The Fall

The Fall is the event recorded in Genesis 3, in which Adam and Eve ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil against God's command (Genesis 2:16-17; 3:6), after which the man was banished from the garden of Eden (Genesis 3:23-24). The Zondervan Pictorial Encyclopedia of the Bible describes it as the event in which the first parents fell from the state of integrity in which God had made them.

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The Account in Genesis

The LORD God had commanded the man that he might eat freely from every tree of the garden except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, warning him, "in the day that you eat of it, you will surely die" (Genesis 2:16-17). The serpent, "more crafty than any beast of the field," questioned what God had said and told the woman, "You will not surely die" (Genesis 3:1-4). Seeing that the tree was good for food, pleasing to the eyes and desirable for obtaining wisdom, she ate its fruit and gave some to her husband, who also ate (Genesis 3:6). Their eyes were opened, they knew that they were naked, and they made coverings of fig leaves and hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden (Genesis 3:7-8). Questioned by God, the man said that the woman had given him the fruit, and the woman answered, "The serpent deceived me" (Genesis 3:11-13).

God cursed the serpent and put enmity between its seed and the woman's seed: "He will crush your head, and you will strike his heel" (Genesis 3:14-15). To the woman He announced increased pain in childbirth; to Adam, a ground cursed because of him, toil all his days and a return to the dust from which he was taken (Genesis 3:16-19). The LORD God made garments of skin for them, then banished the man from the Garden of Eden and stationed cherubim with a whirling sword of flame to guard the way to the tree of life (Genesis 3:21-24).

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Readings of the Account

The Zondervan Pictorial Encyclopedia of the Bible holds that scripture is unequivocal in tracing death to Adam's trespass (Genesis 2:17; Genesis 3:19). Zondervan also calls man the crown of creation and holds that his fall brought "the bondage of corruption" on everything over which he was to exercise dominion (Genesis 3:17). Zondervan sees "the activity of Satan" behind the serpent. The serpent of the garden points forward to "that ancient serpent called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world" (Revelation 12:9).

Herman Bavinck observed that the Old Testament seldom refers to the history of the Fall, finding at most possible allusions in Hosea 6:7 and Ecclesiastes 7:29. Hosea says that "they, like Adam, have transgressed the covenant" (Hosea 6:7), and Ecclesiastes that "God made mankind upright, but they have sought out many schemes" (Ecclesiastes 7:29). Bavinck nevertheless called the Fall "the silent hypothesis of the whole Biblical doctrine of sin and redemption". The Fall is where "sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin" (Romans 5:12), and Adam himself points forward as "a pattern of the One to come" (Romans 5:14): "as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive" (1 Corinthians 15:22).