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From: Genesis 2:7-9; 3:1-7

The Creation of Adam

[7] Then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into
his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.

Man in Paradise

[8] And the LORD God planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there he put
the man whom he had formed. [9] And out of the ground the LORD God made
to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, the tree of life
also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Temptation and the First Sin

[1] The serpent was more subtle than any other wild creature that the Lord God
had made. He said to the woman, “Did God say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree
of the garden’?” [2] And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit
of the trees of the garden; [3] but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the
tree which is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.”’
[4] But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not die. [5] For God knows that
when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing
good and evil.” [6] So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and
that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make
one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband,
and he ate. [7] Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they
were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons.

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Commentary:

2:7. As far as his body is concerned, man belongs to the earth. To affirm this,
the sacred writer must have been always conscious of the fact that when a
person dies, his/her body will turn into dust, as Genesis 3:19 will in due course
tell us. Or it may be that this sort of account (a special one like the literary
genre of an these chapters) is based on the similarity between the word “adam”,
which means man in general, and “adamah”, which means “reddish soil”; and
given that the words look alike, the sacred writer may have drawn the conclusion
that there is in fact a connection between the two very things (unsophisticated
etymology goes in for this sort of thing). But the fact that man belongs to the
earth is not his most characteristic feature: as the author sees it, animals too
are made up of the stuff of the earth. What makes man different is the fact that
he receives his life from God. Life is depicted here in terms of breathing, because
only living animals breathe. The fact that God infuses life into man in this way
means that although man on account of his corporeal nature is material, his
existence as a living being comes directly from God, that is, it is animated by
a vital principle—the soul or the spirit—which does not derive from the earth. This
principle of life received from God also endows man’s body with its own dignity
and puts it on a higher level than that of animals.

God is portrayed as a potter who models man’s body in clay; this means that
man is supposed to live in accordance with a source of life that is higher than
that deriving from matter. The image of God as a potter shows that man (all of
him) is in God’s hands just like clay in a potter’s hands; he should not resist or
oppose God’s will (cf. Is 29: 16; Jer 18:6; Rom 9:20-21).

2:8-15. Here we have a scenario in which God and man are friends; there is no
such thing as evil or death. The garden is described as being a leafy oasis, with
the special feature of having two trees in the center, the tree of life and the tree
of the knowledge of good and evil—symbolizing the power to give life, and the
ultimate reference-point for man’s moral behavior. Out of the garden flow the four
rivers the author is most familiar with; these water the entire earth and make it
fertile. What the Bible is teaching here is that man was created to be happy, to
enjoy the life and goodness which flow from God. “The Church, interpreting the
symbolism of biblical language in an authentic way, in the light of the New
Testament and Tradition, teaches that our first parents, Adam and Eve, were
constituted in an original ‘state of holiness and justice’ (Council of Trent, “De
Peccato Originali”). This grace of original holiness was ‘to share in...divine life’
(”Lumen Gentium”, 2)” (”Catechism of the Catholic Church”, 375).

>From the outset, man is charged with cultivating the garden—working it, protec-
ting it and making it bear fruit. Here again we can see that work is a commission
that God gives man from the start. “From the beginning of creation man has had
to work,” Bl. J. Escriva said. “This is not something that I have invented. It is
enough to turn to the opening pages of the Bible. There you can read that, before
sin entered the world, and in its wake death, punishment and misery (cf. Rom
5:12). God made Adam from the clay of the earth, and created for him and his
descendants this beautiful world we live in, “ut operaretur et custodiret ilium”
(Gen 2:15), so that we might cultivate it and “look after it” (”Friends of God”,
57). But man needs to recognize God’s mastery over creation and over himself
by obeying the commandment God gives him as a kind of covenant, telling him
not to eat the forbidden fruit. If man lost the original happiness he was created
to enjoy (the writer will later explain), it was because he broke that covenant.

3:1-24. “The account of the fall in Genesis 3 uses figurative language, but affirms
a primeval event, a deed that took place at the beginning of the history of man.
Revelation gives us the certainty of faith that the whole of human history is
marked by the original fault freely committed by our first parents” (”Catechism of
the Catholic Church”, 390). The Bible is teaching us here about the origin of evil—
of all the evils mankind experiences, and particularly the evil of death. Evil does
not come from God (he created man to live a happy life and to be his friend); it
comes from sin, that is, from the fact that man broke the divine commandment,
thereby destroying the happiness he was created for, and his harmony with God,
with himself, and with creation in general. “Man, tempted by the devil, let his trust
in his Creator die in his heart and, abusing his freedom, disobeyed God’s com-
mand. This is what man’s first sin consisted of. All subsequent sin would be
disobedience toward God and lack of trust in his goodness” (”Catechism of the
Catholic Church”, 397).

In his description of that original sin and its consequences, the sacred writer
uses symbolic language (garden, tree, serpent) in order to convey an important
historical and religious truth—that no sooner did he walk the earth than man dis-
obeyed God, and therein lies the cause of evil. We can also see here how every
sin happens and what results from it: “The eyes of our soul grow dull. Reason
proclaims itself sufficient to understand everything, without the aid of God. This
is a subtle temptation, which hides behind the power of our intellect, given by
our Father God to man so that he might know and love him freely. Seduced by
this temptation, the human mind appoints itself the center of the universe, being
thrilled with the prospect that ‘you shall be like gods’ (Gen 3:15). So filled with
love for itself, it turns its back on the love of God” (BI. J. Escriva, “Christ Is
Passing By”, 6).

3:1. The serpent symbolizes the devil, a personal being who tries to frustrate
God’s plans and draw man to perdition. “Behind the disobedient choice of our
first parents lurks a seductive voice, opposed to God, which makes them fall
into death out of envy (Wis 2:24). Scripture and the Church ‘s Tradition see in
this being a fallen angel, called ‘Satan’ or the ‘devil’. The Church teaches what
Satan was at first a good angel, made by God: ‘The devil and the other demons
were indeed created naturally good by God, but they became evil by their own
doing’ (Fourth Vatican Council)” (”Catechism of the Catholic Church”, 391).

3:2-5. The devil’s temptation strategy is very realistically described here: he
falsifies what God has said, raises suspicions about God’s plans and intentions,
and, finally, portrays God as man’s enemy. ‘The analysis of sin in its original
dimension indicates that, through the influence of the ‘father of lies’, throughout
the history of humanity there will be a constant pressure on man to reject God,
even to the point of hating him: ‘ Love of self to the point of contempt for God,’ as
St Augustine puts it (cf. “De Civitate Dei”, 14, 28). Man will be inclined to see in
God primarily a limitation of himself, and not the source of his own freedom and
the fullness of good. We see this confirmed in the modem age, when the atheis-
tic ideologies seek to root out religion on the grounds that religion causes the
radical ‘alienation’ of man, as if man were dispossessed of his own humanity
when, accepting the idea of God, he attributes to God what belongs to man,
and exclusively to man! Hence a process of thought and historico-sociological
practice in which the rejection of God has reached the point of declaring his
‘death’. An absurdity, both in concept and expression!” (John Paul II, “Dominum
et Vivificantem”, 38).

3:6 And so both of them, the man and the woman, disobeyed God’s command-
ment. Genesis refers not to an apple but to a mysterious fruit: eating it symboli-
zes Adam and Eve’s sin—one of disobedience.

The sacred writer leads us to the denouement by giving a masterly psychological
description of temptation, dialogue with the tempter, doubt about God’s truthful-
ness, and then yielding to one’s sensual appetites. This sin, Pope John Paul also
commented, “constitutes ‘the principle and root of all the others’”. We find our-
selves faced with the original reality of sin in human history and at the same time
in the whole of the economy of salvation. [...] This original disobedience presup-
poses a ‘rejection’, or at least ‘a turning away from the truth contained in the Word
of God’, who creates the world. [...] ‘Disobedience’ means precisely going beyond
that limit, which remains impassable to the will and the freedom of man as a
created being. For God the Creator is the one definitive source of the moral order
in the world created by him. Man cannot decide by himself what is good and what
is evil—cannot ‘know good and evil, like God’. In the created world ‘God’ indeed
remains the first and sovereign source ‘for deciding about good and evil’, through
the intimate truth of being, which is the reflection ‘of the Word’, the eternal son,
consubstantial with the Father. To man, created to the image of God, the Holy
Spirit gives the gift of ‘conscience’, so that in this conscience the image may
faithfully reflect its model, which is both Wisdom and eternal Law, the source of
the moral order in man and in the world. ‘Disobedience’, as the original dimension
of sin, means the ‘rejection of this source’ , through man’s claim to become an
independent and exclusive source for deciding about good and evil” (”Dominum
et Vivificantem”, 33-36).

3:7-13. This passage begins the description of the effects of the original sin. Man
and woman have come to know evil, and it shows, initially, in a most direct way—
in their own bodies. The inner harmony described in Genesis 2:25 is broken, and
concupiscence rears its head. Their friendship with God is also broken, and they
flee from his presence, to avoid their nakedness being seen. As if his Creator
could not see them! The harmony between man and woman is also fractured:
he puts the blame on her, and she puts it on the serpent. But all three share in
the responsibility, and therefore all three are going to pay the penalty.

“The harmony in which they found themselves, thanks to original justice, is now
destroyed: the control of the soul’s spiritual faculties over the body is shattered;
the union of man and woman becomes subject to tensions (cf. Gen 3:7-16), their
relations henceforth marked by lust and domination. Harmony with creation is
broken: visible creation has become alien and hostile to man (cf. Gen 3:17,19).
Because of man, creation is now subject ‘to its bondage to decay’ (Rom 8:21).
Finally, the consequence explicitly foretold for this disobedience will come true:
man will ‘return to the ground’ (Gen 3: 19), for out of it he was taken. “Death
makes its entrance into human history” (cf. Rom 5:12)” (”Catechism of the
Catholic Church”, 400).

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Source: “The Navarre Bible: Text and Commentaries”. Biblical text from the
Revised Standard Version and New Vulgate. Commentaries by members of
the Faculty of Theology, University of Navarre, Spain.

Published by Four Courts Press, Kill Lane, Blackrock, Co. Dublin, Ireland, and
by Scepter Publishers in the United States.