Have you ever had that mortifying nightmare where you are standing in front of a classroom stark naked and everyone is pointing and laughing? Well imagine if everyone else was naked too and instead of sneering, they paid no heed, acting as if being naked was completely fine. Well in Genesis three, Adam and Eve, God’s first human creations, experience just that. They are created without the concept of good or evil so they feel no embarrassment in their nudity. Yet, God gives them one rule that is to not eat from the tree knowledge or else they will “die”. Beyond that, Adam and Eve walk around the Garden innocently and freely until a devious serpent tricks them into eating from the seemingly desirable tree of knowledge. What seems to be a desirable source of wisdom, turns out instead to introduce the concept of fear and shame, proving that from the knowledge of good and evil comes the awareness of the capacity to do right or wrong.
Prior to eating from the tree of knowledge, Adam and Eve are “innocent” and free in the Garden of Eden. “The two of them [are] naked, the man and his wife, yet they [feel] no shame” (Gen. 2:25). Adam and Eve are naked, but they are innocent because they do not associate one another’s nakedness with any moral wrongness. They also feel no shame because they have no concept of what it means to be self-aware. It is this awareness of self that gives shame an emotional depth because shame is an emotion rather than a state of being. Still further, to feel shame implies one has done something wrong or inappropriate. Shame is not internal but external because the feeling of shame is derived from societal expectations. Before the incident, Adam and Eve’s simple nakedness was an expression of their purity. They had no consciousness to know that being naked was socially unacceptable. This doesn’t mean Adam and Eve were incapable of doing wrong because clearly Eve violates the one rule she was given, but it does mean Eve could do wrong without realizing the implications of her actions. This dichotomy is seen in Eve’s interaction with the serpent.
The serpent plays on Eve’s inability to see right from wrong. The serpent knows she is both trusting and gullible: Eve is not wise enough to know the serpent’s ulterior motives because up to that point she has not had any experiences with tricky serpents. In addition, Eve does not know evil can even exist, she only knows there is good. We see this when she looks at the tree of knowledge and sees that “it is good for eating and a delight to the eyes” (Genesis 3:6). Eve’s independent desire makes her look at the fruit and see the potential to obtain wisdom, which she sees as an innocent desire, but a desire nonetheless. In this instance Eve has completely disregarded God’s one rule. So what makes Adam and Eve’s actions so bad is that for the first time they disobey God, taking the word of a creature that is not their God. Eve outrages God by trusting and believing in someone other than Him. Eve also corrupts Adam when he eats the fruit she gives him even though he knew it was an act of disobedience; at that moment Adam proved his allegiance was to his wife and not God. Together, they break the one rule He gives them without even a second thought because Eve saw no wrong in that action. Ironically, if they had known the difference between good and evil, Eve would have been more wary of the serpent’s schemes. Eve hoped that by eating from the tree, she’d be rewarded with wisdom, but instead she is burdened by shame and guilt and her relationship with Adam and God are changed forever.
After eating from the tree of knowledge, Adam and Eve now notice that they are naked and that being naked in front of one another is shameful. “They perceive that they are naked; and they sew together fig leaves and make themselves loincloths” (Genesis 3:7). Notice that Adam and Eve perceive they are naked which means that on a basic level Adam and Eve realize that the other is exposed. Intrinsically, Adam and Eve are aware of their individual self, capable of making decisions to satisfy their own flesh instead of God. By covering their nudity, Adam and Eve attempt to hide their bodies from one another and from God. There is now shame in knowing that Adam and Eve were walking around in the Garden acting like animals by being nude. Adam and Eve are aware of their superiority over animals since animals are naked because they lack the awareness of self that makes humans moral beings rather than existing beings. The contrast is that now Adam and Eve are aware of their inferiority to God, which instills fear in them. Adam and Eve fear God not because they are afraid of his wrath but because the experience of shame is a punishment in itself. In this context, fear is not the punishment given by God, but given to them along with knowledge.
Later on God “moves about in the garden at the breezy time of day…the man and his wife [hide] from the Lord…” and when he asks them where they are Adam replies, “’I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid’”(Genesis 3:8-10). In this passage, Adam and Eve are clearly terrified of God because they understand the gravity of their transgression. Prior to eating from the tree, all Adam and Eve had to know was to obey what God said, but they did not need to know why. Now after eating from the tree of knowledge, they know that punishing consequences follow wrongful actions. It is the fear of God’s wrath and disappointment that drives Adam and Eve to hide from him. But hiding from God only angers him further because it is perceived as if Adam and Eve are trying to evade God and avoid being punished. We know this because Eve attempts to put the blame on the serpent by claiming he “duped” her. Only now does she know what it means to be tricked, but it is too late. God delivers a heavy punishment that validates Adam and Eve’s fear and shame, yet he also proves that he still cares about them by clothing them. This simple gesture captures God’s ability to be compassionate and loving even after he banishes man from the Garden.
The relationship between man and man and man and God is changed permanently when Adam and Eve eat from the tree of knowledge. On the one hand, Adam and Eve now have the ability to do right or wrong. They see they are naked and quickly try to cover themselves up because they know that is the proper thing to do. Now there are customs and measures that must be taken between man and man to ensure that no bad action is committed lest they incur God’s wrath. It is this fear of God, on the other hand, that alienates man from God. In the Garden, God was completely loving to Adam and Eve because they were still his pure creations, but now that man can decide whether to do right or wrong, God can now either reward or punish those who do accordingly. This new God is capable of violence and terror as he is now forced to look upon man objectively, knowing they are responsible for their own actions. Instead of gaining divinity, as the serpent promised, man becomes less than divine, and is sentenced to a life of struggle and pain “until [man] return[s] to the ground—for from it [he was] taken. For dust [he] is, and to dust [he] shall return” (Gen. 3:19). Man is reduced to nothing more than molded dust capable of fleeting divinity, being so knowledgeable and at the same time so powerless before God.
Work Cited: Tanakh: The Holy Scriptures. The New JPS Translation According to the Traditional Hebrew Text. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1985. Print.
Inside the Anthill 