THE PRIMÆVAL HISTORY. (continued 3)

² From the presence in both of crocodiles: Arrian, Anabasis vi. 1, 2 f.; compare Strabo, XV. 1. 25, and the similar notion about the Nile and Euphrates in Pausanias, ii. 5. 2.

³ Josephus and most of the Fathers. Strangely enough, there seems to be no suggestion of the Indus earlier than Kosmas Indicopleustes (ii. 131). Is this because the identity of Nile and Indus was a fixed idea?

⁴ The summary is taken from Driver, page 59 f.; the original article, in Ueber Land und Meer, 1894‒95, I have not been able to consult.

3. It seems probable that the resources of philology and scientific geography are well-nigh exhausted by theories such as have been described above, and that further advance towards a solution of the problem of Paradise will be along the line of comparative mythology. Discussions precisely similar to those we have examined are maintained with regard to the Iranian cosmography—whether, e.g., the stream Ranḥa be the Oxus or the Yaxartes or the Indus; the truth being that Ranḥa is a mythical celestial stream, for which various earthly equivalents might be named (see Tiele, Geschichte der Religion im Altertum ii. 291 f.). If we knew more of the diffusion and history of cosmological ideas in ancient religions, we should probably find additional reason to believe that Genesis 2^10‒14 is but one of many attempts to localise on earth a representation which is essentially mythical. Gunkel (¹33, ²31), adopting a suggestion of Stucken, supposes the original Paradise to have been at the North pole of the heavens (the summit of the mountain of the gods: compare Ezekiel 28¹⁴), and the river to be the Milky Way, branching out—[but does it?]—into four arms (there is some indication that the two arms between Scorpio and Capricornus were regarded in Babylonia as the heavenly counterparts of Euphrates and Tigris: see Die Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament³, 528). It is not meant, of course, that this was the idea in the mind of the biblical writer, but only that the conception of the mysterious river of Paradise with its four branches originated in mythological speculation of this kind. If this be the case, we need not be surprised if it should prove impossible to identify Pishon and Giḥon with any known rivers: on the other hand, the mention of the well-known Tigris and Euphrates clearly shows that the form of the myth preserved in Genesis 2^10‒14 located the earthly Paradise in the unknown northerly region whence these rivers flowed. And the conclusion is almost inevitable that the myth took shape in a land watered by these two rivers,—in Babylonia or Mesopotamia (see Gressmann, Archiv für Religionswissenschaft., x. 346 f.).

10. יפרד] Frequently imperfect? So Driver, A Treatise on the use of the Tenses in Hebrew §§ 30 α, 113, 4 β; Gesenius-Kautzsch § 107 d (‘always taking place afresh’), Davidson § 54 (b). That seems hardly natural. Is it possible that for once מִשָּׁם could have the effect of אָז in transporting the mind to a point whence a new development takes place? (Davidson § 45, R. 2).—רָאשִׁים] Not ‘sources’ but ‘branches’; as Arabic ra’s en-nahr (as distinct from ra’s el-‛ain) means the point of divergence of two streams (Wetzstein, quoted by Delitzsch, page 82). So Assyrian rîš nâri or rîš nâr, of the point of divergence (Ausgangsort) of a canal (Delitzsch Wo lag das Paradies? 98, 191).—11. האחד] See on 1⁵.—הוא הסבב] On the determination of predicate, Davidson § 19, R. 3; compare Gesenius-Kautzsch § 126 k (so verse ^{13 f.}).—החוילה] If the article be genuine, it shows that the name was significant (‘sandland,’ from חוֹל?); but everywhere else it is wanting, and The Samaritan Recension of the Pentateuch omits it here.—12. וּֽזֲהב] On metheg and hataf-pathach, see Gesenius-Kautzsch §§ 10 g, 16 e, f; König i. § 10, 6 e δ (compare 1¹⁸).—הִוא] The first instance of this Qrê perpetuum of the Pentateuch, where the regular הִיא is found only Genesis 14² 20⁵ 38²⁵, Leviticus 2¹⁵ 11³⁹ 13^{10. 21} 16³¹ 21⁹, Numbers 5^{13 f.}. König (Historisch-kritisches Lehrgebäude der hebräischen Sprache i. page 124 ff.) almost alone amongst modern scholars still holds to the opinion that the epicene consonantal form is genuinely archaic; but the verdict of philology and of Hexateuch criticism seems decisive against that view. It must be a graphic error of some scribe or school of scribes: whether proceeding from the original script definition הִא or not does not much matter (see Driver and White’s note on Leviticus 1¹³ in The Sacred Books of the Old Testament, page 25 f.).—טוב] The Samaritan Recension of the Pentateuch + מְאֹד.—הבדלח] Of the ancient versions LXX alone has misunderstood the word, rendering here ὁ ἄνθραξ (red garnet), and in Numbers 11⁷ (the only other occurrence) κρύσταλλος. Peshiṭtå can only be a clerical error. That it is not a gem is proved by the absence of אבן.—אבן השהם] LXX ὁ λίθος ὁ πράσινος (leek-green stone); other Greek versions ὄνυξ, and so Vulgate (onychinus); Peshiṭtå , Targum^Onkelos בורלא. Philology has as yet thrown no light on the word, though a connexion with Babylonian sâmtu is probable. Myres (Encyclopædia Biblica, 4808 f.) makes the interesting suggestion that it originally denoted malachite, which is at once striped and green, and that after malachite ceased to be valued tradition wavered between the onyx (striped) and the beryl (green). Petrie, on the other hand (A Dictionary of the Bible, iv. 620), thinks that in early times it was green felspar, afterwards confused with the beryl. It is at least noteworthy that Jensen (Keilinschriftliche Bibliothek, vi. 1, 405) is led on independent grounds to identify sâmtu with malachite. But is malachite found in any region that could be plausibly identified with Ḥavilah?—13. גיחון] Probably from √ גיח (Job 38⁸ 40²³) = ‘bursting forth.’—14. שֵׁם] LXX omitted.—חדקל] Babylonian Idigla, Diglat, Aramaic דִּגְלַת and , Arabic Diǧlat; then Old Persian Tigrâ, Pehlevi Digrat, Greek Τίγρις and Τίγρης. The Persian Tigrâ was explained by a popular etymology as ‘arrow-swift’ (Strabo); and similarly it was believed that the Hebrews saw in their name a compound of חַד, ‘sharp,’ and קַל, ‘swift,’—a view given by Rashi, and mentioned with some scorn by Abraham Ibn Ezra. Hommel’s derivation (The Ancient Hebrew Tradition as illustrated by the Monuments, 315) from ḫadd, ‘wādī,’ and דִּקְלָה (= ‘wādī of Diḳlah,’ Genesis 10²⁷), is of interest only in connexion with his peculiar theory of the site of Paradise.—קדמת] Rendered ‘in front’ by LXX (κατέναντι), Peshiṭtå () and Vulgate (contra); as ‘eastward’ by Aquila, Symmachus (ἐξ ἀνατολῆς) and Targum^Onkelos (למדנחא). This last is also the view of Rashi, Abraham Ibn Ezra, and of most moderns. But see Nöldeke Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenländischen Gesellschaft, xxxiii. 532, where the sense ‘eastward’ is decisively rejected. The other examples are 4¹⁶, 1 Samuel 13⁵, Ezekiel 39¹¹†.—פרת] Babylonian Purâtu, Old Persian Ufrâtu, whence Greek Εὐφράτης.

15. to till it and to guard it] To reject this clause (Budde), or the second member (Dillmann), as inconsistent with 3^{17 ff.} are arbitrary expedients. The ideal existence for man is not idle enjoyment, but easy and pleasant work; “the highest aspiration of the Eastern peasant” (Gunkel) being to keep a garden. The question from what the garden had to be protected is one that should not be pressed.—16 f. The belief that man lived originally on the natural fruit of trees (observe the difference from 1²⁹) was widespread in antiquity, and appears in Phœnician mythology.¹ Here, however, the point lies rather in the restriction than the permission,—in the imposition of a taboo on one particular tree.—For the words of the knowledge of good and evil it has been proposed to substitute “which is in the midst of the garden” (as 3³), on the ground that the revelation of the mysterious property of the tree was the essence of the serpent’s temptation and must not be anticipated (3⁵) (Budde, Holzinger, Gunkel, al.). But the narrative ought not to be subjected to such rigorous logical tests; and, after all, there still remained something for the serpent to disclose, viz. that such knowledge put man on an equality with God.—in the day ... die] The threat was not fulfilled; but its force is not to be weakened by such considerations as that man from that time became mortal (Jerome, al.), or that he entered on the experience of miseries and hardships which are the prelude of dissolution (Calvin, al.). The simple explanation is that God, having regard to the circumstances of the temptation, changed His purpose and modified the penalty.

¹ Eusebius Præparatio Evangelica i. 10 (from Philo Byblius): εὑρεῖν δὲ τὸν Αἰῶνα τὴν ἀπὸ τῶν δενδρῶν τροφήν.

15. The verse is either a resumption of ^8b after the insertion of ^10‒14, or a duplicate from a parallel document. It is too original to be a gloss; and since there was no motive for making an interpolation at ^8b, the excision of ^10‒14 seems to lead necessarily to the conclusion that two sources have been combined.—את־האדם] LXX + ὃν ἔπλασεν (as verse ⁸).—וינּיחהו] On the two Hiphils of נוח and their distinction in meaning, see Gesenius-Kautzsch § 72 ee, and the Lexicon.—עדן] LXX^Lucian and most cursives render τῆς τρυφῆς: LXXᴬ and uncials omit the word.—לעבדָהּ וגו׳] Since גן is nowhere feminine, it is better to point לעבדֹה ולשמרֹה (see Albrecht, Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft, xvi. 53).—16. האדם] LXX Ἀδαμ, Vulgate ei. Except in verse ¹⁸, the word is regularly, but wrongly, treated as a proper noun by these two versions from this point onwards.—17. מות תמות] Symmachus θνητὸς ἔσῃ. In LXX the verbs of this verse are all plural (as 3^{3. 4}).

18‒25. Creation of animals and woman.

The Creator, taking pity on the solitude of the man, resolves to provide him with a suitable companion. The naïveté of the conception is extraordinary. Not only did man exist before the beasts, but the whole animal creation is the result of an unsuccessful experiment to find a mate for him. Of the revolting idea that man lived for a time in sexual intercourse with the beasts (see page 91), there is not a trace.—18. a helper] The writer seems to be thinking (as in 2⁵), not of the original, but of the present familiar conditions of human life.—כְּנֶגְדּוֹ] (only here) literaly ‘as in front of him,’ i.e. corresponding to him.—19. The meaning cannot be that the animals had already been created, and are now brought to be named (Calvin, al. and recently Delitzsch, Stade): such a sense is excluded by grammar (see Driver A Treatise on the use of the Tenses in Hebrew § 76, Obsolete), and misses the point of the passage.—to see what he would call it] To watch its effect on him, and (eventually) to see if he would recognise in it the associate he needed,—as one watches the effect of a new experience on a little child.—whatever the man should call it, that (was to be) its name] The spontaneous ejaculation of the first man becomes to his posterity a name: such is the origin of (Hebrew) names.—The words נֶפֶשׁ חַיָּה are incapable of construction, and are to be omitted as an explanatory gloss (Ewald, al.).—20. The classification of animals is carried a step further than in ¹⁹ (domestic and wild animals being distinguished), but is still simpler than in chapter 1. Fishes and ‘creeping things’ are frankly omitted as inappropriate to the situation.—21. It has appeared that no fresh creation ‘from the ground’ can provide a fit companion for man: from his own body, therefore, must his future associate be taken.—תַּרְדֵּמָה] is a hypnotic trance, induced by supernatural agency (compare Duhm on Isaiah 29¹⁰). The purpose here is to produce anæsthesia, with perhaps the additional idea that the divine working cannot take place under human observation (Dillmann, Gunkel).—one of his ribs] A part of his frame that (it was thought) could easily be spared. There is doubtless a deeper significance in the representation: it suggests “the moral and social relation of the sexes to each other, the dependence of woman upon man, her close relationship to him, and the foundation existing in nature for ... the feelings with which each should naturally regard the other” (Driver). The Arabs use similarly a word for ‘rib,’ saying hūa lizḳī or hūa bilizḳī for ‘he is my bosom companion.’ On the other hand, the notion that the first human being was androgynous, and afterwards separated into man and woman (see Schwally Archiv für Religionswissenschaft., ix. 172 ff.), finds no countenance in the passage.—22. built up the rib ... into a woman] So in the Egyptian “Tale of the two brothers,” the god Chnum ‘built’ a wife for his favourite Batau, the hieroglyphic determinative showing that the operation was actually likened to the building of a wall (see Wiedemann, A Dictionary of the Bible, Sup. 180).—23. By a flash of intuition the man divines that the fair creature now brought to him is part of himself, and names her accordingly. There is a poetic ring and rhythm in the exclamation that breaks from him.—This at last] Literally, ‘This, this time’ (v.i.): note the thrice repeated זֹאת.—bone of my bones, etc.] The expressions originate in the primitive notion of kinship as resting on “participation in a common mass of flesh, blood, and bones” (William Robertson Smith Lectures on the Religion of the Semites², 273 f.: compare Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia², 175 f.), so that all the members of a kindred group are parts of the same substance, whether acquired by heredity or assimilated in the processes of nourishment (compare 29¹⁴ 37²⁷, Judges 9², 2 Samuel 5¹ 19¹³). The case before us, where the material identity is expressed in the manner of woman’s creation, is unique.—shall be called Woman] English is fortunate in being able to reproduce this assonance (’Κ, ’Iššā) without straining language: other translations are driven to tours de force (e.g. Jerome Virago; Luther, Männin). Whether even in Hebrew it is more than an assonance is doubtful (v.i.).—24. An ætiological observation of the narrator: This is why a man leaves ... and cleaves ... and they become, etc.] It is not a prophecy from the standpoint of the narrative; nor a recommendation of monogamic marriage (as applied in Matthew 19^{4 ff.}, Mark 10^{6 ff.}, 1 Corinthians 6¹⁶, Ephesians 5³¹); it is an answer to the question, What is the meaning of that universal instinct which impels a man to separate from his parents and cling to his wife? It is strange that the man’s attachment to the woman is explained here, and the woman’s to the man only in 3¹⁶.

It has been imagined that the verse presupposes the primitive custom called beena marriage, or that modification of it in which the husband parts from his own kindred for good, and goes to live with his wife’s kin (so Gunkel: compare Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia², 87, 207); and other instances are alleged in the patriarchal history. But this would imply an almost incredible antiquity for the present form of the narrative; and, moreover, the dominion of the man over the wife assumed in 3^16b is inconsistent with the conditions of beena marriage. Compare Benzinger Encyclopædia Biblica, 2675: “The phrase ... may be an old saying dating from remote times when the husband went to the house (tent) of the wife and joined her clan. Still the passage may be merely the narrator’s remark; and even if it should be an old proverb we cannot be sure that it really carries us so far back in antiquity.”—See, however, Gressmann, Archiv für Religionswissenschaft., x. 353¹; van Doorninck, Theologisch Tijdschrift, xxxix. 238 (who assigns 2²⁴ and 3¹⁶ to different recensions).

one flesh] If the view just mentioned could be maintained, this phrase might be equivalent to ‘one clan’ (Leviticus 25⁴⁹); for “both in Hebrew and Arabic ‘flesh’ is synonymous with ‘clan’ or kindred group” (Lectures on the Religion of the Semites², 274). More probably it refers simply to the connubium.—25. naked ... not ashamed] The remark is not merely an anticipation of the account given later of the origin of clothing (3⁷, compare ²¹). It calls attention to the difference between the original and the actual condition of man as conceived by the writer. The consciousness of sex is the result of eating the tree: before then our first parents had the innocence of children, who are often seen naked in the East (Doughty, Travels in Arabia Deserta, ii. 475).

Verse ²⁵ is a transition verse, leading over to the main theme to which all that goes before is but the prelude. How long the state of primitive innocence lasted, the writer is at no pains to inform us. This indifference to the non-essential is as characteristic of the popular tale as its graphic wealth of detail in features of real interest. The omission afforded an opportunity for the exercise of later Midrashic ingenuity; Jubilees iii. 15 fixes the period at seven years, while R. Eliezer (Bereshith Rabba) finds that it did not last six hours.

18. אעשה] May be cohortative (Gesenius-Kautzsch § 75 l); LXX, Vulgate render as 1st person plural (as 1²⁶).—עזר] (usually ‘succour’) = ‘helper’ (abstractum pro concreto) is used elsewhere chiefly of God (Deuteronomy 33^{7. 26}, Psalms 33²⁰ 115^{9 ff.} etc.); possible exceptions are Ezekiel 12¹⁴ (if text right), Hosea 13⁹ (if emended with Wellhausen): see Brown-Driver-Briggs.—כנגדו] LXX κατ’ αὐτόν (but verse ²⁰ ὅμοιος αὐτῷ); Aquila ὡς κατέναντι αὐτοῦ; Symmachus ἀντικρὺς αὐτοῦ; Vulgate similis sibi (ejus, verse ²⁰); Peshiṭtå ; Targum^Onkelos כקיבליהּ.—19. The Samaritan Recension of the Pentateuch, LXX insert עוֹד after אלהים.—Omission of את־ before כל־חית is remarkable in this chapter (see on verse ⁹), and is rectified by The Samaritan Recension of the Pentateuch.—נפש חיה] The only construction possible would be to take לו as dative ethical, and נ׳ ח׳ as direct object to יקרא; but that is contrary to the writer’s usage, and yields a jejune sense. Even if (with Rashi) we transpose and read ‘every living thing which the man called [by a name], that was its name,’ the discord of gender would be fatal, to say nothing of the addition of שֵׁם.—20. ולעוף] Read with MSS LXX, Vulgate, Peshiṭtå Targum^Jonathan ולכלֹ־עוף (Ball).—וּלְאָדָם] Here the Massoretic takes Adam as a proper name. Delitzsch, al. explain it as generic = ‘for a human being’ (Gunkel); Olshausen emends וְהָאדם. The truth is that the Massoretic loses no opportunity presented by the Kethîb of treating אדם as noun proper. Point וְלָֽאָדָם.—לא מצא] Tuch, al. take God as subject; but it may be passive expressed by indefinite subject (Gesenius-Kautzsch § 144 d, e) = ‘there was not found.’—21. תרדמה] LXX ἔκστασιν; Aquila καταφοράν; Symmachus κάρον; Peshiṭtå (‘tranquillity’); Vulgate sopor; Targum^Onkelos and some Greek versions (Field) have ‘sleep’ simply. The examples of its use (15¹², 1 Samuel 26¹², Isaiah 29¹⁰, Job 4¹³ 33¹⁵, Proverbs 19¹⁵†), all except the last, confirm Duhm’s view that hypnotic sleep is indicated. It is true that in the verb (Niphal) that sense is less marked.—23. זאת הפעם] The construction rendered above takes זאת as subject of the sentence and הפעם = ‘this time,’ the article having full demonstrative force, as in 29^{34 f.} 30²⁰ 46³⁰, Exodus 9²⁷ (so LXX, Symmachus, Theodotion, Vulgate; Delitzsch, Dillmann, Gunkel, al.). The accents, however, unite the words in one phrase ‘this time,’ after the rather important analogy of זֶה פַעֲמַיִם (27³⁶ 43¹⁰), leaving the subject unexpressed. This sense is followed by Peshiṭtå, Targum^{Onkelos-Jonathan}, and advocated by Stade (Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft, xvii. 210 ff.); but it seems less acceptable than the other.—אִישׁ, אִשָּׁה] The old derivation of these words from a common √ אנשׁ is generally abandoned, אישׁ being assigned to a hypothetical √ אוּשׁ = ‘be strong’ (Gesenius Thesaurus philologicus criticus Linguæ Hebrææ et Chaldææ Veteris Testamenti). Arabic and Aramaic, indeed, show quite clearly that the √ seen in the plural אֲנָשִׁים (and in אֱנוֹשׁ) and that of (אִנְשָׁה) אשָּׁה are only apparently identical, the one having s where the other has ṯ. The masculine and feminine are therefore etymologically distinct, and nothing remains but a very strong assonance. The question whether we are to postulate a third √ for the singular אִישׁ does not greatly concern us here; the arguments will be found in Brown-Driver-Briggs, s.v. See Nöldeke Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenländischen Gesellschaft, xl. 740 (“Aber אִישׁ möchte ich doch bei אנשׁ lassen”). In imitation of the assonance, Symmachus has ἄνδρις, Vulgate Virago. Theodotion λῆψις, represents אֶשָּׂא, ‘I will take’: a curious blunder which is fully elucidated by the quotation from Origen given in Field, page 15³².—For מאיש, The Samaritan Recension of the Pentateuch, LXX, Targum^Onkelos read מֵאִישָׁהּ, which is by no means an improvement.—לֽקֳחָה־זּאת] See Gesenius-Kautzsch §§ 10 h, 20 c.—24. והיו] Add שְׁנֵיהֶם with LXX, Vulgate, Peshiṭtå, Targum^Jonathan and New Testament citations. The Samaritan Recension of the Pentateuch has והיה משניהם, referring to the offspring.—25. עֲרוּמִּים] עָרוּם ‘naked,’ to be carefully distinguished from עָרוּם (√ ערם) ‘crafty,’ in 3¹, is either a by-form of עֵירֹם (√ עוּר = ‘be bare’) in 3^{10 f.}, or (more probably) a different formation from √ ערה (‘be bare’). See Brown-Driver-Briggs, s.vv.—יתבששו] The Hithpael (only here) probably expresses reciprocity (‘ashamed before one another’); the imperfect is frequentative.

III. 1‒7. The temptation.

Attention is at once directed to the quarter where the possibility of evil already lurked amidst the happiness of Eden—the preternatural subtlety of the serpent: But the serpent was wily] The wisdom of the serpent was proverbial in antiquity (Matthew 10¹⁶: see Bochart, Hierozoicon, sive bipertitum opus de animalibus Sacræ Scripturæ iii. 246 ff.), a belief probably founded less on observation of the creature’s actual qualities than on the general idea of its divine or demonic nature: πνευματικώτατον γὰρ τὸ ζῶον πάντων τῶν ἑρπετῶν (Sanchuniathon, in Eusebius Præparatio Evangelica i. 10). Hence the epithet עָרוּם might be used of it sensu bono (φρόνιμος), though the context here makes it certain that the bad sense (πανοῦργος) is intended (see below).—beyond any beast, etc.] The serpent, therefore, belongs to the category of ‘beasts of the field,’ and is a creature of Yahwe; and an effort seems to be made to maintain this view throughout the narrative (verse ¹⁴). At the same time it is a being possessing supernatural knowledge, with the power of speech, and animated by hostility towards God. It is this last feature which causes some perplexity. To say that the thoughts which it instils into the mind of the woman were on the serpent’s part not evil, but only extremely sagacious, and became sin first in the human consciousness (so Merx, Dillmann, al.), is hardly in accordance with the spirit of the narrative. It is more probable that behind the sober description of the serpent as a mere creature of Yahwe, there was an earlier form of the legend in which he figured as a god or a demon.

The ascription of supernatural characters to the serpent presents little difficulty even to the modern mind. The marvellous agility of the snake, in spite of the absence of visible motor organs, its stealthy movements, its rapid death-dealing stroke, and its mysterious power of fascinating other animals and even men, sufficiently account for the superstitious regard of which it has been the object amongst all peoples.¹ Accordingly, among the Arabs every snake is the abode of a spirit, sometimes bad and sometimes good, so that ǧānn and ġūl and even Shaitān are given as designations of the serpent (Wellhausen Reste arabischen Heidentums 152 f.; compare William Robertson Smith Lectures on the Religion of the Semites², 120¹, 129 f., 442).² What is more surprising to us is the fact that in the sphere of religion the serpent was usually worshipped as a good demon. Traces of this conception can be detected in the narrative before us. The demonic character of the serpent appears in his possession of occult divine knowledge of the properties of the tree in the middle of the garden, and in his use of that knowledge to seduce man from his allegiance to his Creator. The enmity between the race of men and the race of serpents is explained as a punishment for his successful temptation; originally he must have been represented as a being hostile, indeed, to God, but friendly to the woman, who tells her the truth which the Deity withheld from man (see Gressman l.c. 357). All this belongs to the background of heathen mythology from which the materials of the narrative were drawn; and it is the incomplete elimination of the mythological element, under the influence of a monotheistic and ethical religion, which makes the function of the serpent in Genesis 3 so difficult to understand. In later Jewish theology the difficulty was solved, as is well known, by the doctrine that the serpent of Eden was the mouthpiece or impersonation of the devil. The idea appears first in Alexandrian Judaism in Wisdom 2²⁴ (‘by the envy of the devil, death entered into the world’): possibly earlier is the allusion in Enoch lxix. 6, where the seduction of Eve is ascribed to a Satan called Gadreel. Compare Secrets of Enoch xxxi. 3 ff., Psalms of Solomon 4⁹; also Bereshith Rabba 29, the name נָחָשׁ הַקַּדְמֹנִי (Sifrê 138 b), and in the New Testament, John 8⁴⁴, 2 Corinthians 11³, Romans 16²⁰, Apocalypse 12⁹ 20² (see Whitehouse, A Dictionary of the Bible, iv. 408 ff.). Similarly in Persian mythology the serpent Dahâka, to whose power Yima, the ruler of the golden age, succumbs, is a creature and incarnation of the evil spirit Angro-Mainyo (Vend. i. 8, xxii. 5, 6, 24; Yaçna ix. 27; compare Dillmann 70). The Jewish and Christian doctrine is a natural and legitimate extension of the teaching of Genesis 3, when the problem of evil came to be apprehended in its real magnitude; but it is foreign to the thought of the writer, although it cannot be denied that it may have some affinity with the mythological background of his narrative. The religious teaching of the passage knows nothing of an evil principle external to the serpent, but regards himself as the subject of whatever occult powers he displays: he is simply a creature of Yahwe distinguished from the rest by his superior subtlety. The Yahwistic author does not speculate on the ultimate origin of evil; it was enough for his purpose to have so analysed the process of temptation that the beginning of sin could be assigned to a source which is neither in the nature of man nor in God. The personality of the Satan (the Adversary) does not appear in the Old Testament till after the Exile (Zechariah, Job, Chronicles).

¹ Compare the interesting sequel to the sentence from Sanchuniathon quoted above: ... καὶ πυρῶδες ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ παρεδόθη παρ’ ὃ καὶ τάχος ἀνυπέρβλητον διὰ τοῦ πνεύματος παρίστησι, χωρὶς ποδῶν τε καὶ χειρῶν, ἢ ἄλλου τινὸς τῶν ἔξωθεν, ἐξ ὧν τὰ λοιπὰ ζώα τὰς κινήσεις ποιεῖται· καὶ ποικίλων σχημάτων τύπους ἀποτελεῖ, καὶ κατὰ τὴν πορείαν ἑλικοειδεῖς ἔχει τὰς ὁρμὰς, ἐφ’ ὃ βούλεται τάχος· καὶ πολυχρονιώτατον δέ ἐστιν, οὐ μόνον τῷ ἐκδυόμενον τὸ γῆρας νεάζειν, ἀλλὰ καὶ αὔξησιν ἐπιδέχεσθαι μείζονα πέφυκε.... Διὸ καὶ ἐν ἱεροῖς τοῦτο τὸ ζῶον καὶ ἐν μυστηρίοις συμπαρείληπται κτλ. (Orelli, page 44).

² Compare Nöldeke Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie und Sprachwissenschaft, i. 413: “Das geheimnissvolle, dämonische Wesen der Schlange, das sie vor allen grösseren Thieren auszeichnet, die tückische, verderbenbringende Natur vieler Arten, konnte in dem einfachen semitischen Hirten leicht den Glauben erzeugen, in ihr wohne etwas Göttliches, den Menschen Bannendes und Bezauberndes. So finden wir die Schlange im Eingang des alten Testaments, so ist sie im Alterthum, wie noch jetzt, ein Hauptgegenstand orientalischer Zauberei. So glaubte auch der Araber, die Schlange (wie einige andere schädliche Thiere) sei kein gewöhnliches Geschöpf, sondern ein Dschinn, ein Geist. Schon die Sprache drückt dies dadurch aus, dass sie mit Džānn, einem Worte welches mit Džinn eng verwandt ist, eine Schlangenart bezeichnet, etc.”

The serpent shows his subtlety by addressing his first temptation to the more mobile temperament of the woman (Rashi, al.), and by the skilful innuendo with which he at once invites conversation and masks his ultimate design.—Ay, and so God has said, etc.!] Something like this seems to be the force of אַף כִּי (v.i.). It is a half-interrogative, half-reflective exclamation, as if the serpent had brooded long over the paradox, and had been driven to an unwelcome conclusion.—Ye shall not eat of any tree] The range of the prohibition is purposely exaggerated in order to provoke inquiry and criticism. The use of the name אֱלֹהִים is commonly explained by the analogy of other passages of Yahwist, where the name יהוה is avoided in conversation with heathen (39⁹ etc.), or when the contrast between the divine and the human is reflected upon (32²⁹). But Yahwist’s usage in such cases is not uniform, and it is doubtful what is the true explanation here (see page 53).—2, 3. The woman’s first experience of falsehood leads to an eager repudiation of the serpent’s intentional calumny, in which she emphasises the generosity of the divine rule, but unconsciously intensifies the stringency of the prohibition by adding the words: nor shall ye touch it] A Jewish legend says that the serpent took advantage of this innocent and immaterial variation by forcing her to touch the fruit, and then arguing that as death had not followed the touch, so it would not follow the eating (Bereshith Rabba, Rashi). Equally futile inferences have been drawn by modern commentaries, and the surmise that the clause is redactional (Budde Die biblische Urgeschichte 241) is hypercritical.—the tree ... midst] See page 66 f.—4. Ye shall assuredly not die] On the syntax, v.i. The serpent thus advances to an open challenge of the divine veracity, and thence to the imputation of an unworthy motive for the command, viz. a jealous fear on God’s part lest they should become His equals.—5. But God knoweth, etc.] And therefore has falsely threatened you with death. The gratuitous insinuation reveals the main purpose of the tempter, to sow the seeds of distrust towards God in the mind of the woman.—your eyes shall be opened] The expression denotes a sudden acquisition of new powers of perception through supernatural influence (21¹⁹, Numbers 22³¹, 2 Kings 6¹⁷).—as gods] or ‘divine beings,’ rather than ‘as God’: the rendering ‘as angels’ (Abraham Ibn Ezra) expresses the idea with substantial accuracy. The likeness to divinity actually acquired is not equality with Yahwe (see Gunkel on verse ²²).—knowing good and evil] See page 95 ff.—“The facts are all, in the view of the narrator, correctly stated by the serpent; he has truly represented the mysterious virtue of the tree; knowledge really confers equality with God (3²²); and it is also true that death does not immediately follow the act of eating. But at the same time the serpent insinuates a certain construction of these facts: God is envious, inasmuch as He grudges the highest good to man:—φθονερὸν τὸ θεῖον, an antique sentiment familiar to us from the Greeks” (Gunkel).—6. The spiritual part of the temptation is now accomplished, and the serpent is silent, leaving the fascination of sense to do the rest. The woman looks on the tree with new eyes; she observes how attractive to taste and sight its fruit seems, and how desirable for obtaining insight (so most) or to contemplate (LXX, Vulgate, Peshiṭtå; so Tuch, Gesenius, Delitzsch, Gunkel, al.). The second translation is the more suitable—for how could she tell by sight that the fruit would impart wisdom?—although the verb is not elsewhere used in Hebrew for mere looking (v.i.).—gave also to her husband] “The process in the man’s case was no doubt the same as that just described, the woman taking the place of the serpent” (Bennett). That Adam sinned with his eyes open in order not to be separated from his wife has been a common idea both among Jews and Christians (Bereshith Rabba, Rashi, Abraham Ibn Ezra, Milton, etc.), but is not true to the intention of the narrative.—7. the eyes ... opened] The prediction of the serpent is so far fulfilled; but the change fills them with guilty fear and shame.—they knew that they were naked] The new sense of shame is spoken of as a sort of Werthurtheil passed by the awakened intelligence on the empirical fact of being unclothed. A connexion between sexual shame and sin (Dillmann) is not suggested by the passage, and is besides not true to experience. But to infer from this single effect that the forbidden fruit had aphrodisiac properties (see Barton, A Sketch of Semitic Origins¹, 93 ff.; Gressmann, page 356) is a still greater perversion of the author’s meaning; he merely gives this as an example of the new range of knowledge acquired by eating of the tree. It is the kind of knowledge which comes with maturity to all,—the transition “from the innocence of childhood into the knowledge which belongs to adult age” (Driver).—foliage of the fig-tree] To the question, Why fig-leaves in particular? the natural answer is that these, if not very suitable for the purpose, were yet the most suitable that the flora of Palestine could suggest (Dillmann, Driver, Bennett, al.). An allusion to the so-called fig-tree of Paradise, a native of India (probably the plantain), is on every ground improbable;—“ein geradezu philisterhafter Einfall” (Budde). For allegorical interpretations of the fig-leaves, see Lagarde, Mittheilungen i. 73 ff., who adds a very original and fantastic one of his own.

1. והנחש היה] The usual order of words when a new subject is introduced, Gesenius-Kautzsch § 142 d; Davidson § 105.—ערום] LXX φρονιμώτατος, Aquila, Theodotion πανοῦργος, Symmachus πανουργότερος Vulgate callidior. The good sense (which appears to be secondary, compare Arabic ‛arama = ‘be ill-natured’) is confined to Proverbs; elsewhere (Job 5¹² 15⁵) it means ‘crafty,’ ‘wily.’ The same distinction is observed in all forms of the √ except that in Job 5¹³ עֹרֶם has the good sense. The resemblance to ערומים in 2²⁵ is perhaps accidental.—ויאמר LXX, Peshiṭtå + הנחש.—אף כי] as a compound particple generally means ‘much more (or less),’ ‘not to mention,’ etc., as in 1 Samuel 14³⁰, 1 Kings 8²⁷, Proverbs 11³¹ etc. In some cases the simple אף has this sense, and the כי (= ‘when,’ ‘if’) introduces the following clause (1 Samuel 23³, 2 Samuel 4^{10 f.} etc.). It would be easy to retain this sense in verse ¹ (‘How much more when God has said,’ etc.), if we might assume with many commentaries that some previous conversation had taken place; but that is an unwarrantable assumption. The rendering on which Driver (Brown-Driver-Briggs) bases the ordinary meaning of אף כי—‘’Tis indeed that’—requires but a slight interrogative inflexion of the voice to yield the shade of meaning given above: ‘So it is the case that God,’ etc.? The versions all express a question: LXX τί ὅτι, Aquila μὴ ὅτι, Symmachus πρὸς τί, Vulgate cur, Peshiṭtå , Targum^Onkelos בקושטא (= ‘really’?).—לא ... מכל] = ‘not of any’: Gesenius-Kautzsch § 152 b.—2. מפרי] LXX מִכֹּל, Peshiṭtå מפרי כל.—3. ומפרי] Not ‘concerning the tree.’ There is an anakolouthon at אמר אלהים, and the emphatically placed מפרי is resumed by ‎ממנו.—העץ] The Samaritan Recension of the Pentateuch + הַזָּה.—תמתון] On the ending, see Gesenius-Kautzsch §§ 47 m, 72 u.—4. לא מות תמתון] On the unusual order, see Davidson § 86 (b); Gesenius-Kautzsch § 113 v. It is often explained as a negation of the threat in 2¹⁷, adopting the same form of words; but the phrase had not been used by the woman, and the exact words are not repeated. More probably its effect is to concentrate the emphasis on the negative participle rather than on the verbal idea (compare Amos 9⁸, Psalms 49⁸).—5. כאלהים] LXX ὡς θεοί, Targum^Onkelos כרברבין.—6. העץ²] LXX Vulgate omitted.—להשכיל] LXX κατανοῆσαι, Vulgate adspectu, and Peshiṭtå all take the verb as verb of sight; Targum^Onkelos לאסתכלא ביה is indeterminate (see Levy, Chaldäisches Wörterbuch über die Targumim und Midraschim 163 a). In Old Testament the word is used of mental vision (insight, or attentive consideration: Deuteronomy 32²⁹, Psalms 41², Proverbs 21¹² etc.); in New Hebrew and Aramaic it means ‘to look at,’ but only in Hithpael (Ithp.). On the other view the Hiph. is intransitive (= ‘for acquiring wisdom’: Psalms 94⁸) rather than causative (= ‘to impart wisdom’: Psalms 32⁸ etc.).—Gunkel considers the clause ונחמד העץ לה׳ a variant from another source.—ותקח] LXX^Lucian + האשׁה.—ויאכל] The Samaritan Recension of the Pentateuch, LXX ויאכלו.—7. עירמים] See on 2²⁵.—עלה] collectively; but some MSS and The Samaritan Recension of the Pentateuch have עֲלֵי.

8‒13. The inquest.

Thus far the narrative has dealt with what may be called the natural (magical) effects of the eating of the tree—the access of enlightenment, and the disturbance thus introduced into the relations of the guilty pair to each other. The ethical aspect of the offence comes to light in their first interview with Yahwe; and this is delineated with a skill hardly surpassed in the account of the temptation itself.—8. they heard the sound] קוֹל used of footsteps, as 2 Samuel 5²⁴, 1 Kings 14⁶, 2 Kings 6³²: compare Ezekiel 3^{12 f.}, Joel 2⁵.—of Yahwe God as He walked] The verb is used (Leviticus 26¹², Deuteronomy 23¹⁵, 2 Samuel 7⁶) of Yahwe’s majestic marching in the midst of Israel; but it mars the simplicity of the representation if (with Delitzsch) we introduce that idea here.—in the cool (literally ‘at the breeze’) of the day] i.e. towards evening, when in Eastern lands a refreshing wind springs up (compare Canticles 2¹⁷ 4⁶: but v.i.), and the master, who has kept his house or tent during the ‘heat of the day’ (18¹), can walk abroad with comfort (24⁶³). Such, we are led to understand, was Yahwe’s daily practice; and the man and woman had been wont to meet Him with the glad confidence of innocence. But on this occasion they hid themselves, etc.—9. Where art thou?] (compare 4⁹). The question expresses ignorance; it is not omniscience that the writer wishes to illustrate, but the more impressive attribute of sagacity.—10. I feared ... naked] With the instinctive cunning of a bad conscience, the man hopes to escape complete exposure by acknowledging part of the truth; he alleges nakedness as the ground of his fear, putting fear and shame in a false causal connexion (Holzinger).—11. Hast thou eaten, etc.?] All unwittingly he has disclosed his guilty secret: he has shown himself possessed of a knowledge which could only have been acquired in one way.—12. The man cannot even yet bring himself to make a clean breast of it; but with a quaint mixture of cowardice and effrontery he throws the blame directly on the woman, and indirectly on God who gave her to him.—13. The woman in like manner exculpates herself by pleading (truly enough) that she had been deceived by the serpent.—The whole situation is now laid bare, and nothing remains but to pronounce sentence. No question is put to the serpent, because his evil motive is understood: he has acted just as might have been expected of him. Calvin says, “the beast had no sense of sin, and the devil no hope of pardon.”

8. מתהלך] accusative of condition: Davidson § 70 (a).—לרוח היום] LXX τὸ δειλινόν, Vulgate ad auram post meridiem, Peshiṭtå , Targum^Onkelos למנח יומא. On this use of לְ (= ‘towards’), see Brown-Driver-Briggs, s.v. 6 a; and compare 8¹¹ 17²¹, Isaiah 7¹⁵, Job 24¹⁴. With רוח compare Arabic rawāḥ = tempus vespertinum. Jewish exegesis (Bereshith Rabba) and Calvin suppose the morning (sea) breeze to be meant, as is probably the case in Canticles 2¹⁷ 4⁶, and would seem more in accordance with Palestinian conditions. But it is manifestly improbable here.—עץ] collectively, as often. LXX^Lucian omitted.—9. איכה] Gesenius-Kautzsch § 100 o. LXX supplies ‘Adam’ before, and Peshiṭtå after, the interrogative.—10. שׁמעתי] LXX + περιπατοῦντος (as verse ⁸).—11. לבלתי] See Gesenius-Kautzsch § 114 s.—Before μὴ φαγεῖν LXX has τούτου μόνου.—13. מה־זאת] So commonly with עשה; with other verbs מה־זה (Gesenius-Kautzsch § 136 c; Davidson § 7 (c)).

14‒19. Significance of the Fall.

This section contains the key to the significance of the story of the Fall. It is the first example of a frequently recurring motive of the Genesis narratives, the idea, viz., that the more perplexing facts in the history of men and peoples are the working out of a doom or ‘weird’ pronounced of old under divine inspiration, or (as in this case) by the Almighty Himself: see 4¹⁵ 8^{21 ff.} 9^{25 ff.} 16¹² 27^{27 ff. 39 f.} 48^{19 ff.}, 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 21^{28 f.}, Leviticus 20^{15 f.}). 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 Targum^Jonathan 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 Orients², 217 f.), even if confirmed by Assyriology, would have little bearing on the thought of the biblical narrator.

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 (4^{25 ?} 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 56^{2. 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, LXX^{Codex Coislinianus} τρίψει (see Field) and Jerome (Quæstiones sive Traditiones hebraicæ in Genesim) conterere; ‘pant after’ by LXX^{A al.} τηρήσει[ς] (if not a mistake for τρήσει[ς] or τειρήσει[ς]). A double sense is given by Vulgate conteret ... insidiaberis, and perhaps Peshiṭtå ... ; while Targum^Onkelos paraphrases: הוא יהא דכיר מה דעבדת ליה מלקדמין ואת תהי נטר ליה לסופא.

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 2^{18. 23}). There is here certainly no trace of the matriarchate or of polyandry (see on 2²⁴).

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 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.

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 ^17bβ. 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 f.} as they stand, but assigns ^19aα (to לחם) and ^19b to another source (Yahwistʲ), as doublets respectively of ^17bβ and ^19aβ. 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.

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.

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 f.} (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 Semites², 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.

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 , Syro-Palestinian [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 Arabia², 208). The interpretation has found no support.—21. Point לָאָדָם, as in verse ¹⁷.

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 2^{10 ff.}. 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 Testament³, 529 f., 631 ff.; Cheyne in Encyclopædia Biblica, 741 ff.; Jeremias Das Alte Testament im Lichte des alten Orients², 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 18^{11 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 28^{14. 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 6^{23 ff.} 8^{6 f.}), and the miniatures on the lid of the ark in the Tabernacle (Exodus 25^{18 ff.} etc.); but a trace of the primary conception appears in the alternation of cherubim and palm-trees in the temple decoration (1 Kings 6^{29 ff.}, Ezekiel 41^{18 ff.}; see, further, 1 Kings 7^{29 ff.}, Exodus 26^{1. 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 1^{5 ff.} 10^{1 ff.}). 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 4^{6 ff.}, 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 Testament³, 631 f.

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). Targum^Onkelos (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 , and for וישכן (with the cherubim, etc., as object).—המתהפכת] Hithpael in the sense of ‘revolve,’ Judges 7¹³, Job 37¹²; in Job 38¹⁴ it means ‘be transformed.’

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 Orients², 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 2^{4 ff.} 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 2^{5 f.} 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 2^18‒24. 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 Israels⁶ 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 Semites², 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 Israels⁶ 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 (4^{19 ff.}), and in the building of the tower (11^{1 ff.}). 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 4^{16 ff.} and 11^1‒9 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 3^{1 ff.}. 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.”