(Reading: Genesis 3:1-24)

When last we met, the man and the woman were comfortably in Eden, naked and unashamed. In Genesis 3, which comes from the same hand as Genesis 2, that is all about to change. Genesis 3 narrates man’s fall.

In our last discussion, I omitted one element from Genesis 2. The sacred author speaks of God planting a garden, whose flora included “the tree of knowledge of good and evil” (2:17), partaking of whose fruit God forbids.

Now, trees “of knowledge of good and evil” and their fruit are not found in your average suburban nursery, so what is the biblical author talking about? Let’s clarify. At this stage in the Old Testament, “knowledge” is not theoretical. It is not “book-learning.” It is experience and experiential: case in point, the Bible will speak of the man “knowing” his wife, the outcome of which is not a book but Cain and Abel.

So, to eat of the fruit of “knowledge of good and evil” means, essentially, to partake of the experience of good and evil. It is to be forbidden to participate in but to deliberately choose evil. And to choose evil is wrong. Freedom exists not to make good and evil equally legitimate choices but to make the good I choose my good, to establish a personal relationship with good. To establish a personal relationship with evil is always evil.

We don’t know exactly what the first sin was. But it wasn’t God punishing the man and the woman and all their generations until the end of time for biting into a piece of fruit. Indeed, before the first sin, man’s internal unity was undisturbed (which is why he was “naked but not ashamed”). It’s why the first parents, truly human, did not resist the temptation while Jesus, also truly human and hungrier, did not change rocks into apple turnovers. The first temptation had to be more than sensory, more than the itch of concupiscence (which doesn’t yet exist). It had to be a prideful choice, and Genesis 3 tells us what it is: “You can be like gods!”

Like Lucifer, you don’t have to serve! Tell God this Garden isn’t big enough for the three of us. Actually, maybe it is, but the temptation has more modern echoes: we want to fence off a piece of the garden where we, not you, decide what’s right and wrong. Call it our zone of “privacy” or “autonomy.”

Genesis 3 presents the psychology of temptation. The devil (through the snake) twists God’s command: “Did God say not to eat of any of the trees?” When the woman correctly states what God commanded, the devil then proceeds to sow motivational doubts. Did God impose that prohibition because it is inevitable: just like walking off a cliff inevitably involves the fall of gravity, so choosing to partake of evil will make you evil, cutting yourself off from him and thereby dying? Or, rather, is it mere arbitrariness, perhaps some jealous preservation of privilege?

We know what happened, for the man and the woman and for all their offspring. Because it’s not just this man and this woman whose individual personhood has been warped. They have warped their human nature, sharing that defect with all their descendants. (Don’t believe in original sin? Tell me, then, why no parent has yet to say, “Listen, Johnny, I know it’s hard but we really have to sit down so you can practice how to lie through your teeth!”)

The sin is recounted tersely: the act is over in half a verse (3:6b). What follows are the consequences.

• They recognize they are naked. Physically, nothing has changed nor have they made an interim visit to the local ophthalmologist. “Their eyes were opened” to a new sensation — concupiscence — to the possibility that in their nakedness they might not just be loved but possibly used, a reality from which they recoil in their fig leaf loincloths. They are alienated from each other and from themselves. Emotions go one way, reason another, and will’s wavering is what “partaking of good and evil” means.
• They hide. They hear God anthropomorphically on his afternoon constitutional and beat a path for the bushes. God has hitherto never given them any reason for fear but they are afraid of him. It means they recognize guilt and, rather than confront it, want to conceal it. They are alienated from God.
• When confronted, all solidarity breaks down. There is no acceptance of responsibility, no “I confess.” The man blames the woman, the woman the snake. They are alienated from themselves and the rest of the world.

The evil having been done, the further consequences flow. Note that I say “consequences,” not just “punishments.” They are consequences because they are necessary outcomes, not arbitrary impositions. If you cut yourself off from God who is the source of your being, you are going to die because you are not self-sufficient. If you cut yourself off from each other, you will use rather than love each other: “Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you” (3:16). If you cut yourself off from creation, it will rebel.

Work is not a punishment because, as we saw, God wanted man and woman to work as part of creation. The punitive consequence is not work but resistance: your bread will not come easily but “by the sweat of your brow” (3:19). If you cut yourself off from yourself, you yourself will rebel: participation in creation through childbirth involves pain and suffering as if your own body resists you (3:16).

There is, however, a note of hope (fitting for this Holy Year) in this passage. Genesis 3:15 is sometimes called the “Protoevangelium” or “Pre-Gospel” because, in cursing the snake, God also foretells a remedy. Already God is resolved not to leave man in his deplorable state but promises the offspring (Jesus) of a new “woman” (Mary) who will crush the ancient serpent’s head. It’s an appropriate passage to give thanks for this Christmastide.

God not only tends to their ultimate spiritual needs but their immediate physical ones, too: He “clothed” them with garments more substantial than their fig-leaf tailoring (3:21).

Paradise is a state — most accurately a Person — not a place. To cut oneself off from God is to engage in self-expulsion. God merely confirms the true state of things. And we’re off to the snowball of sin.

Today’s text is illustrated by an unknown painter from the 1100s in Spain. It is found in Madrid’s Prado Museum. Romanesque art was still going strong (the Gothic is yet to come in other parts of Europe) and this work has all its hallmarks. As is typical of Romanesque religious art, only the key religious personages are present. There is no “background,” no “landscape.”

The two key moments are depicted on the panel. On the left, the man, kneeling, receives instruction from God about the tree behind him. On the right, we see the deed. No longer kneeling, they stand as the equal-footing, would-be “gods” they aspired to be. The sin has been committed, as we see the culprits trying to conceal their private parts. And, in the middle, the serpent clings to the tree of the “knowledge” of good and evil, the latter of which he has managed to entice these two into experiencing … along with its fruit that now tastes like ashes, the ashes to which they will one day return, having amputated themselves from the source of their lives.