Genesis 3: The Fall.

As always, the chapter first, uninterrupted, from the English Standard Version of the Bible.

1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made.  He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” 

 2 And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, 

3 but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’” 

4 But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. 

5 For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” 

6 So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. 

7 Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.

8 And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. 

9 But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?” 

10 And he said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.”
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11 He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” 

12 The man said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.” 

13 Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this that you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”

14 The Lord God said to the serpent,“Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field; on your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life. 

15 I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”

16 To the woman he said, “I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children.

Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.”

17 And to Adam he said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree

of which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; 

18 thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field.

19 By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken;

for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

20 The man called his wife's name Eve, because she was the mother of all living.
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21 And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them.

22 Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—” 

23 therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. 

24 He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.
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 This is the first truly horrible story (of many to come) in the Bible.  First, in Genesis 2, God blatantly lies to Adam and tells him that if he eats from the tree of knowledge, he will die instantly.  Then a serpent, whom we are supposed to see as a villain, simply tells Eve that this is a lie and so she eats of the fruit, and she does not die.  God apparently wanted nothing more than to keep knowledge and power from the hands of his creations; it is some horrific offense that they would dare learn morality for themselves.   I find it absurd that the 'evil' they discovered was their own nakedness, but one cannot expect a prehistoric desert tribe to be sexually liberated.  

Though modern Christians would not like to believe it, the Bible explains here the suffering in the world as the product of a vindictive and mean-spirited deity.  God is so mad that mankind has eaten of half of the fruits that would make them equal to him that he creates the pain and (before modern medicine) too frequent death that human women experience in labor.  We know now conclusively that the reason for these birthing complications is actually due to the evolution of bipedal locomotion.  Bipedalism is accomplished through a narrowing of the pelvis in humans, which unfortunately has the negative consequence of a narrower birth canal.  Still, blaming women always did seem to have a charming appeal to the ancients of the Fertile Crescent. 

Women are also naturally to blame for the toil and hardships that men must endure every day in order to survive.  It is woman's fault that man must slave away for his food, and it's plainly obvious that a man must keep a close eye on his wife and daughters, because they have a natural tendency to enter into alliances with the devil himself.  This sets the stage for thousands of years of brutal subjugation of women throughout Judaica and Christendom. The original sin belongs to a woman; she cost man no less than heaven on Earth.

But what, really, is Eve's crime?  Again the peculiar pluralism of God rears its head when in verse 22 he fearfully intones, "Man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil."  He then goes on to worry that the humans will eat from the tree of eternal life, thus making themselves an equal to God (and the other mysterious gods to whom he is speaking, and of whom he considers himself merely a singular part).  Who are these other deities that have already eaten from the tree of knowledge and from the tree of eternal life?  Why is it that God, admittedly not alone, gets sole billing as celestial tyrant?

God imposes awful punishments upon mankind and tosses them out of paradise because he is afraid that his tyranny will be challenged by divine equals.  He prefers instead to keep men as subservient playthings, obsequious and ignorant, servants to his will alone.  This is not a happy or pleasant deity; it is certainly not the loving and benevolent revision that shows up in the New Testament.

This God is clearly not omniscient nor omnipotent; if he were omniscient, he would not worry that Adam might eat from the tree of eternal life; he would know certainly if it was going to happen or not.  He also would have no need to question Adam about his whereabouts or about what he had done while God wasn't there.  It is especially peculiar that this chapter in many other translations of the Bible talks about God walking around through the Garden of Eden, seeing only what his apparently corporeal eyes can see; it implies that God has a body, and that he does not see much that goes on beyond his face.  An omniscient God would not be surprised that mankind had eaten from the tree of knowledge, nor that the serpent had convinced Eve; he would know all these things before they happened, and from this narrative, it is clear that he did not.

An omnipotent God would not have to thrust mankind out of paradise in order to safeguard the fruits of the tree of eternal life; could an omnipotent being not simply make it impossible for Adam to approach the tree?  If he could do anything, could he not erect some kind of magical barrier, or induce a psychological compulsion that prevented Adam's approach to the fruits that were forbidden?

In short, this story exposes the Old Testament God as a vindictive and insecure tyrant; in my opinion, his behavior is far more objectionable than that of the snake, Adam, or Eve.