Biting The Hand That Feeds You!

Alex the Lion: “No Marty, we’re not gonna be okizey. Now because of you we’re ruined!”

Marty the Zebra: “Because of me? I fail to see how this is my fault.”

Alex the Lion: “You’re kidding, right Marty? You! You ticked off the people! You bit the hand Marty, you bit the hand. I don’t know who I am, I don’t know who I am. I gotta go find myself in a wild!”

– Madagascar 2005

This scene kept replaying in my head when I was thinking of a name for this blog post. I believe at some point Adam and Eve had a conversation similar to this after they got kicked out of the Garden of Eden because you know what? I’m just going to say it… Y’ALL HAD ONE JOB. ONE. UNO. AND YOU FAILED THAT ONE JOB. YOU BIT THE FRUIT ADAM. YOU BIT THE FREAKING FRUIT.

Okay, now that my small rant is out the way I can continue. The Garden of Eden scene genuinely irks me. Am I the only one who reads the Bible unintentionally hoping for a different outcome? This scene for example, hoping that they listen instead of disobey? No? Just me?

I am well aware of my flaws and sin nature, which means that under no circumstances do I nor anyone else who reads the bible have the right to point fingers at other biblical men/women who mess up because we all ain’t perfect. If I saw a transcript of my past disobediences, I’d cringe and wince abundantly. Yet, I still can’t help but to think to myself the life we would’ve been in had this act not happen in the first place. God obviously had a plan since the beginning and it’s evident throughout the whole bible. He’s the only one in control of everything (can I get an amen?). Even when the enemy tried to derail his plans He’s like “lol okay” and is unphased because in a technical sense the “mess ups” transfers into the triumphs, like Jesus conquering death and sacrificing himself for our sins.

Anyways, it’s history’s charming first love story. God created a boy. God creates a girl from boy for boy. Boy meets girl. Boy is pleased with the girl. Girl and boy disobey God, and sin enters the world, where the wages of sin is DEATH. How eccentric.

    Here we are introduced to the number one loser who appears throughout the bible and even today, Satan. The enemy who spends his time trying to bring as many people down where he will end up (Hell) and try to separate people from God. So he pulls up to Eve in the form of a snake one day and tries to question the command God gave Adam. Remember that Eve wasn’t created when God told Adam the rule about the tree. This meant that Adam had a responsibility to make sure that Eve was aware of it. Now Ms. Eve has her own interpretation that she tells the serpent: 

“You must not eat the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden. Do not even touch it. If you touch it then you will die.”

The million dollar question is…. Did God tell Adam that word from word? The answer is no. Let us regroup back to what God told Adam:

‘Eat freely the fruit of all the other trees that are in the garden. But do not eat the fruit of the tree that makes you able to distinguish good things and evil things. If you eat that fruit, you will certainly die.’”

Does anyone see the “you will die if you touch the fruit” part anywhere because I am having a hard time finding it. It is not present at all but God literally points out that the fruit will make them able to distinguish good and evil things and if they eat it they will certainly DIE, which had a bigger meaning then simply dying on the spot as Adam and Eve probably thought. So Adam probably thought to himself “if I touch this I’ll die” and playing telephone probably passed that message to Eve.

So here is the instance where the devil is working to have them think of the thing they’re not supposed to do and not dwell on the things God has given them which is the Garden of Eden. They could literally have any choice of fruit from any other tree but the enemy wants them to focus on the one tree out of many that they were not supposed to eat at all. You see how trifling he is? As I mentioned before he wants to bring as many people down with him as he can. The enemy talks Eve into eating the fruit after twisting a few words around and Eve decides that the fruit is good enough to eat, lovely to look at, and eats some of the fruit.

A moment of silence please.

Deep breath.

ARE YOU KIDDDING ME?! COME ON EVE. COME ONNNNNNN. I wish Adam yanked the fruit from her hands and threw it on the ground and tapped the back of her head to spit it out. Yet, who am I kidding Adam doesn’t have time to do this because HE EATS SOME OF THE FRUIT TOOOOOOOO. HE PARTAKEN IN THE FRUIT GIVEN TO HIM BY EVE.

My theory is that Adam and Eve literally thought that they would drop dead if they ate the fruit. I’m going to take a hypothetical guess and say that when Eve saw that she was still alive and standing and Adam witnessed her alive and standing he assumed that it was okay to eat the fruit because nothing physically happened at that moment. The thing about God is that He is all knowing. He literally knows all, even when we disobey. There is nothing that surprises him nor can be hidden from him. So Adam and Eve see that they’re naked and make bootleg clothes for themselves and decide amongst themselves:

“Oh no we gotta hide from God!”

“Yea lets hide in the trees!”

“Yea maybe he won’t find us!”

A moment of silence.

Deep breath.

HE CAN STILL SEE Y’ALL. ARE YOU KIDDING MEEEEEE?

One of the things I love about God is that he gives chances. Since God is all knowing, he obviously knew that Adam and Eve were going to bite the fruit. Keep in mind that God gave us free will. He’s not going to smack our hand everytime we’re about to sin and do something bad. He gave us the power to think freely which means that we have the power to choose our path. This doesn’t give us the excuse to live however we want though. If anything we are to live as God’s slaves (1 Peter 2:16) and live to serve him.

To keep moving forward, I like how God knew everything and still gave them a chance to be transparent. God knew where they were hiding. Yet he asked them “where are you?” I’m going to repeat that again. God knew exactly where they were, exactly WHAT they had DONE and still asked them “have you eaten the fruit that I commanded you not to eat?” He gave them a chance to come CLEAN. This conversation obviously leads to the confrontation of what happened with the fruit.

What does Adam do? He throws Eve under the bus.

‘You gave the woman to me as a companion. She gave the fruit of the tree to me and I ate it.’ v13 Then the *Lord God said to the woman, ‘What have you done?’ The woman replied, ‘The snake tempted me and I ate.’

REALLY Adam? REALLLLY? IS this route we are going to take? Is this what we are going to do? Is this who we are? Is this what we become (add Monique’s voice for effect). He blames God for giving him Eve and blames Eve for giving him the fruit. I see the sin is starting to take form. Adam adverts all responsibility for himself. God curses the serpent, he curses woman, and he curses man, and this leads Adam and Eve getting banished from the Garden of Eve. God does make them garments to wear, and sends him out to the farm.

He places the cherubim (an angel/spirit being who takes on a particular form. In the tabernacle and temple, they were represented by the two golden figures of two-winged living creatures.) at the east of the garden in Eden.

 “The cherubim had a sword. It was a flame, which turned in every direction. They guarded the way to the tree of life.”

As we know, sin entered the world when Adam ate the fruit.

Why is that? Granted Eve had a diluted interpretation of the rule but why Adam? Well, Adam received the direct command from God. SO, even if Eve ate the fruit and gave some to Adam despite him thinking that it must be okay to eat the fruit because Eve is still standing, he should not have eaten it because he knew that God told him not to do it. Man was created first and woman was created as his helper so that he would not be alone in his dominion over the world (authority given from God. What God allowed man to have dominion over). In my opinion it would have been better if Adam condemned Eve for her actions and snitched, or better yet keep her from eating the fruit in the first place instead of watching and later placing blame on Eve and God.

Even Paul speaks of the disobedience and says that Eve was deceived, whereas Adam, who received the direct command from God himself, ate the fruit with full knowledge of wrongdoing. The fall introduced SIN and the relationship between husband and wife was distorted. The loving headship was replaced by tyranny and desire for power or by an indifference and unwillingness to offer spiritual leadership.

Curses:

 God said to the woman,

          ‘You will have much pain when you have children.

                      You will have pain when your children are born.

          You will desire your husband’s love, but he will rule over you.’

v17 And God said to Adam,

          ‘You listened to the words that your wife said.

                      I *commanded you not to eat the fruit of that tree, but you ate it.

          Therefore, the ground will produce little because of you.

                      You will work hard for your whole life in order to eat.

v18    When you eat the products of the earth,

                      the ground will produce thorns and thistles for you.

v19    By hard labour you will eat your food until you die.

                      Then you will return to the ground.

          I made you out of the dust on the ground.

                      You are dust and you will become dust again.’

Eve, Adam’s wife, is the mother of everyone who is alive. Hence the name she was given from Adam, which is like the word that means “alive.”