NOTES for Gen 3:1-24

The biblical story of the fall has always raised many questions for readers. What does the tree of the knowledge of good and evil mean, and what does it symbolize? Why is knowing good and evil bad? Where did the serpent in the garden of Eden come from? And what, in the end, happened to human beings during the fall? A great deal depends on the answer to the first question. Why was knowing good and evil dangerous for the human being? Why does eating the fruit from this particular tree lead to death, as God warns the human being?

Some people have thought, and still think now, that this concerns what is sometimes called "childlike innocence," whatever that may mean. Sometimes people speak directly of sexual "innocence," and sometimes of spiritual and moral innocence. The first is clear enough: God commanded the human being to be fruitful and multiply even before the fall, and He hardly meant any ways other than the traditional and well-known one. The second is more complicated, but even here it is not hard to see that, even if one considers children "innocent" in the sense of good and evil (which is far from obvious in itself), such ignorance completely excludes any spiritual or moral responsibility: the human being then becomes an amoral creature, to whom it is meaningless to prescribe anything as a commandment or as a moral, or even behavioral, prohibition.

The point is clearly something else. In antiquity, "good and evil" often meant the whole created world, which was then often described by using one or another pair of all-embracing, cosmic-scale opposites, such as, for example, "heaven and earth" in the biblical Poem of Creation. "Good and evil" was also one such pair. Knowledge in the Bible is always something practical, not abstract and contemplative; it involves entering into what is known and mastering it, not simply detached analysis. To know the world, one had to plunge headlong into it, including into all the evil present in it. And evil was already in the world, for the angels had fallen before humanity, and the serpent in the garden of Eden, symbolizing the power of darkness, confirms this.

The serpent appears because in antiquity the serpent was a symbol of various kinds of magical practices, which from the biblical point of view were in any case evil and a challenge to God. This desire to plunge headlong into the world's evil, to try it and then decide for oneself whether it really is evil or not, is what leads the human being astray. It is quite possible that at first the human being did not intend to quarrel with God or challenge Him. He simply wanted to try to create his own world, where everything would be determined by him, including the question of what, for him, for the human being, is good and what is evil.

But the human being plainly did not have the strength to create such a world. As soon as his "eyes were opened," he saw his nakedness, his own inadequacy in light of the task he had set himself. To admit such inadequacy before God is frightening, not because He will punish, but because one will have not only to fall in one's own eyes, but also to give up such a wonderful project (or rather, fantasy project).

And then, unwilling to acknowledge the obvious, the human being begins to shift blame onto those around him, onto circumstances, in short, onto everything and everyone except himself. Yet for God, "the wife whom You gave me" and the tempting serpent are no excuse. Refusing to acknowledge responsibility puts a wall between God and the human being, a wall that from then on will define the whole life of humanity, now fallen humanity.

"If you are what you think you are, prove it. If you are your own master, become like God." Here is the refined simplicity of temptation: do what is proper for you to do according to your position. The loss is not in what we try to do. We lose when we agree that we really are what the devil calls us. When we begin to prove that we are intelligent, kind, generous, great, almighty, independent, or anything else. He demands proof, and we rush to provide it. It always ends the same way: it is impossible to win by providing proof to a liar. What does Jesus do? What does He teach us as He overcomes temptation? He exposes the liar and deceiver not by doing what, of course, He can do. He does not enter into the argument, showing us that He needs no proof at all. He knows us and never offers us a burden we cannot bear. He asks of us love and mercy, and He does not need proof that we can love and show mercy.

Most questions usually arise in connection with what it means to be "knowing good and evil." How can one judge the moral act of a person who does not know, as Adam and Eve apparently did not before the fall, what good and evil are? We do not judge a child; we explain that he has acted badly, but even in a strictly legal sense we do not judge him, because we understand that he simply does not yet know what good and evil are.

But here the matter is something entirely different. To imagine the situation in that way is fundamentally wrong. In reality, the serpent offers Adam and Eve the possibility of deciding what good and evil are. "To know" (Hebrew "yada") often means "to be able," "to master," "to possess." The concept of what is good and what is evil lies at the foundation of creation; it is a meaning-forming or structural part of the universe. That is precisely why it says "like gods": they are being offered the chance to build their own little world, separate, where they would be masters over themselves.

And after that everything is very simple. Take one step in the wrong direction, and then one thing catches onto another. It is much easier to abstain from temptation altogether than, after thinking, "I will allow myself a little," to struggle later with its strength multiplied tenfold. Such is the law of every sin.

Why did the human being suddenly decide to hide from God? What moved him at that moment? Fear of punishment? Of course, the human being had every reason to fear God's displeasure, just as God had every reason to be displeased after what had happened. But surely the human being had not yet forgotten what God's mercy was and what its measure was. He had to know that one word of repentance could restore the relationship that had already begun to break down. Likewise, he had to understand that refusal of communion would inevitably lead to his further estrangement from the One without whom the garden of Eden would soon become for him a desert overgrown with weeds and thornbushes. Apparently, at that moment the human being was moved by something more serious and deeper than fear.

Perhaps it was the same thing that had earlier made him taste the forbidden fruit. What was it? Desire for power? The urge to set himself above God? Hardly: even we understand that there is nothing good in such desires, and the people who lived before the fall were in no way worse than we are, but infinitely better. What could have tempted them? Paradoxical as it may sound, the main temptation could have been precisely the creative capacities of the human being, infinitely surpassing ours. To create a wonderful world according to his own design, by himself, with his own powers! Such a task could have seemed entirely within reach to a perfected human being. And then, perhaps, even to present his creation to God as a majestic and wonderful gift!

Of course, this undertaking was doomed from the beginning, and the human being very soon began to understand that his plan was not succeeding. But to come out at that moment to meet God would have meant capitulating, acknowledging his defeat and the failure of his own plan, acknowledging the collapse of the whole grand project. It is no wonder that such an admission was worse for the human being than any punishment. And the attempt to hide from God may have been only a desire to gain the time needed to fix everything and still come out to meet God not as a failure, but as a triumphant victor who had succeeded in everything he had planned. And then a creative failure turned into a spiritual failure, a breakdown that, unfortunately, predetermined the entire subsequent history of humanity: humanity that now had to be not led forward, but pulled out of the pit into which it had fallen; humanity that from then on needed not only transfiguration, but also salvation.

How much what we read today in Genesis resembles our own life. After this it is hard to doubt that the Bible is not a book about someone somewhere, but about us. Having violated God's will, Adam and Eve hide, just as we usually do. When asked directly whether he ate the fruit, Adam does not answer "yes." He says: "The woman You gave me talked me into it, and so I ate." Of course, I have nothing to do with it; You Yourself gave me such a wife, so You are to blame for everything, and she is to blame too, while I am actually the injured party...

When asked directly, Eve answers: "The serpent deceived me; I have nothing to do with it either." Someone else is always to blame. We so dislike bearing responsibility for our actions... But one can deceive people, and even oneself, but one cannot deceive the Lord. He sees hearts... So it is better for us too to look at our own heart objectively, without trying to deceive either ourselves or others.

Adam's fall is not merely a story or an allegory explaining a person's relationship with God and his life. It is a daily event. Every day we find explanations for our actions. Every day we act deceitfully and find excuses for our failure to keep the commandments. Many things distract a Christian from communion with God. "Keep sound wisdom and discretion," we read in the Proverbs of Solomon (Prov 3:19-34). Sound wisdom is care for one's true benefit. If we firmly believe and know that the Kingdom of Heaven is the goal of our life, then why do we not strive to make things better for ourselves? Why do we not strive to take joy in communion with God and in good works? Discretion is not the ability to reason, interpret, and define anything at all. It is the ability to make a choice. To determine what is needed and what is unnecessary, to separate our desires from what is truly necessary for our spiritual growth. It is the ability to decide rightly, relying on reason and on our experience of encounters with God. To choose the path after Christ.

Enmity between man and the devil – where is it from and why? It would seem that the answer is clear: man was created friendly of God, and the devil became the enemy of God. But indeed, the author of the Pentateuch speaks about enmity, which begins after the fall, that is when it could seem, man has become closer to the devil, than he was him before the fall! Why the real enmity begins only now? Meanwhile, if we examined attentively the situation that occurred after the fall, the answer will be rather obvious. Before, man was asked to only guard the outer borders of this garden, which was charged to him by God; now hostilities have moved into the garden itself, which stopped to be a garden, and became a battleground.

Before the fall man fought with the evil, which was for him an external strength and a foreign will; now a strength, that would henceforth be necessary to resist, turned out inside, and the will which was before rather inflexible, often disappoints now, disappoint treacherously, playing on the enemy side. Formerly there was a duel, where the participants did not get closer of each other; now it is replaced by a fight of two grappled with each other into one club of enemies, and to deliver oneself from his enemy is possible only by destroying him. Such has become the spiritual war after fall - a war not for life, but for death.

If the world is so good, if God Who created it really cares about man, how to explain then what we see around: why man doesn’t know how to live in peace with himself, with his family, with the earth? Why all the domains of human relationships turn out deformed, and to man remains only "to eat bread by the sweat of his face ", to fight with the nature, with woman, with God? This question is put in the culture and the religious myths from the beginning of the human history.

The Word gives again a symbolic and paradoxical answer: the problem is not in the envy of the gods and not in the anger of the devils - man, Adam, each of us, in the depths of his essence wanted to live without God, and received in result a bitter awareness of his powerlessness and his ache, instead of wisdom and power. And what remains from paradise is a gleam of hope: one day man will overcome the snake... It is important that this hope is not only the fruit of an irresponsible human optimism. God Himself, by putting away from eternity the sinful man, so that he does not suffer eternally, gives the promise of victory. This word is addressed properly to the snake - and it gives us the right to believe that the snake will be overcome, and in the history of the universe, and in our own life.

So what is a human being: dust or the image of God? Or do the two not contradict each other at all? God directly calls fallen humanity dust, pointing out that its destiny is to return to the dust from which it was made. Is this humiliation, a punishment for the fall? It does not look that way: after all, the human being really was created from dust, just as, according to the sacred writer, the whole universe is made up of "the tiniest specks of dust."

What, then, changed for humanity after the fall? First of all, a certain fatalism in everything that is happening stands out. A person's lot is to return to dust; now nothing else is given. Was it always so? The biblical story, if not directly then indirectly by its context, lets us understand that it was not always so, that returning to dust was not previously inevitable for the human being.

What changed? Dust is merely nature, no more and no less. The cycle of deaths and births is the distinctive feature of natural cycles. And now the human being is simply a part of nature, the same as any other, or almost the same. And before? Before, probably, everything was different: the spiritual principle in the human being prevailed over the natural, and returning "to dust" was not inevitable for him. Now, as we can see, the natural in him prevails over the spiritual.

That is probably why the earth no longer wants to give him its fruits: the subordination of nature to spirit is understandable and natural, but why should nature submit to nature? This is how the human being changes after the fall. Before the fall he was, first and foremost and above all, spirit, and only then an animal. Now, after the fall, he has become first and foremost and above all an animal, and he remains spirit only to the extent that his animal nature allows him to be.

An interesting question: is living forever a reward or a punishment? And life itself? Of course, this is not about the life of the Kingdom, which cannot possibly be a punishment. This is about the life people lived before the fall, and about the life we live today. So what is it: a reward or a punishment? If it is a reward, then cutting humanity off from the tree of life is a punishment; if life itself is the punishment, then that exclusion, on the contrary, becomes an act of mercy.

This way of posing the question can look absurd at first glance, if not for... if not, for example, for the Book of Job, whose main character curses the day of his birth. Not to mention attitudes toward life, for example, in Buddhism. Although if it is not worth talking about Buddhism here, that is only because Buddhism has no direct relation to the Bible or to the biblical tradition. In substance, though, it is just as hard to answer Buddhists, who see life only as a source of evil and suffering, as it is to answer Job when he curses life.

Of course, what is usually called common sense (though it may be only an instinct that human beings share with animals) suggests that life is good and death is bad. That may be so, but then the terms should be defined. For example, is life without God life or death? Or something in between? And what about death for the sake of the Kingdom, about which the Savior spoke so much? Or perhaps life in itself is neither good nor evil? Perhaps the issue is not whether to live or die, but how to live and how to die?

After all, the tree of life by itself guaranteed only the maintenance of life, not its quality. And what would that quality have become if the life of a fallen person had gone on forever without changing at all? Surely it would have been the worst kind of endlessness possible. Perhaps that is why access to the tree of life is closed to fallen humanity. For its own good.