Commentari biblici

And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden:

And the woman said unto the serpent. — Our first parents were not, in the state of innocency, silly and witless, like young children, as Socinians make them; but very knowing, though but of small experience. But if they fell the same day ημερα επλασθη και εξηλασθη wherein they were created, as most hold, how sudden was the serpent’s seducing, the woman’s consenting, Adam’s yielding, and God’s executing!

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But of the fruit of the tree which [is] in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.

Neither shall ye touch it. — This is of the woman’s own addition, and of a good intention doubtless. For afterwards, when she had drunk in more of the serpent’s deadly poison, from gazing upon the fruit, she fell to gaping after it, from touching to tasting. Hausit virus peritura, et perituros paritura. - Bern. He that would not feed on sin’s meat, must beware of the broth; "keep thee from an evil matter," saith Moses. Exodus 23:7 A good man dare not come near the treachery, though he be far off the blow; he dare not venture on the occasion, lest his tinder should take fire. It is ill playing upon the hole of the asp, or coming too near hell-mouth; Circa serpentis antrum positus, non eris diu illaesus. - Isidor. for by so doing, you may beseem to drop in. "Watch therefore, and pray" too, "that ye enter not into temptation," saith our blessed Saviour; and mark his reason, "the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak": q.d., though the spirit purpose otherwise, the flesh will falter, and be foiled: witness the woman here with her "lest ye die." She held the precept in the utmost extent of it, but that which she failed in, was that she minced the matter, and opposed not the commination to the temptation. And see how the devil works upon her weakness, as he watcheth for our haltings, and where to have us on the hip.

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And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:

Ye shall not surely die. — He saith not, Dying ye shall not die, or, Surely ye shall not die; this had been too plain a contradiction to that word of God that had threatened assured death; but, Ye shall not die in dying; that is, It is not certain ye shall die. And this latter is more nice and ambiguous. She seems to doubt of the certainty of what God had said. He plainly and cleanly impugns it: whereas had God’s word abidden in her, she had overcome that wicked one. 1 John 2:14 The word is compared to mustard seed, which being mixed with vinegar, is, they say, a sovereign medicine against serpents.

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For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.

For God doth know, … — It should take care of itself because nothing is hidden with God. Id quod cum Deum non lateat, sibi cavet. Picherellus in Colmopaea . It is remarkable that the devil here charges God with envy, which is his own proper disease; for ever since he himself fell from heaven, he cannot abide that any should come there; but of pure spite hindereth them all that may be. Here he envied that God should be served by man, and that man should be gifted and graced by God. So that he points out, and paints out himself, in saying that God envied man the gift of wisdom. There is nothing more usual with the wicked, than to muse as they use, and to suppose that evil to be in others that they find to be in themselves. Caligula, Dio in Calig. that impure beast, would not believe there was any chaste person upon earth. And, I dare say, said Bonner to Hawks, the martyr, that Cranmer would recant, if he might have his living - so, judging others by himself, for Papists apply themselves, said our protomartyr, Mr Rogers, to the present state; yea, if the state should change ten times in the year, they would ever be ready at hand to change with it, and so follow the cry, and rather utterly forsake God, and be of no religion, than that they would forego lust, or living, for God or religion. Act. et Mon., fol. 1441.

Then your eyes shall be opened. — There is an opening of the eyes of the mind to contemplation and joy. There is also an opening of the eyes of the body to confusion and shame. He promised them the former, but intends the latter, and so cheats them, as he doth thousands now-a-days, by the cogging of a die, as St Paul hath it εν τη κυβεια , Ephesians 4:14 giving them an apple in exchange for paradise. Thus of old he cheated Ahab and Croesus Croesus Halyn penetrans magnam disperdet opum vim. - Herod. with promises of victory; which, when it fell out otherwise, he had a hole to creep out, and save his credit by an equivocation. Thus of latter time he begiled Pope Sylvester II., assuring him that he should never die, till he came to say mass in Jerusalem; he, resolving never to come there, made no reckoning but to live a long time. But it fell out somewhat otherwise; for as he was saying mass in a certain church in Rome, called Jerusalem, fearing nothing, the devil claimed his due, and had it. For he was there and then taken with a strong fever, and lying on his deathbed, he sent for all his cardinals, and declaring before them what a wretched bargain he had made with the devil, selling his soul for the popedom, and deceived by him with promise of long life, he bitterly bewailed his own folly, and advised them to beware by his example. Funccius in Chronol. Intelligit se a diabolo, amphibolia vocis, circumventum animadvertit sibi moriendum esse, pensumq. Satanae reddendum, … - Heylin’s Geog. , p. 493. And was not Leoline II., Prince of North Wales, as finely cheated? For, consulting with a witch, he was told that it was his destiny to ride through London with a crown on his head. Hereupon, he growing burthensome to the English Borders, was in a battle overthrown. His head fixed upon a stake, and adorned with a paper crown, was by a horseman triumphantly carried through London; and so the prophecy was fulfilled, A.D. 1282.

And ye shall be as gods. — The serpent’s grammar first taught, saith Damianus, "to bring down God to much; you will be as gods." Deum pluraliter declinare; eritis sicut Dii. This the woman understood of the Trinity, as appears, Genesis 3:22 but the devil might mean it of the angels (so the Chaldee Paraphrast translates it) which had sinned, and now had woeful experience of the good which they had lost, and the evil wherein they lay. "Lo, this only have I found," saith the wise man, "that God made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions". Ecclesiastes 7:29 Ipsi autem quaesiverunt cogitationes Magnatum (so some render it), sive angelorum; apostatarum scilicet. But they soon sought out the tricks or devices of great ones, that is, of the angels, who, not content with their own station, "forsook it". Judges 1:6 So did our Protaplasts.

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And when the woman saw that the tree [was] good for food, and that it [was] pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make [one] wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.

And when the woman saw. — At this portal the devil entered. How many thousand souls have died of the wound of the eye, and cried out, as Eve might here, "When I saw it, I died!" Ut vidi, ut perii! Ovid. If we do not let in sin at the window of the eye, or the door of the ear, it cannot enter into our hearts. "The way to our crimes is through the eyes in our mind." Quintilian said. Vitiis nobis in animum per oculos est via Wherefore, "if thine eye offend thee, pull it out." In Barbary, it is death for any man to see one of the Shereefs concubines; and for them too, if when they see a man, though but through a casement, they do not suddenly screech out. Heyl. Geog. , p.]96.

She took of the fruit thereof. — Whatever it were, whether an apple, as Bernard Porrexit pomum et surripuit paradisum. - Bern. and others gathered out of Song of Solomon 2:3 , or a fig, as Theodoret; or a pomegranate, as Mohammed in his Alkoran; or a bad peach; malum Persicum or "fruit of Paradise," Pomum Paradisi , as the Syrians call a kind of fruit common among them. God created us of nothing, and we offended him for a matter of nothing. All the legions of the reprobate devils, said one, Yates’s Model. entered into one beast, and, by the Pitho and Suada of that viperous tongue, crept into the bosom of Eve, as it were by all the topic places in logic, figures in rhetoric, and other engines of guile and deceit, till they had brought her into a fool’s paradise, with the loss of the earthly, and hazard of the heavenly.

And gave it also to her husband. — It is probable, saith the same author, that Adam stood by all the time of the disputation; therefore his sin was the greater, that he rebuked not the serpent, … And again, I cannot believe, said he, but that the devils in the serpent did as well tempt Adam as Eve, though first they began with her, as a further means of enticing him. Others Paraeus. Cartw. Catech. are of another mind, as that the tempter set upon the woman alone and apart from her husband, as she was curiously prying into the pleasures of the garden; that the serpent crept into Paradise unseen of Adam, who was to keep beasts out of it; that he remained there without being seen by him, and crept out again when he had done his feat; that when she gave him the fruit, she gave him also a relation of the serpent’s promise concerning the force of that fruit, that it would make them wise as God, knowing good and evil, …, whence he is said to have hearkened to her voice. Genesis 3:17 And surely, every Adam hath still his Eve, every David his Bathsheba, a tempter in his own bosom, his own flesh, whereby he is so soon "drawn away, and enticed" as a fish by the bait, - beauty Dελεξομενος ; James 1:14 is a hook without a bait, Dελεαρ ανευ αλκστου as one saith, - till "when lust hath conceived," as here it did in Eve, "it bringeth forth sin; and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death". James 1:14-15 Satan hath only a persuasive sleight, not an enforcing might. It is our own concupiscence that carrieth the greatest stroke.

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And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they [were] naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.

They knew that they were naked. — Bereft of God’s blessed image; no more of it left than, as of one of Job’s messengers, to bear witness of our great loss. I call it ours, because we were all in Adam, as Levi was in Abraham, or as the whole country is in a Parliament man. tie was our head; and if the head plot treason, all the body is guilty. Hence the prophet Hosea: "O Israel, one hath destroyed thee; but in me is thy help". Hosea 13:9 So some read it. Had we been by when this wretched "one" destroyed us all; had we seen him stand staggering betwixt God’s commandment and Eve’s allurement, not yet resolved which way to incline, and could have foreseen the danger hanging over him and ourselves, we would surely have cried out to him, Take heed, thou wretch. Cave miser And why do we not the same to ourselves, when solicited to sin?, Alterius perditio tua sit cautio saith Isidore; and, cavebis si pavebis saith another. Augustine. There is a practical judgment still practised in our hearts. On the one side is propounded the commodity of sin; on the other, the offence whereby we provoke God. So that in the one end of the balance is laid God, in the other sin, and man stands in the midst, rejecting the comnland of God, and accepting of the pleasure of sin. What is this but to prefer Paris before Paradise with Cardinal Bourbon, Barabbas before Christ, a thing of nought before heaven’s happiness? Our first parents were born with the royal robe of righteousness, as those Porphyrogeniti in Constantinople; but the devil soon stripped them of it (the same day, as some think), Purchas’s Pilgrims . and so they became sore ashamed of their bodily nakedness, which therefore they sought to cover by making themselves aprons to cover their privities.

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And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God amongst the trees of the garden.

And they heard the voice of the Lord. — Either speaking something by himself of that which Adam hath done against his command; as who should say, Hath he served me so indeed? or else calling to Adam in a mighty thunder, as to Pharaoh, Exodus 9:28 or in a terrible whirlwind, as to Job, Job 38:1 the better to humble him, and prepare for a sermon of mercy and forgiveness. God poureth not the off of his grace, save only into broken vessels. Christ came to cure not the sound, but the sick with sin: the Holy Ghost is poured out upon thirsty souls only that are scorched and parched with the sense of sin and fear of wrath. Isaiah 35:7 ; Isaiah 44:3 As the way to Zion was by Sinai, so, unless we desire rather to be carnally secured than soundly comforted, we must pass by Baca to Berachah, by a sight of our sin and misery, to a sense of God’s grace and mercy.

Walking in the garden in the cool of the day. — God did not meet the man angrily, as he did Moses in the inn, when tie had much ado to forbear killing him; Exodus 4:24 nor as the angel did Balaam, with a drawn sword in his hand to destroy him; neither did he rush upon him, as David ran upon Goliath, and cut off his head; but, with a soft and slow pace îúäìê (as if he had no mind to it), he comes walking toward them, to do this, his work, "his strange work," Isaiah 28:21 of sentencing sinners; and that in the cool of the day, too, or towards the evening, as St Ambrose το δειλινον : ad vesperam diei . hath it, after the Septuagint. Whereas to show mercy, "behold, he comes leaping Gressu grallatorio. upon the mountains, skipping upon the hills." Lo, "this is the voice," and the pace "of my beloved." Song of Solomon 2:8 God was but six days in making the whole world, yet seven days in destroying one city, Jericho, as Chrysostom long since observed. He scourgeth not his people, "till there be no remedy." 2 Chronicles 36:16 He forbears us, though he "cry like a travailing woman," Isaiah 42:14 to be delivered of his judgments.

And Adam and his wife hid themselves. — Their covering of fig-leaves, then, was too short; for here they ran with their aprons into the thicket to hide from God. A poor shift, God wot, but such as is still too much in use. "If I have covered my transgressions as Adam," or after the manner of men, saith Job, Job 31:33 then let this and this evil befall me. The bad heart runs from God, and would run from its own terrors, Faeti sunt a corde suo fugitivi. - Tertul . as the wounded deer from the deadly arrow that sticks in his side; but refusing ordinary trial, it is in danger to be pressed to death inevitably. We have no better refuge than to run from God to God. Bloodletting is a cure of bleeding, a burn of a burn. To close and get in, avoids the blow, … Our first parents here, in hiding themselves, did but as the fish which swimmeth to the length of the line, with a hook in the mouth, as one well observeth.

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And the LORD God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where [art] thou?

Where art thou? — Not as if God knew not; for he searcheth Jerusalem with lights; yea, himself is the "father of lights," James 1:17 the great eye of the world, to whom the sun itself is but a snuff. He hath "seven eyes upon one stone"; Zechariah 3:9 yea, "his eyes run to and fro through the earth"; 2 Chronicles 16:9 and "all things are naked and open" - naked, for the outside, and open, for the inside - "before the eyes of Him with whom we have to deal." Hebrews 4:13 Simple men hide God from themselves, and then think they have hid themselves from God; like the struthiocamelus, they thrust their heads into a hole, when hunted, and then think none seeth them. Pliny But he "searcheth" - so one may do, yet not find - "and knoweth." Psalms 139:1 "He seeth" - so one may do, yet not observe - "and pondereth." Proverbs 5:21 Though men hide their sins, as close as Rachel did her idols, or Rahab the spies; though they dig deep to hide their counsels, God can and will detect them, with a woe to boot. Isaiah 29:15 For "hell and destruction are before him"; Proverbs 15:11 how then can Saul think to be hid behind the stuff, or Adam behind the bush? At the voice of the Lord he must appear, will he, nill he, to give account of his fear, of his flight. This he doth (but untowardly) in the words following.

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