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Women of the Bible

Eve in the Bible

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The first woman, made from the man and given to him as a partner, whose account holds both the first sin and the first promise of a deliverer.

Read the passages first

Loading Genesis 2:18-25…

· Her making, her naming and the first marriage.

Loading Genesis 3:1-24…

· The serpent, the eating, the sentence and the promise inside it.

Genesis introduces her twice. In the LORD God says that the man being alone is not good, and the chapter ends with a woman standing beside him. In the man names her Eve, and Genesis gives the reason: she is the mother of all living. The name comes after the sentence of death, not before it, which is the first hint that the account is about more than a failure.

Her story is short. Most of what people say about Eve comes from the three later passages that mention her by name, and from a long history of interpretation that is not always careful about the difference. This study keeps them apart.

Where Scripture speaks of her

Every passage in view

  • She is made from the man's side and brought to him. He calls her woman because she was taken out of man.

  • The serpent speaks to her, she answers, she eats and gives to her husband, who eats with her.

  • God questions her directly, and she answers that the serpent her.

  • Her sentence: pain in childbearing, and words about and rule that readers have long debated.

  • Adam names her Eve, because she is the mother of all living.

  • She bears Cain and says she has gotten a man from the LORD.

  • She bears Seth, and names him, and Scripture records her reason.

  • Paul uses the serpent's deceiving of Eve as a warning to a whole church about being led away from Christ.

  • Paul appeals to the order and the in Genesis while giving instruction to Timothy.

Kept apart on purpose

What the text says, what it allows, what it withholds

What Scripture says outright

  • She was made by God from the man, and brought to him by God, .
  • The serpent spoke to her, altered God's words, and she answered by altering them again, .
  • She saw, took, ate, and gave to her husband, and he ate, .
  • She said the serpent her, , and Paul repeats that word , .
  • God spoke judgment on the serpent before he spoke to her, and the judgment contained a promise about her offspring, .
  • She bore Cain, Abel and Seth, and Genesis records her own words at two of those births, and .

What we are drawing from it

  • Scholarship

    Most readers understand to mean the man was present and silent while the conversation happened, since she gives him the fruit immediately and God later addresses him first.

  • Debated

    has been read since the earliest Christian centuries as pointing beyond Cain and Abel to one particular offspring. The New Testament never quotes the verse directly, so the connection is drawn from the whole shape of Scripture rather than from a citation.

  • Language

    The Hebrew name Eve, chawwah, is linked in with living, chay. Genesis supplies the explanation itself, so the wordplay is the text's own, not a translator's guess.

    Where this comes from

    • BDB, Hebrew and English Lexicon. on chawwah and chay

What Scripture does not tell us

  • Scripture never describes her appearance, her age or how long she lived.
  • It does not say the fruit was an apple, and it does not name the tree beyond calling it the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
  • It does not tell us what she felt at any point in . Her words are recorded, her emotions are not.
  • It does not say she was more guilty than the man. sentences the serpent, the woman and the man, and traces death into the world through one man.

Her place in the biblical story

is not a second creation account tacked onto the first. It slows down over one detail: the man is alone, and God calls that not good. Every animal is brought to him and none answers to him. The woman is the answer, and records the first recorded human words of gladness.

then puts that new pair inside a test they had already been told about in . The serpent works on the words. He asks a question that is not quite what God said, she answers with a rule that is not quite what God said either, and the boundary begins to blur before anything is eaten.

What follows is the pattern the rest of the Bible assumes: hiding, blame, exile from the garden, and a God who still speaks and still clothes. is easy to read past. God makes coats of skins for the two people he has just sentenced.

What God does in the story

The centre of is not the eating. It is the speaking. God comes into the garden and asks questions, and the questions are not for his information. and give a hiding pair a chance to say out loud what they have done.

Then he curses the serpent, and inside that curse he places the first promise in the Bible, . Enmity, an offspring, a bruised head, a bruised heel. The judgment scene is where hope enters the story, and it enters through her offspring.

This is why the account cannot be reduced to a warning about . tells the reader what went wrong and, in the same breath, that God has already decided how it will be answered.

The heart revealed in the story

Genesis gives us three things about her inner life, and all three are her own words. She repeats God's command with an addition and a softening, . She says the serpent her, . She says at Cain's birth that she has gotten a man with the help of the LORD, .

That last sentence deserves attention. The woman under the sentence of speaks of the LORD when her first son is born. Genesis does not tell us what she understood about the promise, but it does show her tying childbirth to God.

What this reveals about God and about us

About God: he gives before he commands, . He judges honestly, . He promises in the middle of judging, . He covers what shame cannot cover, .

About us: sin here begins in listening, not in appetite. The serpent changes a word, and a good gift becomes a suspicion. and treat this chapter as the door through which death came to everyone, which is why the Bible keeps returning to it.

Trace the story

Eve through the canon

Two of these stops are direct references to Eve. The rest are places where the New Testament reasons from without naming her. Both are worth following, and they are labelled differently on purpose.

Old Testament to New Testament

  1. Scripture

    Loading Genesis 2:18…

    The man alone is called not good, and God acts.

    Open Genesis 2:18 in the reader

  2. Scripture

  3. Scripture

  4. Scripture

  5. Scripture

  6. Scripture

  7. Scripture

  8. Scripture

  9. Debated

  10. Debated

Scripture interprets Scripture

How later passages read her account

Loading 2 Corinthians 11:3…

Paul does not use Eve to make a point about women. He uses her to make a point about a whole congregation: minds can be moved off Christ the same way, by a voice that adjusts what God said.

Loading 1 Timothy 2:13-14…

Paul cites two facts from Genesis: the order of the making, and who was . Christians disagree sharply about what he builds on those facts. The disagreement is about the application, not about whether Genesis says it.

Not smoothed over

The hard parts of this account

Was Eve more to blame?

Debated

records that she ate first and that she was . It also records that he ate, that God addressed him first in , and that the ground is cursed through him in .

builds its whole argument on one man, and never on her. Any reading that makes Eve the sole cause has to leave Paul's argument behind.

Genesis 3:16 and the word desire

Debated

The second half of is one of the most disputed lines in the Old Testament. Readers take it as a description of conflict introduced by sin, or as a description of an ordering, and the same Hebrew word appears again in about sin desiring Cain.

Audela states the options rather than deciding for the text. What is not in dispute is that the verse belongs to a sentence pronounced after sin, and that Genesis presents it as a wound in the world, not as a blueprint of the good creation.

Revelation 12 and the woman

Debated

shows a woman, a male child and a dragon called the serpent, . Many readers hear behind it. Others read the woman as Israel or as the church, since speaks of the rest of her offspring.

The connection is worth naming and worth labelling. Revelation never quotes .

Questions the text can answer

Take these back to Scripture

  1. What exactly did God say about the tree, and what did the serpent and the woman each make of it?

    Look at . Read Genesis 2:16-17, then Genesis 3:1-3. Write down the three versions side by side and mark every word that changes.

  2. Where does hope first appear in Genesis 3, and who is speaking when it does?

    Look at . Notice who is being addressed in Genesis 3:14-15. The promise is spoken to the serpent, not to the couple.

  3. What does God do after he passes sentence?

    Look at . Read Genesis 3:21 slowly. Ask what it cost and what it covers.

  4. How does Paul use this chapter when he is not talking about Eve at all?

    Look at . Trace the words one and all through Romans 5:15-19.

Pray it back

A prayer from this account

God our Maker, you spoke before we did. You gave the garden, the work and the companion, and you called your gift good.

We confess that we still listen to voices that shave the edges off your words, and that we still hide from the questions you ask.

Thank you that you did not leave the garden silent. You promised an offspring, you clothed what we could not cover, and you kept the line open until Christ came.

Teach us to hold your words exactly as you said them, and to answer you when you call. Amen.

Sources consulted

  • BDB, Hebrew and English Lexicon. chawwah, chay, teshuqah
  • Keil and Delitzsch, Commentary on the Old Testament. Genesis 2 and 3

Themes in this account

  • Covenant. God's promises to Abraham and to David, carried forward.
  • Suffering. Loss, waiting and hardship that Scripture does not explain away.
  • Motherhood. Children, barrenness and household life as Scripture treats them.
  • Genealogy. The line through which the Messiah came.

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Where this study leads next

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