1n the second ofthese, on our Lord seeing Nathanael under the fig tree (Jn 1 :48), Augustinejust
454 The Literal Meaning ofGenesis
But for all that, in this very punishment the rational soul gave an indication of its natural nobility by feeling embarrassment at this animal motion in these organs of its flesh, and covering it with shame. This was not only because it was experiencing something there it had never felt before, but also because this shame-producing motion came from the transgression of the commandment. It perceived it, you see, in that part of the body which had previously been clothed with grace, when in its nakedness it had experienced nothing unbecoming. There the psalm verse was fulfilled: By your will you have bestowedpower on my comeliness; butyou turnedawayyourface, and lbecame troubled (Ps30:7).
Next in that troubled state they had recourse to fig-leaves, they sewed them together into aprons, and because they had disowned these organs as something to be proud of, they covered them up as something to be ashamed of. l do not suppose for a moment that they thought those leaves were in any special way suited to covering up organs already aroused; but their troubled state drove them to this by some hidden impulse, so that such an appropriate sign of their punish ment might be unwittingly enacted by them, to convict the sinner by being performed, and teach the reader by being written down.47
About the "voice of the Lord"
33, 43. And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in Paradise in the evening (Gn 3:8). That was certainly a suitable hour for defectors from the light of truth such as they were to be visited. Now it is possible that previously God used to talk to them in other interior ways, whether expressible in words or not, as he also talks to the angels, enlightening their minds with the unchangeable Truth itself; there understanding means knowing simultaneously whatever things are also happening, not simultaneously, in time. lt is possible, l repeat, that that is how he used to talk to them, even if he did not give them such a full participation in the divine Wisdom as the angels can take, but still visiting and speaking to them in the same way, however much toned down and adjusted to their human capacity. Perhaps, on the other hand, it was by means of some created manifestation, as happens when bodily images, through which God is to
47. For the symbolic significance offig leaves see Sermons 98,3 and 1 22, 1 (vol.111/4 in this series). 1n the second ofthese, on our Lord seeing Nathanael under the fig tree (Jn 1 :48), Augustinejust states that the fig tree stands for sin, for no other reason, it seems, than that Adam and Eve had sewed its leaves together to cover their private parts, that were now pudenda because of sin. But in the first, where he is talking about the tree Jesus cursed because it had no fruit on it, though it was not the season for fruit (Mk 1 1:13-14), he says it stands for people who are unwilling to bear fruit, people like the Jews, "who had the words of the law and didn't have its deeds—full of leaves and bearing no fruit." So fig leaves, in general, stand for the plausible words and excuses with which we so readily cover up our moral nakedness, our failure to produce fruit: and of that we are profitably reminded when we read Gn 3:7.