Chapter 3 (continued, part 2)
sinner. 'Because thou hast done this,' are the awful words with which he will be sent into the everlasting fire.
Such is the visible curse on the serpent. Let us now mark (ver. 15) the invisible curse on Satan. There was to be, from that moment, war between Satan and the woman, enmity between his seed and her seed. Nay, there was to be warfare,—open warfare. This warfare would consist of two great parts, or stages. In the first, the woman's seed would be wounded; in the second, the serpent would be destroyed. The length of his warfare is not stated, or how near its two great parts might be to each other. They might be near, or they might be far off, we are not told, for it was not needful that we should learn this at first. Simply the two things are presented to us, but the question of time is kept out of view that, from the very first, there might be not merely a looking for the arrival of the woman's seed, but also a watching for Him. We get here but the far-off glimpse of a great mountain-range. Its lofty peaks seem all clustered together, as if there were not a step between: yet, when we reach them, as now in their last days we have done, we find them separated from each other by valleys, and plains, and precipices of vast extent and height. We could not gather from the brief words of this verse whether the battle was to be the conflict of a day or of ten thousand years. After ages were to unroll the detail; to reveal to us the suffering and the triumph, the shame and the glory. So closely are the first and second comings of the Lord here brought together, that we should have supposed that there was no interval between them.
But though the times and seasons were not given, and therefore much was hidden from man, yet enough was told to let him know that God had taken his part against his enemy; that Divine love had interposed and pledged itself to the final discomfiture of Satan, and the final blessedness of the victim which he had counted on as his own. Here sounds the first note of gladness in the ear of man. It sounds in many respects indistinctly and inarticulately; but in this respect, at least, is it most distinct and articulate, that it announces the free love of God, and that free love not simply as displayed in the
sending of a deliverer; but as making for itself a righteous approach to man through the sufferings of that deliverer Himself. Now the great thought of God's heart, the idea of grace, began to be unfolded, not only to man, but to the universe. But oh! what a mighty apparatus requires to be constructed ere that one idea can be made plain, and man trusted with it! What an apparatus must be raised (and that gradually, age after age) for carrying out as well as for exhibiting the whole adjustment of righteousness and grace, holiness and grace, wrath and grace, punishment and grace, ere the sinner can be made to comprehend the new, the strange idea, or to distinguish it from mere indifference to sin, or be trusted with the application of it to himself! This was the first step to the unfolding of 'the mystery which was hid in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ; that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known by the Church the manifold wisdom of God, according to the eternal purpose which He purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord' (Eph. 3:9–11). And it is in reference to this that the epistle thus concludes: 'Unto Him be glory IN THE CHURCH, throughout all ages, world without end. Amen' (Eph. 3:21). And at the consummation of the glorious mystery shall this song be sung: 'Oh the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God!' (Rom. 11:33.)
Having briefly sketched the meaning of these two verses, let us now look at them more in detail. They are too important to be slightly passed over. They contain the root of all redemption-truth.
1. Let us mark how God proceeds in His inquiries after sin.—He first traces it out step by step, tracks it in all its windings, ere He utters one word of judgment. His dealings hitherto had been with Adam, as the head of creation. Therefore He speaks first to him. Then from Adam sin is traced to the woman, then from the woman to the serpent. By this process, it was brought solemnly before the conscience of the transgressors, that they might see what they had done. In this process God takes no advantage of the sinner. He does not make use of His omniscience or omnipotence to convict or
overawe the sinner, or to extort confession from him. He proves all by the sinner's own admission, that his mouth may be stopped, and that the Judge may be acknowledged as righteous in all He does; that He may not only be the just God, but that He may be seen to be so by His creatures (see Job 34:23; Ps. 51:4; Rom. 3:4). And as is the process of inquiry, so is the judgment. The sentence is judicially announced, not in anger, but in righteousness. Having traced the sin to its source, God begins with the serpent, the source of the evil, or rather with Satan and the serpent jointly, as the twofold source. He began with the transgressor in His inquiry, He begins with the tempter in His judgment; for the first word of condemnation must be directed against the originator of sin, the first stroke of wrath must fall on the prime mover of the deed. Thus, even in the minutest things, showing His truth and justice! Even in the order of judgment, how careful to mark His sense of the different kinds of criminality! Such is a specimen of the way in which He will judge the world in righteousness!
2. Let us mark the circumstances in which the sentence was given.— It was given in the hearing of our parents. It was not specially directed to them. They were but hearers. Yet the scene was designed for them. This curse on the serpent was spoken in their ears, because it contained in it God's purpose of grace towards them. God's design was, that they should learn His gracious intentions without delay, and thus their fears be quieted and their confidence in God restored, but still that they should learn them in a way which should completely humble them, and make them feel that the grace did not arise from anything in themselves. They learn this grace of God in a sort of side way, as if God turned away His face when making it known. They get it in the form of a curse against the serpent for the evil done by him, thereby learning that the evil done must all be undone before man can be blest! This awful curse against the being that had ruined them intimated such things as these: (1.) That God meant to save them, and not to give them up to the snares of their enemy; (2.) That they could only be saved by their enemy being destroyed; (3.) That this destruction would be attended with toil, and
conflict, and wounds; (4.) That it was easy to ruin a world, but hard to save and restore. How affecting the thought, that God could not preach the gospel directly to Adam, but that he must be left to gather it from the curse against the Evil One,—as if he could not be trusted with the full glad tidings of grace till he had learned the exceeding sinfulness of sin! How different now with us! God preaches that gospel directly to the sinner in all its largeness; saying to each of us, There is grace enough for thee, come thou and be reconciled, come thou and be saved!
3. Let us mark how God hated that which Satan had done.—'Because thou hast done this,' are the words of awful preface to the sentence. God had no pleasure in the snare or the ruin it had wrought. He had no satisfaction in the marring of His handiwork, no pleasure in the death of the sinner, no joy in the desolation of His world. His words are the expression of deep displeasure against him who had done the horrid deed, and at the deed which had been done. And let us not forget how much of that which Satan has since then been doomed to suffer, as well as of that which he shall hereafter suffer, has its origin here. 'Because thou hast done this!' No doubt he was ruined and doomed before, for his own transgression; but now he is to be sunk to a lower level of condemnation, and loaded with a weightier curse, for being the tempter of man, the destroyer of a world. This is the brand upon his burning forehead; this is the millstone round his neck. God will have him understand how He abhorred that which he had done. And when hereafter he is seized, and bound, and shut up by the strong angel in the abyss, shall not these words ring in his ears as he is thrust down into his dwelling of darkness, 'Because thou hast done this'? His sin, by means of which he succeeded in casting man out of Eden, shall be the sin by which he himself shall be cast wholly out of earth, to deceive the nations no more.
4. In undoing the evil God begins at its source.—The drying up of the stream wall not do; the source must be reached. If man is to be saved at all, it must be by the removal of sin; and if sin is to be removed, God must begin at the very root. There must be a complete undoing
of the evil,—an undoing which shall not only sweep off the actual sin, with its sad results, but which shall strike at the very nature of sin itself. Thus God's hatred of sin is the foundation of the sinner's deliverance; and no deliverance can be sure or permanent, if not founded upon this. God's purpose of grace does not treat sin as a light thing, but as an infinite evil, which must be met at its first uprising; nay, which can only be rightly met when met there. Grace cannot come forth to the sinner, save in connection with the utter condemnation of the sin. There can be no true love to the sinner, which does not extirpate and utterly make away with the sin. Sin was the real enemy, and love to the sinner must proceed at once against this enemy, not resting till it is utterly destroyed.
5. God shows that Satan shall not be allowed to triumph.—He has gained a mighty advantage, but his victory is only temporary and partial. God is seen interposing and setting His face against the adversary. God is taking the sinner's side; and this is the assurance that Satan's victory shall be reversed! His doom is sealed. Degradation, shame, ruin, are his portion. What might have been his doom hitherto on account of his former sin we know not; but here we learn the superadded penalty which he was henceforth to bear. Man hears the condemnation of his enemy, and knows that this defeat is his deliverance. And of this he is to have a visible pledge in the serpent's form and habits. This very curse upon the serpent is the declaration to man of his own deliverance from the curse, for it is God's declaration of displeasure against the enemy that had seduced him. Thus Satan's ruin and the sinner's deliverance are bound up together. It was to 'destroy the works of the devil' that the Son of God was to come; nay, it was 'to destroy him that had the power of death, even the devil.' And we now, in these days, know that He has come. He has done His mighty work. He has led captivity captive.
6. God Himself undertakes man's cause.—'I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed.' It is not, 'there shall be enmity;' but 'I will put it.' God Himself will now proceed to work for man. The serpent's malice and success have but
drawn forth the deeper love and more direct interposition in man's behalf.
7. God promises a seed to the woman.—All that this implied she could not know at the time. But it is evidently declared, that she was not to die immediately. The sentence, 'In the day thou eatest thou shalt die,' was to be suspended in so far as death temporal was concerned. She was to have a seed, and that said, Thou art not to die immediately. This suspension was, of itself, an intimation of grace. The seed of the woman might be supposed to be three. First, there is the whole race of man. Secondly, there is the Church. Thirdly, there is the Messiah. To this last, more especially, does the promise point. On Him, as the woman's seed, He sought to fix man's eye from the beginning. Through Him deliverance was to come. For whatever might be the mystery hanging over this, still it was indicated that it was in this way, and through this seed, that sin was to be undone. The woman's seed was to be God's instrument in destroying Satan, and avenging the wrong he had done to man. Here let us mark, (1.) The honour put upon the woman, even though she was first in transgression.2 This is grace indeed,—grace in its largeness. And thus, while the woman is taught not to be overmuch cast down, the man is hindered from triumphing over her. (2.) The confounding of Satan. It is the seed of his victim that is to be his destroyer. It is thus that he is put to shame, and the success of his wiles made the means of his own ruin. His triumph is his destruction. (3.) The directing of the Church's eye to a person as the instrument of blessing; nay, to a man,—very flesh and blood. The salvation was to come from God, and yet it was to come through man.
8. God is to put enmity between the serpent and the woman, and between the serpent's seed and the woman's seed.—The woman and the serpent had joined together in rebellion; and so long as this friendship lasted, there could be no hope for her or for the race. But God steps in to break this bond. This 'covenant with death shall be disannulled, and this agreement with hell shall not stand.' The woman and the serpent had been fellow-accomplices; but henceforth
this league was to be broken. As if God had said to the tempter, 'Thou hast beguiled her to be an accomplice with thee against me, and thou thinkest to get her seed to join thee; but it shall not be so. I will break the alliance. I will not only separate between thee and her, but I will raise up deadly hatred.' Let us notice here such things as these: (1.) The enmity between Satan and the Church. There can be no friendship with him, and no sympathy with his works. Thus the distinction between the Church and the world is as old as Eden; and it is not merely distinction, it is hostility. (2.) The enmity between Christ and Satan; between Him who is the representative of heaven and him who is the representative of hell; between Him who is the friend and him who is the enemy of man. (3.) The name given to the ungodly,—'the seed of the serpent.' And it was this expression that Christ took up when He spoke of the 'generation of vipers,' and said to the unbelieving Jews, 'Ye are of your father the devil.' By birth we are the serpent's brood, till grace transforms us, and we become the woman's seed; then our friendship with the accursed race is for ever broken. (4.) The name of the Church,—'the seed of the woman.' Yes, the seed of her who sinned, who 'was in the transgression,'— offspring of Eve,—of her who was first in apostasy. What tender favour is thus shown to her! (5.) The name of Christ. The same as the Church's, the 'seed of the woman.' Yes, He was indeed 'born of a woman,'—the Son of Mary,—the Son of Eve,—the Son of her that had transgressed. We sometimes wonder that Jesus should have allowed such names as Tamar, and Rahab, and Bathsheba to be in the roll of His ancestors; but is not all this implied in His being called at the outset the seed of the woman? What grace is there in His taking to Himself such a name! What oneness with us does such a name imply; oneness with all the redeemed! Ah, surely He is not ashamed to call us brethren! Truly the Son of man did come to seek and to save that which was lost.
9. There is not only to be enmity, but conflict.—That these two parties should keep aloof from each other was not enough. There must be more than this. There must be alienation and hatred; nay, there must be warfare, and that of the most desperate kind. Satan
and the Church must ever be at open warfare. The world and the Church must ever be foes to each other. It cannot be otherwise. No concession, no compromise, can ever make it otherwise, or alter the declared purpose of Jehovah. Neither Satan nor the world can change. They may hide their vileness, they may mask their hatefulness, and seek to win us with flattery, or beguile us with lies; but they change not. They are still 'from beneath,' not 'from above;' and woe be to us, if by silence, or unfaithfulness, or compliance, we dishonour our Lord before them, and act unworthy of our calling, and name, and hope!
The beginning of this warfare we see in Cain and Abel. Its progress we find in the history of succeeding ages. In Christ Himself we see that warfare at its height. Since then it has still proceeded, and perhaps more than before, in the open field. Babylon was Satan's citadel at first, round which his armies were gathered, and from which, as from a centre, he assailed the Church in her citadel, which, in former days, was exclusively Jerusalem. In each of the seats of the four successive monarchies Satan found a citadel. These were his four great encampments, from which he launched his squadrons against the army of the living God. Especially in the last of these empires has he found at once a city and a fortress, from which he assails the hated followers of the Lamb, and 'wears out the saints of the Most High;' shedding their blood like water, and scattering their bones upon the earth. In a threefold form does this great antiChristian armament take the field,—as Paganism, as Popery, as Infidelity,—the last the most terrible of all, as the product and combination of the others,—the concentration and embodiment of all the various forms of evil from the beginning. In its ranks will be found 'the seed of the serpent' in fullest development,—the truest offspring of the Evil One to which earth has given birth. This conflict is made up of two great parts,—two events, each of which is the crisis of a long series preceding, and the commencement of another series arising out of it. They are widely different in their nature, though forming part of one great development. They are thus referred to by our Lord, 'Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to
enter into His glory?' (Luke 24:26); and by the Apostle Peter, when he speaks of 'the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow' (1 Pet. 1:11); and again, when he speaks of himself as a 'witness of the sufferings of Christ, and also a partaker of the glory that shall be revealed' (1 Pet. 5:1). They form the two mighty events, known to us as the first and second comings of the Lord,—the first coming embracing that part of the conflict which consists in His 'suffering,' the second coming embracing that which is consummated in His 'glory.' Let us notice the two divisions.
1. The bruising of the heel of the woman's seed.—It is not the woman's heel that is to be bruised, but the heel of her seed; neither is it the woman that is to bruise the serpent's head, but her seed;—'it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.' It was an inferior part that was to be wounded, not a vital one. Yet still there was to be a wound. The serpent's seed was to have a temporary triumph, and this was fulfilled when Jesus hung on the cross. Then the heel was bruised. Then Satan seemed to conquer. That was the hour and power of darkness. Then 'He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities.' Then that wound was given which defeated him who gave it, and began our victory. Thus it was that the Church was taught to look forward to the 'bruised heel,' and out of that symbol to gather the great truth which alone can heal the conscience, that God had provided a substitute, by the shedding of whose blood there was to be deliverance. It was not salvation by mere love that was taught; it was not salvation by mere incarnation; it was salvation by sacrificial substitute, salvation by vicarious bloodshedding, salvation by a surety's endurance and exhaustion of the penalty which was our due. In no other way could love find its way to us, and in no other could our consciences have been pacified. The 'bruised heel' was not the mere display of love; it was the judicial removal of the righteous barrier, which would otherwise have for ever hindered that love from reaching the sinner. In the man with the 'bruised heel' we see the sinner's substitute, and, at the same time, the sinner's pattern,—his 'leader and commander.' We are followers of the Man with the bruised heel! Let us not be
ashamed of Him or of His cross! Let us not expect for ourselves anything better than He had to pass through. Tribulation was His entrance into the kingdom. It must also be ours. The servant is not greater than his Lord.
2. The bruising of the serpent's head.—It was his most vital as well as his most honourable part that was to be bruised. An intimation this of utter defeat and ruin. He has received many a stroke. His deadly wound was given upon the cross, in that very stroke by which he bruised the heel of the woman's seed. So that from that moment our victory was secure. But the final blow is reserved for the Lord's second coming. Then it is that the great dragon, that old serpent, is to be bound in chains, and shut up in the abyss. And it is to that day of triumph that the apostle's words specially refer, 'The God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly.'
Such was the curse upon the tempter; such the glad tidings to man which it contained; such the grace it manifested; such the victory which it pledged; and such the process through which that triumph was to be reached. It was this display of an infinite but most unexpected grace that made Adam throw aside his fig-leaves, leave his thicket, and draw nigh to God. He could have expected only avenging wrath; he meets with pardoning love; love that would not rest till it had undone all the evil that had been brought into the world by man's sin; that would spare no cost, not even the blood of the Only-begotten of the Father, in accomplishing this end; and would press forward through every enemy and every barrier, till it had taken the spoil from the mighty, and delivered the lawful captive; till it had overthrown the adversary in righteous battle; till it had won back man and man's forfeited inheritance; till it had compensated for all the dishonours done to God by Satan's victory; nay, till it had secured glory to God in the highest, peace on earth, and good-will to man.
Ver. 16. 'Unto the woman He said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception: in sorrow thou shalt bring forth
children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.'
In the sentence on the woman there are no words of preface, serving as a link to connect the special sin with the special penalty. In the case of the serpent, the preface was, 'because thou hast done this.' In the case of Adam, it was, 'because thou hast hearkened to the voice of thy wife;' but in the case of the woman, it is not, as might have been expected, 'because thou hast hearkened to the serpent;' but, without any such introduction, the sentence goes forth at once, 'I will greatly multiply thy sorrow.' The want of this introduction, taken in connection with the peculiar sentence, seems to show that the woman's punishment was something special, superadded to her share in the punishment of the race, because of her leading her husband into the transgression. As one with the man, she was to partake of his sentence; but, as having misled the man, she was to have a penalty that would always remind her of this. Adam, as the representative of the race, is made to bear the general penalty; and in this the woman, as one of the race, has her part. But, apart from this, as the beguiler of her husband, when given him as his help-meet, she is to have her sorrows multiplied. Yet though her sentence implies this, God, in His tender love to her, does not actually announce this with a 'because,' lest the man should think that God was confirming his accusation against her (ver. 12), and thereby lessening his guilt. Thus she gets something which the man does not, because she was first in transgression, and because she was both the deceived and the deceiver. 'Adam,' says the apostle (1 Tim. 2:14), 'was not deceived (by the serpent); but the woman, being deceived, was in the transgression. Notwithstanding, she (even she!) shall be saved (no less than Adam) through her child-bearing (by means of that very child-bearing which contained her sentence and her sorrow), if she continue in faith, and love, and holiness, with sobriety;' for without holiness no man shall see the Lord.
Thus it was made manifest, (1.) That God looked upon the serpent as the great origin of the sin and the evil in both woman and man. (2.)
That God treated Adam as the representative of the race, through whom sin entered, and passed over to posterity, so that it was not Eve's sin that effected our ruin (though it brought woe upon herself), but that (if we can suppose the case), had Eve sinned alone, no evil would have followed to mankind (Rom. 5:12, 14; 1 Cor. 15:22). (3.) That the very penalty inflicted was connected with grace; the childbearing in sorrow, which was the penalty, being the channel through which the seed was to come by whom deliverance was to be wrought. (4.) That God wished it to be known that this sentence of evil, as well as the previous sentence of blessing, came directly from Himself. He is the Almighty, the Sovereign doer as well as purposer of all. 'I will greatly multiply.'
This sentence takes for granted the previous promise of 'the seed.' As if God were saying to the woman, 'Yes, thou shalt have a seed, and from it deliverance shall come, and come through thee, the introducer of the evil; but the bringing forth of that seed shall be a perpetual memorial of thy sin, so that thou shalt be continually humbled, and solemnized, and saddened, by the very thing which seemed fitted only to lift thee up, and make thee rejoice; with thy joy shall grief be mingled, so that thou shalt not be allowed to forget thy sin, but be perpetually reminded of it; and if at any time thou shouldst exult unduly, and say, "I am the deliverer," thou shalt hear a voice saying in thine ears, "But thou wast the transgressor." ' Thus the memorial of the deliverance and of the sin is one. The two things are kept before our eyes by the same token; and we are taught that, whilst there is a redemption and a Redeemer, it was an awful sin that needed such a redemption and such a Redeemer. On each portion and fragment of this ruined world has God written the evil of sin.
His sentence on the woman is, in part, a reversal of the first blessing: 'Multiply, and replenish the earth.' God's blessing alone went out at first with the command to multiply; but now some drops of the curse are to be infused into it, in remembrance of sin. The race was still to go on increasing; but henceforth it was to be in sorrow. The very perpetuation of the species was to be accompanied with marks of the
displeasure of God. The dark cloud of sorrow was to take up its station above each man as he came into the world. There was henceforth to be pain and danger, fear and trembling, the shrinking of woman's feeble nature from the greatness of the conflict which lay before her, ere the desire of her eyes was attained; and that which was meant to have been an unmingled joy, became the sorest trial of humanity; one of Nature's sharpest struggles; one of the bitterest ills that flesh is heir to. And, kindred to these pangs of her corporeal frame, are the other varied sorrows which overshadow her lot—the weakness, the dependence, the fear, the rising and sinking of heart, the bitterness of disappointed hope, the wounds of unrequited affection;—all these, as drops of the sad cup now put into her hands, woman has, from the beginning, been made to taste.
The sentence falls on her specially as woman, not as one with the man, and part of the human race, but as woman. The things which mark her out as woman are the things which the sentence selects. It is as the mother and as the wife that she is to feel the weight of the sentence now pronounced. A mother's pangs (which otherwise would have been unknown); a wife's dependence (which, in all save Christian countries, is utter degradation); sorrow, not joy, in that appointed process through which the promised seed is to be born into the world; inferiority, instead of equality, in that relationship in reference to which it had been said by her husband, 'Bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh;' not henceforth the husband 'cleaving to the wife,' as at the first (2:24), but the wife cleaving to the husband, and the husband ruling over the wife. Such are the sad results of sin!
In the helplessness of clinging dependence, as well as in the fondness of blind attachment; in the consciousness of needing an arm to lean upon, as well as in the irrepressible overflow of passionate and unreasoning love, 'thy desire shall be to thy husband.' Nay, more, 'he shall rule over thee.' His the lordship, thine the submission; his the rule, thine the obedience. Such, henceforth, is to be thy condition; such the principle on which the domestic constitution is to be reared. So God has ordained it; not only as the penalty of woman's sin, but as
that which best suits a fallen world, and which best carries out His design in regard to the families and kingdoms of the children of men. And what can that family expect where this divine ordinance is overlooked, nay, perhaps reversed? Hence the apostle utters the command so strongly, 'Wives, be in subjection to your own husbands' (1 Pet. 3:1); 'Submit yourselves unto your own husbands in everything. Let the wife see that she reverence her husband' (Eph. 5:22, 24, 33).
Yet, as if to comfort her spirit under this heavy prospect; as if to elevate woman's lowly lot, and to sanctify a mother's pangs, God has taken this very fact concerning her as the groundwork of figures wherein He sets forth the world's coming deliverance and the Church's promised glory. To this He refers when He speaks of creation's groans and travail-pains (Rom. 8:22); and of His people's joy when the day of present sorrow shall have passed away (John 16:21, 22). Again, as if to dignify woman's humbling dependence on another, the figure of the wife is made use of in illustrating the relationship between Christ and His redeemed (Eph. 5:23–32). He, the lover; she, the loved one; he, gazing on her beauty (Song 6:4, 7:1– 6); she, leaning on his strength (Song 2:6, 8:5); he, decking her with jewels, as the partner of his throne and heart; she, 'sick with love,' yet reverently looking up to and rejoicing in the strength and honour of her husband-king; he, putting on his royal state and raiment of glory, to win her eye yet more; she, though conscious of the infinite inequality, not saying, as human love in such circumstances is represented as doing:
'It were all one
That I should love a bright particular star,
And think to wed it; he is so above me,
In his bright radiance and collateral light
Must I be comforted, not in his sphere;'
but saying, in the conscious security of well-proved affection, 'My beloved is mine, and I am his.'
Under the figure of woman's birth-pangs, the whole creation is described as travailing and groaning, pressing forwards with eager longings to the glorious birth which lies before it, in the day of the 'regeneration.' Israel, too, is spoken of under the same figure, as anticipating a wondrous birth in the same day of 'restitution' (Isa. 66:7, 8); and the Church also is represented as, with like pangs and groanings, longing for her expected hour of blessing (Rev. 12:2).
And as this sentence on woman as a mother is thus made use of to set forth the process of bitter grief and anguish through which the coming glory is to be reached, so the sentence on her as the wife is referred to in connection with the Church's relationship to Christ; for though she is spoken of as the Bride, the Lamb's wife, spouse of the second Adam, yet to her it is said, as if to keep her in mind of her subject condition, 'He is thy Lord, worship thou Him' (Ps. 45:11); so that, though in one sense she seems raised to an equality with Him, and placed upon His throne, yet she is ever to keep in mind her inferiority to Him who is 'God over all.'
Church of God! Bride of the Lamb! keep in remembrance thy heavenly calling, thy relationship to the Son of God, that thou mayest be cheered, and gladdened, and quickened; yet keep in mind thy lowly origin, thy unworthiness of character, thy unlikeness to the Holy One who has bethrothed thee to Himself, that thou mayest be humbled and abased. He is thy Lord, worship thou Him; forget not the adoration that is due to Him for His high majesty and condescending love. He is thy Lord, let thy desire be to Him. Love Him as He hath loved thee, and let His name be written on thy heart. He is thy Lord, let Him rule over thee! Serve Him as He hath served thee, when for thee He took on Him the form of a servant. Rejoice in being reigned over by one whose sceptre is love. He is thy Lord, look for His appearing, for He comes to complete the espousals. Long for that marriage-day; the day of nearness, and union, and vision, when
the bridal-blessing, the bridal-glory, the bridal-crown, shall all be thine. In spite of the 'much tribulation' that lies before thee, be of good cheer, for thus He Himself has spoken: 'A woman when she is in travail hath sorrow, because her hour is come; but as soon as she is delivered of the child, she remembereth no more the anguish, for joy that a man is born into the world. And ye now therefore have sorrow; but will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you' (John 16:21, 22).
Vers. 17–19. 'And unto Adam He said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake (or on thy account); in sorrow (or with pain) shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life: 18. Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee (Heb. and thorns and thistles shall it cause to bud to thee); and thou shalt eat the herb of the field. 19. In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.'
God now turns to Adam, to pronounce sentence upon him. In his case, as in that of the serpent, He begins with 'because,' making him feel the special point on which his punishment is made to turn. Adam had cast the blame of his sin on the woman, as if to palliate his own guilt, or at least to divide it with another. God begins at that very point, and takes up the excuse thus made as the very aggravation of the sin. Had the case been that of the woman hearkening to the man, there would have been some excuse for her, for she was under him; but it was Adam, the head, hearkening to the voice of her whom he ought to have led, instead of suffering himself to be led by her. God had made him the head of the woman as well as the head of creation, and therefore his sin was aggravated, not extenuated, by its being done at the woman's suggestion. For thus Adam left his place of rule; he forgot his headship, he overlooked his responsibility both to his wife and to his posterity; he set his wife's voice above the voice of God. Thus he made haste to sin; and, as he aggravated the sin by
doing it at the suggestion of her whom he ought to have restrained, and guided, and watched over, so he aggravated it still more by trying to make that a palliation which was an increase of heinousness.
The sentence then follows: 'Cursed is the ground for thy sake.' It is not a direct one, as in the case of the serpent and of the woman, but a sentence in the form of a curse upon the earth. The king is punished by a curse upon his kingdom, in addition to the personal woe falling on himself, just as Pharaoh was cursed in the plagues inflicted on his people.
The ground, out of which he was taken, is cursed on his account, as if all pertaining to him had become evil. It is not he that suffers on account of his connection with the soil, but it is the soil that suffers on account of its connection with him, affording proof that it is not from matter that evil flows into spirit, but that it is from spirit that evil flows into matter. That soil from which he had sprung, that soil which God had just been strewing with verdure and flowers, that soil whose fruitfulness had produced the tree whose beauty and desirableness had been the woman's beguilement and his own ruin, that soil must now be scourged and sterilized on his account; as if God had thus addressed him: 'I can no longer trust thee with a fruitful soil, nor allow the blessing with which I have blessed the earth to abide upon it; thou art to remain here for a season, but it shall not be the same earth; in mercy I will still leave it such an earth as thou canst inherit, not a wilderness nor a chaos as at first, but still with enough of gloom, and desolation, and barrenness, as to remind thee of thy sin, to say to thee continually, O man, thou hast ruined the earth over which I had set thee as king.' God's blessing on the soil at first proclaimed the commencement of an age of holiness on earth; His curse proclaimed the entrance of sin; and, in the latter day, His blessing shall again descend, restoring it to former excellence and beauty. It was for man's sake that it was made a blessed earth at first; it was for man's sake that it was transformed into a cursed one; and for man's sake it shall be restored to a blessed world again. The first
Adam's connection with it (being made of dust) drew on it all evil when he fell; but the second Adam's connection with it—for He also has a body formed out of it—shall undo the evil, cancel the curse, and perfect it again.
Let us mark the details of the curse.
1. The earth is to bring forth the thorn and the thistle. Whether these existed before, we do not undertake to say, nor whether they are given here merely as the representatives of all noxious plants or weeds, nor whether the object of the curse, in so far as they were concerned, was to turn them into abortions, which they really are. Taking the words as they lie before us, we find that the essence of the curse was the multiplication of these prickly abortions, till they should become noxious to man, and beast, and herb of the field; mere nuisances on the face of the ground. Elsewhere in Scripture they are referred to as calamities. As the effects of judgments, Job refers to them, 31:40, and Jeremiah, 12:13. As the true offspring of a barren soil, the apostle speaks of them, Heb. 6:8. As injurious to all around, our Lord Himself alludes to them, Matt. 13:7–22. And it is evident that all these passages connect themselves with the original curse, and are to be interpreted by a reference to it. They are tokens of God's original displeasure against man's sin, so that the sight of them should recall us to this awful scene in Eden, and make us feel how truly God hates sin, and how impossible it is for Him to change in His hatred of it. These tokens of His anger have not been rooted up, neither have they withered away. They have survived the changes of six thousand years. They are God's monuments of sin, and must stand till He who erected them shall take them down, and that come to pass which is written, 'Instead of the thorn shall come up the firtree, and instead of the briar shall come up the myrtle-tree: and it shall be to the Lord for a name, for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off' (Isa. 55:13).
Christ, in bearing our sins, was 'made a curse for us' (Gal. 3:13). He took our curse upon Him in all its parts. He was treated as the
accursed One. In token of this He sorrowed, and was crucified, and died, and went down into the grave. It was our curse that wrought all these evils for the sinless One. And it was in token that He was truly the curse-bearer that He allowed Himself to be crowned with thorns. In wearing a 'crown,' He was saying, 'I am a King—earth's King, as the first Adam was;' and His enemies, in crowning Him, were unconsciously owning His royalty and dominion; in wearing a crown of thorns, He was announcing Himself as the willing sufferer of the sentence which attached not only to Adam, but to His inheritance, the earth; He was saying, 'Lo, I have come to stand in the first Adam's place, to bear the first Adam's penalty, to endure the first Adam's curse, to redeem the first Adam's forfeited kingdom, and in token thereof I accept this crown of thorns.'
2. Man is to eat the herb of the field. Originally, the fruit of the various trees was to have been man's food; the 'herb' was for the lower creation, if not exclusively, at least chiefly. But now he is degraded. He is still, of course, to eat fruit, but in this he is to be restricted. Whether it were that, the earth being less productive in fruit, he must betake himself to inferior sustenance; or whether it might also be from a change in bodily constitution, requiring something else than fruit, we cannot say. The sentence is, 'Thou shalt eat the herb of the field, not the pleasant fruits of paradise.' In the ages to come, when the better paradise arrives, every vestige of this is swept away, and we 'eat of the tree of life which is in the midst of the paradise of God' (Rev. 2:7).
3. He is to eat in sorrow. There was to be no glad feasting, but a bitter eating, or, if there might be feasting, it should be like Israel's, 'with bitter herbs,'—the sweet and the bitter mingling. A cloud of sorrow was to hang not only over his dwelling, but especially over his table; and perhaps to this we may trace the divinely instituted practice of fasting, as if not only man's eating was to be in sorrow, but as if at certain times he was specially to connect his common food with the remembrance of sin, and to put it away from him altogether, as if not worthy to be sustained by God at all.
Does not man mock all this by his feastings, making them to be special seasons of merriment and pleasure, and forgetting that God had thrown over them a dark shadow, as the memorial of sin! Yet the time is coming when joy shall take the place of sorrow. The great festival is at hand; the feast of fat things for Israel (Isa. 25:6), the marriage-supper for the Church (Rev. 19:9), and the great feast of tabernacles at Jerusalem for the nations of the earth (Zech. 14:16), Of this day of happy festival—this time of the removal of the curse—we have an earnest in the supper of the Lord, when we show His death till He come; nay, more, we may be said to have an earnest of it each time that, like the early believers, we eat our bread with gladness and singleness of heart (Acts 2:46), as men who by faith have already tasted their deliverance from the curse.
4. He is to eat it with toil. He is to wring a stinted subsistence out of the reluctant earth with sore labour and weariness; and the 'sweat of his face' is to attest the hardness of the conflict. The earth will not yield even the herb of the field without heavy toil, toil in every department of the preparation of his food—tilling, sowing, reaping, grinding. He cannot live but in a way which reminds him of his primal sin. Each day he hears the original sentence ringing in his ears. And yet all this hard toil serves barely to sustain a 'dying life;' and even that only for a little, until he return to the dust. This is the end of his earthly toil!
5. He is to die. Grace does not remit the whole penalty. It leaves a fragment behind it, in pain, weakness, sickness, death, though at the same time it extracts blessing out of all these relics of the curse. Besides, in thus leaving men subject to death, it leaves open the door by which the great Deliverer was to go in and rob the spoiler of his prey. By death is death to be destroyed. Man must die! He came from the dust, and he must return to it. The grave must be his portion. Yet, like everything else in the great purpose of grace, this is but the occasion for bringing in larger blessing—that is, resurrection, and all that resurrection comprises. Far beyond our original possessions, are those which flow to us through this channel. Resurrection-life and
resurrection-glory are things higher far than that which Adam knew ere he fell.
Thus has sin degraded man; bringing him down to a lower level; introducing toil, and sweat, and weariness; infusing sorrow into every part of our lot; nay, making us to be 'born to trouble as the sparks fly upward' (Job 5:7, 14:1); making our very food to be the memorial of the curse, and existence only to be maintained by a daily warfare with it; bringing in death, preparing the grave, tearing asunder soul and body; ruining this globe itself, and making its very soil the abode of evil.
Where the actual seat of the curse lies we cannot say. Whether it is in the ground itself, from which noxious influences ascend; or whether it is from the air, in consequence of its being the abode of 'the prince of the power of the air,' so that the soil is impregnated with evil by these ever-descending influences, we cannot say. The subtle processes of atmospheric action are only half discovered, and even science itself is not prepared to say what is the cause of earth's strange fruitfulness in evil and barrenness in good. But the disease is there, though man may not detect the seat. God's purpose subjected the creation to 'vanity.' We know this. We know also that it is subjected 'in hope' (Rom. 8:20), and that that hope will ere long become a reality.
What efforts man makes to shake off the curse, both from himself and creation!—by means of science healing his own body, alleviating his sufferings, lessening his toil, and fertilizing the earth. To a large extent has he succeeded. Marvellous discoveries have been made, by means of which, for a season, the body may be made insensible to suffering, so that the severest operations may be performed—nay, even woman's travail passed through, without the consciousness of a pang. Marvellous progress has been made in tillage, so that with less toil the soil is made more fruitful; in producing the various articles needed for subsistence or clothing, mechanical power has been brought in, to lighten or supersede the toil of man. In many such
ways has man succeeded in lightening the curse. Nor in any of these efforts is there sin. It is not sinful to endeavour to heal disease, or alleviate pain, or ease labour, or wipe the sweat from the brow. No. Man is to use all those facilities and advantages which God has given, and to be thankful that any part of the burden can be thus relieved.
If man, indeed, were in these endeavours defying God, and proclaiming his purpose of effacing what God has written so legibly upon creation, then it would be sin; it would be rebellion. But it is evident that God has allowed man to seek alleviations of the curse; He has allowed him to seek to prolong life by medicine; and, in doing so, He has told him that there is no sin in these endeavours, so long as God is recognised. When Paul said to Timothy, 'Drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy stomach's sake and thine often infirmities,' he was seeking to lighten the curse. And so, when we take measures either for healing disease or relieving pain, we are only acting in the spirit of that grace which has been dealing with our world since sin intruded, and showing us that God has not wholly given it over to the evil one; nay, we are acting in the spirit of Him who came not to destroy men's lives, but to save; who was anointed by the Holy Spirit for the very purpose of healing diseases, as well as of preaching the gospel to the poor.
But what then becomes of the curse? Is it to be disregarded wholly? Alas! after man has done his utmost, how very little of it has he removed! How much remains behind! And if those who sometimes are startled at the progress which man is making in soothing pain and healing disease, and who are at times afraid to make use of his remedies, would but consider how very little is, after all, effected; how in most cases it is a mere transient suspension of pain, a mere shifting of the burden from one shoulder to another, a mere relief such as that which rest gives to the body when it is weary; they would not be under any serious apprehension of man's interfering with the curse. That curse is too sore and deep for any to remove save He who laid it on. He will, in His own way and time, remove creation's curse, and stay its groans; He will bring to an end man's toil and woman's
travail; He will swallow up death in victory. For that glorious day of hope let us wait in faith, knowing that not till then will the 'regeneration' come; not till then will all things be restored. Man may wipe off the tear, but he cannot dry up its source. He may hide himself from the billow and the blast, but he cannot say to either, 'Peace, be still.'
Ver. 20. 'And Adam (Heb. the man) called his wife's name Eve (Heb. Chavah); because she was the mother of all living.'
The sentence has now been pronounced, the criminals have heard it and have left the place of judgment, each, doubtless, occupied with his own thoughts and pursuing his own way. Satan goes out from the presence of the Lord to begin his 'going to and fro in the earth' (Job 1:7), to lay his snares, to prepare his wiles, to forge his fiery darts with double malignity, because he has been foiled in his purpose utterly to ruin the race. The woman retires to brood over coming grief, yet to mingle happier thoughts with her darker musings in the anticipation of the promised offspring which was to be the issue of her pain and travail. The man departs to look round upon a blighted paradise and a ruined earth, to brood over the days and nights of toil that awaited him, till this brief day here be done; yet to cheer himself with the thought that there was love even now for him, and the undoing of the evil in the end.
What space may have intervened between the announcement of the sentence and the scene in this 20th verse, we know not. We may suppose it to have taken place when Adam and his wife retired from the present vision of Jehovah. They talked or silently mused together over what had just befallen them,—over the evil and the good, the falling and the rising, the condemnation and the pardon, the curse and the blessing, the past, the present, the future of their life. Then the man, as if catching up the notes of grace which were just dying away amid the trees of the garden, adds his Amen, and embodies them in the name of her who was now doubly knit to him, doubly one with himself.
The fact that it was not God but Adam that gave the name to the woman, teaches us much. Why did not God give Eve her name, as He had done to Adam? God did not allow Adam to name himself, even in his innocence; yet now in his fall He permits him to name the woman, nay, sanctions his so doing. This was for such reasons as the following:—(1.) To show His grace. What grace, what tender love is displayed in allowing man to give a name to his wife,—and such a name,—Eve,—LIFE! (2.) To show that Adam was not to be deprived of his headship. He was still to be 'head of the woman,' even in his fall, and as such he names her. (3.) To show, that though Adam had so cruelly flung blame upon her before God, yet no estrangement had followed. She was still bone of his bone. They had been companions in guilt, they were to be companions in sorrow, and they were fellowheirs of the hope just held out to them. Thus they were reunited in new bonds of mingled sadness and joy. (4.) To show the direction in which Adam's thoughts were running, that from this manifestation of the current of his thoughts we might learn how the promise had taken hold of him. This verse gives us unequivocal insight into the state of Adam's feelings. It exhibits him to us as one who understood, believed, prized, rested on the divine promise which he had just heard. He stands before us as a believing man; and we might say of him, 'By faith Adam called his wife's name Eve.' It is the voice of a believing man that speaks. One cannot mistake either the word or tone. Unbelief could not have spoken thus; none but a believer could have thought on such a name; a name that takes all its significancy from the promise,—Life, or the Living One,—doomed, and yet living; nay, dead by law, yet living; mother of the living; mother of a spared race; mother of one who is the Prince of life, 'the resurrection and the life;' mother of a family of men, alive from the dead! He takes the promise, he ponders it, he receives it as a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation; and, on thus receiving it, he gives vent to his feeling, and utterance to his faith, in this expressive name. What can this verse be but the solemn utterance of Adam's faith in the divine promise? Surely this is one of the most simple and childlike, yet one of the most expressive ways of proclaiming his faith; and as Abraham expressed his faith by calling his son Isaac, 'the child of gladness,' so
did Adam by naming his wife Eve, 'the mother of the living.' He looks at her and says, 'I see in thee the divine promise all realized,—life, not death, coming from thee; God carrying out His purpose of grace in thy seed, though afar off; I see in thee the pledge and embodiment of divine forgiveness and love, and I proclaim my faith in all this before God and before posterity, by naming thee Eve.' This name is not the mere burst of feeling or a vague expression of acquiescence or wonder; it is the explicit confession of his faith. It is as a believing man that he speaks; a man strong in faith, and wishing to hand down to posterity a declaration of his confidence in the promise of a gracious God.
How simple is his faith! He has just been listening to the voice of God announcing grace, and life through grace; and forthwith he believes. He cavils not, questions not. A dark cloud had come between him and God; but now that cloud has passed, and the true light is shining again. He has just for a moment tasted the bitter cup of separation from his God (and who can tell the agony of that interval?), and straightway he is brought back to his father's love and bosom. The child has but wandered a few steps from the parental door, when it is snatched up by the fond mother's arm and replaced beneath the happy roof, never more to stray. The sheep has but gone a little way from the fold, enough to let it feel the bleakness and famine of the desert, when it is seized by the shepherd's strong hand and carried back in joy.
How immediately and how simply he believes! 'Faith comes by hearing;' he heard and believed, taking God at His word, and giving Him credit for speaking nothing but the truth, though no sign was given. God had spoken; who was he, that he should doubt or hesitate, or reckon it presumption to return to God at once? He has spoken but dimly, no doubt; it is a very brief word of promise; yet he sees in these few words the free love of a forgiving God, and that is enough. He tastes that the Lord is gracious; and how sweet must that cup of grace have been to the parched lips of Adam! God has spoken once; but that once suffices, for He with whom he has to do is the God that
cannot lie. We, with a thousand promises and assurances of love, doubt and tremble; Adam, with but one word, unratified by sign or token, believes.
If any one might have needed a sign, it was Adam. If any one might have said, 'I am too great a sinner, I dare not at once believe,' it was Adam. For his was deep guilt indeed: he had ruined a world; he had let in the flood of evil upon the earth; he had banished God from it; he had helped God's enemy to triumph; he had known what holiness was, and therefore knew what sin was. If any might have shrunk from trusting at once, it was Adam. Yet he believed, and it was counted unto him for righteousness. Nay, he not only believed, but he 'confessed with his mouth;' he testified his faith; he proclaimed his sure hope of everlastíng life.
Go, sinner, and do likewise! Go, and like a child receive the simple word of God, speaking to you in love. Go and take forgiveness at His hands, and sonship, and the kingdom, and the glory. Do not, in the pride and presumption of your heart, speak of your unfitness and unworthiness, as if you would fain be fitter or worthier of the favour of Jehovah. Go, and as you are by birth a child of Adam, rebelling and departing from God, become by the second birth a child of Adam returning and reconciled. Take God's promise of life,—life through the living one,—the seed of the woman; take it and be saved, take it and be blest; and when thou hast thus received God's record, confess with thy mouth, as thy first father did. Make it manifest thou art a believing man; not a doubting, distrusting, wavering man, but a believing man.
Ver. 21. 'Unto Adam also (Heb. and unto Adam), and to his wife, did the Lord God make coats of skin, and clothed them.'
Adam's faith, so far as it went, was true and firm, but it was dim. The extent of his own wants he knew not. The kind of remedy which his case required he understood not. The way in which the promised deliverance was to come he could not foresee. All that as yet he knew
was, that God had revealed Himself as gracious, and had pledged His love; therefore he could trust Him entirely, not merely for showing favour to the sinner, but for providing a way in which grace and righteousness might be reconciled.
Adam, however, having now made solemn confession of his faith, God proceeds to take another step by which some further insight into the process of deliverance was to be given. Adam had believed at once, without sign or pledge exhibited, and God honours his faith by a further revelation of His purpose, making him to know that 'blessed is he that hath not seen, and yet hath believed;' that 'to him that hath shall be given;' that 'if any man is willing to do the will of God, he shall know of the doctrine.'
In Adam's first estate no shame was felt, but as soon as he sinned shame covered his face. He showed this by his fleeing to the thickets, and he showed it by the fig-leaves with which he covered himself. God now deals with him as one ashamed, and who has just cause of shame. He takes for granted that Adam's shame and sense of sin were right things, and He proceeds to deepen them, to make him feel his sin more bitterly, to unfold the evil of sin, to spread out before him the infinite wants which sin had occasioned, to make him understand how largely as well as how entirely he must be indebted to God, and to teach him how great that redemption must be, and that Redeemer who was to accomplish his deliverance.
He begins by taking off their fig-leaves—for, doubtless, this act was His—and then giving them coats made by His own hand, coats of skin for their covering. In so doing was He not saying, 'Look at your sin; it is far deeper and darker than you reckon, so deep and dark that no fig-leaves can cover it or hide your shame; there must be something else even for your bodies than coverings derived from the trees of the garden; something which I only can provide and put on; not the growth of the fields like these fig-leaves, but obtained by the death of the being from which it is taken; something which costs life, which points to blood and death; something which will continually
remind you that a sinner's covering must be a thing planned by God, provided by God, made by God, put on by God, yet a thing of earth, not of heaven, a thing not outwardly comely or bright, yet costly, so costly that even God can obtain it only by taking that which is more precious than gold or gems, the life of the creature which He has made'?
Thus was man taught that one great point in his coming deliverance would be the covering. He needed to be covered, else he could not look up to God, nor could God look upon him; nay, he could not look upon himself without shame. One awful feeling of the sinner is, that he is naked before God, and this feeling is met by the clothing provided by God. But as this feeling of shame is the result of sin and a consciousness of guilt, the covering must be one which will assure him of forgiveness; for if the covering does not of itself proclaim pardon, it will not remove the sense of shame. It did this even in symbol when Adam was clothed with the skins; it does so more truly when we see in it the righteousness of Him who was delivered for our offences, and raised again for our justification. Man's raiment will do nothing; his goodness, his repentance, his prayers, his feelings, these cannot cover sin, nor hide shame, nor purge the conscience; it must be through death that all this is to be done.
God Himself must do it all. He selects the victim, He slays it, He makes the clothing, He puts it on. From first to last, salvation is of Jehovah! It is salvation by death, by sacrifice, by the substitution of life for life. Nor could Adam fail to trace here a connection between the slaying of the animal from whose skin the garment was made, and the bruising of the heel of the woman's seed. That slain Lamb and that bruised heel were in some mysterious way linked together. Time would evolve the connection; meanwhile, the man ponders it in his heart as he looks upon his clothing and remembers whence it was obtained.
Vers. 22, 23. 'And the Lord God said, Behold, the man has 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 (Heb. the life), and eat, and live for ever: 23. Therefore (Heb. and) the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.'
Adam has now been clothed with the God-provided raiment; not raiment such as he would have devised or felt himself at liberty to propose,—raiment which reminded him of his sin, yet exhibited the way of forgiveness and life through the death of a substitute. He stands before God as an accepted man, covered with a garment which removes his sense of shame, and enables him to look up to God without blushing or wishing to be hidden from His face; teaching us that God's first dealings with the sinner are always about the matter of acceptance, and that this therefore ought to be our first point in dealing with God.
But the question of acceptance being settled, that of discipline begins. On this Adam is now to enter. He had much to unlearn as well as much to learn. He had to be taught that, though forgiven, he stood now on a different footing from that on which he stood when a holy being, and that therefore a new line of treatment must be adopted. He might suppose that, being restored to favour, he would be reinstated in his former privileges, remain in Eden, and have access to the tree of life just as before. This, however, cannot be. He is not to be at once placed upon his former footing; he is not to go on eating the tree of life, thus prolonging his days and enjoying an immortality on earth. He has sinned the very sin against which God had warned him; he has gotten 'forbidden knowledge by forbidden means,' and thus far he has gained his end; he has become as God, by eating of the tree of knowledge. God has forgiven him freely and without reserve, yet between his past and his future condition a great gulf must be fixed. He is indeed to 'live for ever,' but not the same kind of life, nor in the same way, as heretofore. The immortality for which he is now destined is to be obtained, not by eating of the tree of life, but through death. It is to be reached only by resurrection. Such was God's purpose respecting him and his posterity. It was to a
more glorious immortality than that which he had lost that he was now to be led, but its entrance was the grave! Meanwhile he must leave paradise and be shut out from the tree of life.
God's lesson now to Adam was, that he must still return to dust. This part of the doom was to remain, not so much as a remnant of the original sentence, as a chastisement, a needed piece of discipline, and as the necessary passage to the new immortality that lay beyond. Had God allowed Adam to have access to the tree of life, it would have just been saying to him, Thou shalt not return to dust; eat of the tree of life and preserve your immortality here, such as it is on this now blighted earth. To prevent him from entertaining any thought of this kind, and to fix his eye on resurrection, he was sent forth from paradise to till the ground from which he was taken, that is, Eden. He was to be cast out of the inner circle which had been his home, and whose special fertility would have made his toil in keeping it a source of pleasure; but he was still allowed to remain within the outer and less fruitful circle, there to remain a toiling man all the days of his life.