chapter 49; compare Numbers 23 f., Deuteronomy 33. Here certain

fixed adverse conditions of the universal human lot are traced back to a primæval curse uttered by Yahwe in consequence of man’s first transgression. See, further, page 95 below.――The form of the oracles is poetic; but the structure is irregular, and no definite metrical scheme can be made out.

=14, 15. The curse on the serpent= is legible, partly in its degraded form and habits (¹⁴), and partly in the deadly feud between it and the human race (¹⁵).――=14.= _on thy belly, etc._] The assumption undoubtedly is that originally the serpent moved erect, but not necessarily that its organism was changed (_e.g._ by cutting off its legs, etc. _Rabbis_). As a matter of fact most snakes have the power of erecting a considerable part of their bodies; and in mythological representations the serpent often appears in the upright position (Bennett). The idea probably is that this was its original posture: how it was maintained was perhaps not reflected upon.――_dust shalt thou eat_] Compare Micah 7¹⁷, Isaiah 65²⁵. It is a prosaic explanation to say that the serpent, crawling on the ground, inadvertently swallows a good deal of dust (Bochart _Hierozoicon, sive bipertitum opus de animalibus Sacræ Scripturæ_ iii. 245; Dillmann, al.); and a mere metaphor for humiliation (like Assyrian _ti-ka-lu ip-ra_; _Keilinschriftliche Bibliothek_, v. 232 f.) is too weak a sense for this passage. Probably it is a piece of ancient superstition, like the Arabian notion that the _ǧinn_ eat dirt (Wellhausen _Reste arabischen Heidentums_ 150).――_all the days of thy life_] i.e. _each_ serpent as long as it lives, and the _race_ of serpents as long as it lasts. It is not so certain as most commentaries seem to think that these words exclude the demonic character of the serpent. It is true that the punishment of a morally irresponsible agent was recognised in Hebrew jurisprudence (9⁵, Exodus 21²⁸ ᶠᐧ, Leviticus 20¹⁵ ᶠᐧ). But it is quite possible that here (as in verse ¹⁵) the archetypal serpent is conceived as re-embodied in all his progeny, as acting and suffering in each member of the species.――=15.= The serpent’s attempt to establish unholy fellowship with the woman is punished by implacable and undying enmity between them.¹――_thy seed and her seed_] The whole brood of serpents, and the whole race of men.――_He shall bruise thee on the head, etc._] In the first clause the subject (הוּא‎) is the ‘seed’ of the woman individualised (or collectively), in the second (אַתָּה‎) it is the serpent himself, acting through his ‘seed.’ The current reading of Vulgate (_ipsa_) may have been prompted by a feeling that the proper antithesis to the serpent is the woman herself. The general meaning of the sentence is clear: in the war between men and serpents the former will crush the head of the foe, while the latter can only wound in the heel. The difficulty is in the verb שׁוּף‎, which in the sense ‘bruise’ is inappropriate to the serpent’s mode of attack. We may speak of a serpent _striking_ a man (as in Latin _feriri a serpente_), but hardly of _bruising_. Hence many commentaries (following LXX al.) take the verb as a by-form of שָׁאַף‎ (strictly ‘pant’), in the sense of ‘be eager for,’ ‘aim at’ (Gesenius, Ewald, Dillmann, al.); while others (Gunkel al.) suppose that by paronomasia the word means ‘bruise’ in the first clause, and ‘aim at’ in the second. But it may be questioned whether this idea is not even less suitable than the other (Driver). A perfectly satisfactory interpretation cannot be given (_v.i._).

¹ “Fit enim arcano naturæ sensu ut ab ipsis abhorreat homo” (Calvin). Compare (with Bochart _Hierozoicon, sive bipertitum opus de animalibus Sacræ Scripturæ_ iii. 250) “quam dudum dixeras te odisse æque atque angues” (Plautus, _Mercator_ 4); and ἐκ παιδὸς τὸν ψυχρὸν ὄφιν τὰ μάλιστα δέδοικα (Theocritus _Idyll_ 15).

The Messianic interpretation of the ‘seed of the woman’ appears in Targumᴶᵒⁿᵃᵗʰᵃⁿ and Targum Jerome, where the verse is explained of the Jewish community and its victory over the devil “in the days of King Messiah.” The reference to the person of Christ was taught by Irenæus, but was never so generally accepted in the Church as the kindred idea that the serpent is the instrument of Satan. Mediæval exegetes, relying on the _ipsa_ of the Vulgate, applied the expression directly to the Virgin Mary; and even Luther, while rejecting this reference, recognised an allusion to the virgin birth of Christ. In Protestant theology this view gave way to the more reasonable view of Calvin, that the passage is a promise of victory over the devil to mankind, united in Christ its divine Head. That even this goes beyond the original meaning of the verse is admitted by most modern expositors; and indeed it is doubtful if, from the standpoint of strict historical exegesis, the passage can be regarded as in any sense a _Protevangelium_. Dillmann (with whom Driver substantially agrees) finds in the words the idea of man’s vocation to ceaseless moral warfare with the ‘serpent-brood’ of sinful thoughts, and an implicit promise of the ultimate destruction of the evil power. That interpretation, however, is open to several objections. (1) A message of hope and encouragement in the midst of a series of curses and punishments is not to be assumed unless it be clearly implied in the language. It would be out of harmony with the tone not only of the Paradise story, but of the Yahwistic sections of chapters 1‒11 as a whole: it is not till we come to the patriarchal history that the “note of promise and of hope” is firmly struck. (2) To the mind of the narrator, the serpent is no more a symbol of the power of evil or of temptation than he is an incarnation of the devil. He is himself an evil creature, perhaps a demonic creature transmitting his demonic character to his progeny, but there is no hint that he represents a principle of evil apart from himself. (3) No victory is promised to either party, but only perpetual warfare between them: the order of the clauses making it specially hard to suppose that the victory of man was contemplated. Dillmann admits that no such assurance is expressed; but finds it in the general tenor of the passage: “a conflict ordained by God cannot be without prospect of success.” But that is really to beg the whole question in dispute. If it be said that the words, being part of the sentence on the serpent, must mean that he is ultimately to be defeated, it may be answered that the curse on the serpent is the enmity established between him and the human race, and that the feud between them is simply the manifestation and proof of that antagonism.――It is thus possible that in its primary intention the oracle reflects the protest of ethical religion against the unnatural fascination of snake-worship. It is psychologically true that the instinctive feelings which lie at the root of the worship of serpents are closely akin to the hatred and loathing which the repulsive reptile excites in the healthy human mind; and the transformation of a once sacred animal into an object of aversion is a not infrequent phenomenon in the history of religion (see Gressman _l.c._ 360). The essence of the temptation is that the serpent-demon has tampered with the religious instinct in man by posing as his good genius, and insinuating distrust of the goodness of God; and his punishment is to find himself at eternal war with the race whom he has seduced from their allegiance to their Creator. And that is very much the light in which serpent-worship must have appeared to a believer in the holy and righteous God of the Old Testament.――The conjecture of Gunkel, that originally the ‘seed of the woman’ and the ‘seed of the serpent’ may have been mythological personages (compare _Das Alte Testament im Lichte des alten Orients_², 217 f.), even if confirmed by Assyriology, would have little bearing on the thought of the biblical narrator.

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‎ =14.= מכל‎] On this use of מן‎ (= _e numero_), see Gesenius-Kautzsch § 119 _w_, and compare Exodus 19⁵, Deuteronomy 14² 33²⁴, Judges 5²⁴ etc. Stade’s argument (_Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft_, xvii. 209) for deleting מכל הבהמה ו‎, on the ground that the serpent belongs to the category of ‎ חית השדה‎ but not to בהמה‎, is logical, but hardly convincing.――גחון‎] Probably from √ גחן‎ (Aramaic) = ‘curve’ or ‘bend’ (Delitzsch, Brown-Driver-Briggs), occurs again only Leviticus 11⁴², of reptiles. Vulgate renders _pectus_, LXX combines στῆθος and κοιλία.――=15.= זֶרַע‎] in the sense of ‘offspring,’ is nearly always collective. In a few cases where it is used of an individual child (4²⁵{?} 21¹³, 1 Samuel 1¹¹) it denotes the immediate offspring as the pledge of posterity, never a remote descendant (see Nöldeke _Archiv für Religionswissenschaft._, viii. 164 ff.). The Messianic application therefore is not justified in grammar.――הוא‎] the rendering _ipsa_ (Vulgate) is said not to be found in the Fathers before Ambrose and Augustine (Zapletal, _ATliches_, 19). Jerome at all events knew that _ipse_ should be read.――ישופך ... תשופנו‎] The form שוף‎ recurs only Job 9¹⁷, Psalms 139¹¹, and, in both, text and meaning are doubtful. In Aramaic and New Hebrew the √ (ע״ו‎ or ע״ע‎) has the primary sense of ‘rub,’ hence ‘wear down by rubbing’ = ‘crush’; in Syriac it also means to crawl. There are a few examples of a tendency of ע״ו‎ verbs to strengthen themselves by insertion of א‎ (König i. 439), and it is often supposed that in certain passages (Ezekiel 36³, Amos 2⁷ 8⁴, Psalms 56²ᐧ ³ 57⁴) שׁוף‎ is disguised under the by-form שׁאף‎. But the only places where the assumption is at all necessary are Amos 2⁷ 8⁴, where the א‎ may be simply _mater lectionis_ for the _â_ of the participle (compare וְקָאם‎, Hosea 10¹⁴); in the other cases the proper sense of שָׁאַף‎ ‘pant’ or metaphor ‘long for’) suffices. The reverse process (substitution of שוף‎ for שאף‎) is much less likely; and the only possible instance would be Job 9¹⁷, which is too uncertain to count for anything. There is thus not much ground for supposing a confusion in this verse; and Delitzsch points out that verbs of hostile _endeavour_, as distinct from hostile achievement הכּה‎, רצח‎, etc.), are never construed with double accusative. The gain in sense is so doubtful that it is better to adhere to the meaning ‘crush.’ The old versions felt the difficulty and ambiguity. The idea of crushing is represented by Aquila προστρίψει, Symmachus θλίψει, LXXᶜᵒᵈᵉˣ ᶜᵒⁱˢˡⁱⁿⁱᵃⁿᵘˢ τρίψει (see Field) and Jerome (_Quæstiones sive Traditiones hebraicæ in Genesim_) _conterere_; ‘pant after’ by LXXᴬ ᵃˡᐧ τηρήσει[ς] (if not a mistake for τρήσει[ς] or τειρήσει[ς]). A double sense is given by Vulgate _conteret ... insidiaberis_, and perhaps Peshiṭtå (‡ Syriac phrase); while Targumᴼⁿᵏᵉˡᵒˢ paraphrases: הוא יהא דכיר מה דעבדת ליה מלקדמין ואת תהי נטר ליה לסופא‎.

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=16. The doom of the woman=: consisting in the hardships incident to her sex, and social position in the East. The pains of childbirth, and the desire which makes her the willing slave of the man, impressed the ancient mind as at once mysterious and unnatural; therefore to be accounted for by a curse imposed on woman from the beginning.――_I will multiply, etc._] More strictly, ‘I will cause thee to have much suffering and pregnancy’ (see Davidson § 3, _R._ (2)). It is, of course, not an intensification of pain to which she is already subject that is meant.――For הֵרֹנַךְ‎, LXX read some word meaning ‘groaning’ (_v.i._); but to prefer this reading on the ground that Hebrew women esteemed frequent pregnancy a blessing (Gunkel) makes a too general statement. It is better (with Holzinger) to assume a _hendiadys_: ‘the pain of thy conception’ (as in the explanatory clause which follows).――_in pain ... children_] The pangs of childbirth are proverbial in Old Testament for the extremity of human anguish (Isaiah 21³ 13⁸, Micah 4⁹, Psalms 48⁶, and often: Exodus 1¹⁹ cannot be cited to the contrary).――_to thy husband ... desire_] It is quite unnecessary to give up the rare but expressive תְּשׁוּקָה‎ of the Hebrew for the weaker תְּשׁוּבָה‎ of LXX, etc. (_v.i._). It is not, however, implied that the woman’s sexual desire is stronger than the man’s (Knobel, Gunkel); the point rather is that by the instincts of her nature she shall be bound to the hard conditions of her lot, both the ever-recurring pains of child-bearing, and subjection to the man.――_while he_ (on his part) _shall rule over thee_] The idea of tyrannous exercise of power does not lie in the verb; but it means that the woman is wholly subject to the man, and so liable to the arbitrary treatment sanctioned by the marriage customs of the East. It is noteworthy that to the writer this is not the ideal relation of the sexes (compare 2¹⁸ᐧ ²³). There is here certainly no trace of the matriarchate or of polyandry (see on 2²⁴).

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‎ =16.= אל‎] Read וְאֶל־‎, with _The Samaritan Recension of the Pentateuch_, LXX, Peshiṭtå.――הרבה ארבה‎] So 16¹⁰ 22¹⁷. On the irregular form of infinitive absolute, see Gesenius-Kautzsch § 75 ff.――עצבון‎] (3¹⁷) 5²⁹† [Yahwist]). LXX λύπας (= עַצְּבוֹתֵךְ‎ ‎ ?).――והרנך‎] (√ הרה‎): _The Samaritan Recension of the Pentateuch_ ‎ והריונך‎ (Ruth 4¹³, Hosea 9¹¹). Olshausen (_Monatsberichte der Königlich-Preussischen Akadamie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin._, 1870, 380) conjecture בְּהריונך‎, to avoid the harsh use of וְ‎. LXX τὸν στεναγμόν σου probably = הגיונך‎‎; יְגוֹנַךְ‎ (‘sorrow’) has also been suggested (Gunkel); and צָרָתֵךְ‎ (Dillmann, Holzinger, al.). The other versions follow Massoretic Text.――בעצב‎] _The Samaritan Recension of the Pentateuch_ בעצבון‎; LXX likewise repeats ἐν λύπαις.――תשוקה‎] Probably connected with Arabic _šauḳ_, ‘ardent desire’ (Rahlfs “עָנִי‎ _und_ עָנָו‎,” page 71); compare שקק‎, Isaiah 29⁸, Psalms 107⁹. Aquila συνάφεια, Symmachus ὁρμή. Although it recurs only 4⁷ and Canticles 7¹¹, it is found in New Hebrew and should not be suspected. LXX ἡ ἀποστροφή σου and Peshiṭtå (‡ Syriac word) point to the reading תְּשׁוּבָתֵךְ‎, preferred by many, and defended by Nestle (_Marginalien und Materialien_, 6) as a technical expression for the relation here indicated, on the basis of LXX’s text of 2 Samuel 17³. His parallel between the _return_ of the woman to her source (the man) and the return of the man to _his_ source (the ground, verse ¹⁹) is perhaps fanciful.

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=17‒19. The man’s sentence.=――The hard, unremitting toil of the husbandman, wringing a bare subsistence from the grudging and intractable ground, is the standing evidence of a divine curse, resting, not, indeed, on man himself, but on the earth for his sake. Originally, it had provided him with all kinds of fruit good for food,――and this is the ideal state of things; now it yields nothing spontaneously but thorns and briars; bread to eat can only be extorted in the sweat of the brow,――and this is a curse: formerly man had been a gardener, now he is a _fellaḥ_. It does not appear that death itself is part of the curse. The name death is avoided; and the fact is referred to as part of the natural order of things,――the inevitable ‘return’ of man to the ground whence he was taken. The question whether man would have lived for ever if he had not sinned is one to which the narrative furnishes no answer (Gunkel).――=17.= _And to the man_] _v.i._ The sentence is introduced by a formal recital of the offence.――_Cursed is the ground_] As exceptional fertility was ascribed to a divine blessing (27²⁸ etc.), and exceptional barrenness to a curse (Isaiah 24⁶, Jeremiah 23¹⁰), so the relative unproductiveness of the whole earth in comparison with man’s expectations and ideals is here regarded as the permanent effect of a curse.――_in suffering_ (bodily fatigue and mental anxiety) _shalt thou eat_ [of] _it_] See 5²⁹. The ‘laborious work’ of the husbandman is referred to in Sirach 7¹⁵; but this is not the prevailing feeling of the Old Testament; and the remark of Knobel, that “agriculture was to the Hebrew a divine institution, but at the same time a heavy burden,” needs qualification. It is well to be reminded that “ancient Israel did not live constantly in the joy of the harvest festival” (Gunkel); but none the less it would be a mistake to suppose that it lived habitually in the mood of this passage.――=18.= _the herb of the field_] See on 1¹¹. The creation of this order of vegetation has not been recorded by Yahwist. Are we to suppose that it comes into existence simply in consequence of the earth’s diminished productivity caused by the curse? It seems implied at all events that the earth will not yield even this, except under the compulsion of human labour (see 2⁵).――=19.= _in the sweat of thy brow, etc._] A more expressive repetition of the thought of ¹⁷ᵇ{β}. The phrase _eat bread_ may mean ‘earn a livelihood’ (Amos 7¹²), but here it must be understood literally as the immediate reward of man’s toil.――_till thou return, etc._] hardly means more than ‘all the days of thy life’ (in verse ¹⁷). It is not a threat of death as the punishment of sin, and we have no right to say (with Dillmann) that verses ¹⁶⁻¹⁹ are simply an expansion of the sentence of 2¹⁷. That man was by nature immortal is not taught in this passage; and since the Tree of Life in verse ²² belongs to another recension, there is no evidence that the main narrative regarded even endless life as within man’s reach. The connexion of the closing words is rather with 2⁷: man was taken from the ground, and in the natural course will return to it again.――_and to dust, etc._] Compare Job 10⁹ 34¹⁵, Psalms 90³ 146⁴, Ecclesiastes 3²⁰ 12⁷ etc.: ἐκ γαίας βλαστὼν γαῖα πάλιν γέγονα.

The arrangement of the clauses in ¹⁷⁻¹⁹ is not very natural, and the repeated variations of the same idea have suggested the hypothesis of textual corruption or fusion of sources. In _Jubilees_ iii. 25 the passage is quoted in an abridged form, the line ‘Cursed ... sake’ being immediately followed by ‘Thorns ... to thee,’ and ¹⁸ᵇ, being omitted. This is, of course, a much smoother reading, and leaves out nothing essential; but ¹⁷ᵇ is guaranteed by 5²⁹. Holzinger rejects ¹⁸ᵇ, and to avoid the repetition of אכל‎ proposes תעבדנה‎ instead of תאכלנה‎ in ¹⁷. Gunkel is satisfied with verse ¹⁷ ᶠᐧ as they stand, but assigns ¹⁹ᵃ{α} (to לחם‎) and ¹⁹ᵇ to another source (Yahwistʲ), as doublets respectively of ¹⁷ᵇ{β} and ¹⁹ᵃ{β}. This is perhaps on the whole the most satisfactory analysis.――The poetic structure of the verses, which might be expected to clear up a question of this kind, is too obscure to afford any guidance. Sievers, _e.g._ (II. 10 f.) finds nothing, except in verse ¹⁹, to distinguish the rhythm from that of the narrative in which it is embedded, and all attempts at strophic arrangement are only tentative.

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=17.= Point וְלָאדם‎; there is no conceivable reason why אדם‎ should be a proper name here (compare 2²⁰ 3²¹).――לאמר ... ממנו‎] LXX reads τούτου μόνου (see verse ¹¹) μὴ φαγεῖν, ἀπ’ αὐτοῦ ἔφαγες.――בעבורך‎] LXX (ἐν τοῖς ἔργοις σου), Symmachus, Vulgate read בַּֽעֲבָדֶךָ‎, Theodotion ἐν τῇ παραβάσει σου (בְּעָבְרְךָ‎). The phrase is characteristic of Yahwist; out of 22 instances in the Hexateuch, only about 3 can be assigned to Elohist (none to Priestly-Code).――תאכלנה‎] The government of direct accusative seems harsh, but is not unexampled: see Jeremiah 36¹⁶.――=18.= LXX omits initial וְ‎: so Vulgate _Jubilees_.――קוץ ודרדר‎] Hosea 10⁸; דרדר‎ occurs nowhere else in Old Testament. It is still used in Syria (_dardār_) as a general name for thistles.――=19.= זעה‎] (√ יזע‎, _waḏa‛a_) is ἅπαξ λεγόμενον; compare יָזַע‎, Ezekiel 44¹⁸.――לחם‎] LXX _Jubilees_ לחמך‎.

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20‒24. The expulsion from Eden.

=20.= The naming of the woman can hardly have come in between the sentence and its execution, or before there was any experience of motherhood to suggest it. The attempts to connect the notice with the mention of child-bearing in ¹⁵ ᶠᐧ (Delitzsch al.), or with the thought of mortality in ¹⁹ (Knobel), are forced. The most suitable position in the present text would be before (so _Jubilees_ iii. 33) or after 4¹; and accordingly some regard it as a misplaced gloss in explanation of that verse. But when we consider (a) that the name _Ḥavvāh_ must in any case be traditional, (b) that it is a proper name, whereas הָאָדָם‎ remains appellative throughout, and (c) that in the following verses there are unambiguous traces of a second recension of the Paradise story, it is reasonable to suppose that verse ²⁰ comes from that recension, and is a parallel to the naming of the woman in 2²³, whether it stands here in the original order or not. The fact that the name Eve has been preserved, while there is no distinctive name for the man, suggests that חוה‎ is a survival from a more primitive theory of human origins in which the first mother represented the unity of the race.――_the mother of every living thing_] According to this derivation, חַוָּה‎ would seem to denote first the idea of life, and then the source of life――the mother.¹ But the form חוה‎ is not Hebrew, and the real meaning of the word is not settled by the etymology here given (_v.i._).――כָּל־חַי‎ commonly includes all animals (8²¹ etc.), but is here restricted to mankind (as Psalms 143², Job 30²³). Compare however, πότνια θηρῶν, ‘Lady of wild things,’ a Greek epithet of the Earth-mother (Miss Harrison, _Prolegomena to the study of Greek Religion_ 264).――=21.= Another detached notice describing the origin of clothing. It is, of course, not inconsistent with verse ⁷, but neither can it be said to be the necessary sequel to that verse; most probably it is a parallel from another source.――_coats of skin_] “The simplest and most primitive kind of clothing in practical use” (Driver).

¹ So Baethgen, _Beiträge zur Geschichte Cölestins_ 148, who appends the note: “Im holsteinischen Plattdeutsch ist ‘Dat Leben’ euphemistischer Ausdruck für das pudendum muliebre”――a meaning by the way which also attaches to Arabic _ḥayy_ (Lane, _An Arabic-English Lexicon_ 681 b).

An interesting question arises as to the connexion between this method of clothing and the loss of pristine innocence. That it exhibits God’s continued care for man even after the Fall (Dillmann al.) may be true as regards the present form of the legend; but that is hardly the original conception. In the Phœnician legend of Usōos, the invention is connected with the hunting of wild animals, and this again with the institution of sacrifice: ... ὃς σκέπην τῷ σώματι πρῶτος ἐκ δερμάτων ὧν ἴσχυσε συλλαβεῖν θηρίων εὗρε ... ἅμα τε σπένδειν αὐταῖς ἐξ ὧν ἤγρευε θηρίων (_Præparatio Evangelica_ i. 10; Orelli, page 17 f.). Since sacrifice and the use of animal food were inseparably associated in Semitic antiquity, it may be assumed that this is conceived as the first departure from the Golden Age, when men lived on the spontaneous fruits of the earth. Similarly, William Robertson Smith (_Lectures on the Religion of the Semites_², 306 ff.) found in the verse the Yahwistic theory of the introduction of the sacrifice of _domestic_ animals, which thus coincided, as in Greek legend, with the transition from the state of innocence to the life of agriculture.

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‎ =20.= חוה‎] LXX Εὕα [Εὔα] (in 4¹), Aquila Αὖα, Vulgate _Heva_, Jerome _Eva_ (English _Eve_); in this verse LXX translates Ζωή, Symmachus Ζωογόνος. The similarity of the name to the Aramaic word for ‘serpent’ (חַוֵּי‎, חִוְיָא‎, Syriac (‡ Syriac word), Syro-Palestinian (‡ Syriac word) [Matthew 7¹⁰]); (compare Arabic _ḥayyat_ from _ḥauyat_ [Nöldeke]) has always been noticed, and is accepted by several modern scholars as a real etymological equivalence (Nöldeke _Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenländischen Gesellschaft_, xlii. 487; Stade _Geschichte des Volkes Israel_, i. 633; Wellhausen _Reste arabischen Heidentums_ 154). The ancient idea was that Eve was so named because she had done the serpent’s work in tempting Adam (_Bereshith Rabba_; Philo, _De Agricultura Noë_, 21; Clement of Alexandria _Protrepticus_ ii. 12. 1). Quite recently the philological equation has acquired fresh significance from the discovery of the name חות‎ on a leaden Punic _tabella devotionis_ (described by Lidzbarski _Ephemeris_, i. 26 ff.; see Cooke, _A Textbook of North-Semitic Inscriptions_, 135), of which the first line reads: “O Lady _ḤVT_, goddess, queen...!” Lidzbarski sees in this mythological personage a goddess of the under-world, and as such a serpent-deity; and identifies her with the biblical Ḥavvah. Ḥavvah would thus be a ‘depotentiated’ deity, whose prototype was a Phœnician goddess of the Under-world, worshipped in the form of a serpent, and bearing the title of ‘Mother of all living’ (see Gressman _l.c._ 359 f.). Precarious as such combinations may seem, there is no objection in principle to an explanation of the name Ḥavvah on these lines. Besides the Ḥivvites of the Old Testament (who were probably a serpent-tribe), Wellhausen cites examples of Semitic princely families that traced their genealogy back to a serpent. The substitution of human for animal ancestry, and the transference of the animal name to the human ancestor, are phenomena frequently observed in the transition from a lower to a higher stage of religion. If the change took place while a law of female descent still prevailed, the ancestry would naturally be traced to a woman (or goddess); and when the law of male kinship was introduced she would as naturally be identified with the wife of the first man. It need hardly be said that all this, while possibly throwing some light on the mythical background of the biblical narrative, is quite apart from the religious significance of the story of the Fall in itself.――אם כל־חי‎] William Robertson Smith renders ‘mother of every _ḥayy_,’――_ḥayy_ being the Arabic word which originally denoted a group of female kinship. Thus “Eve is the personification of the bond of kinship (conceived as exclusively mother-kinship), just as Adam is simply ‘man,’ _i.e._ the personification of mankind” (_Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia_², 208). The interpretation has found no support.――=21.= Point לָאָדָם‎, as in verse ¹⁷.

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=22‒24. The actual expulsion.=――=22.= _Behold ... one of us_] This is no ‘ironica exprobatio’ (Calvin al.), but a serious admission that man has snatched a divine prerogative not meant for him. The feeling expressed (compare 11⁶) is akin to what the Greeks called the ‘envy of the gods,’ and more remotely to the Old Testament attribute of the zeal or jealousy of Yahwe,――His resentment of all action that encroaches on His divinity (see page 97). In verse ⁵ the same words are put in the mouth of the serpent with a distinct imputation of envy to God; and it is perhaps improbable that the writer of that verse would have justified the serpent’s insinuation, even in form, by a divine utterance. There are several indications (_e.g._ the phrase ‘like one of us’) that the secondary recension to which verse ²² belongs represents a cruder form of the legend than does the main narrative; and it is possible that it retains more of the characteristically pagan feeling of the envy of the gods.――_in respect of knowing, etc._] Man has not attained complete equality with God, but only God-likeness in this one respect. Gressman’s contention that the verse is self-contradictory (man has become like a god, and yet lacks the immortality of a god) is therefore unfounded.――_And now, etc._] There remains another divine attribute which man will be prompt to seize, viz. immortality: to prevent his thus attaining complete likeness to God he must be debarred from the Tree of Life. The expression _put forth his hand_ suggests that a single partaking of the fruit would have conferred eternal life (Budde _Die biblische Urgeschichte_ 52); and at least implies that it would have been an easy thing to do. The question why man had not as yet done so is not impertinent (Delitzsch), but inevitable; so momentous an issue could not have been left to chance in a continuous narrative. The obvious solution is that in this recension the Tree of Life was a (or _the_) forbidden tree, that man in his first innocence had respected the injunction, but that now when he knows the virtue of the tree he will not refrain from eating. It is to be observed that it is only in this part of the story that the idea of immortality is introduced, and that not as an essential endowment of human nature, but as contingent on an act which would be as efficacious after the Fall as before it.――On the _aposiopesis_ at the end of the verse, _v.i._――=23= is clearly a doublet of ²⁴; and the latter is the natural continuation of ²². Verse ²³ is a fitting conclusion to the main narrative, in which it probably followed immediately on verse ¹⁹.――=24.= _He drove out the man and made [him] dwell on the east of ... [and stationed] the Cherubim, etc._] This is the reading of LXX (_v.i._), and it gives a more natural construction than Massoretic Text, which omits the words in brackets. On either view the assumption is that the first abode of mankind was east of the garden. There is no reason to suppose that the verse represents a different tradition as to the site of Eden from 2⁸ or 2¹⁰ ᶠᶠᐧ. It is not said in 2⁸ that it was in the _extreme_ east, or in 2¹⁰ that it was in the extreme north; nor is it here implied that it was further west than Palestine. The account of the early migration of the race in 11² is quite consistent with the supposition that mankind entered the Euphrates valley from a region still further east.――_the Cherubim and the revolving sword-flame_] Literally ‘the flame of the whirling sword.’ It has usually been assumed that the sword was in the hand of one of the cherubim; but probably it was an independent symbol, and a representation of the lightning. Some light may be thrown on it by an inscription of Tiglath-pileser I. (_Keilinschriftliche Bibliothek_, i. 36 f.), where the king says that when he destroyed the fortress of Ḫunusa he made ‘a lightning of bronze.’ The emblem appears to be otherwise unknown, but the allusion suggests a parallel to the ‘flaming sword’ of this passage.

=The Cherubim.=――See the notes of Dillmann, Gunkel, Driver; _Die Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament_³, 529 f., 631 ff.; Cheyne in _Encyclopædia Biblica_, 741 ff.; Jeremias _Das Alte Testament im Lichte des alten Orients_², 218; Haupt, _The Sacred Books of the Old Testament_, _Numbers_, 46; _Polychrome Bible_, 181 f.; Furtwängler, in Roscher’s _Ausführliches Lexikon der griechischen und römischen Mythologie_ article GRYPS.――The derivation of the word is uncertain. The old theory of a connexion with γρύψ (_Greif_, griffin, etc.) is not devoid of plausibility, but lacks proof. The often quoted statement of Lenormant (_Les Origines de l’histoire_ i. 118), that _kirubu_ occurs on an amulet in the de Clercq collection as a name of the winged bulls of Assyrian palaces, seems to be definitely disproved (see Jeremias 218).――A great part of the Old Testament symbolism could be explained from the hypothesis that the Cherubim were originally wind-demons, like the Harpies of Greek mythology (Harrison, _Prolegomena to the study of Greek Religion_ 178 ff.). The most suggestive analogy to this verse is perhaps to be found in the winged genii often depicted by the side of the tree of life in Babylonian art. These figures are usually human in form with human heads, but sometimes combine the human form with an eagle’s head, and occasionally the human head with an animal body. They are shown in the act of fecundating the date-palm by transferring the pollen of the male tree to the flower of the female; and hence it has been conjectured that they are personifications of the winds, by whose agency the fertilisation of the palm is effected in nature (Tylor, _Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archæology_, xii. 383 ff.). Starting with this clue, we can readily explain (1) the function of the Cherub as the living chariot of Yahwe, or bearer of the Theophany, in Psalms 18¹¹ (2 Samuel 22¹¹). It is a personification of the storm-wind on which Yahwe rides, just as the Babylonian storm-god Zû was figured as a bird-deity. The theory that it was a personification of the thunder-cloud is a mere conjecture based on Psalms 18¹¹ ᶠ, and has no more intrinsic probability than that here suggested. (2) The association of the winged figures with the Tree of Life in Babylonian art would naturally lead to the belief that the Cherubim were denizens of Paradise (Ezekiel 28¹⁴ᐧ ¹⁶), and guardians of the Tree (as in this passage). (3) Thence they came to be viewed as guardians of sacred things and places generally, like the composite figures placed at the entrances of Assyrian temples and palaces to prevent the approach of evil spirits. To this category belong probably in the first instance the colossal Cherubim of Solomon’s temple (1 Kings 6²³ ᶠᶠᐧ 8⁶ ᶠᐧ), and the miniatures on the lid of the ark in the Tabernacle (Exodus 25¹⁸ ᶠᶠᐧ etc.); but a trace of the primary conception appears in the alternation of cherubim and _palm-trees_ in the temple decoration (1 Kings 6²⁹ ᶠᶠᐧ, Ezekiel 41¹⁸ ᶠᶠᐧ;; see, further, 1 Kings 7²⁹ ᶠᶠᐧ, Exodus 26¹ᐧ ³¹). (4) The most difficult embodiment of the idea is found in the Cherubim of Ezekiel’s visions――four composite creatures combining the features of the ox, the lion, the man, and the eagle (Ezekiel 1⁵ ᶠᶠᐧ 10¹ ᶠᶠᐧ). These may represent primarily the ‘four winds of heaven’; but the complex symbolism of the _Merkābāh_ shows that they have some deeper cosmic significance. Gunkel (page 20) thinks that an older form of the representation is preserved in Apocalypse 4⁶ ᶠᶠᐧ, where the four animal types are kept distinct. These he connects with the four constellations of the Zodiac which mark the four quarters of the heavens: Taurus, Leo, Scorpio (in the earliest astronomy a scorpion-_man_), and Aquila (near Aquarius). See _Die Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament_³, 631 f.

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‎ =22.= כאחד‎] Construct before preposition; Gesenius-Kautzsch § 130 _a_.――מִמֶּנּוּ‎] The so-called oriental punctuation (which distinguishes 1st plural from 3rd singular masculine suffix) has מִמֵּנֿוּ‎, ‘from us’ (Baer-Delitzsch page 81). Targumᴼⁿᵏᵉˡᵒˢ ‎ (יחידי בעלמא מינה‎) and Symmachus (ὁμοῦ ἀφ’ ἑαυτοῦ) treat the form as 3rd singular: compare Rashi’s paraphrase: “alone below, as I am alone above.”――לדעת‎] ‘in [respect of] knowing’: gerundial infinitive; Davidson § 93; Gesenius-Kautzsch § 114 _o_; Driver _A Treatise on the use of the Tenses in Hebrew_ § 205.――The pregnant use of פֶּן־‎ (= ‘I fear lest’) is common (Genesis 19¹⁹ 26⁹ 38¹¹ 44³⁴, Exodus 13¹⁷ etc.). Here it is more natural to assume an _anakolouthon_, the clause depending on a cohortative, converted in verse ²³ into a historic tense.――גם‎] LXX, Peshiṭtå omit.――=24.= LXX καὶ ἐξέβαλεν τὸν Ἀδὰμ καὶ κατῴκισεν αὐτὸν ἀπέναντι τοῦ παραδείσου τῆς τρυφῆς, καὶ ἔταξεν τὰ χερουβὶν κτλ. ‎ = ויגרש את־האדם וישכן מקדם לגן עדן וַיָּשֶׂם את־הכרובים וגו׳‎. Ball rightly adopts this text, inserting אֹתוֹ‎ after וישכן‎, against Yahwist’s usage. There is no need to supply any pronoun object whatever: see 2¹⁹ 18⁷ 38¹⁸, 1 Samuel 19¹³ etc. For the first three words Peshiṭtå has simply (‡ Syriac word), and for וישכן‎ (‡ Syriac word) (with the cherubim, etc., as object).――המתהפכת‎] Hithpael in the sense of ‘revolve,’ Judges 7¹³, Job 37¹²; in Job 38¹⁴ it means ‘be transformed.’

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_The Origin and Significance of the Paradise Legend._

1. _Ethnic parallels._――The Babylonian version of the Fall of man (if any such existed) has not yet been discovered. There is in the British Museum a much-debated seal-cylinder which is often cited as evidence that a legend very similar to the biblical narrative was current in Babylonia. It shows two completely clothed figures seated on either side of a tree, and each stretching out a hand toward its fruit, while a crooked line on the left of the picture is supposed to exhibit the serpent.¹ The engraving no doubt represents some legend connected with the tree of life; but even if we knew that it illustrates the first temptation, the _story_ is still wanting; and the details of the picture show that it can have had very little resemblance to Genesis 3.――The most that can be claimed is that there are certain remote parallels to particular features or ideas of Genesis 2⁴‒3²⁴, which are yet sufficiently close to suggest that the ultimate source of the biblical narrative is to be sought in the Babylonian mythology. Attention should be directed to the following:――

¹ Reproduced in Smith’s _Chaldean Genesis_, 88; Delitzsch _Babel und Bibel_ (M‘Cormack’s translation, page 48); _Das Alte Testament im Lichte des alten Orients_², 203, etc. Jeremias has satisfied himself that the zigzag line _is_ a snake, but is equally convinced that the snake cannot be tempting a man and a woman to eat the fruit.

(a) The _account of Creation_ in 2⁴ ᶠᶠᐧ has undoubted resemblances to the Babylonian document described on page 47 f., though they are hardly such as to prove dependence. Each starts with a vision of chaos, and in both the prior existence of heaven and earth seems to be assumed; although the Babylonian chaos is a waste of waters, while that of Genesis 2⁵ ᶠᐧ is based rather on the idea of a waterless desert (see page 56 above). The _order_ of creation, though not the same, is alike in its promiscuous and unscientific character: in the Babylonian we have a hopeless medley――mankind, beasts of the field, living things of the field, Tigris and Euphrates, verdure of the field, grass, marshes, reeds, wild-cow, ewe, sheep of the fold, orchards, forests, houses, and cities, etc. etc.――but no separate creation of woman.――The creation of _man_ from earth moistened by the blood of a god, in another document, may be instanced as a distant parallel to 2⁷ (pages 42, 45).

(b) The _legend of Eabani_, embedded in the Gilgameš-Epic (Tablet I. Column ii. line 33 ff.: _Keilinschriftliche Bibliothek_, vi. 1, page 120 ff.), seems to present us (it has been thought) with a ‘type of primitive man.’ Eabani, created as a rival to Gilgameš by the goddess Aruru from a lump of clay, is a being of gigantic strength who is found associating with the wild animals, living their life, and foiling all the devices of the huntsman. Eager to capture him, Gilgameš sends with the huntsman a harlot, by whose attractions he hopes to lure Eabani from his savagery. Eabani yields to her charms, and is led, a willing captive, to the life of civilisation:

When she speaks to him, her speech pleases him, One who knows his heart he seeks, a friend.

But later in the epic, the harlot appears as the cause of his sorrows, and Eabani curses her with all his heart. Apart from its present setting, and considered as an independent bit of folk-lore, it cannot be denied that the story has a certain resemblance to Genesis 2¹⁸⁻²⁴. Only, we may be sure that if the idea of sexual intercourse with the beasts be implied in the picture of Eabani, the moral purity of the Hebrew writer never stooped so low (see Jastrow, _American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures_, xv. 198 ff.; Stade, _Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft_, xxiii. 174 f.).

(c) Far more instructive affinities with the inner motive of the story of the Fall are found in the myth of _Adapa and the South-wind_, discovered amongst the Tel-Amarna Tablets, and therefore known in Palestine in the 15th century B.C. (_Keilinschriftliche Bibliothek_, vi. 1, 92‒101). Adapa, the son of the god Ea, is endowed by him with the fulness of divine wisdom, but denied the gift of immortality:

“Wisdom I gave him, immortality I gave him not.”

While plying the trade of a fisherman on the Persian Gulf, the south-wind overwhelms his bark, and in revenge Adapa breaks the wings of the south-wind. For this offence he is summoned by Anu to appear before the assembly of the gods in heaven; and Ea instructs him how to appease the anger of Anu. Then the gods, disconcerted by finding a mortal in possession of their secrets, resolve to make the best of it, and to admit him fully into their society, by conferring on him immortality. They offer him food of life that he may eat, and water of life that he may drink. But Adapa had previously been deceived by Ea, who did not wish him to become immortal. Ea had said that what would be offered to him would be food and water of death, and had strictly cautioned him to refuse. He did refuse, and so missed immortal life. Anu laments over his infatuated refusal:

“Why, Adapa! Wherefore hast thou not eaten, not drunken, so that Thou wilt not live...?” “Ea, my lord, Commanded, ‘Eat not and drink not!’” “Take him and bring him back to his earth!”

This looks almost like a travesty of the leading ideas of Genesis 3; yet the common features are very striking. In both we have the idea that wisdom and immortality combined constitute equality with deity; in both we have a man securing the first and missing the second; and in both the man is counselled in opposite directions by supernatural voices, and acts on that advice which is contrary to his interest. There is, of course, the vital difference that while Yahwe forbids both wisdom and immortality to man, Ea confers the first (and thus far plays the part of the biblical serpent) but withholds the second, and Anu is ready to bestow both. Still, it is not too much to expect that a story like this will throw light on the mythological antecedents of the Genesis narrative, if not directly on that narrative itself (see below, page 94).

What is true of Babylonian affinities holds good in a lesser degree of the ancient mythologies as a whole: everywhere we find echoes of the Paradise myth, but nowhere a story which forms an exact parallel to Genesis 2. 3. The Græco-Roman traditions told of a ‘golden age,’ lost through the increasing sinfulness of the race,――an age when the earth freely yielded its fruits, and men lived in a happiness undisturbed by toil or care or sin (Hesiod, _Opera et Dies_, 90‒92, 109‒120; Ovid, _Metamorphoses_ i. 89‒112, etc.); but they knew nothing of a sudden fall. Indian and Persian mythologies told, in addition, of sacred mountains where the gods dwelt, with bright gold and flashing gems, and miraculous trees conferring immortality, and every imaginable blessing; and we have seen that similar representations were current in Babylonia. The nearest approach to definite counterparts of the biblical narrative are found in Iranian legends, where we read of Meshia and Meshiane, who lived at first on fruits, but who, tempted by Ahriman, denied the good god, lost their innocence, and practised all kinds of wickedness; or of Yima, the ruler of the golden age, under whom there was neither sickness nor death, nor hunger nor thirst, until (in one tradition) he gave way to pride, and fell under the dominion of the evil serpent Dahaka (see Dillmann page 47 ff.). But these echoes are too faint and distant to enable us to determine the quarter whence the original impulse proceeded, or where the myth assumed the form in which it appears in Genesis. For answers to these questions we are dependent mainly on the uncertain indications of the biblical narrative itself. Some features (the name _Ḥavvah_ [page 85 f.], and elements of chapter 4) seem to point to Phœnicia as the quarter whence this stratum of myth entered the religion of Israel; others (the Paradise-geography) point rather to Babylonia, or at least Mesopotamia. In the present state of our knowledge it is a plausible conjecture that the myth has travelled from Babylonia, and reached Israel through the Phœnicians or the Canaanites (Wellhausen _Prolegomena zur Geschichte Israels_⁶ 307; Gressman _Archiv für Religionswissenschaft._, x. 345 ff.; compare Bevan, _The Journal of Theological Studies_, iv. 500 f.). A similar conclusion might be drawn from the contradiction in the idea of chaos, if the explanation given above of 2⁶ be correct: it looks as if the cosmogony of an alluvial region had been modified through transference to a dry climate (see page 56). The fig-leaves of 3⁷ are certainly not Babylonian; though a single detail of that kind cannot settle the question of origin. But until further light comes from the monuments, all speculations on this subject are very much in the air.

2. _The mythical substratum of the narrative._――The strongest evidence of the non-Israelite origin of the story of the Fall is furnished by the biblical account itself, in the many mythological conceptions, of which traces still remain in Genesis. “The narrative,” as Driver says, “contains features which have unmistakable counterparts in the religious traditions of other nations; and some of these, though they have been accommodated to the spirit of Israel’s religion, carry indications that they are not native to it” (_The Book of Genesis with Introduction and Notes_ 51). Amongst the features which are at variance with the standpoint of Hebrew religion we may put first of all the fact that the abode of Yahwe is placed, not in Canaan or at Mount Sinai, but in the far East. The strictly mythological background of the story emerges chiefly in the conceptions of the garden of the gods (see page 57 f.), the trees of life and of knowledge (page 59), the serpent (page 72 f.), Eve (page 85 f.), and the Cherubim (page 89 f.). It is true, as has been shown, that each of these conceptions is rooted in the most primitive ideas of Semitic religion; but it is equally true that they have passed through a mythological development for which the religion of Israel gave no opportunity. Thus the association of trees and serpents in Semitic folk-lore is illustrated by an Arabian story, which tells how, when an untrodden thicket was burned down, the spirits of the trees made their escape in the shape of white serpents (_Lectures on the Religion of the Semites_², 133); but it is quite clear that a long interval separates that primitive superstition from the ideas that invest the serpent and the tree in this passage. If proof were needed, it would be found in the suggestive combinations of the serpent and the tree in Babylonian and Phœnician art; or in the fabled garden of the Hesperides, with its golden fruit guarded by a dragon, always figured in artistic representations as a huge snake coiled round the trunk of the tree (compare Lenormant, _Les Origines de l’Histoire_, i. 93 f.: see the illustrations in Roscher, _Ausführliches Lexikon der griechischen und römischen Mythologie_ 2599 f.). How the various elements were combined in the particular myth which lies immediately behind the biblical narrative, it is impossible to say; but the myth of Adapa suggests at least some elements of a possible construction, which cannot be very far from the truth. Obviously we have to do with a polytheistic legend, in which rivalries and jealousies between the different deities are almost a matter of course. The serpent is himself a demon; and his readiness to initiate man in the knowledge of the mysterious virtue of the forbidden tree means that he is at variance with the other gods, or at least with the particular god who had imposed the prohibition. The intention of the command was to prevent man from sharing the life of the gods; and the serpent-demon, posing as the good genius of man, defeats that intention by revealing to man the truth (similarly Gunkel 30). To the original heathen myth we may also attribute the idea of the envy of the gods, which the biblical narrator hardly avoids, and the note of weariness and melancholy, the sombre view of life,――the ‘scheue heidnische Stimmung,’――which is the ground-tone of the passage.

It is impossible to determine what, in the original myth, was the nature of the tree (or trees) which man was forbidden to eat. Gressman (_l.c._ 351 ff.) finds in the passage traces of three primitive conceptions: (1) the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, whose fruit imparts the knowledge of magic,――the only knowledge of which it can be said that it makes man at once the equal and the rival of the deity; (2) the tree of knowledge, whose fruit excites the sexual appetite and destroys childlike innocence (3⁷); (3) the tree of life, whose fruit confers immortality (3²²). The question is immensely complicated by the existence of two recensions, which do not seem so hopelessly inseparable as Gressman thinks. In the main recension we have the tree of knowledge, of which man eats to his hurt, but no hint of a tree of life. In the secondary recension there is the tree of life (of which man does not eat), and _apparently_ the tree of knowledge of which he had eaten; but this depends on the word גַּם‎ in 3²², which is wanting in LXX, and may be an interpolation. Again, the statement that knowledge of good and evil really amounts to equality with God, is found only in the second recension; in the other it is doubtful if the actual effect of eating the fruit was not a cruel disappointment of the hope held out by the serpent. How far we are entitled to read the ideas of the one into the other is a question we cannot answer. Eerdmans’ ingenious but improbable theory (_Theologisch Tijdschrift_, xxxix. 504 ff.) need not here be discussed. What is meant by knowledge of good and evil in the final form of the narrative will be considered under the next head.

3. _The religious ideas of the passage._――Out of such crude and seemingly unpromising material the religion of revelation has fashioned the immortal allegory before us. We have now to inquire what are the religious and moral truths under the influence of which the narrative assumed its present form, distinguishing as far as possible the ideas which it originally conveyed from those which it suggested to more advanced theological speculation.

(1) We observe, in the first place, that the ætiological motive is strongly marked throughout. The story gives an explanation of many of the facts of universal experience,――the bond between man and wife (2²⁴), the sense of shame which accompanies adolescence (3⁷), the use of clothing (3²¹), the instinctive antipathy to serpents (3¹⁵). But chiefly it seeks the key to the darker side of human existence as seen in a simple agricultural state of society,――the hard toil of the husbandman, the birth-pangs of the woman, and her subjection to the man. These are evils which the author feels to be contrary to the ideal of human nature, and to the intention of a good God. They are results of a curse justly incurred by transgression, a curse pronounced before history began, and shadowing, rather than crushing, human life always and everywhere. It is doubtful if death be included in the effects of the curse. In verse ¹⁹ it is spoken of as the natural fate of a being made from the earth; in verse ²² it follows from being excluded from the tree of life. Man was capable of immortality, but not by nature immortal; and God did not mean that he should attain immortality. The death threatened in 2¹⁷ is immediate death; and to assume that the death which actually ensues is the exaction of that deferred penalty, is perhaps to go beyond the intention of the writer. Nor does it appear that the narrative seeks to account for the origin of sin. It describes what was, no doubt, the first sin; but it describe it as something intelligible, not needing explanation, not a mystery like the instinct of shame or the possession of knowledge, which are produced by eating the fruit of the tree.

(2) Amongst other things which distinguish man’s present from his original state, is the possession of a certain kind of knowledge which was acquired by eating the forbidden fruit. This brings us to the most difficult question which the narrative presents: what is meant by the knowledge of good and evil?¹ Keeping in mind the possibility that the two recensions may represent different conceptions, our data are these: In 3²² knowledge of good and evil is an attainment which (a) implies equality with God, (b) was forbidden to man, (c) is actually secured by man. In the leading narrative (b) certainly holds good (2¹⁷), but (a) and (c) are doubtful. Did the serpent speak truth when he said that knowledge of good and evil would make man like God? Did man actually attain such knowledge? Was the perception of nakedness a first flash of the new divine insight which man had coveted, or was it a bitter disenchantment and mockery of the hopes inspired by the serpent’s words? It is only the habit of reading the ideas of 3²² into the story of the temptation which makes these questions seem superfluous. Let us consider how far the various interpretations enable us to answer them.――i. The suggestion that magical knowledge is meant may be set aside as inadequate to either form of the biblical narrative: magic is not godlike knowledge, nor is it the universal property of humanity.――ii. The usual explanation identifies the knowledge of good and evil with the moral sense, the faculty of discerning between right and wrong. This view is ably defended by Budde (_Die biblische Urgeschichte_ 69 ff.), and is not to be lightly dismissed, but yet raises serious difficulties. Could it be said that God meant to withhold from man the power of moral discernment? Does not the prohibition itself presuppose that man already knew that obedience was right and disobedience sinful? We have no right to say that the restriction was only temporary, and that God would in other ways have bestowed on man the gift of conscience; the narrative suggests nothing of the sort.――iii. Wellhausen (_Prolegomena zur Geschichte Israels_⁶ 299 ff.) holds that the knowledge in question is insight into the secrets of nature, and intelligence to manipulate them for human ends; and this as a quality not so much of the individual as of the race,――the knowledge which is the principle of human civilisation. It is the faculty which we see at work in the invention of clothing (3²¹ ?), in the founding of cities (4¹⁷), in the discovery of the arts and crafts (4¹⁹ ᶠᶠᐧ), and in the building of the tower (11¹ ᶠᶠᐧ). The undertone of condemnation of the cultural achievements of humanity which runs through the Yahwistic sections of chapters 1‒11 makes it probable that the writer traced their root to the knowledge acquired by the first transgression; and of such knowledge it might be said that it made man like God, and that God willed to withhold it permanently from His creatures.――iv. Against this view Gunkel (11 f., 25 f.) urges somewhat ineptly that the myth does not speak of arts and aptitudes which are learned by education, but of a kind of knowledge which comes by nature, of which the instinct of sex is a typical illustration. Knowledge of good and evil is simply the enlargement of capacity and experience which belongs to mature age,――ripeness of judgment, reason,――including moral discernment, but not identical with it.――The difference between the last two explanations is not great; and possibly both are true. Wellhausen’s seems to me the only view that does justice to the thought of 3²²; and if 4¹⁶ ᶠᶠᐧ and 11¹⁻⁹ be the continuation of this version of the Fall, the theory has much to recommend it. On the other hand, Gunkel’s acceptation may be truer to the teaching of 3¹ ᶠᶠᐧ. Man’s primitive state was one of childlike innocence and purity; and the knowledge which he obtained by disobedience is the knowledge of life and of the world which distinguishes the grown man from the child. If it be objected that such knowledge is a good thing, which God could not have forbidden to man, we may be content to fall back on the paradox of Christ’s idea of childhood: “Except ye turn, and become as little children, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven.”

¹ In Old Testament usage, knowledge of good and evil marks the difference between adulthood and childhood (Deuteronomy 1³⁹, Isaiah 7¹⁵ ᶠᐧ)), or second childhood (2 Samuel 19³⁶); it also denotes (with different verbs) judicial discernment of right and wrong (2 Samuel 14¹⁷, 1 Kings 3⁹), which is an intellectual function, quite distinct from the working of the conscience. The antithesis of good and evil may, of course, be ethical (Amos 5¹⁴ ᶠᐧ, Isaiah 5²⁰ etc.); but it may also be merely the contrast of pleasant and painful, or wholesome and hurtful (2 Samuel 19³⁶). Hence the phrase comes to stand for the whole range of experience,――“a comprehensive designation of things by their two polar attributes, according to which they interest man for his weal or hurt”: compare 2 Samuel 14¹⁷ with ²⁰ ‘all things that are in earth’ (Genesis 24⁵⁰ 31²⁴). Wellhausen maintains that the non-ethical sense is fundamental, the expressions being transferred to virtue and vice only in so far as their consequences are advantageous or the reverse. Knowledge of good and evil may thus mean knowledge in general,――knowing one thing from another.

(3) The next point that claims attention is the author’s conception of sin. Formally, sin is represented as an act of disobedience to a positive command, imposed as a test of fidelity; an act, therefore, which implies disloyalty to God, and a want of the trust and confidence due from man to his Maker. But the essence of the transgression lies deeper: God had a reason for imposing the command, and man had a motive for disobeying it; and the reason and motive are unambiguously indicated. Man was tempted by the desire to be as God, and Yahwe does not will that man should be as God. Sin is thus in the last instance presumption,――an overstepping of the limits of creaturehood, and an encroachment on the prerogatives of Deity. It is true that the offence is invested with every circumstance of extenuation,――inexperience, the absence of evil intention, the suddenness of the temptation, and the superior subtlety of the serpent; but sin it was nevertheless, and was justly followed by punishment.――How far the passage foreshadows a doctrine of hereditary sin, it is impossible to say. The consequences of the transgression, both privative and positive, are undoubtedly transmitted from the first pair to their posterity; but whether the sinful tendency itself is regarded as having become hereditary in the race, there is not evidence to show.

(4) Lastly, what view of God does the narrative present? It has already been pointed out that 3²² borders hard on the pagan notion of the ‘envy’ of the godhead, a notion difficult to reconcile with the conceptions of Old Testament religion. But of that idea there is no trace in the main narrative of the temptation and the Fall, except in the lying insinuation of the serpent: the writer himself does not thus ‘charge God foolishly.’ His religious attitude is one of reverent submission to the limitations imposed on human life by a sovereign Will, which is determined to maintain inviolate the distinction between the divine and the human. The attribute most conspicuously displayed is closely akin to what the prophets called the ‘holiness’ of God, as illustrated, _e.g._, in Isaiah 2¹² ᶠᶠᐧ. After all, the world is God’s world and not man’s, and the Almighty is just, as well as holy, when He frustrates the impious aspiration of humanity after an independent footing and sphere of action in the universe. The God of Genesis 3 is no arbitrary heathen deity, dreading lest the sceptre of the universe should be snatched from his hand by the soaring ambition of the race of men; but a Being infinitely exalted above the world, stern in His displeasure at sin, and terrible in His justice; yet benignant and compassionate, slow to anger, and ‘repenting Him of the evil.’ Through an intensely anthropomorphic medium we discern the features of the God of the prophets and the Old Testament; nay, in the analogy of human fatherhood which underlies the description, we can trace the lineaments of the God and Father of Jesus Christ. That is the real _Protevangelium_ which lies in the passage: the fact that God tempers judgment with mercy, the faith that man, though he has forfeited innocence and happiness, is not cut off from fellowship with his Creator.