Today’s Passage: Genesis 3
The garden is still open, and the command is still one tree. Then a serpent talks, the woman takes the fruit, the man eats with her, and they hide. God comes looking and asks, “Where are you?” You will leave this chapter with clothes of skin, a promise, and a sword at the gate.
As you read, hold this: They reached for the fruit. God came looking.
Context The world of Genesis 3
The serpent is a creature the LORD God had made. He is not a second god. He is arum, pronounced ah-ROOM. Strong's H6175, crafty, cunning, shrewd. In the last chapter they were naked and not ashamed. Now the serpent is crafty. The two words sit next to each other in Hebrew, and you are meant to hear that. Naked and unashamed becomes naked and covering up, and it starts with a question you still hear: “Did God really say?” , and he talks.
He stretches the command first. God said they could eat from every tree but one. The serpent makes it sound like God had locked the whole garden. Then he says the warning is a lie. Then he offers them a chance to be like God. The woman looks, and the tree is good, pleasing, and desirable. She takes it, and she gives some to her husband. He is with her. He is not off in another field. He says nothing until the fruit is in his hand. That is how a whole house falls. Later Scripture names the ancient serpent as the devil. Paul treats this chapter as the door death walked through. That door is why the world you live in feels the way it does.
"Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, so also death was passed on to all men, because all sinned." Romans 5:12 (BSB)
The woman adds a word God did not say: “or touch it.” The serpent takes away a word God did say: “You will not surely die.” When they eat, they do not become like God the way they hoped. They become ashamed, so they sew fig leaves and hide in the trees. The man points at the woman and at God. The woman points at the serpent. No one says, “I ate, and I was wrong,” until the eating is already done. You know that move. You have made it.
Genesis 3:1–7 (BSB)
¹ Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field that the LORD God had made. And he said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden?’” ² The woman answered the serpent, “We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden, ³ but about the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden, God has said, ‘You must not eat of it or touch it, or you will die.’” ⁴ “You will not surely die,” the serpent told the woman. ⁵ “For God knows that in the day you eat of it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” ⁶ When the woman saw that the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eyes, and that it was desirable for obtaining wisdom, she took the fruit and ate it. She also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate it. ⁷ And the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; so they sewed together fig leaves and made coverings for themselves.
Their eyes are opened. They do not see glory. They see that they are naked. They sew fig leaves together and cover themselves. You cannot hide from God with a leaf.
Genesis 3:8–13 (BSB)
⁸ Then the man and his wife heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the breeze of the day, and they hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden. ⁹ But the LORD God called out to the man, “Where are you?” ¹⁰ “I heard Your voice in the garden,” he replied, “and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid myself.” ¹¹ “Who told you that you were naked?” asked the LORD God. “Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” ¹² And the man answered, “The woman whom You gave me, she gave me fruit from the tree, and I ate it.” ¹³ Then the LORD God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?” “The serpent deceived me,” she replied, “and I ate.”
God comes walking, they hide, and He calls. “Where are you?” is not because He lost them. He will not let hiding be the last word. The man admits he is afraid and naked. He does not admit the tree until God asks. Then he blames the woman, and he blames God for giving her to him. The woman blames the serpent. Both of them tell a piece of the truth and hide behind it. God still comes looking for you the same way.
Genesis 3:14–19 (BSB)
¹⁴ So the LORD God said to the serpent: “Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and every beast of the field! On your belly will you go, and dust you will eat, all the days of your life. ¹⁵ And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed. He will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.” ¹⁶ To the woman He said: “I will sharply increase your pain in childbirth; in pain you will bring forth children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.” ¹⁷ And to Adam He said: “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat, cursed is the ground because of you; through toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. ¹⁸ Both thorns and thistles it will yield for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. ¹⁹ By the sweat of your brow you will eat your bread, until you return to the ground—because out of it were you taken. For dust you are, and to dust you shall return.”
Genesis 3:20–24 (BSB)
²⁰ And Adam named his wife Eve, because she would be the mother of all the living. ²¹ And the LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife, and He clothed them. ²² Then the LORD God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil. And now, lest he reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever…” ²³ Therefore the LORD God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. ²⁴ So He drove out the man and stationed cherubim on the east side of the Garden of Eden, along with a whirling sword of flame to guard the way to the tree of life.
Adam names her Eve, “living,” after God has just spoken about death. God does not send them out in fig leaves. He makes skins and clothes them. Something died so they could stand covered. Even the covering is mercy.
Then the garden is closed. Cherubim and a sword guard the way to the tree of life. A sinner who lives forever in his sin would be a horror. The exile is judgment, and it is also mercy. They will work the ground. They will die. And the zera, pronounced ZEH-rah. Strong's H2233, seed, offspring, descendants. Seed means offspring, the ones who come after. God puts hostility between the serpent and the woman, and between his seed and hers. Then it gets personal. He will crush your head. You will strike his heel. The coming one will be wounded, and the serpent’s head will be crushed. has already been promised.
The church has long heard the first gospel here. The verse does not say the name Jesus. God speaks this promise before anyone has left the garden. The promise already points ahead to the One who will crush the serpent.
The woman’s pain in childbearing is real. The man’s work in a cursed ground is real. Desire and rule will go crooked. None of that cancels the promise. The curse is not the last thing God knows how to say. You live on this side of the gate, and that promise is still the hope.
Study notes Going deeper
Stay with “Where are you?” The God who made the week is the God who walks in the garden after the fruit is eaten. He is not surprised, and He is not done. They hide, and He calls. If you have hidden, He still knows how to call your name.
The sword will not be the last word about the tree of life. Revelation shows that tree again, in another garden city, for the healing of the nations. Between those two trees stands the Seed who was struck and who crushed the serpent’s head.
They reached. He came looking. That is still the story.