Go to Related Reading
About this book

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 4Q417 1 i 17

Hebrew Bible · Dead Sea Scrolls, Wisdom and Instruction

Share:

Summary

In Genesis 3, the serpent tells Eve that eating the fruit will give the knowledge of good and evil. In the Dead Sea Scroll 4Q417, the spirit of flesh is said to lack that knowledge and is denied a vision given to a people of spirit.

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. 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.
750–400 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Genesis

4Q417 1 i 17

Dead Sea Scrolls, Wisdom and Instruction · 4QInstruction
15 For it is engraved, decreed by God, against all … […] of the sons of Seth, and a book of remembrance is written before him 16 for those who keep his word. And that is the vision of Hagi for the book of remembrance. And he gave it as an inheritance to humankind, together with a people of spirit, for 17 according to the pattern of the holy ones he formed it. But no more did he give Hagi to the spirit of flesh, for it did not know the difference between 18 good and evil according to the judgment of its spirit. And you, son who understands, look at the mystery that is to be and know
200–150 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in 4Q417

References

“... It is not clear to me, however, that 4QInstruction envisions a Fall, or a sin of Adam, at all. We find further echoes of Genesis 2–3 in the very fragmentary text 4Q423, which appears to take the garden as a metaphor for life, which may be either delightful or full of thorns depending on whether the gardener is faithful or not. Even there, however, there is no clear reference to a primeval sin. Rather, Genesis is treated as a paradigmatic story that outlines two permanent possibilities in life. While much is unclear in 4QInstruction, because of the fragmentary state of the text, the contrast between the people of spirit, who are formed in the image of the holy ones, and the spirit of flesh, appears to be primordial. The fact that the verb “to fashion” is imported into the paraphrase of Genesis 1 does not necessarily mean that the two accounts are being fused into a single creation. ...”
John J. Collins, Jewish Cult and Hellenistic Culture: Essays on the Jewish Encounter with Hellenism and Roman Rule, JSJSup 100 (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 177.

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

Your feedback

Genesis 3:5 and 4Q417 1 i 17

Leave a comment

Your questions and comments are welcome!

Comments

Glossary

Search the Library