The Skull Crusher

Masaccio - The Expulsion from Eden (c. 1426-27)
Masaccio, The Expulsion from Eden (c. 1426–27), Brancacci Chapel, Florence

Genesis 3:8–11:

Then they heard the sound of Yahweh God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of Yahweh God in the midst of the trees of the garden. Yahweh God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?” And he said, “I heard the sound of You in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.” And He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?”

Did this surprise God? No. God breathed out and the Milky Way appeared in the night sky. God knew what His creation would do. He gave them free will. I have built robots and programmed them to do things, and they always did what I programmed them to do. God created man and his woman, and because He is a loving God (Ephesians 2:4: “But God, being rich in mercy because of His great love with which He loved us”), He granted us free will. To believe Him or not. Those in the “believe Him not” category will find themselves living through eternity in torment and loneliness. Forever.

From Jesus — the Word who was there in the beginning — the word He uses most for this place is Gehenna. The Valley of Hinnom outside Jerusalem, where trash burned and worms fed. He uses a real, visible place as a picture of a real, invisible reality:

Matthew 5:22 — “Anyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment… anyone who says ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire.”

Matthew 10:28 — “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.”

Matthew 25:41 — “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.'”

Matthew 25:46 — “And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.” Same word for both. If eternal life is eternal, eternal punishment is eternal.

Mark 9:43–48 — “Where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.” Jesus says this three times in a row. The only place He repeats Himself like this.

Luke 16:19–31 — The rich man and Lazarus. The rich man is in torment in Hades. He can see Abraham. He feels thirst. He asks for a drop of water. Abraham says, “Between us and you a great chasm has been fixed.” He asks Abraham to send someone to warn his brothers. Abraham says: “If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.”

I implore you, if you are a non-believer, pray to God for mercy, that He would save you.

The Curse — and the Promise

Adam tries to distance himself from his woman. Genesis 3:12:

And the man said, “The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me from the tree, and I ate.”

He didn’t take responsibility. He blamed her. Genesis 3:13:

Then Yahweh God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?” And the woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”

She knew she had been deceived. But the temptation was too great. For many of us, and for the sin that lives within us, the temptation is too great. Matthew 26:41: “Keep watching and praying that you may not enter into temptation; the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.”

Albrecht Durer - The Fall of Man (1504)
Albrecht Dürer, The Fall of Man (Adam and Eve), 1504 engraving

God gets down to business with the culprit. Genesis 3:14–15:

And Yahweh God said to the serpent,
“Because you have done this,
Cursed are you more than any of the cattle,
And more than every beast of the field;
On your belly you will go,
And dust you will eat
All the days of your life;

And I will put enmity
Between you and the woman,
And between your seed and her seed;
He shall bruise you on the head,
And you shall bruise him on the heel.”

God will put enmity between the woman and the serpent. The Hebrew word in Genesis 3:15 is shuph (שׁוּף). It means to crush, to bruise, to strike at — the sense of pressing or grinding with the foot or head. It appears twice in the same verse:

  • “He shall shuph your head” — the seed of the woman crushes the serpent’s head
  • “You shall shuph his heel” — the serpent strikes at the seed’s heel

Same word. Same action. Different targets. A crushed head versus a bruised heel. One is fatal. One is not.

This is the first prophecy in the Bible. It is also the whole gospel in one verse. A woman’s offspring will crush the serpent’s head. The serpent will bruise his heel. The victor takes damage — but the wound is survivable. The loser takes a blow to the head — and that wound is fatal. The bruised heel is the cross. The crushed head is satan’s defeat. The resurrection is the Victor walking away from the fight.

Every prophecy after this is an expansion of this one verse:

Abraham — which offspring? This line.
Moses and the Passover — the seed preserved through blood.
David — which king? The seed through David’s line.
Isaiah 53 — which suffering servant? “He was pierced for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities.” The bruised heel becomes a crushed servant.
Daniel 9 — when? Seventy weeks are decreed. The timeline narrows.
Christ — Hebrews 2:14: “That through death He might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil.” 1 John 3:8: “The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil.”

The thread does not break. Not once. From Genesis 3 to Revelation 20, the same promise keeps expanding, narrowing, specifying — and every expansion was written before it was fulfilled.

An interesting side note: on August 16, 2026, we had a celebration of my wife’s and her younger brother’s birthday. Same day, seven years apart. The whole family — think large — came to celebrate, and I got to spend an hour or two talking to my nephew, a man of God. In the course of our theology discussion, I mentioned I had bought a book called The Gospel of the Skull Crusher by Joel Richardson. My nephew said he knew the author personally. It is a very good book dealing with the enmity between the woman and the serpent.

The Curse on the Woman and the Man

Genesis 3:16 — To the woman He said:

“I will greatly multiply your pain and conception; in pain you will bear children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.”

“Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.” What is going on here? The first look at this is not what you think. The desire she has for her husband is not romantic. It is a desire to rule over him. To be the head, not the helper. If you don’t believe me, look at Genesis 4:7 — the same word, the same construction:

“If you do well, will not your countenance be lifted up? And if you do not do well, sin is lying at the door; and its desire is for you, but you must rule over it.”

The Hebrew word is teshuqah. It appears only three times in the entire Old Testament — here, in Genesis 3:16, and in Song of Songs 7:10. Both times in Genesis, it is paired with the verb mashal, “to rule.” Sin’s teshuqah is to rule over Cain. The woman’s teshuqah is to rule over her husband. Same word. Same grammar. Same meaning. This is not how God designed it. This is the curse. Untold trouble has been caused in marriages from the woman seeking to be the head of the household instead of the helper. A Stanford University study found that women initiate roughly 69% of divorces in the United States. Not every divorce is caused by this. But I find it interesting that the helper of man is able to initiate divorce more often than the man. I will leave that as testament to our fallen world.

God deals with Adam. Genesis 3:17–19:

Then to Adam He said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat from it’;
Cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you will eat of it all the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you; and you will eat the plants of the field; by the sweat of your face you will eat bread, till you return to the ground, because from it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

James Tissot - Cain Leadeth Abel to Death
James Tissot, Cain Leadeth Abel to Death (c. 1896–1902), Brooklyn Museum

The End of the Story

Because a woman, made to be a helper to the man, listened to a serpent while the man was doing — what, we don’t know — they broke the one commandment their Creator had given them. We live in a fallen world. The creation groans, longing for the day when God will make all things right. And He will.

Revelation 21:

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth passed away, and there is no longer any sea. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne, saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is among men, and He will dwell among them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself will be among them, and He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain. The first things have passed away.”

And He who sits on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” And He said, “Write, for these words are faithful and true.” Then He said to me, “They are done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give to the one who thirsts from the spring of the water of life without cost. He who overcomes will inherit these things, and I will be his God and he will be My son. But for the cowardly and unbelieving and abominable and murderers and sexually immoral persons and sorcerers and idolaters and all liars, their part will be in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.”

A woman’s offspring will crush the serpent’s head. The serpent will bruise his heel.

That’s the whole story. The rest of the book just fills in the details.

Sources

  1. Shuph (שׁוּף): Genesis 3:15 — Hebrew verb meaning to crush, bruise, or strike at. Appears twice in the same verse: the seed of the woman crushes the serpent’s head; the serpent bruises the seed’s heel. See Francis Brown, S.R. Driver, and Charles Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (Oxford, 1907), p. 1003.
  2. Teshuqah parallel (Genesis 3:16 / 4:7): The Hebrew word teshuqah (desire) appears only three times in the Old Testament — Genesis 3:16, Genesis 4:7, and Song of Songs 7:10. In both Genesis passages it is paired with the verb mashal (to rule). Susan Foh, “What Is the Woman’s Desire?” Westminster Theological Journal 37 (1975): 376–83, first developed the “desire to rule” interpretation. Also: John MacArthur, The MacArthur Study Bible, notes on Genesis 3:16 and 4:7.
  3. Panourgia (2 Corinthians 11:3): Greek noun meaning craftiness, cunning, shrewdness — used by Paul to describe the serpent’s deception of Eve. Walter Bauer, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament (BDAG), p. 748.
  4. Joel Richardson, The Gospel of the Skull Crusher: The Gloriously Good News of God’s Plan to Fix Everything (Winepress Media, 2025). Available at joelstrumpet.com.

The Skull Crusher

Genesis 3:8-11:

Then they heard the sound of Yahweh God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of Yahweh God in the midst of the trees of the garden. Yahweh God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?” And he said, “I heard the sound of You in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.” And He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?”

Did this surprise God? No. God breathed out and the Milky Way appeared in the night sky. God knew what His creation would do. He gave them free will. I have built robots and programmed them to do things, and they always did what I programmed them to do. God created man and his woman, and because He is a loving God (Ephesians 2:4: “But God, being rich in mercy because of His great love with which He loved us”), He granted us free will. To believe Him or not. Those in the “believe Him not” category will find themselves living through eternity in torment and loneliness. Forever.

From Jesus — the Word who was there in the beginning — the word He uses most for this place is Gehenna. The Valley of Hinnom outside Jerusalem, where trash burned and worms fed. He uses a real, visible place as a picture of a real, invisible reality:

Matthew 5:22 — “Anyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment… anyone who says ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire.”

Matthew 10:28 — “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.”

Matthew 25:41 — “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.'”

Matthew 25:46 — “And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.” Same word for both. If eternal life is eternal, eternal punishment is eternal.

Mark 9:43-48 — “Where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.” Jesus says this three times in a row. The only place He repeats Himself like this.

Luke 16:19-31 — The rich man and Lazarus. The rich man is in torment in Hades. He can see Abraham. He feels thirst. He asks for a drop of water. Abraham says, “Between us and you a great chasm has been fixed.” He asks Abraham to send someone to warn his brothers. Abraham says: “If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.”

I implore you, if you are a non-believer, pray to God for mercy, that He would save you.

The Curse — and the Promise

Adam tries to distance himself from his woman. Genesis 3:12:

And the man said, “The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me from the tree, and I ate.”

He didn’t take responsibility. He blamed her. Genesis 3:13:

Then Yahweh God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?” And the woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”

She knew she had been deceived. But the temptation was too great. For many of us, and for the sin that lives within us, the temptation is too great. Matthew 26:41: “Keep watching and praying that you may not enter into temptation; the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.”

God gets down to business with the culprit. Genesis 3:14-15:

And Yahweh God said to the serpent,
“Because you have done this,
Cursed are you more than any of the cattle,
And more than every beast of the field;
On your belly you will go,
And dust you will eat
All the days of your life;

And I will put enmity
Between you and the woman,
And between your seed and her seed;
He shall bruise you on the head,
And you shall bruise him on the heel.”

God will put enmity between the woman and the serpent. The Hebrew word in Genesis 3:15 is shuph (שׁוּף). It means to crush, to bruise, to strike at — the sense of pressing or grinding with the foot or head. It appears twice in the same verse:

  • “He shall shuph your head” — the seed of the woman crushes the serpent’s head
  • “You shall shuph his heel” — the serpent strikes at the seed’s heel

Same word. Same action. Different targets. A crushed head versus a bruised heel. One is fatal. One is not.

This is the first prophecy in the Bible. It is also the whole gospel in one verse. A woman’s offspring will crush the serpent’s head. The serpent will bruise his heel. The victor takes damage — but the wound is survivable. The loser takes a blow to the head — and that wound is fatal. The bruised heel is the cross. The crushed head is satan’s defeat. The resurrection is the Victor walking away from the fight.

Every prophecy after this is an expansion of this one verse. Abraham — which offspring? This line. Moses and the Passover — the seed preserved through blood. David — which king? The seed through David’s line. Isaiah 53 — which suffering servant? “He was pierced for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities.” The bruised heel becomes a crushed servant. Daniel 9 — when? Seventy weeks are decreed. The timeline narrows. And Christ — Hebrews 2:14: “That through death He might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil.” 1 John 3:8: “The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil.”

The thread does not break. Not once. From Genesis 3 to Revelation 20, the same promise keeps expanding, narrowing, specifying — and every expansion was written before it was fulfilled.

An interesting side note: on August 16, 2026, we had a celebration of my wife’s and her younger brother’s birthday. Same day, seven years apart. The whole family — think large — came to celebrate, and I got to spend an hour or two talking to my nephew, a man of God. In the course of our theology discussion, I mentioned I had bought a book called The Gospel of the Skull Crusher by Joel Richardson. My nephew said he knew the author personally. It is a very good book dealing with the enmity between the woman and the serpent.

The Curse on the Woman and the Man

Genesis 3:16 — To the woman He said:

“I will greatly multiply your pain and conception; in pain you will bear children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.”

“Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.” What is going on here? The first look at this is not what you think. The desire she has for her husband is not romantic. It is a desire to rule over him. To be the head, not the helper. If you don’t believe me, look at Genesis 4:7 — the same word, the same construction:

“If you do well, will not your countenance be lifted up? And if you do not do well, sin is lying at the door; and its desire is for you, but you must rule over it.”

The Hebrew word is teshuqah. It appears only three times in the entire Old Testament — here, in Genesis 3:16, and in Song of Songs 7:10. Both times in Genesis, it is paired with the verb mashal, “to rule.” Sin’s teshuqah is to rule over Cain. The woman’s teshuqah is to rule over her husband. Same word. Same grammar. Same meaning. This is not how God designed it. This is the curse. Untold trouble has been caused in marriages from the woman seeking to be the head of the household instead of the helper. A Stanford University study found that women initiate roughly 69% of divorces in the United States. Not every divorce is caused by this. But I find it interesting that the helper of man is able to initiate divorce more often than the man. I will leave that as testament to our fallen world.

God deals with Adam. Genesis 3:17-19:

Then to Adam He said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat from it’;
Cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you will eat of it all the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you; and you will eat the plants of the field; by the sweat of your face you will eat bread, till you return to the ground, because from it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

The End of the Story

Because a woman, made to be a helper to the man, listened to a serpent while the man was doing — what, we don’t know — they broke the one commandment their Creator had given them. We live in a fallen world. The creation groans, longing for the day when God will make all things right. And He will.

Revelation 21:

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth passed away, and there is no longer any sea. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne, saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is among men, and He will dwell among them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself will be among them, and He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain. The first things have passed away.”

And He who sits on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” And He said, “Write, for these words are faithful and true.” Then He said to me, “They are done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give to the one who thirsts from the spring of the water of life without cost. He who overcomes will inherit these things, and I will be his God and he will be My son. But for the cowardly and unbelieving and abominable and murderers and sexually immoral persons and sorcerers and idolaters and all liars, their part will be in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.”

A woman’s offspring will crush the serpent’s head. The serpent will bruise his heel.

That’s the whole story. The rest of the book just fills in the details.

Sources

  1. Shuph (שׁוּף): Genesis 3:15 — Hebrew verb meaning to crush, bruise, or strike at. Appears twice in the same verse: the seed of the woman crushes the serpent’s head; the serpent bruises the seed’s heel. See Francis Brown, S.R. Driver, and Charles Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (Oxford, 1907), p. 1003.
  2. Teshuqah parallel (Genesis 3:16 / 4:7): The Hebrew word teshuqah (desire) appears only three times in the Old Testament — Genesis 3:16, Genesis 4:7, and Song of Songs 7:10. In both Genesis passages it is paired with the verb mashal (to rule). Susan Foh, “What Is the Woman’s Desire?” Westminster Theological Journal 37 (1975): 376–83, first developed the “desire to rule” interpretation. Also: John MacArthur, The MacArthur Study Bible, notes on Genesis 3:16 and 4:7.
  3. Panourgia (2 Corinthians 11:3): Greek noun meaning craftiness, cunning, shrewdness — used by Paul to describe the serpent’s deception of Eve. Walter Bauer, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament (BDAG), p. 748.
  4. Joel Richardson, The Gospel of the Skull Crusher: The Gloriously Good News of God’s Plan to Fix Everything (Winepress Media, 2025). Available at joelstrumpet.com.

The Fall

Lucas Cranach the Elder, The Garden of Eden (c. 1530)

Lucas Cranach the Elder, The Garden of Eden (c. 1530). Public domain.

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

You’ve read that many times. But have you stopped to think about what it really means? John 1 says:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being.

God in the form of the Word spoke, and it was. Light before the sun. Plants before photosynthesis. Sea creatures before any net was cast to catch them. Man from the dust of the ground, with the breath of God in his lungs, placed in a garden where every tree was for food except one.

And God called the light day, and the darkness He called night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day.

The Hebrew: Vayyiqra Elohim la’or yom velachoshekh qara layelah vayehi-erev vayehi-voker yom echad.

You see the word yom. Everywhere in the Hebrew Bible where yom appears with a number — first day, second day, forty days — it means a 24-hour day. Over 350 times outside of Genesis 1, not one exception. When Moses wrote “the first day” and “the second day,” he meant exactly that. A morning and an evening. Twenty-four hours. The same way you’d read “three days’ journey” or “on the seventh day” anywhere else in the Old Testament. So we can be assured that God, the Word, created all that we know in six days. Light. The firmament to divide the waters. Heaven. Dry land. Vegetation. Lights in the sky. The swarm of living things in the sea and the sky. The beasts of the earth and every creeping thing.

Then He said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness.” And He gave man dominion over the birds of the sky and every living thing.

Elohim — God — declared it all to be very good.

The Law of Information

John Collier, The Laboratory (1895)

John Collier, The Laboratory (1895). Public domain.

But a point needs to be made about the creation itself. We run into something called the Law of Information. It states that information does not arise from matter by natural processes. Information comes from a mind. It always has. It always does.

Norbert Wiener founded the field of cybernetics at MIT. He was not a theologian. He was not a creationist. In 1948, he wrote: “Information is information, not matter or energy. No materialism which does not admit this can survive at the present day.”

That is not a Christian saying that. That is one of the founding fathers of information theory, stating what his own field proved: information is not matter. It is not energy. It is its own category. And it does not spontaneously generate from dead chemicals. DNA and RNA — the master codes for how living things are built — are information. Code. The question is not whether the code exists. The question is who wrote it. Every code anyone has ever found the origin of came from a mind. Not one has been shown to arise from matter alone. Look around your house. Everything you see was made by someone — from an idea in someone’s mind.

Now look at Romans 1:

That which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, both His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.

God made His creation evident within us. We have all seen His attributes. A beautiful forest. A patch of flowers exquisite in their beauty. The dogs and cats we love. Every living thing carries the code — DNA, RNA — the master plans for how living things are built. Not one of those codes wrote itself. Not one arose from dead chemistry. Information comes from a mind. Always has.

James Tissot, The Pharisee and the Publican (Brooklyn Museum)

James Tissot, The Pharisee and the Publican (Brooklyn Museum). Public domain.

So when the evidence of creation is this plain — written into every cell of every living thing — what do some people do with it? Paul says they suppress it. They hold it down. Romans 1:18: “Who suppress the truth in unrighteousness.” Not that they didn’t have the truth. Not that it wasn’t available. They had it, and they held it under. Scientists who deny the Creator are not different in kind from the Pharisees who denied Christ. They have worked long and hard to attain their titles, as did the Pharisees. They were all educated in the same worldview, as were the Pharisees. They love the prestige of their education, as did the Pharisees. And when they come to evidence that tells them plainly to change their worldview, they are loath to do so — as were the Pharisees.

Henry Ossawa Tanner, Nicodemus Visiting Jesus (1899)

Henry Ossawa Tanner, Nicodemus Visiting Jesus (1899). Public domain.

Jesus said to Nicodemus, a Pharisee, in John 3:3-5:

“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.”

Nicodemus said to Him, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?” He couldn’t see past his framework. But Nicodemus did eventually change his worldview — along with Joseph of Arimathea, a wealthy man and a disciple of Jesus, but secretly, for fear of the Jews (John 19:38). They both had a change of mind, and it cost them in this life. But they attained salvation, which is more than worth the loss of stature among their friends. There were others who were offered the same change. I’ll let you find them on your own. Consider it homework.

We are without excuse. But we continue.

The Fall

Adam, who is made from the dust of the ground — God breathed life into him (Genesis 2:7) — is told he may eat from every tree in the garden, except one. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Adam is then given a helper, taken from his rib. She is called Woman because she was taken out of Man (Genesis 2:23). And Genesis 2:24: “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother, and cleave to his wife; and they shall become one flesh.”

This will become important later.

The Bible does not say how long Adam and his woman had before a visitor showed up. We are told in Scripture that satan and the angels who rebelled were cast down — Revelation 12:7-9:

And the great dragon was thrown down, the serpent of old who is called the devil and satan, who deceives the whole world. He was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.

So we don’t know how long Adam and his woman had before the serpent showed up and started asking questions. Why Adam was not out in front of his woman, we don’t know. Perhaps, going back to Genesis 2:24, he was cleaving to his wife. Whatever the reason, his woman was the one talking to the serpent. 2 Corinthians 11:3: “But I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ.” Cunning. Not smarter. The word is panourgia — craftiness, shrewdness, trickery.

Genesis 3:1 — The serpent said to the woman, “Indeed, has God said, ‘You shall not eat from any tree of the garden’?”

Genesis 3:2-3 — The woman said to the serpent, “From the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat; but from the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God said, ‘You shall not eat from it, and you shall not touch it, lest you die.'”

Adam had conveyed the command from God to his woman, and she repeated it back to the serpent.

And the serpent said to the woman, Genesis 3:4-5: “You surely will not die! For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

Have you ever been offered something so good it couldn’t possibly be true? It is a temptation, to be sure. Adam’s woman thought what the serpent said sounded pretty good. What Adam thought, we don’t know. Before this, before he was missing a rib, God had run all the animals past him so Adam could name them (Genesis 2:18-20):

Then Yahweh God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make him a helper suitable for him.” And out of the ground Yahweh God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the sky, and He brought each to the man to see what he would call it; and whatever the man called a living creature, that was its name. And the man gave names to all the cattle and to the birds of the sky and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found a helper suitable for him.

Now that he has a helper, does he delegate and run the show from the back? We don’t know. We do know from the dialog with the serpent that the woman had never encountered craftiness and deceit before. Previous to this, God and Adam had been honest and without guile. The serpent brought something new into the world: deception.

To summarize: God creates the heavens and the earth and everything else. It takes six yom, six 24-hour days. God declares His workmanship to be very good. Sometime later — we don’t know how long — one of His creations makes an error in judgment. Genesis 3:6:

Then the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, so she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate.

Adam was with her. He was not deceived — he ate willingly. Genesis 3:7:

And the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings.

Paradise became something other than what it was designed to be.

Sources

  1. Yom with a number = 24-hour day: James Stambaugh, “The Meaning of ‘Day’ in Genesis,” ICR Impact No. 184, 1988. Over 350 instances of yom with a number outside Genesis 1 — every one means a 24-hour day. Zero exceptions.
  2. Law of Information — Norbert Wiener, Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine (MIT Press, 1948), p. 132: “Information is information, not matter or energy. No materialism which does not admit this can survive at the present day.” Wiener was not a theologian or a creationist — he was the founder of cybernetics at MIT. For the corollary that information originates from a mind, see Werner Gitt, In the Beginning Was Information (Christliche Literatur-Verbreitung, 1997).
  3. Women initiate ~69% of divorces: Michael Rosenfeld, “Who Wants the Breakup? Gender and Breakup in Heterosexual Couples,” Social Networks and the Life Course (Springer, 2018). Data from the How Couples Meet and Stay Together survey, 2,262 adults, nationally representative. Presented at the American Sociological Association annual meeting, 2015.

Know God and trust in Him

This is for those, in times of weakness, times of trials, that need to know God loves them. It is clear from the scriptures that He not only loves His own, but will be with you in your darkest hour. Let Him be your strength when you are weak!

Psalm 9:10 — And they that know thy name will put their trust in thee: for thou, Lord, hast not forsaken them that seek thee.

Psalm 56:3 — What time I am afraid, I will trust in thee.

Proverbs 3:5-6 — Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.

Isaiah 26:3 — Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee.

Isaiah 40:31 — But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.

Jeremiah 9:23-24 — Thus saith the Lord, Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches: but let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me, that I am the Lord which exercise lovingkindness, judgment, and righteousness, in the earth: for in these things I delight, saith the Lord.

Jeremiah 17:7-8 — Blessed is the man that trusteth in the Lord, and whose hope the Lord is. For he shall be as a tree planted by the waters, and that spreadeth out her roots by the river, and shall not see when heat cometh, but her leaf shall be green; and shall not be careful in the year of drought, neither shall cease from yielding fruit.

Nahum 1:7 — The Lord is good, a strong hold in the day of trouble; and he knoweth them that trust in him.

John 17:3 — And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.

Romans 8:28 — And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.

2 Corinthians 1:9 — But we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God which raiseth the dead.

Philippians 4:6-7 — Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.

2 Timothy 1:12 — For the which cause I also suffer these things: nevertheless I am not ashamed: for I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day.

Hebrews 10:23 — Let us hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering; (for he is faithful that promised;)

1 John 4:16 — And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.