The question of justice (Genesis 3:8-21)

The agents God trusted with caring for creation attempted a coup, to become gods, to define good and evil for themselves. How does God respond? God takes responsibility, but how God handles justice is not like what human rulers  do when someone threatens their authority.

God doesn’t react swiftly or violently. God doesn’t drop everything and rush to apprehend the rebels who betrayed the trust he placed in them. God waits. God invites them to discuss their relationship with them. God explains the implications of what they have done.

Genesis 3:8-9 (NIV)
⁸ Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. ⁹ But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?”

After their day’s work, at the time when he would normally come to walk with them, God approaches. They hide. He doesn’t part the bushes to expose them. He invites them to tell him why they’re reticent to appear before him.

Genesis 3:10-13 (NIV)
¹⁰ He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.”
¹¹ And he said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?”
¹² The man said, “The woman you put here with me — she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.”
¹³ Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”

Their coup has been unsuccessful. God is still in charge, deciding good and evil. The creatures (man, woman, and serpent) must each give an account of themselves to the heavenly sovereign. Instead of gaining autonomy, they’re ducking for cover, evading responsibility.

This is a court scene, but the heavenly court is less about meting out punishment than having them accept responsibility. The court explains the impact of their actions: the pain and conflict their treachery has introduced to God’s earthly realm.

The heavenly sovereign addresses each traitor in turn:

Genesis 3:14-15 (NIV)
¹⁴ So the Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, Cursed are you above all livestock and all wild animals! You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life. ¹⁵ And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.”

The serpent’s attempt to dethrone King Adam and Queen Eve has backfired. Instead of gaining status and autonomy, it will now be regarded as the lowest of the low: crawling on its belly, eating the dust of the earth.

The serpent has introduced conflict with humans, an enduring battle for the generations to come. As God puts it later, animals now live in dread of humans (Genesis 9:2-3), and the harming goes both ways. The earth is no longer a peaceful place, though Scripture also hints that one day a seed of the woman will restore divine peace to the world (Isaiah 65:25; 11:6).

God explains to Queen Eve the consequences of her attempt to throw off God’s authority:

Genesis 3:16 (NIV)
¹⁶ To the woman he said, “I will make your pains in childbearing very severe; with painful labour you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.”

What do you make of “he will rule over you”? Originally God decreed that men and women were to reign over creation jointly (1:28). Is God now changing the rules, saying that men must now rule women?

That doesn’t fit the context. God is not redefining what ought to be; he’s describing what is. God explains the trouble Eve brought on herself with her attempt to become a god in her own right. She has introduced conflict and pain into her most precious relationships. In fighting God for power, she will find herself fighting Adam too. The world is now a conflict zone where control is through physical force, and that’s a fight Eve cannot win.

God is not establishing patriarchy as her punishment or protection. Watch how Genesis plays out and you’ll see how absurd that interpretation is. By the end of the book, Jacob has all the power in the family, with multiple wives seeking his attention. They give their servants to bear children for him when they feel diminished because they can’t. This is not good. It’s not God-ordained. This is patriarchal society in a world that has rejected relationships as God established them (2:24), a world where physical strength rules. This is the painful door Eve has opened by rejecting God’s authority. Patriarchy and gender wars are the consequence of rejecting what God said.

The first part of verse 16 needs explanation too. It’s commonly interpreted to say that God punished Eve by making her labour pains worse. While I haven’t felt that pain, I was present when two of my children were born. It’s intense. But did God punish Eve by making it worse?

The Hebrew words do not support that interpretation:

• The word translated “childbearing” (hē·rôn) does not mean childbirth. It means conception or pregnancy.
• The word for “pain” (iṣṣā·ḇôn) is not the word for birth pains. It means grief and suffering in general. In verse 17, Adam also feels iṣṣāḇôn as he struggles to grow food among thorns and thistles. (Adam was not facing labour pains.)

Tim Mackie from The Bible Project translates verse 16a like this:

I will greatly multiply your grief and your conception,
in grief, you will birth children.

What grief and anguish did Eve face as a mother? Having opened the door to conflict by fighting against God’s authority, she will see that conflict play out in her own family. Can you imagine the grief of watching one of your children murder the other?

God was explaining to Eve what she had unleashed by rejecting God’s authority by defining what was good for herself. She would now face unspeakable grief as her children did the same.

In summary, by rejecting God’s authority and grasping power for herself, Queen Eve has introduced pain and conflict to human relationships, pain she will feel as a mother and as a wife.

God then addresses Adam as an accomplice in Eve’s crime:

Genesis 3:17-19 (NIV)
¹⁷ To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’ Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life. ¹⁸ It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. ¹⁹ By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.”

Because Adam participated in the rebellion against God’s authority, the creation entrusted to his care is now in rebellion against his authority. The ground that God blessed with fruitfulness (1:11-12) now rebels: it produces thorns and thistles. The world is now a grievous, toilsome place where we fight creation to survive.

Without God’s breath, Adam is just dust. Āḏām (the Hebrew word for human) comes from āḏāmāh (the Hebrew word for ground):

Genesis 2:7 (NIV)
The Lord God formed a man (āḏām) from the dust of the ground (āḏāmāh) and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man (āḏām) became a living being.

But if he has turned from God to become a god in his own right, adam is just adamah. Inevitably, he returns to the dust of the ground (verse 19).

Death is the inevitable consequence of disconnecting from God, the source of our life.

Can you hear the grief in God’s voice as he explains what they had done? Trying to be gods in our own right does not diminish God’s character or authority; it undermines the peace of the world and our own existence.

But God has not given up on them or on creation. More on that next time.

Related posts

• What changed with the rebellion? (Gen 3:15-24)
• Who’s in charge now? (Gen 3:1-14)
• The question of trust (Gen 3:1-7)