The Serpent and the Forbidden Fruit

1 And the serpent was more cunning than all the wild animals on the face of the field that the Lord God had created. And it said to the woman, “So the Lord has really said, ‘You shall not eat from any of the trees of the garden’?” 2 And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat from the fruit of the trees of the garden. 3 But about the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden the Lord has said, ‘You shall not eat from it, and you shall not come near it, so that you will not die.’” 4 And the serpent said to the woman, “You will certainly not die. 5 For it is revealed and known before the Lord that on the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like angels before the Lord, knowing how to tell good from evil.” 6 And the woman saw that the tree was good to eat, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was fit for gaining insight from it. And she took from its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband with her, and he ate. 7 And the eyes of the two of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together for themselves and made themselves belts.

The Lord Questions Adam and the Woman

8 And they heard the voice of the Memra of the Lord God walking in the garden as the day’s breeze was blowing, and Adam and his wife hid from before the Lord God among the trees of the garden. 9 And the Lord God called to Adam and said to him, “Look, the whole world that I created is revealed before me; darkness and light are revealed before me. And do you think that the place where you are is not revealed before me? Where is the commandment that I gave you?” 10 And he said, “I heard the voice of your Memra in the garden, and I was afraid because I am naked, and I hid.” 11 And he said, “Who told you that you are naked? Have you then eaten from the tree I commanded you not to eat from?” 12 And Adam said, “The woman you put with me, she gave me from the tree, and I ate.” 13 And the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this that you have done?” And the woman said, “The serpent misled me, and I ate.”

Punishments for the Serpent, the Woman, and Adam

14 And the Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, cursed shall you be, serpent, more than all the cattle and more than all the wild animals on the face of the field. On your belly you shall go, and dust shall be your food all the days of your life. 15 And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your sons and her sons. And it shall be that when her sons keep the Law and do the commandments, they will aim at you and strike you on your head and kill you. And when they abandon the commandments of the Law, you will aim and bite him on his heel and make him sick. Yet for her sons there will be healing, but for you, serpent, there will be no healing, for they are destined to make peace in the end, in the day of King Messiah.”⁠a 16 And to the woman he said, “I will greatly multiply your pains and your pregnancies. In pain you shall bear children, and toward your husband you will turn, and he will have power over you, whether for innocence or for sin.” 17 And to Adam he said, “Because you listened to the voice of your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat from it,’ cursed is the earth because of you. In pain you shall eat the fruits of its harvest all the days of your life. 18 And thorns and thistles it shall grow for you, and you shall eat the plants on the face of the field.” Adam answered and said, “Please, by the mercy that is before you, Lord, let us not be counted like the cattle, that we should eat the grass on the face of the field. Let us get up now and toil, and from the toil of my hands let us eat food from the fruits of the earth, and in this way there will be a distinction between people and cattle.” 19 “By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return to the earth, because from it you were created. For dust you are, and to dust you will return. And from the dust you will rise again and give an account and a reckoning of everything you have done.” 20 And the man called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all the living. 21 And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of glory for the skin of their flesh, and clothed them.

Adam Is Driven from the Garden

22 And the Lord God said, “Look, the first Adam, whom I created, is one of a kind in the world, as I am one of a kind in the heavens on high.⁠b Many nations are going to arise from him, and from him one nation will arise that will know how to tell good from evil. If he had kept the commandment of the Law and carried out its precept, he would have lived and endured like the tree of life forever. And now, since he has not kept the commandments of the Law and has not carried out its precept, look, we will drive him out from the garden of Eden before he stretches out his hand and takes from the fruit of the tree of life and eats and lives forever.” 23 And the Lord God drove him out from the garden of Eden to work the earth from which he had been created.

The Law as the Tree of Life

24 And he drove Adam out, and from the beginning he made the Glory of his Shekinah dwell to the east of the garden of Eden, between the two cherubim. Two thousand years before he created the world, he created the Law; he prepared the garden of Eden for the righteous and Gehenna for the wicked. He prepared the garden of Eden for the righteous, so that they might eat and take their delight from the fruit of the tree, because they kept the commandments of the Law in this world and carried out its precepts. He prepared Gehenna for the wicked, and it is like a sharp sword that devours from both its sides; he prepared within it sparks of fire and burning coals for the wicked, to punish them in the world to come, because they did not keep the commandments of the Law in this world. For the Law is a tree of life for everyone who toils in it and keeps its commandments: he lives and endures like the tree of life in the world to come. The Law is good for those who serve it in this world, like the fruit of the tree of life.