What Is This That You Have Done?

There may perhaps be no more alarming words in all of scripture than what we hear God say in verse 13 of Gensis 3: “What is this that you have done?” We can envision a parent walking into a room and noticing some disaster that his young child has caused and gasping, with arms lifted up in shock, “What have you done?” We hear in these words the sense of alarm and desperation.

This story in Genesis 3 is, of course, the Bible’s way of telling us about the mess that we find ourselves in, even to this day. It is the scriptural account of why the world is the way it is and why we are the way we are. But it also gives us the first glimpse of hope of how we might finally get ourselves out of the mess. In this story we see how we lost our innocence, how we go about trying to cover up our guilt, and what God finally will do to redeem us from it.

The Loss of Innocence

The first seven verses of Genesis 3 give us the story of Adam and Eve’s sin. It tells us how they became guilty, how they lost their innocence.

Naked and Unashamed

But if we want to understand all that Genesis 3 has to tell us, we really need to begin with the last verse of chapter 2. Genesis 2:25 says, “And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.” Their nakedness before God and before each other serves a key function in the narrative.[1] It comes into focus again in verses 7, 10, and 11, and once more in verse 21.

The nakedness of Adam and Eve serves to highlight their total innocence. They have nothing to hide, no skeletons in the closet.

None of us are like that, are we? Who among us would feel completely at ease having all our thoughts and action brought to light for everyone to see? But that’s how Adam and Eve are described. And that’s the way God intends for us all to be.

The Crafty Serpent

But along comes a serpent.

Now, let’s make an important observation here before we go too far into the story. As with what we’ve already encountered in Genesis, this story is filled with symbols. The nakedness of Adam and Eve, the serpent, the two trees and their fruits—these are all symbols. It doesn’t mean these things aren’t real. John Walton reminds us that a nation’s flag is a symbol but it is also something real. The point of a symbol is that it stands for something beyond itself.[2]Far too often we get hung up in debates about how literal the symbol is and ignore entirely the thing the symbol is intended to signify. It’s a key problem for how many of us read these first stories in Genesis.

What does the serpent represent? In the ancient world, the answer was clear: the serpent is instantly recognized as an evil force.[3]And that’s all we have to know at this point.

However, in describing the serpent as “crafty,” the author of Genesis has given us one of the most obvious wordplays in the text: “crafty” (arum) sounds very similar to “naked” (erom) in the previous verse. The serpent has come to take away Adam and Eve’s innocence.

The Fruit of Disobedience

And, of course, he succeeds.

He begins by questioning God’s directions. “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” (v. 1). The woman, in answering the question, shows herself to be the first apologist as well as the first legalist.[4] In verse 2 she corrects the mischaracterization of God’s command, but in verse 3 she goes beyond what God had restricted when she said that God had restricted them from even touching the forbidden tree.

But it’s in verses 4-6 that the dark moment arrives. The serpent contradicts God and suggests to the woman that God is holding out on her. The woman, believing the serpent instead of God, eats from the forbidden tree and shares the fruit with her husband.

Alright. So many questions! But let verse 7 serve its rhetorical function in the story and show us the point we are supposed to get. You can see how this verse puts a wrap on the scene that began with Genesis 2:25. It started with the couple naked and unashamed. It ends with them naked and very ashamed. Their innocence has been lost. That is the point of the story so far. When we disobey God, we lose our innocence.

The Cover Up of Guilt

And so we become desperate to do something about that. You know how you know your guilty? You try to cover it all up. That’s exactly what Adam and Eve did.

Hiding Our Shame

Verse 7 goes on to say that “they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.” Commentators point out that fig leaves would be the biggest leaves available in the Promised Land, but the scene is intentionally comical. The skimpiness of the clothing is emphasized to depict the urgency and the desperation.[5]Something must now be done to cover up the transgression. We have to find a way to hide our shame.

Now who are they hiding from? It would be easy to say, “God,” but wait just a minute. That will come next, in verse 8. Here it seems that the fig leaves are an attempt to hide from each other. The intimacy of their union has been fractured. They both know they are guilty, and so they are afraid of each other. What a parable for our day in which we find ourselves so afraid of other human beings. Might it be that the reason we find it so hard to trust our neighbor is because deep down we know we can’t be trusted ourselves?

At any rate, in verse 8 we find both Adam and Eve hiding from God when “they heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day.” We probably have a hard time imaging what that verse describes, but this is how God spoke to Israel about his presence among them in the tabernacle. “And I will walk among you and will be your God, and you shall be my people,” we read in Leviticus 26:12. Sin does not cause God to hide from us but the other way around.

Shifting the Blame

And of course, we cannot hide from God forever. So, if we cannot remain hidden we will resort to the next strategy to cover up. If we cannot hide the shame then we will try shifting the blame.

So the man blames the woman in verse 12, and the woman blames the serpent in verse 13. But all parties involved are indicted in the crime. All of them will face the consequences of their rebellion against God.

Wise In Our Own Eyes

But there’s one important feature of this story we must not overlook. Did you notice that the serpent was at least partially correct in what he told the woman? He said that were she to eat from the forbidden tree, her eyes would be opened, that she would be like God in that she would know good and evil (v. 5). Verse 7 says that when Adam and Eve ate, indeed their eyes were opened.

And then in verse 22 we are told that God himself acknowledges that “the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil.” What is this knowledge that humanity came to possess through disobedience to God, a knowledge that God never wanted us to have?

In a word, it is wisdom, but it’s a particular kind of wisdom. Gordon Wenham points out that while wisdom is one of the highest goals of the godly, the Bible

also makes it plain that there is a wisdom that is God’s sole preserve, which man should not aspire to attain, since a full understanding of God, the universe, and man’s place in it is ultimately beyond human comprehension.[6]

It's not that God is holding out on us. It’s not that God wants to prevent us from knowing things. It’s not that “ignorance is bliss” and that God intends to keep us in the dark about certain things. The bottom line is this: the tree of the knowledge of good and evil represents human autonomy, the pursuit of wisdom and knowledge apart from God’s revelation.[7]

This is what God laments in verse 22. By disobeying God, humans have attempted to displace God and to do away with him entirely. God is not opposed to us knowing that which can be known, that which he has revealed to us in nature or in Scripture. That is called wisdom, and we should pursue it with all our heart. But what God opposes is being wise in our own eyes—knowledge that leads us to a self-sufficient pride that leads us to say, or at least act as if we believe, that we are not creatures who find life and wisdom only in constant dependence on him and in constant communion with him.

And here we see yet one more way we try to hide, try to cover up our sin, our shame, and our guilt. If we cannot hide from God, cannot pass of our guilt on someone else, then we will simply assert our independence from God. Can’t hide your shame? Can’t shift the blame? Then go ahead and make this devilish claim: who needs God when you can be your own God?

That’s exactly what each of us has done. It’s not just those who are openly transgressive especially during this so-called “Pride Month.” It’s what we church people do, too. We get along just fine without God, thank-you-very-much. We know the right thing to do, the right person to vote for, the side that Jesus is on. Hint: our side! So who needs a healthy and humble communion with God when we already know what God wants in every situation?

Paul Miller writes, “If you are not praying it may well be because you are quietly confident that time, money, and talent are all you need in life to overcome.”[8]We’ve figured out how to live east of Eden without God just as well as the non-Christians around us.

God’s Redemptive Action

Now if this were the end of the story, there would be no good news. But the Genesis 3 story is not complete without seeing the decisive and redemptive acts of God.

Life East of Eden

God, seeing that we human beings have gotten a taste of this kind of wisdom, sees a huge problem. So, he sends him out from the garden of Eden so that he will not be able to eat from the tree of life and live forever.

A “literal” reading of verse 22 might lead us to conclude that God wants us to die, wants to keep us from eternal life. But once we see that what the story is telling us is that God is displeased with what he sees we have become, then we can see the expulsion from the garden as a mercy. A severe mercy to be sure. Life outside the garden, we’ve already been warned, is not going to be a piece of cake. But it would be far, far worse for humanity were God to not intervene and prevent us from going down the dark path of life lived without God. God will not let us live forever without him.

The Entrance of Death

So he drove out the man from the garden, we are told in verse 24, and “placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.” Now that is the kind of language that doesn’t make a lot of sense to us, but it would have been familiar language to ancient Israel, to whom these words were originally written.

“Drive out” is the language of exile. The cherubim are placed, or more literally, encamped, a word that describes the presence of God among his people in the tabernacle. Cherubim are “the traditional guardians of holy places in the Near East,” and were depicted on the walls of both Israel’s tabernacle and temple.[9]The tree of life is represented by the golden candlestick in the tabernacle. East of Eden? Of course, the entrance to the tabernacle and temple were both on their easter fronts. The point could not be lost on the original audience. The garden of Eden is depicted as an “archetypal sanctuary, where God was uniquely present in all his life-giving power” and this is what “man forfeited when he ate the fruit.”[10]

This is how death enters into the world, not only to humanity, but to all creation. This is the entrance of chaos into God’s ordered creation. With the divinely-appointed priests now exiled, order cannot be maintained. The exile itself is a punishment, of course. But now that God’s people have chosen to follow their own will rather than God’s, the chaos that follows is also the natural consequences for that sinful rebellion.

The Way Back to the Tree of Life

But it’s not an irredeemable punishment. If this were the end of the story, we would be hopeless, left in our shame and guilt, trying to cover it up, left only with death. But along comes a Savior. What is the way back to Eden? What is the way back to the tree of life? Jesus says, “I am the way” (Jn 14:6).

Bible students have long seen in Genesis 3:15 a “proto-euangellion,” an early gospel proclamation. God announces that there will be a long conflict between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman. But the promise is that the seed of the woman will prevail.

How will this promised seed prevail? We recall now those alarming words, uttered in agony from Calvary’s cross, where Jesus calls out to God, “What have you done? Why have you forsaken me? Why have you sent me into exile?”

You know why. So that you and I can be brought back.

Here’s how the Apostle Paul describes it, in Romans 5:

Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned— for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come. But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if many died through one man’s trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many. And the free gift is not like the result of that one man’s sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brought justification. For if, because of one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ. Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous. Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord (Rom 5:12-21).

This is what God has done. Through Jesus the victory over the serpent has been achieved. And if we will believe him, commune with him, and go his way, then life will be the result.

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[1] Gordon J. Wenham, Genesis 1–15, ed. Bruce M. Metzger, David A. Hubbard, and Glenn W. Barker, vol. 1, Word Biblical Commentary (Dallas: Word Books, 1987), 71. [2] John H. Walton, The Lost World of Adam and Eve: Genesis 2–3 and the Human Origins Debate (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2015), 116. [3] Tremper Longman III, Genesis, The Story of God Bible Commentary (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2016), 63. [4] Longman III, Genesis,64. [5] Wenham, Genesis 1–15, 76. [6] Wenham, Genesis 1–15, 63. [7] Wenham, Genesis 1–15, 63. [8] Paul E. Miller, A Praying Life: Connecting with God in a Distracted World(Colorado Springs: NavPress, 2009), 49. [9]Wenham, Genesis 1–15, 86. [10] Wenham, Genesis 1–15, 86.