There is no mention of Eve’s walk towards the center of the Garden or if she was already there when the Serpent encountered her. The writer immediately transports us to the tree filling up Eve’s eyes, prohibitions forgotten ({{Gen 3:6}}).
Note the four-sided allure of sin.
First the woman looked at the tree differently than what she had before. In the past, it was a tree marked by death. In her mind, eating or touching resulted in the death penalty. Yet after her illuminating conversation with the Serpent, she had learned that the Creator God of {{Genesis 1:1}} was really trying to hold her back from her full potential. The tree had gone from prohibited to attainable.
Secondly, she noted that the tree was good for food…just as good as all the other trees in the garden were. Why God would make such a prohibition against this one tree’s good food over all of the others made no sense—it was perfect for eating! After all, it was good in fulfilling a basic necessity of life.
Thirdly, she was amazed at how beautiful the thing was. Here she was, walking about a garden with all the other (rather) drab fruit when such a beautiful thing sat here untouched and prohibited. God was something else to deny her of the pretty things in life! After all, it was aesthetically pleasing—the means by which life is madeenjoyable.
Fourthly, she had a hunger for wisdom outside of God’s counsel. A wisdom that would only be granted upon eating the fruit from this tree. Why would she sit there in the doldrums of Garden Life as a simpleton when she could become something better, smarter, and wiser? After all, it was intellectually needed to make one wise.
And now we see the sinner at her side. Some have wondered if Eve took the fruit to him but I don’t think so…I think Adam knowingly sinned whereas Eve messed up, transgressed, by being cleverly deceived (1 Tim 2:14). She ate, she didn’t die and she handed it to her husband who (I think) noted that she didn’t die then ate after her.
It was then, after Adam’s eating, that the eyes of both of them were opened. The sin was that they had disobeyed God’s command by eating of this tree…not that they had copulated as God had commanded. Their eyes were opened not because they ate of a magical tree but because God defined that eating from this would instill personal knowledge of Good and Evil and done so because it disobeyed him. In other words, Adam and Eve knew Good and Evil in this sense: God said “Don’t Eat from X Tree” and that meant “To Eat from X-Tree” was outside of what God wanted thus it was Evil. Therefore “Good” was to stay within what God wanted. Now, by them stepping outside of what God wanted they experientially knew Evil: they went there and they knew Good as what they had left behind. Their eyes were opened and man became his own Lord God and held accountable for said responsibility.
With this sudden openness of their position, outside of the demand of God and out there of their own volition, they realize how naked they truly are. Indeed the Serpent’s words come true that their eyes are literally opened…albeit they thought he may have been referring to some Great Intelligence. Indeed, they know Good and Evil as the Serpent has said, albeit they experientially know it and now are trying to fix the situation by sewing useless loin clothes out of leaves and vine. They didn’t die…but God’s prohibition stated “In the day that you eat of it” and they may not have remembered that bit as the day approached that nice cool part…
Series link. Tags: Bible, Bible study, Simple Bible Study Methods, Genesis, Creation, Evolution, Adam, Eve, Cain, Abel, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Israel, Sin, Fall of Man, Depravity