In the Bible, God forbids the first people only one thing: “Don’t eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. When you do, you will die.” You will see this in Genesis 2. It will be helpful at this point if you read Genesis 2 and 3. Beginning at Genesis 2: 2, the two chapters tell one story. (I’ll say a bit more on “you will die [at the time you eat of the tree]” in a moment.) The main idea here, I think, is that humans must not presume to be able to construct what is truly right and wrong. That is God’s department, and we depend on him for our ultimate bearings.
Enter a talking snake. It might be helpful for ask if we are meant to consider what was it doing before it talked with Eve. Could it be that the snake’s conversation with Eve was not its first act of cosmic mischief? We must take notice that the snake questions God’s reputation. You can’t trust him. He is only looking out for his own. He doesn’t want to share everything he has with you. Adam and Eve buy into this. They are being led on.
They both eat. And they are stunned with guilt, cover themselves and hide. God comes. Can you hear the pain in his voice when he says, “Adam, where are you?”
Adam tries to pass the buck. Eve does the same. God pronounces a kind of sentence on each of the three characters, beginning with the snake. The snake is given a lowly dirt-in-your-face existence. Adam’s work, which once was enjoyable, will now become hard. For Eve, what was once meant to bring joy, childbirth, will become a great risk. And what about the relationship between man and woman? How does it change?
Adam and Eve are punished, but not with the sentence of death. They do not die as we might have expected. Why do you think not? Does this tell us something about God’s character?
Is there any hope in this story? God assures Eve that one of her offspring will fatally wound the serpent, although sustaining a wound himself, only to the heel. How do you think that assurance has been fulfilled?