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I was talking a couple of weekends ago with a friend, and the discussion turned to Creation, the Fall, and other related issues and it caused me to think more about just how much responsibility God gave to man and just why Paul laid so much at the father’s feet in a family. I’d like to take this opportunity to look through some Bible passages with you and see just what fathers and husbands have to be responsible for. Just so you know how we’ll go about this study, I’m going to do searches for fathers and husbands in the Bible and then address passages that talk about a father’s or husband’s responsibility.
I do want to start out with the one that got me going, just to get you thinking.
And when the woman saw that the tree [was] good for food, and that it [was] pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make [one] wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat. And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they [were] naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons. – Genesis 3:6-7
What my friend pointed out that was interesting here was the order of events. Here you have Eve deceived, she eats, she gives to Adam, both of their eyes were opened. The question that he posed to me was this– could it be that it was not necessarily a sin for Eve to eat? God told Adam not to eat, Adam told Eve not to touch it, but it wasn’t until after Adam ate that the Bible records that both their eyes were opened. I always wondered why Adam would have eaten it if Eve realized that something happened– was it out of love or not wanting to be separated, but this brings a different element into the picture– could it just be that nothing happened to Eve, so she offered it to Adam– and then sin entered? What a picture of the responsibility of a husband!
You see, I always thought that if Adam and Eve were to have children and then sinned that the sin would not have come through those children, and yet if you look at it as Adam was the head of the human race, it still would have. Tomorrow we’ll look at the fact that God visits the iniquity of fathers on the children unto the third and fourth generation, but suffice it to say, in Adam we all sinned– not in Eve, even though she was first.
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Where does it say that Adam told eve not to touch it? I’ve heard this metioned before, but I seem to be missing something.
In Genesis 3 is where the serpent confronts Eve. Check this out:
If you look at God’s command to Adam in 2:17 you see this:
God never told Adam anything about touching it. Adam must have added that when he told Eve– maybe to protect her thinking that if she didn’t touch it she wouldn’t be able to eat it. Instead, I can see Eve emboldened by the fact that she touched it and lived– and then she ate. The rest, as they say, is history.
Fascinating. I never considered that before. Though I have oft wondered why Eve wasn’t the person we recieved sin from. I think you may be on to something there.
MML