Genesis 2:24 Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh. 25 And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed. JPS Tanakh 1917
Historically the church has pointed at this verse along with Matthew 19:4-7 and Mark 10:6-9 as the norm for human sexuality. While the word “marriage” doesn’t appear here, the act of leaving parents, cleaving and becoming one flesh strongly implies this. Marriage is often thought of as an institution, but what is described here is a relationship.
Monogamous relationships are generally the case by the time of Jesus, but if we look ahead from Genesis 2 to Genesis 4:19, we see Lamech with two wives. Jacob also has two wives, David has eight named wives (but there are more) and Solomon takes the prize with 700 wives plus 300 concubines. This is clearly in conflict with God’s intention as stated in Genesis 2 but things change in chapter 3 as sin enters the world and disrupts the shalom that had existed prior. Also, Jacob, David and Solomon all suffered as a result of these irregular family unions.
Matthew 19:3 And Pharisees came to him, testing him, and saying to him, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce a wife for any reason?” 4 He answered, and said, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, 5 and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother, and be joined to his wife; and the two will become one flesh?’ 6 So that they are no more two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no one separate.” 7 They asked him, “Why then did Moses command us to give her a certificate of divorce, and divorce her?” 8 He said to them, “Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it has not been so. 9 I tell you that whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery. And he who marries her when she is divorced commits adultery.” NHEB
In Matthew 19:3 (and Mark 10:2), Jesus is asked about marriage and the ability of a man to divorce his wife for any reason. At the time, there were two competing rabbinical schools of thought. One allowed divorce for any reason and the other would only allow divorce for sexual immorality. Divorce, without reason, was widespread throughout Jewish society even before Moses. For more see: https://www.thetorah.com/article/when-is-a-man-allowed-to-divorce-his-wife. Jesus quotes the verse from Genesis 2 and adds an additional command. He also clarifies God’s intent on the subject.
His comment about hardness of hearts is a rather harsh criticism regarding the spiritual nature of the Jews of the time but in practice, we also miss the mark too often by following the “devices and desires of our own hearts” (Page 321 Book of Common Prayer https://bcponline.org/HE/penord1.html). Nevertheless, God doesn’t give up on us.
“We were made not primarily that we may love God (though we were made for that too) but that God may love us, that we may become objects in which the Divine love may rest ‘well pleased’. To ask that God’s love should be content with us as we are is to ask that God should cease to be God: because He is what He is, His love must, in the nature of things, be impeded and repelled by certain stains in our present character, and because He already loves us He must labour to make us lovable.” C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain.
Genesis 3:1 Now the serpent was more shrewd than any of the wild animals which God had made. And he said to the woman, “Has God really said, ‘You shall not eat of any tree of the garden?'” 2 And the woman said to the serpent, “Of the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat, 3 but of 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.'” 4 And the serpent said to the woman, “You won’t surely die, 5 for God knows that in the day you eat it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” 6 When 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 of its fruit, and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. 7 The eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked. So they sewed fig leaves together, and made coverings for themselves. 8 They heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden during the breeze of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of God among the trees of the garden. 9 So God called to the man, and said to him, “Where are you?” 10 The man 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 that I commanded you not to eat from?” 12 The man said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I ate.” 13 Then God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.” NHEB
There are not all that many explicit references to Genesis 3 in the Bible although it is the backdrop for much of what comes after. Our favorite rabbi will tell you that it isn’t a big player in Judaism and was not that important to Christianity until Augustine came along and developed the story. Nevertheless, it is hard to understand Luther and Calvin if you ignore Genesis 3. It is also an important narrative for America as while not all of our founders were Christians, all were influenced by Judeo-Christian ethics and teachings particularly the duality of good and evil. In Federalist 10, the discussion focuses on human nature as relates to the new government. If humans typically only look out for themselves, then government needs checks and balances to keep any one group from dominating the rest rather than negotiating and working together.
Chapter 3 starts off with the appearance of the serpent. We aren’t given any details on who the serpent is or where he came from although John’s Gospel and the Book of Revelation identify him as Satan. In the ancient world, a serpent would be recognized as dangerous – a symbol of something that is antagonistic to God. It is important to note that, unlike God, the serpent does not have an independent existence. Rather, the serpent is created and the question he asks becomes the basis for all rebellion in the Bible. Essentially, his argument is that you don’t have to take what God has said seriously and as a result, can simply reject what He has said.
The rabbinical tradition is that the serpent made his move for Eve basically because she was weaker or somehow less rational. Perhaps, but that line of reasoning ignores the fact that she is there with Adam who neglects to offer any resistance. Also at this point, men and women are equal partners. From Matthew Henry’s Commentary:
“Yet man being made last of the creatures, as the best and most excellent of all, Eve’s being made after Adam, and out of him, puts an honour upon that sex, as the glory of the man. If man is the head, she is the crown, a crown to her husband, the crown of the visible creation. The man was dust refined, but the woman was dust double-refined, one remove further from the earth. 2. That Adam slept while his wife was in making, that no room might be left to imagine that he had herein directed the Spirit of the Lord, or been his counsellor… 4. That the woman was made of a rib out of the side of Adam; not made out of his head to rule over him, nor out of his feet to be trampled upon by him, but out of his side to be equal with him, under his arm to be protected, and near his heart to be beloved. Adam lost a rib, and without any diminution to his strength or comeliness (for, doubtless, the flesh was closed without a scar); but in lieu thereof he had a help meet for him, which abundantly made up his loss:
There is an expansion on the commandment regarding the tree of good and evil by Eve as she adds that touching the tree will also cause death. This addition could have come from Adam or it could have come from her but either way, it didn’t come from God. Adding additional criteria to Scripture still occurs today. While it may seem innocuous, there are two ways to diminish Scripture – by ignoring it or by adding to it.
Death is the real inheritance here. The Hebrew word for evil is the same as the Hebrew word for apple which is why “apple” got thrown into the Latin translations. Three other consequences from their sin is that they now realize they are naked, they hide from God in shame for their transgression and they set in motion the unraveling of shalom. This unraveling starts from an act of disobedience and then spreads throughout so that by the time we get to Genesis 11, the world is completely undone.