Literal Commentary on Genesis 11.31–12.2

So they ate, “and the eyes of both were opened.” To what, if not to desiring each other—the penalty of sin conceived by the death of the flesh itself—so that the body was now not only animal, which could have been changed without death into a better and spiritual condition if they had kept obedience, but now a body of death, in which the law in the members would fight against the law of the mind? For they had not been made with their eyes closed, nor were they wandering blind and groping in the paradise of delights, so that they touched the forbidden tree without knowing it and groped at the forbidden fruit in ignorance. How were the animals and birds brought to Adam to see what he would call them, if he did not see? And how was the woman herself brought to the man when she was made, so that he said of her, whom he did not see, “This now is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh,” and the rest? Finally, how did the woman see that the tree was good for food and that it was pleasing to the eyes to look at and beautiful to know, if their eyes were closed? Yet the whole is not to be taken figuratively because of the transferred use of one word. Let the serpent see in what sense he said, “Your eyes will be opened”; for the writer of the book narrated that he said this, but in what meaning or sense he said it, he left to the reader to consider. But what is written, “And their eyes were opened, and they knew that they were naked,” is written in the same way as all the things that are narrated as done, and yet it should not on that account lead us to an allegorical narrative. For the evangelist, as narrator, was not inserting someone's figurative words in that person's character, but was narrating in his own character what had been done, when he said of those two, one of whom was Cleopas, that when the Lord had broken bread for them their eyes were opened and they recognized him whom they had not recognized on the way—not because they were walking with closed eyes, but because they were unable to recognize him. As there, so in this place the narrative is not figurative, though Scripture used a transferred word in saying that eyes were opened that had been open before: opened, that is, to look at and think about something they had never noticed before. For when bold curiosity was stirred to transgress the commandment, eager to try hidden things, to see what would follow on touching what was forbidden, delighted to break the reins of prohibition by a harmful freedom, thinking it more probable that the death they had feared would not follow—for we must believe that the fruit on that tree was of a kind they had already found harmless on other trees—they believed more readily that God could easily forgive sinners than they patiently bore not knowing what it was, or why he had forbidden them to take food from it. As soon, then, as they had transgressed the commandment, they were stripped bare inwardly, the grace deserting them which they had offended by a certain vanity and proud love of their own power; they cast their eyes on their own members and desired them with a movement they had not known. To this, then, their eyes were opened, to which they had not been open before, though they were open to other things.

This death befell them on the day on which what God forbade was done. For when they lost their wonderful condition—a condition provided even for the body by the tree of life through a mystical power, by which they could neither be assailed by disease nor changed by age, so that this was already signified in their flesh, though still animal and later to be changed for the better, through the food of the tree of life; which happens in the angels from the spiritual nourishment of wisdom itself, of which that tree was a sacrament, through participation in eternity, so that they are not changed for the worse—when, then, this condition was lost, their body took on a diseased and death-bearing quality, which is present also in the flesh of cattle, and therefore also the same movement by which in cattle the appetite for mating arises, so that those being born may succeed those who die. Yet even in that punishment the rational soul, showing its noble birth, blushed at the bestial movement in the members of its flesh and struck shame into it, not only because it felt this there where it had never before felt anything of the kind, but also because that shameful movement came from the transgression of the commandment. For there it felt with what grace it had been clothed before, when in its nakedness it suffered nothing unseemly. There was fulfilled: “Lord, in your will you gave strength to my beauty; but you turned away your face, and I became troubled.” Finally, in that trouble they ran to the fig leaves, sewed girdles, and, because they had deserted what was to be gloried in, covered what was to be ashamed of. Nor do I think they had in mind anything in those leaves that made them fit for covering members that now itched; but by a hidden prompting they were driven to this in that trouble, so that even such a signification of their punishment might be made by people who did not know it, which as an act would convict the sinner and as a writing would teach the reader.

“And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in paradise toward evening.” That hour was now fitting for visiting such people, who had fallen away from the light of truth. Perhaps before this God used to speak with them inwardly in other ways, whether expressible or inexpressible, as he also speaks with the angels, illuminating their minds by the unchangeable truth itself, where there is understanding to know at once all things, even those that do not happen at once in time. Perhaps, I say, he spoke with them in this way, even if not with as great a participation in divine wisdom as the angels receive, yet in human measure, however much less, but in the very same kind of visitation and speech. Perhaps also in that kind which happens through a creature, whether in ecstasy of the spirit through bodily images or to the bodily senses themselves, some appearance being presented to be seen or heard, as God is often seen in his angels or makes his voice sound through a cloud. Now, however, their hearing the voice of God walking in paradise toward evening was done visibly only through a creature, lest it be believed that the invisible substance, everywhere whole, which is of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, appeared to their bodily senses by movement in place and time. “And Adam and his wife hid themselves from the face of the Lord in the midst of the trees that are in paradise.” When God turns away his face inwardly and a man becomes troubled, let us not wonder that these things happen, which are like madness, through excessive shame and fear—that hidden prompting also not being at rest—so that without knowing it they did things that would signify something to descendants who would one day know, for whose sake these things were written.

“And the Lord God called Adam and said to him, Adam, where are you?” It is the voice of one rebuking, not of one ignorant. And this certainly bears on some meaning: that just as the commandment was given to the man, through whom it was to reach the woman, so the man is questioned first. For the commandment came from the Lord through the man to the woman, but sin from the devil through the woman to the man. These things are full of mystical meanings, not because those in whom they happened intended them, but because the most powerful wisdom of God was at work concerning them. Now, however, we are not unlocking the meanings but defending the events. So Adam answered, “I heard your voice in paradise and was afraid, because I am naked, and I hid myself.” It is quite probable that God was accustomed to appear to those first human beings in human form through a creature suited to such an action; yet he never allowed them to notice their nakedness, raising their attention to things above, until after their sin they had felt the shameful movement in their members by the penal law of the members. So they were affected as people usually are under the eyes of other people; and such an affection, coming from the penalty of sin, was to want to hide from him from whom nothing can be hidden, and to conceal their flesh from him who is the inspector of the heart. But what wonder if, proudly wishing to be like gods, they became futile in their thoughts and their foolish heart was darkened? For they said they were wise in their abundance, and when he turned away his face they became fools. For what they were already ashamed of before each other, for which they had also made themselves girdles, they feared much more vehemently to be seen by him, even girdled as they were, who, with a kind of familiar adaptation, brought something like human eyes through a visible creature to look upon them. For if he appeared in such a way that human beings spoke as with a man, as Abraham did at the oak of Mamre, that very nearness of friendship which gave them confidence before sin weighed them down with shame after sin; and they no longer dared to show to such eyes that nakedness which displeased even their own.

So the Lord, wishing now to punish the sinners, questioned in the manner of justice, more than by that penalty at which they were already compelled to blush, said, “Who told you that you were naked, unless you have eaten of the tree of which alone I had commanded you not to eat?” For from this, death conceived because of the sentence of God, who had so threatened, caused them to notice their members with concupiscence, where their eyes are said to have been opened, and there followed what made them ashamed. “And Adam said, The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I ate.” Pride! Did he say, “I have sinned”? He has the deformity of confusion and not the humility of confession. These things were written down for this purpose—since the questions themselves were surely asked so that they might be written both truly and usefully, for if falsely, then certainly not usefully—that we may notice with what disease of pride people labour today, trying to refer to the Creator whatever evil they have done, while they want whatever good they have done credited to themselves. “The woman,” he says, “whom you gave to be with me,” that is, whom you gave so that she might be with me, “she gave me of the tree, and I ate”: as though she had been given for this, and not rather that she should obey her husband and both obey God. “And the Lord God said to the woman, Why have you done this? And the woman said, The serpent deceived me, and I ate.” Neither does she confess her sin, but refers it to another: of unequal sex, of equal arrogance. Yet from them was born, though he did not imitate them, but was plainly exercised by many evils, he who said and will say to the end of the age, “I said, Lord, have mercy on me; heal my soul, for I have sinned against you.” How much better if these two had spoken so! But the Lord had not yet cut off the necks of sinners. There still remained toils, griefs, deaths, and all the crushing of the age, and the grace of God, by which at the fitting time he comes to the help of human beings, whom by affliction he taught not to presume on themselves. “The serpent,” she says, “deceived me, and I ate”: as though anyone's persuasion ought to have been put before the commandment of God.

“And the Lord God said to the serpent, Because you have done this, you are cursed above all cattle and above all the beasts that are upon the earth. Upon your breast and your belly you shall go, and earth you shall eat all the days of your life. And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed. She will watch for your head, and you will watch for her heel.” This whole sentence is figurative, and the writer's trustworthiness and the truth of the narrative require nothing of it except that we not doubt that it was spoken. For the words “And the Lord God said to the serpent” are the writer's words; these must be taken in their proper sense. This, then, is true: that it was said to the serpent. The rest are now God's words, which are left to the free understanding of the reader, whether they should be taken properly or figuratively, as we said at the beginning of this volume. Accordingly, the fact that the serpent was not asked why it did this may be seen as indicating that it had not done this in its own nature and will, but that the devil had worked by it, through it, and in it, the devil who was already destined for everlasting fire because of the sin of his ungodliness and pride. Now, then, what is said to the serpent, and is certainly referred to him who worked through the serpent, is beyond doubt figurative; for by these words that tempter is described, such as he would be to the human race, which began to be propagated only when this sentence was pronounced against the devil as against the serpent. How these words are to be taken, with their figures explained, we have discussed as far as we could in those two books on Genesis published against the Manichaeans, and if we can do so more carefully and fittingly elsewhere, God will be present to help us accomplish it; but now our purpose must not be turned aside to something other than what we have undertaken, when nothing requires it.

“And to the woman he said, I will greatly multiply your sorrows and your groaning; in sorrows you shall bear children, and your turning shall be to your husband, and he shall rule over you.” These words of God against the woman too are much more suitably understood figuratively and prophetically. Nevertheless, since the woman had not yet given birth, and the pain and groaning of one giving birth come only from the body of death, which was conceived through that transgression of the commandment—members that were animal even then, but which, if man had not sinned, would certainly not have died and would have lived in another, happier condition, until after a well-spent life they deserved to be changed for the better, as we have already suggested above in several places—this punishment is referred also to the proper sense of the letter. Only the words “and your turning shall be to your husband, and he shall rule over you” must be examined, as to how they can be taken in the proper sense. For it is not fitting to believe that even before sin the woman was made otherwise than that the man should rule her and she should turn to him in service. But it can rightly be taken that the servitude signified here is one of a certain condition rather than of love, so that even that servitude by which human beings later began to be slaves to human beings is found to have arisen from the punishment of sin. The apostle did indeed say, “Through love serve one another”; but he would by no means say, “Rule one another.” So spouses can serve one another through love; but the apostle does not permit the woman to rule over the man. For God's sentence conferred this rather on the man, and it was not by nature but by fault that the woman deserved to have her husband as lord; yet unless this is kept, nature will be depraved further and the fault increased.

So he said also to her husband, “Because you listened to the voice of your wife and ate of the tree of which alone I had commanded you not to eat, cursed is the earth in your works; in sorrows you shall eat of it all the days of your life. Thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, and you shall eat the grass of the field. In the sweat of your face you shall eat your bread, until you return to the earth from which you were taken; for earth you are, and to earth you shall go.” Who does not know that these are the toils of the human race on earth? And that they would not exist if the happiness that had been in paradise had been kept, there is certainly no doubt; and so let us not be reluctant to take these words first in their proper sense. Yet the prophetic meaning must be kept in mind and looked for, which the intention of God as he speaks has chiefly in view here. For it was not for nothing that Adam himself then, by some wonderful prompting, called the name of his wife “Life,” adding also, “because she is the mother of all the living.” For these too are to be understood as the words not of the writer narrating or affirming, but of the first man himself, so that he said, “because she is the mother of all the living,” as if giving the reason for the name he had given her, why he called her “Life.”

“And the Lord God made for Adam and his wife garments of skin and clothed them.” This too was done for the sake of a meaning, but nevertheless done; just as those things which were said for the sake of a meaning were nevertheless said. For this, which I have often said and do not mind saying more often, must be required of a narrator of things done in the proper sense: that he narrate as done what was done and as said what was said. And just as with deeds one asks both what was done and what it signifies, so with words one asks both what was said and what it signifies. For whether what is narrated as said was said figuratively or properly, that it was said must not be thought figurative. “And God said, Behold, Adam has become like one of us in knowing good and evil.” Since this, through whatever means and in whatever way it was said, was nevertheless said by God, the words “one of us” are to be understood in no other way than that the plural number is taken because of the Trinity, as it had been said, “Let us make man,” and as the Lord also said of himself and the Father, “We will come to him and make our dwelling with him.” So there was turned back upon the head of the proud man the outcome of his desire for what the serpent had suggested, “And you will be like gods”: “Behold,” he says, “Adam has become like one of us.” For these are words of God not so much mocking him as deterring others, for whose sake these things were written, from being proud in the same way. “He has become,” he says, “like one of us in knowing good and evil.” What else is to be understood but that an example was set forth to strike fear, because not only did he not become what he wanted to become, but he did not even keep what he had been made?

“And now,” God said, “lest at some time he stretch out his hand and take of the tree of life and eat, and live for ever.” “And the Lord God sent him out of the paradise of delight to till the earth from which he was taken.” The first are words of God; this deed followed because of those words. For, estranged from life—not only from the life that he would have received with the angels had he kept the commandment, but also from that which he was leading in paradise in a certain happy condition of the body—he certainly had to be separated from the tree of life; whether because that very happy condition of the body was sustained for him by it, from a visible thing by an invisible power, or because there was in it also a visible sacrament of invisible wisdom; he certainly had to be estranged from it, either as one now going to die or also as one excommunicated, just as also in this paradise, that is, the church, people are customarily removed by church discipline from the visible sacraments of the altar. “And he cast Adam out and placed him opposite the paradise of delight.” This too was done for the sake of signifying, but nevertheless done: that the sinner should dwell in misery opposite the paradise by which the happy life was also signified spiritually. “And he stationed the Cherubim and the flaming sword which turns, to guard the way to the tree of life.” We must believe that this was done through heavenly powers in the visible paradise as well, so that through the ministry of angels there was a kind of fiery guard there; yet we must certainly not doubt that it was not done in vain, but because it signifies something also about the spiritual paradise.

I am not unaware that some have thought that those human beings anticipated in haste their desire for the knowledge of good and evil and wished to receive at an unripe time what was being kept for them, postponed, for a more suitable time; and that the tempter brought this about so that, by plucking prematurely what did not yet suit such as they were, they would offend God and, excluded and condemned, be estranged from the benefit of that thing, which, had they approached it in its own time as God willed, they could have enjoyed to their salvation. If such people choose to take that tree not literally, as a real tree with real fruit, but figuratively, this view may have some outcome that is probable and consistent with right faith and truth. It has also seemed to some that those first two human beings stole their marriage and came together in intercourse before he who had created them joined them; and that this was signified by the name of the tree from which they had been forbidden, until they should be joined at the fitting time. As though they are to be believed to have been made at an age when the maturity of puberty had to be awaited; or as though it would not have been lawful then, as soon as it could first be done, whereas when it could not be done it certainly would not be done! Unless perhaps the bride had to be given away by her father, and the solemnity of vows and the celebration of a banquet, the valuation of the dowry and the drawing up of the marriage contract had to be awaited. That is ridiculous; besides which it departs from the proper sense of the events, which we undertook to assert and have asserted as far as God was pleased to grant.

This is more troubling: if Adam was already spiritual, in mind though not in body, how could he have believed what was said through the serpent, that God had forbidden them to eat the fruit of that tree because he knew that if they did they would be like gods through discerning good and evil, as though the Creator begrudged his creature so great a good? It would be a wonder if a man endowed with a spiritual mind could have believed this. Or was it because he could not believe it himself that the woman was added, who was of small understanding and perhaps still lived according to the sense of the flesh, not according to the spirit of the mind; and is this why the apostle does not attribute the image of God to her? For he says, “A man ought not to veil his head, since he is the image and glory of God; but the woman is the glory of the man.” This is not because a woman's mind cannot receive the same image, since he says that in that grace there is neither male nor female, but because perhaps she had not yet received what comes about in the knowledge of God, and was to receive it gradually under the man's guidance and direction. For not in vain is that too which the apostle says: “For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and came to be in transgression,” that is, so that through her the man also transgressed. For he calls him too a transgressor, where he says, “in the likeness of the transgression of Adam, who is a type of the one to come”; yet he denies that he was deceived. For when questioned, Adam did not say, “The woman whom you gave to be with me deceived me, and I ate,” but, “She gave me of the tree, and I ate”; whereas she said, “The serpent deceived me.” So, Solomon, a man of such great wisdom—are we to believe that he believed there was any use in the worship of idols? But he could not resist his love for women, which drew him to this evil, doing what he knew should not be done, lest he grieve the deadly delights for which he was pining away and wasting. So too Adam, after the deceived woman had eaten from the forbidden tree and given it to him so that they might eat together, did not want to grieve her, whom he believed might waste away without his comfort if she were estranged from his affection, and perish altogether in that discord; not indeed overcome by the concupiscence of the flesh, which he had not yet felt in the law of the members resisting the law of his mind, but by a certain friendly goodwill, by which it very often happens that God is offended lest a friend be made an enemy. That he ought not to have done this the just outcome of the divine sentence showed. So he too was deceived in some other way; but by that serpent's guile by which the woman was deceived I think he could by no means have been deceived. The apostle properly called it deception when what was being urged, though false, was thought true: namely, that God had forbidden them to touch that tree because he knew that if they touched it they would be like gods, as though he who had made them human begrudged them divinity. But even if some desire to try it stirred the man, because of some exaltation of mind that could not be hidden from God, the searcher of inward things, when he saw that the woman had not died after taking that food, according to what we discussed above, still I do not think that, if he was already endowed with a spiritual mind, he could in any way have believed that God had forbidden them the food of that tree out of envy. But why say more? That sin was urged as it could be urged on such as they were; and it was written down as it ought to be read by all, even if these things would be understood by few as they ought to be.

From the beginning of the holy Scripture entitled Genesis until the first man was sent out of paradise, we have discussed and written down in eleven books what we could and as we could, either asserting and defending what is certain to us, or inquiring, conjecturing, and hesitating about what is uncertain; not so much prescribing to each person what he should think about obscure matters as showing that we ourselves need to be taught where we have been in doubt, and keeping the reader from rashness in affirming where we could not provide the firmness of knowledge. This twelfth book, however, now freed from the care that occupied us in treating the text of the sacred writings, will deal more freely and at greater length with the question of paradise, lest we be thought to have avoided the fact that the apostle seems to suggest that paradise is in the third heaven, where he says, “I know a man in Christ fourteen years ago—whether in the body I do not know, or out of the body I do not know, God knows—such a one caught up to the third heaven. And I know that such a man—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows—was caught up into paradise and heard ineffable words, which it is not lawful for a man to speak.” In these words the first question usually asked is what he means by the third heaven; and next, whether he meant paradise to be understood as there, or whether, after he was caught up into the third heaven, he was also caught up into paradise, wherever paradise may be—so that being caught up into the third heaven was not the same as being caught up into paradise, but first into the third heaven and afterwards from there into paradise. And this is so ambiguous that it does not seem to me it can be resolved, unless someone finds something, not from the apostle's words in this passage but perhaps from other places in the Scriptures or by clear reason, by which to show either that paradise is in the third heaven or that it is not; since even what the third heaven itself is does not clearly appear, whether it is to be understood among bodily things or perhaps among spiritual ones. It could indeed be said that a man could not have been caught up with his body except to some bodily place; but since he put this too in such a way as to say that he did not know whether he was caught up in the body or out of the body, who would dare to say that he knows what the apostle said he did not know? Nevertheless, if a spirit without a body cannot be caught up to bodily places, nor a body to spiritual ones, his very doubt seems to compel us to understand—since no one doubts that he wrote these things about himself—that what he was caught up to was such that it could not be distinguished and discerned whether it was bodily or spiritual.

For when images of bodies are formed, whether in sleep or in ecstasy, they are not distinguished at all from bodies, except when the person, restored to the senses of the body, recognizes that he has been among images which he was not taking in through the senses of the body. For who, when he wakes from sleep, does not at once perceive that what he was seeing was imaginary, although while seeing it asleep he could not distinguish it from the bodily things seen by those awake? Yet I know that it has happened to me—and so I do not doubt that it could have happened, or can happen, to others too—that while seeing in sleep I perceived that I was seeing in sleep, and even while asleep I held and perceived most firmly that those images which are accustomed to mock our very assent were not true bodies but were being presented in sleep. Yet in this I was sometimes deceived: that I tried to persuade a friend of mine, whom I was likewise seeing in sleep, of this very thing, that those were not bodies which we were seeing, but images of dreamers; when he himself, of course, appeared to me among them in the same way as they did. To him I also said that it was not true that we were speaking together, but that he too was then seeing something else in his sleep and did not know at all whether I was seeing these things. But while I was striving to persuade him that he did not exist, I was led in part also to think that it was he, to whom I would certainly not have been speaking if I had been entirely convinced that he did not exist. So the soul of the sleeper, though wonderfully awake, could not but be led by the images of bodies as if they were bodies themselves. In ecstasy I have been able to hear only one person, and he a countryman scarcely able to express what he perceived, who knew both that he was awake and that he was seeing something not with the eyes of the body. For, to use his words as far as I can recall them, “My soul,” he said, “saw him, not my eyes; yet I did not know whether it was a body or the image of a body.” For he was not such as to distinguish these things, but he was so simply faithful that I listened to him as if I myself had seen what he said he had seen. And therefore, if Paul saw paradise in the way in which that sheet let down from heaven appeared to Peter, or as John saw whatever he wrote in the Apocalypse that he had seen, or as Ezekiel saw that plain with the bones of the dead and their resurrection, or as Isaiah saw God seated and the Seraphim in his sight and the altar from which a coal was taken to cleanse the prophet's lips, it is plain that he could have been ignorant whether he saw these things in the body or out of the body.