Genesis 3

At some point I need to pick up the pace but these chapters are so jam packed, I can only fit one chapter per post so far.

In Chapter 3, the serpent encourages the woman to go ahead and eat from the tree of knowledge. She doesn't take much convincing. She shares with Adam, and Boom! Now they know they're naked. Fruit can do that to you. So they get to sewing aprons out of fig leaves.

God shows up to learn his new creations have disobeyed the one simple rule he gave them. Adam points the finger at Eve. She made me do it!

And now for some consequences. The serpent's punishment is to slither on its belly and eat dust. OK then. The serpent and the woman will no longer coexist peacefully; they and their descendants will now have enmity between them. If Eve's descendant is Jesus and the serpent is Satan, you could read this as the forever battle of good and evil, right and wrong, love and hate. But I digress. Back to the punishments.

For her role in this whole mess, the woman's sorrow will be multiplied and the husband will rule over her. Childbirth will be painful. For every woman. Forever. Pretty extreme sentence.

Adam too is cursed. He shall feel sorrow, toil for his food, and "unto dust shalt thou return" (hey! I recognize that phrase from Ash Wednesday Mass). God provides some clothing, so that's something positive I guess. But otherwise he is a total a-hole about this situation. He created them and told them just the one time about the tree of knowledge, and their goof-up changes everything for all humans for all eternity? Geez. Then he sends them out of Eden to fend for themselves.

P.S. We see Eve's name for the first time in this chapter.

This brings back memories of Paradise Lost, which I was supposed to read in college. I totally get how this can be read as an allegory and it's a beautiful little story in that regard. Loss of innocence, fall from grace, and so on. I do not understand, however, how anyone can read this chapter literally... a talking snake, folks.