I’ve decided to take my notes from a class I taught on Understanding Scripture last year and upload them as posts to this Blog. Originally, this material was taught in five sections. Here, it has been split into more manageable chucks. Several posts came before this one. You may want to check them out before you start this one.
When I originally taught this series, I took one week and dedicated it to walking chronologically through the Bible in about one hour. I split it into much smaller chunks here. If you want to read the whole thing, it's available PDF format. I’ll be posting these a little more often than once a week since each one is so short.
Genesis 3
Everything was going great until the serpent entered the picture. We know him better as Satan; his name in Hebrew is Ha-Satan: “the accuser.” Satan shows up in the garden and begins tempting Eve (though her husband is close by). The accuser starts by accusing God of being unloving and unreasonable; he asks her if God had really forbidden them from eating from any tree in the garden (3:1, note that virtually every time the serpent uses the word “you,” it is a plural pronoun).
Eve starts off rather poorly; she seeks to defend God, but adds something onto the rule that He had given her, putting a fence around the protection God had already given. She says that God had given them permission to eat from any tree in the garden but forbidden them from eating or touching fruit from the tree in the middle of the garden (the bit about touching was added, not a part of God’s command as it was revealed to us) lest they die (3:2–3). Satan then accuses God of lying, telling Eve that they would not die but would in fact become like God (3:4–5). Eve takes the bait and also gives some of the fruit to her husband, whom Genesis records as being with her (3:6).
For the first time they understand good and evil; the first thing that they see is their own sinfulness. Now they have to be covered, so their solution is to sew fig leaves together (3:7). Now the sound of God moving in the garden, instead of bringing joy, brings fear. Adam and Eve run and hide themselves (3:8). God goes looking for and calling after the man, though he was the last to rebel chronologically (3:9). Adam admits to having been afraid and says that, even though he had sewn his own covering (3:7), he still felt naked (3:10). God knows what’s going on and asks Adam if he had eaten from the tree (3:11). Adam responds by effectively blaming God for giving him a defective woman (3:12). The woman blames the serpent (3:13), and God responds by cursing all parties involved starting with the serpent. The serpent was doomed to crawl on his belly (3:14), which really doesn’t sound too bad. God was just getting started, though.
Genesis 3:15 contains the first direct proclamation of the gospel; theologians call it the protoevangelium because they think Greek sounds cooler than English (and in this case, I must agree). God promises that a seed (a Son, ultimately Jesus) would come from the woman. This seed would be injured by the serpent, but in return would deal the serpent a killing blow to the head. Next God moves onto cursing woman; she is told that her pain in childbirth would increase and that she would desire to control her husband but would instead be ruled over by him (3:16). Adam is told that the ground is cursed because of him; he would henceforth have great difficulty providing for his own needs and the needs of his family; the death penalty is also restated (3:17–19).
God then makes proper coverings for the man and the woman (3:21). He kills an animal and uses its skin to cover Adam and Eve’s skin, thus setting the precedent that sin can only be covered by shed blood. Within a single generation (and just a chapter later), Cain will get this wrong and murder his brother out of anger (4:3–5,8). Although man is still smart and strong, he is no longer loving or just.
Noah
I don’t want to take too much time covering this, but it’s an excellent illustration of what has now happened to mankind. Several generations after Adam and Eve, humanity is described as utterly wicked, everything man thought and wanted was always wicked, 24/7 (6:5). God even goes so far as to say that He was sorry that He had made man (6:6). We don’t have time to explain specifically what that means; for right now we will just say that God is using very strong language to prove His point: man is wicked. Man is so wicked that God decides to wipe out everyone except for one man and his family (6:7).
Noah is said to be the only righteous person on earth (6:9), this righteousness, though, cannot be taken to mean sinless. In Genesis 8:21, God repeats the notion that every thought that man has is wicked even from his youth. This is after God had wiped out everyone but Noah and his family! Noah then proceeds to plant a vineyard, get drunk, and lay naked in his tent; it’s almost as though he is trying to prove God’s point (9:21). It should be noted that we cannot say that man has completely lost the image of God. After the flood, God essentially institutes the death penalty for anyone who murders (9:6); He says that the reason for it is that man is made in the image of God. We would say that while man still has many of the natural good aspects of being made in the image of God, he has lost any moral good attributes; his thoughts and intentions are “only evil continually” (6:5).
Noah’s son Ham does not respond properly to Noah’s vineyard incident like his brothers Shem and Japheth do (9:22–23). Noah curses Ham’s son, Canaan, and blesses Ham’s brothers, blessing Shem the most (Gen 9:25–27). From Shem will eventually (after an incident with a tower and a very different kind of tongues experience – chapter 11) come Abraham, who is the main character in our next main point.
