Genesis 3-4

(Read Genesis 3 and 4 here.)


Here we read about the fall of Man. The serpent piques the woman's curiosity, asking if they were really forbidden from eating the fruit of any of the trees in the garden. (Remember, they were allowed to eat from any tree they desired, except for those two.) The woman tells the serpent that God told them they would die if they even touched the fruit of the "tree that is in the midst of the garden." The serpent tells her that God just doesn't want them to eat that fruit because it will open their eyes for them to know good from evil--they will be like God. So she eats the fruit, and gives some to the man, who of course eats it, and suddenly they know that they're naked, so they make loincloths out of fig leaves. 

• I wonder what their mindset was like before their eyes were opened. Were they more like our domesticated animals, only more intelligent? 

Later, God comes walking through the garden, and the man and woman hide from him, and God can't find them. (This doesn't sound like the omniscient God that I usually think of.) When God calls out to the man, the man answers that he was hiding because he was ashamed of his nakedness. I guess this tips off God to the fact that the man has eaten from the tree of knowledge. The man passes the buck to the woman, and she passes the buck on to the serpent. So God says the serpent is cursed from now on. The woman will have painful childbearing, and the man will have to work the ground in order to eat. 


After all this, the man names his wife Eve, which sounds like the Hebrew word for "life-giver." Then God makes clothes of skins for them both. 

• Where did he get the skins? He must have slaughtered some animals to do this.

Then God says that the man has "become like one of us in knowing good and evil." 

• Who is "us?" Does God have some companions that are also gods, or at least higher than humans?

So God decides that the man and woman have to leave the garden before they also eat from the tree of life and live forever.

• I wonder what would have happened if the serpent had suggested that the woman eat from the tree of life, rather than the tree of knowledge.

In Chapter 4, Adam and Eve have two sons, Cain and Abel. Cain is a farmer, and Abel keeps a flock of sheep. At some point, Cain brings some of his harvest as an offering to God. Abel brings the firstborn of his flock for an offering. 


This next part confuses me: it says that God "had regard for Abel and his offering, but for Cain and his offering he had no regard." Why was a lamb a better offering than the harvest that Cain produced? This seems very arbitrary to me. If they had been given some guidelines as to what was acceptable for an offering, at least it would be fair. From what we're told, though, this isn't fair at all. Cain was angry, with good reason.


Later on, Cain and Abel are in the field, and Cain kills Abel. We aren't told why. Is it out of jealousy over God's favoring Abel's offering, or did they have some other dispute? 


God asks Cain where his brother is, and Cain pretends not to know. So Cain gets cursed as well: he is to wander the earth as a fugitive. Cain fears that he will be killed while he is wandering, so God puts a mark on him and says that anyone who kills Cain will suffer vengeance sevenfold. (I'm not sure how that works, but it does sound bad.)


Cain goes off and settles east of Eden, and builds a city that he names after his son Enoch. Then we get the family tree. Interestingly, Cain's great-great-great grandson Lamech takes two wives. Apparently he is the first guy that's either brave or stupid enough to attempt this. Lamech tells his wives that he has killed a young man who struck and wounded him (self-defense, I guess?). He declares that if Cain's revenge is sevenfold, then his own revenge is seventy-sevenfold. 


Finally, Adam and Eve have a third son, Seth. When Seth has a son, Enosh, it says that "at that time people began to call upon the name of the Lord." I wonder why they weren't doing so for the several previous generations.