 |  |
Eve however, was apparently not so prepared (her calling lay elsewhere) and hence
deception ensued.
The deception of the woman.
From the lips of Eve herself came the confession:
"The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat" (Gen. 3: 13).
Paul wrote:
". . . . . the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty . . . . . the woman being deceived
was in the transgression" (II Cor. 11: 3; I Tim. 2: 14).
It is necessary to go back to Genesis itself to find out how this "deception" came
about, and since Paul builds important doctrine upon it, it will serve as a useful
preparation to consider the steps which led up to this tragedy.
It was shown in a previous article that behind the tragedy in Eden lay the defying of
God's "order"
(a)
Satan, identified as Lucifer, desired a higher position in God's order than that
allotted to him (Isa. 14: 13, 14).
(b)
The serpent is raised up out of its appointed order by Satan and beguiles the woman
(Gen. 3: 1-6).
(c)
The woman steps out of her appointed place by reasoning with the serpent, instead
of referring him to her husband as the guardian (Gen. 3: 1-6).
(d)
Adam listens to the voice of his wife instead of to the word of God. He thereby
opts out of his headship (Gen. 3: 6, 12, 17).
Now note the steps in the deception of Eve:
SERPENT. "Can it be that God has said, `Ye shall not eat from any tree of the garden'?"
The crafty serpent expresses surprise at the stringency of God's commandment, at the
same time throwing doubt on whether God can have indeed said such a thing. The
serpent has in fact used a clever trick (which has been employed in argument many times
since) of quoting something like the word of God (not the word itself), concerning which
he will now be able to show its unreasonableness. He has added to the original word
from God, making the commandment more stringent; the one tree of Gen. 2: 17 has
become "every tree" (the idiom requires "any tree") in 3: 1. Upon this falsification he
then throws doubt.
Eve is partially taken in by this trick, for in answering, she herself misquotes the
original word of God:
Eve. "From the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat, but from the fruit of the tree
which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, `Ye shall not eat from it, and
ye shall not touch it, lest ye die'."