In Our ImageAncient Stories. Modern Lives. Familiar Struggles.
02 - Adam & EvePrint
Story 02·Genesis 2-3

Adam & Eve

Why do we hide, blame, and rationalize when we know we have crossed a line?
ResponsibilityAvoidanceIntegrityShameFear
Movement I of IV
The story
What the text says happened, before anyone tells you what it means.
The story

God puts the first man in a garden. He may eat from any tree except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God then makes a woman to be his partner.

A serpent tells the woman she will not die if she eats. She sees the fruit is good and desirable, eats, and gives some to her husband. He eats.

Their eyes are opened and they know they are naked. They sew fig leaves into coverings and hide among the trees when they hear God walking in the garden.

God questions them. The man says the woman gave him the fruit. The woman says the serpent tricked her. Each ends by saying they ate.

God announces consequences for the serpent, the woman, and the man. Then he makes them garments of skin and sends them out of the garden.

Genesis 3:12
“And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.”
Movement II of IV
The pattern
What may be happening underneath the events, with each reading marked for how firmly the text supports it.
Story to psychology

What's happening underneath?

A few possible ways to read the human behavior in the story.
The man says he hid because he was afraid (3:10)
Grounded in the text
Fear is the only feeling named after the eating. It comes before anyone has accused them.
They cover up, hide, then talk about being naked (3:7-10)
A plausible reading
Read one way, each step keeps the eating a little out of view until God asks directly. The fear could also be an honest response to God coming near.
Both answers end with 'and I ate' (3:12-13)
Grounded in the text
Neither of them denies it. Each starts with someone else's part and puts their own act last.
The man says 'the woman you gave to be with me' (3:12)
A plausible reading
The phrase could reach past the woman to God, who gave her. Its target and tone are unclear.
The woman weighs the fruit (3:6), then says the serpent tricked her (3:13)
A plausible reading
Both descriptions stand. Being misled and choosing happen together, not as opposites.

They cover, hide, and wait to be asked.

The first thing the couple do after eating is sew fig leaves together. The second is hide among the trees when they hear God walking in the garden. God calls out, 'Where are you?' The man talks about his fear and his nakedness. He mentions the tree only after God asks outright whether he ate from it.

Read one way, each step keeps the eating a little further out of sight. The leaves cover their bodies. The trees hide the couple. Talk of nakedness stands in front of the act. His fear may also be honest. Something new has happened to them, and God is close.

Many readers call this shame, and the opening invites that reading: before they ate, they were naked and 'not ashamed' (2:25). Afterward, though, the only feeling named is fear. And they hide before anyone has accused them of anything.Evidence note 1

Both answers end with 'and I ate.'

Neither of them denies it. Asked if he ate, the man says the woman God gave him handed him the fruit, and he ate. Asked what she has done, the woman says the serpent tricked her, and she ate. Both answers have the same shape: someone else's part comes first, and the admission comes last.

Both accounts are true. She did give him the fruit. The serpent did tell her she would not die. So the usual reading, that he blamed her and she blamed the serpent, is about what each of them emphasized, not about lying. Fairness means reading her answer the same way as his.

That may be what makes this move so available. Nobody has to lie. A true story told in a certain order will do.Evidence note 2Evidence note 3

Being misled and choosing can both be true.

Genesis describes the woman's decision in two ways. The narrator tells it through her own eyes: the fruit looked good to eat, lovely to look at, and worth wanting because it could make her wise. Her own account is shorter: the serpent tricked me. The story keeps both and never ranks them. The man's story has the same shape. Someone handed him the fruit, and he ate it.

Then both of them face consequences. God's words to the man name his wife's voice and his own eating in the same breath (3:17). Her part is acknowledged, and the weight still lands on him for what he did. Some take the consequences as simply what follows from eating, whatever anyone said. Read as a whole, though, the scene suggests that a true account of someone else's influence does not take away your own share.Evidence note 4Evidence note 5

The deeper idea

An excuse does not have to be false to be a way of hiding. We can tell the truth about what happened, put someone else at the front of it, and still be the one who ate.

Movement III of IV
The mirror
Where the story stops being about them and starts being about you.
From the story

Lines worth sitting with.

Genesis 2:25 KJV
“And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.”
Genesis 3:10 KJV
“And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.”
Genesis 3:13 KJV
“And the LORD God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.”
Genesis 3:21 KJV
“Unto Adam also and to his wife did the LORD God make coats of skins, and clothed them.”
The uncomfortable part

Your excuses might be true.

Think of the last time you explained something you got wrong. Whose name came first? It might have been the traffic, the vague email, or the friend who talked you into it. All of that may have been true. The question is where 'and I did it' came in that sentence, and whether anyone could hear it.

This is not a charge of dishonesty. The man and the woman told the truth too. Ask whether the truth you told was arranged to keep you slightly out of view. If it was, you can rearrange it. Say your part first. The rest can still follow.

What's yours?

The serpent wasn't theirs. The eating was.

Outside your control
  • The serpent's argument that they would not die
  • What another person put in their hands
  • How someone else chose to act first
Still yours
  • Whether to eat
  • Whether to hide or come out when called
  • Which part of the story to say first
The couple could not control the serpent's argument or what someone put in their hands. The eating was theirs, and so was the way they answered when asked. Each answer names someone else's part, and the consequence still falls on the one who ate.
You can split your own lapse the same way. List what was done to you, then what you did. The second list is the one you can act on. Owning your part can start with coming out from behind the trees, before you explain anything.
Movement IV of IV
What remains
The tension the story refuses to resolve, and the question it leaves with you.
The part that doesn't resolve neatly

The story never calls this loss or growth.

God says the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil (3:22). That sounds like growth. But it comes with pain, sweat, thorns, and a guarded gate. God had warned the man he would die on the day he ate (2:17). He doesn't die that day. He hears he will return to dust, and Genesis leaves the link between the two open.

The ending also sets two coverings side by side. The couple made their own from fig leaves. After the consequences, God makes them garments of skin and dresses them, just before sending them out. Is that care, preparation, or a send-off? Genesis doesn't say. The first covering was their own work; the second is God's.Evidence note 6

What the text doesn't say

Genesis leaves these questions open.

The story gives few reasons. Here are the gaps a careful reader runs into. Each answer would change how the story reads.

  1. Where it sits: Genesis 3:1-6, Genesis 3:17

    Where was the man while the serpent talked to the woman?

    The only clue is that she gave fruit to her husband 'with her.' If he heard the serpent's whole argument, he ate knowing it. If he came up just as she held out the fruit, he ate what he was handed. Each picture changes what 'you listened to your wife' means in 3:17.

  2. Where it sits: Genesis 2:16-17, Genesis 3:3

    Why does the woman add 'do not even touch it' to the command?

    God gave the command to the man before she was made, and it only forbade eating. We never see how the command reached her or why her version is stricter. Knowing that would change how we picture her side of the talk with the serpent: cautious, anxious, or just speaking loosely.

  3. Where it sits: Genesis 3:9

    Is God really asking where the man is?

    If it is a real search, the question tells us something about what God knows. If God already knows, the weight falls on how the man answers. Both readings fit the words, and each changes the tone of the whole scene.

  4. Where it sits: Genesis 3:1, Genesis 3:14

    Why does the serpent start the conversation at all?

    Genesis calls it a crafty creature God made, and it gives no reason for what it does. A motive would change how much of the story belongs to the serpent and how much to the two who ate.

Common misreadings

Some familiar readings go past the text.

Some of the best-known ideas about this story come from later retellings or modern assumptions, not from Genesis 2-3. People hold them for real reasons. Here is what the two chapters actually show.

  1. The familiar reading

    The serpent went to the woman because she was the easier target. She was more trusting or less steady than the man, and easier to talk round.

    What the text supports

    Genesis gives no reason for the serpent's approach (3:1). She states the command herself (3:2-3). The narrator shows her weighing the fruit (3:6). The man also eats. Both answer the same way when questioned (3:12-13). The passage never compares their judgment.

    References: Genesis 3:1, Genesis 3:2-3, Genesis 3:6, Genesis 3:12-13

  2. The familiar reading

    Adam blamed Eve because he was ashamed. Shame made him push the fault onto someone else, just as psychologists say shame does.

    What the text supports

    After eating, the text names only fear. The man hid because he was afraid (3:10). They were earlier 'not ashamed' (2:25), making shame feel obvious. But shame research studies people today - it shows you the pattern, not what was happening when he answered (3:12).

    References: Genesis 2:25, Genesis 3:10, Genesis 3:12

  3. The familiar reading

    The serpent is Satan in disguise, out of malice to ruin the first humans.

    What the text supports

    Genesis names it a creature God made, only more crafty (3:1). Its curse is a creature's: belly, dust, enmity with humans (3:14-15). Satan reading came in later writings. Reading it back supplies a motive and a backstory that these chapters never give.

    References: Genesis 3:1, Genesis 3:14-15

Sit with this

The next time you explain something you got wrong, whose name will you say first - and where in the sentence will you put the part that was yours?

Show the evidence

What each point rests on, and how firmly.

Some of these points are in the text itself. Others are readings of it, and they are marked that way.

  1. Note 1In the text

    SupportsBack to They cover, hide, and wait to be asked.

    The sequence is in Genesis 3: fig leaves (3:7), hiding in trees (3:8), the man's answer about fear and nakedness (3:10), and only then eating is mentioned (3:11-13). Seeing this order as concealment is interpretation laid on top.

    References: Genesis 3:7-13

  2. Note 2In the text

    SupportsBack to Both answers end with 'and I ate.'

    Both answers close with the same words, 'and I did eat,' and both open with someone else. That is just the order of their words. What each of them meant by that order is left for the reader to judge.

    References: Genesis 3:12, Genesis 3:13

  3. Note 3In the text

    SupportsBack to Both answers end with 'and I ate.'

    Each explanation points to something the story has already shown: the woman did hand the man the fruit (3:6), and the serpent did contradict God's warning (3:4-5). So calling the answers blame is a judgment about emphasis. It never accuses either of them of lying.

    References: Genesis 3:4-6, Genesis 3:12-13

  4. Note 4A reading

    SupportsBack to Being misled and choosing can both be true.

    The narrator shows her weighing the fruit (3:6). She later says the serpent tricked her (3:13). Both lines are in the text. Reading them as both true, rather than picking one, is interpretation. Readers differ on which takes priority.

    References: Genesis 3:6, Genesis 3:13

  5. Note 5In the text

    SupportsBack to Being misled and choosing can both be true.

    After they answer, the woman and the man each hear a consequence (3:16, 3:17-19). God's words to the man name both his wife's voice and his own eating (3:17). The story tells us what follows the explanations. It never shows them being weighed or thrown out.

    References: Genesis 3:16, Genesis 3:17-19

  6. Note 6In the text

    SupportsBack to The story never calls this loss or growth.

    The fig leaves come before any questions (3:7). The garments of skin come after the consequences (3:21), just before the expulsion (3:22-24). The pairing is in the text. What the garments mean is never explained.

    References: Genesis 3:7, Genesis 3:21-24