Why Eve?

Part Two

I was away at a church conference this past week. Because we are in the midst of refining what our churches are to believe about women and their role in the life of the church, a lot of the discussion revolved around that subject.

In one conversation I had, a female friend (holding a fairly influential position) stated that women with a "call" to pastoral ministry were in fact patterning themselves after Eve as we find her in Genesis 3. She characterized Eve as having the sinful ambition to be, and have, something that she shouldn't be or have.  By implication she was saying that any woman aspiring to the pastorate or claiming to have a call to the pastorate, is being sinfully desirous of the position and the title just to prove a point—that this woman has the heart supposedly of the secular feminist disguised in the cloak of a calling from God. I know that she is not the only to believe this. I should not have to say that I disagree, but just in case, I most certainly do disagree.

However that conversation takes me to Genesis 3, which is where we are in my journey into the hearts and minds of the women of Scripture and leads to this question: Why did Satan pick Eve as his target and not Adam?

Spoiler alert: I don't know and I don't think anyone else can say definitively either. But let's talk about it anyway.

We are not told what transpired between Genesis 2 and 3. As I mentioned in my previous post in this new series, the mysterious and unsolved doesn’t change history in the least. But I need to “unpack” this woman, Eve, because she is me. She is all of us, and what happened to her matters to all of us, particularly to us as women.

The world of Adam and Eve is good. They have everything anyone could want or need. God comes to walk and talk with them in the garden. Their relationships are as good as they can be. What more could anyone want?

There is only one rule: Don’t eat the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. But why would anyone want to?

What I think happened here in Genesis has a backstory that is similiar to other stories told for us in the Scriptures, particularly the story of a man named Job. Let's pause to consider what happened to him.

When we are first introduced to Job, we find a man blessed by God. He is a righteous man, implying a good relationship with God. He has a wonderful family, influence in the community, and a flourishing lifestyle.

Then Satan enters the presence of God (Job 1:6). This raises more questions for us, but that’s for another book. Sufficient to say for our purposes that Satan seems to have access to God. This access is also hinted at in Luke 22:31-34. Jesus told His disciples, specifically in reference to a conversation with Peter, that Satan had asked God for permission to test them. Addressing Peter in particular, Jesus said that after Peter failed the test, he would be restored and would strengthen his brothers in the faith.

This helps us understand that such a conversation between God and Satan took place, and that what is described in detail in Job is not simply a story but a real event that is repeated in the lives of others though under different circumstances and with different results.

Satan claims that Job is obedient to God only because God has given him everything, so he has no reason not to obey. God tells Satan that he may test Job, but he is not to touch the man himself.

Everything is taken away from Job. Yet Job refuses to turn away from God, even though his wife pressures him to do so (this could be important for what we will see in the story of Adam and Eve).

Satan returns to God and claims that Job will turn against God if God allows him to touch Job’s body. God grants permission but is told that he cannot take Job’s life.

Satan touches Job’s body and afflicts him with such pain that should have driven him away from God. But it doesn’t. Job continues to cling to his faith.

When I think about what might have happened between Genesis 2 and 3, I believe the early chapters of Job, and what is later described by Jesus concerning Peter and the disciples, describes what occurred between those two chapters in Genesis.

Satan sees what God has created—and hates it! He wants to damage it and take away what is God’s, just as he once sought to take away God’s position in heaven (Isaiah 12:12-14).

I imagine him coming into God's presence with the same accusation he would later level at Job.

Do these two creatures of yours simply obey you because you have given them everything and their life is so good? They will desert you if they are tested.

Satan believes he has discovered a “fatal flaw” in God’s divine design. God has made His man and woman free to choose. He could have made it impossible for them to choose. He could have manipulated their choices in His favour. But instead He put a tree in the garden that could destroy all that He meant His creation to be. He gave those created in His image free will. This was not a fatal flaw. This was a God quality—after all, God Himself has the right to choose, and these are His image-bearers.

I believe that God granted Satan the opportunity to test Adam and Eve's faith and, consequently, their obedience.

The choice of a serpent as a tool in this temptation is a mystery. I suppose it could have been any animal—or none at all! Satan could have simply whispered in Eve's ear like a breeze wafting through the air and planted the suggestion.

The fact that the animal could talk didn’t seem surprising. Is it possible that animals and humans had a means of communicating before the fall that we know nothing about? I don’t know. But Satan chose to speak to Eve through the serpent. Perhaps its novelty was part of the deception—who would think twice about something said by one of the creatures God Himself had created? Would she feel more secure believing the lie because its source seemed so innocent? We are often deceived in the same way. Wolves disguised as sheep have led many believers astray. False prophets and teachers were numerous in the days of the early church, and the apostle Paul warns the Corinthian church to beware of them and uses Eve as an example in 2 Corinthians 11:3, 4:

I am afraid, however, that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent’s cunning, your minds may be led astray from your simply and pure devotion to Christ. For if someone comes  and proclaims a Jesus other than the One we proclaimed, or if you receive a different spirit than the One you received, or a different gospel than the one you accepted, you put up with it way too easily.

Again the question arises here. Why Eve? Why did Satan approach Eve first rather than Adam? Some argue that because Eve, as a woman, was the “weaker vessel,” she was the easier target. That doesn’t hold up, given that Satan is “no respecter of persons” when it comes to temptation and any moral weakness in Eve at this point is impossible since both she and Adam are "good.". After all, Matthew 4:1-11 tells us that Satan tempted Jesus, seeking to deceive Him by making promises that were not what they seemed. Another example of God granting Satan permission to test His Son in the wilderness highlighted by the fact that it was the Spirit of God who took Jesus into that wilderness for that purpose.

Men are just as prone to succumbing to temptation as women. We don’t have to look any farther than Judas, Balaam, Jonah, Samson, Elijah, and, let’s not forget, all the disciples, including Peter, who were “sifted as wheat” and ran. Deception isn’t restricted to women. Men can be deceived—Adam himself intimated that Eve had deceived him and made him sin (Genesis 3:12). The “blame game” has become part of the warp and woof of our lives ever since that fatal day in the garden.

Some might say Paul is saying that deception is a woman’s thing, but he isn’t. He is simply using Eve as an example. Deception was Satan’s plan. Paul also mentions Eve again in his letter to Timothy in 2:13, 14:

For Adam was formed first, and then Eve. And it was not Adam who was deceived, but the woman who was deceived and fell into transgression.

The distinction matters, though some will argue it is a distinction without a difference. This quote from Paul doesn’t present Adam as more righteous than Eve. Paul simply states a fact—Eve was deceived. Though Adam implied he had been deceived by Eve, he hadn’t been. He knew what he was doing, which is the distinction Paul makes when he writes to Timothy.

Still, why Eve? In another conversation this past week something clicked that may or may not be a clue to an answer. I was told by a gentleman that women could be allowed to teach because teaching was just passing on information while preaching leads to an invitation to action, to change. You can see the fallacy in this on many levels, but especially when we think of the characteristic of nurturing that is usually a common role for the female of the species particularly during the early developmental years of a child's life. The mother does not simply pass on information, she instills in her children from their earliest years principles and practices that will remain with them for life. Some believe that even while a child is in the womb its mother finds ways to communicate with it.

So though I have asked the question "Why Eve?," and can’t come up with a satisfying answer, I wondered if Satan (though he can’t be credited with originating this quote by William Ross Wallace) was thinking: “The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world.”

If Satan can get her, he might get easier access to all the future generations brought into the world and nutured by her kind. Interesting idea.

We'll talk more about Eve's failure to pass the test in our next post.