The Fall (Genesis 3)

The goodness of creation and the close relationship that man and woman shared with God gets severely tested and ultimately changed because of a series of decisions.  Genesis 3 takes us from the ideal state of "everything was good" to a serious rupture in the relationship.  What happened?  Is there any hope?   

In season five we're listening to Bible stories and learning to pray them.  Our focus today is the very human story of how the first couple on earth used their freedom and choices to go their own way, to know good and evil on their own.

In our podcast we take time to listen to God's word, reflect on it and then pray it back to God as well as carry that word with us through the rest of the day.  We use the entire Bible to do that and not just the "uplifting" or inspirational parts of it.  On today's episode we listen to Genesis 3 as a rival to God's voice appears in the garden and small actions with big consequences unfold.

Many of the words used in Genesis 1-11 are important even beyond the immediate context of the story and get repeated later on in the stories of the Bible (either verbatim or in echoes).  We’ll return to this point in future episodes.   In this reading, pay attention to the words and themes used repeatedly:  life (and death), seeing (and hiding from sight), and eating.

The wordplay in Genesis 2 between the Hebrew word for man, adam, and ground, adamah is carried over and continued here, as well as the  word for woman or wife, ishshah.  In fact, the woman is named a second time at the end of Genesis 3:  she is called Eve , which means "life".  This reading of Genesis 3 is based on a fresh translation from the Hebrew original so we can  ponder what it means before we pray a prayer to God shaped by this passage.

This passage is traditionally called The Fall, and we are concerned with identifying the themes and recognizing patterns that intersect with our own lives.

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