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Gen_3:8 And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God amongst the trees of the garden.
Ver. 8. And they heard the voice of the Lord.] Either speaking something by himself of that which Adam hath done against his command; as who should say, Hath he served me so indeed? or else calling to Adam in a mighty thunder, as to Pharaoh, {Exo_9:28} or in a terrible whirlwind, as to Job, {Job_38:1} the better to humble him, and prepare for a sermon of mercy and forgiveness. God poureth not the off of his grace, save only into broken vessels. Christ came to cure not the sound, but the sick with sin: the Holy Ghost is poured out upon thirsty souls only that are scorched and parched with the sense of sin and fear of wrath. {Isa_35:7; Isa_44:3} As the way to Zion was by Sinai, so, unless we desire rather to be carnally secured than soundly comforted, we must pass by Baca to Berachah, by a sight of our sin and misery, to a sense of God’s grace and mercy.
Walking in the garden in the cool of the day.] God did not meet the man angrily, as he did Moses in the inn, when tie had much ado to forbear killing him; {Exo_4:24} nor as the angel did Balaam, with a drawn sword in his hand to destroy him; neither did he rush upon him, as David ran upon Goliath, and cut off his head; but, with a soft and slow pace {a} (as if he had no mind to it), he comes walking toward them, to do this, his work, "his strange work," {Isa_28:21} of sentencing sinners; and that in the cool of the day, too, or towards the evening, as St Ambrose {b} hath it, after the Septuagint. Whereas to show mercy, "behold, he comes leaping {c} upon the mountains, skipping upon the hills." Lo, "this is the voice," and the pace "of my beloved." {Son_2:8} God was but six days in making the whole world, yet seven days in destroying one city, Jericho, as Chrysostom long since observed. He scourgeth not his people, "till there be no remedy." {2Ch_36:16} He forbears us, though he "cry like a travailing woman," {Isa_42:14} to be delivered of his judgments.
And Adam and his wife hid themselves.] Their covering of fig-leaves, then, was too short; for here they ran with their aprons into the thicket to hide from God. A poor shift, God wot, but such as is still too much in use. "If I have covered my transgressions as Adam," or after the manner of men, saith Job, {Job_31:33} then let this and this evil befall me. The bad heart runs from God, and would run from its own terrors, {d} as the wounded deer from the deadly arrow that sticks in his side; but refusing ordinary trial, it is in danger to be pressed to death inevitably. We have no better refuge than to run from God to God. Bloodletting is a cure of bleeding, a burn of a burn. To close and get in, avoids the blow, &c. Our first parents here, in hiding themselves, did but as the fish which swimmeth to the length of the line, with a hook in the mouth, as one well observeth.
{a} îúäìê
{b} ôï äåéëéíïí : ad vesperam diei .
{c} Gressu grallatorio.
{d} Faeti sunt a corde suo fugitivi. - Tertul.