Genesis 3...The Garden of Eden

Genesis 3...The Garden of Eden

Genesis 3

(Online: ASV WEB)

The Garden of Eden

1 Now the serpent5 was more subtle than any animal of the field which Yahweh God6 had made. He said to the woman,7 “Has God really said, ‘You shall not eat of any tree of the garden’?”

2 The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees of the garden, 3 but not the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden.8 God has said, ‘You shall not eat of it. You shall not touch it, lest you die.’ ”

4 The serpent said to the woman, “You won’t really die, 5 for God knows that in the day you eat it, your eyes will be opened,9 and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

6 When the woman saw that the tree was good for food,10 and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took some of its fruit, and ate. Then she gave some to her husband with her, and he ate it, too. 7 Their eyes were opened, and they both knew that they were naked.11 They sewed fig leaves together, and made coverings for themselves. 8 They heard Yahweh God’s voice walking in the garden in the cool of the day,12 and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of Yahweh God among the trees of the garden.

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

10 The man said, “I heard your voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; so I hid myself.”13

11 God said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?”

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

13 Yahweh God said to the woman, “What have you done?”

The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”

14 Yahweh God said to the serpent,

“Because you have done this,

you are cursed above all livestock,

and above every animal of the field.

You shall go on your belly

and you shall eat dust all the days of your life.

15I will put hostility between you and the woman,

and between your offspring and her offspring.

He will bruise your head,

and you will bruise his heel.”

16 To the woman he said,

“I will greatly multiply your pain in childbirth.

You will bear children in pain.

Your desire will be for your husband,

and he will rule over you.”

17 To Adam he said,

“Because you have listened to your wife’s voice,

and have eaten from the tree,

about which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat of it,’

the ground is cursed for your sake.

You will eat from it with much labor all the days of your life.

18 It will yield thorns and thistles to you;

and you will eat the herb of the field.

19 You will eat bread by the sweat of your face until you return to the ground,

for you were taken out of it.

For you are dust,

and you shall return to dust.”

20 The man called his wife Eve because she would be the mother of all the living. 21 Yahweh God made garments of animal skins for Adam and for his wife, and clothed them.14

22 Yahweh God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil.15 Now, lest he reach out his hand, and also take of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever—” 23 Therefore Yahweh God sent him out from the garden of Eden,16 to till the ground from which he was taken. 24 So he drove out the man;17 and he placed cherubim* at the east of the garden of Eden,18 and a flaming sword which turned every way, to guard the way to the tree of life.

1. [The annotations for this chapter are primarily from Unity magazine and Charles Fillmore's Mysteries of Genesis, p50-52. These interpretations are religious and focus on the importance of taming the passions.] The serpent, who represents sense consciousness, is the untamed power within human beings which usurps the fine essence of life for the pleasure of the flesh. When the soul, through desire for sensation, indulges in pleasures that lie beyond the perfect balance of the creative law, it is robbed of its vital elements; consequently the body is shorn of the sustaining power of life, and decomposition results. We must then prove that we are master over all the appetites, the passions, and the sensations of our nature. We then discover the path by which we can retrace our steps, which will lead us back into the Edenic state idealized by God in the beginning.
2. [Later interpretations in Unity magazine are philosophical and emphasize the effect of duality in consciousness.] The tree of the knowledge of good and evil represent a consciousness of duality instead of a consciousness of the reality, good. The consciousness of duality gains entry into the mind by way of the soul, which is subject to impressions from the realm of appearances. The woman (the soul) 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. Human beings are saved from duality by Jehovah God, or Christ, the supermind in man, who brings to bear spiritual power in both mind and body, and sensation is thereby lifted up and harmonized. “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up.”
3. [More recent interpretations of this story (Ed Rabel, Joseph Wolpert, Jim Lewis) are psychological and focus on the interplay of mental/emotional processes.] Wolpert writes, “In the allegory, there are four characters, man, woman, the serpent, and God. Man symbolizes the thinking function. Woman symbolizes the feeling function. And the Serpent and God symbolize Sensation and Intuition respectively. With this understanding, it becomes clear then that the disobedience which this allegory illustrates was the failure to follow the Intuitive function of consciousness through which God speaks to man. The result of course was catastrophe.”
4. [By far the most radical (and prescient of feminist theology) interpretation of this allegory is from Ursula Gestfeld, New Thought pioneer and collaborator with Elizabeth Cady Stanton to The Women’s Bible. She wrote in the late 1890s,] “The story of the Garden of Eden is an Allegory of nature and not of Ethics. Adam could not find among all the things brought to him to name, a Help-meet for his soul. Because of its divine origin, soul cannot thrive upon the husks of externality, but demands the spiritual food that nourishes. It must have self-knowledge, for it alone satisfies soul hunger. Eve (or Intuition) the ‘Mother of All living’ supplies this demand, for her office is to minister to the rational or masculine nature and lift the man who ‘tills the soil’—‘up and out’ the ‘slough of materiality.’”(Ursula Gestfeld, Course Notes, Chapter 4, The Origin of Evil and Chapter 5, The Ascent of The Soul)
5. serpent. In individual consciousness, the serpent represents wisdom of sense, or sense consciousness. It may also be called desire, and sensation, or the activity of life in an external expression, apart from the Source of life. When the life is lifted to the realization that it is Spirit, it becomes healing, as illustrated by Moses’ lifting up the serpent in the wilderness. (MBD/serpent)
6. Yahweh God. In consciousness, “Yahweh God” is the real or spiritual Man Idea established in Mind-substance.
7. woman. In consciousness, the “woman” represents the intuitive faculty: that in the soul which develops into feeling of life and substance, without the positive guiding light of Divine Wisdom.
8. but not the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden. The fruit of the wonderful tree in the midst of the garden is the pure essence of life, the transmuted seminal fluid, which should be used only for the glory of God. When one uses this holy fruit to gain selfish sensation, there is waste, depletion, and finally death.
9. God knows that in the day you eat it, your eyes will be opened. God, All-Good, knows no evil. We are convinced that he cannot exercise balanced judgment without knowledge of these opposites, the positive and the negative. In reality they neutralize our power to express the divine image and likeness involved in God. It is not necessary for us to know both good and evil in order to reach our highest development. To reach our highest development we must know good. To know evil in the sense of experiencing evil in ourself is to lose ground, or retrogress, instead of developing. The belief that infinite wisdom includes knowledge of both good and evil is the first great error that let the soul, represented by woman, astray.
10. When the woman saw that the tree was good for food. That the forbidden fruit was useful (“good for food”), beautiful (“a delight to the eyes”), and capable of bestowing wisdom (“to be desired to make one wise”) are all specious reasonings by which the soul attempts to justify its intention to disregard the divine law. These are not the true reasons why the soul heeds the voice of sensation. The senses are avenues through which we grow conscious of the manifest world, but because they tend to draw our attention away from the ideal to the world of form and limit him to what is passing, instead of what is enduring, we need to control and direct them intelligently.
11. Their eyes were opened, and they both knew that they were naked. Through ignorance of the divine law the generative function is being misused by many persons. A sense of guilt and disobedience leads to concealment. Our nakedness must be overcome and our bodies be clothed with radiant spiritual essence. To do this, we must get understanding of the law of transmutation, by which the elemental substance and life are raised to spiritual consciousness.
12. in the cool of the day. The “cool of the day” represents the relaxation or emptiness that follows sense expression. After the high tide of sensation has subsided, the voice of Jehovah God, commonly called conscience, is heard. We are convinced that we have acted out of harmony with divine law. After experiencing sensation the picture visualized by the conscious mind is impressed on the life stream and sets up a subconscious tendency. Consciousness would hide from facing this situation, taking refuge amongst the “trees of the garden” (other sensations), but this is not the way to redemption. Every idea is to be dealt with. All error is forgiven when Truth is brought to bear on it, and if this method is pursued, only constructive thought habits will be put into activity in the subconscious realm of mind. (Mysteries of Genesis, pp 51-52)
13. I was naked; so I hid myself. We hide from God by allowing ourself to be ruled by our emotions and allowing our powers to be wasted in fruitless living to ourself, instead of merging our aims and efforts in the universal life expression.
14. Yahweh God made garments of animal skins for Adam and for his wife, and clothed them. Here we have the biblical reference for the first time to an embodied person, an embodied individual who is male and female; although the way it sounds you have a man and woman here, but you have a man and woman in one, male and female, one individual. Here is manifestation of humanity. From now on, the Bible includes the manifest human being in its symbolism. (Ed Rabel, Old Testament Lectures, Embodiment: Coats of Skin, p44)
15. the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil. “Good and evil,” primarily representing the two poles of Being, are opposite but not adverse to each other. Human beings developed divine consciousness—came into an understanding of ideas in their relation to Being itself—and when they became involved so intensely in the feeling or negative side of his nature, they lost consciousness of the equilibrium of the Christ Mind. They became independent of wisdom, and an unbalanced condition in both mind and body was set up. And “lest he put forth his hand [appropriating power of mind], and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever,” using the forces of Being toward the expression of a consciousness adverse to the Christ Mind, omnipresent wisdom closed the door to the within until human beings should again enter into the “garden” by establishing the divine consciousness, Christ, the Way. (Mysteries of Genesis, p 57)
16. God sent him out from the garden of Eden. The Garden of Eden represents the divine consciousness. When we are driven out of Eden, we are bereft of the supreme blessing. We start the journey back to Eden by recognizing God and acknowledging His presence and His will in all that comes to us, whether good or seemingly evil, we make such a start.
17. So he drove out the man. We find that the Woman was not turned out of the garden, but ever dwells in Eden, and makes Heaven upon earth for him who heeds her words of wisdom. Her spiritual insight pierces the veil of materiality and clearly sees what man’s outsight fails to penetrate. Adam (or intellect) leans wholly upon the outer until Eve, his “better half” shows him the “better part” and thus helps him to forsake the error of his way and turn to the Lord. (Ursula Gestfeld, Course Notes, Chapter 4, The Origin of Evil)
18. placed cherubim at the east of the garden of Eden. The word “Cherubim” meads protection or sacred life. The inner spiritual life is protected from the outer, coarser consciousness. The “flame of a sword” is the divine idea or Word of God. We unite with the inner Word or sacred life, through spiritual thought, meditation, and prayer. These protect us from consciousness of duality.

Fillmore Study Bible annotations by Rev. Mark Hicks.

World English Bible Footnotes:

• * 3:24. cherubim are powerful angelic creatures, messengers of God with wings. See Ezekiel 10.
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