personal. Itor he; (LXX.); not ipsashall bruise.
1. Shall crush, trample downrendering by torero or conterere (Vulgate, Syriac, Samaritan, Tuch, Baumgarten, Keil, Kalisch).
2. Shall pierce, wound, bitetaking the verb as, to bite (Furst, Calvin).
3. Shall watch, lie in wait = (LXX; Wordsworth suggests as the correct reading , from , perforo, vulneroGesenius, Knobel). The word occurs only in two other places in ScriptureJob 9:17; Psa 139:11and in the latter of these the reading is doubtful (cf. Perowne on Psalm in loco). Hence the difficulty of deciding with absolute certainty between these rival interpretations. Psa 91:13 and Rom 16:20 appear to sanction the first; the second is favored by the application of the same word to the hostile action of the serpent, which is not treading, but biting; the feebleness of the third is its chief objection. Thy head. I.e. the superior part of thee (Calvin), meaning that the serpent would be completely destroyed, the head of the reptile being that part of its body in which a wound was most dangerous, and which the creature itself instinctively protects; or the import of the expression may be, He shall attack thee in a bold and manly way (T. Lewis). And thou shalt bruise his heel. I.e. the inferior part (Calvin), implying that in the conflict he would be wounded, but not destroyed; or “the biting of the heel may denote the mean, insidious character of the devil’s warfare” (T. Lewis).
Gen 3:16
Unto the woman he said. Passing judgment on her first who had sinned first, but cursing neither her nor her husband, as “being candidates for restoration” (Tertullian). The sentence pronounced on Eve was twofold. I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception. A hendiadys for “the sorrow of thy conception” (Gesenius, Bush), though this is not necessary. The womanly and wifely sorrow of Eve was to be intensified, and in particular the pains of parturition were to be multiplied (cf. Jer 31:8). The second idea is more fully explained in the next clause. In sorrow shalt thou bring forth children. Literally, sons, daughters being included. The pains of childbirth are in Scripture emblematic of the severest anguish both of body and mind (cf. Psa 48:7; Mic 4:9, Mic 4:10; 1Th 5:3; Joh 16:21; Rev 12:2). The gospel gives a special promise to mothers (1Ti 2:15). “By bringing forth is also meant bringing up after the birth, as in Gen 50:23” (Ainsworth). And thy desire shall be to thy husband. , from to run, to have a vehement longing for a thing, may have the same meaning here as in Son 7:10 (Dathe, Rosenmller, Delitzsch, Keil, Bohlen, Kalisch, Alford); but is better taken as expressive of deferential submissiveness, as in Gen 4:7 (Luther, Calvin, Le Clerc, Lunge, Macdonald, Speaker’s ‘Commentary’.) Following the LXX. (), Murphy explains it as meaning, “The determination of thy will shall be yielded to thy husband.” According to the analogy of the two previous clauses, the precise import of this is expressed in the next, though by many it is regarded as a distinct item in the curse (Kalisch, Alford, Clarke, Wordsworth). And he shall rule over thee. Not merely a prophecy of woman’s subjection, but an investiture of man with supremacy over the woman; or rather a confirmation and perpetuation of that authority which had been assigned to the man at the creation. Woman had been given him as an helpmeet (Gen 2:18), and her relation to the man from the first was constituted one of dependence. It was the reversal of this Divinely-established order that had led to the fall (Gen 3:17). Henceforth, therefore, woman was to be relegated to, and fixed in, her proper sphere of subordination. On account of her subjection to man’s authority a wife is described as the possessed or subjected one of a lord (Gen 20:3; Deu 20:1-20 :22), and a husband as the lord of a woman (Exo 21:3). Among the Hebrews the condition of the female sex was one of distinct subordination, though not of oppression, and certainly not of slavery, as it too often has been in heathen and Mohammedan countries. Christianity, while placing woman on the same platform with man as regards the blessings of the gospel (Gal 3:28), explicitly inculcates her subordination to the man in the relationship of marriage (Eph 5:22; Col 3:18; 1Pe 3:1)
Gen 3:17
And unto Adam he said. The noun here used for the first time without the article is explained as a proper name (Keil, Lunge, Speaker’s ‘Commentary’), though perhaps it is rather designed to express the man’s representative character (Macdonald). Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife. Preceding his sentence with a declaration of his guilt, which culminated in this, that instead of acting as his wife’s protector prior to her disobedience, or as her mentor subsequent to that act, in the hope of brining her to repentance, he became her guilty coadjutor through yielding himself to her persuasions. And hast eaten of the tree of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it. For which a twofold judgment is likewise pronounced upon Adam. Cursed is the ground. Ha adamah, out of which man was taken (Gen 2:7); i.e. the soil outside of the garden. The language does not necessarily imply that now, for the first time, in consequence of the fall, the physical glebe underwent a change, “becoming from that point onward a realm of deformity and discord, as before it was not, and displaying in all its sceneries and combinations the tokens of a broken constitution” (vide Bushnell, ‘Nature and the Supernatural,’ Gen 7:1-24.); simply it announces the fact that, because of the transgression of which he had been guilty, he would find the land beyond the confines of Eden lying under a doom of sterility (cf. Rom 8:20). For thy sake. .
1. Because of thy sin it required to be such a world.
2. For thy good it was better that such a curse should lie upon the ground. Reading instead of , the LXX. translate ; and the Vulgate, In operetuo. In sorrow. Literally, painful labor (cf. Gen 3:16; Pro 5:10). Shalt thou eat of it. I.e. of its fruits (cf. Isa 1:7; Isa 36:16; Isa 37:30). “Bread of sorrow” (Psa 127:2) is bread procured and eaten amidst hard labor. All the days of thy life.
Gen 3:18
Thorns also and thistles. Terms occurring only here and in Hosed Gen 10:8 = the similar expressions in Isa 5:6; Isa 7:23 (Kalisch, Keil, Macdonald). Shall it bring forth to thee. I.e. these shall be its spontaneous productions; if thou desirest anything else thou must labor for it. And thou shalt eat the herb of the field. “Not the fruit of paradise” (Wordsworth), but “the lesser growths sown by his own toil” (Alford)an intimation that henceforth man was “to be deprived of his former delicacies to such an extent as to be compelled to use, in addition, the herbs which had been designed only for brute animals;” and perhaps also “a consolation,” as if promising that, notwithstanding the thorns and thistles, “it should still yield him sustenance” (Calvin).
Gen 3:19
In the sweat of thy face (so called, as having there its source and being there visible) shalt thou eat bread. I.e. all food. “To eat bread” is to possess the means of sustaining life (Ecc 5:16; Amo 7:12). Till thou return unto the ground (the mortality-of man is thus assumed as certain); for out of it thou wast taken. Not declaring the reason of man’s dissolution, as if it were involved in his original material constitution, but reminding him that in consequence of his transgression he had forfeited the privilege of immunity from death, and must now return to the soil whence he sprung. }j e)lh&fqhj (LXX.); de qua sumptus es (Vulgate); “out of which thou wast taken” (Macdonald, Gesenius). On the use of as a relative pronoun cf. Gesenius, ‘ Lex. sub nom.,’ who quotes this and Gen 4:25 as examples. Vide also Stanley Leathes, ‘Hebrews Gram.,’ p. 202; and ‘Glassii Philologiae,’ lib. 3. tr. 2, c. 15. p. 335. This use of , however, appears to be doubtful, and is not necessary in any of the examples quoted.
HOMILETICS
Gen 3:8-19
The first judgment scene.
I. THE FLIGHT Or THE CRIMINALS.
1. It is the instinct of sinful men to flee from God. “Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God” (Gen 3:8). So “Jonah rose up to flee unto Tarshish from the presence of the Lord” (Jon 1:3).
(1) Through a consciousness of guilt. A perception of their nakedness caused our first parents to seek the shelter of the garden trees (verse 10). Doubtless it was the burden lying on Jonah’s conscience that sent him down into the ship’s hold (Jon 1:5). So awakened sinners ever feel themselves constrained to get away from God.
(2) From a dread of punishment. Not perhaps so long as they imagine God to be either unacquainted with or indifferent to their offence, but immediately they apprehend that their wickedness is discovered (cf. Exo 2:15). The sound of Jehovah’s voice as he came towards our first parents filled them with alarm. How much more will the full revelation of his glorious presence in flaming fire affright the ungodly.
2. It is God‘s habit to pursue transgressors. As he pursued Adam and Eve in the garden by his voice (verse 9), and Jonah on the deep by a wind (Jon 1:4), and David by his prophet (2Sa 12:1), so does he still in his providence, and through the ministry of his word, and by his Spirit, follow after fleeing sinners
(1) to apprehend them (cf. Php 3:12);
(2) to forgive and save them (Luk 19:10);
(3) if they will not be forgiven, to punish them (2Th 1:8).
3. It is the certain fate of all fugitives to be eventually arrested. Witness Adam and Eve (verse 9), Cain (Gen 4:9), David (2Sa 12:1), Ahab (1Ki 21:20), Jonah (Gen 1:6). Distance will not prevent (Psa 139:7). Darkness will not hinder (Psa 139:11). Secrecy will not avail (Heb 4:13). Material defenses will not ward off the coming doom (Amo 9:2, Amo 9:3). The lapse of time will not make it less certain (Num 32:23).
II. THE EXAMINATION OF THE CRIMINALS.
1. God’s questions are always painfully direct and searching. “Adam, where art thou?” (verse 9). “Who told thee thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree?”(verse 11); “What hast thou done?” (verse 13).
(1) Because he knows the fact of the sinner’s guilt. The nature and aggravation, the time, circumstances, manner, and reason of the sinner’s transgression are perfectly understood.
(2) Because he aims at the sinner’s conviction; i.e. he desires to bring sinners to a realization of the sinfulness of their behavior corresponding to that which he himself possesses.
(3) Because he wishes to elicit a confession from the sinner’s mouth. Without this there can be no forgiveness or salvation (Pro 28:13; 1Jn 1:9).
2. Man‘s apologies are always extremely weak and trifling.
(1) As attempting to excuse that which must for ever be inexcusable, viz; disobedience to God’s commandment. Nothing can justify sin. God’s authority over man being supreme, no one can relieve man from his responsibility to yield implicit submission to the Divine precepts. Jehovah’s question rests special emphasis on the fact that Adam’s sin was a transgression of his commandment (verse 11).
(2) As seeking to transfer the burden of guilt from himself to another. Adam blames his wife: Eve blames the serpent; and ever since, sinners have been trying to blame anything and everything except themselvesthe companions God has given them; the circumstances in which God has placed them; the peculiar temperaments and dispositions with which God has endowed them.
(3) As failing to obliterate the fact of transgression. Even Adam and Eve both discern as much as this. Beginning with apologies, they were obliged to end with avowal of their guilt. And if man can detect the worthlessness of his own hastily-invented pleas, much more, we may be sure, can God pierce through all the flimsy and trifling arguments that sinners offer to extenuate their faults.
(4) As not requiring to be answered. It is remarkable that Jehovah does not condescend to answer either Adam or his wife; the reason being, doubtless, that any reply to their foolish speeches was unnecessary.
3. The Divine verdict is always clear and convincing.
(1) Though in this case unspoken, it was yet implied. Adam and Eve did not require to be informed of their culpability. And neither will sinners need to be informed of their guilt and condemnation when they stand before the great white throne. It is a special mark of mercy that God informs sinners in the gospel of the nature of the verdict which has been Pronounced against them (Joh 3:18, Joh 3:19).
(2) It was so convincing that it was not denied. Adam and Eve we can suppose were speechless. So was the disobedient wedding guest (Mat 22:12). So will all the condemned be in the day of judgment (Rev 6:17).
III. THE SENTENCE OF THE CRIMINALS.
1. On the serpentjudgment without mercy.
(1) Degradation on both the reptile and the tempter.
(2) Hostility between the serpent’s brood and the woman’s seed.
(3) Ultimate destruction of the tempter by the incarnation and death of the woman’s seed.
2. On the sinning pairmercy, and then judgment.
(1) Mercy for both. Great mercythe restitution of themselves and of their seed (or at least a portion of it) by the complete annihilation of their adversary through the sufferings of a distinguished woman’s seed. Certain mercythe entire scheme for their recovery was to depend on God, who here says, “I will put ” Free mercyneither solicited nor deserved by Adam or his wife.
(2) Judgment for each. For the woman, sorrow in accomplishing her womanly and wifely destiny, combined with a position of dependence on and submission to her husband. For the man, a life of sorrowful labor, a doom of certain death.
Learn
1. The folly of attempting to hide from God. It is better to flee to God than to run from God, even when we sin (Psa 143:9).
2. The expediency of confessing to God. It is always the shortest path to mercy and forgiveness (Psa 32:5).
3. The gentle treatment which men receive from God. Like David, we have all reason to sing of mercy as well as, and even rather than, judgment (Psa 101:1).
HOMILIES BY R.A. REDFORD
Gen 3:8
The working of the sin-stricken conscience.
I. GOD THE JUDGE REVEALING HIMSELF. The voice of the Lord God represents to men the knowledge of themselves, which, like light, would be intolerable to the shamefaced.
II. MAN HIDING FROM THE JUDGE BECAUSE UNABLE TO MEET HIM. While the darkness of the thick foliage was regarded as a covering, hiding nakedness, it is yet from the presence of the Lord God that the guilty seek refuge.
III. MAN‘S SELF AGAINST HIMSELF. The instinctive action of shame is a testimony to the moral nature and position of man. So it may be said
IV. GUILT is itself God’s witness, comprehending the sense of righteousness and the sense of transgression in the same being. (Perhaps there is a reference to the working of the conscience in the description of the voice of God as mingling in the facts of the natural world; “the cool of the day“ being literally the “evening breeze,” whose whispering sound became articulate to the ears of those who feared the personal presence of their Judge.)R.
HOMILIES BY J.F. MONTGOMERY
Gen 3:9
The searching question.
We can picture the dread of this question. Have you considered its lovethat it is really the first word of the gospel? Already the Shepherd goes forth to seek the lost sheep. The Bible shows us
1. The original state of man; what God intended his lot to be.
2. The entry of sin, and fall from happiness.
3. The announcement and carrying out God’s plan of restoration.
THE GOSPEL BEGINS not with the promise of a Savior, but WITH SHOWING MAN HIS NEED. Thus (Joh 4:15-18) our Savior’s answer to “Give me this water” was to convince of sin: “Go, call thy husband.” That first loving call has never ceased. Men are still straying, still must come to themselves (Luk 15:17). We hear it in the Baptist’s teaching; in the preaching of St. Peter at Pentecost; and daily in his life-giving work the Holy Spirit’s first step is to convince of sin. And not merely in conversion, but at every stage he repeats, “Where art thou?” To welcome God’s gift we must feel our own need; and the inexhaustible treasures in Christ are discerned as we mark daily the defects of our service, and how far we are from the goal of our striving (Php 3:13, Php 3:14). Hence, even in a Christian congregation, it is needful to press “Where art thou?” to lead men nearer to Christ. We want to stir up easy-going disciples, to make Christians consider their calling, to rouse to higher life and work. Our Savior’s call is, “Follow me.” How are you doing this? You are pledged to be his soldiers; what reality is there in your fighting? How many are content merely to do as others do! What do ye for Christ? You have your Bible; is it studied, prayed over? What do ye to spread its truth? Ye think not how much harm is done by apathy, how much silent teaching of unbelief there is in the want of open confession of Christ. Many are zealous for their own views. Where is the self-denying mind of Christ, the spirit of love? Many count themselves spiritual, consider that they have turned to the Lord, and are certainly in his fold. Where is St. Paul’s spirit of watchfulness? (1Co 9:26, 1Co 9:27). “Where art thou?” May the answer of each be, Not shut up in myself, not following the multitude, but “looking unto Jesus.”M.
HOMILIES BY W. ROBERTS
Gen 3:14, Gen 3:15
The doom of Satan and the hope of man.
I. THE DOOM OF DEGRADATION (Gen 3:14).
II. THE DOOM OF HOSTILITY (Gen 3:15). Three stages:
1. The enmity.
2. The conflict.
3. The victory.
Lessons:
1. See the wondrous mercy of God in proclaiming from the first day of sin, and putting into the forefront, a purpose of salvation.
2. Have we recognized it to the overcoming of the devil?W.
HOMILIES BY R.A. REDFORD
Gen 3:9-24
The word of God in the moral chaos.
These verses bring before us very distinctly the elements of man’s sinful state, and of the redemptive dispensation of God which came out of it by the action of his brooding Spirit of life upon the chaos.
I. THE WORD OF GOD ADDRESSED TO THE PERSONAL CONSCIOUSNESS IS THE BEGINNING OF THE NEW WORLD. “The Lord God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou?“ Before that direct intercourse between the Spirit of God and the spirit of man there is no distinct recognition of the evil of sin, and no separation of its moral and physical consequences. The “Where art thou?“ begins the spiritual work.
II. THE PROCESS OF THE WORK OF GOD IS THE CONSCIENCE IS ONE THAT LEADS US FROM THE OUTSIDE CIRCLE OF RESPONSIBILITY TO THE INNERMOST CENTER OF CONVICTION AND CONFESSION. “I was naked,” “I was afraid,” “I hid myself,” “The woman gave me of the tree,” “I did eat;” so at last we get to the central factI broke the commandment, I am guilty towards God. Each lays the blame on anotherthe man on the woman, the woman on the serpent. But the main fact is this, that when once the voice of God deals with us, when once the Spirit of light and life broods over the chaos, there will be truth brought out, and the beginning of all new creation is confession of sin. After all, both the transgressors admitted the fact: “I did eat.” Nor do they dare to state what is untrue, although they attempt to excuse themselves for there may be a true confession of sin before there is a sense of its greatness and inexcusableness.
III. The transgression being clearly revealed, next comes THE DIVINE CONDEMNATION. It is upon the background of judgment that redemption must be placed, that it may be clearly seen to be of God’s free grace. The judgment upon the serpent must be viewed as a fact in the sphere of man‘s world, not in the larger sphere of the superhuman suggested by the later use of the term “serpent.” God’s condemnation of Satan is only shadowed forth here, not actually described. The cursed animal simply represents the cursed agent or instrument, and therefore was intended to embody the curse of sin to the eyes of man. At the same time, the fifteenth verse must not be shorn of its spiritual application by a merely naturalistic interpretation. Man’s inborn detestation of the serpent brood, and the serpent’s lurking enmity against man, as it waits at his heel, is rightly taken as symbolically representing
(1) the antagonism between good and evil introduced into the world by man’s fall;
(2) the necessity that that antagonism should be maintained; and
(3) the purpose of God that it should be brought to an end by the destruction of the serpent, the removing out of the way both of the evil principle and of the besetments of man’s life which have arisen out of it. This “first promise” as it is called, was not given in the form of a promise, but of a sentence. Are we not reminded of the cross which itself was the carrying out of a sentence, but in which was included the redeeming mercy of God? Life in death is the mystery of Christ’s sacrifice. “ It pleased the Lord to bruise him “ (Isa 53:10). “Through death he destroyed him taut had the power of death,” &c. (Heb 2:14). It must have been itself like a revelation of redeeming love that God pronounced sentence first upon the serpent, not upon man, thereby teaching him that he was in the sight of God a victira of the evil power, to be delivered by the victorious seed of the woman, rather than an enemy to be crushed and destroyed. The sentence seemed to say, Thou, the serpent, art the evil thing to be annihilated; man shall be saved, though wounded and bruised in the heel; the “woman‘s seed“ shall be the conqueror,which was the prediction of a renovation of humanity in a second Adam, a dim forecasting of the future, indeed, but a certain and unmistakable proclamation of the continuance of the race, notwithstanding sin and death; and in that continuance it was declared there should be a realization of entire deliverance. The sentence upon the woman, which follows that upon the serpent, as she was the first in the transgression, is a sentence which, while it clearly demonstrates the evil of sin, at the same time reveals the mercy of God. The woman’s sorrow is that which she can and does forget, for “joy that a man is born into the world.” Her desire to her husband and her submission to his rule do come out of that fall of her nature in which she is made subject to the conditions of a fleshly life; but from the same earthly soil spring up the hallowed blossoms and fruits of the affections, filling the world with beauty and blessing. So have the law of righteousness and the law of love from the beginning blended together in the government of God. In like manner, the sentence upon the man is the same revelation of Divine goodness in the midst of condemnation. The ground is cursed for man’s sake. To thee it shall bring forth thorns and thistles, i.e. thy labor shall not be the productive labor it would have beenthou shalt put it forth among difficulties and obstacles. Thou shalt see thine own moral perversity reflected in the stubborn barrenness, the wilderness growth of nature. Yet thou shalt eat the herb of the field, and depend upon it. With sweat of thy face all through thy life thou shalt win thy bread from an unwilling earth. And at last the dust beneath thy feet shall claim thee as its own; thy toil-worn frame shall crumble down into the grave. It was
(1) a sentence of death, of death in life; but at the same time it was
(2) a merciful appointment of man’s most peaceful and healthy occupationto till the ground, to grow the corn, to eat the bread; and it was
(3) a proclamation of welcome release from the burden “when the dust shall return to the earth as it was, and the spirit shall return to God who gave it.” There is no allusion in any of these-sentences to spiritual results of transgression, but that is only because the whole is a representation of the fall, objectively regarded. Just as the serpent is spoken of as though it were only an animal on the earth, so man’s sin is spoken of as though it were only his life’s error, to be paid for in his life’s suffering; but as in the former case the deeper spiritual meaning lies behind the form of the serpent, so in the latter the condemnation which brings toil and suffering and death upon man’s bodily frame brings upon his whole nature that which the external infliction symbolizes and sets forth. The life goes down into the dust, but it is the life which by sin had become a smitten, cursed thing; that hiding of it in the dust is the end, so far as the mere sentence is concerned. We must, however, wait for the revelation which is to be made in the new man,the life coming forth again,which, though but dimly promised, is yet suggested in the story of paradise. Adam gave a new name to his wife when she became to him something more than “a help-meet for him.” He called her, first, woman, because she was-taken out of man.-He called her, afterwards, “Eve,” as the life-producing, “because she was the mother of all living.” The coats of skinwhich were not, like the fig-leaves sewn together, man’s own device for hiding shame, but God’s preparation for preserving that reverence between the sexes so vital to the very continuance of the race itselfbetokened again the mingling of mercy with judgment; for, apart altogether from any theory as to the slain animals whose skins were employed, the Divine origin of clothing is a most significant fact. When we are told that “the Lord God made them coats of skins, and clothed them,” we must interpret the language from the standpoint of the whole narrative, which is that of an objective representation of the mysteries of man’s primeval life. It would not be in harmony with the tone of the whole book to say in what method such Divine interposition was brought about. To the Biblical writers a spiritual guidance, a work of God in the mind of man, is just as truly God’s own act as though it were altogether apart from any human agency. The origin of clothing was an inspiration. Perhaps it is not putting too much into the language to see in such a fact an allusion to other facts. Man is directed to use skins; might he not have been directed to slay animals? If so, might not such slaughter of animals have been first connected with religious observances, for as yet there is no allusion to the use of animal food, save in the indirect form of dominion over the lower creation? In the fourth chapter, in the extra paradisiacal life, the keeping of herds and flocks is mentioned as a natural sequel. Doubtless from the time of the fall the mode of life was entirely changed, as was its sphere. Before sin man was an animal indeed, but with his animal nature in entire subordination; after his fall he was under the laws of animal life, both as to its support and propagation. Death became the ruling fact of life, as it is in the mere animal races. Man is delivered from it only as he is lifted out of the animal sphere and becomes a child of God. The expulsion from Eden was part of the Divine sentence, but it was part of the redemptive work which commenced immediately upon the fall. The creature knowing good and evil by disobedience must not live forever in that disobedience. He must die that he may be released from the burden of his corruption. An immortality of sin is not God’s purpose for his creature. Therefore the Lord God shut up Eden.R.
Fuente: The Complete Pulpit Commentary
Gen 3:8. And they heard, &c. This may be rendered, and they heard the sound of the Lord God proceeding or coming into the garden, at the decline, or in the cool of the day, whether morning or evening. The word, which our translators render voice, koll, denotes any sort of sound; and the root of that word, which we render walking, denotes local motion, going, in any way, or manner. The word koll, sound, is applied to two appearances of the Deity: one mentioned, 1Ki 19:12. After the fire a still small sound; and in Eze 1:24. The sound of great waters, as the sound of the Almighty; the sound of speech, as the sound of an host. Now it is observable, that, in these two passages, the presence of the Lord is described, 1st, in the still small sound; and, 2nd, in the loud and lofty sound as of waters, an host, &c. whence we may be led to conclude, that nothing certain can be determined respecting the sort of sound which was, to Adam in paradise, the index of Jehovah’s presence. It was a sound, it is evident, well known to Adam; and a sound, without all doubt, sufficiently declarative of the divine greatness and glory: but most probable, in the time of their innocence, rather gentle than tremendous. To sinners the voice of the Lord is thunder; to his saints, it is the still small voice of peace and love.
Many writers have supposed, that it was the second Divine Person, the eternal , who here particularly appeared to Adam; and many have written much concerning the manner of the divine appearance. The sentiment is very pleasing, and has much probability in it. The Targums of Onkelos and Jonathan paraphrase this passage thus, They heard the voice of the Word of the Lord God, probably, the essential Word of God, who was since made flesh, and dwelt among men. If also, as many have supposed, he appeared to Adam in a human form, as a pledge of his incarnation in the fulness of time, then he might be literally said to come walking in the garden in the cool of the day, or at the wind of the day, during the evening-breeze; and that wind might bring the sound of the voice and of the steps of this glorious Person the sooner to the ears of Adam and his wife, which gave them notice of his near approach, and caused them to hasten their flight.
And Adam and his wife hid themselves, &c. Shame was the first fruit of their sin: another, and one which always attends guilt more or less is here mentioned; namely, a desire to flee from his presence, which to man, in his state of purity, must have been the highest joy. Such are the natural effects of sin, which also makes men foolish as well as full of conscious guilt; for who can fly from his presence, who discerneth the very secrets of the heart? yet, like the first fallen pair, all sinners seek to the same vain and idle resource. They are ashamed, and would therefore hide themselves from Him whose eyes are as a flame of fire!
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
Gen 3:8 And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God amongst the trees of the garden.
Ver. 8. And they heard the voice of the Lord. ] Either speaking something by himself of that which Adam hath done against his command; as who should say, Hath he served me so indeed? or else calling to Adam in a mighty thunder, as to Pharaoh, Exo 9:28 or in a terrible whirlwind, as to Job, Job 38:1 the better to humble him, and prepare for a sermon of mercy and forgiveness. God poureth not the off of his grace, save only into broken vessels. Christ came to cure not the sound, but the sick with sin: the Holy Ghost is poured out upon thirsty souls only that are scorched and parched with the sense of sin and fear of wrath. Isa 35:7 ; Isa 44:3 As the way to Zion was by Sinai, so, unless we desire rather to be carnally secured than soundly comforted, we must pass by Baca to Berachah, by a sight of our sin and misery, to a sense of God’s grace and mercy.
Walking in the garden in the cool of the day.
And Adam and his wife hid themselves.
a
b : ad vesperam diei .
c Gressu grallatorio.
d Faeti sunt a corde suo fugitivi. – Tertul .
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
NASB (UPDATED) TEXT: Gen 3:8-13
8They heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden. 9Then the LORD God called to the man, and said to him, Where are you? 10He said, I heard the sound of You in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid myself. 11And He said, Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat? 12The man said, The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me from the tree, and I ate. 13Then the LORD God said to the woman, What is this you have done? And the woman said, The serpent deceived me, and I ate.
Gen 3:8 They heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden King James has the voice of the LORD God but the Hebrew word implies the sound of Him walking (BDB 229, KB 246, Hithpael PARTICIPLE). The structure of the Hebrew and the context seem to imply that this was a regular activity where God and the first couple met for fellowship. This is a very anthropomorphic phrase for God who is a spiritual being and does not have a body. Some have postulated that God clothed Himself in human form for fellowship with the original couple. This may be true, but the only part of the Triune God that has a corporeal existence is the Son. Some have speculated that since the NT asserts creation to the agency of the Son (cf. Joh 1:3; Joh 1:10; 1Co 8:6; Col 1:16; Heb 1:2), and that often there are physical manifestations of God (i.e. Angel of the Lord, e.g. Gen 16:7-13; Gen 22:11-15; Gen 31:11; Gen 31:13; Gen 48:15-16; Exo 3:2; Exo 3:4; Exo 13:21; Exo 14:19, see Special Topic: Angel of the LORD ) this may refer to the pre-incarnate Christ.
SPECIAL TOPIC: GOD DESCRIBED AS HUMAN (ANTHROPOMORPHISM)
in the cool of the day The Hebrew phrase is related to the term for the wind (BDB 398). It speaks of the cool breeze either of the morning or the evening.
the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God This VERB (BDB 285, KB 284) is Hithpael IMPERFECT. The tragedy of sin can already be seen in the emotional as well as physical separation between God and His creation (cf. Psalms 139; Rev 6:16).
Gen 3:9 Where are you? Obviously this is not God looking for information, but asking a question so that they could realize what they had done (cf. Gen 3:11). These types of rhetorical questions in the OT have been used to assert a developing aspect in God’s character, called Open Theism (i.e. Clark Pennock, The Most Moved Mover).
Gen 3:10 I was afraid because I was naked What a tragedy! Adam is afraid of the loving God who created him and wanted to know him. The intensity of evil can be clearly seen here as man still continues to hide from God, from himself, from his family and from the natural order. The fact that he was naked was simply a coverup of the real problem which was open-eyed rebellion to the will of God.
Gen 3:12 The man said Here we have the emphasis on the fact that Adam is responsible even though he tries to blame Eve, even God Himself. Even in the midst of numerous excuses, blaming either Eve or God, man is responsible for his own actions. Flip Wilson’s theology, The Devil made me do it! is no more of an excuse than Cultural environment made me do it or Genetic predisposition made me do it, etc.
Gen 3:13 The serpent deceived me, and I ate Eve quickly learned from Adam and she began to make excuses. The term deceived seems to mean cause to forget (BDB 674, KB 728, Hiphil PERFECT). It may be an onomatopoeia to the serpent’s hissing (i.e. hissi’ani). The NT mentions Eve’s actions in 2Co 11:3 and 1Ti 2:14.
CONTEXTUAL INSIGHTS INTO Gen 3:14-24
INTRODUCTION
A. This passage, like Gen 3:1-12, is crucial in our understanding of our world’s present condition of sin, sickness, pain, injustice, and evil. This is not the world that God intended it to be.
B. This passage, especially Gen 3:15, gives us our first word about what our world is going to be because of God’s redemptive intervention! It is God’s great promise of redemption to fallen, rebellious humanity and it will come through the woman.
C. The consequences of rebellion against God’s person and word is clearly depicted! Satan is clearly seen as a liar and sin fully runs its course in the lives of Adam and Eve and their children.
D. The relationship between man and woman is clearly delineated in Gen 3:16 (cf. 1Ti 2:9-15; Eph 5:22; Col 3:18; 1Pe 3:1). The stressed relationships of our world are a direct result of original, willful disobedience. If there is etiology in the OT, this could be an example. However, they have also been affected by God’s grace in Christ (cf. 1Co 11:11; Gal 3:28).
E. The rabbis reject original sin and posit the two yetzers (intents). However, there seems to be OT corroboration for Adam’s originally sinning in Job 14:4; Job 15:14; Job 25:4; Psa 51:5 and the classical NT passage of Rom 3:9-18; Rom 3:23; Rom 5:12-21.
Fuente: You Can Understand the Bible: Study Guide Commentary Series by Bob Utley
voice = sound. (Ecc 7:6 = crackling.) Here = footsteps, as in 2Sa 5:24. 1Ki 14:6. 2Ki 6:32.
cool. Hebrew. ruach. App-9.
hid themselves. No “quest for God” in fallen man. Compare Gen 4:14. Luk 15:13. Eph 2:13. Jer 23:24.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Fellowship
And they heard the voice of the Lord God Walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden. And the Lord God called unto the man, and said unto him, Where art thou?Gen 3:8-9.
If this is veritable history, it is also parable. It is the record of the first fear, the first blush, the first self-concealment. So common are all these experiences to-day, that it is difficult to conceive the time of innocence and assurance when they did not exist. Yet man, made in the image of God, enjoyed unclouded communion with his Creator. There was no withdrawal of light on the part of God, and there were no mists of doubt exhaled from earth to obscure its clear shining. God talked with man. Adam delighted in the voice of God. But in the evil hour of temptation all this was changed. Disobedience unclothed the conscience. Its garment of innocence was lost, and they knew that they were naked. The spiritual condition which their sin had produced was symbolized in the physical. They mistook the sign for the substance. The fig-leaf aprons were their first vain effort. But this was not enough. The approach of God convinced them of its insufficiency, and so they sought shelter among the trees of the garden. But even here God followed them with mingled words of justice and of love. This is the fountain-head of all earths woes. This is the little cloud of sins which has overspread the heavens with the darkness of despair, and threatens now the storm of wrath. This is the beginning of that great necessity, which, foreseen, had already in the council of eternity drawn forth the pitying love of God, and had already secured the acceptance and condescension of the Son of God, as the second Adam of the race.
Nearly all the most eminent Biblical scholars are now agreed that the clue to the meaning of this third chapter of Genesis is to be found by regarding it as an allegory or parable rather than as an historical document in the modern sense of the term. Even a scholar so cautious and conservative as Dean Church says in one of his books, Adam stands for us allfor all living souls who from generation to generation receive and hand on the breath of human life. The author of what Archbishop Temple has called the allegory of the garden of Eden is both a poet and a prophet. As a poet he has created an ideal conception of the typical natural man. As a prophet he spells out for us, in language coloured by Eastern imagery, the drama of a great crisis in the history of mankind. Look at the story of what is called (though not in the Bible) the fall of Adam, superficially, and you may regard it as a legend, such as those of Hercules and Prometheus. Look at it deeply and seriously, and you see in it the inspired work of a master mind, gifted with profound spiritual insight, who sees the greatness of man even in ruin, who knows what sin means, and what fruit it bears. It is not the voice of a chronicler of past events that is heard here. It is the voice of a preacher who speaks to the soul in image and parable. It is for the sake of the spiritual truth wrapped up in it that the story is told.1 [Note: J. W. Shepard.]
The text brings before us three great fundamental facts
I. Man is made for Fellowship with GodThey heard the voice (or sound, i.e. steps) of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day.
II. Sin breaks the FellowshipThe man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden.
III. God seeks to restore itAnd the Lord God called unto the man, and said unto him, Where art thou?
I
The Fellowship
1. What is Fellowship?
Real religion stands or falls with the belief in a personal God, and in realizing the need of communion with Him. When once we destroy, or tamper with, the conviction that we are living, or should be living, in spiritual contact with a Divine Being who has revealed Himself to us in His Son, worship ceases to have any real meaning. We may not be able to certify or interpret to others this contact with God. But the deepest of truths is that God is not far from any one of us, and it is the Divine Spirit within us that seeks and strives for communication with our Heavenly Father.
Speak to Him thou for He hears, and Spirit with Spirit can meet
Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet.
God made us to speak to Him, not only in formal prayers on stated occasions, but in the silent language of meditation, and in the effort implied in maintaining our belief in His presence and nearness to us. It is a sure sign of something being wrong with us if we shrink from this great thought, and take refuge in any view of life that tends to hide from us the solemn mystery of standing before the living God.
Lift to the firmament your eye,
Thither Gods path pursue;
His glory, boundless as the sky,
Oerwhelms the wondering view.
The forests in His strength rejoice;
Hark! how on th evening breeze,
As once of old, the Lord Gods voice
Is heard among the trees.1 [Note: J. Montgomery.]
2. How may it be enjoyed?
There are two ways especially in which the fellowship between God and man may be enjoyed.
(1) By meditation in the quiet of the evening.God was heard walking in the garden in the cool of the day. It may be that the phrase means no more than the evening breeze. God comes to us all more or less distinctly in the eveningit is a time for leisure, rest, reflection, and worship. After the toil and tumult of the day it is a period of hush and quiet, and amid the stillness we can hear Gods voice borne on the wind.
Morn is the time to act, noon to endure;
But oh! if thou wouldst keep thy spirit pure,
Turn from the beaten path by worldlings trod,
Go forth at eventide, in heart to walk with God.
It is only in the cool of the day that I can hear Thy footsteps, O my God. Thou art ever walking in the garden. Thy presence is abroad everywhere and always; but it is not everywhere or always that I can hear Thee passing by. The burden and heat of the day are too strong for me. The struggles of life excite me, the ambitions of life perturb me, the glitter of life dazzles me; it is all thunder and earthquake and fire. But when I myself am still, I catch Thy still small voice, and then I know that Thou art God. Thy peace can only speak to my peacefulness, Thy rest can only be audible to my calm; the harmony of Thy tread cannot be heard by the discord of my soul. Therefore, betimes I would be alone with Thee, away from the heat and the battle. I would feel the cool breath of Thy Spirit, that I may be refreshed once more for the strife. I would be fanned by the breezes of heaven, that I may resume the dusty road and the dolorous way. Not to avoid them do I come to Thee, but that I may be able more perfectly to bear them. Let me hear Thy voice in the garden in the cool of the day.1 [Note: George Matheson.]
This life hath hours that hold
The soul above itself, as at a show
A child, upon a loving arm and bold
Uplifted safe, upon the crowd below
Smiles down serene,I speak to them that know
This thing whereof I speak, that none can guess,
That none can paint,what marks hath Blessedness,
What characters whereby it may be told?
Such hours with things that never can grow old
Are shrined. One eve, mid autumns far away,
I walked along beside a river; grey
And pale was earth, the heavens were grey and pale,
As if the dying year and dying day
Sobbed out their lives together, wreaths of mist
Stole down the hills to shroud them while they kissed
Each other sadly; yet behind this veil
Of drearness and decay my soul did build,
To music of its own, a temple filled
With worshippers beloved that hither drew
In silence; then I thirsted not to hear
The voice of any friend, nor wished for dear
Companions hand firm clasped in mine; I knew,
Had such been with me, they had been less near,2 [Note: Dora Greenwell.]
(2) In corporate worship.When one joins a group of worshippers, one enters to take ones part in the ordered response of the Church universal to the outgoing of the heart of God; one enters a region where heaven dips down to earth, while earth lifts up blind hands to heaven; one is at the meeting-place of the two orders, the temporal and the eternal; one is standing with ones fellows before the rending veil. And there are other gains to be got from corporate worship. There is outlook. There is the restfulness of its wide horizons. The daily work of most of us is done within a very narrow sphere of interest and enterprise. In the fellowship of the Church we have a unique opportunity of emerging from these limitations. No man can enter into the fullest liberty if he is alone with nature and the God of nature. An essential element in the vision of far horizons is the presence of a body of aspirant life. It is with all saints, not with nature, that we comprehend the love of God. It is where two or three are gathered together to search into His name, that He is in the midst. And another gain to be obtained from corporate worship is quiet of spirit. Who has not known perplexities drop away, who has not seen problems solved, in the contemplation and experience of the fellowship of the Church? Moods that have distressed us have been dispelled by merely seeing them reflected in the experience of fellow-worshippers, whether of our own or of other ages. Controversies which have vexed us have been settled in the light of the broad, plain moralities of the Gospel. Exaggerations of view have been checked by the thought of the manifold variety of catholic Christian experience. Forgotten factors in difficult questions have come to light as we have learned to look at life from the point of view of Gods residence in the collective body of His redeemed. We have repeated the Psalmists experience: When I thought to know this, it was too painful for me; until I went into the sanctuary of God; then understood I.
Wandering thro the city
My heart was sick and sore;
Full of a feverish longing
I entered an old church door.
Dark were the aisles and gloomy:
Type of my troubled breast.
Mournful and sad I paced there,
Eager to be at rest.
Sudden the sunshine lighted
The arches with golden stream,
Chasing the darksome shadows
With brightly-glancing beam.
A chord pealed forth from the organ
Tender, and soft, and sweet:
Trembling along the pavement
Like the tread of the angels feet.
The light as a voice from Heaven,
Bid all my care to cease;
The chord, as a song of Seraphs,
Whispered of Gods own peace.1 [Note: John A. Jennings.]
II
The Separation
The first sin of Scripture is in some sort the type of all our sins. They grow out of a common root. In the language of morals, they are a revolt against the pressure of rules and obligations felt to be in conflict with passion or personal desires. In the language of the Bible, they spring from a state of rebellion against God and the order established by Him.
The author of the record of Genesis shows us in poetic imagery the inward as well as the outward consequences of any deliberate act of rebellion. All sin, until with repentance comes pardon, alters the relations between the creature and the Creator. An estranging cloud comes between the soul and God. And this means bitter shame, haunting fearthe shame of degradation, the fear of death. That concealing cloud cannot be conjured away by any human arts. So long as reconciliation is barred by impenitence and unbelief, the cloud will be there. This permanent fact of mans spiritual nature is portrayed in the words, The man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden.
The heavens above are clear
In splendour of the sapphire, cold as steel,
No warm soft cloud floats over them, no tear
Will fall on earth to tell us if they feel;
But ere the pitiless day
Dies into evening grey,
Along the western line
Rises a fiery sign
That doth the glowing sky incarnadine.1 [Note: Dora Greenwell.]
i. How does the loss of Gods fellowship show itself?
1. In a sense of Shame.The first feeling of the man and his wife was an indistinct sense of shame, a desire to hide themselves from one another and from all the world. Their eyes, both of them, were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig-leaves together, and made themselves aprons. Until then they had been like little children, not knowing shame, because they knew not sin; but from that day forward they and their posterity had to carry both sin and shame about with them wherever they went.
My colleague at the City Temple told me of a young fellow whom a friend of his tried to save, and in the end succeeded, I am glad to say. This poor lad was an adopted son; he seems to have inherited a weak nature, or if he did not inherit onefor I do not think there is so very much in heredity, after allat any rate, loose habits, unworthy behaviour, evil company, engendered in him a course of action, and created a character in itself evil. He robbed his adoptive parents, and fled from home. When he was found and brought back almost to the doorstep he refused to enter. Why? Are you afraid to face them? The answer was, I cannot look them in the eye.2 [Note: R. J. Campbell.]
2. In Fear.In no way does the tragedy of Eden come out with more picturesque realism than in these hiding figures fleeing from the face of the God against whom they have sinned. But yesterday the presence of God was their chief delight. It made the flowers more beautiful; it added to the fragrance of the blossoming trees; it gave more exquisite harmony to the singing of the birds; it was the perfection of their delight and their joy. Fear was not in all their thoughts, and they gazed rapturously into the countenance of their Heavenly Father as a child gazes with unspeakable confidence and trust into the eyes of its mother. But now there is nothing they dread so much as the face of God. And we watch them as they hasten into the thickest part of the garden and vainly try to hide themselves from the eye of their Creator.
A child knows at once what it is to love God; but you must force its understanding into an unnatural course to teach it that God is a Person to be afraid of. That terror of God, which cannot spring out of holiness and innocence, comes of itself, however, without teaching or forcing, with sin.1 [Note: J. H. Blunt.]
One of the first results of sin is to awaken the conscience and make it an accuser and pursuer. All great literature abounds in illustrations of this theme. No man deals with it with more wisdom and fidelity than Shakespeare. We have all had on our lips at one time or other those words of Hamlet in which he declares that Conscience does make cowards of us all. And in the tragedy of King Richard iii. Shakespeare makes a wicked man say of his conscience, Ill not meddle with it: it is a dangerous thing: it makes a man a coward: a man cannot steal, but it accuseth him; he cannot swear, but it checks him (Act i. scene iv.).
Spurgeon tells of an Englishman who was so constantly in debt and so frequently arrested by the bailiffs that on one occasion, when going by a fence, the sleeve of his coat catching on a nail, he turned round and said, obeying the instinctive fear of his heart, I dont owe you anything, sir. He thought the picket was a bailiff.2 [Note: L. A. Banks.]
3. In Excuses.All our worst sins are marked by a certain recklessness of consequences. Never mind what may come of it all, we say to ourselves, let us brave the worst. And when the consequences do comeas come they must, sooner or laterwe throw the blame on things or persons other than ourselves. Someones subtlety beguiled us into thinking that rebellion against the moral order would be a glorious gain. Or else we cry out against society or our inherited temperament as responsible for our misdoings. We complain dolefully of the demoralizing tendencies of modern life. It is no fault of ours, we say, if we, too, drift with the stream, and reach out our hands to secure the delights of the passing hour. So, in our blindness and infatuation, we excuse ourselves. And our eyes are opened when we learn in sorrow and suffering that one sinful act may spread its contaminating fibres through the whole of our life.
The literature of imaginationmuch of the fiction of our time and some of its poetryis skilful in painting the wicked thing, until it appears gay and brilliant and free. There are philosophies and theologies which apologize for it, and teach us to view it almost as a necessity for our fuller life, or as a halting-place in the march of the soul to what is higher and holier. Society has a hundred affectations and excuses that hide its foulness, as Greek assassins concealed their death-bringing daggers under the greenery of myrtle leaves. It is a fall upward, we are told, and not a fall downward. On the Amazon a famous naturalist discovered a spider which spread itself out as a flower; but the insects lighting on it found destruction instead of sweetness and honey. Our sin is our sin, evil, poisonous, fatal, although it transmutes itself into an angel of goodness.1 [Note: A. Smellie.]
4. By Hiding.The man and his wife hid themselves. Is not this hiding among the trees of the garden a symbolical representation of what sinners have been doing ever since?have they not all been endeavouring to escape from God, and to lead a separated and independent life? They have been fleeing from the Divine presence, and hiding themselves amid any trees that would keep that presence far enough away.
Professor Phelps tells of a burglar who rifled an unoccupied dwelling by the seaside. He ransacked the rooms, and heaped his plunder in the parlour. There were evidences that here he sat down to rest. On a bracket in the corner stood a marble bust of Guidos Ecce HomoChrist crowned with thorns. The guilty man had taken it in his hands and examined itit bore the marks of his fingersbut he replaced it with its face turned to the wall, as if he would not have even the sightless eyes of the marble Saviour look upon his deeds of infamy.2 [Note: E. Morgan.]
ii. They hid themselves
The attempt to hide oneself may be made in different ways.
1. One way is by careless living, by such levity as that of the Athenians who scoffed at St. Paul when he spoke to them of the resurrection of the dead. Men who are devoured by a foolish appetite for the last new thing, the last word of science and philosophy, have ceased to care for truth, and have become worshippers of idols. To such, the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ must remain for ever an unknown God. They have forfeited the power of seeing the Invisible, and of worshipping in spirit and in truth. There was no Church at Athens. There never can be a Church, in the real sense, composed of men and women who make of a merely intellectual interest in science and literature, in the burning questions of the day, an excuse for shirking the serious aspects of life and the spiritual facts that lie at the foundation of religion. Let not God speak with us, lest we die. This reluctance to hear the deeper chords struck, this desire to run away from the deeper thoughts and experiences that pierce the conscience and trouble the mind, is deeply embedded in human nature. The dearest wish of many among us is to be let alone; to be allowed to live our lives out to the end in a sort of enchanted garden, where no voice from the deeps may reach us, and we may catch no glimpse of the Cherubim and the flaming sword.
How now, Sir John! quoth I: what, man! be o good cheer. So a cried out, God, God, God! three or four times. Now I, to comfort him, bid him a should not think of God. I hoped there was no need to trouble himself with any such thoughts yet. So a bade me lay more clothes on his feet.1 [Note: Mrs. Quickly in Henry v., Act ii. sc. iii. 1. 17.]
2. Another way of hiding from God is the refusal to listen to the voice of conscience when it condemns us, the ingrained habit of slipping away from reminders of duties neglected and obligations left unfulfilled, so finely delineated by George Eliot in the character of Tito Melema. Wherever sincerity is, the quality of perfect openness and clearness of soul, the word of Christ will reach and penetrate the heart. To hear the voice of God calling us with joy and gladness we must be clear from vice, clear from self-indulgence and self-satisfaction. It is our sins, and nothing else, that separate us from Him; our sins, too, that make us shun those who are to us a sort of embodied conscience. I was obliged to get away from him as fast as I could, said a notorious profligate of the saintly Fnelon, else he would have made me pious. Here speaks the natural man, the Adam whose blood runs in our veins. Which of us does not blush to think how often we have shunned the company of the wise and the good because their moral purity shamed us?
I can think of no more telling instance of the evasion of spiritual influence than one that is to be found in the incomparable pages of the great master of Greek philosophic thought. Twenty-three centuries ago there was no more brilliant figure in Athenian society than Alcibiades, soldier, statesman, and leader of fashionthe most daring, the most versatile, the most unprincipled of men. Well, Plato has put him, as it were, into the confessional. And this is what he represents him as saying of the effect produced on his mind by the character and teaching of Socrates. After bearing his personal witness to the strange and almost magical power over the heart of the words of the great Athenian master, he goes on to say, No one would imagine that I could ever feel shame before any one, but before him I do stand rebuked. For when I hear him my heart throbs, and tears gush from my eyes. For he compels me to confess that, in intriguing for place and power, I am neglecting my real self, and all is ill within me. I cannot deny that I ought to do what he bids me, but I go away, and other influences prevail over me. Therefore, I shut my ears and run away from him like a slave, and whenever I see him shame takes possession of me. So I am in a strait betwixt two. Often I feel that I should be glad if he were no longer in the land of the living. Yet, if anything should happen to him, I know full well that I should be the more deeply grieved.1 [Note: J. W. Shepard.]
3. A third way of attempting to hide from Godand it is perhaps the most evasive of allis by flattering ourselves that we are seeking His face. Even religion may be so perverted as to become a deadening influence when we identify it with opinions, or party views, or zeal for dogma, or external things like ceremonies, or forms of worship, or matters of Church order and discipline. How many among us live and move in these surface questions, while shrinking from the deeper problems of what we are to think of God, and how we are to school ourselves to learn what is His will, and how we are to do it. Yes, it is quite as easy to hide from God among the pillars of the sanctuary as among the trees of the garden. Multiplied services, religious discussion, the manifold business of religious societies, may usurp the place of religious worship, and the care for these things may leave scanty room for the inward communing of the soul with God. Experience seems to show that the use of inferior ways of calling forth religious earnestness tends to make us indisposed to centre our faith on Gods own revelation of Himself in His Son.
iii. They hid themselves amongst the Trees of the Garden
Adam and his wife hid themselves amongst the trees of the garden. What are the trees one hides among?
1. One of the trees behind which we hide ourselves is the tree of Knowledge. Ye shall be as gods, said Satan, knowing. That knowledge puffeth up was known to Satan before it was stated by Paul. Knowledge is the fruit of the tree that stood in the very midst of the garden; but knowledge is accompanied by its shadow in the shape of a consciousness of knowledge; and consciousness of knowledge is on the negative side of know-nothing. One single electric light extinguishes the stars, and the shining of the low-lying moon snuffs out all the constellations of the firmament. The garden of the Lord grows up at length into such prodigality of leaf and flower as to conceal the Lord of the garden.
2. Another tree behind which the face of the Lord becomes hidden from us is that of Wealth. The tree of wealth, like the tree of knowledge, has its best rooting in the soil of paradise. We should no sooner think of speaking a disparaging word of money than we should of knowledge. But as knowledge becomes conscious of itself and so loses consciousness of God, so wealth is absorbed in itself and forgets God. The sun lifts the mist that befogs the sun. It is not easy to become very learned without getting lost in the world of our own erudition. It is not easy to become very rich without becoming lost in the world of our acquisition.
3. Another tree in Gods garden is the tree of Respectability. More evidently, perhaps, than either of the others, it is the outcome of heavenly soil. The Gospel has always displayed a surpassing power in diffusing ideals of excellent behaviour, in grappling with the coarser lusts of men, and taming them into habits of regularity and propriety. At the same time, when a man, by the impact of the truth, or by the pressure of sentiment, or by the fear of consequences, but without having been vitally renewed, has had just enough outward effect produced upon him to start in him an incipient and callow sense of goodness, such a man is of the very toughest material with which the Gospel has to contend. Such a little streak of conscious excellence when exposed to the convicting truth of Gods Word, or power of Gods Spirit, like a glittering rod pushed up into the electricity will convey off in silent serenity the most terrific bolt out of the sky that can be hurled against it. Dread respectability more than original sin.
In the ancient orderly places, with a blank and orderly mind,
We sit in our green walled gardens and our corn and oil increase;
Sunset nor dawn can wake us, for the face of the heavens is kind;
We light our taper at even and call our comfort peace.
Peaceful our clear horizon, calm as our sheltered days
Are the lilied meadows we dwell in, the decent highways we tread.
Duly we make our offerings, but we know not the God we praise,
For He is the God of the living, but we, His children, are dead.
I will arise and get me beyond this country of dreams,
Where all is ancient and ordered and hoar with the frost of years,
To the land where loftier mountains cradle their wilder streams,
And the fruitful earth is blessed with more bountiful smiles and tears,
There in the home of the lightnings, where the fear of the Lord is set free,
Where the thunderous midnights fade to the turquoise magic of morn,
The days of man are a vapour, blown from a shoreless sea,
A little cloud before sunrise, a cry in the void forlorn
I am weary of men and cities and the Service of little things,
Where the flamelike glories of life are shrunk to a candles ray.
Smite me, my God, with Thy presence, blind my eyes with Thy wings,
In the heart of Thy virgin earth show me Thy secret way!1 [Note: John Buchan.]
III
The Reconciliation
1. The first step towards reconciliation is taken, not by the creature, but by the Creator. It is not man who first seeks God and cries out, O my Maker, my Father, where art Thou? but it is the great God and Father who tenderly inquires after His erring child. Christs words, Ye did not choose me, but I chose you, have an immediate reference to His followers, but they have also a general application to the race. Bede compares Christs priority in choosing His disciples to Gods priority in loving us. We love, because he first loved us. Our love is a response to the appeal of His infinite, unmerited, and spontaneous love. He first loved us. When He made man, He did not leave him as a manufacturer might an article, without any concern respecting the future. Archbishop Trench says, The clockmaker makes his clock and leaves it; the shipbuilder builds and launches the ship, which others navigate; but the world is no curious piece of mechanism which its Maker constructs and then dismisses from His hands. And the Lord God called unto the man, and said unto him, Where art thou?
I have not sought Thee, I have not found Thee,
I have not thirsted for Thee:
And now cold billows of death surround me,
Buffeting billows of death astound me,
Wilt Thou look upon, wilt Thou see
Thy perishing me?
Yea, I have sought thee, yea, I have found thee,
Yea, I have thirsted for thee,
Yea, long ago with loves bands I bound thee:
Now the Everlasting Arms surround thee,
Through deaths darkness I look and see
And clasp thee to Me.2 [Note: Christina G. Rossetti.]
2. What does Gods question contain? The question is, Where art thou?
(1) It contains the suggestion that the man is lost. Until we have lost a thing we need not inquire about it; but when God said, Where art thou? it was the voice of a shepherd inquiring for his lost sheep; or better still, the cry of a loving parent asking for his child that has run away from him, Where art thou?
(2) It contains also the promise of mercy. It shows that God intended to have mercy upon man, or else He would have let him remain lost, and would not have said, Where art thou? Men do not inquire for what they do not value. There was a gospel sermon in those three divine words as they penetrated the dense parts of the thicket, and reached the tingling ears of the fugitivesWhere art thou? Thy God is not willing to lose thee; He is come forth to seek thee, just as by and by He means to come forth in the person of His Son, not only to seek but to save that which now is lost.
3. And what is the effect of Gods question?
(1) It rouses men to a sense of their sinfulness. Sin stultifies the conscience, it drugs the mind, so that after sin man is not capable of understanding his danger as he would have been without it. Sin is a poison which kills conscience painlessly by mortification. Men die by sin, as men die when frozen to death upon the Alpsthey die in a sleep. One of the first works of grace in a man is to put aside this sleep, to startle him from his lethargy, to make him open his eyes and discover his danger.
One of the holiest of the Churchs saints, St. Bernard, was in the habit of constantly warning himself by the solemn query, Bernarde, ad quid venisti? Bernard, for what purpose art thou here?1 [Note: E. Morgan.]
(2) It brings repentance and confession. The question was meant to convince of sin, and so to lead to a confession. Had Adams heart been in a right state, he would have made a full confession of his sinfulness. It is easier to make a man start in his sleep than to make him rise and burn the loathsome bed on which he slumbered; and this is what the sinner must do, and what he will do if God be at work with him. He will wake up and find himself lost; conviction will give him the consciousness that he has destroyed himself, and then he will hate the sins he loved before, flee from his false refuges, and seek to find a lasting salvation where alone it can be foundin the blood of Christ.
When Fletcher was a boy he lived in Switzerland, near the mighty mountains. He used to like to go out, when he was only seven years old, by himself, in the beautiful valleys and mountains, and think about God. He used to think that the mountains were like those where Elijah was. He had several brothers and sisters, and one day he was very cross, and quarrelled with them. When he went to bed he was told how very wrong it was. John did not say anything. When in bed, of course he could not sleep, and he did a very wise thing. He jumped out of bed, and he knelt down and asked God to forgive him. And Fletcher said, after he was a man, Oh, that was a happy night! and that was the first time I ever tasted sweet peace.1 [Note: James Vaughan.]
(3) But above everything else, and indeed as including everything else, it calls forth a response to Gods love. Where art thou? is no doubt the question of the righteous Judge from whose wrathful eye no leafy tree can shadow. Adam must not imagine that his sin is a light matter in the estimation of Him who claims unqualified obedience. But it is at the same time the voice of the compassionate Father, who Himself goes forth in search of the lost one who has strayed from Him, and whose heart is no less penetrated with the misery into which His child has flung himself than with the guilt of his palpable error. It is, above all, the voice of the compassionate Saviour, who has it already in His heart to guide the sinner through the darker depths of judgment to the glorious heights of an eternal salvation. Where art thou? It is the first word of Gods advent to the world, His salutation of peace before the utterance of the alarming prophecy, I will put enmitya word which at the same time may be called the free act of eternal compassion, and whence still, after centuries, the echo recalls to us this comforting assurance, As I live, saith the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked.
The venerable Dr. Harry Rainyin his old age, a picturesque and familiar figure in the streets of Glasgow with his Highland plaid, his snow-white hair and his furrowed facedied loved and honoured. In his last years he had a beautiful gentleness of spirit, and, regarding this, his son, Principal Rainy, in one of his delightful hours of reminiscence, told me an incident which, though it has a sacred privacy about it, I shall venture to repeat. Old Professor Rainy had one night a strange dream. He dreamt that he was holding converse with some August Personage, and gradually it became clear that This was none other than the Holy Spirit of God. The Divine Spirit seemed to be speaking of the means which would make His human auditor a holy man. God had used mercy and also discipline and yet it all had been insufficient. The only thing, so the Transcendent Speaker seemed to say, is that you should be brought to realize more clearly how much God loves you. And from that timeyou may make of it what you will, said the Principalhis father had a peace and joy he never had before.1 [Note: P. C. Simpson, The Life of Principal Rainy, i. 305.]
Literature
Banks (L. A.), The Worlds Childhood, 300, 312.
Blunt (J. H.), in Miscellaneous Sermons (edited by Lee), 93.
Brandt (J. L.), Soul Saving, 157.
Collyer (R.), Nature and Life, 153.
Evans (D. T.), in Sermons by Welshmen in English Pulpits, 28.
Greer (D. H.), From Things to God, 98.
Hanks (W. P.), The Eternal Witness, 98.
Hayman (H.), Sermons in Rugby School Chapel, 159.
Ingram (A. F. W.), The Call of the Father, 51.
Keble (J.), Sermons for the Christian Year: Septuagesima to Ash Wednesday, 139.
Kingsley (C.), The Gospel of the Pentateuch, 36.
Macmillan (H.), The Touch of God, 23.
Matheson (G.), Moments on the Mount, 1.
Morgan (E.), The Calls of God, 17.
Oosterzee (J. J. van), The Year of Salvation, i. 5.
Parkhurst (C. H.), Three Gates on a Side, 69.
Parks (L.), The Winning of the Soul, 51.
Raleigh (A.), Quiet Resting Places, 235.
Shepard (J. W.), Light and Life, 141.
Smellie (A.), In the Secret Place, 209.
Spurgeon (C. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, vii. No. 412; l. No. 2900.
Tyng (S. H.), The Peoples Pulpit, New Ser., ii. 167.
Vaughan (C. J.), in The Worlds Great Sermons, vi. 69.
Vaughan (J.), Sermons to Children, 177.
Christian World Pulpit, lxviii. 277 (Campbell).
Contemporary Pulpit, 2nd Ser., i. 108 (Keble).
Fuente: The Great Texts of the Bible
And they: Gen 3:10, Deu 4:33, Deu 5:25
cool of the day: Heb. wind, Job 34:21, Job 34:22, Job 38:1
hid: Job 22:14, Job 31:33, Job 34:22, Psa 139:1-12, Pro 15:3, Jer 23:24, Amo 9:2, Amo 9:3, Jon 1:3, Jon 1:9, Jon 1:10, Rom 2:15, Heb 4:13
Reciprocal: Gen 4:16 – went Lev 26:12 – I will 2Ki 5:25 – Whence Job 13:20 – hide myself Psa 32:3 – When Isa 6:8 – I heard 2Th 1:9 – from the presence
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
CONCEALMENT FROM GOD IMPOSSIBLE
Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden.
Gen 3:8
I. That which strikes us first of all is, that Adam represents the average sinner.A man may do worse than Adam. Many men have done and do worse than hide themselves from God after outraging Him by sin. Adams conduct proves that the sense of Gods presence, awfulness, greatness, was still intact in his soul.
II. They hid themselves.It was not the result of a consultation: it was an instinct. Two motives would concurrently have determined the action of Adam. (1) Fear. Gods greatness was now the measure of the terror of the creature who had dared to disobey Him. (2) Shame. Adam had felt a fear of God in his unfallen life which differed from the cowering fear of his guilty conscience much as a healthy circulation of the blood might differ from the pulse of fever. But shame was an absolutely new thing, unlike any other capacity or experience in himself with which our first father had been previously acquainted. As the greatness of God was the measure of Adams fear, so his own lost greatness was the measure of Adams shame.
III. Amongst the trees of the garden.The trees beneath the shade of which the human soul seeks refuge from its God are: (1) pleasure; (2) occupation; (3) moral rationalism.
IV. We have no difficulty in characterising this act of Adam as foolish and irrational. It was so: (1) because it was to attempt the impossible; and (2) because it was to fly from the one hope and opening for restoration and safety.
Canon Liddon.
Illustration
(1) The soul has many hiding-places. There are: (1) The hiding-place of self-complacent propriety; (2) the hiding-place of the reasoner; (3) the hiding-place of theological dogmas. But the true hiding-place for the soul is Jesus.
(2) The disturbed relation with God, which is presented in the highly symbolical form fitting for early ages, is as true and impressive for the twentieth century as for them. Sin broke familiar communion with God, turned Him into a fear and a dread, and sent the guilty pair into ambush. Is not that deeply and perpetually true? The sun seen through mists becomes a lurid ball of scowling fire. The impulse is to hide from God, or to get rid of thoughts of Him. And when He is felt to be near, it is as a questioner, bringing sin to mind. The shuffling excuses, which venture even to throw the blame of sin on God (the woman whom Thou gavest me), or which try to palliate it as a mistake (the serpent beguiled me), have to come at last, however reluctantly, to confess that I did the sin. Each has to say, I did eat. So shall we all have to do.
(3) Hideous feeling! There is no pain so horrible as that of wanting to hide from the eyes of those we love or respect. Who has not compressed immeasurable agony into a few such moments, when trying to avoid detection? I know quite well how Adam and Eve felt,dont you? But what must it be to live in such a state perpetually? Think of the men who are trying each day of life to hide from the eyes of their wives and their children; of the criminals who are trying to hide from the police; of the embezzlers who are trying to hide from their employers! A lifetime of happiness can never quite compensate for a day of such shame. But how beautiful to live an open life,to live so that the sudden discovery that the eyes of the world were on you should not cause you a quiver!
Fuente: Church Pulpit Commentary
Gen 3:8. They heard the voice of the Lord God walking, &c. It is supposed he came in a human shape; in that wherein they had seen him, when he put them into paradise. For he came to convince and humble, not to amaze and terrify them. And they hid themselves, &c. A sad change! Before they had sinned, if they heard the voice of the Lord God coming toward them, they would have run to meet him; but now God was become a terror to them, and then no marvel they were become a terror to themselves.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
3:8 And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife {h} hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God amongst the trees of the garden.
(h) The sinful conscience flees God’s presence.