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1Ti_2:14. καὶ Ἀδὰμ οὐκ ἠπατήθη ] In order to justify this expression, the expositors have sought to define it more precisely, mostly by supplying πρῶτος . So Theodoret; Tertullian, too (De Hab. Mul.), says, perhaps alluding to this passage: tu divinae legis prima es desertrix. Others, again, supply ὑπὸ τοῦ ὄφεως (Matthies: “As the apostle remembers the O. T. story of the fall, there comes into his thoughts the cunning serpent by which Eve, not Adam, let herself be ensnared”). De Wette thinks that the author is insisting on the notion be charmed, betrayed (by sinful desire), as opposed to some other motive to sin. Hofmann arbitrarily supplies with Ἀδὰμ οὐκ ἠπατήθη the thought: “so long as he was alone.”
The apparent difficulty is solved when we remember the peculiarity of allegorical interpretation, which lays stress on the definite expression as such. This here is the word ἀπατᾷν (or ἐξαπατᾷν ). On this word the whole emphasis is laid, as is clearly shown by the very repetition of it. This word, however, in the Mosaic account of the fall, is used only of the woman, not of the man, for in Gen_3:13 the woman expressly says: ὁ ὄφις ἠπάτησέ με ; the man, however, uses no such expression. And in the story there is no indication that as the woman was deceived or betrayed through the promises of the serpent, so was the man through the woman.
Adam did certainly also transgress the command, but not, as the woman, influenced by ἀπάτη . Paul, remembering this, says: Ἀδὰμ οὐκ ἠπατήθη , ἡ δὲ γυνὴ ἐξαπατηθεῖσα . Bengel: serpens mulierem decepit, mulier virum non decepit, sed ei persuasit. To supply anything whatever, only serves therefore to conceal the apostle’s real meaning.
ἡ δὲ γυνὴ ἐξαπατηθεῖσα ἐν παραβάσει γέγονε ] This betrayal of the woman by the serpent is mentioned by Paul also in 2Co_11:3, where he employs the same word: ἐξαπατᾷν .
The emphasis, as is apparent from what precedes, is not on the last words, but on ἐξαπατηθεῖσα ; hence it is not right to supply πρώτη with ἐν παρ . γεγ . Παράβασις here, as elsewhere ( οὗ οὐκ ἔστι νόμος , οὐδὲ παράβασις , Rom_4:15), is used in regard to a definite law.
The construction γεγονέναι ἐν occurs frequently in the N. T. in order to denote the entrance into a certain condition, a certain existence. De Wette: “fell into transgression.” Luther wrongly: “and brought in transgression.”
As to the thought itself, expositors find the force of this second reason to lie in the fact that in the fall the weakness of the woman, her proneness to temptation, was manifested, and that consequently it is not seemly for the woman to have mastery over the man. But did the man resist the temptation more stoutly than the woman? Paul nowhere gives any hint of that. The significant part of the Mosaic narrative to him is rather this, that the judgment of God was passed upon the woman because she had let herself be betrayed by the serpent, and it is in accordance with this judgment that the husband is made lord over the wife.[107]
[107] The right interpretation of this passage does not even in appearance contradict Rom_5:12. In the latter, Paul does not mention the woman, but the man, as the origin of sin; but then he is thinking of the man as the image of God, of the woman as the image of the man.