Adam, Eve and the Serpent

Maybe no one has asked these questions before … maybe lots of people have – I don’t know. But every once in a while, when the subject comes up about the original sin in the Garden of Eden, there are factions for almost every view point. And, those discussions can cause dissension between believers. I don’t want to add to that, or pretend that I know more than I do, but here are my thoughts.

In my reading of the book of Genesis (which usually happens in the month of January, since the beginning of the year goes with the beginning of the Bible) here’s what I keep coming back to: in chapter two of Genesis, God takes the Man and sets him down in the Garden of Eden (v.15). Verses 16-17 describe the command God gave him regarding the Tree-of-Knowledge-of-Good-and-Evil. It’s a pretty succinct command: “Don’t eat from it. The moment you eat from that tree, you’re dead.” (My paraphrase.) And, it’s not until the next verse that a help-mate for Adam is mentioned – and the search for that helpmate began with God’s creation of all the wild animals and birds. When none of them worked for that assignment, then God created Eve.

We don’t know what the time frame was for all that creating and naming; we only know Eve wasn’t a part of the process, since she hadn’t been created yet. But, knowing humans as we do now, how long would you guess it took for Adam to forget exactly what God’s wording was in his command to leave the tree alone? One other thing we know is that they’d both had time to walk with God in the cool of the evening at least once before the serpent showed up. Again, we don’t know how many times they’d taken that evening stroll. But it’s not until the next chapter that the drama begins: Chapter 3, verse 1 says “One day the serpent asked the woman …”

Have you noticed Eve rarely gets a break in people’s minds when this story is brought up? Yes, she added to the words of the command when she told the serpent what God had said. But maybe she hadn’t been the one who heard the command directly from God – maybe that had been just Adam. And Adam was standing with her during her chat with the serpent according to verse 6, but he neither corrected her recitation of the command, nor stopped her from taking the fruit and eating it. And when she offered it to him, he went ahead and joined right in and had a taste for himself.

Yes, yes, I know … they both sinned and even if it had just been one, it wouldn’t have mattered in the long run because the curse would have been activated either way. However, I for one would like to give Eve a little bit of the benefit of the doubt. After all, how do we know that what she told the serpent wasn’t exactly what she’d heard from Adam? It is possible that he was the one who added the extra words when he told her about it … if he told her at all. And even if she messed the words up royally, there was still time to stop her if he’d stepped between her and the serpent and intervened … so I’d like to give the girl a break. Partially because I think she deserves one, but mostly because I know how many times I mess up on a daily basis, and I’d like to think that anyone who is listening or watching would be willing to give me a break too!

Just another odd thing I wonder about now and then …