provided would not make those who partook of it "eat and live for ever" yet, in spite of

all this limitation, the curse, the sorrow and the toil, verses 16-19 constitute a reprieve,

and this is justified by reason of the fact hitherto unrevealed, that Christ had been verily

foreordained as a Lamb without blemish, and this reprieve is further justified by the

symbolic clothing of the guilty pair with coats of skin. In all this there is wondrous truth

expressed in word and in symbol, that demands our attention.

First let us consider the two coverings that were provided: the first by man himself,

the second by God. Sin evidently needs a covering, for although the aprons of fig leaves

were entirely inadequate, the Lord did not do something entirely different, He simply

provided a covering that conformed to His own conception of what was adequate. The

sense of shame, the attempt to propitiate God or gods, is well nigh universal. However

crude or cultured the attempt may be, the sense of need is right, even though the method

employed is wrong.

Herein we meet a vital principle that we do well to keep well before us. The whole

scheme of Redemption, while confessedly the sole work of God, is nevertheless in

harmony with the deepest convictions of the human heart, and faith will never make

demands that the conscience must condemn, and that reason, when uninfluenced by sin

and mortality, would reject. Adam and Eve knew that they needed a covering. God also

agreed that this was so, the difference being that man made aprons of leaves provided a

covering of sorts, but the coats of skin, not only provided a complete covering, but did so

at the cost of life laid down. The word translated "apron" is usually rendered by the word

"girdle". This apron or girdle is sometimes of sackcloth, sometimes of linen, sometimes

for the hanging of a sword, and is used many times in the phrase "gird up the loins". In

fact in Ezek. 23: 15 where we read "girded with girdles", the second word is ezor

"loin cloth". Adam and his wife made a temporary covering out of a newly-developed

sense of shame; God made "coats" of "skins" and covered not only one part of the body,

but the whole of it.

The Hebrew word kethoneth, "coats", in Gen. 3: 21, tunic, long coat, is used of the

coats worn by the sons of Aaron. Is there a suggestion that the guilty pair, thus covered,

were not only forgiven, but granted even fuller access than before? The word kethoneth

occurs eight times in Genesis, the seven other occurrences than Gen. 3: 21 referring to

the coat of many colours given to Joseph by Jacob his father, thereby marking him off as

the firstborn and priest of the family! While Adam and his wife lay under the expectation

of death, innocent animals were slain, thereby providing the first of a long series of types

setting forth the basic truth that without shedding of blood is no remission.

The first recorded death in Genesis was the death of substitutionary victims which

took place 930 years before Adam, who had been condemned, actually died. The same

wondrous doctrine is set forth in Exod. 12:, when at the Passover we read "there was not

a house where there was not one dead" (Exod. 12: 30), the only difference between

Israel and the Egyptians being, that in the house of the Egyptians, it was the firstborn that

was dead, and in the house of Israel it was a lamb. Many other details could well occupy