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This one shall be called Woman

for from man she was taken. (Gen 2:23)

This language expresses a publicly ratified relationship, as it also seems to in 2 Samuel: “And say to Amasa, ‘Are you not my bone and my flesh? God do so to me, and more also, if you are not commander of my army henceforth in place of Joab’” (2 Sam 19:13).

The mood of innocence is maintained even though the couple are married and may be functioning sexually. The man “tends the garden” rather than doing work for work proper would be a punishment for disobedience. Whoever is narrating is taking care to use words economically but exactly: “The two of them were naked but they were not ashamed” (Gen 2:25). In the Biblical description, the man and his wife are adult children-a fact brought out more strongly when we notice the Bible’s frequent pairing of the images of children, nakedness, and not knowing good from evil (Isa 7:16, etc.). This is a dangerous, unstable state of innocence; it cannot last. Adam and Eve are as yet merely pets in a sheltered garden.

THE PLOT THICKENS, AND DRAMA IS THE THICKENING AGENT

The inherent imbalance of the paradise is brought out by wordplay, placed exactly when the mood changes abruptly. Just as they are naked (arumim, Gen 2:25) so is the snake the most shrewd (arum, Gen 3:1) of all the animals. The words for “naked” and “shrewd” are homonymns but their meanings could not be more opposite. The snake is the antagonist in the drama. He asks the woman: “Did God really say: ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden?’” (Gen 3:1). She answers bravely and articulately, beginning a dialogue of misprision: “We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden; but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die’” (Gen 3:2).

The story proceeds quickly to the snake’s next statement, which is an ironic truth: He tells them that they will not die if they eat; rather their eyes will be opened and they will become like gods, knowing good and evil (Gen 3:4). Ironically, this was the exact truth. They do not die when they eat of the tree, and they do become like gods, knowing good and evil. As with the ancient Near East, wisdom and death are related. In Mesopotamia, wisdom is often the result of knowing our mortality. Death itself comes later.

The final damage comes when the woman sees how appealing the fruit is: “good for food,” … “a delight to the eyes,” … “and desirable to make one wise” (Gen 3:6). These are meant to underline the woman’s sensuousness. Certainly she is the better equipped intellectually of the two characters. But she is also more sensuous, and that sensuality is her undoing. She eats and gives to her husband who eats as well.64 She is a much better realized character than is Adam.

It may be that the story is blaming the woman for the sin of disobedience, but there is hardly anything in the story to clarify that interpretation. She is sensually attracted to the beautiful fruit, as well as clever enough to be outwitted by the cleverer snake. But is she any more to blame than her husband? After all, Adam is standing next to her throughout her conversation with the snake, and he can think of nothing to say. He just obeys his wife. If Eve is beguiled by the snake, Adam is beguiled by Eve’s obvious intelligence and sensuousness. He is just as much to blame as she is. His inarticulateness and guilelessness has gotten him into this fix.

Not even the fruit makes Adam smart. What they get from the tree is not “intelligence”; their IQs are unaffected by the change. What they get is “knowledge of good and evil,” which is meant to signify moral discernment, for they are now ashamed of their nakedness and so find leaves in which to dress. This is a development of the relationship between mortality and wisdom in the ancient Near East.

“Knowledge of good and evil” also has developmental implications in Hebrew, since often when it occurs in the text, it subsequently indicates the achievement of moral majority, as when a child becomes