Chapter 3

Enter the serpent.

2021 - For the serpent to be here, and in opposition to God, the rebellion of Satan has to have occurred prior to creation. 

Satan calls God a liar.  Satan attributes to God the desire for supremacy that led to Satan's own fall.  God was from the beginning.  God never had this "ambition".  But Satan tells Eve that God "fears" being equaled.  So the reason Eve ate the fruit was her ambition to be like God.  To elevate herself to God's own level of understanding.  Knowledge of good and evil.  Not content just to enjoy life and work the land and eat and be happy.  Satan convinced her, he stoked the fires of her ambition - built in by God, for how could you want to serve God and have no ambition for anything else?  But she does not question the serpent.  She quotes God's order not to eat of this tree.  She was completely aware, but upon seeing that the tree looked really good, plus it would make her wise - and she desired now to be wise - she ate.  And she gave it to Adam.  Look at his choice?  Even had already eaten.  She was in a different  place than he was.  Her eyes were opened.  She was in a different "reality" than he was.  She had been custom made for him, and now she was not like him at all.  There was tension, there was separation and distance between them.  Did he want to obey God and condemn himself to that separation forever, or did he put his need for a helper above the orders of his God?  Pretty obvious which he chose.

2025 - The MSB footnote on 3:1 says that Satan rebelled somewhere after Gen. 1:31 and before 3:1.  How is it possible that I have never ever even once heard this preached?  It is important!  It ought to be a theological bomb shell!  There was no sin even in the angelic realm when man was created.  There was no threat that sin might come.  Why not create man and woman with this bond between them that is strong enough to rival even man's faithfulness to his creator?  And this is where Satan attacked!  Not at man's weakest link, but at his strongest connection!

Nakedness.  Always wrong, but not always recognized.  Why would this be?  It only applies to man and woman.  We don't call animals naked.  But the creation of woman is unique to the creation of other females.  One flesh.  Surely that is part of it...

This verse:

15 I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel." [Gen 3:15 ESV]  The serpent...I think we have two things going on here.  People hate snakes, and snakes bite people.  They kill each other.  But this is likely because "that old serpent, the devil" used the snake to deceive the woman.  The serpent - the devil - is the real object of God's curse here, but snakes share in it because of their part.

2025 - So...even though a created animal, the snake itself is cursed forever for its participation in this event.  Does that not imply that animals have a lot more going on than we think?  Animals have some measure of responsibility for their actions.  We see in the Law that an ox that gores a man is to be killed.  This too is holding an animal responsible for its actions.

2026 - Look at this verse:

Genesis 3:15 LSB

[15] And I will put enmity Between you and the woman, And between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, And you shall bruise him on the heel.”

We assume we know about the woman's seed.  What does it mean that the serpent will have seed.  Angels don't reproduce. So that part is strictly about snakes.  Yet it said earlier that snakes were the craftiest of all. Plus, obviously, this serpent talks and is intelligent.  How do we resolve this? 

That Satan cannot speak directly to men so has to enter and possess something through which he can talk?  AND that animals could all talk before the fall and that was taken away? That is why animals can do so much more than just be pets?

We hate spiders too, not just snakes.

2026 - There is something being said here that we are missing.

Vs. 16 is the first place in this second account that we see children mentioned.   The need for children seems to have come about only after the fall.

2024 - No, that's not the way to look at this. Note the wording:

16 To the woman he said, "I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you." [Gen 3:16 ESV].  "will multiply" is an imperfect verb in Hebrew.  It is about an "open ended" action, and is usually translated as present or future tense because these are more easily conceived as open ended than past events.  Here is an idea.  God says he "will multiply", and we might ought to see that as a CHANGE in the previous condition.  She had previously had children with no pain.  Going forward, that will be different.  Yes, it is just as easy to say that the painless childbirth that would have happened will now be painful, but I think the other interpretation seems more logical.  So a second verse that indicates childbirth before the fall.

2024 - We can also compare the other punishments.  The serpent will crawl on it's belly.  Previously it moved in some other way.  Adam will henceforth sweat and exceed his physical comfort level in order to provide, where previously it all came easy.  He cultivated before, but now he will have to work at it.  So in each case, something previously done is now made more difficult.  I think this makes good sense and explains a lot about early multiplication.

2025 - This last part of 16..."Yet your desire will be for your husband".  There is a footnote in MSB about this.  JM says that "The woman's desire will be to lord it over her husband, but the husband will rule by divine design.  This interpretation of the curse is based upon the identical Hebrew words and grammar being used in 4:7 to show the conflict man will have with sin as it seeks rule him."  I do not read Hebrew, but the note at 4:7 doesn't seem to me to "connect" back to this.  I put it in the notes because it at least gives the basis for this interpretation that I have heard for so long.  It is a little bit interesting that it was Adam that told Eve not to eat.  In a way, her sin was against him in that she defied what he had told her.  The consequences for her - for women - were dire.  Why would she not resent the authority who's command led to her troubles.  She would see his orders as insufficient.  He did not emphasize the cost of error, did not make it clear enough that disobedience would not be worth it. 

2026 - This verse:

Genesis 3:19 LSB

[19] By the sweat of your face You will eat bread, Till you return to the ground, Because from it you were taken; For you are dust, And to dust you shall return.

This is the first mention of cooking.  Of processed food.   Once the doing was cursed eating was a chore.  Where what had been directly edible now the Chad had to be removed and the seed ground into flour. It became written to prepare it.

This verse:

22 Then the LORD God said, "Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever--" [Gen 3:22 ESV]  What is happening here?  God told them that if they ate, they would die.  So they were immortal before they ate.  Now, this special tree, can give them back immortality if they eat of it, and they just might now that they are fallen.  So they must be expelled from the garden where the tree resides.

OTHER THOUGHTS....

There is no connection between things that live in water and thing that live on land or in the air.  Nothing on land evolved from what started in water.  So this evolutionary "fact" is just dead wrong.  Second, birds did not evolve from anything on land before it.  Birds were there first.  Evolution says birds came from land animals.  Evolution is completely wrong here.  If I wanted to make a career out of "disproving" evolution, these are the two places I would start.  The transition species from marine to land and from land to air.  They are disconnected in every way.

"In Genesis, God reveals Himself and a worldview in sharp contrast to Israel's neighbors.  There is no attempt here to defend the existence of God or to present a systematic discussion of His person and works.  Instead, the book clearly distinguishes the God of Israel from all other gods. "

This quote is from the MSB introduction.  Makes it clear that the Bible - that Genesis in particular - is not about science.  Creation is not scientific.  Genesis is not about evolution, because created things are complete and set at their first appearance.  It is not anthropology, because man appears as fully created may, all descended FROM a single pair, not dozens or hundreds of pairs all ascending TO modern man.  It is not about migrations, because peoples moved to where the divine plan sent them, because they were suited to that land.  Black people moved to the sun, fair people moved to the cold, and brown people stayed near the middle.  There were always variations in color.  If we want to look back at the geological history of the world, we don't need to go back billions of years.  We only need to go back thousands.  We are deceiving ourselves about any time frame longer than that.