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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadPaul Kretzmann Commentary - Genesis 3:20 - 3:24
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Man Driven Out of paradise
v. 20. And Adam called his wife's name Eve because she was the mother of all living. Both Adam and his wife received the first Gospel proclamation in silence; they believed the promise and arose from their fall with due repentance. This is shown even in the name which Adam applied to his wife, calling her "life," or "source of life," because she became the mother of the entire human race, whose propagation and life was dependent upon her.
v. 21. Unto Adam also and to his wife did the Lord God make coats of skins and clothed them. So the first real dress of man was God's work; He authorized them, He gave them instructions, to make themselves coats of skins, which they were to wear as a covering for their nakedness and as a protection against the rigors of a changed climate. Beginning with this time, then, men were permitted to kill and sacrifice animals for their own use. This act of God, incidentally, serves as a basis for all order and decency in the matter of dress under all circumstances. If the dress of man or woman does not cover their nakedness, but suggests or reveals such charms as have an essentially sensual appeal, then it does not serve the purpose for which the Lord intended it in the beginning, then it becomes a tool in the service of sin.
v. 22. And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of Us to know good and evil; and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever,
v. 23. therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the Garden of Eden to till the ground from whence he was taken. Here the Triune God is again shown in counsel with Himself. Man had become, in a manner of speaking, like one of the persons of the Godhead. He knew good and evil, although, unfortunately, he was involved in the latter himself, having broken through the bounds set him by the Lord. The sentence of punishment had been spoken, and lest man frustrate its force by partaking of the tree of life as well, the Lord now formally expelled Adam and Eve from the lovely garden which had been their home. The man was destined henceforth to gain his livelihood by the most laborious application to the soil from which he himself had been formed.
v. 24. So He drove out the man; and He placed at the east of the Garden of Eden cherubim, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life. After his expulsion, man's return into the garden was rendered impossible by the fact that God on the east side, the only accessible entrance, stationed cherubim, armed with the flame of a sword that was two-edged and sharp, glittering in the light as the rays struck its brilliant play. To attempt to pass meant certain death. Man would henceforth know of the existence of Paradise, would even know the location of the tree of life, whose supernatural powers had not been removed by God, but man could not return. This fact was to remind him continually of the time of the final perfection, when sin will be destroyed forever, death will be abolished, and the true tree of life will bear fruit for those that partake of salvation throughout eternity, Revelation 20, 21.