Yesterday, we suggested with Walter Brueggemann to read chapters 2 and 3 as a whole, and we started to describe these two chapters as a “drama in four scenes.” Genesis 2 represents the first two scenes in this drama (see yesterday’s post). Genesis 3 represents scenes 3 and 4.
The first 7 verses of chapter 3 form the third scene about the serpent. Nowhere in the text is the serpent explicitly identified with satan or evil or death, but it functions as an important player in how the drama unfolds. The serpent plays a role in the temptation to view the prohibition given by God in 2:17 not as a given, but an option. The serpent succeeded in relativizing the rule of God and tempting the human creatures to avoid the claims of God. The purpose of God’s gift of the garden was to enhance and embrace life in communion with God and each other. But the emphasis changes in this third scene. Now the speech turns away from speaking to God or with God (which would have indicated communion with God), and becomes speech about God. Brueggemann puts it beautifully, “The new mode of discourse here warns that theological talk which seeks to analyze and objectify matters of faithfulness is dangerous enterprise… The serpent is the first in the Bible to seem knowing and critical about God and to practice theology in the place of obedience.” What was meant as an acknowledgment that there is a boundary to life (2:17) now became a threat to human beings. God is now a barrier to be circumvented in some way. And as soon as the prohibition of 2:17 is violated, the permission of freedom (2:16) is also perverted and the vocation of 2:15 becomes neglected.
Scene 4 (3:8-24) turns the unfolding of this drama to its logical conclusion. If knowledge (the ability to distinguish between good and evil) rather than trust (relationship and communion) become the focus point, then there is nowhere to hide. Shame and guilt is the only outcome possible. And yet, this last scene is not simply a story of disobedience and its deathly consequences. Brueggemann writes, “It is rather a story about the struggle God has in responding to the facts of human life. When the facts warrant death, God insists on life for his creatures.” Therefore, there is a big surprise in this last scene. The ones who brought this curse and death over themselves are protected by God (3:21). God does for the couple (3:21) what they cannot do for themselves (3:7). To be clothed by God means to be given new life in the midst of the shame human beings brought upon themselves.
Genesis Journal 