The first Scripture to consider is Genesis 3:6 where Eve’s inward desires for the forbidden tree in the Garden of Eden are described. The text reads, “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.”2 In order to properly understand Genesis 3:6, one must first understand its context. God created Eve in his image, for the purpose of being Adam’s helpmate, his wife (Gen 2:21-25). God took a rib from the man and created Eve, then brought the two back together to become one flesh.
For this reason, a man “shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh” (Gen 2:24).
In the beginning of chapter 3 of Genesis, the reader is introduced to a new character, the serpent. He is described as “more crafty” than any of the other animals. He deceived Eve to think that the forbidden tree was good. He said, “You will not surely die.
For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Gen 3:4-5). The Devil deceived Eve to believe that the forbidden tree was not what God said it was; rather, God was trying to withhold
something good from Eve. She believed the serpent instead of believing God. This means that she willed her unbelief and an inclination or desire for the forbidden tree in her heart, as Genesis 3:6 explains.
2 All Scripture references in this dissertation are from the English Standard Version (ESV), unless otherwise stated.
155 Exegesis: Comments
Genesis 3:6a. Genesis 3:6 begins, “So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food.” Moses details the inward thoughts of Eve from her heart. She went from agreeing with God concerning the forbidden tree (Gen 3:2-3), to believing the serpent’s words instead. The result of Eve’s willed unbelief was a change of desire in her heart, the birth of sinful desire, concupiscence. Eve “repented” of God and believed the serpent; she turned from God and placed her faith in the serpent, as John Calvin, the most important father of the Reformed tradition and possibly of the Reformation,3 argued,
This impure look of Eve, infected with the poison of concupiscence, was both the messenger and the witness of an impure heart. She could previously behold the tree with such sincerity, that no desire to eat of it affected her mind; for the faith she had in the word of God was the best guardian of her heart, and of all her senses. But now, after the heart had declined from faith, and from obedience to the word, she corrupted both herself and all her senses, and depravity was diffused through all parts of her soul as well as her body. It is, therefore, a sign of impious defection, that the woman now judges the tree to be good for food, eagerly delights herself in beholding it, and persuades herself that it is desirable for the sake of acquiring wisdom; whereas before she had passed by it a hundred times with an unmoved and tranquil look. For now, having shaken off the bridle, her mind wanders dissolutely and intemperately, drawing the body with it to the same licentiousness.4
By choosing to believe the serpent, Eve simultaneously chose to disbelieve God. As Calvin argued, she now saw what the serpent told her to see rather than what God told her to see. The forbidden tree went from being morally repugnant to “good for food,” which should be viewed as a moral admission.5 God called his creation “good” in Genesis 1:3, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25, and 31; that includes the forbidden tree (Gen 2:9). The goodness of creation is derived from its creator. God created a world that displays his fingerprints, his design and purpose for creation to cultivate human flourishing. God’s laws are good because God is good, and his design and purposes for man and the rest of his creation are
3 Eire, Reformations, 289-90.
4 John Calvin, Commentaries on the First Book of Moses called Genesis, vol. 1 of Calvin’s Commentaries, trans. John King (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1996), 151.
5 Kenneth A. Mathews, Genesis 1-11:26, The New American Commentary 1A (Nashville:
Broadman & Holman, 1996), 238.
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good. He forbade Adam and Eve to eat from the tree in the midst of the Garden.
Although the tree was good because God created it good, it was not good for Adam and Eve to eat because God forbade it. The purpose of the forbidden tree was to test Adam and Eve, not to tempt them (James 1:13). Yet, Eve purported in her heart that the forbidden tree was good for food, knowledge she derived from the serpent, not God.6 Kenneth Mathews, Professor of Old Testament and Hebrew at Beeson Divinity School in Birmingham, Alabama, notes,
Eve saw what was “good”; the adjective heads the clause accentuating the ironic results of her evaluation. There is a double entendre here: the term for “good” (ṭôb) can mean beautiful and also what is moral. In this case what was beautiful proved to be an allurement to disobedience. The term “good” is reminiscent of the created order God declares as “good” (1:4, 10, 12, 18, 25, 31). But the verbal echo of God’s earlier evaluation suggests that she has usurped God’s role in determining what is
“good.”7
The forbidden tree may indeed have been “good for food,” objectively, but Eve did not make a statement concerning the tree’s objective goodness. She willed submission to the serpent in her heart, believing him over God. As Mathews points out, the double-meaning from her heart is that the fruit which she previously viewed as forbidden, she now viewed as permissible; the fruit which was previously viewed as immoral she now viewed as morally appealing.
Likewise, C. John Collins, Professor of Old Testament at Covenant Theological Seminary in Creve Coeur, Missouri, notes,
In 3:6, as she regards the tree and sees that it is “good for food, a delight to the eyes, and desirable for giving insight,” the irony of the parallel with 2:9 (there was
already “every tree desirable to the sight and good for food” in the garden) should not escape us. She already had everything she could possibly want, and she even had the resources to get everything she thought the tree had to offer. Hence now she is clearly under the sway of the serpent’s deception.8
6 Mathews, Genesis 1-11:26, 238.
7 Mathews, Genesis 1-11:26, 237-38.
8 C. John Collins, Genesis 1-4: A Linguistic, Literary, and Theological Commentary (Phillipsburg, NJ: P & R Publishing, 2006), 172; similarly, 151-52.
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Because of God’s perfect creation, Collins points out that Eve already had everything she could possibly want in the Garden. And not only that, she also had the resources in the Garden to get everything she thought the forbidden tree had to offer. Therefore, the inner explanation taking place in Genesis 3:6 was Eve trying to justify in her heart what she was about to do with her mouth. The fruit had not changed, Eve had; she had fallen from being “very good” (Gen 1:31) in her heart.