Eden and disaster

So it started out wonderfully, Adam was appropriately joyous and thankful for God's provision of a companion and helper.  He recognized immediately that this was God's gift to him and rejoiced over her.  Eve surely received this song of joy with gladness and she knew her mate's pleasure in her over all else in creation.

Then, we get to chapter 3, that fateful day in the garden where everything was ruined forever.  She spoke with the serpent, over whom humans were to have dominion, and she trusted it.  Apparently she was not surprised that the serpent could talk and believed it might have some wisdom, it might know something about the fruit and about God.  He was, after all, here before she was, so perhaps he knew things she didn't.  Adam had been told not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and if he did they would surely die.  The serpent seems to have other information.

We don't know if Eve had experience of God but the serpent questions whether God is truly good and whether He is truly great.  If He were truly good He wouldn't be so insecure about Himself, He wouldn't prohibit something that was so good as this knowledge, knowledge the serpent says will make them like God.  Is all that separates us from God this knowledge?  Surely there is more between us and the one who created all things that a bit of knowledge.  Second, the serpent questions God's greatness, "you will not surely die."  God either lacks the power to bring about their demise or He lacks the will to do so. 

Eve's temptations are creaturely temptations, the fruit was good for food, a delight to the eyes and desirable to make one wise.  She has been created in the image of God, unlike the serpent, she has the power to rise above creaturely temptations and say no but she chooses to live below her birthright.  Adam, seeing she didn't die from eating the fruit, takes and eats.  He, who was given the command directly by God, who has spent time with the Lord, has no excuse for his actions other than, she didn't die so what the heck, I will eat also, I don't want to be left out. 

The only evidence that they gained knowledge of good and evil is their reaction to God's presence.  They had decided that naked wasn't good now that they had eaten of the fruit, so they hid from themselves.  They knew evil because they had been disobedient so they hid from him.  Estrangement was the new rule of the day.