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Genesis

About this book

Disobedience and Expulsion from the Garden

Chapter 3

1 Now the serpent was shrewder than any of the wild animals⁠ that the Lord God had made.⁠ He said to the woman,⁠ “Is it really true that God said, ‘You must not eat from any tree of the orchard’?”⁠ 2 The woman said to the serpent,⁠ “We may eat of the fruit from the trees of the orchard;⁠ 3 but concerning the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the orchard God said, ‘You must not eat from it, and you must not touch it, or else you will die.’”⁠ 4 The serpent said to the woman, “Surely you will not die,⁠ 5 for God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will open and you will be like God,⁠ knowing good and evil.”⁠ 6 When the woman saw that the tree produced fruit that was good for food, was attractive to the eye,⁠ and was desirable for making one wise,⁠ she took some of its fruit and ate it.⁠ She also gave some of it to her husband who was with her,⁠ and he ate it. 7 Then the eyes of both of them opened, and they knew they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.⁠ 8 Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God moving about in the orchard at the breezy time of the day,⁠ and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the orchard. 9 But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?”⁠ 10 The man replied, “I heard you moving about in the orchard, and I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid.”⁠ 11 And the Lord God said, “Who told you that you were naked? Did you eat from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?” 12 The man said, “The woman whom you gave me, she gave me some fruit from the tree and I ate it.”⁠ 13 So the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?” And the woman replied, “The serpent tricked me, and I ate.”⁠ 14 The Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, cursed are you above all the cattle and all the living creatures of the field!⁠ On your belly you will crawl⁠ and dust you will eat all the days of your life.⁠ 15 And I will put hostility between you and the woman and between your offspring and her offspring; he will strike your head, and you will strike his heel.”⁠ 16 To the woman he said, “I will greatly increase your labor pains;⁠ with pain you will give birth to children.⁠ You will want to control your husband, but he will dominate you.”⁠ 17 But to Adam he said, “Because you obeyed the voice of52 your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you,⁠ ‘You must not eat from it,’ the ground is cursed because of you;⁠ in painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life.⁠ 18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you, but you will eat the grass of the field.⁠ 19 By the sweat of your brow you will eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you will return.”⁠ 20 The man named his wife Eve,⁠ because she was the mother of all the living. 21 The Lord God made garments from skin⁠ for Adam and his wife, and clothed them.⁠ 22 And the Lord God said, “Now that the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil,⁠ he must not be allowed to stretch out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.”⁠ 23 So the Lord God expelled him from the orchard in Eden⁠ to cultivate the ground from which he had been taken. 24 When he drove the man out, he placed on the eastern side of the orchard in Eden angelic sentries who used the flame of a whirling sword⁠ to guard the way to the tree of life.⁠

Texts in conversation

Compare Genesis 3:5 and 2 Samuel 14:17

Hebrew Bible

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Summary

2 Samuel 14 says David can judge good and evil like the angel of God. This echoes Genesis where knowledge makes one like God. The difference suggests that 2 Samuel originally said “like God” but was later changed to “angel” for theological reasons.

Passages

Genesis 3:5

Hebrew Bible
4 The serpent said to the woman, “Surely you will not die, 5 for God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will open and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” 6 When the woman saw that the tree produced fruit that was good for food, was attractive to the eye, and was desirable for making one wise, she took some of its fruit and ate it. She also gave some of it to her husband who was with her, and he ate it.
750–400 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Genesis

2 Samuel 14:17

Hebrew Bible
16 Yes! The king may listen and deliver his female servant from the hand of the man who seeks to remove both me and my son from the inheritance God has given us!’ 17 So your servant said, ‘May the word of my lord the king be my security, for my lord the king is like the angel of God when it comes to deciding between right and wrong! May the Lord your God be with you!’” 18 Then the king replied to the woman, “Don’t hide any information from me when I question you.” The woman said, “Let my lord the king speak.”
600–501 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in 2 Samuel

References

"... Two forms, mal’akh and mal’akh Yahveh are not only the most numerous but also the most evenly distributed within the HB. Together they constitute over 80% of all the “angel”-juxtapositions. The rest of the constructions is scarce in numbers and appears irregularly. In addition, the word mal’akh never appears in plural when juxtaposed with the tetragrammaton, what seems to be in accord with the interpolation theory: due to the grammatical decorum, the “angelic” addendum simply had to be in singular form. However, this does not apply to the word elohim, characterized by its polysemy. Although plural from the morphological perspective, it might very well denote the name of the one of the biblical deities or designate a group of divine beings ... This seems to be the case in Genesis 32:12 where Jacob sees mal’akhey elohim ‘olim ve-yordim. If to interpret the sullam not as a mere ladder but a form of ziggurat or a staircase connecting the heavenly abode with the (under)world, then the hypothesis that the narration had previously described the polytheistic pantheon seems more justifiable. Accordingly, only at a certain stage of transmission the numerous elohim wandering up and down had been preceded by mal’akhey and thus “degraded” from their hypothetical initial divine status to that of a mere servants. Of somewhat similar nature seems to be the expression ke-mal’akh (ha)elohim applied towards the king David in 1 Samuel 29:9, 2 Samuel 14:17; 19:28. It cannot be excluded that the phrase initially accommodated the direct reference to the deity but at a certain moment had been updated to suit the theology of a more transcendent god ..."
Wojciech Kosior, “The Angel in the Hebrew Bible from the Statistic and Hermeneutic Perspectives: Some Remarks on the Interpolation Theory,” The Polish Journal of Biblical Research 12.1 (2013): 55–70.

References are not endorsements of their contents. Read each reference in full to understand its author's intentions in using these texts.

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Comments

  • Riddle me this: In the Gen 2 story, during mankind's interaction about the tree, why was the Serpent wrong when he said eating the fruit would make them like God? Because they already were. Genesis 1:26 And God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our LIKEness."

    May the Spirit of the One ...

    Couch of Green, August 4, 2025

Genesis 3:5 and 2 Samuel 14:17

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