We have here an account of the temptation wherewith Satan assaulted our first parents, and which proved fatal to them. And here observe, The tempter, the devil in the shape of a serpent. Multitudes of them fell; but this that attacked our first parents, was surely the prince of the devils. Whether i... [ Continue Reading ]
Here we see what Eve's parley with the tempter ended in: Satan at length gains his point. God tried the obedience of our first parents by forbidding them the tree of knowledge, and Satan doth as it were join issue with God, and in that very thing undertakes to seduce them into a transgression; and h... [ Continue Reading ]
Where art thou? — This enquiry after Adam may be looked upon as a gracious pursuit in order to his recovery. If God had not called to him to reduce him, his condition had been as desperate as that of fallen angels.... [ Continue Reading ]
I heard thy voice in the garden: and I was afraid — Adam was afraid because he was naked; not only unarmed, and therefore afraid to contend with God, but unclothed and therefore afraid so much as to appear before him.... [ Continue Reading ]
Who told thee that thou wast naked? — That is, how camest thou to be sensible of thy nakedness as thy shame? Hast thou eaten of the tree? — Tho' God knows all our sins, yet he will know them from us, and requires from us an ingenuous confession of them, not that he may be informed, but that we may b... [ Continue Reading ]
What is this that thou hast done? — Wilt thou own thy fault? Neither of them does this fully. Adam lays all the blame upon his wife: She gave me of the tree — Nay, he not only lays the blame upon his wife, but tacitly on God himself. The woman thou gavest me, and gavest to be with me as my companion... [ Continue Reading ]
To testify a displeasure against sin, God fastens a curse upon the serpent, Thou art cursed above all cattle — Even the creeping things, when God made them, were blessed of him, Genesis 1:22, but sin turned the blessing into a curse. Upon thy belly shalt thou go — No longer upon feet, or half erect,... [ Continue Reading ]
And I will put enmity between thee and the woman — The inferior creatures being made for man, it was a curse upon any of them to be turned against man, and man against them. And this is part of the serpent's curse. A perpetual reproach is fastened upon him. Under the cover of the serpent he is here... [ Continue Reading ]
We have here the sentence past upon the woman; she is condemned to a state of sorrow and a state of subjection: proper punishments of a sin in which she had gratified her pleasure and her pride. She is here put into a state of sorrow; one particular of which only is instanced in, that in bringing fo... [ Continue Reading ]
Because thou hast hearkened to the voice of thy wife — He excused the fault, by laying it on his wife, but God doth not admit the excuse; tho' it was her fault to persuade him to eat it, it was his fault to hearken to her. Cursed is the ground for thy sake — And the effect of that curse is, Thorns a... [ Continue Reading ]
In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread — His business before he sinned was a constant pleasure to him; but now his labour shall be a weariness. Unto dust shalt thou return — Thy body shall be forsaken by thy soul, and become itself a lump of dust, and then it shall be lodged in the grave, and... [ Continue Reading ]
God having named the man, and called him Adam, which signifies red earth, he in farther token of dominion named the woman, and called her Eve — That is, life. Adam bears the name of the dying body, Eve of the living soul. The reason of the name is here given, some think by Moses the historian, other... [ Continue Reading ]
These coats of skin had a significancy. The beasts whose skins they were, must be slain; slain before their eyes to shew them what death is. And probably 'tis supposed they were slain for sacrifice, to typify the great sacrifice which in the latter end of the world should be offered once for all. Th... [ Continue Reading ]
Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil — See what he has got, what advantages, by eating forbidden fruit! This is said to humble them, and to bring them to a sense of their sin and folly, that seeing themselves thus wretchedly deceived by following the devil's counsel, they mi... [ Continue Reading ]
He sent him forth — Bid him go out, told him he should no longer occupy and enjoy that garden; but he was not willing to part with it.... [ Continue Reading ]
God drove him out — This signified the exclusion of him and his guilty race from that communion with God which was the bliss and glory of paradise. But whether did he send him when he turned him out of Eden? He might justly have chased him out of the world, Job 18:18, but he only chased him out of t... [ Continue Reading ]