Read Genesis 3:15-24. As a result of the Fall, what happened to Adam and Eve?
While God’s judgment of the serpent is explicitly identified as a curse (Genesis 3:14), God’s judgment of the woman and of the man is not. The only time where the word “curse” is used again, it applies only to the “ground” (Genesis 3:17). That is, God had other plans for the man and the woman, as opposed to the serpent. They were offered a hope not offered to him.
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Because the woman’s sin is due to her association with the serpent, the verse describing God’s judgment of the woman was related to the judgment of the serpent. Not only does Genesis 3:16 immediately follow Genesis 3:15-16, but the parallels between the two prophecies clearly indicate that the prophecy concerning the woman in has to be read in connection to the Messianic prophecy in Genesis 3:15. God’s judgment of the woman, including childbearing, should therefore be understood in the positive perspective of salvation (compare with 1 Timothy 2:14-15).
Because the man’s sin is due to his listening to the woman instead of listening to God, the ground from which man has been taken is cursed (Genesis 3:17). As a result, man will have to work hard (Genesis 3:17-19), and he will then “return” to the ground where he comes from (Genesis 3:19), something that never should have happened, and that was never part of God’s original plan.
It is significant that against this hopeless prospect of death Adam turns, then, to the woman, where he sees the hope of life through her giving birth (Genesis 3:20). That is, even amid the sentence of death, he sees the hope of life.
Meanwhile, as would any loving parent, God had wanted only good for them, not evil. But now that they knew evil, God was going to do all that He could to save them from it. Thus, even amid these judgments, all hope was not lost for our first parents, despite their open and blatant disobedience to God; even though they — living truly in paradise — had absolutely no reason to doubt God, to doubt God’s words, or to doubt His love to them.
| Though we tend to think of “knowledge” in and of itself as good, why is that not always the case? What are some things that we are better off not knowing? |
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