This is one of the best known of all Bible stories, and it has thousands of years of tradition piled on top of it. We have heard so many interpretations that they have a powerful impact on how we read the story. We end out seeing a lot of things that aren't really there.
Take a look through the story and you may notice that there is no mention of an apple, or of Satan. We're used to thinking of the story as the fall from grace and the explanation of original sin though neither of these phrases never appear here (or anywhere in the Bible). By stripping away these traditions we will try to get to the heart of the story.
In the first verse we meet a mysterious new character. The serpent, we are told, is more clever than any other wild animal that God has created.
Christians have often interpreted the serpent as Satan in the form of a snake. That's not unreasonable; the serpent is certainly a malicious tempter in the story, and that sounds like Satan. But it's a good idea to separate our assumptions from what the Bible actually says. Scripture never says that the serpent is the Devil, and Genesis 3:1 says it is a clever wild animal. It's strange that we have a talking snake, but (as we've seen in the first two chapters) this isn't meant to be understood as a literal story. It's like a parable, a made up story designed to teach us something important about God and human beings. If we try to make it into a historical story, we're likely to miss the point.
The man and the woman have everything they need, but people who have everything are the easiest to tempt. The serpent asks a misleading question: "Did God say, 'You shall not eat from any tree in the garden'?"
The woman gives the right answer, but she adds a little touch of her own. God had said that the humans would die if they ate the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. The woman repeats this but adds that they will die if they even touch the fruit, and shows how easy it is to add our own words to God's words.
The woman is tempted and eats, then gives the fruit to her husband who also eats. For what it's worth: the fruit is never identified; early Jewish authorities suggested it was grapes, or perhaps grapes pressed to make wine, or a fig, or even wheat. In Christian art the fruit is usually an apple, probably because the Latin word for "apple" (malum) sounds so much like the Latin word for "evil" (mālum).
There is an irony about the fruit; the serpent says that when they eat it, they will be like God, but that's a gift that God has already given them. Back in chapter 1 God created the humans ". . . in the image and likeness of God". The humans weren't content to trust in God's promises and chose to get what they wanted (or what they thought they wanted) through dishonest means.
This is something we see all the time in human relationships. Often people do not trust the ones they love to care for them so they try to get what they want through lying, through bullying, through manipulation, or any number of other dishonest means. This kind of behavior is the opposite of trusting or being trustworthy and it is poison for a relationship.
Now that they have eaten the fruit and gained knowledge, the man and the woman start acting guilty. In chapter 2 we saw that the humans were ". . . both naked, and were not ashamed but now they feel guilty about their nudity. They make clothes to hide their bodies and then they hide from God in the garden. All this hiding is a direct contrast to the openness and honesty that we saw before.
There's an irony about trust, in marriages where one partner has had an affair the guilty partner is likely to become suspicious of the innocent one. When we break a promise or start keeping a guilty secret we often project our mistrust onto people who haven't done anything. As far as they know, the relationship is still one of love and trust, but we know better and it affects the relationship.
God gathers the guilty parties and judges them. While the story describes God's pronouncements as "curses", they aren't really arbitrary punishments. What we see is more on the order of God describing the consequences of their actions. The serpent acted cruelly toward the humans and his curse is that his kind will always be the enemy of theirs.
The humans' curse is more ironic. They have rejected God's way of harmony in favor of manipulation to get what they want. It affects every area of their life, starting with their relationship with each other.
He told the Woman: "I'll multiply your pains in childbirth; you'll give birth to your babies in pain. You'll want to please your husband, but he'll lord it over you." Genesis 3:16
It's hard to imagine that there could ever be childbirth that wasn't painful, but I think the more significant part of this curse comes right after that. Where man and woman were once living in harmony the new pattern is one of inequality. The woman will have to struggle to please her husband, and the man will lord it over her. That's a pretty accurate picture of the relations between men and woman through the rest of the Bible. It gets better over time but it is never the harmonious relationship that God wanted.
In the man's fate we see that there is no longer going to be harmony with the earth. Where nature had been a garden that freely gave everything the humans needed; now agriculture is going to be hard, as man has to fight for everything he gets from the earth.
We traditionally read this passage as an angry God hurling down punishments on the people; punishments that seem disproportionately harsh for the theft of a piece of fruit. The idea of original sin, especially the version taught by Martin Luther and John Calvin, says that all humans share in the guilt of that fruit theft. This idea claims that all of us will be sent to Hell for eternity. The only way to satisfy God's anger was for there to be a blood sacrifice to atone for human guilt, so God sent Jesus to die on the cross so he would be that sacrifice. While this is a popular view, especially among Evangelical Christians, I have three issues with it:
1) It treats this story as a literal, historical event.
2) It paints a portrait of God as a bloodthirsty monster willing to punish everyone for the crime of one person, and whose anger is only satisfied by the bloody murder of his only child.
3) It really doesn't fit with the story in Genesis, which never mentions either original sin or hell.
When you strip away the doctrines, and read this as a parable, what you see is a God who is more sad than angry. We were made to live in harmony with God, with each other, and with the earth. Because we insist on trying to manipulate and have our own way, there is no harmony and everyone suffers. It's not so much a punishment as it is God saying, "If you insist on living like this, here are the consequences."
That would be a sad note to end on, but there's a moment of grace in the story. In chapter 2, God told the humans that stealing fruit from the tree was a capital crime. They day they broke that rule was supposed to be the day they died.
The culture of the ancient Middle East was a culture of honor in which carrying out your promises, especially in matters of punishment and revenge was very important. If you someone broke your rules, you were expected to punish then swiftly and severely. Failure to do so was looked upon as shameful and a sign of weakness.
Maybe that's why the Church has added the idea of hell and damnation to this story. God's actual punishments are so mild that we think they makes God look like a wimp. This isn't the only story where this will happen. Over and over in the scriptures God threatens harsh punishments, then backs off and saves the people. In the struggle between doing the honorable thing and doing the loving and merciful thing, God chooses mercy. That's not what the people of ancient times wanted, and it's not what many modern Christians want, but we will see it happen again and again.
God's love is scandalous. God is willing to show us mercy, even when that means God will be humiliated in the process. When it comes to honor vs. mercy, God's mercy wins nearly every time in the Bible.
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