You Can't Hide From...

Gen 3:8-24
8 And they heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden.
9 Then the LORD God called to Adam and said to him, "Where are you?" 10 So he said, "I heard Your voice in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; and I hid myself." 11 And He said, "Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you that you should not eat?" 12 Then the man said, "The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I ate." 13 And the LORD God said to the woman, "What is this you have done?" The woman said, "The serpent deceived me, and I ate." 14 So the LORD God said to the serpent:
"Because you have done this,You are cursed more than all cattle,And more than every beast of the field;On your belly you shall go,And you shall eat dust All the days of your life. 15 And I will put enmity Between you and the woman,And between your seed and her Seed;He shall bruise your head,And you shall bruise His heel." 

16 To the woman He said:
"I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception;In pain you shall bring forth children;Your desire shall be for your husband,And he shall rule over you." 

17 Then to Adam He said, "Because you have heeded the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree of which I commanded you, saying, 'You shall not eat of it':
"Cursed is the ground for your sake;In toil you shall eat of it All the days of your life. 18 Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you,And you shall eat the herb of the field. 19 In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread Till you return to the ground,For out of it you were taken;For dust you are,And to dust you shall return." 

20 And Adam called his wife's name Eve, because she was the mother of all living. 21 Also for Adam and his wife the LORD God made tunics of skin, and clothed them.
22 Then the LORD God said, "Behold, the man has become like one of Us, to know good and evil. And now, lest he put out his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever"-- 23 therefore the LORD God sent him out of the garden of Eden to till the ground from which he was taken. 24 So He drove out the man; and He placed cherubim at the east of the garden of Eden, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to guard the way to the tree of life.


One Christmas when my dad was overseas on deployment with the Navy we bought him a puzzle. It was made up of pieces that looked like pickles and you had to place them in the jar just right to get them to fit. Mom knew dad was good at puzzles so she burned the solution to this one. I was 15 or 16 and just knew I could solve that puzzle so I snuck it out and tried for two days to put it back together. Well, guess what? I could not put it back together and I eventually had to tell mom what I had done. Mom could not put the puzzle together either. So we ended up packaging the puzzle as best we could and sending it along with the other things we were sending to dad. I had messed up and there was no fixing the problem and I what was worse I had to face my mom and admit my guilt. This is in a small way what happened to Adam and Eve that day Satan tricked them into trying the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

Now the rest of the story, when my dad got his package he first thought that the jar of pickles had opened and dried out. Then he realized that it was a puzzle to put together, he said he thought we had sent it apart on purpose to make it harder to solve. He solved it in just about 5 minutes.


What caused Adam and Eve to hide? What was the cause and occasion of their fear: They heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day. It was the approach of the Judge that now scared them. As He did every day in the cool of the evening God came to fellowship with Adam and Eve. But this time circumstances were different and even though God came in His usual manner, Adam and Eve feared Him because of their guilty consciences. He appeared to them now (it should seem) in the same way that they had seen him when He put them into paradise. God came to encourage them, not to amaze and terrify them. He came into the garden, not descending immediately from heaven in their view, but he came into the garden, as one that was still willing to be familiar with them. He came walking, not running, not riding upon the wings of the wind, but walking deliberately. He came in the cool of the day, not in the night. He did not come suddenly upon them; but they heard his voice at some distance, giving them notice of his coming.


What was the effect and evidence of their fear: They hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God. Before they had sinned, if they had heard the voice of the Lord God coming towards them, they would have gone out to meet Him. But, now God had become a terror to them. Their own consciences accused them, and set their sin before them. In this fright they hid themselves among the bushes; having offended, they fled. Knowing that they were guilty, they did not wait to face God and certain judgment, but instead fled from justice. Adam and Eve, who were partners in the sin, were sharers in the shame and fear that comes with it; Even though they stood side by side, hand in hand they could not fortify one another.

Adam and Eve Hide

God was not ignorant of Adam and Eve's hiding-place, He knew where they were and what they had done. But He wanted them to confess their sin; that is why He asked where Adam was. When Adam said that he had hidden himself for fear of his nakedness, he sought to hide the sin behind its consequences, his disobedience behind the feeling of shame. It seems that at the time Adam actually thought more of his nakedness and shame than of his transgression of the divine command, and his consciousness of the effects of his sin was keener than his sense of the sin itself.


God said, "Who told you that you were naked?" and asked him whether he had broken His command. Adam could not deny that he had, but sought to excuse himself by playing the first ever round of the “Blame Game,” by saying, that the woman whom God gave to be with him had given him fruit from the tree. When the woman was questioned, she took the blame and placed it squarely on the serpent, round two of the “Blame Game”. In offering these excuses, neither of them denied the fact.

Judgment Passed

God immediately proceeds to pass sentence; and, in these verses, he begins (where the sin began) with the serpent. God did not examine the serpent, He did not ask him what he had done nor why he did it; but immediately sentenced him,

From the moment he was sentenced he was to crawl in the dust and even feed on it. He would slither his way along in disgrace, and hatred would be directed against him from all directions. Man would always regard him as a symbol of the degradation of the one who had slandered. He was to represent not merely the serpent race, but the power of the evil kingdom. As long as life continued, men would hate him and seek to destroy him.

God established unending hostility, not only between the serpent and the woman, but also between the serpent's and the woman's seed, i.e., between the human and the serpent race. The seed of the woman would crush the serpent's head, and the serpent crush the heel of the woman's seed.

The Prophecy Concerning Christ (v.15)

As the woman is the mother of all living (v. 20), her seed, to which the victory over the serpent and its seed was promised, had be of the human race. An individual from among the woman’s seed, namely, Christ Jesus, dealt a death blow to Satan (head) at the cross and through an empty tomb, while Satan would bruise Christ’s heel (cause Him to suffer).

Adam and Eve’s Judgment

Eve was condemned to suffer in childbearing. And Adam was condemned to exhausting labor in order to make a living, because the curse on the ground. (Adam worked before his fall.)


However, Eve was to be the first woman from which life originated. She was the mother of each person and, therefore, the mother of each clan and people. In accordance with the divine purpose, life must go on, even though the pronouncement of death had been spoken - ”unto the dust thou shall return.”

The garments of skin were God’s provision for restoring Adam and Eve’s fellowship with Himself and implying slaying of an animal in order to provide them.

Driving Adam and Eve from the garden was both a punishment and an act of mercy. It was a punishment in that they would have to work hard to make a living as stated before. It was a blessing in that if Adam and Eve had eaten from the Tree of Life they would have lived forever in a state of death and alienation.

The Hebrews claimed that cherubim were "angels of destruction," designed to destroy anyone who sought entrance to Eden. Hebrew (kerubim) indicates divinely formed figures that serve as bearers of the diety or as special guardians of sacred things.

The way back into Eden was guarded not only by the cherubim but also by a revolving swordlike flame. This gave further assurance that man would not make his way to the tree of life. 

Christ Jesus had defeated Satan once and for all. He stepped out of heaven, became God/man and has conquered sin and the death it brings. Why would He do this, because He loves you and wants you to some day be able to "walk in the cool of the evening" with God.