Grace Amidst Judgment
Grace Amidst Judgment ~ Genesis 3:16-21
Preached by Pastor Phil Layton at Gold Country Baptist Church, November 25, 2007
Arthur W. Pink writes: ‘The third chapter in Genesis is one of the most important in all the Word of God … it is the "seed-plot of the Bible."
- Here are the foundations upon which rest many of the cardinal doctrines of our faith.
- Here we trace back to their source many of the rivers of divine truth.
- Here commences the great drama which is being enacted on the stage of human history ...
- Here we find the Divine explanation of the present fallen and ruined condition of our race.
- Here we learn of the subtle devices of our enemy, the Devil.
- Here we behold the utter powerlessness of man to walk in the path of righteousness when divine grace is withheld from him.
- Here we discover the spiritual effects of sin—man seeking to flee from God.
- Here we discern the attitude of God toward the guilty sinner.
- Here we mark the universal tendency of human nature to cover its own moral shame by a device of man’s own handiwork.
- Here we are taught of the gracious provision which God has made to meet our great need.
- Here begins that marvelous stream of prophecy which runs all through the Holy Scriptures.
- Here we learn that man cannot approach God except through a mediator.’[1]
Last week we saw in Genesis 3:15 what scholars call “first gospel”
[I]t is the first direct expression of the gospel. It recognizes the essential conflict between Satan and the Lord and indicates that this conflict also will involve the people of God and the followers of Satan (cf. John 8:44; Acts 13:10; I John 3:10). The seed of the woman is a clear reference to the Messiah, the Lord Jesus (cf. Rev. 12:1-5; Gal. 3:16, 19), who came “to destroy the works of the devil” (Heb. 2:14; I John 3:8). The protevangelium prophesied that Christ would deliver a death blow to Satan, but in so doing would suffer death Himself.[2]
Genesis 3:15 And I will put enmity Between you and the woman, And between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, And you shall bruise him on the heel.”
Last week I mentioned some reasons why I believe Satan understood this prophecy, and also that Adam and Eve and their descendants understood this prophecy which becomes the expectation throughout Genesis. It appears that this hope, this grace promised right in the heart of the curse on the serpent, this was passed on orally from the first humans and spread to the other ancient people of the world. This is a fascinating study to trace:
- Similarities to Genesis 3 in the Babylonian Adapa legend.[3]
- The Gilgamesh Epic has a snake, man, plants, and the promise of life.[4]
- ‘The Egyptian Pyramid Texts (second half of third millennium) … enjoin the serpent to crawl on its belly (keep its face on the path). This is in contrast to raising its head up to strike. The serpent on its belly is nonthreatening, while the one reared up is protecting or attacking. Treading on the serpent is used in these texts as a means of overcoming or defeating it.’[5]
- The Egyptians in fact portrayed snakes as having legs and being able to speak, which leads liberal commentators to argue that Moses simply borrowed the imagery of where he grew up. Instead, it may me best to see such “parallels” as Egyptian perversion of true history (not unlike 100-200 ancient flood stories with some similarities to Genesis, ANE similar legends of tower of Babel, fall, etc.). Moses is providing by divine revelation the truth of what happened and correcting the false ideas and distortions of ancient man
- Perhaps this same principle holds true in supposed ancient parallels to Genesis 3:15, such as the Indian Krishna who contends with the Evil One in the form of a serpent, or the Ahriman of Iran who in the form of a serpent brought of his fruit to mankind as created by their god.[6]
Some have suggested further examples of how the story of enmity with serpents (often defeated by heroes or gods as opposed to normal humans) is retold in star-figures by which early peoples identified the heavenly constellations and their mythologies:
- Hercules is portrayed as battling with the serpent who guarded an apple.
- The king of animals, Leo, is shown clawing the head of a great fleeing serpent.
- The Scorpion is illustrated as stinging the heel of a great fleeing serpent.
- Some think the constellation Virgo, with the spike of wheat in her hands, may preserve oral tradition of a promised seed of the woman from ancient times.
- The Scorpion is illustrated as stinging the heels of the great hero Ophiuchus.
- It is certainly not impossible that some of these or other representations from ancient myths were distorted remembrances of a great primeval prophecy.[7] Whether this is the case or not, God through Moses here presents what really happened – the true history and source of the epic spiritual struggle that only Christ adequately answers.
The great Puritan hymn-writer Isaac Watts may give the best summary of the biblical and Christian truth of what has happened up to this point in Genesis 3:
Deceived by subtle snares of hell, Adam, our head, our father, fell;
When Satan, in the serpent hid, Proposed the fruit that God forbid.
Death was the threat’ning: death began To take possession of the man
His unborn race received the wound, And heavy curses smote the ground.
But Satan found a worse reward; Thus saith the vengeance of the Lord
“Let everlasting hatred be Betwixt the woman’s seed and thee.
“The woman’s seed shall be my Son; He shall destroy what thou hast done;
Shall break thy head, and only feel Thy malice raging at his heel.”
He spake; and bid four thousand years Roll on; at length his Son appears;
Angels with joy descend to earth, And sing the young Redeemer’s birth.
Lo, by the sons of hell he dies; But as he hung ’twixt earth and skies,
He gave their [devil] a fatal blow, And triumphed o’er the powers below.
Our study outline this morning will be simple – God’s Judgment and God’s Grace:
- God’s Judgment on humanity
- God’s Grace toward humanity
I want you to see that in every part of God’s judgment, there is grace as well. But first the bad news before the good news …
I. GOD’S JUDGMENT ON HUMANITY
Genesis 3:16-17 To the woman He said, “I will greatly multiply Your pain in childbirth, In pain you will bring forth children; Yet your desire will be for your husband, And he will rule over you.” Then to Adam He said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat from it’; Cursed is the ground because of you; In toil you will eat of it All the days of your life.
If you could summarize God’s judgment in one word it would be “pain” or “sorrow.” Twice he uses that Hebrew word “pain” in verse 16 and for the man also in v. 17 “In toil [same Heb. Word] you will eat of it All the days of your life.”
NIV has “painful toil” – KVJ uses the word “sorrow”
Both are appropriate, because the word can include emotional pain or sorrow, not merely physical pain. Life will now be difficult, it will be filled with pain and sorrow and difficulty that did not exist before sin entered. Verse 19 says this will continue till death, till man returns to the dust. A life of pain, then death.
This is the result of their sin – this is God’s judgment. Adam and Eve sought to pursue pleasure and pride, now they will have pain instead of paradise. All of life is marked by this effect of sin, but in particular there are areas of pain where man and woman will uniquely and especially feel these effects. For the woman, she will feel the effects in pregnancy and both will be affected in their marital life. The man will feel sin’s effects especially in his work.
The areas where each find their highest fulfillment will not escape the results of sin. Three areas:
1) Motherhood
2) Marriage
3) Work
1.SIN AFFECTS MOTHERHOOD
Pregnancy is not a curse - conception, and childbearing and mothering actually could be and should be a joy. In fact it says earlier that God blessed Adam and Eve by saying “be fruitful and multiply” but now God says He will multiply her pain in this blessing and process. Marriage relationships between husband and wife as the 2nd half of verse 16 discusses, and the work and toil of man as verses 17-19 discuss – these things are also called blessings and gifts of God in His Word.
But it is even in our greatest fulfillment and callings that sin will now be very present. Humanity’s blessings will not escape the effects of sin, and in fact right in the midst of them sin will remind us of the fall’s effects.
Kent Hughes writes: ‘the woman’s punishment struck at the deepest root of her being as wife and mother, the man’s strikes at the innermost nerve of his life: his work, his activity, and provision for sustenance … Both of them would experience perpetual pain in the centers of their existence.’[8]
The labor of pregnancy and the labor of man’s work can be redeemed by God’s grace, but they would now be much more difficult and painful and sorrowful and stressful since we’re sinful.
Verse 16 says God would greatly multiply this pain or sorrow. The KJV has literally “sorrow and your conception” – most other translations and commentators take it as sorrow in conception, and many would expand the meaning to the whole process from conception to childbirth to be parallel with the next phrase “in pain you will bring forth children.”
Without modern medicine, birth pains are described as one of the worst possible agonies for humans, a frequent biblical analogy.
Isaiah 13:8 (NASB95)
8 They will be terrified, Pains and anguish will take hold of them; They will writhe like a woman in labor, They will look at one another in astonishment, Their faces aflame.
Isaiah 21:3 (NASB95)
3 For this reason my loins are full of anguish; Pains have seized me like the pains of a woman in labor. I am so bewildered I cannot hear, so terrified I cannot see.
Romans 8:22 (NASB95)
22 For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now.
Matthew 24:6-8 (NASB95)
6 “You will be hearing of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not frightened, for those things must take place, but that is not yet the end.
7 “For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and in various places there will be famines and earthquakes.
8 “But all these things are merely the beginning of birth pangs.
… 19 “But woe to those who are pregnant … 21 For then there will be a great tribulation, such as has not occurred since the beginning of the world until now, nor ever will.
Pain in pregnancy and childbirth are analogies biblical truth
Children are a great blessing, but they can also bring a mother much pain, not just while they’re being born, but in different ways, great pain is brought a mother after her children are born and grow and when they follow sinful ways as our first mother did in Eden.
3 John v. 4 says there is “no greater joy than to hear that my children walk in the truth” (and some can say from experience there is no greater pain when they don’t)
2. SIN WILL ALSO AFFECT MARRIAGE
Gen 3:16b … Yet your desire will be for your husband, And he will rule over you.
The phrase “he will rule over you” can be a negative, even harsh term, so some commentators take it as a statement of the sinful way in which men tend to treat their wives since the fall.
Or the “rule” could refer to the chain of authority which is not in and of itself evil, the order God established that Eve had overthrown (God-husband-wife). This order would fit with the beginning of verse 17 where God says to Adam that he also abandoned the God-given role of headship and leadership: “Because you listened to the voice of your wife” – literally, the idea is you obeyed her rather than Me. You listened rather than leading her and loving, protecting her. Both departed from design.
Godly male leadership is grounded in Genesis 2, not Genesis 3. Headship came before sin, it’s not the result of sin. But like anything else it has been tainted by sin and sadly throughout history men toward their wives often have been sinfully dominating and disrespecting, and wives also often have not submitted to or respected their husbands. Whether it’s Islam or radical feminism on the other end, or other distortions in-between, God’s original design for man and woman is seriously affected by sin. Just like bearing children, a husband ruling his wife by loving leadership is not in and of itself a curse, but sin effects the way both parties in marriage interact now.
There’s a lot of discussion and debate even among conservative scholars about what verse 16 means “your desire will be for your husband.” The Heb. word Desire only appears 2x more in the Bible - one in Songs 7:11 where it speaks of a lover’s romantic desire.
The only other time the word is used is right in the next context:
Genesis 4:7 “If you do well, will not your countenance be lifted up? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door; and its desire is for you, but you must master it.”
The Hebrew phrase and wording is virtually identical here and in Genesis 3:16 and is the same speaker and writer and it helps shed light on its most likely meaning in this context. The desire is negative and not godly, it is to dominate, to have its own way, to master you, but you must not let that happen.
The ESV has a footnote “desire is for” (or against your husband). There could be a reference to her overstepping her bounds, and her desire to dominate her husband, to have her own way, to not submit, to master him rather than let him lead, but he must master her by loving leadership if he can and exercise godly headship in marriage. This then is the beginning of the battle of the sexes.
Susan Foh, herself a woman, persuasively argued this interpretation in Westminster Theological Journal (Spring 1975), and has influenced the majority of conservative male scholars since. Other godly women also have taken on the Christian feminist ideologies which are in many cases manifestations of the ungodly desire of women spoken of in Genesis 3:16, a desire to not fulfill the role but to instead usurp the husband’s leadership.
Whatever position one takes on this phrase in regards to the desire and rule spoken of here, it is clear that sin impacts marriage in a big way. The Bible has to command wives to submit and respect their husbands because it is not the natural tendency of sinful women. The Bible has to command men to sacrificially love their wives and live in an understanding way, because that is not the natural tendency of sinful man. Marital conflict is a reality in our fallen world, but by God’s grace and Spirit it can be restored in great measure to the original design, which is the point of Ephesians 5.
3. SIN AFFECTS MAN’S WORK
Genesis 3:17 Then to Adam He said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat from it’; Cursed is the ground because of you; In toil you will eat of it All the days of your life.
The MacArthur Study Bible says: ‘The reason given for the curse on the ground and human death is that man turned his back on the voice of God, to follow his wife in eating that from which God had ordered him to abstain. The woman sinned because she acted independently of her husband, disdaining his leadership, counsel, and protection. The man sinned because he abandoned his leadership and followed the wishes of his wife. In both cases, God’s intended roles were reversed.’
Toil translates the same word used in v. 16 for the woman’s pain. This word occurs only three times in the OT, in vv. 16-17 and in Genesis 5:29:
Now he called his name Noah, saying, “This one will give us rest from our work and from the toil of our hands arising from the ground which the Lord has cursed.”
This verse gives some insight of how Adam’s descendants heard of the events of Genesis 3 through their parents and oral tradition, and even were looking for a deliverer to undo the curse.
Work is not in and of itself a curse, just like childbirth and marriage relationship are not cursed or bad, but in each of these areas of blessing, sin will now impact them in serious ways. The full joy God originally designed for each of these areas can only be restored to the measure that man’s relationship with God is restored. Man ate from the tree in paradise and as a result he would now eat from the cursed and less fertile land outside Eden. He forfeited his life of ease and food readily available and he would now have a life of difficult toil for food.
Genesis 3:18 “Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you; And you will eat the plants of the field;
If you want a vivid illustration of this principle, just go up and look at our upper parking lot area up there. This is one of the advantages of coming out and helping us on Saturday work days – there are biblical truths on display in the created world. I remember one of our work days we were weed-eating the areas around the upper parking lot, and these thorns and thistles and gnarly bushes seemed to be attacking me and cutting through my clothing and stabbing me. Those things should remind us of Genesis 3. One of my brothers in the Lord shared last Saturday what a blessing it is to work outside and with soil because of the many Biblical analogies.
Genesis 3:19 By the sweat of your face You will eat bread, Till you return to the ground, Because from it you were taken; For you are dust, And to dust you shall return.”
Man’s work is a big part of his identity. Even today when guys meet each other, before too long one will ask the other “what do you do” (meaning what is your occupation). God’s judgment strikes at the very core, the very nerve of his identity and everyday life with these effects of sin and these reminders. You will have to sweat and work hard, and eventually you’ll be back in the dust.
Labor in pain till you die. Is that good news? Actually there is …
II. GOD’S GRACE TOWARD HUMANITY
God’s grace and the good news here I don’t think most of us pay attention to as we should. When God spoke to the serpent in v. 14, He said “cursed are you” but when He speaks to Adam here, He instead says “cursed is the ground.” Man does not have to face the same doom and fate of the serpent who will be destroyed by Christ.
Matthew Henry writes: ‘Observe here how mercy is mixed with wrath in this sentence. The woman shall have sorrow, but it shall be in bringing forth children, and the sorrow shall be forgotten for joy that a child is born, John 16:21. She shall be subject, but it shall be to her own husband that loves her, not to a stranger, or an enemy: the sentence was not a curse, to bring her to ruin, but a chastisement, to bring her to repentance. It was well that enmity was not put between the man and the woman, as there was between the serpent and the woman.’[1]
John 16:21 (NASB95) “Whenever a woman is in labor she has pain, because her hour has come; but when she gives birth to the child, she no longer remembers the anguish because of the joy that a child has been born into the world.
Momentary pain, even serious pain, can be endured in the light of joy even abiding eternal joy, as pictured in some measure of this principle by Jesus who “for the joy that was set before him endured the cross” (Heb. 12:2).
We use the word “deliver” for children being brought into the world and the Bible also uses the word “deliver” frequently in the context of salvation, synonymous with deliverance. Even the pain that man and woman would have in their various arenas is designed to make us turn to God and lean upon God in our need, to even cry out like Paul “who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God!” Christ delivers both now and forever for all who are in Him.
‘Each experience of birth, therefore, can be a beautiful picture and reminder of God’s promise of “deliverance” from the awful curse on man and all his dominion. The entire world, in fact, is “groaning and travailing in pain,” awaiting the great delivery and birth of a new world, … “the creature [creation] itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of decay into the glorious liberty of the children of God” (Rom 8:22) … the experience of childbirth, therefore, can be – and always should be – a time of blessing, of closeness to God (and to her husband). The suffering is submerged in the rejoicing, and this in itself goes far toward mitigating the physical pain.’[9]
Remember that Adam and Eve’s original warning was that if they ate of the forbidden tree they would surely die, and the understanding was death that very day. So they stand before Him in our text fully expecting and fully deserving their execution. But what God pronounces on them is difficulty rather than death. He says there will be pain in their life, but the word that would have jumped out to Adam and Eve was the word “life” more than pain!
At the end of verse 17, God tells Adam he would eat “all the days of your life.” Those were words of grace – Adam had to be thinking, this means there will be more days of my life! Don’t miss the amazing grace here. God let Adam live over 900 years when He justly could have killed him on the spot. Did he deserve that? Of course not. Was that fair that Adam and Eve were allowed to live? No. Was it grace? Yes!
They got their first hint of grace when God was speaking to the serpent about “her seed” speaking of the future children of the woman. God tells Eve “in pain you will bring forth children” and I have to think her immediate focus was that she would be allowed to bring forth children! They could not have missed the surprising revelation that they would live, and not only that, God would bless them with kids. They deserved God’s fury, but He promises them a family. Instead of instant death, Adam and Eve would receive the gift of life, and the miracle of new life and birth through them. And they’re told one of her male descendants would grow and as a man would put an end to the enmity someday and defeat Satan and undo sin and its effects for all who are God’s children. What grace!
Life would not be as easy, but they would have life! I don’t think we reflect enough on how astonishing it is that God allows sinful man to live for many years on this earth. God has declared the soul that sins shall die and the wages of sin is death – yet He graciously gives sinners life and breath when they deserve the opposite. He gives humans common grace, good things, provision, work, marriage, children, and blessings.
If that was all, that would be extraordinarily good news, extravagant grace, but more than all that, God extends a grace beyond the physical and beyond this life. Adam would not have to live in this flesh forever – even that is a grace when God tells him he will receive rest from his toil by returning to the dust some day. But the O.T. later graciously reveals that we will rise from the dust some day, death will not be the end, God’s children receive a greater grace beyond the grave. This grace is available in the Redeemer promised in this chapter – the Messiah who would be the remedy of sin, who would receive a death blow but would conquer death by His resurrection, conquering Satan and evil in the process, and graciously bringing eternal life to all in Him by faith. This is truly amazing grace that saves a wretch like you or me.
Genesis 3:20 Now the man called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all the living.
This is an act of faith on Adam’s part; to whatever degree He understood what God was saying here, he believed God’s Word and embraced God’s promise. Eve means “living” or “life” or “life-giver” and so even though they’d never seen children or a birth before, Adam shows trust in God to fulfill what He said through their children. For the first time in this chapter, Adam is a good example to his wife and to us.
Naming in the Bible was very significant; the meaning of names often had much to do with what you desired or believed the person would turn out to be. It was so significant that in a few places when someone had a life change and went a different direction, they actually changed their name (ex: Abram to Abraham, Jacob to Israel, Simon to Peter, Saul to Paul, etc.).
The proper name “Adam” appears for the first time in verse 17 as God speaks to the man. God called both male and female “man” earlier, using this same Hebrew root word. At the end of Genesis 2, Adam named his wife “woman,” which is significant. Eve did not name herself, her husband named her. She did not say “I am woman, hear me roar.” There is a divine order God designed, which is appropriate even in our culture where a woman takes on the last name of the man when she gets married, not the other way around. He is the head in biblical terminology, she is the body – both head and body are essential to operate properly or else you have a dysfunctional body, and that’s true spiritually as well as physically. The husband is to lovingly lead, the wife is to lovingly follow. They are equal in God’s image, but have different roles.
In Genesis 2, Adam’s calling his wife “woman” seems to emphasize more her divine-designed companionship and the fact that she is a perfect suitable helpmate, literally “bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh … taken out of man.” But the name “Eve” (life / living) seems to emphasize his indebtedness to her for life’s future, and his joyous trust that she will be the source of life for many to come, rather than the source of death for sin. The first time Adam named his wife had to do with where she was from (“taken from man”) but in renaming her Eve he is looking not to the past but to the future in faith. Adam believes God’s Word and receives God’s grace, and in verse 21 he and his wife receive more grace.
Genesis 3:21 The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife, and clothed them.
Earlier they had tried to make themselves fig leaf coverings, but these were insufficient. The obvious lesson is that only God can provide a sufficient covering. No manmade covering will do, God Himself must provide for sinful man.
CLOTHED – This word is used of a king clothing honored subjects (Joseph by Pharaoh in Gen 41:42). It’s also often used by Moses of times when he would put priestly garments onto the priests before they could serve in God’s presence or perform certain tasks (Exodus 29:8; 40:14; Lev 8:13, etc.).
The word also refers to spiritual clothing, sometimes even used of the H.S. Himself clothing in sense of coming upon someone (Judges 6:34; 1 Ch. 12:18; 2 Ch. 24:20; compare Luke 24:49)
Luke 24:49 (NASB95)
49 “And behold, I am sending forth the promise of My Father upon you; but you are to stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.”
Isaiah almost seems to pick up on this picture in the garden when he speaks of the spiritual clothing by God - “robe of righteousness” or “garments of salvation” of believers.
Isaiah contrasts this with man’s righteous deeds which are like filthy rags in God’s sight. We can never cover ourselves or atone for ourselves by anything we do.
‘Just as Adam renames his spouse, so God reclothes the couple … the covering of fig leaves versus the covering with tunics of animal skins. The first is an attempt to cover oneself, the second is accepting a covering from another. The first is manmade and the second is God made. Adam and Eve are in need of a salvation that comes from without. God needs to do for them what they are unable to do for themselves … the clothing precedes the expulsion from the garden. God’s act of grace comes before his act of judgment.’[10]
Man’s efforts to do good works to earn grace don’t count in God’s economy. They might seem good in the realm of humanity, but they’re no good from God’s vantage point as they do not deal with the sin issue. It’s like trying to use Monopoly money to open a bank account or to buy something at the mall. Monopoly money might work ok in the realm of games, but it’s worthless, it’s no good, it doesn’t count in the higher realm of true commerce.
Similarly, all man’s efforts and righteous deeds are filthy rags to God – or in the words here, fig leaves. Whatever accomplishments we bring to Him, He says they’re fig leaves. Fig leaves.
If you turn from trying to cover yourself, if you turn from trusting in your own works, if you recognize you cannot do anything to save yourself or please God by your fig leaves or filthy rags of good works and deeds, if you put your faith in God’s Word and God’s Promise and God’s Son as your Mediator, your substitute, your sacrifice, your only righteousness and covering – you can experience the saving grace of God offered to sinners. You repent of trusting in what you have done, and you trust alone in what Jesus Christ has done for you, and the Bible says you can be forgiven and clothed in Christ’s perfect righteousness!
2 Corinthians 5 (NASB95)
1 For we know that if the earthly tent which is our house is torn down, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.
2 For indeed in this house we groan, longing to be clothed with our dwelling from heaven,
3 inasmuch as we, having put it on, will not be found naked.
4 For indeed while we are in this tent, we groan, being burdened, because we do not want to be unclothed but to be clothed, so that what is mortal will be swallowed up by life.
5 Now He who prepared us for this very purpose is God, who gave to us the Spirit as a pledge.
… 10 For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may be recompensed for his deeds in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad.
11 Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade men …
17 Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.
18 Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation,
19 namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation.
20 Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making an appeal through us; we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.
21 He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.
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[1]Matthew Henry, E4's Matthew Henry's Complete 6 Volume Commentary, electronic ed. (:: , .), 31.
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[1] A. W. Pink, Gleanings in Genesis, 33.
[2] Davis, Paradise to Prison, 92.
[3] Merrill Unger, “Archaeology and Genesis 3-4,” Bibliotheca Sacra 110/437 (Jan 1953): 12-14.
[4] Gordon Wenham, Genesis 1-15 (Waco, Tex.: Word, 1987), 72. This similarly does not seem to be Moses’ concern, as argued by even more liberal commentators such as Westermann. The similarities with Gilgamesh Epic are actually fairly superficial.
[5]Victor Harold Matthews, Mark W. Chavalas and John H. Walton, The IVP Bible Background Commentary : Old Testament, electronic ed. (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2000), Ge 3:15.
[6] J. P. Lange, Genesis (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1960), 236.
[7] Henry Morris, The Genesis Record (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 1976), 120-21.
[8] Kent Hughes, Genesis, 92.
[9] Morris, 124.
[10]Victor P. Hamilton, NICOT, 1:207.