In his book, Unpunishable, Danny Silk said the state of disconnection from God, others, and themselves experienced by Adam and Eve as a consequence of their sin was the worst punishment any human being could experience. He noted how they had put themselves in that state, and that getting out of it was complicated. Silk then asked an important question: Could Adam and Eve have repented for their sin in the Garden? “Could they have experienced reconciliation and restoration with God and prevented the human race’s long legacy of bondage to sin, shame, and death?” Silk pointed to Genesis 4, which is the story of Cain and Abel, as an answer to his questions, but again I find his interpretation of the text and explanation for what happened unpalatable.
The short answer to Silk’s questions is no, they could not have repented and as a result prevent the legacy of bondage to sin, shame and death. The immediate consequence of eating the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was a change in their nature from that of able to sin or not sin before the Fall to not able not to sin. They now needed a Savior, which was God’s plan all along. Otherwise, they were headed towards the eternal judgment/torment of separation from God, others and themselves—which is ultimately the worst punishment any human being could experience. Intent on using the encounter of God with Adam and Eve in the Garden to illustrate what he calls the punishment paradigm, Silk either missed or ignored the redemptive-historical context of what is happening.
As was pointed out in Part 1, Silk missed a significant point of the text as he described the encounter of God with Adam and Eve in Genesis 3. When Adam replied to God’s question, “Where are you?” in Genesis 3:9, he said that he was afraid because he was “naked,” so he hid. Here, both God and Adam use the Hebrew word, êrōm for naked, which means spiritual and physical nakedness (3:10, 11). As a consequence of eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, Adam and Eve knew they were “êrōm” (verse 3:7). This nakedness is in contrast to Genesis 2:25, where Adam and Eve were naked (ʿārôm), meaning physically naked with the sense of also being vulnerable. Therefore Genesis 2:25 is highlighting that before the Fall, Adam and Eve were naked and vulnerable, but they weren’t ashamed of it.
Afterwards, God gave them what they wanted: knowledge of good and evil apart from God. The first thing they realized was they were physically and spiritually naked and separated (disconnected) from God as a consequence of their sin and they couldn’t undo it. Missing this important point, Silk then imports his sense of the punishment paradigm onto the text, saying Adam and Eve went fully into an “every man for himself” mode, highlighted by blame-shifting and pointing the finger away from themselves in response to God asking them did they eat of the tree they were commanded by Him not to eat. This was an immediate consequence of their sin and not a result of them clinging to their shame, as Silk said. They were not able to do anything else; they were not able not to sin. See Part 1 for a fuller discussion of the states of human nature before the Fall, after the Fall and after the redemption we receive in Christ.
Silk then appeared to gloss over the details of three “pronouncements” made by God to the serpent, Eve and Adam, summing up the consequences each will face. First, look as the Hebrew word used to introduce these pronouncements. In Genesis 3:14, God said to the serpent “Because you have done this, cursed [ʾārûr] are you above all livestock.” Cursed (ʾārûr) is another wordplay on the earlier “crafty” (ʿārûm) in Genesis 3:1 and is the typical way of introducing a decree or judgment of doom (Genesis 4:11; 9:25; 27:29; Deuteronomy 27:15-26; 28:16-20). It connects how the ill-use of the serpent’s craftiness led to divine censure, curse and punishment: as a result of his craftiness ʿ(ārûm), the serpent was cursed (ʾārûr).
“Eating” dust reflects Eve’s temptation to “eat” of the tree and Adam and Eve’s fall by eating. In his commentary on Genesis, Kenneth Matthews said eating dust was a common figure for personal humiliation in Scripture. The serpent was responsible for the demise of man, who returns to dust, just as the serpent’s diet—all the days of its life—is a perpetual reminder of its crime. The curse upon the serpent includes its final destruction by the seed, the descendent of the woman (Genesis 3:15): “The serpent was instrumental in the undoing of the woman, and in turn the woman will ultimately bring down the serpent through her offspring.”
“Between you [serpent]” has the singular pronoun (as elsewhere in the verse), meaning that this hostility begins with the beast and the woman as individuals. Yet their experience is shared by their offspring too; the serpent and woman are distinct from their offspring yet also one and the same with them. Here we have the common case where an individual represents many. Eve and her adversary are the progenitors of a lifelong struggle that will persist until a climactic moment when the woman’s offspring will achieve the upper hand.
Christian tradition has referred to Genesis 3:15 as the protoevangelium or the first gospel. Kenneth Matthews said in his commentary the passage pointed to Christ as the vindicator of the woman, who would soon crush Satan under his feet (Romans 16:20). Jesus alluded to Genesis 3:15 when he said the Pharisees were children of the devil because of their spiritual apostasy (John 8:44), contrary to their claims they were Abraham’s children (8:39). This contrast was heightened in 1 John 3:11-15, where John said from the beginning, we were to love one another and not be like Cain who was of the evil one and murdered his brother. Christ is the offspring (seed) of the woman.
Silk disregards this redemptive-historical allusion and said God was essentially saying, “I created you to function out of connection with Me and one another. Choosing self-protection over reconnection cuts you off from the only thing that causes you to flourish in every department of life and that means life is going to be really hard for you.” Instead of pointing to Christ as the coming Savior, Silk said getting out of the state Adam and Eve had put themselves in was . . . “complicated.” He then pointed to Genesis 4 and the story of Cain and Abel, which he said answered his question of whether or not Adam and Eve could have experienced reconciliation and restoration with God, and prevented the human race’s bondage to sin. Inexplicitly, he said in this story, we see the birth of religion—“humanity’s attempts to engage God in their fallen state.”
This was a reference to the offerings of Cain from the ground and Abel from the firstborn of his flock, but Silk did not elaborate on this aside. Instead, he focused on Genesis 4:13, which he said was the first mention of punishment in the Bible. This may have been the first time the word translated as punishment appeared in the Bible, however it seems Silk forgot what he had referred to as the pronouncement against the serpent. God’s curse (ʾārûr) of Cain in Genesis 4:11 connects this judgment of God to that of the serpent. According to Kenneth Matthews,
Like the serpent, Cain is placed under a curse; this is the first occasion in Scripture where a human is cursed. This curse indicates the gravity of his crime against God and creation. Cain’s culpability is emphasized by the direct accusation “from your [own] hand.” The language “you are under a curse” is the same as the oracle delivered against the serpent: “Cursed are you above [min] all the livestock” (3:14) is parallel to “cursed are you from [min] the ground” (4:11). This linkage shows that like father like “seed,” both the serpent and Cain are murderers who receive the same retribution.
There was another opportunity in his discussion of Genesis 4 for Silk to bring the future redemptive work of Christ into his interpretation of Genesis, but again he missed his chance. He pointed out that the Hebrew word avon was translated as punishment. He cited and quoted from a video discussion from the Bible Project (Avon/Iniquity), where Tim Mackie said the meaning of avon included both the act of sin and its consequences. Silk ended an extended quote of Mackie without any reference to redemption or Christ in his quotation. His last sentences in the quote were: “This is the meaning of the common biblical phrase ‘to bear your iniquity,’ or in Hebrew, to ‘carry’ your avon. God gives people the dignity of carrying the consequences of their bad decisions.” Yet the video continued:
But that’s not the only way God responds to avon in the Bible. He also offers to carry the avon for us people as an act of sheer generosity. In fact, carrying avon is the most common Hebrew phrase for God’s forgiveness. Like in Psalm 32, where the poet says, “I didn’t hide my avon but confessed it. And you carried the avon of my sin.” This is actually shocking if you stop and think about it. God forgives people by taking responsibility for their avon. This idea reaches its high point in the book of Isaiah, where God appoints a figure called the Servant. He will embody God’s forgiving love by carrying the avon of many and allowing it to crush him.
The devotional Connect the Testaments for February 5th related a conversation between two homeless men that contained astute insight into why a good God found it necessary to punish His people. Without punishment, we would not recognize our need for salvation:
You wouldn’t want to live in a world where God didn’t punish injustices and just freely forgave sin—without any request for someone to choose the salvation He offers back. Imagine a place where injustice was never punished and people never recognized their sin and need for salvation. That would be terrible and painful.
It seems to me that the consequence of death for disobeying God’s command to not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was both a blessing and a curse. Without death from sin, humanity would have become devils—eternally existing as beings not able to not sin. But God’s plan was to send a Savior; someone who could save us from this body of sin and death: Jesus Christ (Romans 7:23-24). Through the finished work of Christ, we have the guarantee of the promised renewal of human nature when Christ comes again (Ephesians 1:13-14). This was missing from Silk’s exposition of Genesis 3 and 4.
Read other sections of this article, “Unpunishable is Unpalatable” here: Part 1, Part 3, Part 4.