What went wrong in Eden?

⁴This is the history of the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that Yahweh God made the earth and the heavens.

⁵No plant of the field was yet in the earth, and no herb of the field had yet sprung up; for Yahweh God had not caused it to rain on the earth. There was not a man to till the ground,

⁶but a mist went up from the earth, and watered the whole surface of the ground.

⁷Yahweh God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

⁸Yahweh God planted a garden eastward, in Eden, and there he put the man whom he had formed.

⁹Out of the ground Yahweh God made every tree to grow that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food, including the tree of life in the middle of the garden and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

¹⁰A river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from there it was parted, and became the source of four rivers.

¹¹The name of the first is Pishon: it flows through the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold;

¹²and the gold of that land is good. Bdellium and onyx stone are also there.

¹³The name of the second river is Gihon. It is the same river that flows through the whole land of Cush.

¹⁴The name of the third river is Hiddekel. This is the one which flows in front of Assyria. The fourth river is the Euphrates.

¹⁵Yahweh God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to cultivate and keep it.

¹⁶Yahweh God commanded the man, saying, “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden;

¹⁷but you shall not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; for in the day that you eat of it, you will surely die.”

¹⁸Yahweh God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make him a helper comparable to him.”

¹⁹Out of the ground Yahweh God formed every animal of the field, and every bird of the sky, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. Whatever the man called every living creature became its name.

²⁰The man gave names to all livestock, and to the birds of the sky, and to every animal of the field; but for man there was not found a helper comparable to him.

²¹Yahweh God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep. As the man slept, he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh in its place.

²²Yahweh God made a woman from the rib which had taken from the man, and brought her to the man.

²³The man said, “This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh. She will be called ‘woman,’ because she was taken out of Man.”

²⁴Therefore a man will leave his father and his mother, and will join with his wife, and they will be one flesh.

²⁵The man and his wife were both naked, and they were not ashamed.

¹Now the serpent was more subtle than any animal of the field which Yahweh God had made. He said to the woman, “Has God really said, ‘You shall not eat of any tree of the garden?’”

²The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees of the garden,

³but not the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden. God has said, ‘You shall not eat of it, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’”

⁴The serpent said to the woman, “You won’t surely die,

⁵for God knows that in the day you eat it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

⁶When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took some of its fruit, and ate; and she gave some to her husband with her, and he ate it, too.

⁷Their eyes were opened, and they both knew that they were naked. They sewed fig leaves together, and made coverings for themselves.

⁸They heard the voice of Yahweh God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of Yahweh God among the trees of the garden.

⁹Yahweh God called to the man, and said to him, “Where are you?”

¹⁰The man said, “I heard your voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.”

¹¹God said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?”

¹²The man said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit from the tree, and I ate it.”

¹³Yahweh God said to the woman, “What have you done?” The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”

¹⁴Yahweh God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, you are cursed above all livestock, and above every animal of the field. You shall go on your belly and you shall eat dust all the days of your life.

¹⁵I will put hostility between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring. He will bruise your head, and you will bruise his heel.”

¹⁶To the woman he said, “I will greatly multiply your pain in childbirth. In pain you will bear children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.”

¹⁷To Adam he said, “Because you have listened to your wife’s voice, and ate from the tree, about which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ the ground is cursed for your sake. You will eat from it with much labor all the days of your life.

¹⁸It will yield thorns and thistles to you; and you will eat the herb of the field.

¹⁹By the sweat of your face will you eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken. For you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

²⁰The man called his wife Eve because she would be the mother of all the living.

²¹Yahweh God made coats of animal skins for Adam and for his wife, and clothed them.

²²Yahweh God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand, and also take of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever...”

²³Therefore Yahweh God sent him out from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from which he was taken.

²⁴So 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.

¹²Therefore as sin entered into the world through one man, and death through sin; and so death passed to all men, because all sinned.

¹³For until the law, sin was in the world; but sin is not charged when there is no law.

¹⁴Nevertheless death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over those whose sins weren’t like Adam’s disobedience, who is a foreshadowing of him who was to come.

¹⁵But the free gift isn’t like the trespass. For if by the trespass of the one the many died, much more did the grace of God, and the gift by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, abound to the many.

¹⁶The gift is not as through one who sinned: for the judgment came by one to condemnation, but the free gift came of many trespasses to justification.

¹⁷For if by the trespass of the one, death reigned through the one; so much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one, Jesus Christ.

¹⁸So then as through one trespass, all men were condemned; even so through one act of righteousness, all men were justified to life.

¹⁹For as through the one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the one, many will be made righteous.

²⁰The law came in besides, that the trespass might abound; but where sin abounded, grace abounded more exceedingly;

²¹that as sin reigned in death, even so grace might reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.