The Fallible · Synthetic · Study Bible
God Arraigns Adam and Eve
Genesis 3:8–13 — God Arraigns Adam and Eve. Each verse below carries the full apparatus: the Berean Standard Bible, the vocalized original (tap any word), and a parsed breakdown of every term transcribed from the interlinear. Synthesized commentary, canonical threads, and the reading of Christ gather at the end, over the whole unit.
8Then the man and his wife heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the breeze of the day, and they hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden.
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
hā·’ā·ḏām wə·’iš·tōw way·yiš·mə·‘ū ’eṯ- qō·wl Yah·weh ’ĕ·lō·hîm miṯ·hal·lêḵ bag·gān lə·rū·aḥ hay·yō·wm way·yiṯ·ḥab·bê mip·pə·nê Yah·weh ’ĕ·lō·hîm bə·ṯō·wḵ ‘êṣ hag·gān
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-they-heard the-sound of-YHWH God walking-about in-the-garden at-the-wind of-the-day, and-he-hid-himself — the-man and-his-wife — from-the-face of-YHWH God amid the-tree of-the-garden.
Where the English smooths the original
Really it is in admirable keeping with the whole narrative; and Jehovah appears here as the owner of the Paradise, and as taking in it His daily exercise; for the verb is in the reflexive conjugation, and means “walking for pleasure.” The time is “the cool (literally, the wind ) of the day,” the hour in a hot climate when the evening breeze sets in
יהוה קול (the voice of Jehovah, Genesis 3:8 ) is not the voice of God speaking or calling, but the sound of God walking, as in 2 Samuel 5:24 ; 1 Kings 14:6 , etc. - In the cool of the day (lit., in the wind of the day), i.e., towards the evening, when a cooling wind generally blows. The men have broken away from God, but God will not and cannot leave them alone. He comes to them as one man to another. This was the earliest form of divine revelation.
Before they had sinned, if they heard the voice of the Lord God coming toward them, they would have run to meet him; but now God was become a terror to them, and then no marvel they were become a terror to themselves.
9But the LORD God called out to the man, “Where are you?”
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
Yah·weh ’ĕ·lō·hîm way·yiq·rā ’el- hā·’ā·ḏām way·yō·mer lōw ’ay·yek·kāh
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-called YHWH God to the-man, and-said to-him: "Where [are]-you?"
Where the English smooths the original
This inquiry after Adam, may be looked upon as a gracious pursuit in order to his recovery. If God had not called to him to reduce him, his condition had been as desperate as that of fallen angels.
The Lord does not abandon, He seeks, the guilty. The question is one which the voice of conscience puts to every man who thinks that he can hide his sin from God’s sight.
This he asks, not that he was ignorant of it, but to make way for the following sentence, and to set a pattern for all judges, that they should examine the offender, and inquire into the offence, before they proceed to punishment.
Those who by sin go astray from God, should seriously consider where they are; they are afar off from all good, in the midst of their enemies, in bondage to Satan, and in the high road to utter ruin. This lost sheep had wandered without end, if the good Shepherd had not sought after him
10“I heard Your voice in the garden,” he replied, “and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid myself.”
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
šā·ma‘·tî qō·lə·ḵā bag·gān way·yō·mer ’eṯ- wā·’î·rā kî- ’ā·nō·ḵî ‘ê·rōm wā·’ê·ḥā·ḇê
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-he-said: "Your-sound I-heard in-the-garden, and-I-was-afraid because naked [am]-I, and-I-hid-myself."
Where the English smooths the original
He confesses his nakedness, which was evident; but makes no mention of his sin. This he wished rather to hide, feeling, indeed, the shameful effects of it, but not yet being truly penitent for it.
His hypocrisy appears in that he hid the cause of his nakedness, which was the transgression of God's commandment.Geneva note (i), keyed to "naked."
The man has not courage to tell the whole truth. Fear suppresses that part of the truth which love should have avowed. To hide from God’s presence is the instinct of guilt; it is the converse of “to seek His face.”
this was not the true cause of his hiding himself; he had heard his voice in the garden before, when it did not strike him with terror, but gave him pleasure
11“Who told you that you were naked?” asked the LORD God. “Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?”
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
mî hig·gîḏ lə·ḵā ’āt·tāh kî ‘ê·rōm way·yō·mer ’ă·ḵāl- hă·min- hā·‘êṣ ’ă·šer ṣiw·wî·ṯî·ḵā lə·ḇil·tî ’ā·ḵā·lə·tā mim·men·nū
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-he-said: "Who told to-you that naked [were]-you? Have you-eaten from the-tree of-which I-commanded-you not to-eat from-it?"
Where the English smooths the original
as long as a man feels sorrow only for the results of his actions there is no repentance, and no wish to return to the Divine presence. God, therefore, in order to win Adam back to better thoughts, carries his mind from the effect to the sin that had caused it.
Though God knows all our sins, yet he will know them from us, and requires from us an ingenuous confession of them, not that he may be informed, but that we may be humbled
To this question no answer is expected. The knowledge could only come in one way. The sense of shame implies contact with sin.
12And the man answered, “The woman whom You gave me, she gave me fruit from the tree, and I ate it.”
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
hā·’ā·ḏām way·yō·mer hā·’iš·šāh ’ă·šer nā·ṯat·tāh ‘im·mā·ḏî hî nā·ṯə·nāh- lî min- hā·‘êṣ wā·’ō·ḵêl
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-said the-man: "The-woman whom You-gave [to-be]-with-me, she gave to-me from the-tree, and-I-ate."
Where the English smooths the original
His wickedness and lack of true repentance appears in this that he blamed God because he had given him a wife.Geneva note (k), keyed to "gavest."
It is a mistake to suppose that he wished to shift the blame, first upon Eve, and then upon God, who had given her to him; rather, he recapitulates the history, as if, in his view, it was a matter of course that he should act as he had doneEllicott dissents from the common "shifting-blame" reading; presented here as the minority voice.
By this answer Adam endeavours to cast the blame partly upon his wife, and partly upon God; though in what he said he told the truth, and what was matter of fact, yet it carries this innuendo, that if it had not been for his wife he had never ate of it
Thus Adam excuseth himself, and chargeth God foolishly with his sin. I did eat, out of complacency to her, not from any evil design against thee.
13Then the LORD God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?” “The serpent deceived me,” she replied, “and I ate.”
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
Yah·weh ’ĕ·lō·hîm way·yō·mer lā·’iš·šāh mah- zōṯ ‘ā·śîṯ han·nā·ḥāš hiš·šî·’a·nî hā·’iš·šāh wat·tō·mer wā·’ō·ḵêl
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-said YHWH God to-the-woman: "What [is]-this you-have-done?" And-said the-woman: "The-serpent deceived-me, and-I-ate."
Where the English smooths the original
A forced confession, but no appearance of contrition. 'It's true I did eat, but it was not my fault'Pulpit Commentary, quoting Hughes; on "And I did eat."
Instead of confessing her sin, she increases it by accusing the serpent.Geneva note (l), keyed to "The serpent beguiled me."
This sin of the first pair was heinous and aggravated—it was not simply eating an apple, but a love of self, dishonor to God, ingratitude to a benefactor, disobedience to the best of Masters—a preference of the creature to the Creator.
Sin does not take full possession of the will all at once. It is a slow poison. It has a growth. It requires time and frequent repetition to sink from a state of purity into a habit of inveterate sin.
The verse-by-verse work is done. What follows gathers the whole unit. All three layers below are machine-generated (⚙). Weigh them; they have no authority.
AI synthesis — woven from the public-domain voices above and the original text; generated and fallible.
The unit opens not with a word but with a sound. The Hebrew qōl YHWH ’ĕlōhîm miṯhallēḵ baggān can be read "the voice of the LORD God walking," but Keil and Delitzsch argue the older sense: "not the voice of God speaking or calling, but the sound of God walking, as in 2 Samuel 5:24." Ellicott fixes the picture — the verb is reflexive, "and means 'walking for pleasure'" — so what the guilty pair hear is the familiar tread of a God who came, by custom, to take His evening walk in His garden. The time is lə·rūaḥ hayyōm, "at the wind of the day," the cooling evening hour. The horror is in the ordinariness: nothing about God has changed. Benson draws the contrast that the whole passage will live on — "before they had sinned, if they heard the voice of the Lord God coming toward them, they would have run to meet him; but now God was become a terror to them, and then no marvel they were become a terror to themselves." The first effect of sin is not God's withdrawal but man's flight mippənê, "from the face of" the very Presence he was made to enjoy.
God's response to hiding is not a thunderbolt but a question: ’ayyekkāh, "Where are you?" — a single Hebrew word, verbless and bare. Barnes is right that it "implies that the Lord was aware of their endeavor to hide themselves"; Poole adds the judicial pattern, that God "examine[s] the offender, and inquire[s] into the offence, before they proceed to punishment." But the deepest note is Benson's: "this inquiry after Adam, may be looked upon as a gracious pursuit in order to his recovery. If God had not called to him to reduce him, his condition had been as desperate as that of fallen angels." Cambridge puts it in one line — "the Lord does not abandon, He seeks, the guilty." The interrogative ’ay here is the same word God will use of the missing Abel in 4:9; the God of Eden is the seeking God before He is the sentencing one.
Adam answers — and every word is true, and not one word is repentance. He names the sound (qōləḵā), his fear (wā’îrā, the first fear in Scripture), and his nakedness (‘êrōm) — but, as Benson observes, "he confesses his nakedness, which was evident; but makes no mention of his sin." The Geneva Bible names it hypocrisy: he "hid the cause of his nakedness, which was the transgression of God's commandment." Keil supplies the psychology — Adam's "consciousness of the effects of his sin was keener than his sense of the sin itself." So God's next question, mî higgîḏ ləḵā, "Who told you that you were naked?", lifts Adam's eyes from the symptom to the cause; Ellicott: God "carries his mind from the effect to the sin that had caused it." Then the blunt verb falls — ’ăḵāltā, "have you eaten?" — measuring the man against the one command (ṣiwwîṯîḵā) he was given. As Benson says, "sin appears most plain and most sinful in the glass of the commandment."
Pressed, Adam confesses — but in the order of a man defending himself: "The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me... and I ate." The emphatic nāṯattāh ("You gave") aims past Eve at God; the Geneva note reads it flatly — he "blamed God because he had given him a wife" — and JFB even more starkly: "He blames God." Ellicott alone demurs, hearing not a calculated dodge but a conscience "utterly unmoved," merely reciting the history; the reading is offered for the reader to weigh. Eve in turn points to the serpent: hannāḥāš hiššî’anî, "the serpent deceived me." The verb nāšā (rare, fifteen verses) means to beguile, lead astray, cause to forget — the same idea Paul presses in 2 Corinthians 11:3. Both confessions are true; both stop one word short. Keil draws the abiding lesson: "the sinner first of all endeavours to throw the blame upon others as tempters, and then upon circumstances which God has ordained." Each ends with the identical two-syllable verb — wā’ōḵēl, "and I ate" — the chapter's hinge-word, and the whole tragedy in a breath.
The unit closes on the woman's word, and then silence from the bench: "the serpent deceived me, and I ate." Cambridge marks the turn — "the interrogation is over... there is no enquiry into the origin of the evil. Judgement is now delivered in the reverse order, beginning with the serpent." The questions that began in grace ("Where are you?") have done their work: the man and the woman have each been brought to say wā’ōḵēl, "and I ate." The fact is admitted; the heart is not yet broken. JFB weighs what that little eating really was — "not simply eating an apple, but a love of self, dishonor to God, ingratitude to a benefactor... a preference of the creature to the Creator." Barnes, more gently, sees the slow ruin already underway: "sin does not take full possession of the will all at once. It is a slow poison. It has a growth." From here on in the chapter, only God speaks — and the next word He speaks to the serpent (v. 15) will be the first promise of the One who undoes all of this.
Set this arraignment against the rule that Scripture alone is the final authority, and three things stand out — offered to be tested, not trusted. First: the God who is sinned against is the God who comes searching. The text's own order is gospel-shaped — God walks in the garden, God calls ’ayyekkāh ("Where are you?"), God questions before He sentences. Grace precedes judgment in the very grammar of the scene; the seeking God of Eden stands behind the seeking Shepherd of the parable and the seeking Son of the cross. Second: confession that names only consequences is not repentance. Adam grieves his nakedness, not his sin (Benson, Geneva); Eve names the serpent, not herself (Geneva). The passage exposes the universal instinct to admit the verifiable and bury the culpable — the half-truth told as a hiding place, which Keil saw still at work in every sinner. Third: the gift turned alibi is the oldest dodge. "The woman You gave me" (nāṯattāh) faults the Giver for the abuse of the gift — and at this point the witnesses divide (JFB and Geneva hear blasphemy; Ellicott hears only a dead conscience), so the reading is left open. The unit measures the fall not by the size of the act but by the new direction of the human heart: from running to meet God, to fleeing His face. This is the tool's reading, not a verse; test it against the Word and keep what it supports.
The first thing sin teaches the heart is to run from the very Presence it was made to enjoy. (a reading, not a verse)
AI-generated connections. Each carries a verification badge with a recorded basis; contested links are flagged.
The rare and tender image of v. 8 — God miṯhallēḵ, "walking about," in His garden — is not a one-off. The same verb of God's habitual walking returns in His covenant promise, "I will walk among (tāveḵ) you and be your God" (Leviticus 26:12), the language the tabernacle and temple are built to recover, and the New Creation finally fulfills. Eden is the first sanctuary; the fall is the loss of the walk; redemption is its restoration. The shared lexemes (hālaḵ, tāveḵ) make this a genuine structural-thematic vein, not a quotation.
Genesis 3:8 · Leviticus 26:12
basis: shared lexemes H8432 tâvek (in 390 vv) + H1980 hâlak (in 1346 vv) — God's walking presence among His own; pattern/motif, no quotation claimed
God's first word to fallen man is a question built on the interrogative ’ay — ’ayyekkāh, "Where are you?" (v. 9). His first word to the first murderer is the same root — "Where (’ê) is Abel your brother?" (4:9). In both, as the Pulpit Commentary notes of v. 9, the question is asked "not as if ignorant... but to bring him to confession." Twice over, God opens the door to repentance with a question rather than an indictment.
Genesis 3:9 · Genesis 4:9
basis: shared lexeme H335 ʼay (in 37 vv) — God's seeking interrogative after sin; structural parallel, not a citation
The word for "naked" in vv. 10–11, ‘êrōm, is rare — only ten verses in the whole Hebrew Bible — so its recurrences carry weight. It binds the arraignment tightly back to v. 7, where the pair first "knew that they were naked," and it runs out to the prophets and the curses, where exposed nakedness becomes the standing figure of covenant shame laid bare (Ezekiel 16:7; Deuteronomy 28:48). What began as innocent unashamed nakedness (2:25) becomes, after the fall, the very emblem of guilt before God.
Genesis 3:10 · Genesis 3:7 · Ezekiel 16:7 · Deuteronomy 28:48
basis: rare shared lexeme H5903 ʻêyrôm (in only 10 vv) — verbal link to Gen 3:7; the same rare term carries the motif into Ezek 16:7 and Deut 28:48
The interrogation of the woman ends by naming the instigator — hannāḥāš, "the serpent" (v. 13) — the very word that opened the chapter, where the serpent was "more crafty than any beast" (3:1). The lexeme nāḥāš is uncommon enough (28 verses) that the return is a firm verbal tie within the narrative, and Amos 9:3 even pictures the serpent as the agent of inescapable judgment, no hiding-place (ḥābā) safe from God — the same root used of Adam's hiding in vv. 8, 10.
Genesis 3:13 · Genesis 3:1 · Amos 9:3
basis: shared lexeme H5175 nâchâsh (in 28 vv); Amos 9:3 adds H2244 châbâʼ (in 33 vv) echoing the hiding of vv. 8, 10 — motif, not quotation
Eve's plea uses the rare verb nāšā, "to beguile, lead astray" (v. 13; only fifteen verses). The same root names the self-deceiving pride of Edom — "the pride of your heart has deceived you" (Obadiah 1:3). The thread is the anatomy of deception itself: whether by an external tempter (Eve) or by one's own heart (Edom), nāšā is the lie that hollows out the will before the fall comes.
Genesis 3:13 · Obadiah 1:3
basis: rare shared lexeme H5377 nâshâʼ (in 15 vv) — the verb of beguiling/leading astray; thematic, no quotation claimed
Paul twice returns to this verse: "the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness" (2 Corinthians 11:3) and "Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived fell into transgression" (1 Timothy 2:14). Keil and Delitzsch and the Cambridge Bible both flag the link in their notes here. Held honestly: because this is a Greek-to-Hebrew connection, it cannot rest on a shared Strong's number — the Verifier finds no shared original-language lexeme. The link is real and apostolic, but it is a conceptual/structural reading of the Greek ἐξαπατάω against the Hebrew nāšā, not a verbal-lexical identity; tiered and flagged accordingly.
Genesis 3:13 · 2 Corinthians 11:3 · 1 Timothy 2:14
basis: cross-Testament (Greek↔Hebrew): no shared Strong's lexeme possible; Verifier returns none. Apostolic use is conceptual/structural (Gk ἐξαπατάω ↔ Heb H5377 nâshâʼ), not a verbal link — flagged on purpose
AI-generated reading; weigh it against the text.
Several of the named voices here cannot help reaching toward the incarnation. Poole writes that "either God the Father, or rather God the Son, appeared in the shape of a man, as afterwards he frequently did, to give a foretaste of his incarnation," and Gill follows the Targums in hearing "the voice of the Word of the Lord God" — the Word "since made flesh." Keil grounds it more soberly: "the anthropomorphies of God have their real foundation in the divine condescension which culminated in the incarnation of God in Christ." The God who walks the garden seeking the hiding man is, in figure, the Christ who "came to seek and to save the lost" (Luke 19:10). Henry already names Him: this lost sheep "had wandered without end, if the good Shepherd had not sought after him."
Genesis 3:8 · Genesis 3:9 · Luke 19:10
The hiding and the home-made covering of this scene are answered three verses later, when "the LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife, and clothed them" (3:21) — the first death in Scripture, to clothe the first sinners. Matthew Henry, reflecting on this passage, sets the whole pattern: "Like Adam, we have reason to be afraid of approaching to God, if we are not covered and clothed with the righteousness of Christ." The leaves man sews to hide his shame cannot stand; only a covering God provides at the cost of life can. The thread runs to the One who is "made unto us... righteousness" and whose blood covers.
Genesis 3:10 · Genesis 3:21
The unit ends, twice, on the same fallen verb: wā’ōḵēl, "and I ate" (vv. 12, 13). Where the first Adam, given everything, ate in disobedience and then hid and blamed, the last Adam, offered the kingdoms of the world, answered the tempter from the written Word and "became obedient to the point of death" (Philippians 2:8; cf. Romans 5:19). Adam fled God's face among the trees; Christ would hang upon a tree to bring sinners back to that face. The arraignment of Genesis 3 sets the problem to which Romans 5 is the answer.
Genesis 3:12 · Genesis 3:13 · Romans 5:19
The biblical text is the Berean Standard Bible (BSB), public domain (CC0). Hebrew/Greek text, transliteration, morphology and Strong’s are transcribed from the Berean interlinear (CC0) + Strong’s lexicons (PD); the literal renderings, divergence notes, word notes and all synthesis are this tool’s own work (⚙) — fallible; verify them.
Named voices, quoted verbatim from public-domain works:
The biblical text is the Berean Standard Bible (BSB), public domain (CC0). The Hebrew is the Masoretic tradition; transliterations, parsings, literal renderings, and the "where the English smooths the Hebrew" notes are this tool's own work (⚙) — careful but fallible; check them against BDB/HALOT and a standard grammar.
The named voices are quoted verbatim from public-domain commentaries, attributed in place: Charles Ellicott, Joseph Benson, Matthew Henry, Albert Barnes, Jamieson-Fausset-Brown, Matthew Poole, John Gill, the Geneva Study Bible, the Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges, the Pulpit Commentary, and Keil & Delitzsch. Where a marginal note is keyed to a specific lemma (Geneva's lettered notes), that is recorded in the editorial note.
On the cross-references. The within-Testament threads (Hebrew↔Hebrew) carry verifier-computed bases: shared Strong's lexemes, with frequency noted so the reader can judge how "verbal" a link really is. A rare lexeme like ‘êrōm (nakedness, 10 vv) earns a "verbal" tier; common roots like hālaḵ earn only "structural/thematic." The one cross-Testament thread (Genesis 3:13 → 2 Corinthians 11:3; 1 Timothy 2:14) is left flagged on purpose: a Greek-to-Hebrew link cannot rest on a shared Strong's number, and the Verifier rightly finds none, so the apostolic connection is named as conceptual/structural rather than asserted as verbal. The honest reading throughout is to under-claim. "Search the Scriptures daily, whether those things were so." (Acts 17:11)
One contested reading kept open: whether Adam's "the woman You gave me" (v. 12) is calculated blame-shifting (JFB, Geneva, Gill) or merely an unmoved conscience reciting events (Ellicott). The witnesses disagree; both are presented and neither is forced.
✦ = human, public-domain source, quoted and named. ⚙ = machine synthesis, to be verified. Flagged cross-references are left visible on purpose — the verifier working in the open. “Search the Scriptures daily, whether those things were so.” (Acts 17:11)