The Seed of the Woman

Read Genesis 3 before proceeding. Keep your Bible open throughout this session.

And I will put hostility between you and the woman and between your offspring and her offspring; he will strike your head, and you will strike his heel.”
— Genesis 3:15

This is, in many ways, the most important chapter in Genesis. Everything before it has been the goodness that was lost. Everything after it will be the long work of getting humanity home. The chapter the church has often called The Fall is also the chapter the church has called the Protoevangelium — the first gospel. Both labels are accurate, and both must be held together. Genesis 3 is the saddest chapter in the Bible and, at the same time, the chapter in which the gospel is first announced.

Read carefully. The chapter moves in three movements. First, the temptation and the fall (3:1–7), in which sin enters the world. Second, the interrogation, judgment, and promise (3:8–19), in which God comes seeking and, in the midst of judgment, speaks the first gospel. Third, the banishment with grace (3:20–24), in which Adam and Eve are sent from the garden — but not without being clothed by God Himself in the skins of the first hint of sacrifice, and not without the promise that the way back has been opened in advance.

The whole rest of the Bible is, in one sense, the unfolding of this single chapter.

The Serpent in the Garden

Now the serpent was shrewder than any of the wild animals that the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, “Is it really true that God said, ‘You must not eat from any tree of the orchard’?”

Genesis 3 begins not with the man and the woman but with the serpent. He is introduced abruptly. He is described as more crafty than any other creature — the Hebrew word is arum, meaning shrewd, cunning, capable of indirect speech. There is a wordplay in the Hebrew: the man and the woman were just described in 2:25 as naked (Hebrew arummim), and now the serpent is described as crafty (Hebrew arum). The wordplay is intentional. The naked ones are about to be undone by the crafty one.

Who is the serpent? At the surface level of the text, he is a beast of the field — a creature, made by God, like all the other beasts. But the rest of Scripture will tell us who is operating behind the serpent’s craft. Revelation 12:9 names him directly: the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world. Behind the serpent’s words stands the rebellious creature we call Satan, the adversary, the one who fell before humanity fell, and who has been working ever since to draw humanity into his rebellion.

This raises questions Genesis 3 itself does not answer. Where did Satan come from? How did sin enter into a good creation through him? The text is silent on the details. What the text gives us, and what the rest of Scripture confirms, is this: at the moment of the temptation in the garden, the serpent is operating against God, and his strategy is the strategy he has used in every temptation since.

Watch the strategy unfold.

He said to the woman, “Is it really true that God said, ‘You must not eat from any tree of the orchard’?”

The first move is to question the word of God. Notice the subtle distortion. God did not say you shall not eat of any tree. God said the opposite: you may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat. The serpent twists the command in his very first sentence — turning a single prohibition inside a world of permission into an apparent universal prohibition. He misquotes God deliberately. The misquote is the temptation.

The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit from the trees of the orchard; but concerning the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the orchard God said, ‘You must not eat from it, and you must not touch it, or else you will die.’”

Eve corrects the serpent — partially. She names the permission. She names the one prohibition. But she adds something God did not say: neither shall you touch it. This addition is sometimes treated as a small thing; in fact it matters. Eve is already drifting from the precise word of God. She is making the command harsher than it actually is — perhaps to give herself credit for stricter obedience, perhaps because the serpent’s question has already shaken her confidence. Whatever the reason, her recitation of God’s word is no longer the exact word of God.

The serpent presses. But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

Now comes the flat denial and the impugning of God’s motives. You will not surely die — directly contradicting God’s you shall surely die of 2:17. And then the motive: God knows… you will be like God. The serpent suggests that God is holding out on the woman. God has given the command not for her protection but for His own self-protection — to keep her from becoming like Him. The temptation is now fully laid out: God’s word is false; God is selfish; obedience is what is depriving her of what she could have if she would just claim it.

This is the strategy in every temptation since. Did God actually say? — question the word. You will not surely die — deny the consequence. You will be like God — promise that disobedience leads to elevation. Paul recognized this in 2 Corinthians 11:3: I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ. The strategy continues. The serpent has not changed his tools because he has not needed to. They work.

They Took and Ate

When the woman saw that the tree produced fruit that was good for food, was attractive to the eye, and was desirable for making one wise, she took some of its fruit and ate it. She also gave some of it to her husband who was with her, and he ate it.

The temptation lands. Eve’s perception of the tree is described in three dimensions. Good for food — appeal to appetite, to the body. A delight to the eyes — appeal to beauty, to aesthetic desire. To be desired to make one wise — appeal to the mind, to the longing for knowledge and status. The threefold structure of temptation that John would later name in his first epistle is already operating: the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and the pride of life (1 John 2:16). The same three appeals that ran through the temptation of Christ in the wilderness — turn stones to bread, throw yourself down, possess the kingdoms of the world — run through this first temptation in the garden.

Eve takes. Eve eats. And then come three words that change everything: she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.

Who was with her. This phrase has often been passed over too quickly. Adam was not absent during the temptation. Adam was with her. He stood beside her while the serpent twisted God’s word, while the woman conversed with the serpent, while she examined the tree, while she took and ate. Adam was present. And Adam said nothing. He did not intervene. He did not correct the serpent. He did not call upon the LORD God who had given him the command. He simply stood there. And when his wife handed him the fruit, he ate.

Paul will later distinguish the two falls. Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor (1 Timothy 2:14). Eve was misled by the serpent’s craft. Adam was not misled. He knew exactly what God had said. He had been there when the command was given. He ate anyway. There is a kind of clear-eyed rebellion in Adam’s act that is not present in Eve’s.

But notice also what Paul says elsewhere. Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned (Romans 5:12). Paul does not say through Adam and Eve. Paul says through one man. It is Adam, not Eve, whom Paul identifies as the one man through whom sin entered the world. The fall is humanity’s fall in Adam. Sin enters the world through Adam. The whole doctrine of original sin, as the Lutheran Confessions teach it (Augsburg Confession Article II), rests on this — that we are sinners in Adam, born already in the condition Adam established by his rebellion.

The Lutheran reader will hear in this another echo of what is to come. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive (1 Corinthians 15:22). Adam’s place in the fall is paralleled by Christ’s place in redemption. Adam stood for humanity and failed; Christ would stand for humanity and prevail. The pattern of one man acting in the place of all — what Paul will call the first Adam and the last Adam (1 Corinthians 15:45) — runs through Scripture from this moment forward.

Then the eyes of both of them opened, and they knew they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.

They got the knowledge the serpent had promised. Their eyes were opened. But what they saw was not glory; it was shame. The first thing they knew, in their newly opened eyes, was that they were naked — exposed, unprotected, vulnerable. The innocence with which Genesis 2 closed has been lost.

And immediately — immediately — they try to fix it. They sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths. This is the first attempt at salvation by works. Adam and Eve cover themselves. They construct a remedy. They use what is available to them — leaves from the garden — to mask what they have become. The fig leaves are inadequate; everyone reading the text knows they are inadequate. But Adam and Eve do not yet know they are inadequate. They are doing what fallen humans have always done: trying, with whatever materials are at hand, to cover their own shame and stand righteous before God by their own work. The fig leaves will not last. God will replace them in verse 21. But they tried first. We always do.

Where Are You?

Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God moving about in the orchard at the breezy time of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the orchard.

The next image is one of the most poignant in Scripture. The LORD God walks in the garden. The verb suggests intimacy, presence, the unhurried movement of a friend. We are not told this is unusual; the implication is that the LORD God has walked in this garden before. He is not absent from His creation. He is among them.

But the man and the woman hide.

This is what sin does. Sin makes the creature flee the Creator. The very God who has been a delight to them now is a terror. The fellowship of Genesis 2:25 — naked and not ashamed — has become the hiding of Genesis 3:8 — naked and afraid. They hide among the trees, the very trees that God gave them as food and shelter and beauty. Even the gifts of God become hiding places for those whose hearts have turned against Him.

But the LORD God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?”

This is the first question recorded in the Bible. Where are you?

God does not ask because He does not know. God knows perfectly where Adam is, in every sense of the word. The question is not for God’s information. The question is for Adam’s. Where are you? is law’s question — it forces the hearer to take stock of his own position. It exposes. It refuses to let the sinner pretend that nothing has changed. The man cannot answer the question honestly without confessing that he is hiding, and that he is hiding because he has done something he should not have done. The question is law working.

But notice also that the question is pursuit. God could have walked past the trees. God could have left Adam in his hiding. Instead God calls. The God who comes looking for the sinner is not absent or indifferent. He has come down into the garden. He has called out. Where are you? is, in this sense, also the first word of the gospel — God seeking the sinner, refusing to let him stay lost, calling him out from his hiding place into the light where confession can happen and forgiveness can be received.

The pattern is established here. Throughout Scripture, God will be the One who comes seeking. He will come seeking Cain. He will come seeking Noah. He will come seeking Abraham. He will come seeking Israel. In the fullness of time, He will come seeking the world — the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost (Luke 19:10). The Christ who walked the road to Emmaus and drew near to two disciples whose eyes were kept from recognizing Him is the same God who walked in the garden in the cool of the day and called out Where are you? to a man hiding among the trees.

The man replied, “I heard you moving about in the orchard, and I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid.”

Adam’s first recorded words after the fall are a confession of fear. He has never been afraid before. The fear is new. So is the awareness of nakedness. So is the impulse to hide. Sin has changed Adam at the very level of his relationship to his Maker.

The interrogation continues. Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat? God moves from the broad question to the specific. He names the issue. He gives Adam the chance to confess.

But Adam does not confess. He blames. The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate. Notice the structure of the answer. The woman — blame Eve. Whom you gave to be with me — blame God for giving her. She gave me fruit of the tree — repeat the blame on Eve. And I ate — minimize the act, slipped in at the end.

Eve, when questioned, follows the same pattern. The serpent deceived me, and I ate. The serpent is to blame. I ate — slipped in at the end.

This is what sin does to the conscience. It refuses to take responsibility. It shifts blame downward — to others, to circumstances, ultimately to God Himself. The woman whom you gave is, at its root, an accusation against the Giver. If only God had not given Eve. If only God had set things up differently. If only this circumstance, this person, this temptation had not been present, I would not have done what I did. The fallen heart cannot stand in the light of God’s question without spreading the blame.

The law has done its work. The sin has been exposed. The blame has been shifted. The judgment is about to fall. But before the judgment, God will speak the gospel.

The LORD God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, cursed are you above all the cattle and all the living creatures of the field! On your belly you will crawl and dust you will eat all the days of your life. And I will put hostility between you and the woman and between your offspring and her offspring; he will strike your head, and you will strike his heel.”

God turns to the serpent first. The serpent does not get to be interrogated. The serpent gets the curse without question, without opportunity to speak. He is judged.

And it is in the curse on the serpent that the gospel is spoken.

Pause and consider what is happening. Adam and Eve are standing there, having just been exposed in their disobedience, awaiting their own judgment. The serpent has been cursed. And now, in the very next breath, God says something that the man and the woman cannot have fully understood at the time but that the rest of Scripture will unfold across the next forty centuries: I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.

This is the protoevangelium — the first gospel. It is spoken to the serpent, in judgment on the serpent, but in the hearing of Adam and Eve. The promise is gospel preached to them through the curse on their enemy. The first sermon they hear after the fall is a sermon about the One who will defeat the one who deceived them.

Walk through it. I will put enmity between you and the woman. The relationship between the serpent and the woman, which a few verses earlier had been one of deceptive conversation, is now to be characterized by hostility. The woman is no longer the serpent’s conversation partner; she is his enemy.

And between your offspring and her offspring. The conflict is not just for this generation but for all the generations to come. The serpent’s offspring — those who follow the serpent’s pattern, those who line up with his rebellion — will be at war with the woman’s offspring. The Hebrew word is zera — seed. The line of the woman and the line of the serpent are set against each other across history.

He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel. The Hebrew verb is the same in both clauses — shuph, to crush or to strike. But the targets are different. The head is the seat of life; a strike to the head is fatal. The heel is a wound, but not a fatal one. The seed of the woman will deliver a fatal blow to the serpent. The serpent will deliver a non-fatal wound to the seed of the woman.

And notice — he. Not they. The promise focuses on a particular one. He shall bruise your head. A particular descendant of the woman, in some future moment, will deal the decisive blow to the serpent who has just deceived her. The seed of the woman is, in the depths of this promise, a specific person.

Luther loved this verse. He called it the gospel preached in paradise — the first sermon, given by God Himself, in the hearing of the first sinners, on the very day of the fall. The Augsburg Confession affirms that the promise of Christ runs from the beginning, and Genesis 3:15 is where that beginning is anchored. Every prophet who would speak of a coming deliverer would be unfolding Genesis 3:15. Every patriarch who would receive a promise of seed would be receiving a development of Genesis 3:15. The entire long history of God’s dealings with Israel — and ultimately with the world — would be the unfolding of this single sentence.

The New Testament fulfills it explicitly. When the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law (Galatians 4:4). Born of woman — the seed of the woman. And the God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet (Romans 16:20). The crushing of the serpent’s head. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil (1 John 3:8). The mission begun in the protoevangelium completed at the cross.

The bruising of the heel is the cross. The bruising of the head is the resurrection and the final defeat of Satan. The wound that the seed of the woman received was real and grievous — Christ suffered and died. But the wound was not fatal in the ultimate sense; He rose again. And the blow He dealt to the serpent was fatal. Hebrews 2:14 makes the point clearly: through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil. The cross looks like the serpent’s victory and is, in fact, the serpent’s death.

This is the first gospel. And here is the breathtaking thing about it. The first gospel is spoken before the first sinner has been clothed, before the first hint of sacrifice has been made, before the first banishment has been ordered. The gospel goes first. God preaches Christ to Adam and Eve before He gives them their curse, before He takes them out of the garden, before He does anything else with them. The order matters. The whole rest of Scripture is shaped by this priority: God’s gospel runs ahead of God’s judgment. Christ is announced before sinners feel the full weight of their sin. Mercy precedes wrath in the very first divine response to the fall.

The Hard New World

The promise of the seed comes first. Then come the consequences.

To the woman he said, “I will greatly increase your labor pains; with pain you will give birth to children. You will want to control your husband, but he will dominate you.”

The woman receives two consequences. The first is in her primary vocation as a mother. Childbearing, which God gave as a blessing in Genesis 1:28, will now be marked by pain. The Hebrew word — etsev — means agony, grief, hard labor. Every mother since Eve has known the pain that this verse predicts. The blessing remains; the curse runs through it.

The second consequence is in her relationship with her husband. Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you. The Hebrew word for desire — teshuqah — is rare. It appears again in Genesis 4:7, where sin’s desire is for Cain, to master him. The parallel is suggestive. The fall has introduced a struggle into the marriage relationship: the woman’s desire for the man and the man’s rule over the woman. This is not God’s prescription for marriage; this is God’s description of fallen marriage. The harmony of bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh has been replaced by the strain of desire and rule. It is one of the saddest consequences of the fall. Every marriage since Eden has lived with it.

But to Adam he said, “Because you obeyed your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’ the ground is cursed because of you; in painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, but you will eat the grain of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat food until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you will return.”

Adam’s consequences fall on his vocation. He had been given the garden to work and to keep — vocation as gift. Now his work will be cursed by the resistance of the ground itself. Thorns and thistles. In pain you shall eat of it. By the sweat of your face. Work, which was good, is now hard. Every honest laborer since Adam has known this. The cubicle has its thorns. The harvest has its sweat. The shop floor has its thistles. The work remains, and it remains good in its essence, but it is no longer the unfallen labor of Eden.

And then come the words that change the world forever. For you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

This is the first announcement of death in Scripture. God had warned of it back in 2:17: for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die. Adam did not, on the day he ate, drop dead in the garden. But on the day he ate, death entered. Mortality has now become his condition. The body that was formed from the dust will, in the end, return to the dust. The breath that God breathed into his nostrils will, in the end, depart. Adam — and every son of Adam — will die.

This is the cost of sin. Not just hardship, not just pain, not just strained relationships. Death. The undoing of what was given in Genesis 2:7. The dust will reclaim what came from it.

Paul will summarize the whole arc in one sentence: The wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23). And then, in the next breath: but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. The wages have been pronounced in Genesis 3:19. The free gift is announced, dimly, in Genesis 3:15. The whole of the Bible runs between these two sentences.

Clothed in Skins

The man named his wife Eve, because she was the mother of all the living.

Adam’s response to the judgment is striking. He names his wife. The Hebrew is Chavvah — Eve — from the root meaning to live. The mother of all living. In the wake of the death-pronouncement of verse 19, Adam names his wife in terms of life.

This is faith. Adam has just heard the curse that ends with to dust you shall return. But he has also just heard the promise that the seed of the woman will crush the serpent’s head. He believes the promise. He acts on the promise. He names his wife in terms of the life that the promise has secured. Where there could have been only despair, there is hope rooted in the gospel that was spoken five verses earlier. Adam, in this moment, is the first believer. He hears the gospel and responds with an act of trust.

The LORD God made garments from skin for Adam and his wife, and clothed them.

This is one of the most quietly powerful sentences in all of Scripture.

The man and the woman had made themselves coverings — the fig leaves of verse 7. Their work was insufficient. Fig leaves dry. Fig leaves tear. Fig leaves do not actually cover. The shame they had tried to mask remained.

So God provides what they could not provide for themselves. He makes garments — the Hebrew is kethonet, the word later used of priestly garments — out of skins. Animal skins. Which means an animal has died. Which means blood has been shed. Which means, in the very first hours after the fall, there has been a death — and with it, the first hint of sacrifice.

This is the first death in Scripture. Not the death of Adam — that is delayed by mercy, until Genesis 5:5. The first death is the death of an animal whose skin will cover the shame of the first sinners. God provides the covering. God shed the blood. God dresses the sinners in the result.

The pattern is now established for the entire rest of the Old Testament. Sin cannot be covered by human work. The fig leaves of self-righteousness are insufficient. What is needed is blood — the blood of another, given by God, that covers the sinner in a way the sinner cannot cover himself. From the skins of Genesis 3 will run the sacrificial system of Leviticus, the Passover lamb of Exodus, the Day of Atonement, the prophet’s vision of the Suffering Servant on whom the iniquity of us all was laid. And in the fullness of time, the substitution that Genesis 3:21 dimly pictures will be completed at Calvary. Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29). The Lamb whose blood was shed, whose body was broken, whose righteousness is given to the sinner as a covering — that Lamb was foreshadowed in the very first hint of sacrifice, in the garden, in the hours after the first sin.

Lutherans have read this passage with particular warmth. The fig leaves are works-righteousness; the skins are gospel. The fig leaves are what we manufacture; the skins are what God provides. The fig leaves are inadequate; the skins are sufficient. The whole shape of justification by faith — that the righteousness which covers us is not our own but is given to us by God in Christ — is foreshadowed in Genesis 3:21. Sinners cannot cover themselves. God covers them. The covering costs blood. The blood is shed by God’s provision. The sinner is dressed in righteousness not their own.

And the LORD God said, “Now that the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil, he must not be allowed to stretch out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” So the LORD God expelled him from the orchard in Eden to cultivate the ground from which he had been taken. When he drove the man out, he placed on the eastern side of the orchard in Eden angelic sentries who used the flame of a whirling sword to guard the way to the tree of life.

The chapter ends in banishment. The man and the woman are sent out from the garden. They will live the rest of their days outside the place that was made for them.

But notice what the banishment is for. Lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever. The exile is not pure punishment. The exile is, in part, mercy. If Adam and Eve, in their fallen condition, took also from the tree of life, they would live forever in their fallenness. The condition that has just been introduced — sin and shame and the desire for self-justification — would become permanent. The banishment is God’s refusal to let humanity be eternally fixed in its broken state. The door is closed not to crush hope but to preserve hope, because what humanity needs is not eternal life in its fallen condition but a way back to the tree of life through redemption.

And the way is guarded. Cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life. The cherubim are the same heavenly beings who will later be embroidered into the curtain of the tabernacle and carved into the walls of the temple — guardians of God’s holiness. The tree of life is now inaccessible by ordinary means. The way must be opened by another route.

And it will be. Hebrews 10 announces that the way has been opened. Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh (Hebrews 10:19–20). The veil of the temple, which represented the cherubim guarding the way back, was torn at the moment of Christ’s death. The new and living way was opened — not by going around the sword, but by passing through it. Christ Himself took the blow that the sword was guarding against. And the tree of life will reappear at the very end of the Bible. On either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month (Revelation 22:2). The tree that was guarded in Genesis 3 will be available in Revelation 22. The arc of Scripture moves from this banishment to that return.

Gathering the Threads

Genesis 3 is the chapter on which the rest of the Bible turns. The fall has been recorded. The serpent has been exposed. The man and the woman have been judged. Death has entered the world. The man and the woman have been banished from the garden. The way to the tree of life has been blocked.

And yet — at every step in the chapter — the gospel runs alongside the law.

Where are you? is law’s question, but it is also God’s pursuit. I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring is curse on the serpent, but it is gospel for sinners — the announcement of the seed who will crush the head of the deceiver. In pain you shall bring forth children is consequence, but the very pain is the means by which the seed of the woman will eventually come. To dust you shall return is sentence, but Adam’s response — to name his wife Eve, mother of all living — is faith in the promise. Garments of skins is provision, the first hint of sacrifice, God’s covering replacing the sinner’s. Lest he reach out his hand and take of the tree of life is exile, but it is exile in mercy, preventing the eternal fixation of humanity in its broken state. The cherubim and flaming sword block the way back — but the way back is not closed forever; it is being prepared.

For the Lutheran reader, this chapter is the foundation of the doctrine of original sin (Augsburg Confession Article II) and of the doctrine of justification — that righteousness comes not by our own works (fig leaves) but by God’s covering (skins) provided through the shed blood of another. It is the first chapter of law and gospel together, the chapter where the distinction must be made and the distinction must also be held in proper tension. The law exposes; the gospel covers. The law sentences; the gospel promises. Both are spoken in the garden, by the same God, on the same day, to the same sinners.

Christ is not predicted in Genesis 3 in vague abstractions. He is announced in the protoevangelium of 3:15 as the seed of the woman who will crush the serpent’s head. His sacrificial death is foreshadowed in the skins of 3:21. His opening of the way back to the tree of life is anticipated in the cherubim of 3:24. The whole shape of the gospel is laid down in this chapter. Everything that follows in Scripture is the unfolding of what God said in the garden on the day humanity fell.

Next session, we move into Genesis 4 — the first generation after the fall. Cain and Abel. The first murder. The first time we will see what original sin actually produces when it begins to walk in the world. And we will see, in Abel’s offering, the first faith-based worship of the post-fall world — a worship that the New Testament will commend to us as a model.

For Discussion

The following questions are for group discussion or personal reflection.

The serpent’s strategy is question the word — deny the consequence — promise elevation. Where do you recognize this strategy in temptations you face today? How does the recognition help you resist?
Adam was with Eve during the temptation. He saw it unfold and said nothing. What does Adam’s silence teach us about the responsibilities of leadership in marriage and family — and about the cost of failing in them?
The first thing fallen humanity does is sew fig leaves. What forms does the human impulse to cover ourselves take in our own lives today — religiously, morally, socially?
Where are you? is the first question in the Bible. What does it mean to you that God is the One who seeks the sinner, who comes looking for the one who is hiding? Where can you look back and recognize that the LORD came looking for you?
The protoevangelium — he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel — is the first gospel promise in Scripture. Why do you think God spoke this promise first, before pronouncing the curses on Adam and Eve? What does the order tell you about the heart of God toward sinners?
The LORD God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them. How does this verse picture the gospel of justification by faith? In what ways are we still tempted, even as believers, to keep weaving fig leaves rather than receive God’s covering?

Looking Ahead

Session 6 turns to Genesis 4 and the first half of Genesis 5 — the first generation after the fall. We will meet Cain and Abel — Adam’s two sons, who will worship the same God in different ways, with very different results. Abel’s worship will be accepted; Cain’s worship will be rejected. Cain will rise up against his brother in the field. The first murder will be recorded. And the consequences will spread.

But Genesis 4 will not be only about Cain. It will be about the line of faith that God will preserve through Adam and Eve’s third son, Seth, and the early development of human civilization (Cain’s line) alongside the early development of the worshiping line (Seth’s line). And the chapter will end with one of the most surprising sentences in the early chapters of Scripture: To Seth also a son was born, and he called his name Enosh. At that time people began to call upon the name of the LORD. The worship of God by name begins.

Before next session, read Genesis 4 in full, and the first eight verses of Genesis 5. As you read, pay particular attention to the difference between Cain’s offering and Abel’s offering (and why one is accepted and the other is not), to God’s question to Cain — Why are you angry? — which echoes the Where are you? of this chapter, and to the contrast between the line of Cain and the line of Seth.

Closing Prayer

Lord God, who in the day of the fall did not abandon Your creatures but pursued them, who came down into the garden and called out to a man hiding among the trees, who spoke the gospel before You spoke the curse, and who covered with garments of Your own making the shame Your creatures could not cover — we worship You. You are the God whose mercy runs ahead of judgment. You are the God who provides what the sinner cannot provide. You are the God who promised, in the very hour of our fall, the Seed of the woman who would crush the serpent’s head. Forgive us where we have listened to the serpent and doubted Your word. Forgive us where we have sewn fig leaves of our own righteousness rather than receive the covering You have given in Christ. Where we are hiding among the trees, find us. Where we are blaming others for what is our own, convict us. Where we are weighed down by the cost of sin, lift our eyes to the Seed who has come and to the cross where the serpent’s head was crushed. And bring us, at the last, through the way that has been opened — not around the cherubim and the flaming sword but through them, by the body and blood of Your Son — to the tree of life that is in the midst of Your eternal paradise. Through Jesus Christ our Lord, the Seed of the woman, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, world without end. Amen.