NOTES for Gen 3:8

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.