After God created Adam and Eve, everything was perfect and beautiful, free of sin and decay. Everything was always fresh and new. Adam and Eve were innocent of evil. Eden Garden was a perfect place to live for perfectly innocent human beings, like Adam and Eve.
Before Eve came into the picture, God did this:
“And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is PLEASANT TO THE SIGHT AND GOOD FOR FOOD. THE TREE OF LIFE was in the midst of the garden, and THE TREE OF THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOOD AND EVIL. . . The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” Genesis 2:8-9, 15-17ESV (capitalization is mine)
Notice the kind of trees God created for Adam to eat and enjoy. They were trees “pleasant to the sight and good for good.”
And God said to Adam, “eat of every tree of the garden,” – except one tree. That means if 100 trees were created, God said to Adam, “Eat 99 of these trees.” When it comes to knowledge and wisdom, God kind of implied to Adam to say, I am your Knowledge and Wisdom. I only know what is good and what is evil for you because I am your Creator. You are a created being. You cannot know good and evil apart from Me. You cannot be independent of Me for your own good. So, leave the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil” alone because you don’t need it.
I mean, Adam didn’t ask God any question like, “Can You make the instruction a bit clearer than that?” No, Adam didn’t need any explanation and he didn’t have any question because he was perfect human being with all his faculties working perfectly. He understood the instruction clearly.
Then after, God said, “Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” Genesis 2:18ESV
And God took one rib from Adam’s side and fashioned the rib into a woman, Eve. (Genesis 2:21)
And the word of God said, “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.” Genesis 2:24-25ESV
Just perfect world! Perfect joy and pleasure! In the presence of the LORD God around the clock!
Then “Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’”” Genesis 3:1-3ESV
Okay. Just for a second, compare what the woman said to the serpent (Genesis 3:2-3) and how God exactly instructed Adam (Genesis 2:16-17).
I mean, hello!
At this point, I feel like the serpent, tongue in the cheek, said to himself, “Bingo! When I saw you coming to church every week and signing in the church choir, like a lion, I thought you knew the word of God! I guess you don’t! That will make my work very simple and easy!”
“But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”” Genesis 3:4-5ESV
At this point, Eve might probably have said in her heart: What! Really? I can’t believe this! Wow! So, all along God had been lying to both of us, trying to keep us from being Gods like Him! Wow!
The word of God said,
“So when the woman saw that the tree WAS GOOD FOR FOOD, AND THAT IT WAS A DELIGHT TO THE EYES, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.” Genesis 3:6ESV (capitalization is mine)
Do you see any similarity between these two verses: Genesis 3:6 & 2:9 – the tree was “pleasant to the sight and good for food.” The one thing Eve’s imagination added to the description of the tree because of what the serpent said to her was this: “the tree was to be desired to make one wise,”
Wow! She wanted to eat the tree to be wise, to find wisdom that can empower her to identify clearly between good and evil without God’s help.
While trying to be “God and wise” apart from God, she became dead!
God was her only Wisdom.
The Bible says, “Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption” 1 Corinthians 1:30ESV
Amen!
Eve got deceived by a short and quick speech of the devil. Paul writes: “For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor.” 1 Timothy 2:13-14ESV
The question we need to ask after reading the above passage is this: What about Adam? Why did he get cursed by God if he didn’t get deceived, right?
Well, Genesis 3:6b reads, “she[Eve] took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.”
What? Adam was next to her?
Yes, he was!
Was he listening to their conversations too?
Yes, he was!
Then?
Adam just ate the forbidden fruit knowing what he was doing. He didn’t get deceived or confused like Eve.
So, God cursed Adam saying,
“Because you have listened to the voice of your wife
and have eaten of the tree
of which I commanded you,
‘You shall not eat of it,’
cursed is the ground because of you;
in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life;
thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you;
and you shall eat the plants of the field.
By the sweat of your face
you shall eat bread,
till you return to the ground,
for out of it you were taken;
for you are dust,
and to dust you shall return.” Genesis 3:17-19ESV
This must have happened. Adam neglected his headship! He didn’t interrupt the serpent and said, “Why are you talking to my wife?” Nope! He was just simply led by Eve who was totally deceived.
(Just as a side note, some men read the above passage of the Bible and say, “I should never listen to my wife because everything she says will lead me to evil.” Actually a wise man marries a wised up woman by the Holy Spirit that he carefully and attentively listens to her, his wife. That is Marriage 101 Class!)
After the fall, every man, and every woman for that matter, became very familiar with the story of how Adam was innocent of any evil until Eve came into his life and made him sin against God. So, the woman was considered lower than a man and a little higher than domestic animals. She was considered as man’s property, whether that man is her dad or brother or husband. And if any man who owns her as a daughter or as a sister or a wife if he thinks she deserves to die, he kills her and he won’t be accountable for her death because duh, she is his property! It is like you throw away your used pot! Who will drag you to court for doing that?
No one!
A man cannot be held responsible “for a thing.” Only for human beings, “men!”
Anyway, to make the long story short, the Law of Moses came to give some peace to the society as well as some freedom and rights to women; but tradition and men’s long held concept of women tramped over the Law. They misinterpreted the Law to suit their views of women, to make men higher than women and to make women useful property that a man can use and discard at any moment and at any time.
By the way, what Jesus did in the Sermons on the Mount is to teach to Jews how to clearly and correctly interpret the Law (Matthew 5, 6, 7).
Do those interpretations change the woman’s status in the society?
Nope!
To this day, women, especially women in churches, in the name of religion and the word of God, are viewed as objects created by God for a man.
Then God interrupted human’s history and sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to earth!
And, guess what?
Jesus began teaching the people the truth of God. And in the eyes of Jew men, Jesus’ concept of women was totally obnoxious, outrageous, unacceptable, unspiritual, and non-agreeable and contrary to their long-held views.
Jesus’ view of women is the view a woman needs to know and have so that she will be liberated from her unconsciously or consciously wrong and false view of who she is. She doesn’t need once a year celebration of “Woman’s Day” or movements such as Feminism which all sound good from the surface but unable to free a woman to be the woman God created her to be.
God willing, I will continue this teaching next week. ///